Not a Good Day to Die (27 page)

The operators also respected the fact that by conducting a mission Dailey so clearly disapproved of, Blaber was laying his career on the line. “Blaber was leaning farther forward” than the TF 11 and JSOC headquarters realized, according to one operator, who said Blaber had not been his favorite officer back at Fort Bragg, but had won him over at Gardez. “He was taking career-political risks to get guys on the ground,” he said. “That’s why I changed my mind about him.” Blaber gave each team a final mission brief. After walking the India Team members through the mission as he saw it, the AFO commander joined Speedy outside in the frosty, moonlit night. “Sir, now I know you don’t really care whether I live or die,” the team leader joked in his Kentucky drawl after hearing what Blaber expected of him and his men. “Speedy, your dying is none of my concern,” Blaber replied with dry humor, but added shortly afterward, “Speedy, it’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that I know how good you are, so I don’t have to worry about you dying. You’re uniquely qualified to execute this mission. It’s your destiny.”

THE
two A-teams were less sanguine about their roles in the upcoming mission, and their concerns increased as they watched the plan evolve through the second half of February. Thomas and McHale, the A-team leaders, were particularly worried that the plan called for their ragtag force to conduct a tightly synchronized advance, crossing phase lines on the map at precise times. “That clearly showed us that nobody was giving a darn about how difficult it was going to be to get our guys down there,” said McHale. They had not expected this when they had been told they were the main effort. The SF officers thought the sequence and timing of the preparatory strikes and the air assaults should be triggered by TF Hammer’s movement, not the other way round. “Because if you’re the main effort, everybody supports you,” McHale said. With such an inexperienced force, it was hard for the A-team leaders to guarantee that Zia’s fighters would be exactly where the plan required them to be, when it required them to be there. They had bonded with their militia brethren as well as could be expected, but were not blind to their weaknesses. Zia’s men were hit-and-run fighters, but the plan called for them to behave like American light infantry, using tactics they had just learned and weapons they had only owned for a few days. This reflected a split between the Dagger leaders at Bagram, who promised their Rakkasan and Mountain counterparts that Zia’s force would stick to the tight schedule, and the A-team leaders in Gardez. To McHale and Thomas, the planners in Bagram seemed to have lost touch with reality. The A-team leaders suggested that instead of landing along the eastern ridge, at least one Rakkasan company land behind their task force as it swung east into the Fishhook, to provide extra firepower in case they had to close with an enemy force in the villages. The suggestion got nowhere at Bagram.

Haas, McHale, and Thomas knew instinctively that just moving a few hundred Afghans and a few dozen Americans in the dead of night along rutted, washed-out dirt roads was going to present a significant challenge. The Americans would travel in a combination of Toyota pickups and a few armored Mercedes SUVs donated by Norway. But moving the 300–400 Afghan fighters was a challenge of a different scale. “We labored intensively trying to figure out how we were going to move all these dudes,” Haas said. The Americans’ preferred solution was to buy more pickup trucks. But the CIA couldn’t find fifty pickups for sale on such short notice anywhere. In the end the CIA bought a couple of dozen “jinga” trucks—the gaudily decorated, seemingly top-heavy trucks that are ubiquitous in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. But who would drive them? Hoskheyar had been a truck driver, and some of the other Afghans claimed experience in driving trucks. “So we thought okay, let’s just have our own [Afghan] guys drive these trucks,” McHale said. “Well, in their culture they hate to say no when they can’t do things. So we ended up with some guys who weren’t really truck drivers.”

Haas shared his team leaders’ concerns about moving hundreds of men into battle down poor roads in nontactical vehicles. “There were spots where we knew we were going to have problems,” Haas said. “We said it’s a risk, but it’s the only way to get Zia’s guys into the battle.” If the SF officers felt a sense of foreboding, they weren’t the only ones. Not long before D-Day an intelligence report reached the safe house that someone in Zermat, the local Al Qaida logistics hub, had placed an order for 165 coffins.

23.

