4 March
0455 HOURS
As Mako-30 neared the mountain without any pre-assault fire support, frustration boiled over in the SEAL leader. “Motherfuckers!” Slab muttered regarding the gunship, and told Friel, “Go around,” so he could get a look and perhaps induce the gunship to fire.
“Not going to happen,” replied the pilot. Without even enough fuel for him to make a second pass, he declared a fuel emergency before they inserted.
Slab now had an impossible choice: Leave with the helicopter and abandon his teammate, possibly saving the lives of his remaining team and the helicopter crew, or go into the same HLZ as before without support, fully announcing their intentions to the enemy. It wasn’t really a choice at all.
In the cockpit of Grim-32, frustrations were also growing. The pilot, Turner, couldn’t fire, no matter how much ground forces begged. His responsibilities were equal parts destruction of the enemy in support of the operators and the prevention of fratricide. His situation was not uncommon among AC-130 crews. The men on the ground, with a very narrow view of the battle, often could not appreciate the ease with which locations and forces could be confused. Turner’s fire control officer offered an opportunity when he announced, “Two guys have been walking around that rock all night and I know they are bad. Why don’t we shoot them?” To do so required the concurrence of the entire crew. When one of the other officers on the flight deck voiced an objection, the last opportunity to force the enemy’s head down vanished, as did all hope of Mako-30 getting on the ground without taking fire.
As the helicopter neared the landing, the final words Friel spoke to Slab were rhetorical: “It ain’t going to be good.”
At 0457, the MH-47 prepared to touch down in the exact spot where Razor-03 had met its fate. Its twin turbine engines spewed heat and noise from the back of the fuselage, defeating the mountain silence. Snow scattered in every direction in what remained of the night. Anyone within fifty feet of the helicopter would be blinded in the rotor-induced blizzard. The enemy was far enough away to allow an unobstructed view of the giant settling onto their summit, though the noise made it difficult to communicate. But communication was no longer necessary; they were all fully armed, the only means they needed to communicate with their most despised enemy.
For the men in back, the final seconds of infil were an unbearable eternity. Waiting for the helicopter to make its way sluggishly to the ground left them exposed, a terrible feeling of powerlessness for men of action. The crew doused the lights, leaving those in the back in complete darkness. Only the men’s NVGs provided illumination, yet with the swirling snow and the narrow field of view out the ramp, nothing was visible. Chapman was pushed up against Slab almost as if the two were going to make a skydive out the back. His adrenaline was pumping, and he was anxious, as they all were, to get out of the thin-skinned death trap. He felt the helicopter jerk as it touched down.
When the wheels hit, Slab and Chapman launched themselves off the ramp. Slab took two steps in the knee-deep snow and plunged face forward, filling his NVGs with snow in the process and temporarily blinding himself. Chapman, second in line, wasted no time and went around the SEAL, heading to his left in search of high ground or shelter to begin orchestrating airpower with Grim-32. The four remaining SEALs spread out in two-man fire teams around their leader, who quickly recovered.
On the snow-covered slope, Chapman paused for a moment, orienting himself to the terrain. Fire was incoming but concentrated on the helicopter, even as it began lifting off, trailing smoke and dragging enemy fire along with it. Then it was gone, and the mountain went silent for a moment. The Chechens and Al Qaeda stopped firing, trying to determine what had happened in the blackness. The SEALs and Chapman had yet to fire a shot, and in the dark and confusion after the blowing snow and rotor noise, the enemy had no idea how many Americans were on the ground. Without NVGs, they were mostly blind…but only for another forty-five minutes.
The quiet was short-lived. Fire exploded all around the team as the enemy let loose a barrage. John made a snap decision and began running uphill, into the fire, without looking behind him to see if Slab had recovered or what the other SEALs were doing. He took a knee and began firing at the closest point where he could see muzzle flash and a fighting position in the first bunker, Bunker 1.
Twenty feet behind him the SEALs huddled, getting their bearings before splitting off in their two two-man fire teams. Slab, seeing Chappy upslope, stepped out in pursuit of the Combat Controller.
John could see the enemy had the advantage of high ground and dug-in terrain. There was no cover for him to set down and start calling airstrikes. That would have to wait. If he didn’t do something now, there’d be no one left to call for air because there would be no one left.
