Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (25 page)

That night we gathered in the CIA’s corner room of the schoolhouse. Sergeant Major Ironhead, Bryan, and I sat with a few CIA officers, while Adam Khan, Ali, and the aide-translator Ghulbihar were on a tightly woven green and white Afghan carpet. On any battlefield, you can bet the CIA has the best accommodations available. On another carpet, in the center of the group, were several small green-tinted teacups. A steaming kettle and basket of nuts followed moments later.

The carpet and place servings were in stark contradiction to the techno spreads of the CIA military and civilian gear hugging the walls. Black and silver radios and antennas, various equipment stored in black boxes, night vision goggles, satellite phones, and extra AK-47 magazines were carefully positioned for quick use.

After dispensing with the pleasantries, Ali reiterated his desire to end this battle as soon as possible and committed to doing whatever it took. But he also warned that some local tribes claiming loyalty to him could easily be bought off and change allegiances.

George immediately brought up the increasing crowd of journalists and asked what the general planned to do about them. Ali answered that
he had assigned an individual escort to every journalist to take charge of them while they were here. “I also have ordered more checkpoints to control the reporters and keep them away from here,” he said with confidence. My thoughts flashed back to the aggressive TV van that had been on our tail, and I believed the general might be overestimating his ability to control the ever-persistent press. The answer sounded rehearsed, too good to be true, and it was.

During the meeting, one of Ali’s frontline commanders was ushered in. He rendered all the courtesies toward the general before sitting down. Ali introduced him as the commander of the fedayeen—men of sacrifice—who were Ali’s best troops, some eighty of them. He had just returned from an hour-long skirmish with al Qaeda fighters just above the foothills.

He said the fedayeen attacked just before nightfall, and that they were successful in seizing three caves and killing several enemy fighters, but an unknown number escaped. Surprisingly, the commander’s impromptu after-action review also highlighted what his men had done wrong.

He spoke of how al Qaeda counterattacked while his men were clearing the second of the three caves. His muhj were freezing in the hills, and always took plenty of time for freebooting and securing the spoils of war, particularly anything to keep them warm. After sustaining eight wounded and three men killed in action, the commander decided to give up the hard-earned caves and retreat for the evening.

Someone asked him to describe the al Qaeda fighters. “All black, from head to toe, with hoods masking their light-skinned faces,” he responded enthusiastically, as if trying to convince us of his sincerity.

We were aware that the preferred Taliban dress was black on black, a semiuniform so distinctive that it was added to the rules of engagement early in the war: All black equaled Taliban or al Qaeda, which equaled threat, which equaled authorization of lethal force.

“Why did you retreat and give up the hard-earned caves and trenches?” I asked the fedayeen commander.

“It is too dark and dangerous at night,” he stated, with a sheepish glance at General Ali. “We must rest at night and partake of food and drink.”

The common daily itinerary for a Muslim fighter during the holy month of Ramadan required fasting from sunup to sundown for thirty consecutive days. Throughout this oncoming battle, that ancient Islamic tradition proved to serve as a consistent default for inaction by the muhj. Apparently the Muslim enemy also respected the same Quranic tradition.

In other words, everyone typically took a breather from the fighting at night in order to get some chow, grab some sleep, regroup, and maneuver forces into position for the next day’s skirmishes. We thought that this particular fight that had been so carefully described by the fedayeen commander seemed to have been possibly staged for our benefit.

Ali and George began to bicker, with the big Texan pressing the general about supporting our move into the mountains with his fighters, and goading him about his lack of aggressiveness during the last couple of days.

Ali jabbed back at the CIA, arguing that Tora Bora was not his only area of concern. He had two thousand fighters at Tora Bora, but his other four thousand men were needed to run the everyday policing of Jalalabad and the outlying areas of the big and troublesome city. It might be possible to bring a few thousand more fighters, if only he had weapons to give them. That meant more money.

George didn’t blink. He reiterated that he would provide everything Ali needed to accomplish the mission of killing bin Laden. I figured another black duffel bag of cash was about to be opened.

But the good news was that Ali had agreed, if only halfheartedly, to Dailey’s three requirements, and that was the affirmation we needed before our boss would agree to do much more than sit around the schoolhouse waiting for a bin Laden sighting. Ali promised to provide us with guides to navigate the mountain trails, and also granted Bryan’s request for pack mules to help move our equipment up the mountains. And he would position our forces with his.

He further pledged to do what he could to help if we ran into significant trouble in the mountains, essentially signing up to provide us with a
QRF, should we get into a mess. We doubted the “quick” part of any Afghan QRF. One simple look at the daunting mountains was enough to convey that we would have to hold on for a good while before any of Ali’s men could reach us. It would take them hours, possibly days, to move up the mountains and flush out the al Qaeda fighters.

