Hunters: U.S. Snipers in the War on Terror (8 page)

At the end of seven months, Bobby returned to Fort Bragg. It was a relief to get back to his wife and to be in the States again. A month later, however, he was back to training, and went through the Special Operations Target Interdiction Course. It was a gentleman’s course, considering that the students were not physically destroyed by the instructors. They didn’t need to be, though, because most of the students had already passed the Q-course. By the time they entered SOTIC, they had proven themselves physically, and the instructors wasted no time smoking the soldiers. Instead, they focused on training, and that was how most SF schools happened.

The Zhawar Kili caves were frightening. In January 2002, Chris’s platoon; two Navy explosive ordnance disposal techs; two Air Force combat controllers; an Army nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare soldier; fifty marines; and two FBI agents were set to move in. The group was informed that bombs had destroyed everything and that they would be assessing battle damage on the area. DNA samples, fingerprints, fingernails, and hair samples were to be collected to see if any high-value targets had been killed. It was likely that al-Qaeda was still in the region, and possibly even Osama bin Laden was still there.

The flight to the area took three hours. The teams were shuttled in by CH-53 Sea Stallions and dropped seven miles from the objective. Sparse vegetation sprinkled the barren landscape, and it was amazing that anyone wanted to live in such a remote location. The world’s most sought after terrorists, however, had no choice. This was their backyard.

Within the group, each unit had separate objectives. The marines would hold security for everyone, while the SEALs were to do the cave clearing. The explosive ordnance disposal sailors would destroy any explosives found, the combat controllers would direct air support, and the FBI agents would examine the dead. When they finally reached the area, they realized that the bombs had done little to no damage to the tunnels and infrastructures.

The caves were dug into a cliff on the side of a small riverbed. Above the cliff was a small village. Other small buildings were in the riverbed. As the team closed in, Chris noticed that the cave entrances were semi-buried. The bombs had missed their targets and had thrown dirt everywhere. The combat controllers marked the smaller entrances with a GPS, and when they reached the main tunnels, the SEALs prepared to enter.

Searching the caves was nerve-wracking. It would be close-quarters combat if anyone inside decided to fight. Chris anticipated everything from enemy fighters to land mines. To add to the stress, when he started in, the light from his surefire flashlight disappeared in the blackness.

The tunnels were big enough to drive a truck through. The SEALs pushed inside while the marines held the high ground outside. Chris stuck close to the man in front of him but could not see much in the darkness. He prayed that they would not step on any booby traps. As they made their way deeper, the SEALs began to discover random items.

“Look,” said Chris’s teammate, motioning to the ground.

Chris glanced down at a human foot in the dirt. Moments later, they came upon a jail cell, complete with bars and locks. Next, they found small rooms. Chris entered while others held security. His light revealed boxes upon boxes, stacked from the floor to the ceiling, full of small arms ammunition.

Throughout the caves, the SEALs found more weapons and explosives, enough to supply a small army. Surface-to-air missiles were uncovered along with tanks and Russian-made amphibious track vehicles known as BMPs. They found rifles, land mines, mortars, and radios. By the end of the clearings, Chris was amazed at the inventory. They found literally hundreds of thousands of rounds of small arms ammunition, thousands of rifles, tens of thousands of mortars and land mines, but there were no bodies or men. The occupiers must have fled into Pakistan, only three kilometers (two miles) away.

After hours in the caves, the group prepared to patrol back to their pickup point. Before leaving, they marked the locations of the cave entrances and the vehicles for follow-on bombing. All the while, the FBI agents attached had not found bodies to examine. It was no surprise to them, knowing that in the enemy’s culture, burials happened within twenty-four hours of death. The problem was that when the commander learned that no dead had been found, he canceled the extract ten minutes before pickup and ordered the group back for further searching.

The group decided to hole up in the village built on the hill above them. Chris should have known that nothing in war ever happens as planned. He had packed for a twelve-hour mission, but now there was no telling how long it could take.

Under darkness, the men patrolled back. When they arrived, Chris and two other SEALs were sent to search the buildings inside the village. The area was empty and the group took one of the buildings. Inside, a small cooking stove was used for warmth as nobody had brought any sleeping materials. Within a few minutes the men were fast asleep.

While they slept, AC-130 Spectre gunships patrolled overhead. Their thermal imagery spotted militants nearby and killed them. Within hours, the men on the ground were directed to search the remains of the dead. Before sunrise, the group split into two elements. Chris would be with the group searching the dead a few kilometers away.

They arrived before daybreak at the spot of the bombing. The AC-130 retreated to base, no longer having night to cover it. Another reconnaissance aircraft guided the team onto the location. When they neared the position the AC-130 had bombed, their radio cracked up.

“You guys should be standing on the bodies,” said the radio operator on the aircraft, but there were no dead in sight.

Everyone stopped and took a knee. Chris and the others set security while the platoon commander began to scout the area. Within seconds, voices sounded behind Chris’s team.

“Go to ground,” whispered the platoon commander, immediately sending the SEALs prone and hugging the dirt.

Chris searched for the voices. They came from a group of men he thought were close to 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) away and climbing from a cave with weapons.

“Hey, man, how far do you think they are?” the platoon commander asked Chris.

“About a thousand meters,” Chris replied, but he misjudged the distance. With the rolling hills, it was hard to determine the range.

“Call in an air strike,” the officer said to a combat controller.

Minutes later, F-18s flew in hot. The whistle of falling bombs had everyone in the team watching. They all witnessed the bombs miss their mark low and to the left.

