“Heard you shot Phil to get this job,” Charlie said when he got in country. “Is that how you get a team now? Better watch your six.”
I had missed the big bully, and it was good to have him back.
Once Phil left, the pranking around the camp stopped. I was confident my room was free from glitter bombs, but the mood was never as light as when Phil was prowling around. Most of all, we missed his experience. Much like a football team, we had the “next man up” mentality. We all knew how to do the job, but it was hard to argue against experience. Phil had a ton of it. The pace of operations made it hard to dwell on the past. But he was missed for sure.
Having Charlie back made up for some of it. Fresh off of instructor duties at Green Team, he was sharp, and on this operation he was going to be vital. His experience and calm demeanor under fire were second to none.
The operations center was small, and maps of the area hung on the wall above furniture made of plywood. Antennas stuck up out of the corner of the squat building. Sandbags made up the walls and roof, protection against RPGs and mortar rounds. A radio sat in one corner, and two young Army specialists or junior enlisted men sat nearby monitoring it.
I stood next to Steve and looked at the map.
“Sorry about the welcome party,” the Army captain in charge of the outpost said. “We get it about once a week. You just happened to be at the right place at the right time.”
Operating in Kunar was tough. I’d argue it was one of the toughest places to effectively target the enemy in the entire country. It was rare that we made the trip up to the province without getting into a fight. Located in the lower Hindu Kush, the mountains and narrow valleys with steep sides serve as formidable natural obstacles. The province has been a favored spot of insurgent groups for decades. Its impenetrable terrain, cave networks, and border with the semi-autonomous Pakistani North-West Frontier Province provide significant advantages for militant groups.
Known as “Enemy Central” or “Indian Country,” between January 2006 and March 2010 more than sixty-five percent of all insurgent incidents in the country occurred in Kunar. Native Taliban forces mingle with foreign al Qaeda fighters, while mujahedeen militias also operate in the region.
On a table at the center of the room was a map of the area. We all huddled around it. The plan was to patrol deep into a valley to the south of the outpost and conduct a kill or capture operation against a group of high-level Taliban who were having a meeting.
We were coming up near the end of deployment, and this might be our last chance to hit such a juicy target. It had already been a solid deployment, despite Phil getting wounded and one of the dogs being killed. If we played our cards right, we were going to get a little payback.
From our drones overflying the suspected compound, we observed roving patrols. Over the years, Steve and I had gotten pretty good at spotting what we called “nefarious activity.”
Drone feeds by themselves don’t look like much. On the screen, people look like small ants moving around, but to me and Steve, everything we could see on the feed was adding up. Most compounds don’t have roving guards. Combine that with the location in Kunar and intelligence reports about the meeting, and it all added up to nefarious activity.
We knew we were in for a fight.
The plan was for my eight-man team to climb up the ridgeline and parallel the valley until we made our way past the target compound. We would set up a blocking position on the uphill side and contain the fighters in the valley if they tried to escape. They wouldn’t expect us on the high ground, since the compounds sat almost at the very top of a valley. The other two teams would patrol up the main road into the valley and try and flush the Taliban fighters out to where my team could ambush them. If the two teams made it all the way to the objective undetected, we would simply make our way down to the compound ourselves and help clear the target from all sides.
Most times, the fighters wouldn’t stay and fight when they saw us. Instead, they ran, trying to hide in the tree line or escape into neighboring valleys. To stop them, we set up a team on the high ground and let them wander into our kill zone. We’d cut them down easily before they had a chance to escape.
The infiltration route was about seven kilometers, not far, but only if you didn’t account for the elevation change. My team would have to do the majority of the hard climbing that night because the route took us directly up the ridgeline. Knowing we had a very challenging climb ahead, I’d chosen to dump my bulletproof plates and only carry three extra magazines, a hand grenade, my radios, and a med kit. We all tried to go as light as we could. We had a saying: “Light is right.”
But when you ditch your bulletproof plates, you have to be willing to suffer the consequences. After our surprise at the landing zone, I was already second-guessing that decision.
As we discussed the plan with the Army captain, I could feel the soldiers’ eyes on us. To the clean-cut soldiers, we probably looked like bikers or Vikings.
Most of us had long hair by military standards. None of us had the same uniform on; instead we all had mismatched pants and shirts. We also had fancy, four-tube night vision goggles, thermal scopes, and suppressors on our rifles. We pretty much had all the latest in tactical fashion. Each one of us was a professional who knew exactly what they needed for the job, and it was up to the individual operator to carry what he needed.
“Some of these guys aren’t even wearing their plates,” said one of the soldiers.
The troop’s RECCE team leader showed the captain the goat trail on the map. He was going to navigate the route for my team.
“You guys been up this goat trail?” he asked.
“I’ve seen it,” he said. “It is straight up. What kind of time line are you on?”
“We want to hit and be back before it gets light,” the RECCE team leader said.
“There is no way you’re going to make it,” the Army captain said. “The terrain is impossible, and there is no way you can do it in one cycle of darkness.”
Since his unit lived in the valley, we couldn’t really argue. It was their backyard. They’d seen the terrain in daylight.
“You guys ever been up there?” the troop chief asked, pointing at the target compounds.
“The furthest we’ve ever been is here,” he said, pointing to a spot not even halfway to where we wanted to go. “It took us six hours, and we made contact and got into a long firefight. We had to move back down out of the valley.”
We spent a few more minutes talking about the plan.
The troop chief looked at me, Steve, and the other team leaders.
“What do you guys think?”
This target was too good to pass up. Even with three fewer assaulters and no dog, we still had enough people to clear the objective. The drones watching the target reported no major movements, so we still had the element of surprise. We decided to scrap the plan of my team going up the goat trail and we would all combine into a single patrol taking the road part of the way up the valley, then split off and loop around to the high ground and assault the target from above.
“Let’s do it,” I said when the troop chief looked to me. Steve also nodded yes.
“You guys are still going?” the captain said.
“Yeah,” the troop chief said, finally.
“The attack on the base tonight might be a great cover for action,” the Army captain said. “Why don’t we send out a patrol with you guys tagging along?”
He’d take about twenty soldiers out and patrol into a nearby village that was just down the valley to the south. We’d follow along at the back of his patrol, before peeling off and sneaking up into the target valley. If people were watching, and they were most likely doing so, we’d hope they would take the bait and follow the main body of the patrol.
“You guys mind if we get some ammo before we go?” the troop chief said.
“Sure. I’ll get it.”
The captain started to organize a foot patrol, while we went back to brief the guys waiting in the outpost’s weight room. It had a few dumbbells, a weight bench or two, and a squat rack wedged into a room no bigger than a small home office. Sandbags protected the room, like the operations center, from mortar attacks.
I replaced the few rounds I fired in my magazine and checked to make sure my team was ready. I could see
