No Hero: The Evolution of a Navy SEAL (11 page)

Moving up the driveway, my team was mixed in with Steve’s team, minus Walt and another SEAL back with the Taliban sentries. There were five of us moving directly up the
driveway toward the house. I glanced to the left and could read Steve’s body language. He was thinking the same thing I was. We were about to come face-to-face with the enemy. Steve was crouched down, with his HK416 shouldered and ready to fire. His IR laser scanned the dark trees directly ahead of me.

Steve and his machine gunner, armed with an MK 46 light machine gun, flanked to the left of my group as we began making our way up the driveway. My team kept walking toward the compound and the clump of tangled trees behind it. We knew the fighters didn’t have enough time to go far, nor would they venture out into the open for fear of being spotted by our drones. If they ran into the open, the Rangers set up on the edge of the field would spot them. If we were going to come into contact with the enemy, it would take place inside the tree line directly in front of us.

Near the top of the driveway, I saw a cluster of blankets and mats on the ground. The blankets were in a pile and looked like whoever was under them had gotten up quickly. There were multiple sleeping mats, at least five that I could see on my first glance. I didn’t bother to count because my mind was fixed on the coming fight.

“OK, shit, where are they?” I thought.

As soon as I spotted the mats, I stopped and began pointing them out to my team using my IR laser. Everyone froze as we started to scan the surrounding wood line. I could see my teammates’ IR lasers crisscrossing over the trees. I slowly tracked my laser across the dark tree line to our left when a
head popped up in front of me and then disappeared. It was too fast to positively identify if it was a man, woman, or child.

With the rules of engagement constantly changing and becoming more restrictive, I couldn’t shoot because I had no idea if what I’d seen was a fighter. The odds were definitely good that the head belonged to someone from the nearby bedrolls. If so, based on the sentries Walt had picked out, I was pretty sure he would be armed, but I couldn’t see a gun and we hadn’t been fired upon. Everything was right in front of me. These had to be bad guys. I’d already seen the car, motorcycles, and empty bedrolls and was pretty damn sure this was one of the guys we were looking for.

Without seeing any more activity, I keyed up my radio.

“Hey, guys, I’ve got some movement over here,” I whispered into the radio.

Just as I finished the radio call, a now very obvious enemy fighter stood up out of the ditch fifteen yards directly in front of us. As he stood up he began firing from a belt-fed PKM machine gun.

The muzzle flash looked like he was shooting a howitzer. A three-foot-long flame shot from the barrel as I fell backward and landed on my back. Everything in my night vision goggles exploded in a burst of light. Rounds tore overhead as the gunman fired wildly. The roar of the gun drowned out everything, including any thoughts I had about rules of engagement or what to do. I could see several of my teammates diving for cover. My body switched to survival mode. I had just pulled some
Matrix
-style bullet dodging and fallen
backward onto my back. If I dove forward I’d land in the path of the bullets chewing up the ground around me. I just wanted to get as low as I possibly could, as fast as I possibly could. We were completely pinned down, with zero cover. It would be only a matter of seconds until the rounds from the PKM began tearing my team apart.

I jammed my rifle between my legs and started shooting back toward the enemy. I could feel the spent cartridges hit against my thigh. I wasn’t aiming through my EOTech and couldn’t see where my IR laser was pointed. Front sight focus was out the window as I fired rounds at the target by feel alone. This time, I was spraying and praying. My teammates were also firing back. We needed to get some rounds back toward the fighter as quickly as possible.

Machine gun rounds slammed into the ground around us. Tracers buzzed by my face, slamming into trees and shrubs all around my team. Had any one of us stood up, we would have immediately been shot. The Taliban fighter was having trouble aiming the machine gun as it kicked up and down in his arms. But with each passing second, he was wrestling it under control.

All of a sudden I began hearing something a short distance to my left. It was the sweet sound of an MK46 machine gun. We typically shoot six- to eight-round bursts to conserve ammo and to help control the accuracy. But these weren’t short bursts. Steve’s gunner wasn’t letting up on the trigger. He let fly one super-long continuous burst. He and Steve were about ten yards to our left and had a perfect angle on the
enemy position. I could see his tracer rounds sending bits of wood and bark flying into the air as he walked the rounds directly on top of the enemy position.

