Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (43 page)

Soon after the meeting, the signals interceptors picked up several radio calls of al Qaeda fighters still negotiating with Zaman. There was no doubt that the whole surrender gesture was a hoax. The “negotiations” were a simple stalling tactic to buy time, and the enemy wanted to drag out the discussions for as long as they could to make the battlefield safe for them to do whatever they wanted.

Afew hours after the Shura departed, Zaman himself came to the schoolhouse in hopes of fulfilling his commitment to al Qaeda over terms of surrender. After listening to Jim’s firm lecture that the bombing would resume, Zaman had driven somewhere to freshen up and had changed into a chocolate brown tailored suit, with shiny brown leather dress shoes and a little silver hat. Perhaps he wanted to look the part of a serious diplomat, but that image was soiled when he arrived with a couple of truckloads of ragged triggermen. Still, he strutted with pride.

George and I sat on a beautiful green, red, and gold carpet that had been spread about twenty meters north of the schoolhouse. The afternoon skies were clear and a very welcome sun warmed us. Now we would get to hear all the details of the cease-fire from Zaman himself.

As we waited for Ali to join us, Haji Zaman said to me, “This is the greatest day in the history of Afghanistan.”

“Why is that?” I asked. He was not aware that we already had concluded that the surrender was a fraud.

“Because al Qaeda is no more. Bin Laden is finished!” he boasted.

General Ali arrived, clad in his standard modest clothing of
browns and whites. He obviously was still aggravated that Zaman’s people got to the hilltop first the day before, and now his rival warlord had used that edge to freelance surrender negotiations that Ali had not approved.

George laid the situation out clearly. The CIA deputy chief told the two leaders, in few words, that they were smoking crack if they thought a less than legitimate surrender would weaken America’s resolve to kill or capture bin Laden. Nor would the Americans be leaving the Tora Bora area before that job was done.

“After this meeting, the bombs will start falling again,” George pledged.

In fact, even though the Muslim armies on the battlefield were conducting their cease-fire, the Americans and British had never agreed to it, so some bombs were being called by the boys in OP25-A and 25-B on the higher elevations. No fighter, bomber, or gunship would return home still carrying ammunition, but without the forward observation posts, much of the target area was hidden.

Zaman said a dozen Algerians were ready to surrender immediately but feared that the American commandos would kill them on the spot. The Algerians demanded permission to retain their rifles but would come off the mountain with weapons slung across their backs.

My turn. “No weapons, or risk being shot by my men. No conditions whatsoever,” I responded.

I shook my head side to side and smirked, essentially signaling that I thought Zaman was full of shit. Looking at me incredulously, he asked, “Commander Dalton, why do you not accept surrender? In every war surrender is an option.”

We were tired of his showmanship, and I answered, “Haji Zaman, you grossly underestimate our resolve here. Your al Qaeda brothers can fight or flee, hide deeper in the mountains, or they can lay down their Kalashnikovs and raise a white flag, but any conditional surrender is unacceptable in this battle.” I paused to make sure he was still following my translated words. “We attack in one hour.”

After committing ourselves to resume the fight, George and I rose, deliberately turned our backs to the warlords, and walked away, an insulting
and dismissive gesture that left them alone with their personal aides to ponder their next move.

The Americans had no intention of playing fair.

Bernie got on the satellite radio and arranged for some bomber support from Bagram to get on station. Throughout the fight, certain areas were designated as engagement zones, or EZs, which for all intents and purposes were free-fire areas for any bomber or aircraft willing to oblige. We intended to clear hot any available aircraft to engage at will inside those zones, with the only condition being to first make certain that none of our guys or Ali’s men were in the area before hell broke loose.

There was no sign of any surrendering al Qaeda.

Jim’s patience had run out and he laid the law down to Zaman’s field commander, the same joint-smoking guy who had given him such a bad time earlier in the day. The surrender was a hoax, Jim declared, and pointed out that no enemy fighters had arrived. MSS Grinch were saddling up again and getting ready to head out. Jim, Hopper, and Pope planned to occupy new observation posts and get the air strikes pinpointed on better targets, expanding the battlefield. Too much valuable time had already been wasted in this surrender charade.

The senior Delta operator looked hard at the muhj commander to be sure the man took in what he had to say next: “Don’t raise your weapons at us.”

At exactly five o’clock in the afternoon of December 12, two teams of Delta snipers, two teams of Delta assaulters, the British commandos, and an air force combat controller shouldered their heavy rucksacks, wrapped blankets around their backs, and put one foot in front of the other, heading for the high ground beneath an umbrella of
bombers and weapons at the ready. Of course, Adam Khan was along as well.

