shoot me! Don’t shoot me!”
Tora Bora was still a dangerous place, no matter what your occupation, and it could be even more dangerous if you were armed with a camera, and not a rifle.
The boys finally reached MSS Grinch just before dusk, after four hours of heavy slogging and carrying snow- soaked loads. That night, they enjoyed the luxury of a warming fire. On the nearby ridges, the muhj continued to celebrate the end of the Holy Month. All night, they chanted verses from the Quran, beat little round drums, sang songs, smoked hash, and fired their automatic weapons at the moon.
Back at the schoolhouse things were also winding down in anticipation of our return to Bagram. The show here was over.
After all of the number crunching, the final body count emerged, although it was just a guesstimate. As best we could figure, the actual number of dead al Qaeda came to 220. Another fifty-two al Qaeda fighters had been captured, most of them Arabs and about a dozen Afghan, with a few Chechen, Algerian, and Pakistani fighters mixed in. Finally, there were the one hundred or so men who were captured crossing the border by Pakistani authorities.
There is no doubt that the real number of killed and captured enemy fighters was much higher, because many of the accurate bombs impacted directly on dozens of al Qaeda positions and either sent body parts flying in all directions or just obliterated groups of fighters where they stood. Several hundred others probably managed to run from the battlefield.
No one will ever know for sure, and it is not really all that important. We had taken Tora Bora, which the Soviets had failed to do in ten years of savage fighting.
On the morning of December 19, George, General Ali, and Adam Khan jumped in the lime green SUV. The rear window had been patched with clear plastic secured in place by duct tape. A few dozen muhj climbed into a few pickup trucks.
Intelligence reports had already turned the CIA’s attention from bin Laden to his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who had not been killed in an earlier bombing as first reported. Earlier that morning, a source had provided a possible location for al-Zawahiri, and the CIA was going to check it out, backed by General Hazret Ali, who was now America’s favorite warlord.
I doubted I would see them again anytime soon, so as they stepped into the SUV, I approached the vehicle to say goodbye. General Ali touched his chest over his heart, shook my hand and smiled, and touched his chest again.
As I shook hands with Adam Khan, my thoughts flashed to all the important work he had done. He seemed to always be at the center of the fight, and likely had saved the lives of several Delta operators. Words cannot express how deeply we were indebted to him.
“You didn’t just face a single enemy here, but battled political, regional, and personal dilemmas in a culture completely foreign to you and your men,” he said.
George, never much for small talk, said, “Your guys did a great job.” Before pulling away, the CIA leader leaned out the window and called, “As soon as your men get off the mountain, we have another one for you. Number Two is nearby.”
And with that, our Battle of Tora Bora officially came to a close.
For several years we would cling to the hope that bin Laden’s foul remains were still inside a darkened and collapsed Tora Bora cave and that the terrorist was forever an inmate in hell. It was not until October 2004 that we learned he had gotten out and was still alive.
We have to give him credit for that escape, but we also must recognize the price he paid. Bin Laden made it out, but he left behind a battered, beaten, and shell-shocked bunch of terrorists. Perhaps he also left behind some pools of his own blood, but most of all, he had to abandon buckets of self-respect.
Only two months after his spectacular and cowardly 9/11 attack on the United States, a handful of American and Brit commandos, a fleet of warplanes and an ill-trained force of Afghan muhj had ripped away his fortress and made him run for his life.
17 The Years Since
I’m just a poor slave of God. If I live or die, the war will continue.
– USAMA BIN LADEN, VIDEO TAPE PLAYED
DECEMBER 27, 2001
A month or so after the Battle of Tora Bora, I had an opportunity to fill in the Delta command group on what happened there. The official briefing was followed with an informal afternoon cup of coffee and a private sit-down with Col. Jim Schwitters, the Delta commander who was known as Flatliner for his unflappable manner.
I had known him for years, and as we spoke, I recalled a day that had given me an unexpected glimpse of both the colonel’s experience, and our own. After a training exercise in an American desert, we were returning to the base when the old asphalt road led us past a little-known but historically important site. Some derelict single-story buildings loomed off to our left, and we pulled over. As the Unit chaplain and I waited at the vehicle, Flatliner walked to an old wooden wall that had been weathered by the fiery desert sun and was anchored by four rusted but sturdy steel support cables. The buildings were discolored and warped from years of exposure.
Flatliner rested his hand on one of the rusty cables and rubbed it with reverence. He spoke to us in his trademark dry manner.
“We probably went over this wall a hundred times,” he said softly. His eyes swept the area as if it were occupied by ghosts. “We had to get over the wall of the embassy to get to the hostages.” Flatliner added, looking up. “I don’t remember it being this high.”
It finally struck me that this was where Delta conducted its rehearsals for the planned rescue of American hostages in Iran back in 1979 and 1980. During that raid, Operation Eagle Claw, Jim Schwitters had been a young E-5 buck sergeant and was the radio operator for Delta’s founder and first unit commander: Col. Charlie Beckwith.
Besides this site being the rehearsal stage for the eventually aborted rescue mission, it also was where the infant Delta Force underwent its final evaluation by the Department of the Army to validate the long, painful, and costly birthing process.
If anyone knew first-hand how a good operation can go sour, it was Flatliner. He had been there.
The Delta commander listened carefully as I described the conflicted feelings that some of us had about the outcome in Tora Bora, and I believed that I was experiencing the same bitterness felt by the original Deltas after the Eagle Claw disaster. An important job had not been completed, and it was no one’s fault.
Tora Bora was yesterday, and all we could do about it was pick up and go forward to the next assignment. The war on terrorism was really only just getting under way, so there would be more battles in the future. Flatliner left the table after expressing how much he appreciated the boys’ efforts and individual acts of heroism.
There is no doubt that bin Laden was in Tora Bora during the fighting. From alleged sightings to the radio intercepts to news reports from various countries, it was repeatedly confirmed that he was there. The lingering mystery was: What happened then?
In February 2002, an audiotape was released to the al-Jazeera network in which the terrorist leader himself described the fighting at Tora Bora as a “great battle.” Although the tape was released at that time, it was not known when it had been made.
In May 2002, a decision was made to try and resolve the issue by sending troops back to the now-quiet
