than a decade, and absent an official troop commander, he was the ranking operator in the reconnaissance troop.
The master sergeant was a former Green Beret and a natural leader, one of the better pistol shots and long- gun shooters in the building, and a master climber. Bryan was calm and cool under pressure, and had a knack for dissecting a contentious issue completely before speaking out. Then he would pick out the decision that had been the least thought about by everybody else, but the one that would be collectively agreed upon as the best.
We had a great team going up the road.
Thirty minutes into the drive, the sun rose in the distance to expose a landscape straight out of the ninth century. High snow-covered peaks dominated the land to our west and north. Dry streambeds and deep wadis cut the vast rolling and rocky desert floor. Colored foothills featured uneven splotches of tan and gray, while green painted the countryside, and the dirty skeletons of burned or rusted Communist-era armored vehicles stood dead and abandoned. Long forgotten village ruins and adobe tan compounds completed the scene of desolation.
Rocks the size of softballs, painted red on one side and white on the other, lined the road edge to mark mine fields: Proceed no farther or risk blowing yourself to smithereens.
Halfway to Kabul we noticed an unexploded bomb just off the road, with its nose buried a foot or so in the ground and the fins sticking out. The dud looked fairly new, and no doubt had been delivered by an American bomber within the last couple of weeks and intended for some fleeing Taliban troops during the Northern Alliance’s big push on Kabul.
Our next escort waited in a lone vehicle parked to the side of the road. It was another old friend, Lt. Col. Mark Sutter, who had been commanding the Northern Advance Force Operations team, or NAFO. By the time Iraq rolled around, Sutter had succeeded Jake Ashley as squadron commander and was the best combat leader in Delta: fearless, out front, and possessing a remarkable ability to audible away from a briefed plan to make quick and timely decisions in the thick fog of war.
After quick handshakes and some backslapping, we said goodbye to Doc and the Judge and followed Sutter on a fifteen-minute drive through the back streets of Kabul. We slowed to ease through an Afghan security checkpoint, then entered a parking lot behind a large guesthouse in the center of town. In the past few weeks, it had become the home of Jawbreaker, the CIA’s lead headquarters. From here, Sutter commanded and controlled, or “C2ed,” the advance force cell. It was the same building that the CIA had used during the 1980s to monitor and support the Afghan war against the Soviets.
It was instantly clear that security was very, very tight. Standing guard, wearing black North Face clothing and with a new AK-47 at the ready, was none other than His Majesty, Sir Billy Waugh. Now well into his silver years, Billy should have been rocking in his favorite chair watching the war unfold on television, but instead, he was standing smack-dab in the thick of things…
His reputation in the special operations and intelligence communities, including multiple tours in Vietnam, was the stuff of legend. Anyone up for an exciting ride should read his memoirs,
With his usual growl, he and Ironhead and Bryan immediately began swapping yarns from other third world shit holes, European urban sprawls, and the Sudan. Bryan had done some Delta work there in the early 1990s while Billy was undercover for the CIA, snapping photographs of bin Laden’s comings and goings in anticipation that the pictures might come in handy one day.
Luck is Billy’s ally, I thought. Stay close to him.
Inside the guesthouse, the first person I met was Gary Berntsen, the CIA’s point man in Kabul and the instigator of that fateful meeting around the Humvee at Task Force Dagger. On this cold December morning, Gary was upbeat, slapping backs like a proud sandlot football coach, obviously eager to get things moving. He offered us his complete support. “Anything you need,” he said.
Gary shared his own account of the CIA’s mission in Afghanistan and his tough take on the Tora Bora situation. Several years later, Gary got around to publishing his own book,
Gary did not have much more information than Gus had given us the night before, but his estimate of enemy manpower matched exactly. “We believe fifteen hundred to as many as three thousand fighters are there,” he said, then added, “Kill them all.”
The CIA nerve center had the look of a spy movie set. Numerous compartments were abuzz with folks hacking away at laptops, thumbing through stacks of classified documents, talking on cell phones, or conducting secure radio calls. Armed guards seemed to be everywhere. Every box was padlocked and every door was outfitted with a push-button cipher lock.
Out of that crowd emerged Adam Khan, an unlikely but invaluable warrior in this new war on terror.
The Afghan-born American citizen, a former marine with an impressive commanding personality, was standing at Ground Zero the day after 9/11, helping another government agency deal with the aftermath of the terrorist attack. His cell phone rang and some former colleagues were calling. They needed his help. More accurately, they said his nation needed his help and asked if he was interested in inserting into Afghanistan as a liaison officer with Special Ops units. “Do you want to read the news or do you want to make the news?” they asked.
Adam Khan accepted the challenge and was now back in his hometown of Kabul for the first time in twenty years. Danger did not bother him.
He was fluent in numerous dialects of the two key battlefield languages, Pashto and Dari, and although his current orders were only to ferry us safely to General Ali’s headquarters, he was to become much more than just our travel guide. Adam Khan would be the critical nexus between the CIA forward headquarters in Jalalabad, General Hazret Ali’s command, and Delta.
He did whatever it took to help us, including tasting the local food or tea before any American commando dug in to make sure it was not poisoned. I know that sounds a bit Hollywood, but it’s true. Over the next two weeks, many a Delta operator would owe an awful lot, including some lives, to Adam Khan.
We hit it off right away, and I sent up a silent prayer of thanks that this American would be with us.
As Adam Khan tidied up a few things inside the building, the rest of us were outside, shivering and talking smack with Billy while we helped load a few trucks with supplies for the Northern Alliance in the Panjshir Valley. There were crates of new AK-47 rifles, Chinese Communist vests, bags of blue-dot special tennis shoes, U.S.-issue camouflage winter jackets and crates of 7.62mm ammunition, all paid for by the American taxpayer.
It was our first meeting with the Northern Alliance fighters, and they were of all ages and already dressed in fresh U.S. camouflage shirts and fatigue pants, with many wearing sneakers. Since turbans were the trademark of the oppressive Taliban, they were forbidden to wear them and instead had on a camouflage hat or a traditional Afghan wool hat. Each carried an AK-47 assault rifle and had three thirty-round magazines.
The overloaded trucks struggled to start and then eased into convoy formation and inched out of the parking lot, axles already screaming under the enormous weight of supplies. We wondered if they were mechanically fit enough to make the long trip over uneven rock-strewn riverbeds and torn asphalt.
Not to worry, called out Billy, who was going along on the ride. Just another character-building opportunity. He rode away waving, with a big wide smile on his face. The next time I ran into Sir Billy would be in January 2004, when he was strollin’ and grinnin’ in Baghdad.
Our own convoy loaded up, a couple of large trucks carrying a thousand AK-47s and hundreds of pounds of ammunition, all from the CIA. Our soon-to-be hosts, the Eastern Alliance, were also customers now and wanted their share of supplies. Well, I thought, the more, the merrier. At least our friends would be well armed.
In about an hour, as the midmorning sun ducked behind dark clouds, we drove through the guarded gate of the CIA house and slipped into eastbound traffic, heading for Jalalabad.
We passed through two Northern Alliance checkpoints without incident, reached the edge of Kabul, and got onto the main highway to Jalalabad. First would come twenty miles of deeply potholed and uneven road, and it was hard to imagine how the road could get any worse. Then it did. After the pavement gave out, the next seventy miles would be rocky and rutted, hardened, dusty ground that kept our pace to a tortuous average of only ten to fifteen
