second, the helicopter slipped closer toward the earth. From my side of the helicopter I could see the compound rushing up at us through the open door.
I struggled to find a handhold and slide back into the cabin. There was little room behind me as all my teammates had pushed forward prepping to fast-rope. Then I felt Walt’s hand grab my gear and pull me deeper into the cabin. His other hand shot out and grabbed the sniper next to me. I leaned back with all my strength. My legs kicked the air as I tried to get them inside. I knew if my legs were exposed when we hit, they would get pinned or cut off.
The closer we got to the ground, the angrier I became. Each and every assaulter had sacrificed so much throughout their individual careers to get to this point. We all felt extremely lucky to have been chosen for this mission and now we were about to die without even getting a chance to do our part.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I thought. “This is going to hurt.”
CHAPTER 13
Infil
My body was tense and my abs screamed as I tried to fold my legs into my chest.
All I could see was the ground coming up at me through the large open door. Helicopters are not like airplanes that can glide in for a crash landing. When helicopters stop working, they fall out of the sky like a rock. When they hit, rotor blades snap off, sending shrapnel and debris in all directions. Sitting in the open door, I feared the cabin would roll, crushing me underneath.
I could feel Walt tugging on my kit, pulling me back inside the cabin. No matter how much I pulled my legs close, they were still outside the door. The sniper next to me was stuck with one leg inside the cabin and the other outside of it.
It is hard to describe the feeling of riding a helicopter into the ground. I don’t think my mind fully grasped what was happening. I had it in my mind that maybe I could stay in the door like a
The privacy wall around the compound quickly passed by as we headed for the ground.
When the helicopter rotated ninety degrees, the tail rotor barely missed the wall on the south side of the compound. I could feel fear grip my chest as the ground rushed toward me. I had no control, and I think that scared me most of all. I always figured I would probably die in a gunfight, not in a helicopter crash. We were all used to stacking the odds in our favor. We knew the dangers. We did the battlefield calculus and we trusted our skills. But clinging to a helicopter, there was nothing we could do.
Seconds before impact, I felt the nose dip. I held my breath and waited for impact. The helicopter shuddered as the nose dug into the soft ground like a lawn dart. One minute, the ground was rushing up at me. The next minute, I was at a dead stop. It happened so fast, I didn’t even feel the impact.
The blades didn’t snap off. Instead, the rotors blasted the muddy courtyard, blowing dust and debris and creating a maelstrom around us.
I exhaled and blinked the dust out of my eyes. Squinting against the assault of rocks and dust, I realized we were still about six feet above the ground at a steep angle.
“Get the fuck out,” Walt yelled at me, shoving me forward.
I dropped from the cabin and landed in the courtyard in a crouch. Despite wearing more than sixty pounds of gear, I didn’t feel the weight or the jolt from the fall. Without looking back, I ran forward like an Olympic sprinter away from the wreck. Sliding to a halt about thirty yards away, I turned back and saw the wreckage for the first time.
When the helicopter crashed, the tail boom got caught up on the twelve-foot privacy wall. The tail’s single load-bearing section propped the Black Hawk up and kept the rotors from hitting the ground. If any other part of the helicopter hit the wall, or if we had tipped and the rotor hit the ground first, none of us would be walking away unscathed. Teddy and his copilot had somehow pulled off the impossible.
I could see my teammates dropping out of the cabin and dashing through a gap underneath the helicopter as it rested at an angle against the wall.
Like my teammates, I had gotten good at compartmentalizing stressful situations over my career, and now I had to block the crash out. Two minutes ago, I was pissed we were going to land outside the compound, but now we were alive and on the ground inside the walls. Despite the near-disaster the mission was still on track.
My teammates were already headed to the gate that led us back into the main compound. I needed to get my ass in gear because if Charlie or Walt saw me standing there while they were already moving to their positions I would never hear the end of their shit-talking.
We had scheduled thirty minutes to complete the mission based on the helicopter’s fuel consumption and a possible response time from the Pakistanis. We had built in an additional ten minutes of flextime just in case. Running back toward the helicopter, I figured we needed those extra minutes now.
The way the helicopter was perched on the wall, I didn’t have enough room to clear the rotors in the front. It was dark and even with my night vision it was impossible to be sure how high the rotors were spinning. The only way to get to the compound was by going underneath the wreck.
“I am going explosive,” I heard Charlie say over the troop net. I could see him at the gate to the main compound, setting the charge.
Putting my head down, I raced toward the wreck. As I got close, I tried to hug the wall as I ran underneath the tail boom. Hot exhaust blew down from the engines as I passed. It was like walking inside a hair-dryer for a few seconds.
Coming out on the other side, I could see Charlie prepping a charge on the locked iron gate. All around him were guys with their weapons trained out, pulling security.
I moved toward a prayer room near the gate to make sure it was clear. The room had a large open area with thick rugs on the floor and pillows forming a perimeter around the walls. We knew from the intelligence analysts that the room was most likely used to meet guests, but that seemed to be infrequent. Once cleared, I pulled off an IR chemlight and threw it by the door to alert the others the room was secure.
When I got back outside, Charlie was checking his back blast to make sure no one could get hit by shrapnel from the breaching charge. I saw the quick flash as Charlie hit the detonator and smoothly rolled back out of the way like he had done thousands of times.
We all dipped our heads to protect our eyes. No one was panicked or nervous. We were on the ground and finally it was up to us to get the job done.
The explosion sent a shock wave that blew a hole in the gate. Charlie was the first through, kicking and pulling the scorched metal wider so we could fit. Guys quickly started to pile through and peel off toward their planned objectives. Despite the first few curveballs, we were now back on our original plan.
After clearing the gate, I caught a glimpse of the second Black Hawk carrying Chalk Two. I could tell by the way the helicopter was hovering that Chalk Two had already landed the perimeter security team outside the walls of the compound. From the dozens of times we had trained in the mock-up, I was used to getting rotor wash in the face as the helicopter hovered over the building while the teams fast-roped onto the roof.
But instead of hovering above the house, the helicopter quickly disappeared behind the walls. The pilots must have seen us crash, and set back down to drop the team off outside the walls.
“Don’t worry about risking a bad position with the helicopters, just get the guys on the ground,” Admiral McRaven had reiterated during one of our final briefs. “It doesn’t matter where, the most important thing is to get them on the ground safe, and they’ll figure out the rest.”
I guess Chalk Two hadn’t wanted to gamble with fast-roping to the main building after seeing what happened to our helicopter. It was the right call.
I could hear the first few radio calls starting to chime in over the net. I knew from contingency planning that if Chalk Two didn’t fast-rope onto the roof, they were headed to a gate on the north side of the compound.
