“If not for such men, we would be at the mercy of every demon.”—MICHAEL YON
THE HEART OF A HERO
BEN KOPP
Ben Kopp knew what a hero looked like. After all, his great grandfather was an infantryman in World War II and from an early age, he and Ben were buddies. The two were very close and Ben loved to try and pry a war story out of the man who, like most of his generation, preferred not to talk about it.
When his great grandfather passed away in April of 2001, Ben was devastated. A few months later when terrorists attacked America, Ben decided the best way to honor the memory of his hero was to become one himself—at the age of thirteen, the Rosemount, New Mexico, native announced that he planned to become an Army Ranger.
Ben Kopp in Afghanistan
Ben was a scrappy kid—possessed of a kind of frenetic energy that makes parents pull their hair out and wonder how the boy will survive to finish high school. At fourteen he and his buddies decided to play army and soon got into a brutal firefight with each other—using BB guns. At the height of the battle, Ben was sounding the battle cry when he was hit by enemy fire—in the mouth. The small metal pellet miraculously missed his teeth and embedded itself under the skin. He somehow hid the injury from his mother for weeks and when he finally told her about it, the doctor she hired said it wasn’t worth taking it out. So from then on he lived with a metal pellet inside his tongue. True to form, he used the anomaly to his advantage with the ladies, claiming it made him a better kisser.
His senior year of high school, Ben kept his oath and joined the Army under the delayed entry program. One month after graduation, he headed for basic training.
There, Ben found the purpose for which he was created. The military fit him—he had a talent for it the way some have an aptitude for baseball or music. He loved the camaraderie, the constant challenge to be better than you were yesterday. Even the discipline it imposed was good for him, though submitting to authority went against his nature.
He sailed through Airborne school and the Ranger indoctrination program. The day he earned his tan beret was one of the proudest moments of his life. It was a hard-won honor he’d wanted for years. After graduation, he reported to the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment at Fort Benning, Georgia.
The Ranger Regiment on a war footing left no room for relationships, however, so Ben chose to stay unencumbered as he fought through two deployments to Iraq. Between deployments he attended the grueling sixty-one-day Ranger school. During the mountain phase of training, he had his first brush with failure and found himself being “recycled,” held back one cycle and given a second chance to make it with the following class. It sparked some deep reflection about the kind of man Ben wanted to be. With some time to kill before he could join the next class, a dog-eared book left behind by a previous student caught his eye. The book talked about leadership and the parallels between the life of an elite solider and the life of a Christian. It got him thinking about the things he loved most about the Rangers, being a part of something greater than himself, being a force for good in the world. He realized God’s plan for his life was even bigger than the Rangers, bigger than the Army. By the time he successfully graduated Ranger school and pinned on the black and gold Ranger tab, Ben was already on a new mission—one that would continue into eternity.
He grew during his time in Ranger school. He matured physically, emotionally, and spiritually. He made a note in his journal that illustrated his new found purpose. It reads, “God is more concerned with who I am becoming than with what I am doing . . . there is something inherently noble in choosing to put oneself in the line of fire to save a brother.” The next line in the notebook indicates he’d found a new hero to emulate: “Christ put himself on the line for the very people who were against him.”
Pages from the journal of Ben Kopp
Ben Kopp in Afghanistan
His next trip to the war zone would provide ample opportunity to put into practice those convictions.
In 2009 Iraq was winding down and the war was heating up in the shadows of the Hindu Kush. Ben’s company deployed once again—this time to Afghanistan.
Because of the nature of some of the Tier One units with which the Rangers work, an ongoing need for operational security makes it impossible to release most of the details regarding that deployment. It is known that Ben’s unit participated in dozens of important and high-risk missions, in which the newly tabbed Ranger demonstrated the leadership abilities he learned in Ranger school while acting as a gun team leader.
Then two weeks before he was due to return stateside, a call for help came in from a Special Ops reconnaissance team that had been compromised and was taking heavy fire from a large number of Taliban fighters in the southern Helmand province. Ben was part of the Ranger Quick Reaction Force that scrambled to go to the aid of the beleaguered team. They rushed to the sound of the guns and plunged into the firefight, suppressing the enemy so the recon team could make it safely away. Ben was awarded a Bronze Star with Valor for his actions that day. According to the citation, he exposed himself to heavy, close range enemy fire in order to save his comrades. In the process, he took a bullet in the leg.
The Rangers’ first-rate medical evacuation system swung into action. Ben was placed aboard a medevac helicopter and flown to a nearby hospital. He was rushed to FOB Dwyer, and doctors there performed two surgeries to try and repair the damage. From there he went to Bagram Airbase, and then Landstuhl, Germany. A day later he was flown to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The doctors kept him in an induced coma and performed more operations to try and save him, but in the end, Ben had simply lost too much blood. A week after he was wounded and with his mother, Jill Stephenson, now by his bedside, the terrible news came that Ben was not going to make it.
But he wasn’t done being a hero. Not by a long shot.
