The Only Thing Worth Dying For (7 page)

When Miller relayed the news to the team leaders later that day, he wasn’t certain what pleased them more: their impending missions or Queeg’s departure.

Late on the morning of October 8, four men riding tandem on two clunky motorbikes approached the Afghan border from Pakistan.

Without weapons or even the most basic military training, Hamid Karzai and his friends were armed only with their faith that the Pashtun people were ready to rise up against the Taliban and take back their country.

The week before, in Islamabad, Karzai had met with his CIA case officer, a man named Casper, and assured him that his tribe was prepared to revolt. Casper had given him a satellite phone, his own phone number and those of other Pakistani-based CIA operatives, and instructions to call once Karzai had raised an army in Afghanistan—the Agency’s way of saying “put your money where your mouth is.” Those in the higher echelons of the CIA seemed to consider Karzai’s quest an impractical dream at best; he might be helpful down the line in forming a post-Taliban government—if he survived.

To Hamid Karzai, that satellite phone symbolized hope.

CHAPTER THREE

To War

There was tremendous pressure from the Secretary of Defense to do some thing. [We] went forward with a plan, and I believe that most of the senior officers at CENTCOM did not believe it was going to work and that it was just to buy time.

—Lieutenant Commander Philip Kapusta, Joint Strategic Plans and Policy staff, Special Operations Command Central, 2001
¹

The two-story brick building surrounded by a simple chain-link fence looked like a cross between an industrial warehouse and an Econo Lodge, not a state-of-the-art Special Forces isolation facility. On Sunday, October 14, the A-teams chosen by 5th Group to isolate for Operation Enduring Freedom arrived one by one to the ISOFAC—located not far from the 5th Group block.

Some brought family members to their team rooms for a private good-bye before heading over to the ISOFAC; others opted for a public farewell in the parking lot. Most maintained smiling composures to alleviate their families’ fears. All of them knew of Afghanistan’s reputation as “the graveyard of empires,” where invading armies had been routed since the time of Alexander the Great.

After taking leave of their families, the men of ODA 574 entered the self-contained, electronically pimped-out “Bat Cave” and were greeted by Sergeant Bob Webb, half of ODA 574’s two-man administrative support team, or AST. Each team member had the shadow of a beard that would thicken during isolation, which could last anywhere
from five days to several weeks. During this period of time, Webb would serve as a twenty-four-hour on-call link to the outside world, procuring anything the team might need: a piece of intelligence, a weapon diagram, a photo of a warlord, or a New York–style pizza. Now he led ODA 574 to one of twenty-four isolation dorms, a two-story apartment opening onto a central hallway where the Special Forces motto,
De Oppresso Liber,
was posted. The phrase, which means “to free the oppressed,” wasn’t exactly resonating with the men. News channels were still looping footage of the airliners striking the World Trade Center, and the country was still mourning. The people living under Taliban rule certainly qualified as oppressed, but 5th Group’s core mission was to avenge the United States of America.

Inside the apartment, the décor was “military clinical”: gray and white, concrete and metal. Even the dull desert camouflage worn by the men added color to the drab interior. A double-wide door with small square windows led outside to a fenced cement “yard,” and a stairway in the corner led to the bunkroom and communal bathroom upstairs. Walking in, Dan Petithory shouted out, “All right! Where’s the keg?!” Then he and Wes wired their laptops into the ISOFAC’s secure network at desks along the walls of the cavernous planning room. Mag headed upstairs to claim the lower bunk in the quietest, darkest corner of the room before returning to stand quietly at Amerine’s side.

Only his aunt Olga called Sergeant First Class Gilbert Magallanes, the team’s intelligence sergeant and third-in-command, by his first name; to everyone else he was Mag. Raised in Livermore, California, Mag had cruised around Oakland as a teen, Mexican machismo coursing through his veins and the chest-out-shoulders-back-stand-tall posture to match. After high school, rather than join the family tile business, he enlisted in the military, where he became a Ranger-qualified Green Beret and earned a reputation as the type of guy you wanted at your side in a firefight—“the strong, silent type,” as a fellow NCO put it, “minus the word
silent
.” Like JD and Ken, Mag was a Gulf War veteran; during the war he’d been tasked with photographing the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein’s forces upon the Kuwaiti people.