The enemy fire completely died at this point, but the Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) gunner and Steve were still providing covering fire. My team peeled back away from the PKM.

“Go,” I yelled to a pair of my teammates while I continued to fire. Another member of my team stayed to help me cover the first pair.

After the first teammates bounded back a short distance, they found a safer position. It was my turn to move. I rolled onto my side and jumped up, careful to stay as low as I could. I was sure it would be only a moment before the PKM began firing again. This was our one chance to get out of the direct line of fire. Sprinting down the driveway, I slid to a stop just past my teammates. I leveled my rifle and started to fire in an attempt to provide covering fire for my teammates.

“Set,” I yelled. “Go, go.”

With all my guys back at the edge of the field and behind cover, we turned and provided as much covering fire as we could so Steve and his gunner could sprint to safety. The gunner had emptied an entire two-hundred-round box in one pull of the trigger. As he and Steve ran past me, I could see the gunner reloading his machine gun while in a dead sprint.

Once Steve and the gunner made it back, the troop chief cleared the Ranger platoon hot. They opened fire with heavy
machine guns, grenade launchers, and small arms. It was impossible to hear anything over the roar of the guns. The Rangers were laying down a wall of bullets. I took a quick glance back toward where we had just been and saw trees exploding into kindling.

The troop chief and troop commander were huddled nearby working the radios.

“Get head counts and let me know we’re all up,” the troop commander said.

It was the team leaders’ responsibility to make sure we all had one hundred percent accountability of all our guys. We certainly weren’t going to leave anybody behind. I walked back to the line where my team had set up.

“Hell yeah,” said one of my teammates.

I could just make out a smirk under his night vision goggles.

“Yeah, dude, what the fuck?” I said.

I don’t think I could form a complete intelligent sentence if I wanted to. I had other things on my mind and knew I needed to get a head count before our JTAC could start dropping bombs. If we’d left a guy wounded back in the line of fire, we weren’t going to be able to call in air support until we went back and got him. Luckily, everyone had made it back to the line.

I keyed my radio.

“Alpha is up,” I said.

“Charlie is up,” Steve said over the radio.

I held my breath as each team checked in over the radio
with their status. In my mind there was no way in hell everyone got away uninjured. The fighters had gotten the first rounds off at us. They had a head start and with the PKM firing six hundred and fifty to seven hundred and fifty rounds a minute, someone must have been hit.

All the reports came in clean. No one was injured. We didn’t have to be good all the time. Sometimes it was better to be lucky. And so far our luck was holding.

Steve and his gunner had saved our lives. We all saw the same situation unfolding and he knew where my team was going to be and put his team in place to support us. If it weren’t for Steve’s team and the close bond we shared, there is no doubt we would have taken casualties. He instinctively knew what to do based off the terrain and our immediate reaction to the enemy fire. We thought the same way. We knew each other’s position without thinking about it.

Think of a pickup basketball game out on the playground, but imagine that game being played by NBA players. No one is on the sideline diagramming plays with a chalkboard. They are individually great athletes and they can read off of each other to make amazing plays. We were doing the same thing, just not on the court and certainly not for the same paychecks.

“Stand by for CAS,” I heard over the radio.

The JTAC was on the radio calling in Close Air Support. Fighters overhead started to circle, preparing for a bombing run.

“Three minutes,” the troop chief said.

If there were any fighters left in the trees, they had three
minutes to clear out before the bombs started to fall. I made sure my team had cover and waited for the strikes.

I hunkered down in a small ditch and waited for the whistling noise the bomb makes just before it detonates. Then I saw the bright flash lighting up the sky seconds before the thunderous crack of the explosion. I could make out the trees and compound in silhouette against the explosion as dirt and debris landed on us.

“Cleared hot for immediate re-attack,” I heard over the radio. “Three minutes out.”