Every Ranger fills out a form before each trip to the war zone specifying his wishes in the event he is killed in combat. Ben indicated on his form that he would like his organs donated, if possible. Specifying which organs he would like to donate, he wrote simply, “any that are needed.”
Judy Meikle was a fifty-seven-year-old woman from Winnetka, Illinois, who suffered from poor circulation all her adult life. An active lover of the outdoors, she woke up one morning in 2008 and couldn’t breathe. A trip to the hospital brought the bad news that her heart was failing. She needed a heart transplant.
A year later, an acceptable match had yet to be found and Judy was running out of time.
One of Judy’s friends happened to be a first cousin of Ben’s mother and made mention of her need on a post to an Internet guest book set up to honor Ben’s memory.
Though she was wracked with grief at the loss of her son, Jill Stephenson saw that post, and in it a chance for Ben to live on in more than memory. On July 20, the day after they turned off the machine that was keeping his body alive, Ben Kopp saved Judy Meikle’s life.
Judy Meikle, recipient of Ben Kopp’s heart
Jill Stephenson with her son, Ben Kopp
Now with the heart of a twenty-one-year-old Ranger beating in her chest, Judy’s circulation problems are a thing of the past. And while she might not be able to run a six-minute mile—yet—she feels a deep sense of gratitude and responsibility to live her life, like Ben did, according to that tenet of the Ranger creed that states “one-hundred percent, and then some.”
Doctors said Ben’s other organs and tissues could end up saving as many as seventy lives. He was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. His mother made sure Ben received his other last request—a flyover of U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters at his funeral.
Five months after his death, the wife of one of Ben’s Ranger buddies was going through his digital camera and found this photo of Ben, smiling in the back of a Humvee in Afghanistan. Because she had never seen it before, Jill Stephenson likes to imagine the photo came from heaven and Ben sent it to let her know how happy he is there.
Jill Stephenson at Ben’s memorial service, holding his journal
Ben Kopp in the back of a Humvee, taken in Afghanistan
Col North with DEA FAST Alpha
DEA FAST “ALPHA”
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, AFGHANISTAN
Hulking outlines of four Mi-17 helicopters were all that occupied the “Green Ramp” in front of Kandahar International Airport when we arrived in a convoy of Toyota pickups packed to the gunnels with heavily armed Special Operators. All was dark except for the muted reds and greens of their penlights as they hopped out onto the cool tarmac and began final checks of their gear. They spoke in hushed tones, standing in small groups until the American pilots arrived and fired up auxiliary power units to perform their pre-flight checks.
Most of the Americans wore full, bushy beards, though their athletic bulk would certainly keep the average operator from being mistaken for an Afghan. The dozen or so Afghan Commandos present wore no facial hair. At least a half-dozen different uniforms could be seen: Green Berets who worked as trainers for the commandos wore the same uniforms as their Afghan counterparts, while the American Special Ops unit that made up the bulk of the force, wore Marine MARPAT uniforms. Others wore specially modified multicam and everyone customized their kit to fit their own needs.
For the past two weeks, our FOX News crew wasn’t actually embedded with the military. Instead, we’d been following the exploits of what is arguably the most highly specialized group of federal law enforcement officers on the U.S. payroll—agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s FAST units.
FAST—Foreign-deployed Assistance and Support Team. It sounds innocuous, even harmless. It isn’t. All FAST members are experienced DEA special agents who volunteer for the program. FAST teams deploy around the world in support of counter-drug efforts by friendly host nations, with a mission set very similar to that of the Green Berets—a team of ten men advising their host-nation counterparts, gathering intelligence, and assisting with direct action when necessary.
FAST Alpha patch
It’s no surprise the DEA is very active in Afghanistan, considering the country produces ninety percent of the world’s illegal supply of opium. The Taliban movement, cynically preaching a purer brand of Islam is actually a narco-insurgency, little different from the FARC in Colombia or a Mexican drug cartel. The DEA is in Afghanistan to break the Taliban’s opium-money-corruption-terror link.
DEA FAST units of eight agents, a team leader, and an Intel specialist rotate through Afghanistan on one-hundred-twenty-day deployments and bring to the fight their own air wing as well as an intelligence-gathering capability second to none. This makes them very valuable to the Special-Ops community.
We launched on the mission eight years to the day since terrorists trained in Afghanistan killed nearly three thousand innocent people back at home. The thirty-five Special Operators who climbed aboard three Soviet-era Mi-17 helicopters just before first light could think of no better way to mark the anniversary. It was something these men would never forget and if they had anything to say about it, neither would the Taliban.
It was a capture-kill mission on the compound of a Taliban kingpin southwest of Kandahar. Experience told them wherever drugs were present, usually there would be arms and explosives for supporting the insurgency. It was something they called “the nexus” and FAST units have targeted these drug-terror kingpins with good success. Every kilo of heroin they confiscated and destroyed is money out of the Taliban’s war chest. And they are getting very good at finding the drugs.