The local commander was in a panic and called Zaman again, but this time the warlord did not answer. The local guy wisely had read the determined faces of the commandos and decided not to challenge the highly trained men again. They were obviously ready for a gun battle, and possibly even hungry for one. He watched helplessly as they slowly moved out of sight.

Within two minutes after the deadline, the first warplane was cleared hot and the exploding bombs made it clear that Zaman’s negotiation attempts had failed. A half-dozen other aircraft were stacked at various altitudes, waiting to hear their call signs.

Hopper led his Jackal Team up a rocky ridge along the east side, while Pope took Kilo Team off on a separate axis further west. Not too many months before, Pope and Dugan had become the first Delta operators to graduate from the grueling British 22 SAS Mountain Course, and Pope spent much of his personal time mountaineering, topping off at 18,000 feet on one excursion. But this time there would be no special climbing equipment. His expert assessment of the ugly uphill trek that lay ahead was that they were all in for a bitch of a climb.

So he made a prudent tactical decision to avoid walking like a train of ducks up the ridgeline and possibly right into the business end of an enemy machine gun. Pope split his team in half and maneuvered upward by using the bounding overwatch technique. As one team was up and moving, the second team was behind cover looking for any sign of the enemy, prepared to engage with small-arms fire. Before losing sight of each other, the teams switched roles.

Sure enough, about an hour into the climb, al Qaeda welcomed Pope’s three-man team with some DShK machine-gun fire, and the heavy bullets ricocheted off the rocks, putting the commandos flat on their bellies.

“Damn, I don’t like that,” commented Adam Khan, who was lying close to Pope.

From somewhere up in the mountains, al Qaeda unveiled another mortar, which began lobbing rounds on Pope’s forward position. The three men hugged the tan and gray quartz rocks.

The other three commandos who were in the protective overwatch position took a bead on the machine gun’s location, which was a little too far for their 5.56mm weapons. One of the British commandos grabbed his radio hand mike and gave a call to an overhead fighter. Within moments, a thousand-pound JDAM took care of the DShK and gave Pope and the others some breathing room.

Both teams stayed low behind cover to prevent enemy observers from sending any more mortar rounds their way until darkness fell. When the sun vanished, total darkness cloaked the area, which created the commando comfort zone. The entire team rejoined and pressed on in search of a nice rocky outcropping from which they could overlook al Qaeda’s hidden frontline defensive positions. Adam Khan had gone far enough and used the opportunity to backtrack to Jim and the assaulters of MSS Grinch.

It took another hour of moving uphill before they found a suitable perch, and not a moment to soon. Pope, the veteran climber, had developed a minor case of altitude sickness and was having a hard time staying awake. It could hit a climber at any time, and he needed to stop ascending to let the ill effects wear off. Pope dropped his eighty-seven-pound Norwegian pack, opened the top flap, and pulled out a gallon-sized Ziploc bag containing thirty small packets of GU Hardrock energy gel. It was all he needed to get him back in the fight.

The team members made themselves comfortable, put on their NVGs, and almost immediately spotted a pickup truck one ridgeline over to their west, flashing its lights on and off, signaling someone, somewhere.

An AC-130 gunship was already on station, orbiting in a tight circular pattern. Pope smiled at Lowblow and keyed the radio hand mike, his altitude sickness forgotten. He directed the Spectre’s attention toward the ridgeline where the truck was sitting and blinking, and asked for the
AC-130 to “burn” the area with their onboard infrared spotlight. The gunship quickly found its prey, and Pope cleared it hot. A couple of 105mm howitzer rounds boomed out of the plane, followed by some sawing chain gun action for good measure, and the truck was ready for the junkyard.

The half-dozen men of Kilo Team had managed to slip inside al Qaeda’s perimeter and were now the commandos farthest into the mountains. In doing so, they had found one heck of a location for their OP and had beautiful sightlines into al Qaeda’s longtime sanctuary. Even through the green tint of their NVGs, the view was breathtaking and intimidating. Throughout the night the two Delta snipers and one British commando would work fire mission after fire mission, directing air strikes on known and suspected positions, while the other three Brits protected their teammates from any unannounced enemy appearances.

A savvy reader might notice here Pope didn’t have a qualified ground force air controller with his team. A GFAC is the guy whom the military has blessed off on—certified—to talk to and control multiple aircraft at various altitudes and clear them to drop bombs on the bad guys. When MSS Grinch inserted, we only had two air force combat controllers, the Admiral and Spike, and even though one of the Brits with Pope on the Kilo Team was qualified, the vast battlefield begged for more. We requested two additional GFACs and they arrived in short order, but we had to wait for future infils to capitalize on their skills.