Throw in the complications that we like to fight at night, while the muhj prefer to sleep, and that we were in the middle of Ramadan, which had its own time limitations. Our chances of being able to depend on any of Ali’s men coming to help us were slim to none, but beggars couldn’t be too choosy. The nearest American QRF was two and a half hours away by helicopter. Those birds would have to land in the foothills to offload because of the SAM and RPG threats and the lack of suitable landing zones or fast-rope points in the mountains. So any Ranger QRF would have to start from the same spot as the muhj.

Nonetheless, Ali had taken the moral high ground and we left it at that. I took him at his word and believed he would send help.

After the meeting broke up, I went back into our room and disconnected my night vision goggles from my helmet, then walked the halfdozen yards over to General Ali’s quarters. His trusty aide Ghulbihar was already dutifully stooped outside the door to await any of his general’s wishes. I explained that I wanted to show Ali something important, how well we can see at night. To reach a boss, you first have to go through the receptionist, so I took time to demonstrate the NVGs for Ghulbihar. It helped persuade him.

Ali was tired but, ever the gracious host, acceded to my bothersome meddling. He was already in bed, but sat up. I knelt next to him.

First, I placed the goggles in front of my own eyes while Ghulbihar explained what I was doing. The slight flicker of a single gas lantern sitting in the far corner illuminated the general’s all-white pajamas and made me wonder if I should have removed my boots before entering and stepping on the carpet. I turned the goggles around and carefully placed them in front of his eyes. Ali leaned toward them with both eyes wide open. The green
glow from the NVGs greatly amplified the light of that gas lantern and highlighted his deep facial wrinkles.

I spoke to Ali directly, as if he understood English. “General, with these green eyes, we can hunt for bin Laden at night and see al Qaeda, but not be seen.”

After Ghulbihar translated, the general sighed deeply, then tilted the goggles toward the window, which offered a view of the ongoing bombing of the distant mountains. I told him that the NVGs give a clear view in the dark at ranges in excess of three hundred meters on a starry night. He wasn’t sold on the magic. “Maybe you can see at night, but al Qaeda does not sleep,” he said. “They have brothers guarding every path and trail.”

I couldn’t resist a quick lesson on tactics, waiting patiently while Ghulbihar translated each sentence. “We need to get in and among al Qaeda to defeat them. We can kill those guards. You need to keep the terrain that your fighters capture, and not retreat at sundown. We will go with your men. You have my word,” I told Ali. “Once my men get close enough to see the enemy, they will make the bombs much more effective, killing more enemy faster and ending the fight sooner.”

Ali handed back the NVGs. He looked at me, rubbed his beads in his left hand, and mumbled something. “The general wishes to sleep. He asks you do the same,” Ghulbihar politely translated.

Good enough. Let the guy sleep on it. I don’t need an answer right now anyway. The boys are still two days away
. I nodded to the general, smiled as if to say we are gonna have some fun here, then took my toy back to my own room.

So we believe that the defeat of America is something achievable—with the permission of God—and it is easier for us—with the permission of God—than the defeat of the Soviet Empire previously.

   
—USAMA BIN LADEN, OCTOBER 21, 2001

Bernie’s radio check back to Bagram awoke us on the morning of December 8, 2001. We had stayed up late taking stock of our situation and had managed only an hour or two of sleep during a night that had been chilly and restless. We dug in our rucks for some MRE packets that would be a cold breakfast meal and grabbed bottles of water from a box outside the flimsy wooden door.

As we slowly came to life, I could not help thinking how lucky and proud we were to have been handed this mission. Here we were, thousands of miles away from Ground Zero in New York City, at the most extreme and sharpest end of the spear in the hunt for Usama bin Laden. We were enormously thankful for the opportunity.

It was going to be “fly by the seat of your pants” war fighting, in which it would be impossible to predict what might happen within the next hour, much less a day in advance. My formal military schooling had ended as a young infantry captain at Fort Benning in 1995, where the approved course curriculum contained little on the art of ambiguous and unconventional fighting while connected at the hip to some third world warlord.

This type of work, however, was practiced at the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, and few officers understood it better than the Task Force Dagger commander, Colonel Mulholland, who did not like it at all. He had voiced his strong objections to going after al Qaeda in a mountainous environment with an unknown army of indigenous fighters and without a solid support structure in place. If things fell apart from here on out, nobody could blame Mulholland. He had sent up the red flags of warning.

Our own task force commander was not without his own reservations. General Dailey certainly could not be described as impetuous or flippant when the lives of his men were on the line.
*
In fact, the general leaned slightly toward the cautious side, as most prudent commanders often do. But Dailey also knew the opportunities to nail bin Laden were going to be few and far between, and killing bin Laden was the premier mission of the war to date, no doubt about it. It required a commander willing to take a deep breath, grasp the moment, suppress the high-risk nature of the mission, and let loose the dogs of war. Whether or not Dailey was personally comfortable with the whole deal or not was irrelevant. He had pulled the trigger, and we respected him for that.