But the Taliban and their supporters are getting smarter, too. The insurgents have learned to plant IEDs and mines around potential landing zones. Lieutenant Dan Cnossen, a Navy SEAL, on his fourth combat deployment stepped on a mine as he disembarked from a helicopter during a night insertion.
The explosion nearly tore him in half, traumatically amputating both his legs. Braving more hidden mines all around, the SEAL corpsmen rushed to his aid and was able to stop the bleeding and save his life. Though every young person going into a fight wants to believe, “that won’t happen to me”—the wise warrior knows it can happen to anyone.
We sped down the runway at Kandahar and took off into the first hint of morning and soon the Mi-17 pilots were flying so low and so fast it seemed as though we were driving to the target. Looking out the open rear door of the helicopter, I could see the helo behind us skimming along a field of poppies low enough to harvest it, then pull up to clear the mud wall of the farmer’s compound. There could be no question they are incredibly skilled and more than a little crazy.
Poppy fields in Afghanistan where opium is grown
With FAST Alpha team leader Carson Ulrich
Twelve minutes later we got the signal. One minute out. Every man passed it to the man behind him and all began final preparations, checking weapons and adjusting gear one last time. I made sure my camera was on standby and said a quick prayer for the safety of the team.
The helicopters swooped into freshly plowed fields around the target compound, flaring hard and throwing up a curtain of dust and sand. As soon as the wheels touched earth the operators charged out the back, eager to get away from the largest, loudest target on the battlefield. In seconds, everyone was fanned out behind the bird, bracing themselves on one knee, scanning the fading twilight for targets and bracing against forceful gusts of rotor wash as the choppers lifted off again.
When they were gone, we moved quickly to the outer wall of the compound, Holton and I doing our best to stay out of everyone’s way and still get the action on “tape.” I followed the team leader of FAST Alpha—Carson Ulrich. He was one of the tallest guys on the mission, built like a cross between a swimmer and a pro wrestler. He moved fast, obviously eager to make sure the rest of his team got where they needed to be and didn’t get hurt in the process. Carson is the kind of guy whose presence makes any dangerous situation seem a little less so—he looked like he could handle anything.
Two operators breached the outer door of the compound within sixty seconds and then the entire team flowed inside in a practiced ballet of weapons pointing in every direction. They immediately came upon several younger military-age males, who were taken into custody by Afghan Special Police Commandos. There was also a knot of about a dozen women and children, who had been sleeping on a raised dias. Though they were obviously terrified, the Afghan Commandos gently coaxed them into moving to a secure area of the compound where they were sequestered and guarded until the mission was complete.
Old-Vietnam-era UH-1 “Huey” helicopters outfitted with GAU-17 miniguns did racetracks overhead watching for signs of the enemy. Within five minutes the entire compound was secure and a Spec-Ops K-9 dog and handler began searching the various rooms for drugs while the operators took up positions on the rooftop to defend against a possible counterattack from the surrounding orchards and nearby farms. Twice the pilots reported a man with a radio in hand, watching our movements. The helo gunners fired warning shots to discourage him. Taliban insurgents are known to use walkie-talkies to call in mortar fire.
The search of the compound turned up a bag of black tar heroin, a stash of precursor chemicals, and a large bag of glass marbles. I asked the Afghan police captain in charge of the raid why they were important and he pointed out that the enemy has begun using marbles in IEDs because they can’t be seen by metal detectors.
These converted Huey Helicopters flew as air cover for missions with the DEA in Afghanistan.
To the west of the target compound, the operators noticed several acres of carefully cultivated, eight-foot-tall hashish producing marijuana plants. The “field of dreams” was so large, the FAST agents didn’t even try to destroy it. One of the FAST unit members did take care to burn a large stash of dried poppies stacked against one wall. The marbles, opium, and chemicals were moved a safe distance from the compound into a drainage ditch and wired with several pounds of plastic explosive. Two Afghan Commandos secured several men for questioning and released the rest while everyone else moved toward the pickup zone to wait for the Mi-17s to return. Then the demolitions men called “Fire in the hole!”
We moved two hundred meters outside the compound and I readied my camera, capturing the black cloud of smoke that shot skyward as the contraband heroin, morphine base, and precursor chemicals were destroyed. Moments later the helos swooped in to pick us up and we ran through the dust cloud to the rear ramp and hopped aboard.
The ride home was just as low and fast as the trip out, but the mood was completely different. The men were smiling, joking, and using their personal cameras.
Dried poppies
The men of FAST Alpha went on to raid dozens of drug bazaars around southern Afghanistan. Unlike our relatively uneventful 9/11 anniversary mission, they often found themselves involved in pitched battles with hardened terrorists. Then on 26 October, another DEA mission, supported by a U.S. SOCOM Spec-Ops team hit a large drug market in Farah province. They were quickly engaged by several dozen fanatical insurgents, of whom they killed more than thirty. On the objective, they found and destroyed refined opium worth more than a million dollars. The operation was a stunning success, but as they were extracting from the site, one of the nightstalker helicopters crashed, killing ten of those inside. Three of those killed were Special Agents—the first DEA casualties in the war on terror. The others were U.S. Army and MARSOC Special Operators with whom we went on numerous ops without losing a man.
