February 2002
When the SEALs and the two Controllers landed in Afghanistan, along with an entire SEAL Team Six command and control force structure, it was clear Bagram Airfield was no longer the battleground it had been just two months before. Transformed by the relentless might of the US military’s logistical magicians, with what to the impoverished Afghans seemed like endless supplies and equipment, not to mention ceaseless airplanes, it now resembled a major commercial airport of the developed world.
The only real signs one was in Afghanistan were the desolate snowcapped mountains that surrounded the base, the bland low-slung architecture of the city, and the February winds rushing down from the Hindu Kush, slicing through heavy clothing and singeing exposed skin, promising frigid combat for the men offloading the C-17s fresh from Virginia Beach.
Operations were still ramping up in-country, and SEAL Team Six wasted no time getting in on the action. The snipers, along with Andy and John, moved into a tent city made of heavy vinyl with large heating and air-conditioning units plugged into the sides to combat the extreme temperatures. John stayed with Slab, while Andy was assigned to the number-two enlisted sniper leader, a SEAL known as Goody. Inside, the men made the most of their personal space: a cot and crates for storing kits or, for some lucky ones, unfinished pine shelves crafted from crates. Tent city living was old hat to the SEALs and Controllers, and little note was made about the living quarters. They were there to hunt men.
They soon planned their first safari: for the elusive Taliban founder, Mullah Omar (code name Objective Bear), a one-eyed former mujahideen and the de facto head of Afghanistan from the time of the Taliban’s rise in the mid-’90s until the American invasion displaced him. He was rumored to be in the remote mountains of the Bamyan Province, northwest of Kabul, home of the giant cliff-carved Buddhas that would eventually be destroyed by Taliban forces. Intelligence from the CIA indicated he was holed up in a village, moving from one secure location to another.
The planned mission was to catch him in transit between his safe houses, using an eighty-man local partisan force for security and guidance through the mountainous terrain. For the operation, a six-man British Special Boat Service unit was to accompany the SEALs and CCT. The mission’s call sign was Mako-30—Red sniper’s standard. On 15 February, the nineteen Americans and Brits climbed aboard three 160th MH-47s for the hundred-mile flight to Bamyan. Slab and John, with a handful of SEALs, were on Chalk 1 (the first helicopter), the Brits Chalk 2, and Andy and Goody on the last chalk. A Special Tactics combat search and rescue (CSAR, pronounced “sea-sar”) team was aboard Andy’s helicopter. Led by a PJ named Keary Miller, it had CCT Gabe Brown as its airstrike and coordination wizard. The CSAR was not part of the mission; they were only there in the unlikely event of an aircraft crash or a call for medevac by other SOFs operating that evening. Keary Miller and Gabe Brown could not have known their destinies would converge with John Chapman again on a mountain summit the name of which none of them had yet heard uttered—Takur Ghar.
On the LZ in the dark, the men quickly unloaded and stepped onto an anonymous valley floor high in the mountains next to a small mud-hut village. When the helicopters had departed, Slab and the SBS leader met with the local partisan leaders and discussed the situation. One thing was certain, the Afghans were not going to lead the Americans anywhere in the dark. “We ended up in a defensive posture, staying in a goat pen, waiting for sunrise so we could wrangle the partisan force,” recalls Andy.
The sunrise brought a surprise. The Afghan partisans had brought donkeys to carry supplies and the Americans’ rucksacks, because they were going to walk twenty-two kilometers to a position above the village where they claimed Omar was coordinating the Taliban’s campaign. Andy and John looked dubiously at the donkeys. According to Andy, “They looked like German shepherds, they were that small. And we were laughing because we’re thinking, ‘Yeah right, these things are going to die under the loads we’ve got.’” Duly loaded by the expert Afghan mule wranglers, the hundred-man and donkey force set off for the distant target, trudging higher into the mountains on a narrow single-track footpath. Continues Andy, “Well, within about half an hour, those little donkey bastards were out of sight ahead of us.” The men watched with varying degrees of dismay as they lost control and sight of their ammo, survival gear, and batteries.
The long day led into night as the force moved into assault position on ridgelines towering above another nondescript and nameless village—Omar’s purported redoubt. Unfortunately the weather had moved back in, closing down visibility as darkness descended upon them. “The weather drops to zero-zero visibility, absolute dogshit for airplanes,” remembers Andy. The partisans were telling Slab and the Brit leader that Omar was definitely in the village, but in the freezing mountain storm, the Afghans weren’t willing to move forward, and the allies agreed to retreat to another nearby village and wait out the inclement weather.
Through their interpreter and the partisans, each of the Mako-30 elements was lodged with a separate local family—involuntarily. John and Slab went to one with a handful of SEALs, the Brits a second, and Andy with more SEALs to a third. “They’d never seen a Westerner before, and the only other foreigners they’d seen were Soviet troops. They were terrified,” recalls Andy. Who could blame them? The Americans, vigilant to the very real possibility of an ambush, and suspicious of their reluctant “hosts,” sent the men of the families out but kept watch on them. The partisans saw an opportunity and tried to push the women and children out as well, in order to stay inside where there was warmth. The heat source was minimal—no bigger than a coffee can—but heat nonetheless. When John saw what was happening, he stepped in. “No way. We are not putting women and children out in the cold. They stay. You go,” he directed through the interpreter.