Amerine seemed entranced by the map of Afghanistan taped to the wall.

“There she is,” said Mag.

With a wry smile, Amerine said, “Here there be dragons.”

“Yeah,” replied Mag, “but not for long.”

The room was silent. The half-dozen A-teams, including ODA 574, that were gathered in the ISOFAC briefing chamber had been warned not to talk outside their teams, and nobody wanted to get blackballed from a mission for violating this order. Major Kurt Sonntag, standing next to a white screen onto which was projected a PowerPoint briefing, began to speak.

“This morning we are going to tell you everything we know, which frankly isn’t much. Be patient and don’t beat up your ASTs for information that none of us have. This is not going to be your typical isolation. We will go over your likely mission and discuss what has been going on in Afghanistan since the first ODA tried to infiltrate four days ago. A storm forced the helicopters to turn around, and bad weather has been keeping them grounded, but they should get in very, very soon. We’ll keep you posted.”

Excited whispers filled the room. Their fellow Green Berets from 5th Group were already pulling missions—it was really happening.

Breaking protocol that called for complete secrecy from one team’s mission to the next, Sonntag explained that teams already in place at a forward operating base in Uzbekistan were preparing to link up with warlords of the Northern Alliance. “You won’t be conducting classic unconventional warfare,” said Sonntag. “You won’t be recruiting, organizing, and training the Northern Alliance soldiers—they’ve been doing this for years. We’ll be working alongside them and supporting them. They will guide us to the enemy.”

Seated beside JD, Amerine scribbled notes for the next hour while intel and operations officers took turns briefing the men, but as Sonntag had warned, the information was thin. There was little beyond
a general outline of Northern Alliance safe havens and the names of both Northern Alliance and Taliban leaders.

“What do you think?” JD asked Amerine as they returned to their apartment.

“Get all the guys together in the planning bay. I have an idea how to tackle this,” said Amerine.

“Those are the scariest words a captain can say.”

“It gets scarier.”

While Amerine suspected that this was going to be a long war, he knew that only a few teams were going in right away, which meant they were all competing for a limited number of imminent missions. He had to be creative with his concept for a plan—and ODA 574 needed to lay it out flawlessly. Back in the planning room, he hastily wrote bullet points on an easel before assembling the men.

“Okay,” Amerine said to his team. “Our mission is to ‘conduct unconventional warfare in order to destroy al-Qaeda’s safe haven in Afghanistan.’ Instead of traditional guerrilla warfare, CENTCOM thinks our teams will be linking up with the standing armies of the Northern Alliance in their safe havens to call in air strikes and advise the warlords. That isn’t too hard to plan, so we aren’t going to do it.”

Amerine registered the puzzled looks with a smile.

“We are going to plan an unconventional war from scratch, from making friends with happy little villagers to organizing them as an army of killers and taking them to war. I intend for us to pull a plan out of our asses in five days that will make us marketable for just about any mission they throw at us. With any luck, that will get us out the door first.”

Amerine’s “broad concept” plan proved difficult to construct. The men needed a big-picture analysis of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, their current numbers and locations, leadership structures, and weaponry. If ODA 574 was going to foment a rebellion among the locals, the team would also need detailed reports on Afghanistan’s ethnic geography.

The book
Taliban
by Ahmed Rashid provided the best informa
tion on Afghanistan under that regime.
The Other Side of the Mountain,
a study of Mujahideen tactics compiled by the Marine Corps Combat Command, outlined, among other lessons learned, how the Soviets were repeatedly ambushed at the same locations. As the team sorted through piles of pseudo-intelligence, most of it dredged from Soviet military archives, it became clear that there was barely enough information to write a high-school history report.

JD floated among the men spread out around the room, some seated at desks, others on the floor, assisting when he could. He had compiled a list of questions about Afghanistan, but there were no resources to consult for the answers.