It was a devastating blow for all the organizations involved, particularly the tight-knit DEA community. Michelle Leonhart the Acting Administrator, made sure the entire team was brought home to attend all three funerals. For that, FAST commander Carson Ulrich, his men and their families were very grateful, realizing that most warriors aren’t afforded that privilege. They arrived back on U.S. soil with only one request—that they be allowed to return to Afghanistan as soon as the memorial services were over to see out the remainder of their tour.
In their minds, it was the only way to properly honor their friends—by picking up the weapons of the fallen and carrying them back into the fight. And that’s exactly what happened.
Back from a raid with FAST Alpha. Last man on the left is Chad Michael.
DEA memorial for agents Forrest Leamon, Chad Michael, and Michael Weston
Mi-17 helicopter
DEA DRUG RAID
JALALABAD, AFGHANISTAN
We launched well before dawn on three Russian Mi-17 helicopters and while the pilots were American, it was a surreal experience for me. I trained for years in the Marines on how to shoot these down. Now I was riding into combat in one, armed with a camera and covering other young men fighting a different enemy. But most of those in this aircraft were neither Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, or Marines. This unit was different.
According to colleagues back home, our FOX News team in Afghanistan missed all the excitement. After we left the USA in late August 2009, Washington saw one of the largest peaceful protests in history against a sitting government. A bold congressman rose during a televised joint session of Congress to accuse the president of the United States of prevaricating. The rhetoric in Washington was nearly as hot as the summer sun in Helmand Province. All pretty exciting stuff, I suppose. But as I glanced around the dim interior of the shuddering Mi-17, at steely-eyed warriors riding into battle, I realized I wouldn’t trade a single day with the Special Operations raiders with whom we were keeping company for all the hoopla in Washington.
The “raiders” were an extraordinary cross section of talent, tenacity, experience, and courage. But one thing that made them different from many of our previous embeds—most of these Special Operators were not active duty military. In their ranks are U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agents, intelligence specialists, linguists, contract pilots, and air crewmen from the Department of Defense and the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, contract weapons and tactics experts and some very dedicated, brave, and resourceful Afghan police officers. On this operation we were joined by a team of U.S. and coalition Special Operators.
Throughout 2009 these kinds of “task-organized” units were becoming the nemesis of the Taliban and they did it all beneath the radar of the mainstream media.
Our FOX News team spent nearly a month embedded with them on operations spanning the length and breadth of Afghanistan. By agreement, we would not photograph or videotape most of their faces or identify them by anything but their first names. We were not allowed to broadcast the specific unit to which any of these men belonged. On many of their operations, they flew non-U.S. aircraft and rarely used American military vehicles, in order to confuse the enemy. These measures combined with the DEA’s unique ability to collect accurate “full-spectrum intelligence,” validate it with human sources, and exploit that information with rapid, direct action account for the raiders’ unparalleled effectiveness in taking on the Taliban. The 14 September mission—launched by the DEA—is a dramatic example of how effective these kinds of operations have become.
Afghan narcotics police
The Birds headed southeast from Jalalabad, escorted by Vietnam-era UH-1 “Huey” gunships to the raid objectives, less than ten kilometers from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in the incredibly mountainous Nangarhar Province. At first light, we touched down—a force of forty-three DEA agents, NATO Special Operators, police officers from Afghanistan’s narcotics interdiction and special investigations units, and two confidential informants who were actually residents of the village we were raiding, their heads covered with balaclavas to keep them from being identified and the resulting death sentence.
The informants led the raid force directly to the first target—a way station on an opium ratline into Taliban-controlled territory in Pakistan. I stayed close to Walid, a muscular, bearded senior SIU investigator, as he trudged up the steep hillside to a dry-stack stone hut pointed out by one of the informants. Walid immediately found what he was looking for: precursor chemicals, opium, morphine base, and pure heroin. Some of it was buried in a shallow hole outside the building and the rest was stockpiled inside. As he riffled through a box of morphine base at the site, he looked up at me, smiled and said, “Money from these drugs will never get to the Taliban.” He then helped a team of Afghan narcotics police carry the haul to a corner of the courtyard where other Special Operators quickly rigged it with several pounds of plastic explosive.
Moments later, the call “Fire in the hole!” came from the demolitions experts and everyone pulled back a safe distance to watch the explosion. When it went off, so did all the donkeys in the neighborhood, hee-hawing their displeasure at the thunderclap that echoed up the valley.
Drug lab in Afghanistan making black tar heroin.
Taliban drug lab blown up by DEA
Walid was right. Nobody was going to be selling those drugs now.
