Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (50 page)

The bombs from the first warplane hammered in with tremendous effect, ignited something flammable, and multiple flashes and secondary explosions lit up the valley like an outdoor rock concert. Something beside humans had definitely been inside that cave. More GBU-31 bombs saturated the cave complex with enormous power.

The snipers hunkered behind a small rock formation to watch the show as impact after impact shook the ground and detonated even more secondary explosions. Fireballs rose into the air and shrapnel and debris raced over their heads and rattled off the rocks.

For the next two hours, bombs rained on one small area of Tora Bora.

Sundown, of course, brought the usual muhj retreat. The three snipers, however, were unwilling either to ease up on this chance to nail bin Laden or lessen the pain that was being inflicted on al Qaeda. They would remain on the steep ridgeline, with and without the muhj, for the next two days.

The Delta boys were certain that they were as close to bin Laden as any Americans had been in years, certainly since 9/11, and they were hellbent on ensuring that some American pilot would wake up soon and hear that it was his bomb that killed the al Qaeda leader.

For now, the snipers didn’t think about sleep. Who could? They wrapped themselves in their thin blankets and tried not to long for all of the cold-weather gear that had been left behind in their rucksacks, back when they thought the mission to confirm the demise of the machine gun would be a quick one.

They were exposed on a six-foot-wide rocky path along the high spine
of the ridgeline. It was the only trail up there, but remaining on it wasn’t possible. Their options were limited, and night was on them. On both sides of the path, the terrain dropped off severely, with intermittent trees and stumps protruding from the cliff walls at odd angles.

After a little discussion, they decided to take their chances as mountain goats. They sat down, slipped over the edge boots first for about ten feet, and then lodged in, as best they could, practically vertical, but within whispering distance. Having started out in daylight, they had only one pair of NVGs between them.

About an hour after squeezing into the awkward positions, they heard the unmistakable sound of weapons rattling and heavy, fast-paced footsteps approaching. The snipers froze in place and held their breaths, with thumbs on the selector switches of their rifles. Shrek slipped a grenade from his vest and held it close to his chest. As soon as the footsteps faded, Scrawny whispered, “Five or six al Qaeda. No doubt.”

Scrawny had been in worse spots.

He and I were in the same Ranger Class, 10-84, and after a few years with the 2nd Ranger Battalion, he joined Delta. He stands roughly five feet, seven inches tall and has a wiry set of muscles on a fat-free frame, and many in Delta refer to him as the Punisher.

He made his rep firm as a young assaulter in 1989 during the rescue of American hostage Kurt Muse in Panama.
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Scrawny toted a M-249 SAW with twelve hundred rounds of linked 5.56mm ammo onto the roof of Modelo prison. It took his mates only six minutes to breach the rooftop door, descend the stairs, secure the hostage, and return to the roof to get picked up by helicopters. During that short time, Scrawny fired a thousand rounds at Panamanian defense forces while under heavy
fire himself. He did not get so much as a scratch, but his number of confirmed kills exceeded fifty.

The team of snipers hugging the cliffside like spiders discussed their next move and Murph decided their best option was to stay where they were. Within minutes, another group of the enemy passed, but this time the risk of compromise was increased, for these fighters carried several white-lens flashlights to illuminate the trail of slippery, loose, and uneven rocks. A glance over the side would have exposed the Americans.

For the next several hours, more groups of fighters used the busy trail, hustling along in both directions. Was al Qaeda reinforcing their forward lines? Were they moving into ambush positions to await the routine midday return of the muhj? Or, were they simply swapping out forces? The isolated Delta boys had no way of knowing what the footsteps in the night meant.

Any thoughts that Usama bin Laden might still have of victory and retaining his mountainous redoubt were gone by the evening of December 15. The top terrorist, who was apparently being chased around the battlefield by our bombs, had already apologized to his fighters for getting them into this mess. He placed blame for their failures on the apostate regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Pakistan, saying he expected those countries to rally around the cause and come to the rescue. He also had passed that strange permission for women and children to arm themselves to defend the caves.

