Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (59 page)

As the new guy in the battalion, my presence was also required at a seemingly endless series of routine chores. There was a brigade change of command rehearsal in starch and spits for several hours on a parade field in category IV heat. Then there was combat lifesaver recertification, military driver’s license testing, drownproofing, MILES 2000 certification, observer-controller certification testing, and so on.

I had forgotten how much the army thrived off of
certification
in everything. It is a cover-your-ass technique to ensure some lower-ranking officer is accountable when a soldier screws up: “Look, you signed right here that this guy was certified, so it’s your fault, not mine.”

I even had to take a written test on how to wear and operate the AN/PVS-5 night vision goggles. I might as well have been quizzed on eighteenth-century buggy-whip manufacturing. I had not used the PVS-5s since I was a Ranger instructor more than a decade earlier. They were technological throwbacks, for in Delta, we used the much more advanced ANVS-9 generation of night vision goggles, the same kind worn by the night-flying pilots with the daring 160th SOAR. My new battalion was not high enough on the totem pole to receive modern gear that had extraordinary clarity and depth perception.

Also, I was a fish out of water when it came to mechanized infantry. I was uncomfortable in the rolling forts called Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. Didn’t know a damned thing about them. Didn’t care. Had to take another class. In Tora Bora, a decent jackass that could plod a mountain trail was much more valuable than a Bradley.

To add insult to injury, I was kicked out of the Fort Stewart Field House’s weight room twice in three months, once for trying to lift weights while still in my camouflage uniform, and the other time for lifting while in blue jeans, a T-shirt, and desert combat boots. That was common attire inside the Delta gym, because you were going to get sweaty later anyway, but it was taboo in the regular army.

In early May, I attended a terrain model briefing for our brigade’s upcoming two weeks of annual summer training. All the lieutenant colonels and majors stood around the model while the colonels and a few starry generals sat comfortably in folding chairs, sniping at the various briefing officers about tactics and techniques, good ideas, and not so good ideas.

My personal distaste for the conventional army came rushing back at me like a big Mack truck and reminded me of just how much I despised the traditional military pomp and circumstance. I was present at that terrain model physically, but absent mentally. The rigidity, inflexibility, and rank-has-its-privileges standards were petty and abhorrent. Why did the big dogs get to sit in comfort while the guys who would really be doing the work were either not present or treated like underlings? This was leadership?

In Delta, the whole troop would have studied this problem together and then Ironhead, Grinch, B-Monkey, and the other sergeants would tell the officers whatever we needed to know.

My mind was on the war in Iraq, and I missed the action, the adrenaline rush, and the boys. I was not exactly loving my new assignment.

Ihad stayed in touch with the Delta loop because it would have been impossible not to do so. The boys had rotated into Iraq and things were different this time around, they told me. No sitting around the tents waiting for perfect intelligence to materialize before being given authorization to kill the enemy. As the Tom Cruise fighter-jock character said in the movie
Top Gun
, Iraq was a target-rich environment. Delta was making their own actionable intelligence and throwing down against Iraqi soldiers and Baath Party loyalists. To make the boys jealous, I could now describe how to change the oil in a Bradley.

After several months, I received a phone call from Lowblow, one of the Kilo Team snipers in Tora Bora. One of our former teammates—retired Master Sergeant William Carlson—had been killed in Afghanistan while on patrol looking for remnant Taliban and holdover al Qaeda fighters. The Chief, from the Blackfeet tribe of American Indians, had been in
Delta forever and was one of the very best when he retired and went to work for the CIA as an independent contractor. That new job came with a hefty increase in pay and a ticket back to Afghanistan.

Chief’s funeral was a solemn event, but it was also incredibly uplifting for me to see so many of my former mates gathered on that sunny summer afternoon. Jim and Jester, Shrek and Murph, and a dozen others were dressed in their military Class A uniforms adorned with the Purple Hearts and various awards for valor. Several other operators were dressed in sharp custom-made suits. There were plenty of warriors there who wore the Delta trademark Oakley sunglasses, and among them were Gus Murdock and Mark Sutter.

Inside the funeral home that day, Gus asked if I would consider coming back to Delta and get into the Iraq fight. Was it even possible, given the army’s stringent rules on moving soldiers around?

I knew Gus had made the inquiry not because I was anything special, nor because the Unit needed me, because they certainly didn’t. As I drove along Interstate 16, chewing up the hours to reach Fort Stewart, it became clear that he was offering me a chance to deal with my personal regret at having left Delta. I had not yet paid my dues in full, and we both knew it. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, I fat-fingered Gus’s cell number into my phone with the other hand to accept his offer.

