Victory Point (15 page)

Topographic map of the summit region of Sawtalo Sar

Needing further detail than his maps supplied, Westerfield studied oblique (sideways, as opposed to orthogonal, or “straight down” view) submeter resolution MQ-1 Predator UAV imagery of the upper Korangal, upper Shuryek, and Sawtalo Sar summit region taken just hours earlier. Wood and Westerfield, having compiled a complete vetted intel set, noted a series of “Named Areas of Interest” (NAIs), numbered one through four where they felt Shah would most likely locate himself and his cell. They designated Korangal Village as NAI-1 (while this location represented the least likely location for Shah and his men to be found, they believed that villagers might hide weapons for him there); they denoted Chichal village as NAI-2; the duo marked a network of terraces and small structures of and around the Northeast Gulch of the Peak as NAI-3; and they designated a small section of the north ridge of the peak just to the north of NAI-2 and NAI-3 as NAI-4. SIGINT hits that continually rolled in off Shah’s Thuraya and Roshan phones indicated that the cell leader and his men had the highest probability of locating themselves at NAI-3, with NAI-2 a close second.

With the target areas identified, Wood and Westerfield set out to locate observation posts (OPs) that would grant the clearest, most direct views of the NAIs, yet allow a small reconnaissance and surveillance team to remain well concealed from any roving timber harvester, goat herder, village traveler, or bad guy meandering along any of the countless trails the duo noted on the “Pred” feed. While more difficult to identify than the relatively large NAIs, the high-resolution black-and-white imagery did provide just enough detail for the two to identify two observation posts: OP-1 would lie within some dense trees at the top of the peak’s Northeast Spur just over a half mile to the northeast of Sawtalo Sar’s main summit, granting a view of NAI-3 and
NAI-4; and they chose a point about a mile due north of the peak’s main summit directly off the Super Highway to be OP-2, which would give a view of NAI-1 and NAI-2. Wood and Westerfield then chose four helicopter landing zones (HLZs) for the insertion of the force that would cordon and strike the NAI the reconnaissance and surveillance team positively identified as Shah’s: HLZ Shar Pei, on a broad terrace in NAI-3; HLZ Swift, just to the east of the Super Highway inside NAI-4; HLZ Navajo, also just to the east of the Super Highway but north of NAI-4; and HLZ Blown, which the two saw as tactically advantageous—except for the trees growing from the well-positioned, flat parcel of land; those trees would need to get blown (with satchel charges) should the reconnaissance and surveillance team deem that location necessary for the main cordon and strike phase of the op, hence the name.

Wood, intent on using the battalion for the entire ground portion of the op with attached Afghan National Army soldiers for its latter phases, now needed to get buy-in from CJSOTF-A to allow TF-Brown to insert the main strike and cordon teams. He and First Lieutenant Rob Long, the Scout/Sniper Platoon commander who was “double-billeted” as Westerfield’s primary assistant (known as the S-2 Alpha) ventured to Bagram to meet with the CJSOTF-A commanders and Kamiya himself to pitch the mission. But no dice. Any SOF elements, even support elements like the 160th, couldn’t be employed by conventional forces—those were the rules, mandated by doctrine. For the mission to proceed with the pivotal TF-Brown support, Wood was told, CJSOTF-A would require ⅔ to utilize a SOF ground element—either Special Forces, Rangers, or Navy SEALs—for the direct-action phase of the mission. Although the Marines developed the op, CJSOTF-A would force ⅔ to designate SOF ground units as the supported, main elements; in return, CJSOTF-A would allow the 160th to support the Marines by inserting them for the cordon of the NAI inside which the direct-action team was taking down the targets. Once the direct-action team completed the hit, the Chinooks of the 160th would pull the SOF team out, and at that point, the Marines would be the “supported” element. Furthermore, CJSOTF-A mandated that the initial, shaping phase of the op be conducted by a SOF team, and not by Ronin, as they considered those first hours so critical to the subsequent direct-action team’s actions on the objective in phase two of the plan that they simply could not trust a conventional team, regardless of that individual team members’ capabilities, skill sets, and experience. Eggers and Team Ronin were out—without even the slightest hint of a review of their qualifications.

“This is fucking outrageous, Long. Unbelievable. They have us hamstrung. Have you ever heard of such nonsense? All these rules . . . if only we were a MEU, or some type of fucking MAGTF.” The young lieutenant stared blank-faced at Wood. “If we were the BLT [Battalion Landing Team] on a MEU, the Fifty-threes [CH-53E/Ds] would fly no matter what—zero illum. Colonel would say do it and they’d fly,” the major roared.

“Sir, can’t Eggers and his team at least go in with their initial reconnaissance and surveillance team?”

“It’s out! Eggers and his team are already out. They don’t think that our scout/snipers are good enough to lay the tactical groundwork for their main element. And they got the rules on their side. We have to get air support to make this work, and this is the only way. We bring in SOF—
and give them the C2 of our op
—just to get the hand-me-down use of the air primarily tasked to their teams. What a system. We’re at the mercy of SOCOM rules.”

Wood took a step back and tried to calm himself. “Okay. Basically, they want us to split the C2, they got command and control for our mission for the first part of the op, then we’re supposed to be ‘supported’ by them once they exfil . . .” Wood pondered the March 2002 Operation
Anaconda
—which he’d studied in depth—where the C2 was virtually nonexistent as was SOF-conventional-forces integration. Wood, who’d been raised as an enlisted grunt and then as an infantry officer to strictly adhere to the concept of unity of command/effort, couldn’t comprehend how such a convoluted structure ever enveloped his battalion. “We got no choice. We do it their way or we don’t do it at all. If we choose the latter, then we might as well be sitting back in Oahu sucking down Mai Tais at Duke’s.”