Then it was back to the landing zone for a quick flight to the second objective—a village much like the first—clinging as it had for centuries to a steep mountainside. This one was the suspected site of a drug-processing lab. The raiders, led by one of the informants, moved rapidly up the hill and set up a cordon, taking advantage of the element of surprise. By the time they made it to the target buildings, however, the occupants had fled—leaving two dirty, malnourished infants behind. The babies lay crying amidst used hypodermic needles and dirty clothes. Apparently the drug processors were also partakers of their poison. Afghan NIU police scooped up the children, trying to console them and find their mothers among a crowd of women and children huddled in a house further up the mountainside. Even here in the primitive villages of the Hindu Kush, opium destroyed everything it touched. The mothers of the babies were nowhere to be found.
DEA Assistant Regional Director Keith Weis, a tall, dark-haired father of two who looked far too young to have been in this dangerous business for more than twenty years was the raid leader and one of the few we are allowed to identify. During the mission Keith said intelligence indicated the site was part of “a significant organization with ties to the Taliban.” That allegation was substantiated by documents and records seized from the building. The operator of the lab, who looked much older than his age due to sampling his own product, was identified by an informant, taken into custody, and the drugs and chemicals were wired with explosives by the NATO Special Operations team.
It was an extraordinary haul. We found out later from Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar that the six-hour raid destroyed one thousand kilograms of opium, three hundred kilograms of morphine, thirty kilograms of pure heroin, and more than two hundred kilograms of precursor chemicals and yielded weapons and reams of documents. Estimated street value of the drugs and chemicals in Western Europe or the United States: more than $3 million.
After footage of the raid aired on FOX News Channel, the single greatest inquiry we received wasn’t about the drugs, the Taliban or the raiders; it was, “What happened to the little babies who were abandoned at the lab?”
Here’s the answer: The DEA informants pointed out the two mothers in the crowd gathered nearby, neither of whom looked to be more than fifteen years old. The NIU officers handed the children back to them along with a tongue lashing for abandoning their children. The DEA unit’s intelligence chief, also named Keith, later told me, the NIU officers’ anger stemmed from embarrassment—that these wives of a lab operator would rush to save themselves and leave their babies behind. “They wanted to make sure the American news crew understood that’s not the way a proud Afghan should act.”
As for their husband, if he’s convicted, it’s unlikely the children will ever get to know their father, but perhaps thousands of other children will be spared the horror of being on the receiving end of the drugs the man produced.
For the men of this special mission unit—though they may not be recognized with awards and decorations, that knowledge is good enough.
Exfil—the skilled pilots of these Mi-17s put these huge aircraft down on postage-stamp-sized terraces below the village.
Special Operators on a capture-kill mission have to walk single file to avoid possible IEDs.
CAPTURE/KILL MISSION
NEAR HERAT, AFGHANISTAN
They only had a matter of hours to plan the mission. After tracking a known Taliban warlord for months, the Special Forces team based in Herat received notice that their target was in a village only a few kilometers away. With no time to spare, the ODA, quickly planned a capture/kill mission for that very night and received approval. Though hastily devised, the plan was designed from mission templates they rehearsed over and over, and the team felt confident they could pull it off.
Assigned to the ODA was Staff Sergeant Rob Gutierrez, the same stocky Combat Controller from San Diego, California, who had already distinguished himself in 2008 and earlier in 2009 on previous deployments to Afghanistan. Rob did a quick map reconnaissance of their objective and drew up some pre-planned “nine-line” fire missions that could be fed to attack aircraft supporting their mission. From aerial imagery available, he marked each building in the target village with a number, with which it would be simple to identify the locations of friendly and enemy forces.
Night-vision view of laser target designator
The other Green Berets scrambled around the base, readying night-vision optics, weapons, and equipment. They ran a quick walk-through with their Afghan commando counterparts so every man would know his assigned place in the mission. Though they all would have preferred to have more men for the mission, they made do with what they had and preparations went smoothly because they had done them all a hundred times before.
As the sun sank over the ancient walls of the fortress built by Alexander the Great in Herat city, the special mission unit mounted up in Ground Mobility Vehicles and rolled out toward the foothills surrounding the city. The village where their target, a Taliban warlord took refuge was in an area proven to be very dangerous for Coalition forces. In these parts of Afghanistan, allegiance to the Taliban was high and attacks and IEDs were a major threat to “friendlies” venturing too far outside the city. So the Americans and their Afghan allies went loaded for bear, knowing their target was known to travel with a large and well-trained personal security detail that would fight to the death. If it came to that, the ODA would be happy to oblige.
The only way to avoid IEDs was to stay off the roads completely. This meant the convoy of Humvees had to pick its way at a snail’s pace cross country through the farmland surrounding Herat. With the drivers using NVGs, it was agonizingly slow and painful going, as the vehicles bounced and jostled over the uneven ground.
In order to keep their profile as low as possible, the unit decided to travel the last five kilometers on foot. Leaving a rear guard to watch over their vehicles, the ODA and their Afghan counterparts dismounted at about 2200 hours and crept toward the village, following their GPS devices and doing their level best to avoid detection along the way.
