Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (48 page)

When they finally arrived, some were walking and some were riding. Having been so isolated, they had not yet learned how valuable their efforts had been.

After debriefing Jester and Dugan, the two snipers bagged out for a few hours inside the local stables, then volunteered to pull the radio watch that night. Bernie, Ironhead, and I were able to get the first sleep we had managed in the last several days.

On December 14, our troop received two new personnel. When I first laid eyes on them, I couldn’t help but think these were the two luckiest Delta operators in the unit. As I shook hands with them, they were all smiles. Both were in their midtwenties and recent OTC graduates. They sported excellent records and came with solid footing from growing up in the 75th Ranger Regiment and Special Forces.

Skeeter, a young Ranger from 1st Ranger Battalion, sported a shaved head and thick beard that would grow to be one of the most envied in the unit.

A year later in Afghanistan, word reached us that conventional wisdom had caught up to the unconventional ways of a special operations war zone and a rumor spread that would require us to shave our beards and cut our hair. Lieutenant Colonel Ashley remarked to Skeeter, “Don’t you dare cut off that work of art.” By then his beard had grown at least six inches, a length the Taliban would have been proud of, with a center streak of light gray running vertically down the middle, in between pepper-colored sides, similar to the beard of Mr. bin Laden himself.

The other operator, Bullets, just as new to us, was experienced in the
craft. Already a Green Beret, his beard was a little lighter than Skeeter’s, and he arrived with short-cropped hair. Hopefully, both these young men’s careers inside Delta will last for decades.

After a quick in brief, Ironhead told them both they had less than an hour to configure their rucks for a minimum of several days and nights in the mountains. They stood there hanging on the squadron sergeant major’s every word, not worried in the slightest about the falling temperature or going into battle.

“Only take what you need,” Ironhead said. “Leave your Kevlar helmet and body armor in the hooch. You won’t need a sleeping bag or a lot of snivel gear. Grab an Afghan blanket from the stables to go along with your wool muhj hat and scarf to keep you warm.”

Skeeter joined MSS Grinch as an assaulter on the Bravo Team of Stormin’, while Bullets went up to be an assaulter with MSS Monkey’s Charlie Team. No use in having them just sit around the schoolhouse.

With the two original observation posts forced to shut down because of the advancing of Ali and Zaman’s forces backed by both America and British commandos, an opportunity presented itself to increase the relentless pursuit of bin Laden.

We now had twelve Green Berets out of a job, and several of General Ali’s subordinate commanders—converts to what Special Ops people could do—were begging for commandos to direct bombs along their particular axis of advance. We wanted to oblige, as this would give us better visibility and at the same time provide firm locations on each group of muhj. With the Green Berets from Cobra 25 now available, problem solved. Or so I thought.

The decision to not allow them to enter the mountains dumbfounded me and frustrated the quiet professionals from Cobra 25. The Green Berets were now out of the fight completely, and I had no option but to thank them for their efforts.

Not long after that exchange, the dreaded black Chinook arrived and
whisked away the A Team commander. The eager young captain had been relieved of command. Before he left, I gave the distraught Special Forces officer the phone number to the Delta recruiter and shook his hand.

I had assumed that, by now, the Task Force Dagger risk assessment matrix would have been subordinate to killing the Most Wanted Man in the world. Apparently, it was not.

As the bombs continued to rain down on bin Laden and his henchmen, George and I settled down with the general for the nightly fireside chat.

The nightly meetings with Ali served several purposes, but probably the most important benefit to the battle was what the private conferences did for Ali’s stature and reputation. He was winning the fight, and as al Qaeda was being ground into dog food in the mountains, the warlord was gaining an aura of superwarlord in the eyes of his men and the local Shura. Our regular face-to-face engagements served our needs as well, as they pressured him to do more than talk to the press and issue hollow promises. He had to match his words with deeds and make good on his deals.

Numerous topics needed attention, but tonight he led off with one that surprised me.

Ali was extremely frustrated both by his fighters’ inability to locate bin Laden, and by Zaman, who reportedly was continuing discussions with the enemy. Out of the blue, he made an announcement that raised our eyebrows. The general was advertising a one million dollar reward to anyone who could take him to bin Laden. A pretty shrewd business move, but not entirely unexpected. He was expecting to receive every penny of the $25,000,000 reward that the State Department had advertised, and could afford to be generous in posting a bounty that would guarantee that big payday.

We asked the general what made him think bin Laden had not slipped out of the mountains and escaped? Ali responded confidently that he had two sources that were adamant the al Qaeda leader was still around.

George asked the general if any of his men had actually seen bin Laden yet. Ali gave us that familiar shrug to give the impression his men were doing the best they could considering the conditions.

