movement on two smaller hilltops and assumed they were enemy fighters, so he began working up a fire mission on them. On a sudden hunch, he grabbed a nearby muhj commander and pointed to the mysterious people. Were they al Qaeda? According to the commander, they were not. Just some of Haji Zaman’s fighters scouring Hilltop 2685, looking for booty.
Ski considered the unexpected tank fire, and the way that everyone on the battlefield looked alike. There was no sure way to differentiate enemy fighters from friendly looters, even at close range, so he let the unknown men live, thinking,
The muhj main force finally returned to Jackal Team early in the morning on December 15, and the boys fully expected them to advance to the next ridgeline. Instead, the muhj needed babysitting.
The muhj stalled and bitched about the DShK heavy machine gun that had laid down so much fire and ignored American arguments that the weapon had been eliminated. It had not fired a shot for many hours.
No! It was still there, they insisted, and refused to advance without 100 percent confirmation that the gun, some five hundred meters away, had been destroyed. They didn’t like taking risks.
The American commandos’ patience had worn thin. Al Qaeda was on the run, and the continuous bombing was sapping the enemy’s will to fight and forcing them to leave prepared positions. Each minute wasted, such as with this mini mutiny by the muhj, only provided much needed rest to a vulnerable and disoriented enemy. They had no choice but to prove the DShK had been taken out. Nowadays, they would send a Predator to take a look, but back in December 2001 the only way was to move forward and eyeball it yourself.
Murph and his fellow snipers Shrek and Scrawny dropped their rucks and headed out, taking along an Afghan guide. Hopper and the Admiral stayed back to cover them. If that gun was somehow still operating, then a long- range sniper shot would finish the job, the Admiral would summon an aircraft, and Murph would adjust the bombs onto the target.
So, with the muhj apparently more interested in smoking hash than dealing with al Qaeda, the Delta snipers chose to explore a different route to find the heavy gun. Three men crossing open ground was just not a smart idea, and they might as well use the chance to scout for a new path that would speed a general advance. In a training exercise over such terrain, as at Lake Tahoe or Jackson Hole, they would have been able to employ a lot of safety equipment, but this was a real-world mission where not only was such equipment unavailable, but al Qaeda might have them in their sights as they climbed.
The eastern approach took them up the face of a precariously long and ugly ridgeline. One slip on the vertical rock walls could have resulted in serious injury or even a nonbattle fatality. We couldn’t afford that, since no helicopters would be sent in to evacuate an injured American although he might be barely clinging to life. The dead would just have to wait until the mission was over.
They were on their own, and pressed forward as far as they could to gain a commanding position on al Qaeda’s defenses. It was an extraordinary accomplishment. Al Qaeda must have assumed the route was impassable and had decided not to waste any fighters securing it or establishing any defensive positions that might cover it. Any young soldier knows that failing to overwatch a major obstacle with at least a gun or two reduces its effectiveness from being an impregnable castle moat to being a mere speed bump for any determined foe. It was a grave tactical error.
Scrawny spotted an al Qaeda fighter about eight hundred meters away, but the enemy fighter did not see them. Instead, the man fired an RPG round in the direction of the muhj who were still lounging about on the other ridge.
For a sniper like Scrawny, such an easy target was almost too good to be true. He reached for his SR-25 rifle, ready to prone out to engage, but then realized that the sound of a shot and a dead terrorist flopping down would compromise the team. Plus, there had to be more than one up there, so instead of squeezing the trigger, he took a knee, pulled off his Nomex flight gloves, and dug his map from a cargo pocket and the Silva compass from his assault vest, placing them both gently on his thigh. He lined his leg up with the target and oriented his map to the north and quietly told Shrek, who was behind him, to ready a fire request from whatever plane was overhead so that the bigger explosions would not raise curiosity about the snipers.
Scrawny looked at the spot where the RPG gunner had appeared, looked back at his map, then checked his compass needle. He didn’t have a laser range finder or laser marker with him, but he didn’t need one. Scrawny estimated the target coordinates using good old-fashioned terrain association and commando know-how and passed the numbers to Shrek. Within a few minutes, the first bomb slammed into the enemy position, a direct hit that sent debris whizzing over the snipers’ heads.
“Look at Scrawny!” Murph joked. “Map and compass. Ooold schooool!”
Scrawny reached down for his gloves. They were gone. He asked the other guys if they’d picked them up. No? Scrawny turned to the Afghan guide who was hiding sheepishly in the rear, with his hands hidden beneath crossed arms.
“Hey, did you take my frickin’ gloves?” Scrawny growled with disgust. The young man just stared. Scrawny moved closer and asked again. The Afghan remained expressionless. Scrawny finally walked up to the young man and yanked out his hands.
“You frickin’ thief, give me those damn gloves!” Scrawny demanded, and pulled each one off, finger by finger.
Within a couple of hours, they found the DShK position, plotted the location and relayed the target coordinates back to the Admiral. Soon, a pair of GBU-31 bombs zoomed in and obliterated whatever had been left of the gun emplacement.
As the debris settled, an RPG whizzed over their heads from a camouflaged firing position in a nearby cave that was cut deep into the ridgeline. A new player was in the game.
The snipers quickly sent back the new coordinates and another brace of bombs impacted center mass to crush the cave opening. Once again, before the rocks stopped falling, still another enemy fighter stepped out and launched another RPG at the snipers. More JDAMs were called. They finished the job.
With the way up having been made safe, a group of muhj fighters caught up with the snipers and pushed ahead to the twice-blown-away DShK location. By midafternoon the snipers had repositioned and for the first time were able to get a good look at several cave openings just below a ridgeline, some six hundred meters to the southwest.
A frantic muhj commander keyed his radio and began trading transmissions with another muhj. Some of the fighters excitedly reported seeing a figure that they believed to be Usama bin Laden moving among a group of several dozen enemy fighters. They lost sight when he disappeared into a cave.
That was all that our snipers needed to hear. They got the word back to the team pronto. The Admiral broke into the net and summoned all available aircraft to check in with him and stack up while Murph plotted the exact target location. Could this be it for bin Laden?
The bombs from the first warplane hammered in with tremendous effect, ignited something flammable, and multiple flashes and secondary explosions lit up the valley like an outdoor rock concert. Something beside humans had definitely been inside that cave. More GBU-31 bombs saturated the cave complex with enormous power.
The snipers hunkered behind a small rock formation to watch the show as impact after impact shook the ground and detonated even more secondary explosions. Fireballs rose into the air and shrapnel and debris raced over their heads and rattled off the rocks.
For the next two hours, bombs rained on one small area of Tora Bora.
Sundown, of course, brought the usual muhj retreat. The three snipers, however, were unwilling either to ease up on this chance to nail bin Laden or lessen the pain that was being inflicted on al Qaeda. They would remain on the steep ridgeline, with and without the muhj, for the next two days.
The Delta boys were certain that they were as close to bin Laden as any Americans had been in years, certainly since 9/11, and they were hellbent on ensuring that some American pilot would wake up soon and hear that it was his bomb that killed the al Qaeda leader.
For now, the snipers didn’t think about sleep. Who could? They wrapped themselves in their thin blankets and tried not to long for all of the cold-weather gear that had been left behind in their rucksacks, back when they thought the mission to confirm the demise of the machine gun would be a quick one.