His heart was pounding in the thin atmosphere at over 10,000 feet. Even Gardez was only 7,500 feet, and the extra elevation was attacking his cardio system as surely as the Al Qaeda were attacking the team. He stopped momentarily once again, then drove forward, breaking trail through the snow, which rose past his gaiters to his knees. As his boots plunged through the snow, he held his M4 pulled against his shoulder, barrel pointed forward at an angle into the slope. He stopped for a breath, brought his weapon up, and, sighting on Bunker 1 using his laser and NVGs, snapped off a few shots. Then he ran again, lungs aching, to his right. As he surged uphill, the bunker moved up and down through his NVGs, but outside the circle of illumination, all was dark, creating the effect of images swimming.
Behind him, Slab moved to catch up as Chapman stopped again, took a knee, and snapped off another three- to five-round burst. Before the SEAL could catch him, Chapman was up and moving again, his knees and feet blazing a trail in the virgin snow, increasing the distance between them again. It was as if the Controller was a man possessed. He never looked back at Slab, just fired and moved like a machine into the enemy’s fire. Slab stopped, getting the lay of the land and checking the rest of his team.
Two of the SEALs (who would come to be the upper fire team) had moved left and uphill a few feet from the original huddle and stopped, firing upward at the invisible enemy. The final two SEALs of Mako-30, the lower fire team, had spread out near the huddle and were searching for targets. The team was taking fire from three directions—east, west, and north—the most effective of which was raining down from the hilltop to the north, directly in front of Chapman. Slab turned and looked uphill at the Controller, now twenty feet ahead of him, and watched in disbelief as John again charged at the enemy, snapping off shots.
Still the Controller never looked behind him to see if Slab had caught up. The fire from Bunker 1 was cracking as it passed him and the team. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t been hit. Between heaving breaths he looked through his NVGs, the muzzle flash from the AK-47 fire blinding due to the light amplification of his optics. He didn’t wait; he launched himself—stumbling through postholing snow would be a more accurate description—headlong at the bunker.
Bunker 1 was arrayed in an arc under a ten-foot-tall bonsai-shaped tree. The defensive position was well constructed, having been improved by the Chechens and Al Qaeda fighters from its original construction by their mujahideen predecessors during battles with the Soviets twenty years earlier. Inside were two Chechens, well protected and masked by the tree overhead and a large rock outcrop to the left that covered their flank. Twenty-five feet behind them sat a second bunker, Bunker 2, filled with more fighters, including Roberts’s executioner, a PKM heavy machine gun, and several RPG tubes with a stockpile of rounds.
The two Chechen fighters were spraying the team below them. They could hear the Americans, but they were difficult to identify in the dark, a problem compounded by the blinding effects of their own weapons and their lack of night vision devices. They felt they had the upper hand: They’d shot down one helicopter already, and this second one had limped off. Plus, they’d tasted their first kill for the glory of Allah, the reason they’d traveled through Pakistan to the rugged peaks of Afghanistan. And had He not delivered to the mujahideen an American for them to kill and his gear to pillage? One of the fighters was already wearing the American’s Gore-Tex pants, another his black woolen watch cap. Allah would surely give them more Americans to sacrifice and desecrate. They fired their weapons, fear and excitement driving them.
It was the last action for the two dirty and ill-equipped fighters. John appeared, lungs burning, in front of the bunker’s berm and between it and the flanking rock. Taking advantage of his NVGs and laser he killed first one, then the other in as many seconds. Shocked by the American materializing from the black, both went to Allah without another shot. John had been on Takur Ghar for exactly two minutes and had now killed the first men in his thirty-six years of living.
Slab was still behind him but closing the distance. Below, fire team one, saved from the deadliest fire by Chapman’s one-man onslaught, began charging up the steep slope toward the rock outcropping, ignoring the wild fire from the west flank to their left. The two SEALs were intent on getting into the fight, finding Fifi if he was still alive, and killing every single motherfucker on the mountain.
John, now in command of the bunker, oriented himself to his new surroundings, looking for a place to establish his airstrike position. Fire continued to pour in from the next bunker and off to his right. He engaged both directions, changing out at least one magazine in the process, as Slab finally joined him under the tree. The two shared an instant before Slab engaged Bunker 2, loosing several three-round bursts.
Chapman dropped to a knee next to the tree’s trunk. To his left, Slab was facing Bunker 2 when a burst of fire from that position split the few feet between the two teammates. Slab slid behind the rock outcrop farther to his left and yelled, “What do you have?”
“I’m not sure,” replied the Controller.
Slab returned his attention to Bunker 2 and tried firing a couple 40mm grenade rounds from the M203 launcher slung beneath his Stoner SR-25 .308-caliber sniper rifle, but the twenty-foot distance to the next bunker was so close, one grenade failed to arm before impact and rolled down the hill. It exploded without effect. The second detonated, but the fire kept coming.
