On THE DAY OF Echo team’s departure, the nagging feeling that I would not be leaving with the team became a reality. The reason had nothing to do with my rejected socks, but with insufficient helicopter lift capability. So like extra baggage, I was scratched from the flight manifest and once again left behind.
After the team departed I, along with two SF soldiers who were also left behind, assumed a pessimistic attitude, believing there probably would not be a resupply flight anytime soon, leaving us stuck in Jacobabad. The next day, however, I received a secure-line call that changed everything: Headquarters wanted me to lead another team, designated “Foxtrot,” into southern Afghanistan.
I was surprised by the call, and after I hung up it dawned on me that I would definitely not be joining back up with Echo team and Karzai. I was not sure how I felt about that. For the previous two weeks my every waking moment had been spent in preparation to go into Afghanistan as an Echo team member. I particularly didn’t like the idea of parting ways with Jimmy, who had been with me from the start and whose extensive military experience and council I valued. Now it seemed Echo team was no longer in the cards. It was an abrupt change of course that I had to get my mind around.
The plan called for Foxtrot to infiltrate directly into Kandahar province and to link up with Gul Agha Shirzai, the former Kandahar provincial governor who had been driven from office when the Taliban had seized power. Like Karzai, he had recently begun building a force of mostly Pashtun anti-Taliban fighters inside Afghanistan. While I was intrigued by the operational concept, I had to admit that the idea of infiltrating directly into Kandahar province was a bit intimidating.
The next day, the U.S. Air Attaché in Islamabad and another Air Force officer flew down in a small plane to pick me up and take me back for discussions in Islamabad. Not knowing what the future would hold, I decided to bring all my gear with me, including my Glock and AK-47, which I just managed to fit into my duffle bag.
We waited until dusk to take off, and as soon as the wheels were off the ground, the Air Attaché immediately pulled the nose up putting the plane into a steep climb and then sharply banked to the left. The evasive maneuvers were not without justification. In the previous couple of weeks, some of the Air Force’s planes had taken fire from locals who did not like the U.S. presence on the base, and one crewmember had been wounded.
I was impressed by the Attaché’s flying skills, but began to have doubts about his navigation ability. Our route took us near the heavily militarized Pakistan-India border, and it was important that we did not stray into Indian airspace lest the Indians mistake us for a Pakistani plane and blow us out of the sky. Not long into our flight, the Air Attaché became uncertain as to our location in relation to the sensitive border. He was navigating by looking at landmarks, mostly lights on the ground delineating roads and towns, but decided that maybe it was time to consult a map. By this time it was dark and we were flying in black-out conditions so no interior lights were on. After digging through his bag, he found a red filtered flashlight to read the map, but the batteries were dead. Eventually, after dumping out the assorted contents of a briefcase, the pilots located new batteries, consulted the map, and got us back on course. All this sorting out seemed to take forever. Throughout the entire episode, however, neither of the Air Force officers was particularly ruffled, and we made it to Islamabad without any encounters with Indian surface-to-air missiles.