At midnight they reached the outskirts of the small hamlet that was their objective. It was surrounded by farmers’ fields, many of which had grown opium poppy earlier in the year but now were dry and barren. Others had a half-grown crop of wheat that would be ready in another month for harvest. Trees lined ancient, hand-dug canals that irrigated the fields. The moon was half full, throwing off enough illumination the men hardly needed their night vision whenever clouds were not blocking its light.
The Special Forces Captain, who went by the call sign “Digger” was smart and methodical and this was his first mission as ODA commander. He split his force, sending half the men to set up an over-watch position where they could provide security for the maneuver element that would enter the village. Once the support element was in place, the rest of the team, made up of six operators including the commander and SSG Gutierrez, left cover and ran for the target building—the place where Intel indicated the HVT would be asleep with one of his wives.
The building was constructed in typical Afghan fashion, high mud walls surrounded the compound at least eighteen inches thick, with flat-roofed rooms built against the outer walls and a courtyard in the center. The team moved up to the corner of the target building and pressed themselves against the wall.
But the enemy was waiting.
Gunfire exploded above them from three rooftops less than thirty feet away. The Special Operators dove behind a short mud wall jutting from the building, then began to return fire. But the enemy had constructed “spider holes” in the walls around each rooftop that would allow them to fire their AK-47s without exposing themselves in the process. Small arms fire rained down from these concealed fighting positions smacking the wall behind which the operators were crouched. Then, a PKM machine gun opened up on them from ground level, blasting rounds at them from down an alleyway. As the ODA fought to improve their position, a cow appeared in the alley, scared up by the gunfire. Disoriented, it charged the machine gun position, taking the majority of the bullets meant for the Green Berets.
The team took advantage of the diversion caused by the bovine’s demise and made for the doorway of the target building. Gutierrez and another man took up positions to draw the enemy’s fire and unloaded on the enemy fighters shooting down on them so the rest of the team could get inside. Then the Captain and another Green Beret charged forward so Gutierrez and his partner could move inside. As he moved, Gutierrez was on the radio talking with two Air Force F-16s overhead. The aircraft had visual contact on the objective and warned Gutierrez they identified more enemy reinforcements moving toward their position. This was bad news, but not wholly unexpected, since they knew any fighters in the area would definitely run to the guns as soon as the shooting started. The ODA had been engaged for just a few minutes—and time was already running out.
The support-by-fire element positioned outside the village was trying to engage the enemy and give the assault team some relief, but the height of the walls obstructed their ability to deliver accurate fire. They repositioned to try and get better fields of fire but began taking RPG rounds into their midst. Forced to relocate again, the fire-support element was, for the time being, out of the fight. Inside the compound, the assault team was now on its own.
Then Digger got hit. The bullet made through-and-through holes in his thigh. Two other men caught shrapnel from a grenade as well, both superficial wounds. They were able to reach the relative safety of the target building, however, where the SF medic quickly went to work dressing their wounds. But the enemy began throwing hand grenades onto the rooftop of the room they were in, and the explosions caused mud and debris to cascade on top of them. Then rocket-propelled grenades started slamming into the outside walls, turning the plaster-like mud into shrapnel and blowing holes in the structure.
With the Captain in a mild state of shock from his leg wound, the Team Sergeant took charge of one corner of the compound, sending men to defend the approach from the direction of the alleyway and ordering two men up on the rooftop to discourage the grenade throwers. A warrant officer in front of Gutierrez was firing out the doorway at Taliban fighters on the rooftop across the alley when his weapon jammed.He spun out of the doorway to clear it and change magazines. The battle-hardened Latino Combat Controller stepped in to replace him and saw two Taliban shooting down on his buddies from the two-story building across the yard. He stepped out and put two well-aimed shots center mass, watching them fall.
Then another man in black pajamas stood up at the corner of the rooftop. Gutierrez snapped his weapon up and pulled the trigger just as the man’s AK-47 spat flame. The man dropped his weapon and toppled over, but Gutierrez felt like someone had just punched him in the lower back. He ignored the sensation because another man stood up and took the place of the one he’d just engaged. He shot that man, too, and watched him fall.
Back on the radio, Gutierrez began trying to find a way for the F-16s to help them out of their predicament. With Taliban fighters crawling over the rooftops only a few meters away, there was no way to use the fighter jets’ onboard missiles to take them out without killing Americans in the process.
Gutierrez suddenly felt exhausted. Then he coughed and was surprised to taste blood in his mouth. He dropped to his knees and spit blood—too much blood. That was when he realized how badly he’d been shot.
The terrorist’s bullet entered just above his armpit and punched a fist-sized hole in the small of his back. In between, it torn up his insides and caused his left lung to collapse. The medic appeared at his side and dragged him into a doorway, rolling him onto his uninjured side so he wouldn’t drown in his own blood.