Slab moved to his left against the security of the base of the rock outcropping. A grenade thrown by the enemy in Bunker 2 detonated in the snow half the distance to the two Americans but failed to inflict any damage. Slab didn’t realize it, but the very reason for them being on the mountain lay mere feet from his position. Focused on staying alive, the SEAL never saw Roberts’s body.
Farther to his left, fire team one arrived at the rock outcropping and was taking fire from Bunker 2 and the heavy DShK antiaircraft gun behind it. The two SEALs pressed themselves into the snow, attempting to lower their profile from the vicious raking. Below them, fire team two continued their attempt to flank to the right but couldn’t beat back the fire pouring down, so they withdrew another thirty feet downslope.
John was now concentrating his fire on Bunker 2. He stepped up, exposing himself to deadly fire again. The close range and blinding flames from the PKM machine gun made it impossible to ignore. He was sweating from his push up the hill, still trying to catch his breath. Luckily there was no need to take aim through his scope; he merely centered the laser point on the muzzle flashes. Years of training alongside the best combat shooters in the world, Delta Force and SEAL Team Six, put him on autopilot. Despite the adrenaline and physiological stress, he exhaled, then smoothly pulled the trigger until the suppressed weapon coughed, but he was not rewarded with seeing the impact.
An Al Qaeda fighter charged him from his right side to counter-flank the Americans, firing wildly. John shot his assailant from a few feet away, stopping him and knocking the man over. Before he could pick another target, he was suddenly slammed in the torso and knocked backward. “Where’d that come from?” he yelled to Slab over the sound of the machine gun. But he never heard the answer, toppling back and onto his side. His world went dark.
Slab heard the shout but didn’t respond. He saw Chapman ten feet away, the NVGs’ green glow illuminating his face and his laser pointing against a tree, rising and falling with his breathing. The Controller’s legs were crumpled beneath him, but he was alive.
The mountain was exploding around Slab and his two remaining fire teams. To his left, the first man of fire team one arrived, with the other SEAL hot on his heels. The latter had their only crew-served firepower, an M60, and he scuttled around behind his teammate with the rock masking him, so he and Slab could huddle. Slab looked over at Chappy, but the laser, while still on, didn’t appear to be moving, and he concluded the Combat Controller must be dead. He was now down two men. “Get on top of the rock and fire point-blank in the bunker,” he told his 60 gunner. Slab needed to put an end to Bunker 2 quickly if they were to survive.
“Roger that,” replied the other, who climbed the half dozen feet to the top and began firing from a knee. When he couldn’t get a good-enough angle into the bunker, he stood up and began pouring sustained fire into the position. As he did, Slab moved to the other fire-team-one member in preparation for a sweep to the left to finish off the resistance, when a frag grenade, thrown from the bunker in the face of the 60 gunner’s withering fire, exploded near the SEAL’s feet. It was followed by another determined fighter exposing himself to return the point-blank barrage with his AK-47, striking the 60 gunner’s thighs. The SEAL rolled off the rock, calling out, “I’m hit!” as he collapsed at Slab’s feet.
The two SEALs held another rapid discussion while the first member of fire team one continued to fire from the left side of the rock. At least the enemy wasn’t charging them. Slab had no idea of the numbers of Al Qaeda and Chechens on the mountain, but if they rallied in force, the SEALs, now without Chapman’s expertise in walking fire up against their own positions, would be wiped out. Two and a half men behind a lone rock, only marginally supported from below by a single two-man fire team without heavy weapons, were powerless to stop a rush.
“Are you hit in the chest?” he asked.
“No, I’m hit in the legs.” That was good.
“Can you move?”
“Yeah.”
They’d been on the mountain now for eight minutes, with two more casualties, a dwindling supply of ammo, and no better command of the terrain than when they’d landed. Slab had used up his entire supply of 40mm grenades and had discarded his M203 in the snow, leaving him only his sniper rifle. He made his decision: They were retreating. Now.
The three SEALs wasted no time moving off the summit and rapidly past Bunker 1. The first fire-team-one SEAL had also been shot during the firefight, with a grazing wound to the knee. In their rush to retreat, no one checked Chapman’s condition, though only Slab knew at the time that Chappy had been shot.
A Predator pilot leaned back in the chair of his “cockpit” inside an air-conditioned trailer fifteen hundred miles and a time zone away, silently watching the SEALs’ and Chapman’s battle for life. On his next pass, while the SEALs withdrew, the nameless pilot dropped the Predator a thousand feet to get a better view of the action. Though he didn’t know their names, he watched the SEALs passing below the bunker. On his screen, Chapman’s still-warm body very clearly showed under the bonsai tree and, slightly cooler, Roberts’s body lay along the SEALs’ path.