The impact of the bombs in the tree line definitely made me happy that I wasn’t on the receiving end. As each bomb impacted the ground and exploded, I could feel the shock wave thumping the terrain. It felt like a giant smashing his fists into the ground.

After the second bombing run, I met with the troop commander, troop chief, and other team leaders.

“We’re going to clear out the tree line,” the troop chief said. “Let me know when your teams are ready to roll.”

A mix of guys from my team and Steve’s team got up out of the ditch and prepared to move back up the driveway. We set up on a line and cautiously patrolled back into the tree line. As I got closer, the tree line looked like how I imagine a World War I battlefield would look. Craters where bombs had landed still smoldered. Charred trees shorn in half stood like broken teeth. A layer of smoke hung over everything. All of the trees were burning, creating a blinding green blur in our night vision goggles and making it almost impossible to see anything clearly.

Halfway up the driveway, I could see the area where we had taken the initial contact. It didn’t look anything like it had looked a few minutes prior. The bombs had chewed up the thicket of trees, leaving just a smoking hole. Up ahead, I could make out the silhouette of something life-size lying in a small ditch. I held my rifle on the object as I approached. Moving closer, I saw it was one of the fighters. His body was badly burned. His clothes were still smoldering. I could see where shrapnel had cut through his long, baggy shirt. A chest rack hung from his torso. Another badly burned body was lying nearby.

We continued clearing through the burned-up tree line, stepping over pieces of debris and moving around the large craters left by the blast. I was about to pull my team back and start searching the compound and camp for any additional fighters or intelligence when the drone pilots circling above came over the radio.

“We have multiple movers one hundred and fifty meters to the west,” the pilot said.

Six fighters had popped out of the tree line after the last bombing run. They must have been the luckiest six Taliban in the world. They somehow survived our initial firefight, the Rangers’ heavy-weapons barrage, and now two bombing runs.

As the radio call came through, I looked over and saw Steve and his team to my left. We were both thinking the same thing. There was no way these guys were going to get away.

“Alpha Team has it,” I said over the radio to the troop chief. Immediately following me on the radio Steve chimed in.

“Charlie Team has it.”

Our troop chief paused for a second.

“Roger that,” he said. “Alpha and Charlie, take control of ISR and the AC-130 gunship and let me know if you need anything else.”

I checked in with the drone over the radio.

“ISR, this is Alpha One,” I said. “I have an element of eight and one dog moving west at this time. Please advise with enemy numbers and position.”

The drone pilot got us oriented and we quickly moved our two teams into position and started to patrol toward the enemy location. The dog handler pushed his combat dog out front. I could see it searching the ground for a scent. On the radio, we were getting reports from the ISR.

“Alpha One this is ISR,” the drone pilot said. “We have multiple movers that are located at the southwest corner of an open field roughly five hundred meters to your west.”

“Roger, ISR, please sparkle,” I said.

The drone’s sensor operator fired an infrared laser, like a giant laser pointer, at the fighters’ location. Under our night vision, it looked like a giant finger pointing to the fighters’ exact location. It was something out of a video game.

Once we broke out of the trees, we slowed way down. The tree line opened into a large field with a small levee and a thicket of trees running along the south end.

I watched our dog handler let his dog off the leash and push him ahead of the group along the edge of the trees. Steve’s team moved on a line perpendicular to the trees. I
noticed Steve’s team was again taking a wide arc to my left, covering our flank.

I pushed my team farther to the right, hoping to get a better angle on the fighters. We didn’t have the Rangers with us. It was up to the two assault teams. If we got into contact now, we would have two teams in position to open fire.

I stayed focused on the “sparkle.” It hadn’t moved since we cleared the tree line, which was good. But I wanted to close with the fighters before they could set up a defense. My hope was the fighters were trying to hide and not fight.

I checked to my left and right. My team was spread out and silently moving across the field. I glanced to my left over toward Steve’s team and happened to notice our dog—nicknamed the hair missile—dive into the thicket of trees. The dog disappeared and then I heard a man let out a scream. The dog had locked onto the scent of a fighter and now I could hear its snarls and the man’s screams.