He countered with another interesting tidbit.

One of his associates reportedly had some sort of information that bin Laden’s interpreter was still in the mountains and that the interpreter’s father lived nearby. The general surmised that the father would certainly leave with his son, and that was even more proof for Ali that bin Laden had not yet fled.

We read it a different way. If bin Laden was still around, we needed to press the attack and not let up the offensive, not even for a moment.

Progress always involves risk. You can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.

   
—FREDERICK B. WILCOX, AUTHOR

We were almost out of supplies in the mountains by December 14, and the biggest needs were batteries and water. Water was needed to maintain a man’s strength for carrying heavy loads up and down the steep ridgelines and to prevent the onset of hypothermia or altitude sickness. The icy weather was about ten degrees with a steady wind, and an inch or two of snow falling each day. We could melt the snow for emergency drinking water, but the extreme temperatures sucked the life out of our radio batteries.

Coming out of the mountains while al Qaeda was bloodied, disorganized, and on the run was not an option. We didn’t even discuss it. In the last seventy hours, we had pushed several thousand meters into the middle of the enemy’s fabled mountain stronghold and were not about to give that territory back.

The dreadful weather also was playing havoc with some of the aircraft flying missions to blast the mountainous positions, and visibility would change by the hour. We had to replace the fire support of those planes during the bad weather with some organic all-weather assets as soon as possible. The Rangers back at Bagram owned just such weapons, and we put
in several requests for some Ranger mortars. Request denied. The reasons elude me still, particularly since some of their officers told me that they were anxious to comply and get into the fight.

Resupply by helicopter was also out of the question. Besides the low visibility that was periodically choking the mountains, we had learned a lesson from the Afghan-Soviet War. The muhj knew how to patiently wait behind rock formations, inside shallow caves and dugouts, or behind thick tree formations for an attack helicopter to come darting over the ridgeline. When it appeared, they would kill it with an RPG or a shoulder-fired missile. If the muhj skills were good enough to shoot down several hundred of those fast helicopters during the Soviet jihad, it wouldn’t take much to pick off a slow Special Ops Dark Horse lumbering over some high ridgeline in search of a landing zone the size of a postage stamp.

Living off the land wasn’t in the cards either. We had captured dozens of caves stocked with firewood, potatoes, rice, RPGs, medical supplies, and thousands of containers of Chinese-made 7.62mm AK rifle ammunition. Almost everything but enough drinking water or batteries. But while al Qaeda had shrewdly overstocked their stores in anticipation that the Far Enemy would soon arrive to do battle, they also had protectively laced some of those caves with mines that silently awaited the first clumsy or curious attacker to enter. Picking up a tin of potatoes could be deadly.

The obvious question was how were our muhj partners resupplying themselves? The hard fact was they carried what they needed to fight on their backs as we did, but they just didn’t need as much to survive. Also, they could rely on some equine help along the way. The typical muhj fighter went up the mountain with his weapon, a bag of rice the size of a baseball, three to five thirty-round magazines, a couple of RPG rockets, and a single, thin blanket to stave off the cold. The muhj rarely required water, almost as if they were perpetually hydrated, and were much more acclimated to the high altitudes than we were. And there was no use carrying food for daytime use anyway, since during the holy month of Ramadan they were forbidden to eat or drink anything from dawn to dusk.

Unfortunately for the muhj, many of them just about froze to death
each night. Beneath their snow-damp blankets, they typically wore only a single layer of thin cotton clothing. The lucky ones sported some type of waist-length garment. In contrast, beneath the blankets of the Americans and Brits were layers of twenty-first-century extreme-cold-weather gear. Even that could not stave off the cold.

But the muhj could get whatever they needed hauled up to them, and were usually off the mountain by nightfall. Teenage Afghans clocked in as porters to carry what they could while tending the valuable donkeys, and a well-balanced jackass humped about 150 pounds of foodstuffs and equipment.

When MSS Grinch had moved into the mountains days earlier, we had been unable to locate or bargain for donkeys. MSS Monkey had some, but even a donkey had its limits in this place. Once Grinch entered the radically steep terrain where they were now fighting, donkeys wouldn’t have helped at all.

We had another idea, and we once again went back to the Rangers. Few professional military organizations can match their physical ability and mental toughness, just the attributes required to deliver the vital supplies to MSS Grinch so the shooting could continue without letup. Two platoons of Rangers were sitting around back at Bagram, and we asked for one platoon to help. They could serve as a human logistics train from the last vehicle drop-off point in the foothills all the way up to MSS Grinch, which was located several klicks away and at an elevation several thousand meters higher. Rangers could do what helicopters and mules could not. Request denied. Again, I never learned the reasons for that refusal.