2 March
MIDNIGHT
The period of darkness (POD) on the night of 2 March stretched on for everyone in the Shahi Khot Valley, including Al Qaeda. From the enemy:
We spent our night alert and on guard, to deter any more airdrops throughout the night, as was expected. Before performing the morning Fajr prayer, we divided the brothers into three groups: the first joined the group of Maulawi Saif-ur-Rahman Mansoor, for he needed more people; the second took position where the Shilka ZSU-23 antiaircraft cannon was situated, at the entrance of the valley; which left myself, along with three other brothers, as support for any of the groups that needed more men. To begin with, we headed toward the location of the Shilka and took our positions in the rear, to help curb the aerial bombardment which had increased significantly. During the entire period, the enemy did not cease to spray the mountain peaks and valleys with the lava of bombs and missiles, while machine guns sprayed their bullets in every direction. The martyrs were too many to count. Many of the Afghans were now martyrs. One brother tried to hide in a trench from the bombs, but the trench was full to the top with dead Uzbeks.
For Combat Controllers Jay Hill and Andy Martin, the POD was a nonstop airstrike fest, each Controller sequencing aircraft, handing them back and forth, or sharing with TF-Rakkasan. The strikes were so frequent and numerous that the numbers and aircraft blurred. The devastation and relentlessness revealed in their after-action reports are impressive. Sometimes the strikes were identified by the aircraft or munition, other times they describe merely the outcome.
Jay: OP site and bunker (2-3 KIA)—AC-130
Andy: Enemy squad (11 KIA, 5 WIA)—2 x F-16s
Jay: Fighting position (4 KIA)—JDAMs [He reported over SATCOM, “If anyone was on the ridgeline they aren’t now.”]
Andy: Mortar position (unk KIA—poss 2-3, target suppressed)—4 GBU-31s
Jay: 3 x fighting positions (5 KIA)—JDAM bomb box
Andy: Hilltop fighting position w/poss mortars (unk KIA—poss 2-3, target suppressed)—4 GBU-31s—B-52
Jay: OP (3 KIA, 2-5 probable KIA)—JDAM bomb box
Jay again: Bunker (3 KIA)—JDAM bomb box
Andy: Congregation of enemy on ridge (unk KIA—poss 2-3)—2 GBU-12s
Jay: Mortar position and 1 x DSHKA (7—KIA)—JDAM
Andy: Cave complex (2 KIA, unk damage to tunnels)—8 GBU-31s—B-1
Jay: Sniper position (2 KIA)—Predator Hellfire
Andy: Mortar position (unk KIA—poss 2-3, target suppressed)—4 GBU-31s
Jay: Mortar position, 2 x Toyota PU trucks (4+ KIA)—MK-82
And so it went, through the entire night, without sleep, hands freezing on the mikes and handsets, changing radio and rangefinder batteries as they drained in the below-freezing temperatures. They suffered blurred vision and the pressure to ensure not only that each and every strike was on target but that there was also no confusion with friendly locations, since the entire battlefield was anything but static as units and enemy positions maneuvered and fought.
The two Controllers weren’t alone; each was supported by his team. And though one mission was led by a SEAL and the other a Delta operator, the leadership roles reversed once they were engaged, as Jay explains:
A definite evolution, or change of mission responsibilities takes place after you first arrive. [Before then] there’s more of them and they’re taking care of certain things, “Hey, this is our OP. This is where we’re going.” They’re getting you there, they’re defining the area, you’re doing your own stuff and your position hasn’t percolated to the top yet because you’re not talking to [aircraft]. But as soon as it does, well then you become the center point and you start tasking. “I need you to do this for me. I want you to verify my coordinates. Hey dude, I need you to check my math, make sure, because I’m literally bombing people off of FalconView and a laser rangefinder and they’re three klicks away.” The roles kind of get reversed.
It’s really complex. To get your eyes on [target] and come up with a game plan of how you’re going to get aircraft in and safely separate them, drop bombs, and do it at night with the gear and the sensors we were dealing with at the time, and they were just not adequate. Back then, we had to correlate coordinates off FalconView. If you say to a Controller today, “I was bombing off FalconView” he’d just shake his head in wonder. It was terrible, but it worked.
Because it had to. Each of the Controllers ultimately had the responsibility for life and death: life for the troops in contact and their respective teams, death for everyone else on the battlefield. The burden was heavy. Any slip when controlling such things as run-in bombing headings or restrictions, or incorrect coordinates (even those that were read back by the pilot), and there was only one man who’d be the target of the subsequent investigation and left with a lifetime of guilt, one man left holding the bag. Conversely, if you were good (and sometimes lucky), you moved forward knowing your efforts made all the difference.