THERE was an eerie feel to Bagram on those nights in late February. Tendrils of fog snaked around the tents and even on overcast nights the sky retained a ghostly pallor. A Rakkasan soldier making a nocturnal trek from the Mountain headquarters hangar back to tent city would have noticed the base was a little chillier than Kandahar and a lot wetter. Pools of water lay everywhere, surrounded by mud rutted with the tracks of Humvees and SUVs that plied the main routes around the base. Half-closing his eyes and gazing between the strands of barbed wire that surrounded the special operations compounds, the soldier could have imagined himself somewhere on the Western Front during World War I.

ON
February 25, Wiercinski met with his commanders in a large tent erected inside the hangar that housed Hagenbeck’s headquarters. On the floor was an eight-foot by nine-foot scale model of the Shahikot, surrounded by a map overlaid with operational graphics, and two large aerial photos that each measured about thirty inches by thirty inches. The officers gathered around, serious and attentive, but not noticeably nervous.

“You’re making history here,” Wiercinski told them. “You need to be proud of yourselves, you need to be proud of your soldiers.” Leaders would have a critical role to play on the Anaconda battlefield, he told them. “Do not slacken up…. Our soldiers will do what we tell them. They always have.” Then he reiterated his priorities: “The most important thing is surprise and opsec and getting 100 percent of the force on the ground.”

The next morning Hagenbeck and Wiercinski briefed the handful of journalists who had flown up from Kandahar. Hagenbeck described the plan. Task Force Hammer would approach the Shahikot from the west, halting at daybreak at the Fishhook, just as the Rakkasans’ first air assault wave landed along the eastern ridgeline. The plan counted on surprise to get the air assault on the ground safely, but it also hinged on the enemy fighters realizing that the Rakkasans had landed. The idea, Hagenbeck explained, was for the enemy leaders to know that Zia blocked the valley’s western exits and the Rakkasans blocked the trails to the south and east. Hagenbeck anticipated a stand-off would then occur, as the enemy leaders pondered their options. The enemy had 150 to 200 fighters in Serkhankhel, the Mountain commander said. But even though “Zia really wants to get these guys,” Hagenbeck said there was no intention for Zia to attack the villages on D-Day, still set for February 28. The enemy would probably try to slip their leaders out using the northeastern trail that the plan deliberately left open and inviting. To preclude that option, at dusk part of the Rakkasans’ second air assault would set down in the northern end of the valley “to close the door,” with the remainder landing in the south to reinforce LaCamera’s 1-87 Infantry. This time, Hagenbeck said, the air assault in the north would probably be unseen by the enemy. “We think the action on D-Day will be completely minimal,” he added.

On March 1, if the enemy forces had neither surrendered nor tried to escape, Zia would attack Serkhankhel. “He’s willing to go house to house” to root out Al Qaida fighters, Hagenbeck said. He acknowledged that he had never met Zia, but appeared unconcerned that he was commanding a major combat operation in which the man at least nominally in charge of the main effort was an unknown to him. That John Mulholland, the Dagger commander, had faith in Zia was enough of a guarantee for Hagenbeck. “Our Special Forces guys are very, very confident,” Hagenbeck said.

The Mountain headquarters at Bagram would function as Anaconda’s command-and-control hub, but Wiercinski said he intended to fly with his forward command post into the valley behind the Chinooks, landing lower down the same Finger upon which Mako 31 planned to put their observation post in order to get a firsthand feel for how the battle was going. He planned to just stay for an hour or so and then return to Bagram. It would nearly cost him his life.

If the enemy chose to fight, Wiercinski predicted it would be in the villages—” That’s where they have cover and concealment.” In a statement that might have surprised Rosengard, who still believed the Rakkasans suffered from a “kill ’em all” mentality, the Rakkasan commander stressed his commitment to the rules of engagement, which only allowed his troops to fire at personnel they had “positively identified” as enemy fighters. “I don’t want to kill women and children in this place,” Wiercinski said. “I don’t want to kill an innocent Afghan. Nobody does.” The Rakkasan commander also noted that, contrary to the fears of the Hammer A-teams, his blocking positions would be located over a kilometer from the villages, so the Rakkasans would not be able to influence any small arms fight in the towns.

