Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (16 page)

Throughout the exercise, we emphasized that we were capable of operating alongside Afghan warlords, infiltrating hostile areas, conducting long-range helicopter assaults in extremely cold weather, and fighting in dangerously unforgiving mountain passes.

As the CAPEX came to a close, we had shown Don Rumsfeld, the cleanup hitter for the world’s only remaining superpower, that Delta Force, the most versatile, lethal, and trustworthy tool that he had, was ready to be pulled out of the toolbox and put to work.

In fact, our sister squadron was already operating secretly inside Afghanistan. Delta was the United States’ premier counterterrorism force, and it was high time that someone treated us that way, and gave the taxpayers their money’s worth.

Little did we know at the time of Rumsfeld’s visit, but our squadron’s fate was being determined some 7,000 miles away in northwest Afghanistan.

On a sunny but cold day at Bagram Air Base, about thirty-seven miles north of the capital city of Kabul, four men were gathered around the hood of a Humvee outside the headquarters of Task Force Dagger, home of in-country Special Forces operations at the time. Gary Berntsen, the lead guy on the ground for the Central Intelligence Agency, was paying yet another visit to barrel-chested colonel John Mulholland, the
commander of Dagger, to lay out fresh intelligence sources on the whereabouts of Usama bin Laden.

It was not the first time the CIA had approached Mulholland on the issue, and the first request had been unequivocally rejected. To increase his chances this time around, the CIA man had brought along more firepower, in the persons of Lt. Col. Mark Sutter of Delta Force, and a Special Forces officer we will call Lieutenant Colonel Al, who was attached to the CIA.

The three visitors felt so strongly about the new intelligence that they would not discuss it by phone, even over secure lines. But to do anything with the vital information, they needed more than just to share it; they needed an army. Short of that, they would settle for a Special Forces A Team or two from Mulholland.

To Gary Berntsen the new details were hot enough to be “actionable intelligence,” by definition something that could be acted upon. In the past week, credible sources had placed bin Laden in the historic city of Jalalabad, close to the Pakistan border and the entranceway to the Khyber Pass. Locals had reported scores of vehicles loaded with al Qaeda fighters and supplies moving south, toward bin Laden’s old fortress, the caves and secure positions nestled high in the Tora Bora Mountains.

There already were numerous Special Forces A Teams working in the western part of Afghanistan, and that put these highly skilled soldiers at the top of the CIA wish list for assistance. Mulholland voiced his concern that bin Laden held well-prepared defensive positions up in those mountains, as well as a significant terrain advantage.

But there was something else going on, too, for the colonel’s Special Forces teams had been burned already by Afghan warlords who had personal vendettas and agendas that were counter to the United States objectives. The warlord the CIA was now backing to hunt down bin Laden was a relative unknown, and had not yet been vetted to Mulholland’s satisfaction.

Gary Berntsen continued his hard pitch, placing the Green Beret commander in a dilemma. For a few uncomfortable moments, it looked like a stalemate.

Then Lieutenant Colonel Al, who had been friends with Mulholland for a long time, looked the colonel in the eye and promised that any Green Berets that Mulholland could spare would be used only under Al’s
personal guidance and within their capabilities. He promised to watch over them like they were his own.

Mulholland wanted bin Laden dead as bad as the next guy, probably even more so if the death of the terrorist might get him out of godforsaken Afghanistan a little earlier. He reluctantly agreed to commit some Green Berets, but not before leveling a few veiled threats at his friend Lieutenant Colonel Al: Don’t get my guys killed in some harebrained reenactment of Custer’s last stand.

Once they had Mulholland’s blessing, Lieutenant Colonels Sutter and Al, along with the operations officer of the 3rd Battalion of the 5th Special Forces Group, went to work developing a plan that would pass muster by the various decision makers back at the CIA in Langley, Virginia, and at Fort Bragg. A gentlemen’s agreement made over the hood of a Humvee in a country that was one big battlefield is quite different from appeasing the senior leaders managing the war from the United States.

In a rare display of unity, during that single afternoon, the three planners cast aside all politically correct barriers, or the stovepiping of information, embraced a united front, and developed a viable interagency plan. All parties involved had to wipe the snot from their noses and sing from the same sheet of music. It was a bonding not often achieved among senior levels of the intelligence and the military communities.