A few days after the funeral, I was on a rifle range, teaching a company of soldiers how to mount an Aimpoint sighting device to their M-16A4 rifles. These National Guard troops were preparing to go to Iraq and needed all the training they could get. My cell phone rang. The Delta adjutant was calling to say that the Department of the Army paperwork officially ordering me back to Delta was in the mail. I guess I underestimated the Unit’s power. That evening I doubled my run route and doubled up on chest and biceps. I was stoked!

Not everyone was as happy. My wife, in particular, was unimpressed that I was returning to Delta and heading for Iraq. She rightly pointed out that I was a family man, too, and that my decision was totally selfish. She was right, but what could I do? But she had been through this Delta routine before, understood the magnetism, and knew that I would be back when I got back, and that the twenty service years were almost up anyway.

My brigade commander also was not a happy camper when, without explanation, he received the news that I was history with the mechanized infantry battalion. They said that I could not just up and leave, so I gave them a special telephone number, then up and left. They called the number and were curtly informed that the commander’s approval had not been sought because it was unnecessary. In the midst of a real war, the petty stuff goes out the window.

Things inside the building had changed very little since I parted from Delta months earlier, and after a few days of catching up with old teammates, it seemed like I had never left.

Stormin’ had prepared for my arrival by drawing my old guns from the arms room, kitting them out with all the bells and whistles, and even zeroing them on the range. It was great to see my old friend again, because we had learned the trade of small unit infantry tactics together while growing up in the 1st Ranger Battalion in Savannah, Georgia, in the early 1980s. He joined Delta just after Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

Stormin’s other nickname, “the Bod,” rhymes with his first name but is an inaccurate description. Typically, one associates such a nickname with rippling stomach muscles and bulging biceps, someone who is a nearperfect physical specimen. This “Bod” was different, and his nickname stuck because he looks just the opposite of a Hercules, more like a local mechanic with a small beer belly than a Delta operator.

In fact, it is that appearance that made him so valuable to Delta missions, when he easily can become a “gray man,” the everyday kind of guy who fits into literally any surrounding, a chameleon who can pose as a tourist, a businessman, or a scumbag. No foreign intelligence service would look twice at the Bod when he came through their airport, and that mild appearance often made adversaries underestimate him, which in turn made it difficult for them to compromise his mission.

He has a mind that is truly a superior analytical machine, and that
uncanny ability to calmly think on his feet even while enduring the most confusing and hostile situations makes him even more valuable.

Even those of us who have known and worked with him for a long time have repeatedly been surprised at how the mild physical appearance of this man veiled a tremendous athlete, who is surprisingly strong and deadly accurate with pistol and rifle. In March 2005, the Bod was leading the boys on one of hundreds of raids that were carried out during the long hunt for al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq. True to fashion, after all hell broke loose with grenades and AK-47 automatic fire, the Bod did what he always did—went to the sound of the guns. A few minutes later, the terrorists were standing before Allah at the gates of martyrdom and the Bod and several other operators were fertilizing the Iraqi soil with their own blood, wounded but alive.

The Bod took a through-and-through gunshot wound to his right butt cheek that exited out the front of his left thigh, missing his private parts by centimeters. He actually watched through his green-glowing NVGs as a second round tore into his right forearm and severed the nerve to his million-dollar pistol finger. A third bullet was a little more forgiving, as it only ripped into his tan boots and claimed his right big toe.

As usual, the Bod continued to think quickly, even while lying in an Australian field hospital bed, and remembered to reenlist for a $150,000 tax-free bonus before he was shipped home. Now that was American taxpayer money well spent, for he is still an operational member of the Unit.

I consider the Bod to be a true American hero, one of the scores who migrated to the Unit over the last quarter of a century. He has taken more of our enemy’s blood than he has given of his own, and in the context of the war on terror, that probably says more about the man than anything else.

Ispent less than two weeks at Bragg, redrawing the rest of my old gear, shooting, putting in some serious physical training, catching up on the intelligence picture in Iraq, and even running the obstacle course.

There was a definite sense of purpose within the Unit, which was knee-deep in another manhunt, this time for Saddam Hussein, but it was
a businesslike approach by guys who acted as if they didn’t have a worry in the world. Then I headed to Iraq, back in the fight and at least for the time being, no longer a
former
Delta operator.