Pashtun hospitality demanded they feed and care for the dangerous-looking and heavily armed outsiders, so the family slaughtered goats and chickens, feeding the Americans significant portions of their winter stores. In return, Goody, Andy’s SEAL team leader, tried to pay them in US dollars, but the family refused to accept the cash, even though they understood the value of American currency. The villagers slowly came to realize that the men were no threat and cautiously accepted them, in large part because of John’s good nature. Slab would later state, “John’s demeanor put them at ease, and I fully believe that helped keep us safe.”
In John and Slab’s house, the parents had two young boys and a tiny one-year-old daughter, a sun-darkened beauty with huge chocolate-colored eyes, darkly arched eyebrows, and a disarming smile. As Slab got on his Toughbook laptop to communicate with SEAL Team Six HQ in Bagram, John was reminded of his own daughters, Madison and Brianna, who weren’t that much older, and formed an instant connection. Cognizant of how much they were putting these modest people out, John was as respectful and helpful as he could be; not that the others weren’t, but John was purposeful about it. On one of the nights, while they were waiting for the storm to pass, the little girl’s mother showed how much John had won her over when she placed her daughter in his lap. Realizing the significance of the moment, a rarity given the culture in which no male outside of the family is allowed to touch a female, he asked Slab to retrieve his disposable camera and snap a shot. The resulting black-and-white photo captures the juxtaposition of the warrior and the man—a kind soul in a foreign land, there to do a rough job but whose love of family and children transcended fear and hostility—to freeze-frame a poignant moment when two humans silently bonded across language and culture. John’s kind eyes, gazing directly into the camera, belie the warrior beneath.
For two days the team remained ensconced in Afghan hospitality while the partisan force held the possibility of ambush at bay. Finally, the force moved silently into position above the suspected Mullah Omar refuge. The partisans wanted the Americans to take the village down, yet something seemed off. Slab and Goody conferred, and as Andy observed, “We needed to rethink this.” In the village below, there were mostly women and children going about their day. “No combat power whatsoever.” And no sign of Omar.
Slab turned to his Combat Controllers. “Can you order up a show of force?” He wanted something that would shake the village and possibly the truth out of the situation they and the locals found themselves in. Andy got on the net and contacted Kmart, the combined forces air component commander (CFACC, in charge of airpower in theater), and explained what he wanted. Kmart (so named for convenient one-stop shopping) had just the item, a B-1 bomber, coming off another mission and heading home. “Perfect,” declared the Controller.
“He called me fifty miles out and inbound at high Mach down through the valley,” recalls the Controller. Andy gave the pilot an entry and exit point above the unsuspecting village and cleared him for the very high-speed pass. “He comes down through the valley, maybe seven hundred feet above the ground, and he’s got this air cone coming off of him that you only see in pictures,” he recalls of the plane. As it passed, it pulled up and was already firing back to altitude like a bullet, “when the shock wave hit us; it sounded and felt like ten JDAMs going off all at once.”
Unsurprisingly, the town’s residents poured from their huts, stunned by the display, and sent two representatives to meet with the Americans and Brits. Through the interpreter, Slab—overall in command of the mission—realized that what they’d walked into wasn’t the potential hiding place of the number-one Taliban target, but a village-on-village Afghan-style Hatfields-versus-McCoys feud. Omar had been there, some parties claimed, but had long since departed. The partisan force provided to Mako-30 saw the opportunity to settle a decade-long dispute. During discussions, which took hours to sort out, Andy continued his show of force with more aircraft passes, until Slab finally called a halt to the ear-shattering displays.
With no Omar, nor even any real indication that he was ever actually there, “We left after the show of force. A dry hole,” Andy recalls of the wasted mission. John called back for exfil, and a lone MH-47 returned to retrieve them. Recognizing the burden they’d placed on the small village, he added a request to accompany the extraction helicopter. As the helo hovered into position on the steep mountainside, its nose and blades hanging out over precipitous space and its ramp dropped to retrieve the men, a cargo pallet was dragged onto the mountain by the team. Strapped securely to the top of the plywood was cooking oil, coal, stoves, and dry goods such as peanut butter and sugar for the village who’d taken them in. John, on his own initiative, had requested the provisions as a token for the family and the little girl who’d stolen his heart. It was a small gesture in a large war. Perhaps it made no real difference in a country shattered by decades of conflict, but it mattered to the Combat Controller.
With nothing to show for their efforts but potential misuse of American and British military might and a bit of goodwill, the men clambered aboard and disappeared into the dark. The CCT aspects of the mission, driven primarily by Andy, had also been a bust for John. He hoped his next mission would provide greater opportunity to demonstrate his value and capabilities.