Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (47 page)

The Admiral noticed something odd about one of the caves on which he directed bombs that day. Typically, a bomb at the base of the cave opening or on top of a bunker resulted in the flash of a momentary fireball, a storm of hot shrapnel and debris, and then a slow and billowing thick black, gray, and brown cloud. This one particular strike ignited large secondary explosions of something hidden inside the cave. It was also answered by futile attempts to engage the U.S. aircraft high above with multiple missile launches. Something valuable had been hidden in that cave.

Within an hour or so, Murph came up on the net with an exciting report. The muhj commander with the forward Jackal OP said his forces had captured bin Laden! Murph, who was out there at the scene, was skeptical, and the communication gap on his end prevented any detailed explanation as they were without a ’terp.

Back at the schoolhouse we grabbed Ali’s trusted aide Ghulbihar and brought him into our room. Murph gave his hand mike to the muhj commander and we gave ours to Ghulbihar, with instructions to ask the commander if he had captured bin Laden. After a few moments of back-and-forth discussion, Ghulbihar reported the commander had not in fact captured bin Laden but “they are very close to doing so.” Being close was not at all the same as having done it.

Still, with our boys positioned in the forward OPs, this was good news. At worst it suggested bin Laden had not fled the battlefield. Interestingly, during Jackal Team’s bombing missions we received another intercepted al Qaeda radio transmission which told the story very clearly. Under obvious duress, an unidentified al Qaeda commander passed a
message to a fellow fighter: “We are surrounded by the American commandos from above.”

The reports were sobering because they reminded us that after hundreds of thousand of taxpayer dollars in bombs alone, after weeks of bombing this same ten-mile-by-ten-mile piece of an Afghan mountain range, somehow the resilient al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden was still alive.

As Jackal Team patiently worked its magic on the east ridgeline, the rest of MSS Grinch punched straight up the middle. Each day, with Pope, Lowblow, and four Brit commandos in the lead, the allied team linked up with the muhj forces and supported their advance by putting bomb after bomb on key terrain, suspected enemy locations, cave entrances, and al Qaeda foot soldiers.

These seemingly simple linkups were an adventure of their own as our expensive and secure radios weren’t compatible with the Dollar Store versions used by the muhj. Even if they had been, it would have made little difference, since the muhj didn’t speak English, nor was the word spread that they should be on the lookout for the Americans at any specific place.

In one incident in particular, a group of friendly muhj returning to the battlefield crested a hill within forty meters of Stormin’s Bravo Team and MSS Grinch. The local dress of the boys perplexed and alarmed the Afghans, and an anxious fighter shouldered his RPG and leveled it at the boys. Adam Khan quickly yelled out in Pashto to stop the confrontation, but the results could have been tragic. Once the linkups were completed, the muhj could now advance some three to nine hundred meters per day, burrowing deeper and deeper into the mountains.

Much has been written about this battle being fought solely with proxy Afghan fighters supported by American bombers, the implication being that American soldiers remained safely in the background, out of harm’s way. The facts are different. The muhj we were tasked with supporting flat-out refused to stay in the mountains overnight. After a day
of fighting, they licked their wounds, counted their booty, slung their Kalashnikovs, and left the field.

This low tide of performance was repeated for the first three nights in the mountains. Our boys watched in amazement as the muhj left the field, each time relinquishing hard-earned terrain to al Qaeda forces. Ramadan certainly played a role, but to us Westerners, trained to keep the momentum and reinforce success, this standard tribal-warfare dick dance was annoying.

Besides leaving al Qaeda alone to rest and recuperate overnight, the muhj left behind the boys from MSS Grinch as well. We flat-out refused to leave the field. We weren’t going home until the battle was decided one way or another.

Keeping their positions didn’t bother the boys a bit, and besides, it was easier to hide smaller numbers.

It was not until the men of MSS Grinch proved they could survive inside al Qaeda’s sanctuary after nightfall that the muhj foot soldiers started to see the benefits.

MSS Grinch continued to push up the mountains and ever forward, forcing al Qaeda to retreat. As soon as snipers Pope and Lowblow reached a commanding position offering a view of the enemy’s fallback caves and bunkers, they slipped between small rock formations and began scanning the terrain through their Leopold binoculars for targets of opportunity.

