CHAPTER 33

Caged Dogs

WES BRYANT

ISIS was a brutal enemy, and inhumane to the core. They needed to be obliterated beyond all trace. But the terrorist army seemed fearless. Even as we hit them with airstrikes again and again, they quite literally fought to the last man. It was uncanny.

ISIS was certainly nothing if not zealous and aggressive. From the outside looking in, their spirit seemed nearly indomitable. Of course, we’d later learn a contributing factor was that they gave their fighters opiates and cocaine before battles and threatened punishment or torture for failure or cowardice. Religious extremism coupled with mind-altering drugs and fear of torture was certainly a way to create a seemingly indomitable force.

Still, we were often surprised at the level of capability ISIS showed even in comparison to some of the best-trained Iraqi ground forces. In fact, when we came across armed and maneuvering fighters we hadn’t yet identified as friendly or enemy, the going rule became “if they move tactically sound, they’re probably ISIS.” Nonetheless, if ISIS prided themselves in being bold and aggressive, they were surely humbled once they realized what it meant to be on the receiving end of the wrath of the U.S. military.

Those of us in the BIAP Strike Cell had all sacrificed and bled with our partner forces during the previous Iraq War and the ongoing war in Afghanistan. Most of us had lost friends and brothers- or sisters-in-arms over the years, and we’d watched our partner forces suffer the same. We’d helped both the Iraqis and the Afghans fight for their homes and their countries, and we witnessed their struggle to balance the well-beings of themselves and their families with the duties and sacrifices that came with being soldiers in perpetually war-torn nations. We knew what our Iraqi forces were enduring because we’d been there. In the strike cell, when we supported the Iraqis with airstrikes, we put ourselves on the ground with them.

The most difficult challenge was how differently we were doing business than what we were used to. It wasn’t common for JTACs to work tandem and run strikes as a team. We were accustomed to being “the man” in charge—the sole JTAC attached to a special operations team, tromping through austere battlefields as the exclusive air and indirect firepower expert for the team. We were used to working independently and making tough calls on our own under intense circumstances. Because of those factors, our job tended to attract strong and independent individuals.

Admittedly, most of us had pretty controlling personalities. It was difficult at times to figure out how to take a crew of special operations JTACs and get them to work cohesively as one killing team. Compound that with the intensity of strike cell operations that were truly a perfect microcosm of everything that is war—and you had a recipe for volatility.

I paired my shift with Adam, the most senior Combat Control JTAC of my Special Tactics team. Adam was a bit rough around the edges. He was a charmer and a bit of a lady’s man on one hand, and a hothead on the other. Extravagant and robust, his was a strong-willed personality that was often quick-witted and funny, but also pretty abrupt.

Even though our personalities seemed to be near polar opposite, Adam and I had an immediate bond and my respect for his abilities outweighed anything else. He was a smart, aggressive, and extremely talented JTAC. His past experience hunting insurgents on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq—mirrored with my own—made us quite a good team.

But we butted heads fairly often, and our nights were not complete without a few fights. I was the senior enlisted JTAC for the strike cell. I had to make sure our JTACs were following the intent of General Pittard and Colonel Kehoe at all times. Sometimes, my idea of that conflicted pretty significantly with Adam’s.

It was a particularly quiet night and we were waiting for the Bayji operation to kick off within a few days. Adam and I were using our air assets to hunt for ISIS targets of opportunity. It was so dead that Colonel Kehoe, his deputy Major McCrae, and the general were all out for the evening on other business.

In lieu of active ground offensives, intelligence on enemy locations, or any other information leading us to targets, we were still every bit as aggressive hunting ISIS. In fact, we were often as much if not more successful when let loose to hunt ISIS using our own intuition, past experience with insurgency tactics, and what we’d learned about how they operated thus far. We’d developed a growing database, nearly imprinted in our minds, of the patterned tactics and behavior of the ISIS forces we were hunting.

Adam was the primary controller. He’d been directing a couple of fighter jets and a Predator drone to search various locations that he suspected had ISIS fighters, based on historic patterns and some past operations we’d conducted. All of his searches were coming up dry.

After a while, I finally told him to shift to another specific area. I had a general plan for the night after my discussion with Colonel Kehoe earlier in the evening, and Adam hadn’t really been following it anyway. He definitely didn’t like my correction.

“Why do you wanna look there, man? We won’t find shit there,” he told me frankly.

I had particular locations I wanted checked out, and Adam had others he believed would give us a higher chance of finding ISIS. We argued off and on over the course of about twenty minutes or so, the tone of our argument growing ever more bickering as we went.

Little did I know, the tension was building in Adam. I didn’t quite realize it at the time because I was also engrossed in the secure email and messaging traffic that I tended to on my down time, coordinating for future operations. Adam was growing increasingly agitated with each of my corrections.

Eventually he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Just do your fires bullshit and let me control!” he snapped. “I’m the JTAC tonight, man!”

I stayed relatively calm. At least, calm in my mind—although I’m sure looking back I was outwardly pissed off. On the inside, I was immediately enraged. Still, I didn’t act on my anger. I tried to explain my reasoning to him a little better, hoping to tame down the situation. Adam wasn’t hearing it. He thought my plan was, in a word, “bullshit.”

He may have been right…but I wasn’t going to let up.

We raised our voices incrementally higher. I was insistent on following my agenda and Adam wouldn’t budge on his. What started as a minor tiff quickly escalated into an all-out yelling match as I could no longer maintain the calm myself.

