Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (53 page)

Regardless of the success of laying down an umbrella of bombs, and the advances the muhj had racked up over the last four days, we could not get bottlenecked on a single hilltop. Bin Laden’s location was still unknown, and we needed to be able to quickly join the fracas when the al Qaeda chief showed himself.

Moving to the new axis of advance, MSS Grinch crossed paths with a group of muhj taking some al Qaeda prisoners back to General Ali’s headquarters. Upon seeing the American commandos, the muhj became nervous, clearly not wanting the boys near their prisoners. A rumor had spread after the laughable surrender deal a few days earlier that the Americans would kill all prisoners in cold blood. In a war zone, that wasn’t necessarily a bad reputation to have.

The muhj tried to sneak the prisoners past, but our Alpha Team, along with the attached Special Ops Arab linguist, intercepted them. Their orders were to snap some photos, see if they recognized anyone, and take a look at how the muhj were treating the prisoners. Did they allow them to keep their weapons? Were they treating them as prisoners of war, or had the enemy simply paid off the Afghan muhj to escort an escape? Hell, the way things were going with the entire rumor, innuendo, and unanswered questions about the surrender deal, it wouldn’t have surprised any of us if bin Laden and his cane were strolling along with them.

As expected, the muhj took issue with the situation, which made the picture taking and questioning in Arabic all the more entertaining. Surprisingly, at least one of the al Qaeda prisoners had a fairly good command of English and didn’t mind flaunting it.

After being asked where bin Laden was located, another prisoner
responded defiantly, “I could tell any Muslim brother where Sheik Usama is and they wouldn’t tell you.”

Every nervous muhj guard present during this exchange thought the next action would be an American commando putting a .45-caliber hard ball into the prisoner’s smart-ass mouth. But we are more civilized than our terrorist adversaries, a characteristic seen as a sign of weakness by al Qaeda’s ilk, and let them live. In a war zone with these people, such compassion isn’t such a good reputation to have.

General Ali declared victory over the al Qaeda forces at Tora Bora. He did not mention Usama bin Laden.

The general’s victory cry was at odds with the current realities of the battlefield, where the air strikes were continuing unabated. The boys called in a half-dozen “troops in the open” requests for fire from a couple of loitering B-52s. Close to forty-five bombs were dropped before noon.

By early afternoon, we decided to honor Ali’s request to cease bombing to allow his fighters greater freedom of movement. The general was confident that no caves existed beyond Hilltop 3212. He said he knew this for sure because he had helped build them in the mid-1980s.

Several villages reported strangers showing up, and the muhj visited them, one by one. At this point, there was little fight and little faith left in al Qaeda’s ranks.

There had been no confirmed sign of bin Laden in the last couple of days, no body to photograph, no DNA to collect. The press began reporting that the al Qaeda leader had escaped, and that led some critics to declare that the Battle of Tora Bora was a failure.

Our boss relayed the necessity that we paint a picture of victory, but
without the body of our target, there were few options for convincing outsiders that the overall fight had been a success.

We could state the fact, verifiable by the press, that the al Qaeda mountain stronghold had been utterly destroyed. And we could also accurately point out that the enemy was on the run. The preferred choice was to fall back on the body count option of the Vietnam era.

Thus began the numbers game of meticulously soliciting figures from each subordinate commander of the rival warlords, from the CIA people who had explored particular caves and valleys, and cross-checking their tallies with our own daily notes and reports.

Regardless of the spin, General Ali’s declaration of victory meant very little to us. True victory could never be claimed until there was some proof of bin Laden’s demise. A bunch of dead al Qaeda types was certainly a good thing, but the main mission had been to kill the mastermind and bring back proof. That didn’t happen.

Jester, Dugan, and the two Brits got an early start on their resupply hike. They had about one thousand meters to cover, moving uphill and over some treacherous terrain in weather that was deteriorating every day.

Like Scrawny before him, Dugan’s mountaineering expertise saved the day, and after three hard hours of climbing over slippery rocks they finally reached their teammates. It is amazing that none of them slipped over the edge and plummeted two thousand feet to the bottom of the valley.

