Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (18 page)

Bin Laden’s major assumption, as well as personal desire, was that the United States would introduce massive numbers of conventional troops, just what the Soviets had done in this same terrain. He figured that large numbers of Americans would face the same challenges as Russians. In his mind, it all added up to another opportunity for his guerrillas to inflict large-scale casualties on another superpower. After our turn-tail-and-run withdrawal from Somalia, he had to believe that hard and costly combat might invoke an American or even worldwide outcry to withdraw from Afghanistan.

Of course, details of al Qaeda’s defensive disposition remained unknown while we were planning at the ISB. Satellite imagery is nice, but clarity, confirmation, and documentation of the al Qaeda fortress came only after American boots had walked the ground.

A small cluster of task force planners, commanders, and Delta operators gathered inside a makeshift briefing area at the ISB. White sheets of target cloth served as walls, and we took seats in rickety chairs. It was a pretty dilapidated feel for a place in which such an important mission was being finalized.

A laptop computer sat on a large cardboard box next to a small projector that threw the image of a slide with black letters on the wall:
A SQUADRON MISSION BRIEF,
2
DEC
2001
.

Our sister assault troop would continue the hunt for Mullah Omar in the south. Our teammates had been in that fight since the beginning and were well versed in the Taliban order of battle there.

Meanwhile, the majority of our Unit would focus on bin Laden in eastern Afghanistan. As close as I can remember, it went something like this: On order, conduct linkup with the Eastern Alliance Opposition Group in the vicinity of Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to facilitate killing or capturing Usama bin Laden.

That was a pretty simple and direct set of orders. Meet and greet some local Afghan mujahideen, then go find bin Laden and kill or capture him.

Placing the word “capture” in the mission statement was standard practice, because some targeted personalities are more valuable alive than dead. They might have valuable information that can lead to someone higher up the food chain or reveal critical information that might disrupt a planned terrorist operation.

The fact is that the live-or-die decision is not complicated for a Delta operator. When an operator enters a room, his first task is to eliminate all threats in his designated sector. If the targeted individual happens to be standing there, he determines his own fate. If he is unarmed and not displaying hostile intent, then he lives and is chalked up under the capture category.

Delta does not waste time looking at the face, but takes an instant snapshot of the entire person before focusing on what is critical—the hands. If the target has a weapon, well, he is a dead man with a one-way ticket to martyrdom with carry-on baggage only.

Usama bin Laden was different. Simply put, he was more valuable being dead. It was made crystal clear to us that capturing the terrorist was not the preferred outcome. The president had already signed a memorandum of notice that authorized killing the terrorist mastermind on sight.
*

Bringing a captured bin Laden to trial in the United States would surely have created a media frenzy that would make the O. J. Simpson trial look like a catfight between mothers at the local PTA. Other nations would be undoubtedly drawn into the ugly mix.

Biting their fingernails at the idea of such a trial was our critical ally, the Saudis. Bin Laden was a native of Saudi Arabia and part of a huge, rich, and important family in that country. A major trial of bin Laden in a Western court of law would expose and embarrass members of the Saudi royal family and our double agents inside Saudi intelligence and perhaps put the entire regime at risk.

Following the short brief, Maj. Gen. Dell Dailey issued the commander’s guidance. He was adamant that we stay focused on bin Laden and not get swept into sideshow firefights. Once bin Laden was killed, we were to give his remains to the Afghans.

He voiced concern about our ability to operate at such high altitudes in extreme winter weather, and he queried the intelligence officer about the minefields. The general also tried to temper our natural offensive mind-set with caution not to outpace our ability to resupply as we pushed into the al Qaeda stronghold. The general went on and on. He seemed to have a hundred concerns, and his staff could provide very few answers.

All good stuff, but somehow I got the impression the general was not too keen on Delta venturing up into the mountains. There was an impression of hesitancy, almost as if some folks still hoped the problem would somehow solve itself before we entered Afghanistan. Then we all could return to our normal training routine at home.

The general seemed concerned that we might stage a massive uphill frontal assault against an entrenched enemy who owned the high ground. He had to be aware that Delta doesn’t march single line abreast into automatic weapons fire.

Dailey also told us that we were not going to Tora Bora to support the friendly Afghan mujahideen. That was an odd statement because it was exactly what the 5th Special Forces Group had been doing with the Northern Alliance for weeks.

We appreciated the general’s concern for our health and welfare, but his comments were out of synch with our mission statement. After all, just a few minutes earlier, one of the slides specified that we were to link up with a warlord to kill Usama bin Laden.

As assault troop Sergeant Major Jim and I listened to the comments, we shot each other curious looks:
Can you believe this shit?

Bottom line, it was not perfect, and nobody ever said it had to be. We couldn’t rewrite the script to our liking.