* * *
As Jay and Andy traded aircraft throughout a night of blurred hours, Jim Hotaling only had access to a single platform…but it was all his and its presence was critical. The CIA Predator shadowed and guided the SAS team as they worked to reposition themselves nearer the battle after the errant helo drop-off. The men progressed at an excruciatingly slow pace. To them, the Predator was a lifeline. Even though they were moving at night with NVGs, Al Qaeda forces were everywhere throughout the valley and its facing mountain slopes, exactly where they were traversing. Worse still, the terrain in every direction was higher ground, and they felt completely exposed. They had no place to maneuver along the creek bed, so an RPG or DShK emplaced along their route would make short work of them. Even more alarming, the men staggered under the immense 140-pound loads they carried, making it impossible to identify threats from above. They were too busy trying to maintain momentum without falling over and, like the AFO teams, stopping only led to freezing in the night, so it became a torturous tightrope balanced between exhaustion and cold.
Between breaths, Hotaling periodically talked with the pilot, who was sitting in a heated box, “most likely sipping coffee,” mused the Controller. But he remained grateful to “have the Predator as our point man.” When the drone approached “bingo” fuel, it would depart, replaced by another Wildfire. On occasion, there were gaps in coverage, and Hotaling would fill the intervening time with the AWACS air coordination platform (call sign Bossman), a poor substitute for men moving on the ground in rugged terrain, but still a source of continuity and comfort. When the next Wildfire arrived, Bossman handed it off to Hotaling for control.
His faith in the system wasn’t misplaced, but Predators’ reliability was susceptible to overestimation. Visual acuity for the pilot scanning the ground below was no more than 20/200, rendering certain angles and terrains a mystery, especially those with shadows. It’s often noted that the operator’s view was little better than staring through a straw from high altitude, so unless the focused lens passed directly over a threat, it was quite possible to miss the heavy machine gun or RPG position that could cost a life.
Furthermore, as would happen repeatedly from the time of their introduction into the modern battlefield, Predators and other drones, even those with improved acuity, fed into another dangerous condition. For leaders sitting far removed from the battlefield, the temptation to believe that drone footage provided adequate situational awareness led to increased micro- and mismanagement by general officers and higher headquarters. They felt their central operation centers, by virtue of information flow and video feed, somehow “knew better” than the men on the ground and their forward commanders. Combine that with the urge to “do something” when situations became dire, and it was inevitable for them to take control away and make decisions for the men on the ground. This would play out in Anaconda in tragic ways over the next twenty-four hours.
For now, though, the Aussies progressed with the belief they were at least more secure than if there was nothing overhead, and it allowed them to double the speed at which they would otherwise have traveled—which was still a snail’s pace. As the 3 March sun rose in the east, they waited for its heat to clear the ridgeline so they could feel the warming rays of the fiery orb. When it finally reached the exhausted men, they stopped for something to eat and checked their location. After twelve hours of constant movement, they were only halfway to their new OP. The long night would now become an even longer and more dangerous day. At least the sun was shining on them from a clear, but cold, blue sky.
* * *
As Hotaling shouldered his ruck, Pete Blaber was hitting his own wall. Awake for fifty-five hours straight, he pulled the headset off his matted, unwashed hair and dropped onto his cot inside the AFO tent for two hours of well-deserved blackout. When his alarm went off, he was still fuzzy. He grabbed his Glock pistol from under his pillow, tucking it into his tan cargo pants, and stumbled out into the morning with his toothbrush in his mouth to take a piss. In the tent next to him, Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” was prophetically playing. Ablutions complete, he headed toward the TOC, passing “a bunch of unfamiliar faces,” only to be intercepted by Glenn, the Delta AFO officer and Blaber’s right-hand man in Bagram. Speaking rapidly, his agitated intel analyst told him two teams of SEALs had arrived earlier and their officer in charge was waiting for him in the TOC.
Inside, Blaber found a Navy SEAL lieutenant commander named Vic and two teams of SEALs from SEAL Team Six’s Red Team; Mako-30’s Slab from the recce element; and one other team made up of assaulters—not reconnaissance experts—call sign Mako-21, led by a man named Al.
“What are you doing here?” Blaber asked Vic, who explained that Trebon had ordered him to Gardez to command and control the SEALs, and that he was to infiltrate the teams into the ongoing fight that night. Blaber was instantly pissed. Grabbing a satellite phone, he stepped out of the TOC and into the compound for some privacy, leaving the SEALs behind, and rang up Trebon.
“What’s going on, sir?”
“Same thing I told you. I want these guys in the fight. Vic is in charge of the [SEALs], you just stay in charge of the AFO guys. And when do you think you can turn them over to Blue?”
