Hunters: U.S. Snipers in the War on Terror (7 page)

The platoon made the best of their situation. They began night patrols along the coast to interdict hostile vessels. Their boat, an MK V Special Operations Craft, held the entire team and was able to speed at fifty-four miles per hour. As a platoon sniper, Chris normally used his M4 and rotated with other qualified snipers in his platoon for the duty of sniper over-watch. If called upon, Chris would hold sniper over-watch from a helicopter while the rest of his platoon boarded the ship. After three weeks, they had yet to see action, until one night they finally got the call.

The SEALs were hustled into their ship’s cabin. Chris stood in the back listening to the situation.

“There’s a ship that needs to be taken down,” explained their unit commander. “Its name is
Alpha 117
. This ship was used to smuggle explosives into Africa. It destroyed multiple U.S. embassies, killing two hundred and injuring a few thousand people. You’re taking the lead, so jock-up. You guys are going right now!”

The SEALs rushed into action. Chris would not be a sniper on this mission. Instead, he would board the ship with the others. After suiting in essential gear and double-checking their weapons, the SEALs were ready in minutes. Soon they moved onto a smaller vessel, their Rigid Inflatable Boat (RIB), and sped toward the target.

It was pitch black when their RIB closed in on the target ship, already under way. When they pulled alongside it, the pole man hooked the railing, and the SEALs scurried up the ladder onto the deck.

Atop, Chris and six others waited for the rest of the men to climb up. They looked frightening; they all wore black balaclavas to cover their heads and woodland battle dress uniforms, while gripping M4 assault rifles. On their knees, the SEALs held security, but suddenly the cabin door swung open.

“Open door!” yelled one of the SEALs, and the team flooded toward it.

The man opening the door was smashed in the face and knocked over. Chris pulled him out of the way to let the other SEALs rush inside. He quickly zip-tied the prisoner’s hands and feet, and when the man began struggling, another SEAL, Chris’s cover man, bounced his head against the deck, yelling for him to “Stay down.”

Chris was assigned to the engine room team. He passed the prisoner off and fell in with three other team members. Their movement through the ship was fluid. They had trained a thousand times for ship takedowns, and now that it was real, they were well prepared. The heat from the ship had Chris sweating profusely, and when they entered the engine room, it was even worse.

Three men were working inside the engine room. When the SEALs ran in, the men lifted their hands and surrendered. Within three minutes, the ship was under control of the SEALs, and after they moved the ship’s crew to the back deck, a thorough search of the entire ship was done. Though no shots were fired, Chris enjoyed the mission more than any others. This was a true SEAL mission and at the time applicable only to the men of Naval Special Warfare. He even enjoyed the mission over his time in Afghanistan.

By late 2001, Chris’s team had been re-tasked. They were flown into Oman, a country on the Arabian Peninsula. Naval Special Warfare would be involved with a special unit hunting and tracking high-value targets in Afghanistan. SEAL Team Three, Echo Platoon, would be part of the group, and Chris’s platoon was headed to the desert.

With their new land warfare mission, the SEALs began preparing. Painted weapons and equipment lay in their berthing area, and at that time, most of the SEALs had not used Humvees before. Chris, having been a Marine, was very familiar with them. With the help of another platoon from SEAL Team Three and a platoon from SEAL Team Eight, he helped to train his platoon on night driving, basic mechanical skills, and immediate action drills. He also pulled out his sniper rifles. He had a .300 Winchester Magnum and an M14 with match-grade ammo. Should he need them, they would be good tools for the distances of Afghanistan.

Task Force K-bar was their new assignment. This elite group was formed with Special Operations units from seven different countries. The Task Force was given the mission to destroy, degrade, and neutralize the leadership of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. They learned of terrorist training camps, bomb-making factories, civilian and enemy personnel, and where to find al-Qaeda and the Taliban. They were to be on the hunt the entire time. Chris’s platoon, in particular, would be hunting in the eastern region of the country. There they expected difficult terrain and cold weather.

Echo Platoon touched down at Kandahar Airport in late December 2001. Right away the cold was felt. Three hours before, the temperature had been over 120°F; now it was just above 60°F. The SEALs were given no time to acclimate. The enemy needed to be hunted, and the SEALs needed to get into action.

