same bombs, particularly after nightfall.
Ali consented and gave us no more than five minutes to get ready. Adam Khan dashed over to our room with the news, and we understood how incredibly important it was to support this rare advance by Ali. We couldn’t afford to miss a single opportunity to show the general and the muhj that we were indeed there to share the same dangers.
Because we had been planning to insert several teams into the same part of the mountains later that evening, the group that jumped out at us was Jackal Team. If nothing else, at least a couple of them could steal a look at the cover and concealment available at the contemplated location.
Without a moment of hesitation, team leader Hopper volunteered, and one of our air force combat controllers, a young kid code-named the Admiral, was told to go with him. Adam Khan would go along to translate. Together, they became the Jackal Team, because that was Hopper’s team. They had only five minutes to pack, and as they hurriedly prepared, we gave them simple orders: Go wherever the general goes, provide close air support, and kill as many al Qaeda as you can.
We took a stab at the location to give them the six-digit grid of a spot located near the base of the mountain. That was a waste of time. The muhj were never able to provide even a guess as to the exact location of their men, or the enemy fighters either. We could have just as well fatfingered the map to give Hopper and the Admiral their intended location.
Off they went. Hopper and the Admiral looked like any other muhj on their way to a gunfight. Dirty, unkempt,
Adam Khan drove and a couple of muhj fighters climbed into the truck, confidently sporting aged Kalashnikovs that they had adorned with feathers, colorful string, and shiny stickers of many colors. Each would make do with three thirty-round magazines of 7.62mm ammunition until more could be stripped from the vest of a dead Muslim brother.
In sharp contrast, the two Special Ops boys brimmed over with the sort of arsenal expected from a superpower: two 5.56mm M-4 assault rifles with AN-PEQ2 laser designators and Bushnell reflex HOLOsights. One rifle was outfitted with an M-203 launcher under its barrel to fire 40mm high-explosive or smoke rounds. Their custom-made load-bearing vests had special pockets for hand grenades, first aid equipment, water, ammunition, flashlights, and handheld secure radios. They had an MK-7 laser range finder that could be seen by pilots miles above them and a powerful 117 satellite radio that would allow them to talk to those pilots, or anyone in the world for that matter. Another special toy was a Special Operations Force Laser Marker, or SOFLAM for short, a twelve- pound black box that was worth its weight in gold because it provided accurate ranges and designations for laser- guided munitions out to five thousand feet.
It took about a half hour of driving to reach Mortar Hill, where they found the road was jammed by a faded green and rusted T-55 tank that was struggling to remove a stuck muhj antiaircraft artillery vehicle. Hopper, the Admiral, and Adam Khan knew enemy OPs would spot the multivehicle convoy within minutes and call down the mortars.
Adam Khan maneuvered the truck to a masked location, and they jumped out only moments before the fun began. The initial mortar rounds arrived like clockwork but were off the mark. The three Americans moved away from the vehicles because the mortars were clearly targeting the stalled convoy. Nearby, a group of muhj squatted together, immobile, as if waiting for someone to tell them to do something different. Seconds later, a round struck them center mass.
Adam Khan was warned by another muhj that things would only get hotter further up the road as the route went into the enemy’s mountain lair. The hair on Adam Khan’s back stood up and he lost that warm and fuzzy feeling so important in combat. Although it clearly was not his job, his concern was for the safety of Hopper and the Admiral, and he was well aware of General Ali’s concern about getting an American killed. Adam Khan wondered if it was worthwhile to proceed. Why press the issue in daylight when they were already compromised and under mortar attack? Tomorrow would be another day, and they could try again. The former marine was unafraid, but felt it was too dangerous to continue.
He told Hopper to radio the schoolhouse that they were returning, and that they should not go any farther without an okay from the commandos’ commander, me. Hopper didn’t think the situation was all that dangerous, just a couple of mortar blasts, and anyway, he knew what our response would be. He already had his orders.
With the rounds still landing intermittently and the three of them squeezed behind a jagged rock face bordering the road, Hopper now repeated those instructions: Go where the general goes. Hopper reasoned that it was no surprise that they would take some rounds once they were forced to stop at this particular place. After all, that was why it was called Mortar Hill. The debate ended when the cheers of the muhj signaled that the tank had gotten the stuck artillery vehicle out of the way and the road was again clear. The three Americans scrambled to their vehicle and continued the mission.
The warning Adam Khan had been given about the increasing intensity of the enemy activity ahead had been correct. He pressed the gas pedal and sped through the curves, dodging the impact of several mortar rounds. The bed of the truck was peppered with shrapnel twanging into the thin metal as he roared deeper into the foothills until a group of muhj on the road forced them to stop.
They had driven as far as they could go. The rest of the way would be on foot. Another muhj fighter emerged to warn the group that the mortars were much more accurate at this close range. As Hopper and the Admiral took up security positions and manipulated a GPS to pinpoint their location, Adam Khan rapped with the muhj for whatever information he could muster. The distinct rattle of machine-gun fire could be heard to their front.
As anticipated, al Qaeda would not be causing all of the problems. Word that a few American commandos were coming forward with the permission of General Ali to support the late-afternoon attack never made it to the frontline folks who most needed to know about it. For the next half hour, several muhj acted like they were in charge and corralled our guys, shuttling them aimlessly from one group of fighters to the next.
At one point, a muhj leader motioned toward the sky and made some flickering hand signals to mimic bombs dropping. They wanted the Americans to make it rain death. The Admiral was happy to grant their request, and radioed some aircraft to work up a fire mission.
Then another set of muhj that they had been with earlier came and interrupted the Admiral’s call for fire to ask why the Americans had stopped moving with them and had taken up with this new group. It was a bizarre scene that was to be repeated several times. Hopper, the Admiral, and Adam Khan were mixed up with a bunch of foot soldiers who had no clue why the Americans were there, who had sent them, or where they were supposed to be going.
The one thing that kept Hopper and the Admiral happy was that, despite the headaches, at least they were heading in the right direction-south toward al Qaeda.
After moving several hundred more meters, their latest muhj escort took a break along the military crest of a steep ridgeline. Hopper and Adam Khan moved to a nearby hilltop in hope of getting “eyes on” a suitable target so they could start the aerial fireworks. In the meantime, Adam Khan found a forward command post where small- arms fire, machine guns, and sporadic rocket rounds were clattering about. The three of them made themselves at home in the position, deeper into the Tora Bora mountain range than any other Americans probably had ever gone.
The Admiral asked for all aircraft call signs in the area to check in, since he would be orchestrating the fight that night, and everyone was ready to demonstrate the art of the possible to General Ali. But General Ali was not there.
The Admiral is one smooth talker on the radio. Most important in this business was his willingness to risk everything for his fellow man, an unhealthy but common trait among air force combat controllers.
Darkness was falling fast, and Hopper attempted to reach OP25-A on his handheld FM radio and pass along their current location, in case things took a major turn for the worse. No luck. The FM was not working in that jagged landscape.
The boys of Jackal knew that India Team had arrived at OP25-A, but the reverse was not true. Things had developed so quickly back at the schoolhouse to move Hopper, the Admiral, and Adam Khan out in just five minutes that word of their departure had not yet made it to OP25-A. So the boys in the observation post remained unaware that their teammates were under fire on the other side of the valley.