“You would think,” he said to Amerine, “that with Osama bin Laden identified as our greatest terrorist threat, the CIA, DIA, or some alphabet agency would have files on the country where he operates.”

“You’d think.”

“If the intel existed, we’d have it by now, right?”

“I’m thinking the channels are open,” Amerine said. “There’s just nothing to push through.”

On the third day of isolation, Amerine briefed Sonntag, who was impressed with ODA 574’s unique concept for a full-scale unconventional warfare campaign—especially in the absence of hard information. The other teams had chosen to focus their plans on linking up with the standing armies of the Northern Alliance. He told Amerine to press on.

By the fifth day of isolation, the planning room walls were plastered with large sheets of butcher paper bearing the handwritten step-by-step notes that were the blueprint of their plan. By noon the men were ready to deliver a finalized brief when their AST entered the room.

“Congratulations,” said Sergeant Webb. “You don’t need to brief Major Sonntag; you’re already at the top of the pecking order. You can prepare for deployment to Uzbekistan.”

This news elated the team. The men knew their plan was based on spotty intelligence, but—being the “tip of the spear” for the ground forces—they assumed they would receive better intel at a forward base. The metaphor implies a first-offensive thrust followed by a larger force, but in this case there was no planned follow-through.

General Franks had begun the war as an air campaign. When he committed to unconventional warfare, Special Forces became the main effort, and the other units in all the branches of the U.S. military were directed to support them. The Army and Marine Corps were still working on developing a plan that would get large numbers of their conventional forces into the country, but at this time ODA 574 and the rest of 5th Special Forces Group were not just the tip of the spear, they were the entire spear.

Meanwhile, General Franks appeared to second-guess the plan he’d okayed. While Colonel Mulholland was trying to get the first Special Forces teams into the north, Franks openly voiced his doubts to his subordinates. He was confident the Green Berets could buy some time and thus get Rumsfeld off his back, but he directed the Army and Marines to press forward with their plans.

The idea of large-scale reinforcements was comforting to some in Special Forces; others were troubled by the implication that they would be necessary.

Late on the night of October 19, the men of ODA 574 were busy packing gear and sorting through planning materials when the door of their apartment swung open.

Amerine and JD looked up from folding maps at the table to see their AST standing in the doorway, grinning. They could hear chatter from the usually quiet hallway, then a muffled cheer before Webb slammed the door shut behind him.

“What’s up?” asked JD.

“The first teams are on the ground in the northern mountains,” said Webb, “and the Rangers just completed a raid at an airstrip in the south near Kandahar.”

“Damn,” said JD. “Any casualties?”

“No. The Rangers got out clean.”

“Did they nab anybody?” asked Amerine.

“No, but I don’t think they expected to. It was a symbolic strike, a ‘fuck you’ showing the Taliban we can drop into their backyard and
kick them in the nuts. Meanwhile, two ODAs slipped into the north and are with the Northern Alliance.”

Before this, ODA 574 had been skeptical that they would actually have the opportunity to execute missions, but the knowledge that two other A-teams were on the ground sobered the men as they completed their final task before leaving for Uzbekistan: death letters.

Even before he entered isolation, Dan had written a lighthearted letter to his parents and given it to Lloyd Allard to deliver in the event of his death. He had quickly asked for it back and torn it up, saying that his folks would kill him if that was the last they ever heard from him.

Here in the ISOFAC, he began a more serious letter: “Dear Ma and Dad. So sorry you have to be reading this letter today. I guess we can never tell when our time is coming.”

Mike McElhiney wrote three letters, one to his wife, Judith, another to his twelve-year-old daughter, Maria, and the third to his eight-year-old son, Michael Jr.: “I hope Mommy has explained where I am and what I had to do. This war and what has happened to me is for you and all children of your age. I have gone and suffered this fate so you don’t have to. You are now the man of the house and I know this is a big responsibility but when you grow up you will understand. Take care of your mother and sister and I will be watching over you from heaven. I love you always. Your Daddy.”