LATER
on February 26 Wiercinski held a “confirmation brief” in which his subordinate commanders walked him through how they intended to execute their part of the operation. The meeting was held in “The Hunting Lodge,” a GP Medium tent belonging to Ron Corkran’s scout platoon that had a satellite photo of the Shahikot taped to the tent wall and a to-scale relief model of the valley, made out of dirt. Over forty soldiers clustered around the sandtable, going over the operation one more time. Their comments reflected a focus on distinguishing between civilians and enemy fighters, and their belief that firepower would not be a priority. Chip Preysler, the fresh-faced 2-187 Infantry commander, described how his companies intended to configure their blocking positions: Anybody approaching from the villages would first encounter a fence made from engineering tape with a sign in Pushto saying
go away
; if they ignored this warning, they would encounter a second sign indicating they were entering a minefield (even though the U.S. troops had no intention of actually laying a minefield); only if they ignored both warnings and continued to advance would the U.S. troops consider shooting at them. (Preysler was more concerned with the prospect of a vehicle approaching at high speed than with pedestrians, who would be easier to deal with.) Wiercinski approved of the false minefield, which fitted with his concept of applying an “escalation of violence” against people approaching the blocking positions.

In keeping with the overriding belief that any combat would be dominated by small arms and automatic weapons, Preysler said he would not bring any mortars in on the first air assault wave—or lift—and would take just one 60mm mortar team in on the second lift. As with LaCamera’s battalion, only three Chinooks had been apportioned to carry his first lift—just enough to haul most of his C Company plus a twelve-man battalion command post. Preysler asked for another Chinook so he could bring in all of his C Company. But there were no more helicopters to be had. Wiercinski instead suggested that Preysler create space on the second lift by leaving his mortars behind, as LaCamera’s battalion was bringing a 120mm mortar capable ranging of the entire valley.

Then Preysler voiced a concern heard frequently in the run-up to Anaconda: that Al Qaida leaders would try to escape disguised as women clad in burkas, the uniquely Afghan garments that covered women from head to toe, with just a gauzy latticed slit to see through. “Do you want us to actually take the burkas off?” he asked. No, Wiercinski replied. Special operators had told him the best way to handle the situation without offending Muslim sensitivities was to look at a person’s feet to see if they resembled a man’s or a woman’s.

The discussion turned to the potential for friendly casualties. “When there’s a casualty, nothing else matters at that time,” Wiercinski told his audience. “Get the casualty to a location where we can bring him out without causing more casualties.” If a Chinook was shot down, the brigade commander said, the other helicopters in the lift should land beside it to perform combat search and rescue, with the Apaches “laying down a wall of steel” between the troops and the enemy. “We go back to the old Ranger creed of never leaving a fallen comrade, hooah!” Wiercinski said.

After Dennis Yates, the Rakkasan fire support officer, briefed the group on procedures for calling in close air support, Wiercinski gave a prophetic final piece of advice. “Fight the enemy, don’t fight the plan,” he told his men as a series of explosions caused by soldiers blowing up captured materiel echoed in the background. “The second the first shot goes downrange, things are gonna change with the plan.”

SHORTLY
thereafter, Wiercinski convened the Rakkasan “maneuver rehearsal,” also held in the Hunting Lodge, in which each commander repeated how he intended to conduct his mission. The Rakkasan commander again cautioned his audience that “a plan goes about as far as the first shot being fired,” and he reminded them that Zia was the operation’s main effort and TF Rakkasan the supporting effort. “For me, the decisive point of the fight is getting the force on the ground,” he said. Once the troops landed, “the first five minutes of the fight is going to tell the story,” he added presciently. Then he returned to the theme of taking care not to target civilians. “There’s about 800 to 1,000 people in this town,” he said, pointing to Serkhankhel on the terrain map on the floor. “About 10 percent of them are bad people and about 90 percent of them are good folks.”