Before Chris’s arrival, the Taliban had been removed from power. The Northern Alliance and their allies, U.S. Special Forces, and CIA operatives had pushed the Taliban from the major cities, while al-Qaeda had been driven to the countryside. However, a few hours north of Kandahar, in the Paktika Province, al-Qaeda had regrouped near the town of Khost.

That group occupied the Zhawar Kili cave complex. This complex was an enormous expanse of underground tunnels, with compounds and buildings nearby. Its use was for holding supplies and terrorist training camps, and for storing ammunition and troops. Al-Qaeda leadership also planned their missions there. Initially, an Army Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) team was tasked with the mission, but certain events led to Chris’s platoon from SEAL Team Three taking over. They, along with a few attachments, were dispatched to clear the caves.

Bobby was excited about Afghanistan, but his first deployment there saw limited sniper operations. Before leaving Fort Bragg, his team learned that they would be doing FID, or Foreign Internal Defense, training. Essentially, they would teach the Afghanistan National Army how to fight; it was just the type of mission especially suited for Special Forces soldiers.

FID is one of many missions for an Operational Detachment Alpha. A-teams are comprised of twelve men, expertly trained at infiltrating remote, hostile countries, finding friendly local-nationals, and training them on weapons and tactics. Each member learns this during five extremely difficult training phases known as the Q-course. Those who pass earn the eighteen-series military occupational specialties and the honor to be called a Green Beret. For Bobby, the training had happened years ago, and now he would be putting it to use.

His A-team arrived in Afghanistan’s capital city, Kabul. Right away, they met the indigenous troops they would be training. The job was tricky business for the SF soldiers. Bobby was honored to train the very first troops of the new Afghan government, but there was a harsh reality behind it. The possibility of al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents infiltrating the ranks to learn the Army’s capabilities and strategies was highly likely, but the job had to be done.

Bobby was one of the two 18Bs, weapons sergeants, in his team. His expertise dealt with the employment of several types of weapons both foreign and domestic. They included small arms, light and heavy crew-served weapons, and antiaircraft and antiarmor weapons. He had also become proficient with sniper rifles before joining SF.

In the Eighty-second Airborne Division, Bobby had been in a scout platoon. There, he was given the chance at scout/sniper school at Fort Benning, Georgia. The elite of the infantry, the scouts made up the reconnaissance and sniping element for the battalion. Bobby’s conclusion about sniping was simple. Just as with the animals he had killed for food growing up, if he had to, he would snipe another human and with no problems.

From Ranger school to sniper school, Bobby was bound for another dreadful adventure. The students stayed in a barracks built in World War II. Within seventy-two hours of arriving, Bobby and the others were forced to make ghillie suits from scratch. From there, students dropped from the course like flies after failing stalking and shooting. Bobby was no stranger to scoped weapons. He had hunted with them since childhood in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He enjoyed the challenge of shooting targets at extended ranges, even when he was forced to find the distances during the unknown distance phase of the training.

His most memorable experience, though, was the FTX, or the Final Training Exercise. For a week straight, the students were forced to use everything they had learned. Planning, patrolling, stalking, reporting, and the final exercise: one shot at an unknown distance target. After six long weeks, Bobby graduated sniper school and received the B4, sniper identifier military occupational specialty.

In Kabul, Bobby’s team trained Afghan troops for three months. He’d taken six months of Arab language instruction but spoke none of the tribal languages of Afghanistan and needed an interpreter to teach patrolling, ambushes, and ways to use terrain and heavy weapons to advantage. Teaching indigenous troops is fun, but not as satisfying as hunting enemy troops, and Bobby was relieved to hear that after the third month, his team would be transferred to do just that.

From Kabul, Bobby’s team convoyed south to Kandahar, the last stronghold of the Taliban among Afghanistan’s thirty-four provinces. Special Operations Forces were sent to track the remaining leaders. Bobby’s team arrived to be part of a joint task force operation, a mission to apprehend high-value targets.