Rob Gutierrez was no stranger to combat and saw plenty of men die. As the medic worked frantically to remove his combat harness and body armor, the wounded Staff Sergeant realized he had about three minutes left to live. Images of Julie, his wife, seven months pregnant with their first child and thoughts of his mother—the Mexican immigrant who realized the American dream when she married his father. A part of him knew they would be okay. It would be sad, but theirs was a strong, close-knit family.
Another part of him, though, was saying “This really sucks!”
An instant later, both sentiments were overcome by one fiery emotion—anger. He wasn’t going to let his team down. If this was it and he only had minutes to live, Robert Gutierrez was going to go down fighting, protecting his team. He rolled his head to the side and could see out the doorway into the courtyard. Silhouetted in the moonlight was a Taliban fighter, blazing away with his AK-47. Summoning his remaining strength, Gutierrez raised his rifle and fired.
“Rob! Hey Rob!” It was the medic. He was busy stuffing curlex into the hole in Gutierrez’s back. “You’ve got a sucking chest wound, buddy. Your lung is filling up with fluid. If we don’t get you to a hospital, you’re not going to make it.”
Tell me something I don’t already know, Rob thought.
“I’ve got to stay and call in the aircraft,” he wheezed through bloody lips. Just breathing was becoming more and more difficult. It felt like someone was pumping his chest cavity full of concrete.
“I’ve got to decompress this lung.” The medic pulled out a needle the size of a ballpoint pen. “This is gonna hurt like hell, buddy. But it will make it easier to breathe.”
It already hurt like hell. How much worse could it get? Gutierrez gave a feeble nod, “Do it.”
The medic was right. He lifted Rob’s armor plate and jabbed the needle between his ribs. If he could have, Gutierrez would have screamed. But within seconds, the pressure in his chest started to ease, and he could feel breath coming back. He gulped in the sweetest lungful of air he’d ever tasted and said, “Thanks, Doc.”
Then he got back on the radio.
The F-16s orbiting overhead were armed with hellfire missiles and five-hundred-pound bombs. But there was no way they could use either weapon system without killing Americans and enemy alike. The two jet pilots had a clear picture on their thermal scopes as the Taliban swarmed in, only feet away from the team of ten Special Operators who were now trapped inside the compound and about to be overrun. And they were almost out of gas.
Gutierrez had an idea. He keyed his radio and said to the fighter pilots, “How about a show of force, over?” If the jets could make a high-speed pass and get low enough, they might just scare the enemy fighters into taking cover.
The jets’ fuel tanks were hovering just above “bingo”—the absolute minimum they needed to make it back to base. But the pilots agreed to try. A moment later, they dove their planes to rooftop level and screamed over the target area with full afterburners. The noise was so deafening everyone who wasn’t wearing ear protection had their eardrums blown out as the jets screamed by. Taliban fighters were literally blown off the rooftops by the fiery jet wash and Gutierrez and his mates were sure the building they were in would collapse.
But it didn’t slow the enemy for long. The Taliban fighters renewed their attack with a vengeance as soon as the jets turned for home.
Gutierrez heard the handover as the jets left and passed the battle space to two incoming A-10 Thunderbolt aircraft. In addition to missiles like the fighters, the “warthogs” were armed with seven-barrel rotary cannons capable of firing seventy rounds of 30-mm high explosive and incendiary ammunition per second. Regulations said friendlies had to be no less than two hundred feet away from where the aircraft were shooting in order to be safe.
They barely had twenty feet, much less two hundred. But at that point, they didn’t have much of an option. Gutierrez discussed it with the captain, who would have to authorize such a “danger close” gun run by the A-10s. The enemy grenades exploding on the roof of their position and RPGs still blasting holes in the walls of their enclave were enough to convince him it was worth the risk.
Gutierrez got on the radio and tried his best to calmly relay the information to the A-10 pilots. When he got to the part about them being thirty feet away from the enemy, the pilot asked him to re-send his transmission. Even if the pilot’s aim was perfect, the slightest turbulence could cause the impact to vary as much as sixty feet. There were Green Berets half that distance from the enemy.
When the pilots finally agreed to the gun run, Gutierrez turned to the men around him and said, “Everyone had better cover up. This is going to get loud.”
The operators got into the prone position, huddled together in the corner of the room. The medic draped himself over Gutierrez and they waited for the firestorm.
When it came, it felt like the end of the world. The walls around them imploded and then crumbled, flaming debris was falling everywhere and the sound was something you felt, not heard—like it was raining house-sized meteors. For a moment Gutierrez wondered if any of them would survive.
After the first A-10 made its run, Gutierrez coughed dust and blood and heard the team sergeant checking to see if everyone was alive. Miraculously they were. But there was still some incoming gunfire, though much less than before. So Gutierrez keyed his mike and cleared the second aircraft hot.
Again, it felt like they were inside the apocalypse, and again, they all survived. After that, more Taliban moved in to replace their fallen comrades, so after a few minutes, in anticipation they’d soon be able to pull out, the CCT airman slid his body armor back on over the still-bleeding wound in his back. Then Gutierrez ordered a third pass.