I turned toward him and leaned in close to his face. “Dude, just put the fuckin’ aircraft sensors where I told you to—or I’ll just control!” I bellowed.

The strike cell was suddenly like that cliché of the record screech in a dance club—dead silent. Up until that point, Adam had been coolly passing guidance to the fighter pilots and drone crews in-between arguing with me, remaining ever-the-professional JTAC even despite our heated pissing match.

But then, he abruptly stopped mid-transmission and ripped off his communications headset, slamming it onto the table. He shoved his chair back and shot up. Attached to his belt on the right hip of his jeans was a custom leather holster with an etched CCT crest holding his issued Glock 19 pistol. He ripped the holster off and smashed it onto the radio control box on the table between us. (I noted that he made sure not to de-holster his pistol and that the barrel pointed away from either of us.)

“Don’t you EVER fucking tell me how to control!” he yelled as he jutted his head toward me. His eyes narrowed in a look that told me I want to beat the shit out of you right now.

Unfortunately, my anger got the better of me again.

“Fuckin’ leave, then! Get the fuck outa here, I’m controlling now!” I shouted back.

Adam stood in anger for a few seconds, staring at me in silence as I donned the radio headset and ignored him. He stormed out of the backside of the trailer. The back door thudded closed.

I felt my eyes had gone red with anger, I was so infuriated. My first instinct was to go outside, get back in his face and say things that surely would have led to us brawling it out. Luckily I held that urge back—really only because we still had aircraft to control, actively hunting for ISIS across central Iraq. Adam and I may have been on the verge of a full contact match in the middle of the BIAP Strike Cell, but we couldn’t leave any of our pilots hanging.

I gathered myself and keyed the microphone. “All players be advised—Vampire Zero-One has control,” I said relatively calmly over the net.

I gave the aircraft updated guidance…my guidance. And I sat at the desk, fuming. Then I despondently watched over the next several minutes as our aircraft feeds revealed absolutely no signs of enemy activity in my new search areas.

Everyone in the cell continued on in dead silence while I worked on quieting my temper that had almost raged completely out of control only minutes before. Luckily, controlling our aircraft in search of ISIS gave me something else to focus on. At the same time, I was laughing a bit inside at the tension in the cell. I kind of just wanted to blurt out, “Hey guys, it’s just another day in our world…this is how we talk through things!” Ultimately, I didn’t think that comment would be appropriate at the time, so I kept it to myself.

Adam and I were friends, and we were teammates as JTACs. But I was also the senior member of our team. After a few minutes I realized that, despite my anger, I needed to figure things out. I was upset with myself. I had nearly gotten in a fistfight with a subordinate and teammate while in the midst of what was probably the highest priority military tasking at the time—a mission straight from the President of the United States.

I knew we couldn’t continue to act this way given the scope and gravity of our mission. It was one of those times when regardless of which of us was in the wrong, we just needed to pull our shit together and continue mission.

In my years as a noncommissioned officer up to that point, I had never really counted myself as the quintessential “inspirational” type of leader that others seemed to pride themselves in being. I had other strengths, and I’d at least picked up a few pearls of wisdom. If there was one thing I’d learned about working with and leading the kind of hardened, Type-A individuals that abound in the JTAC and special operations community—it was that sometimes you just had to let men be men. And that’s not in the way some might think of the phraseology, but entirely in the warrior sense.

I knew it wouldn’t go anywhere to continue to get in Adam’s face or levy my superior rank or position. It would only make him angrier and then resentful toward me for having to rely on rank to settle the issue. In the culture of special operations there was this kind of unofficial commandment: respect was merit-based—it had to be earned. Your teammates and subordinates respected you first for your skill, ability and experience, and second for the respect you showed to theirs. Rank and position were always secondary, at best, to those critical things.

I knew that truth from first-hand experience. I’d been on the opposite side of the equation all too often in encounters with unsavory superiors over the years, and I’d vowed to never do the same when I became a leader.

Ten or fifteen more minutes dragged by. I controlled our pair of fighter jets and the Predator drone, monitoring the video feed in front of me for any signs of ISIS. I was still having about as much luck finding ISIS as Adam had.

In my periphery, I saw Adam stroll quietly back in. He sat down next to me as calm as can be. Without exchanging anything but a couple mutually understanding nods, I passed the headset back over to him. He grabbed his holstered Glock—still sitting on the radio box where he’d slammed it—and casually attached it back onto his belt.

He situated his headset as I passed him a brief update on the status of our aircraft and the taskings I’d given them since he’d been out. A cardinal rule in the JTAC world was to never hand off control without first giving the new controller a current update on the battlefield along with a status of the position of all aircraft and their sensor allocations. That rule superseded any fight we may have had.

“Got it,” he said evenly.

He went back to controlling without skipping a beat. I slid back over to my side of the desk, quietly resuming my secure email and message coordination—or my “nerd work” as Adam would so often lovingly prod. A couple of minutes went by. During a break in his radio communication with the pilots, Adam finally looked over at me.

“Sorry bro,” he said, breaking a sly smile. “I love ya.”

I nodded and smiled back. “Love you too man,” I replied. “Sorry if I was more of a dick than I thought I was being.”

“It’s cool, man.”

He looked over at me briefly, then with a closed-lip smirk he coolly put his fist out toward me and turned his head to the front of the room to keep his eyes on the aircraft feeds. We fist-bumped, and drove on with the mission.