Now he was undergoing a sea change of attitude. He authorized his battered subordinate units to surrender if they so desired! That surprise guidance came as no surprise at all. In the last signals intercept we had of bin Laden the day before, on December 14, his voice indicated obvious distress, and since then our attacks had not let up.

The British commandos who went into the mountains to keep Haji
Zaman motivated radioed back that scores of al Qaeda fighters had decided to quit, opting to remain in the present world for the time being. Martyrdom would have to wait. Having lost their will to fight, they dropped their weapons and walked off the battlefield.

The image of bin Laden hiding, surviving, and contemplating surrender was confirmed by the numerous radio calls gathered by our special intelligence collectors at the schoolhouse and also being intercepted by both MSS Grinch and MSS Monkey. Al Qaeda had lost its nerve, and it appeared that their leader also was cracking.

But was he really in panic? Or was he just putting some fighters out there to surrender as a ruse to buy time and stall our attack, hoping to get breathing room to slip out the back door? Even when things are looking good, you have to consider other possibilities.

Whatever bin Laden’s choice, we knew this battle would be decided shortly.

There were spies among us.

One commodity at the top of every supply wish list was a request for interpreters fluent in speaking Pashto. Adam Khan was our only trustworthy ’terp, and being unable to clone him meant that communications between the locals and the Americans continued to present problems.

In the Tora Bora Mountains, the job skills needed for these interpreters included the ability to survive in austere commando conditions—more specifically, to keep their balance, manipulate a trigger in freezing weather, and pull their own weight.

So when a suitable linguist popped up, he was put to work. A man in a passing patrol stopped for a moment near MSS Grinch and caught the eye of Adam Khan. The guy looked like a real find. Not only was he fluent in Pashto, but he also spoke and understood English at about a grade-school level. More than good enough. He was paid a handsome signing bonus.

But the new ’terp, known as “Flagg,” had not been fully vetted, so Jim and the boys limited his exposure, either visually or verbally, to what they were doing. Adam Khan kept an eye on him during his probationary
period and soon figured out that there was more to this guy than a smattering of English. He spoke five languages! He also was a lot less trustworthy than any of the other Afghans accompanying MSS Grinch, and Adam Khan determined he was a spy and had him detained on the spot. It was quite possible the guy was on the al Qaeda payroll. His pocket litter contained an MSNBC business card, but also handwritten notes on a few pieces of paper, including the call sign of our man Pope. The ’terp denied all allegations, but was escorted down the mountain to see General Ali.

Before Ali could figure out what to do with Flagg, the guy was caught brazenly trying to use the telephone inside the general’s quarters. One of Skoot’s tactical signal interceptors struck up a conversation with him and noticed that Flagg, among his other languages, spoke fairly good Arabic. This was a big enough spike to arrest him. He was interrogated, roughed up a bit, and shipped off to Kabul to be locked away in some dark, damp, and overcrowded cellblock.

But Flagg wasn’t the only questionable person around. Another gentleman was constantly following and pestering Adam Khan with personal questions about where the American commandos lived in the United States, wanting to know their names, and trying to gain his trust. He had a British accent and curiously remained apart from the rank-and-file muhj as much as possible. His English was much more advanced, but the most telling discovery about the small, skinny, and dark-skinned Muslim was the way he clearly understood the sophisticated manner in which the boys used infrared lasers to guide the bombs.

To do that required some advanced training, and Adam Khan soon pegged this one as an agent of the Pakistani Intelligence Service, the ISI, who had infiltrated inside Ali’s forces. He wasn’t allowed anywhere near us. Afghanistan was strange.

The British intelligence officer and Haji Zaman attended the fireside chat on the night of December 15, for another important cultural turning point would arrive with the dawn. The following day, December 16, marked the end of Ramadan, and not only could the muhj start eating and
drinking during the daytime, but traditionally it was supposed to be a time of rest and forgiveness of enemies.