RECCE sniper with a thermal scope on the roof starting to scan for sentries in a dried-up creek bed that ran north to south along the perimeter of the compounds.
My team’s point man led us through the same gate, and we approached the front door of our building.
Walt tried the door of his building and it was unlocked. He slowly pushed it open and saw a man messing with a flashlight. As Walt walked into the room to subdue the man, another man sat up from under some blankets. He was wearing a chest rack, and he had an AK-47 next to him. Walt and another SEAL who entered behind him opened fire, killing both men. Across from Walt’s room, Steve opened the door to another room and found a group of women and kids. Leaving one member of his team in the room, Steve led the rest of his team to a door farther down the wall.
A RECCE sniper on the backside of the building Steve’s team was clearing was looking for roving sentries. As he scanned the road that ran up the valley, he saw a half dozen Taliban fighters grabbing for their guns through a window. He immediately started firing just as Steve and his team reached the door to the room.
Cracking the door open, Steve could see the fighters scrambling for cover.
“Frag out.”
One of Steve’s teammates cracked the door just wide enough to toss the grenade into the overwhelmed enemy fighters. I heard the muffle of the explosion as shrapnel peppered the room, killing the fighters.
Just as we reached the door to our building, I could make out the faint sound of a second sniper’s suppressed rifle opening fire. A guard was sitting on a rock overlooking the main road. He had an AK-47 slung on his back and an RPG resting next to him.
My point man pushed the front door open and cleared into the first room. The house had a dirt floor, and sacks of food, clothes, and cans of oil littered the room. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as the point man opened fire. A fighter, gun in hand, was attempting to jump out a back window and escape. The bullets riddled his back and ass as he tumbled out of the window.
Outside, I heard one of Bravo team’s Squad Automatic Weapon gunners, or SAW gunners, go hot.
WHAAAAA!
The machine gun rounds echoed across the valley. It caught me off guard because most of us were using suppressors on our guns to muffle the sound.
“We’ve got movers coming from the north,” I heard over the command net on my radio. We were starting to get reports that fighters were headed toward our position from farther up the valley. This target quickly escalated into three separate firefights, and now we had reports of additional fighters advancing on our position.
The SAW gunner and Bravo team continued to maneuver just down the hill from us. One by one, Bravo team picked off at least five more fighters as they tried to move into fighting positions with RPGs and heavy machine guns. The SAW gunner fired another thirty-round burst as he sprayed the last sentry hiding between boulders in the dried creek bed.
Within minutes, I heard the buzz of an AC-130. On the radio, I could hear the troop commander passing word that the AC-130 was going hot on the movers to the north.
“You’ve got this,” I told my teammate.
I left him and another SEAL in the building while Charlie and I cleared an alley that ran between this building and the one below it. The buildings were on the same tiered steps of land as the fields where we had entered.
The alley was narrow, and it was impossible to see the end because the walls were crowded with junk. I kept getting caught up in low-hanging clothes lines strung up between the two buildings.
With a narrow alley like this, Charlie and I stood on opposite walls. I covered his side of the wall with my laser, and I could see his laser crossing the alley onto the wall in front of me. It was all an angles game.
We crept down the alley, being as quiet as possible. The key was throttle control. We’d go fast when needed, but then go back to being slow and quiet. We were about halfway down the alley when Charlie opened fire.
POP, POP, POP.
I froze. I couldn’t see what was in front of me. Charlie let loose a short burst and then started to move forward. I glanced ahead for a split second to see a fighter crumble against the wall three steps ahead of me. As he hit the ground, he dropped a shotgun.
Usually we wore about sixty pounds of gear, including those ballistic plates to protect us from gunfire. Charlie wasn’t wearing his plates either.
When we cleared all the way to the end of the alley, we paused to get our bearings.
“If I get shot tonight, no one better tell my mom I didn’t wear my plates,” I whispered to Charlie.
“Deal,” Charlie said. “Same goes for me.”
A short time later, we heard the “all clear” call over the radio. The target was secure, but now we had to do sensitive site exploitation, which we called SSE. Basically, we shot pictures of the dead, gathered up any weapons and explosives, and collected thumb drives, computers, and papers.
SSE had evolved over the years. It had become a way to rebut false accusations that the fighters we killed were innocent farmers. We knew that within a few days after the raid, the village elders would be down at the local NATO base accusing us of killing innocent civilians. The kind of innocent civilians who we knew and could now prove carried RPGs and AK-47s. The more SSE we provided, the more proof we had that everyone we shot was guilty.
“We are on a time crunch, fellas, so make it fast,” the troop chief said. “We’ve still got movers to the north.”
His voice was drowned out by the sound of the AC-130’s 120mm shells landing a few hundred meters up the valley. I checked my watch. It was well past four in the morning. We were running out of darkness, and since the shooting started there was a steady flow of reports coming from the drones alerting us to more fighters coming our way.
With the photos complete, we piled all the weapons and ammo in the center of the courtyard and set explosive charges on a five-minute delay.
With the RECCE guys in the lead, we quickly and quietly snuck back out the way we’d come. As we raced away from the compound, I heard the explosion and saw a small fireball light up the courtyard as the fighters’ weapons and ammunition were destroyed.
The walk back was easier than the walk up. We were high on the adrenaline of what we had just managed to pull off. Several times along the patrol down the hill we had to stop and direct some additional close air support on multiple groups of fighters who were searching for us. We didn’t want to be in the valley any longer than we had to, and definitely not at daybreak.
Three hours after clearing the compounds, we were back at the base. The guys slumped down along the walls, exhausted. Everyone was smoked. We sucked down water, power gels, pretty much anything we could get our hands on.
In the operations center, we gave the captain all of our SSE. He could show the elders the evidence when they came down to complain.
“We had seventeen EKIA,” the troop chief told the captain, meaning we killed seventeen fighters. “We suspect another seven or eight dead from the AC-130.”
The Army captain was stunned as he looked at the pictures on his computer. He and his men rarely got a chance to be on the offensive against the enemy. They were stuck protecting the villages and the roads leading into and out of the valley. It felt really good knowing that we eliminated Taliban fighters harassing the outpost.
On the helicopter back to Jalalabad, I finally had time to reflect on the mission. Sitting near the ramp in the dark, I was amazed that we were able to pull off an operation as dynamic as this one without taking any serious casualties.
From the patrol up the mountain, to the assault, it was a textbook raid incorporating all of the lessons we had learned from previous missions.
Instead of flying in and fast-roping down, we snuck in quietly.
Instead of blowing open all the doors, we crept in and caught the fighters off guard.
Instead of yelling and crashing through the buildings, we used suppressors and kept the noise down when possible.
We used their trails and traveled light and we had beaten them at their own game. All in all, we cleared an objective with more than a dozen well-armed fighters without taking one casualty. The raid was proof that good