That agreement was nice, but whether this hunt for bin Laden would turn out to be a great success or a complete goat screw was yet to be seen.

Based upon that meeting at Bagram, our squadron’s luck changed, and a day or two later we received deployment orders to Afghanistan.

We spent a couple of days tying up loose ends, spent time with our families, and studied the available intelligence reports on potential targets. Then we walked out of the Delta building in North Carolina and loaded the buses for our long journey to war.

We were going off one man light. Former Ranger and Delta assaulter Scott had wanted to go to Afghanistan as much as the rest of us, but a civilian job had been aggressively recruiting him. He stalled as long as
possible and even pushed back his end-of-service date, hoping for the deployment orders to come through before he had to make the final decision. The timing was all wrong, and he had dropped the paperwork that ended his military career just before we got the word to move out.

It was a disappointment for everyone, including Scott, but he came out to meet us at the bus, in civilian clothes with his long hair blowing in the wind, to shake hands and wish the squadron luck.

Acouple of C-17 Globemasters hauled us across the Atlantic Ocean, long and tiring flights to the ISB, our intermediate staging base near the Arabian Sea. The change from the chill of North Carolina to the searing heat of the Middle East hit us hard. We stowed our gear, dressed down into brown T-shirts and black running shorts, and got down to preparing to enter Afghanistan.

Intelligence remained painfully scarce, since very few friendly forces were inside Afghanistan at that early date. The whereabouts of bin Laden and his stubborn and faithful Afghan host, Mullah Omar, were unknown. Anyone’s guess.

Then we were slammed by a silly deception plan that had been dreamed up by parties unknown. The majority of the Rangers and our Delta teammates were being sent home! Somebody had decided to try and fool Usama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the Taliban into thinking that the Joint Special Operations Task Force had left the theater of operations, so the bad guys would let down their guard. The naïveté of that idea still boggles my mind today.

“Aren’t we at war?” we asked. Why were we not pouring all available assets into Afghanistan, rather than withdrawing our strength? What about helping the 5th Group Green Berets deliver the coup de grâce to the Taliban? Moreover, what about the deadly and dangerous business of hunting
and killing terrorists in their rugged mountain redoubts and desert lairs? Why were we drawing down just as we were about to embark on what was arguably the most important mission ever given to our organization?

Fortunately, a couple of hundred Rangers would be arriving at Bagram eventually and could form a potential quickreaction force should we get into big trouble. None were yet in the country, however, so the key word remained only a “potential” QRF, not a real one. Still, it was a bright spot in a sea of ambiguity. No helicopters or air assets were yet based in the country, but some of those stationed within flying distance also were being sent home. Crazy stuff.

Ours not to reason why. Our sister squadron was at the ISB for another few days, heading back to the States after a busy month and a half, and we picked their brains for lessons learned. During their brief stint, they had raided Mullah Omar’s house in Kandahar on October 19, conducted mounted reconnaissance missions south of that city, and executed in-and-out missions that destroyed fleeing Taliban convoys. Their most striking mission involved the first nighttime combat HALO (high altitude, low opening) parachute jump since the Vietnam War.

Another friendly face at the ISB was that of Gus Murdock, who had been our squadron commander until just a few months before 9/11, when he had been corralled to head a new organization. Gus was now in charge of a mix of sister-service operators, support personnel, fixed- and rotarywing aircraft planners, and some top military and civilian intelligence geniuses, and they would fight deep in the shadows and along the seams of the war on terror.

Within a day or so, a small advance party from our squadron flew ahead to Bagram, dubbed FOB Yukon. They were to determine whether Yukon could be suitable as a staging base for us, and what they found was not exactly a fixer-upper.

Built by the Soviets during their own Afghan war, Yukon had plenty of real estate, buildings, and a runway, but was in terrible shape. Derelict Soviet jets and rusted airplane parts littered the area, and years of bombardment had left the old runway severely cratered. Most windows were shattered in the gutted buildings and there was no running water or electricity. Hundreds of unmarked land mines were hidden beneath an inch or so of fine brown dust.

Still, Yukon could be made workable, and our unit engineers assumed the monumental task of turning it into a long-term station that could support combat operations for an indefinite period. They worked miracles.