The village exploded again in a rain of high-explosive rounds. When the A-10s pulled up and shot skyward at the end of their run, the only sound was the crackling of flames as the destroyed buildings around the team burned. Then the aircraft radioed that a large group of enemy reinforcements was heading their way. There was no time to lose.
The team sergeant dragged himself to his feet. “Lets’ get out of here.” One by one, the Special Operators got up and moved out, single file, helping the injured along as best they could. They picked their way through the dust, smoke, and burning rubble, sidestepping the bodies of their foes.
A-10C Thunderbolt II
They had to walk almost two kilometers to find a safe extraction point where helicopters could come in and get them. During this movement Gutierrez held onto the harness of the man in front of him, but otherwise walked under his own power. Every step became more difficult, however, as his punctured lung slowly filled with blood once again. Despite his pain and blood loss, he maintained contact over the radio with the A-10 pilots, who prowled the skies above, escorting the team to safety. After he called in the helicopter that would take them home, Staff Sergeant Gutierrez passed out from loss of blood.
The medic performed a second needle-decompression of his lung and started an IV to replenish his fluids. The injured staff sergeant briefly regained consciousness, only to lose it again as they were loading him on the aircraft.
It takes time for awards to make their way through the system and be approved. Had Staff Sergeant Gutierrez died that dark night east of Herat, he might well have been awarded the Medal of Honor his team mates wanted him to receive. As it is, he will likely receive the Air Force Cross, which added to his Silver Star from Bari Kowt in 2008 and Bronze Star from the Shok Valley four months later, will make him one of the most highly decorated airmen alive today.
But Rob Gutierrez doesn’t care about any of that. If anything, the accolades and attention are an additional burden as he does his best to heal quickly so he can get back out with his brothers who are still in harm’s way.
Staring death in the face has made him a little more philosophical, however. Now the chance to hold his infant daughter and spend time with Julie has a sweeter flavor he appreciates more than he ever thought possible. And he’s grateful, too, for the country that allowed him the opportunity to serve with men for whom he would, even today, lay down his life.
Staff Sgt Robert Gutierrez
SSG Damone "D" Brown and his K-9 partner Argus
SPECIAL OPERATIONS K-9
The U.S. Special Forces are some of the most highly specialized soldiers in the world. Each soldier trains for years, cross-training for every job in his unit. There are weapons experts, communications specialists, engineers, and Intel officers. They can train a force of foreign fighters or take down a terrorist network with direct action. Years of combat experience hone their senses to a razor’s edge.
But these super warriors rely on one special member who has skills none of them can match. His name is Argus. Most Green Berets wait until after they finish high school to join the military—Argus was hand-selected to be a Special Operator almost from birth. He has years of combat experience and highly specialized training. He can drop onto a target by parachute, or fast rope in from a helicopter. He can track the enemy across mountainous terrain in freezing weather and take him down without a weapon. In fact, he never carries a gun, because he doesn’t need one.
Oh, and one other thing Argus has the other Green Berets don’t—four feet and a tail. He’s a Belgian Malinois—one of only a handful of Special Operations qualified military working dogs and he’s proven his worth as a member of the 7th Special Forces Group on three combat tours in Afghanistan.
Specially trained to find explosives by smell, Argus has been credited with saving dozens of lives by sniffing out IEDs. His handler, Staff Sergeant “D” likes to point out that Argus is as much one of the team as any of the other guys. And most of the time, he swears Argus smells better, too.
Argus has been trained to go anywhere his team goes—whether that means jumping from an airplane at ten thousand feet (albeit connected to his handler with a special harness) or going out on a twenty-five-mile rucksack march. Argus even wears his own kevlar body armor.
Since its inception as an experimental program in 2005, the special operations military working dog program has met with great success, and some of its graduates have even been awarded bronze stars for their work saving lives in the war zone.
It’s a program enjoying huge success and is very popular with the soldiers. Argus always trains as a member of the team. Even during medical refresher training—the Green Berets take turns sticking each other with needles, learning to give each other intravenous fluids which might save a life on the battlefield. Argus gets stuck too, and though he obviously doesn’t like it, SSG “D” points out that Argus is one of the most likely to be injured, so they need to know how to save him if that ever happens.
The bond between man and dog was never stronger than between these two—they spend nearly every hour of the day together, even sharing a room. “Argus has been there by my side the whole time—it’s like taking my son to war—such a huge responsibility. But one that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. We definitely have a very strong bond.”
Argus has found dozens of IEDs, thousands of pounds of explosives, and has even survived an IED attack. So far he’s never been injured, but a sizeable percentage of the dogs in this profession will be wounded or killed in the line of duty. It’s likely Argus will complete at least one more combat tour before he retires—at which time he’ll be put up for adoption if he’s deemed not to be too aggressive.
SSG “D” plans to be first in line to take him.
