to his wounds and expired, then moving his body several hundred feet to this memorial was not out of the realm of possibility. We pulled out photo imagery from the past year that showed the mosque was constructed several months after the battle.
This thought, however intriguing, quickly moved into the too-good-to-be-true category. It would have been virtually impossible to hide a burial site of bin Laden that was so accessible to tourists and the faithful.
Nevertheless, the place was a stark reminder of the cost of war. We were happy that these Tora Bora fighters had paid the ultimate price.
First blood was spilled on our mission before it really got under way. At midafternoon, we piled into some pickup trucks for the short drive out to the MC-130 Combat Talon aircraft that was waiting for us on the asphalt runway, with her engines already turning. When one of the pickups took a sharp turn, a large piece of equipment shifted in the cargo bed, smacked a young operator named Rip square in the nose and catapulted him out of the bed of the truck. His Kevlar helmet and body armor protected him upon impact with the runway.
Our medic, Durango, went to work to stop the facial bleeding and mend the wounds enough to get him on the plane, although I think Rip did not know where he was for a few minutes. After we loaded and took off, I made my way over to Rip, who was staring straight ahead, stoic as ever, and holding a bandage on his nose. His dark beard was matted with the thick red blood, adding even more menace to the long wavy hair and piercing eyes. I bent over to his ear and yelled to be heard over the engine roar. “You gonna make it?”
Rip nodded vigorously in the affirmative, clearly in no mood for small talk.
“It’s no big deal if you can’t go on. We can leave you on the plane and they’ll bring you back,” I yelled.
Rip snapped his head up, locked on to my eyes and yelled, “I’ll be okay, and I’m good to go!”
His manner said more than his mouth. I did not need to hear the words, because his look had delivered the message loud and clear:
It was still daylight when our Combat Talon touched down in Jalalabad, where Ski and Shrek waited at the end of a secluded taxiway. We offloaded our gear and moved it immediately to the cargo trucks, then Shrek and Ski gave the team leaders a final intelligence dump. We arrived at the airfield with the assault plan, but were depending on Ski and Shrek to figure out how to get us there.
They told us that we would have to negotiate three known roadblocks to reach our destination in the mountains. The first two were expected to be relatively benign, just several militiamen and tribal thugs shaking down commuters for whatever tolls they could get. This assumption came from some local Afghan militiamen hired by the CIA, who believed we could move through those two points if we just held our breath. The checkpoint guards would not act as long as there were no indications that our trucks contained anything more than ordinary supplies being hauled to the needy somewhere in that region. Even with these assurances, we remained concerned. In commando-speak, such locations were referred to as “friction points,” and caution was required.
Shrek and Ski had come up with some ingenious planning to get through the third roadblock, which was more complex. A small sedan would travel with us but stay far enough from our convoy to keep the signature low. In the car would be four Afghan militiamen who were on the payroll of the CIA and had been trained by the Green Berets. Once the trucks were two thousand meters short of the roadblock, the sedan would speed around us to the checkpoint, the militiamen would jump from the car with their guns raised, and demand the guards drop their weapons or else. If a gunfight broke out, we would reinforce them. If, instead of gunfire, we saw three flashes of a red lens flashlight, it was safe to proceed. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
Ski and Shrek would be in the truck cabs because they looked more local than the rest of us. We wanted them not only to look local but to also smell like filth because they would need every bit of that indigenous charade for this to work.
With the plan in place, we had no worries.
The ever-thoughtful Ski amazingly had found about twenty thick foam mattresses in a variety of colors, which were welcome additions to our trickedout cargo trucks. We expected a good amount of bouncing and jerking from side to side on the trip as the trucks navigated streambeds studded with boulders the size of basketballs, washed- out pathways, and gigantic potholed sections of war-ravaged roadway.
Another addition came from our new troop sergeant major, Stormin’, who obtained a half-dozen cases of bottled water and several empty five-gallon water cans for use as portable urinals during the trip. The guys were always thinking.
By the time we were ready, we reckoned that our trucks were at least as comfortable as the Trojan gift horse.
While we had discussed the final plan, the boys positioned the equipment and inspected the rigging of the tarps. We couldn’t afford any light holes that might compromise us as we drove through busy downtown market streets or crossed through the few expected rural roadblocks and checkpoints that defined tribal lines, for a Trojan horse operation is all or nothing.
If compromised, the gig is up right then and there. One has little choice but to come out swinging and hope for the best. If this happened, we would unass the truck as quickly as possible, eliminate any threat, and hightail it to the nearest building and own it. Once inside, we would turn it into a stronghold by occupying the roof and covering all windows and doors. Then a radio call to our teammates and Rangers back at Bagram would bring us the beautiful, thundering sound of the 160th SOAR birds.
Regardless of what we did after being compromised, if we weren’t within sprinting distance of the target, we were likely facing mission failure, something that we and our commanders did not look upon too favorably.
One thing was certain. We would not come out of those trucks with our hands up in surrender.
We settled in for a long trip as our little convoy made its way south from the airport and left the city limits, packed like sardines in a can, moving only from one ass cheek to the other to ease the discomfort. It was impossible not to think of how many of us would be hit if a burst of AK-47 rounds stitched the side of the truck and ripped through the protective walls that had been cobbled out of thin metal and cloth tarp. Enemy bullets aside, we were at the mercy of our Afghan driver’s total lack of offroad skill. He consistently seemed to aim for the dark spots in the road and drop two tires into every pothole in the broken asphalt or intentionally bounce over every big rock.
After the first of an expected seven hours traveling at the pace of a one-legged snail over the severely rocky roads, we were certain that we were developing lower back pains for life. Some of the guys fiddled with pieces of their weapons, and the bottled water went quick because we all knew to hydrate for the expected climb that night. The urine cans were wrestled back and forth.
The boys, focused on the mission, could spend but a few moments thinking of their wives and kids back home before automatically switching back to mentally review the various mission contingencies briefed and rehearsed during the planning phase. I’m sure some of them took time to secretly curse me for getting them into this, but I ignored that, keeping my attention glued to the map that I held in one hand and the Garmin GPS in the other.
As we approached the first checkpoint, our communicator, Gadget, manipulated his satellite antenna to the appropriate azimuth and angle, then whispered into his mike. “Wrangler Zero-One, this is Rascal Zero-One. Checkpoint one, over.”
His call was monitored by the Joint Operations Center back at Bagram, where our current location was plotted. Important information should we run into trouble. Help was several hours away, and the Ranger cavalry could only fly to the rescue if they knew where we were.
As expected, the first checkpoint proved fairly simple to pass. The guards stopped us and questioned the Afghan driver as to where the supplies were headed. We glanced at each other as the white beams of several flashlights danced over the tarps and supplies while our driver awaited permission to proceed. Beside him in the front passenger seat, Ski held his breath, as did all of us hiding back in the belly of the horse. In less than a minute, we were on our way.
Several uneventful hours later, we arrived at the second checkpoint, which separated two tribes that had been feuding for centuries in Nangarhar Province. These guards probably would be more aggressive and might decide to help themselves to a small portion of our cargo, which would reveal our perfidy.