While the snipers worked the high ground, the assaulters from Alpha and Bravo teams moved on the recently abandoned bunkers and caves, getting an education in the methods of al Qaeda. Outside the caves were stacks of cut firewood covered with waterproofing plastic to ward off the elements and camouflaged from the air with fir tree limbs and branches. Scattered about willy-nilly were RPG and mortar rounds and cans of ammunition. Discarded clothing and bloody bandages lay at the base of shrapnel-infested trees, and dirty wool socks dangled on broken limbs.

Inside, the caves still smoldered from warming fires, indicating a hasty retreat. Bottled water from Pakistan, abandoned modern backpacks, food, and cooking utensils sat on the dirt floors. Finally, to prevent having to venture out into the cold night air and expose themselves to the infrared camera of an overhead AC-130, discarded water bottles had been recycled nicely as urine containers.

Although the al Qaeda mortars had been relatively quiet since the night of December 10, when Dugan and Dallas worked their mojo, it was not until the afternoon of December 14 that we could confirm their word. Pope, Lowblow, and the four Brits, moving forward to create still another OP, saw firsthand the death and destruction dealt by the gunship.

The derelict 82mm mortar tube rested silently in the upturned rock and dirt. Next to the tube was an al Qaeda fighter’s decomposing corpse still sitting on—and partially lying under—a dead donkey. Surrounding them was a boatload of spent mortar round containers, crates, wrappings, and the remains of a couple of the donkey rider’s buddies. The entire area had been turned into mincemeat.

Like most of the team leaders in Delta, the man who led Kilo was a singular personality. I first met Pope in 1994 as a Ranger lieutenant visiting the Delta compound to rehearse for the eventually aborted invasion of Haiti. As a young assaulter in the squadron he was given the dubious task of escorting my platoon to the range and teach us the finer points of combat marksmanship so we could keep from shooting one another. During a live fire run in one of the buildings, one of my young privates made what I thought was a mental mistake in his technique.

I stepped forward, confident and feeling a sense of omniscience, and immediately brought up the infraction for everybody’s benefit. Pope had watched the team’s entire run through the shoot house. The problem, from his point of view, was not what the private did; it was my correction of the Ranger’s action. Pope stepped forward and calmly, professionally, and very deliberately explained why what I was telling the private was not necessarily the smart thing to do and then offered an alternate solution to the group. Wow! In just a few seconds, Pope made believers out of all of us and still allowed me to retain my dignity in front of my Rangers, including the young man that I had scolded. Of course, I felt about a foot tall. That young Ranger whom I had admonished in that long-ago incident was destined to be the future Kilo Team sniper with the code name of Lowblow.

Pope is the best organized individual on the planet and a master at time management. During a normal day back at Fort Bragg, Pope could accomplish more tasks in a day than most of us could in a month and still find time to shoot and work out. His teammates would arrive in the team room on Monday morning and find that he had repacked each man’s gear, shampooed the carpet, and generally cleaned the entire room. All the kit bags were retagged with not only the proper markings but with some Gucci-looking tags with fancy colors and lamination. Then he might hand out new name tags to the whole troop, embroidered with the individual’s jump qualifications and matching HALO wings in two different colors. It was like he possessed some stolen alien technology to control time.

On a more serious note, Pope also knows more about commando kit and fighting gear than any manufacturer in the industry. If you needed some special item or piece of equipment, but weren’t sure which one to get or who carried the top of the line, you talked to Pope. He could tell you the best product, be it a flashlight or wristwatch or cold-weather underwear, but he probably had one or two tucked away in his locker and would just give it to you, or promise to call some “people” who would get it for you at half price. It reminded me of how Richard Gere always kept a stash of new brass buckles and shiny black dress shoes in the rafters of his barracks in the movie
An Officer and a Gentleman
.

Just after sunup on December 14, Jester, Dugan, and the Green Berets closed out OP25-A for good. Before leaving, the boys had an idea to discuss with Dave, the seasoned leader of the Green Beret team. Instead of exfilling, only to be reinserted later, the Delta snipers reasoned that it might be smarter to simply ruck up and make their way on foot deeper into the mountains to take up a flanking position abreast of the advancing MSS Grinch.

As much as he might have wanted to oblige personally, Dave had orders not to get his team into a firefight, so he had no choice in the matter. To do what the Delta boys suggested would have been career suicide.

Jester and Dugan repacked their rucks with water, chow, and fresh
radio batteries, confident that their stay at the schoolhouse would likely be brief before they headed out to fight again. Unfortunately, all of our trucks were tied up inserting MSS Monkey, so the boys from OP25-A would have to rely upon the donkey express; they humped halfway back to the schoolhouse before finding some.