“Sir, there’s no need to shove these guys into the fight. I don’t need to put two more teams in tonight. We control the valley, not them—”
Trebon cut him off. “Pete, put both SEAL teams into the fight tonight. That’s an order.” The general hung up. Blaber knew what was happening. With the sterile-sounding and effective airstrike calls being reported across the AFO SATCOM net, it appeared to the TF-11 leaders that putting more teams and Combat Controllers in the field was simple…Stick them in a helicopter, fly them to some high ground, put the Controller on the radio, make strikes. Easy.
But in Blaber’s mind there was more to the situation. Trebon was an Air Force pilot and would never come up with the idea to push SEAL Team Six into the fight. It could only be coming from Kernan and Szymanski. Glenn had been right: Neither the SEAL Team Six leaders nor TF-11 generals understood conditions on the ground, and dropping men into the middle of the battle at the last moment without preparation was asking for disaster.
The irony of Szymanski and Kernan pushing Trebon from below was not lost on Blaber, who’d had to convince the SEALs of the mission’s value and had even off-ramped others for poor attitude and performance. Now they didn’t just want in, they wanted the entire show, and they had co-opted Trebon in Bagram to get it. When Blaber had asked Trebon in previous conversations whether the SEALs they intended to send down were going to conduct direct-action missions (which were their forte), the general had replied their missions were to be the same as Blaber’s current teams’.
The two had not settled on a time frame, so when Trebon asked about timing, Blaber replied, “I can’t give you a time.” The general wasn’t satisfied. “I want you to come back to me with when the exact time is that you’re transitioning this to Blue.” The one concession Blaber received was that Vic would serve as his number 2 until he turned over control.
Vic was a contentious candidate to lead the SEALs in AFO operations. Technically, he was the Red Team recce officer in charge, placing him in the Navy command chain between Slab, Goody, and now (by virtue of his inclusion in AFO) Al the assaulter, and their senior officers, Szymanski and Kernan back in Bagram. His few months in Afghanistan had been anything but quiet and had exposed poor judgment and leadership on two occasions. The first involved an unauthorized New Year’s Eve vehicle movement between Bagram and Jalalabad, during which Vic and the SEALs in the SUV were stopped at a militia checkpoint. It resulted in shots being fired, injuring a SEAL and necessitating the team’s rescue by a British helicopter. The second of what became known as “Vic’s three strikes” inside the TF-11 command occurred during a “dry hole” raid he led in which an unarmed Afghan had been killed when he approached the team’s location. From the darkness of the SEALs’ hiding spot, the civilian had been told in English to stop. When he didn’t stop, the man was shot through the eye and killed. The SEAL who shouted the English command and fired the round that killed him was Vic. There was an investigation but no charges, leaving an impression that extended up to the TF-11 commanding general, Dell Dailey. According to a TF-11 general officer familiar with both events, “[Vic] got as much of a fair hand as any other person would who ultimately showed, probably, not the right judgment.” Defending Kernan’s choice to continue allowing the junior SEAL officer to lead, he added, “You can’t pick out a lousy judgment–type guy right off the bat.” However, others were less forgiving, including SEALs within his own unit. When one Navy operator returned from the field to find Vic in the Gardez TOC that morning, he was stunned. “I got the feeling [Vic] was now running the show on the ground. Of course, he was out of his league.”
But the decision to send Vic to run things and put teams in play was done. According to one official after-action report, Kernan “had already made the decision to insert.”
For John Chapman, the drama surrounding who led the missions “back at the rear” in the Gardez safe house was immaterial. He had a new mission and set about prepping his gear, studying the AFO maps on the walls as well as talking with Glenn, the Delta intel officer. He was joined by Ben Miller, the Combat Controller assigned to Al’s Mako-21 team. While the two CCT had similar responsibilities, the nature of the separate teams’ composition, and the fact that they came from different elements, caused the two friends to implement their actions independent of each other and immerse themselves within the separate forces—just as Chappy and Andy had done previously during their early missions with Slab and Goody. A divide also existed between assault troops, with their direct-action mission, and the more low-key snipers of recce. Slab, as the senior recce team leader, personified these differences with his introspective and laconic approach to dealing with others.
As Slab and Chapman were making sense of their short-notice mission, the battle continued to rage at Mako-31’s location, and another piece of the TF-11/SEAL puzzle fell into place. Between identifying and nailing down targets with his SEAL teammates and calling in airstrikes, Andy received an odd communication. It came from the TF-Blue TOC in Bagram and didn’t include anyone else in the AFO chain of command. Mako-31 had continued to provide their situation reports to TF-Blue, the SEAL Team Six element in Bagram. Of course, the two senior officers of the unit, Kernan and Szymanski, were also hearing Mako-31’s transmissions on the AFO SATCOM channel. This message was different.