The nearby town of Deh Rawod supported the Taliban. Mullah Mohammed Omar, the supreme leader of the Taliban, and other Taliban leaders had family in the area and trusted the town as a sanctuary. U.S. Special Operations, foreign coalition forces, and Afghan troops would search the town for the leaders or any other Taliban militants. For the operation, Bobby’s team was to conduct a visual recon of the town in advance of the main force and, if need be, to guide bombs onto targets. Bobby, in particular, acted as the sniper in his team, and though he didn’t engage, the operation was the perfect example of how snipers perform.

On subsequent nights, Bobby, his team, two Air Force tactical air controllers, and two communications soldiers (to intercept radio traffic) infiltrated the mountains around the town. On their way in, the helicopters took fire from Anti-Aircraft Artillery (AAA) weapons inside Deh Rawod, but the team landed safely at around eleven thousand feet elevation. Immediately one of the communications soldiers showed signs of altitude sickness. He was dizzy, had a headache, and couldn’t walk more than a few hundred feet before becoming completely fatigued. Bobby had an M24 sniper rifle and a week’s worth of equipment on his back, as did the other soldiers, but they took turns carrying the sick soldier’s hundred-pound pack, making the already tough three-kilometer (two-mile) movement even more grueling.

The men were in position before daybreak. Bobby helped to blend the team’s location into the mountainside. Their hide encompassed everyone and kept them all unseen, and Bobby easily observed the town, five kilometers away. While watching the area, they noticed that as friendly aircraft flew nearby, antiaircraft artillery came to life from inside the town and attempted to down the planes. On the night when ground forces proceeded to insert, AAA weapons became the main threat as the troops traveled into the town by helicopters. When Bobby’s team reported the activity, the word came back to direct air support onto the positions, giving the tactical air controllers free rein.

The compounds were leveled before Bobby’s eyes. When the dust cleared, the damage was irreparable. Taliban fighters commonly hid behind civilians, but Bobby was shocked to find that the fighters had strategically placed the AAA weapons close to the civilian population in hopes that they would not be targeted. As a result, civilians were hit and lives were lost. It was not the type of outcome Special Forces soldiers enjoyed, but though the incident was tragic, after the bombings AAA weapons did not fire at Coalition Forces again.

Ever ready at a moment’s notice, Bobby and his team traveled north to Asadabad. They moved in specially configured Humvees known as Ground Mobility Vehicles (GMVs), fitted with little to no armor, to keep the vehicles faster. The treacherous roads made it hard for the normal, armored Humvees to navigate, and SF soldiers didn’t trust them to go off-road into sand and other difficult terrain. The GMVs didn’t have doors and had three mounted weapons, one .50-cal and two M240 machine guns, bringing much more firepower to the fight than the normal vehicles.

While patrolling near Asadabad, Bobby survived his first IED attack. He was manning the .50-cal on the road, when right beside them on the road an IED exploded. In the explosion, shrapnel peppered the entire vehicle and dust covered the road. Bobby’s driver punched the gas and sent them off the edge of a ravine and down the side of a hill. Miraculously nobody was hit, but a passenger broke his arm in the crash.

Bobby also learned the differences in cultural customs there. The locals still lived in the Stone Age. They had never seen the weapons, gear, or equipment the U.S. military had, especially SF. Also, the treatment of women and children by the men was severe. Once, Bobby’s team patrolled through a small town, and while driving, Bobby waved at a little girl, who smiled back with a wave. When her father saw that, he picked up a stone and hit her in the head with it, knocking her down. Bobby reacted on instinct; he kicked the driver and told him to stop. Before he climbed out of the GMV, he grabbed his M4, then stormed up to the man, barrel punching him in the chest.

“Tell this man, if he ever does that again, we’ll leave him in the desert to die!” he yelled to the interpreter. Bobby thought about his own daughter and could not imagine doing anything like that to her.

Another time, he witnessed the strength of the kids. His team was at a remote outpost, in very bad weather. The wind blew so hard that their fire flickered sidewise. Bobby was in the best cold weather gear available on the market. He was wrapped in sweaters, thermals, hiking boots, and jackets, but he was still cold and moved closer to the flame. When he looked beside him, a six-year-old boy in a tattered sweatshirt, sweatpants, and rubber boots was amused that the American soldiers were cold, because he was not in the slightest bit.