“Roger, sir.” Long tapped his wrist slowly . . . rhythmically—
forebodingly
.

“We get the air we need, we get the op done, and they get their rules fulfilled. And hopefully things don’t go haywire like they did in that goat-rope masterpiece
Anaconda
,” Wood seethed.

“So, sir, do we pitch it to one of the ODAs? The SEALs?
Who?
”

“We should pitch it to both SF and NAVSOF . . . But since we already have a working relationship with Kristensen and the SEALs, we might as well go with them. It amazes me, Kristensen and the SEALs had no problem falling under our command and control when I asked them. No problem at all.”

Wood contacted Kristensen once again, and although the SEALs had no problem working with ⅔ the way NAVSOF had worked with 3/3 in
Spurs
and
Celtics
—even working under ⅔’s command and control—Wood knew he had no vote in the process. The Marines would take the backseat to NAVSOF for the first two phases of the operation, then work the security and stabilization and MEDCAP portions themselves with the Afghan National Army once TF-Blue had completed the direct-action phase of the operation. “We need to get this mission done, and this is the only way,” Wood told Long. “I’m not happy about the split C2, but that’s how it’s gotta go.”

“Roger that. We just keep our fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong when we’re not in control of it,” the young lieutenant stated with unease.

“Yeah, fingers crossed, Long,” Wood said with a sarcastic tone. “Lotta good that always does.” The two Marines shook their heads and laughed nervously.

5

S
teeling themselves for the rigors of their eastern Afghan mission from the very moment their boots hit the deck of RC-East, the Marines of ⅔’s main element proved both eager and indefatigably capable as they attacked every task—from the minuscule to the battalion-scale—with determined resolve. Focused on their ultimate goal of ensuring successful Afghan national parliamentary elections on 18 September and then continuing to stabilize the region after that historic event, the Marines took no task lightly, from mission planning, to splicing wires in broken radios, to drinking enough water during long movements through the mountains to remain combat capable, to ensuring that bottles of that water made their way to the respective bases—even as extremists intensified their campaign of terror throughout the spring.

Nestled in the shadows of Sawtalo Sar and its sibling peaks, Camp Blessing was the clear focus of the extremists during that spring-thaw campaign. Kinser and the other “Blessing Marines” picked up quickly on the bad guys’ standard tactics—improvised explosive-device strikes on convoys near the firebase and 82 mm mortar and 107 mm rocket attacks, launched typically three or four days on either side of a full moon from well-concealed locations just behind the high ridges to the east of the camp. Terrorists used one spot in particular enough for it to earn the name Rocket Ridge, which lay in a direct line between the rooftop lookout of the base’s COC and the summit of Sawtalo Sar. Providing the Marines of the firebase with a tremendous tactical advantage, however, the Afghan Security Forces personnel manned four observation posts surrounding Blessing. Hailing from throughout the slopes and valley floors surrounding Nangalam, the ASF proved themselves vital to the Marines for their knowledge of the area and its people—people good, bad, on the fence, trustworthy, and sneaky. The Afghan fighters, whom many of the Blessing Marines would come to regard as family by the end of their deployment, reflected the sentiments of the villagers throughout the Pech Valley region: they hated the attacks, the shrieks of the rockets, the out-of-nowhere deafening
crack
of impacting 82 mm mortar rounds, the IED strikes, the threats to their families, the indiscriminate ambushes, the terror. From the abhorrent slaughter of the people of the Pech in the late seventies by the Afghan Communists, to the intentional targeting of civilians of the area by the Soviets, to the infighting of the early nineties, to the Taliban, and now the “leftovers” of all those past influences, the ASF just wanted an end to it all, to close the book on the decades of war, to go back to their homes and small mountain pastures and live out their lives in peace. The ASF members would come to view the Marines’ presence as a chance to finally lay down their Kalashnikovs and RPGs and go home; and for that, they would fight side by side with the grunts, with bloodlust, vehemence, and incalculable loyalty.

The day after the short-lived firefight against the snipers in the Shuryek Valley, Kinser greeted a fellow infantry officer at Blessing’s front gate whose magnetically sincere midwestern charm, devotion to the COIN fight, and independent- and quick-mindedness would, as a complement to Kinser’s leadership style, yield payoffs to ⅔’s mission far greater than even the insightful Rob Scott—who masterminded placing the two together at the remote base—could have imagined: First Lieutenant Matt Bartels. Bartels, a standout high school football player from Bloomington, Minnesota, fought his way from near death at the clutches of viral meningitis and, once recovered, set his sights on becoming a Marine Corps infantry officer. Having proven himself a uniquely independent yet utterly trustworthy and competent platoon leader during ⅔’s deployment as the Battalion Landing Team of the Thirty-first Marine Expeditionary Unit, Bartels was chosen to lead a fifteen-man experimental Marine Corps antiterror augmentation force that would work with the Navy’s SEAL Team 3 as part of Joint Task Force 510 interdicting the al-Qaeda-connected Abu Sayef terrorists of the southern Philippines. Returning just weeks before ⅔ began predeployment training for their Afghan fight, Scott chose Bartels to be Camp Blessing’s base commander, learning from Cooling that the vital “tip of the spear” outpost required a leader who was one independent yet regimented, compassionate toward the locals, yet coolheaded and deliberate, even under the worst of attacks.