Bin Laden was up in Tora Bora waiting for us, and we had no problem obliging him, regardless of the strategic or operational limitations.

Still, I didn’t leave that briefing with a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Only a few minutes after the briefing broke up, Dailey approached Jim, Ski, and me. He still wore that look of concern, but then he paused, focused, and very general-like gave us all the command guidance we had ever really needed.

“Fellas, kill bin Laden. . .and bring back proof!”

That was more like it.

At midday on the fifth of December, we loaded several MC-130 Talon II aircraft for our four-and-a-half-hour journey into Afghanistan. In addition to several dozen operators, each aircraft contained two pickup trucks strapped to the floor and loaded down with supplies and combat gear. I took up a seat on the passenger side of a white Toyota that still smelled showroom new.

I plugged in a laptop computer so it was powered by the vehicle battery
and called up the FalconView software. On the screen, I began sorting through layers of satellite imagery and maps, including a Russian-made 1:50,000 of Afghanistan.

A cable snaked out of the truck window to a circular GPS antenna behind one of the aircraft’s window blackout screens. That linked us with several airborne satellites that gave life to a tiny royal blue airplane icon that represented our plane. That little image crept over the map on my screen as our aircraft crossed the Arabian Sea.

We hugged the Pakistan border just east of Iran and bent around the southern and eastern side of Afghanistan. Somewhere above the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, the pilots banked hard to the west and we entered Afghan airspace, heading toward Kabul.

Bart, the squadron operations sergeant who had given us the first word on the September 11 attacks, was there to meet us on the runway at Bagram. He led us to an old, bombed-out rectangular building, our new home away from home, where we dropped our gear. To keep the frigid air away, the advance party had boarded up the windows in the hard clay walls, acquired kerosene space heaters, and covered the cold concrete floor almost wall to wall with crimson red carpet.

The building, and one just like it sitting roughly forty meters away, was among the very few where the land mines had been cleared outside. Only enough space had been cleared to allow us to walk around the perimeter by staying close to the buildings and to pull up a few pickup trucks in the front.

Within thirty minutes, we were summoned to the Joint Intelligence Agency Task Force building a couple of hundred yards down the street. With land mines in our thoughts, we walked to the building, which was a little larger, a little warmer and had more divided rooms. This was the austere home of the Fusion Cell, the relatively new designation given to an ad hoc faction of professionals charged with collating, analyzing, and making heads or tails out of the various intelligence collected by multiple means; hence the name Fusion. Their task was daunting, even for such a talented bunch of men and women, and it did not take long for some jokers to add a prefix to the name, changing it to the Confusion Cell.

Gus Murdock had beaten us into town from the ISB, and was in charge of joint advance special forces operations, as part of the Fusion Cell. After some quick handshakes and dirty jokes, we sat down to get our
former squadron commander’s take on our next move. The news was not good. Gus said the intelligence community was estimating that between fifteen hundred to three thousand enemy forces were currently inside the Tora Bora Mountains.

That was when we started to realize Delta was being asked to do something clearly outside our Mission Essential Task List. We were quite certain that Delta had never before been tasked to tether their combat operations to a tribal opposition group. Moreover, we were to conduct military operations while relying on indigenous security and guides, local quickreaction forces in lieu of Americans, and do so with an extremely untimely and weather-dependent casualty evacuation support plan. It was most un-Delta like. General Dailey’s vagueness began to make sense.

The CIA had passed word while we were still in the air that Gen. Hazret Ali, the head of the Eastern Alliance, was ready to receive us immediately over in the border city of Jalalabad. We were looking forward to it, because we had zero information about the Afghan warlord with whom we were to link, other than the basics of his biography. Ali, a Sunni Muslim, had come from the Pashai tribe in Nangarhar Province, and distinguished himself as a field commander in the war against the Soviets. Beyond that, we knew zilch.

But the CIA in Jalalabad, Team Jawbreaker Juliet, said Ali was ready to help, and that was good enough for us. Anyway, we had been told the Afghans must
appear
to be a part of any action. We did not think that was any big deal, but it sure became one.

We were to drive down from FOB Yukon to Kabul, link up with a few advance force operators and CIA folks, and receive a quick intelligence dump. From there we would proceed under the escort of a dozen or so CIA-funded mujahideen over to Jalalabad, where the Afghan warlord kept his headquarters.

Gus told us it was all set and we needed to move out soon. While I briefed Jim and the boys on the situation, Sergeant Major Ironhead, and reconnaissance troop Sergeant Major Bryan, code-named B-Monkey, our
communicator Bernie, and Shag, a Pashto speaker, loaded two trucks. Jim elected to stay behind to coordinate things and oversee preparations to eventually move the rest of the boys forward once the details were worked out with the CIA and General Ali. We figured it would be a day or two at most.