The pilot watched the SEALs as they huddled below Bunker 1. In defilade below the bunker and ten feet from the stricken Controller, they continued to return fire. Downslope, fire team two did the same, but the route from the outcrop to their current location did not pass Chapman. The most likely event in the dark is that Slab passed Roberts’s body, which was between Bunker 1 and the outcrop but not above the bunker. Chapman, in his last engagement before going down, was above Bunker 1, where he had engaged the flanking Al Qaeda.20
For the moment, believing Chapman dead, Slab was concerned only with their survival. They were still a divided force, and unless they consolidated and moved off the mountain, they’d all end up like Chapman, who had bought them initial relief and salvation in the early part of the battle. They spent the next four minutes taking stock of their condition, ammo count, and situation, discussing the matters while still engaging the enemy from below the bunker.
When it was time, Slab tossed a smoke grenade to mask their retreat, and they left the summit for the final time just after 0510. The 60 gunner, with his damaged legs, went first as the three began to scramble and slide toward the lower fire team. The last to leave the position, Slab was suddenly confronted with a donkey on the far side of Bunker 1. He pumped two rounds into it as it sat in the snow, believing it would help to mask their retreat.
The three stopped at the edge of a cliff and waited for fire team two to join them. The lower fire team was across an open saddle where it extended out onto a ridge, projecting out to a rock fin at the end. Throughout the engagement, two Al Qaeda fighters had traversed the ridge, encroaching and then withdrawing from the fire team, seemingly torn between closing with the enemy in the darkness and fearing the consequences if they did.
Fire team two made the move to consolidate with the others across the nearly fifty-meter open saddle. As they ran, pursued by the PKM from Bunker 2, one of the SEALs shouted out in pain and fell. He’d been hit in the right ankle, the round nearly severing the SEAL’s foot from his leg. His teammate half supported, half dragged him the remaining distance. When they joined the other three survivors, one of the SEALs took a head count. Coming up one short, he asked, “Where’s Chappy?”
“He’s dead,” Slab told him. Slab again took stock of his diminishing team. Two dead, three injured, two of them seriously. The fire-team-two SEAL who’d been shot was bleeding heavily and in great pain. They were off this rock. There was only one direction to go—down—but the terrain below was a nearly vertical snow-covered slope interrupted only by straight ledge drops of unknown height. If they could gain enough distance, Slab could perhaps get on the radio and have Grim-32 destroy the entire summit. He couldn’t know with absolute certainty, but Roberts had to be dead. And as for Chappy, Slab believed him to be dead too. Blowing the mountaintop would not change that fact.21
In Bunker 2, the Chechens continued to engage. Despite the smoke, the SEALs were now more exposed to incoming fire and vulnerable in the morning twilight. For men without NVGs, the predawn broadcast movement. And the American weapons were easily identified, if not by their muzzle flashes and disciplined fire rates, then by the report of their bullets leaving the barrel. US 7.62 and 5.56 ammunition, the only two rounds the SEALs were using, have a distinct sound all combat veterans know well. The same is true of the Eastern Bloc 7.62 coupled with the AK-47. There is no mistaking the weapon. Whether or not the Chechens and Uzbeks knew how much damage they had inflicted on their enemies, or the limited number of Americans they fought, will never be known. What was clear was their willingness to engage in a fight.
At this point in the battle, it was academic for the SEALs. They’d now huddled below Chapman for over five minutes and started down the cliff thirteen minutes after they’d stepped off the helicopter’s ramp. The first to move created a snowslide down the vertical. The rest followed. The snow may have saved their lives as surely as Chapman had. The steepness allowed the two severely wounded SEALs to slide and drag themselves without having to stand erect. Even the Predator video showed the snowslides preceding the men down the mountain, gaining speed as they traveled.
When the Americans stopped firing at Bunker 2, it emboldened the now three Al Qaeda fighters on the fin above them. Barely a minute after the SEALs began their sliding retreat, two of the Muslim brothers began to move again. No longer taking fire, the two walked to overlook the Americans at the far end of the fin, where it terminated in a rocky outcrop and sheer fifty-foot drop. The Americans could be clearly seen sliding down the slope, presenting the perfect opportunity to kill them all.
Under the bonsai-shaped tree above Bunker 1, Chapman’s body lay inert. To all appearances he was dead.