TF-Blue wanted Mako-31 to relocate to a new OP using one of the Agency’s Mi-17s. That they would send the request directly to the team was new—and odd—but it was where they wanted the team to relocate that got his attention…Takur Ghar.
Andy showed the message to Goody. The team’s reply did not take long to formulate. Takur Ghar was three kilometers away and had a commanding view of the valley, much better than their current location, but it had problems. Mako-31 responded with three points:
Goody turned them down with a push of the send button, which closed the matter for Mako-31. What was clear to Andy was, “They [Six’s leaders] wanted us to insert on an Mi-17 with a single door-mounted M60 [machine gun]. They wanted it done now. That mission would have required multiple DAPs and SEAL boat crews to take the summit. [DAPs—Direct Action Penetrators—were specially modified MH-60s flown by the 160th SOAR. Essentially attack helicopters, they came equipped with variations of .50-cal, 7.62mm miniguns, and 2.75-inch rockets.] When we declined the mission, they moved it on to Slab’s team instead.”
* * *
For the broader Operation Anaconda, things were not going smoothly. TF-Rakkasan was in fights, with strikes taking place everywhere in the valley. It was also taking a beating as Al Qaeda forces continued to muster numbers and close with the Army.
With a handset to his ear, Jay watched from behind sunglasses and beneath his wool cap as yet another strike took out an Al Qaeda bunker. This strike, from a B-52, delivered a 2,000-pound GBU-31 (actual weight 2,036 pounds and a monstrous twelve feet long).
An airstrike has a strange and macabre beauty all its own. Massive ordnance detonations against ground targets produce the expected satisfaction of destroying your enemies in a vivid, billowing, black-and-orange ball of fire, smoke, and dust. At only three kilometers away, the initial violent explosion is followed by the reverberation as the radiating sound wave compresses air in every direction and reaches the ears a second later. As the sound fades and the black smoke billows upward and out, bits of rock, weapons, and human parts rain down in the immediate vicinity of the detonation. Finally, the last image is of dust, settling and spreading across the valley floor. It is mesmerizing to friend and foe.
JDAM airbursts used on enemies in open terrain are different. These produce a string of black aerial cauliflower blossoms in a line, puffs of deadly Fourth of July–type fireworks that, instead of celebrating a festive day, shred and mangle man and equipment below without the dirt and flying debris.
Jay and J Team continued to prosecute the mission, though things were not going smoothly for them either, despite their superior fields of view and, by now, seamless teamwork.
Like Mako-31, to ensure they weren’t “fragged” by friendlies, the team did their best to mark themselves as American, but the task was made more difficult because “the bad guys had VS-17 panels as well, which we didn’t know at the time, and they looked like us because they’re wearing fatigue bottoms, North Face–type jackets, and civilian clothing, using Hilux trucks and whatnot. And many of them are Chechen or Uzbek or whatever, the point being they didn’t look Arab or Afghan. [So] as far as on the mountaintop, we looked similar, and aircraft that were in the valley a lot, like the Apaches, might not know AFO was over here or there.”17
As Apache attack helicopters swooped across the valley, interspersed with fighter and bomber airstrikes, Jay was just beginning to work a flight of two F-15 Strike Eagles to hit a target on the Whale when Kris announced they had something in front of them. Jay and the Delta snipers watched through binoculars as an ancient white Toyota Land Cruiser pickup truck stuffed with enemy fighters rolled to a stop in front of the foothills below their OP. He recalls, “We’re watching this guy, asking, ‘What’s he doing?’ He’s looking right at us and then jumps out and sets up a mortar tube and starts firing at us. We all went, ‘Fuck!’ as the first couple rounds were inbound. It was quick.”
Unfortunately for the Al Qaeda mortar men, Jay’s Strike Eagles hadn’t committed to their briefed target, and he rapidly lined them up with a new nine-line, diverting the flight to the enemy mortar position now bracketing J Team. With little time to spare and no precoordination, the Combat Controller did it the old-fashioned way—he talked them onto the mortar position using years of expertise in guiding pilots to the target via descriptions of landmarks and features. Using only Mk-82 500-pound dumb bombs (no laser or GPS guidance), Jay and the pilots “shacked” the truck, mortar tube, and its crew, killing a handful of Al Qaeda.
The jet fighters lived up to every bit of their name and reputation, leaving a shredded pickup and bits of human in their wake as the two Strike Eagles sped back to their base for fuel and more bombs.