After reaching the three snipers, the five Delta operators and two Brit commandos huddled close together in the freezing temperatures. There were seven of them, each with a thin local blanket, but there were only two sleeping bags. They took shelter from the knife-sharp wind inside an old al Qaeda trench and spent that whole horrible night rotating through security and restless sleep. None were considering getting out of there, but were just waiting for authority to start dropping bombs again. In their opinion, the lack of thunderous explosions, machine-gun chatter and radio transmissions was only a temporary condition.

The only thing breaking the eerie, ghostly silence was the keening wind.

On the other side of the battlefield, the four-man team of Brit commandos and one American combat controller that was accompanying Zaman’s fighters made their way to Ski and his India Team. By now, Zaman had surrounded the second highest peak in the area, just short of 10,000 feet, and shown on our maps as Hilltop 3212.

What was left of al Qaeda fighters was in a full retreat. And without any command and control to organize and direct them, it was every man for himself. None were sticking around the mountains in hopes of a lastditch defensive. When the weather cooperated, the desperate yet brave enemy fighters were easy targets in the daytime for our fighter jets and accurate bombers.

India Team took the opportunity to conduct some battle damage assessment of the caves and bunkers in their area. The fissures that dominated the high ground had excellent overhead cover and concealment, and were topped with blue and clear plastic to keep out the rain. The Delta boys were impressed by the work of the men who had constructed the caves, but also saluted the attention to detail of the American factory workers who built the engines of war that destroyed them.

Heaps of sheared rock, mounds of turned soil, and mangled branches and tree trunks surrounded the emplacements, severe damage that attested to the accuracy and severity of heavy bombing. A destroyed ZPU-1 antiaircraft gun, previously well camouflaged, sat open and exposed and motionless behind some tattered trees. Empty ammo cans and belts of ammunition were strewn in all directions. Bloodied bandages, discarded cans of Quaker Oatmeal and food wrappings, split firewood, abandoned RPG rounds, and old potato masher grenades gave it the look of a junkyard. A few documents written in Arabic, the only thing of value to us, were collected and passed to the CIA.

While documenting the finds with a camera, Ski struck up a conversation with a muhj fighter. The Afghan told a dramatic yarn of a helicopter
swooping in fast and low to land in a small village down in the Wazir Valley. Although the muhj’s memory was admittedly hazy, he told Ski the event happened about eight days earlier, and in his opinion the helicopter had belonged to Pakistan. Ski knew for sure that it had not been an American helicopter. Could it have picked up a special passenger and whisked him away? No way to prove any part of his story.

I sat down with General Ali and Adam Khan for our nightly chat and had a chance for some small talk while we waited for George to arrive with his latest CIA reports. I mentioned that since the general’s earlier declaration of victory, the U.S. government had begun debating a “definition of success” for Tora Bora.

“The Voice of America is saying this battle is over, and that you won, General,” I said, sipping a cup of hot tea. Obviously exhausted, but happy that the fighting was over except for some minor actions, Ali responded in a fatherly tone: “We might not have been up to the task, we might have needed more fighters, it might not have gone according to plan, or maybe this was all in God’s hands.”

Pausing to allow Adam Khan to translate, the general continued, “We have much work still to do. We haven’t found Sheikh Usama.”

“General, with all you just said, how could you claim victory?” I asked.

“To put a smile on your face. We have destroyed al Qaeda’s base of the last ten years. They are confused, tired, and hurting. The sheikh has no other place as good as this,” he answered with total sincerity, nodding toward the snow-sheathed peaks.

I changed the subject. “When we arrived, we were told that up to three thousand enemy fighters were in the mountains. Where did they go, and how many were killed?”

“My commanders will tell me how many died. It is difficult, though, as our culture is to care for the martyrs right away. Zaman buried many the other day. We found eighty in a valley yesterday from bombs,” he explained, then paused for a few seconds. “If al Qaeda was still strong, they would not have left their dead brothers behind.”