The next bird on station was a B-52. It was close to dropping its ordnance, but the pilot wanted the SEALs’ location first. The last thing the SEALs wanted was to give their coordinates to the bomber, especially when months earlier Army SF soldiers were killed after being accidentally targeted in a similar scenario.

The team did not give their coordinates and the planes would not drop bombs. It took the authorization from the platoon commander and his stating that he would take responsibility for the placement of the ordnance for the pilots to send their payload. Only after the officer stated his initials over the radio were the bombs released.

Meanwhile, the SEALs shot at the militants. At the distance, effects on targets were difficult to gauge. Chris had his M4 with a scope made for close-quarters combat and tried his best to apply Kentucky windage to get a hit. Surprisingly, the militants had no clue where the fire came from and did not run. They stayed very close to the cave entrance and began searching for the origin of the shooting.

“Bombs away. Impact forty-five seconds,” said the radio operator on the B-52.

Chris braced for impact behind a small mound of dirt. When they hit, the fourteen Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) sounded like popcorn raking the mountainside. One landed five hundred meters from the group. The ground rumbled underneath them. The bomb fell at such close proximity that rocks and pebbles landed around them. When the dust settled, half of the mountainside had collapsed upon itself, and trees and brush were ablaze.

“Let’s go,” said the officer in charge.

The men quickly headed to assess the damage. Less than a hundred yards away, they came upon a small house. When they noticed it, the men rushed to the entrance and cleared the building. Inside, jugs of water and wooden trunks loaded with passports, money, and freshly pressed clothes lay about. Since everyone had prepared for a twelve-hour mission, Chris’s team had drunk most of their water. The jugs in the room were heaven-sent, allowing everyone to top off his canteen. As they left, they marked the house with a GPS and headed for the mountainside.

When they reached the craters, smoldering rubble was all that was left.

“Did we even hit these guys?” questioned Chris. There were no bodies anywhere.

As they walked up the hill, a small cutout room was left. Stacks of blankets, cooking wear, and rifles were inside. The SEALs broke the cooking wear, took the rifles, and moved on. A mound of rubble was all that remained of the main entrance to the cave where the men had been spotted. Black, smoldering trees around the area held shards of burned clothing. Unknown to the SEALs, a P-3 Orion had recorded the bombing and revealed twelve to fifteen men completely obliterated. After a quick search, the team patrolled back and rejoined the other group. As they left the area, they called in an air strike on the small house they had searched.

Their time in the area lasted a total of nine days. The SEALs took follow-on missions to search the surrounding area and nearby towns as well. On day three, they were resupplied, and Chris’s sniper rifle was flown in. A few days later, the men moved to clear a village close by, and there Chris and another SEAL provided sniper over-watch.

On the morning of the mission, while it was still dark, Chris and the other sniper set out for the village. They planned to watch the area in advance of the main effort. It was eerie patrolling in the hills, just the two of them. By daybreak, they were above the village, hidden among rocks. Their old maps did not give them an accurate picture of their initial position. It was a cliff face, and they moved to their secondary position.

Hours later, Chris watched the group search the village. He and his partner calculated several different ranges in case they had to engage, but there wasn’t much action. The village was empty, and the main effort filed out of the area. Chris and his partner covered their movement and prepared to meet them, but before they left, Chris’s man-tracking skills came into play. He noticed fresh footprints on a goat trail leading in the opposite direction. The two of them wanted to see where the tracks led and radioed their commander.

“We’ve got fresh tracks here,” Chris said. “We’re gonna follow them.”

They received the OK and moved out. On the trail, Chris was worried. He carried only a bolt-action sniper rifle, and if they made contact, he’d be stuck with a single-shot weapon. The trail led them down a hill and directly into a cache of clothing and three sleeping bags. Clearly the owners of the materials had tried hiding them. Chris marked the position with his GPS and kept walking. Soon, the trail split into two, one aimed toward Pakistan, while the other led to another nearby village. The SEALs took the trail toward the village. As they patrolled, Chris’s partner suddenly stopped him.

“Look,” he said, pointing at a bunker.

Thankfully, nobody was manning it, or Chris would have been dead. The hidden bunker was big enough for five guys. Inside were a fire pit, logs, and cooking materials. Chris also marked the bunker with his GPS and recorded the coordinates to the village. When they were finished, the two snipers patrolled back and met up with the rest of their unit. That night, a surveillance plane monitored the village that Chris and his partner had stumbled upon. Radio traffic indicated that Taliban militants held meetings there. They arrived that evening in two trucks. The surveillance plane recorded as bombs hit the vehicles, chalking up more kills for the SEALs.

By the ninth day, the SEALs had achieved the remarkable. They had collected an enormous amount of intelligence, discovered more than seventy caves, and called in nonstop air strikes for days. Being among the first Americans in the region, the mission was surreal for Chris. Thinking of all the 9/11 coverage on TV and all the talk of payback, he realized he was actually in the place al-Qaeda terrorists called home and presumably the area where the hijackers were trained. Although he would have liked to have had more trigger time with the sniper rifle, he had acted as a sniper and made it out alive.

When the mission was complete, the group headed back to base. They had completed two months of ship takedowns and four months of ground warfare in Afghanistan, and now it was time to head home.

SF soldiers are perfect for PSD, or Personal Security Detail. Specialized training makes ODA teams exceptional at protecting high-profile dignitaries; however, most SF soldiers will tell you that these missions are not preferred, and for two reasons. One, the soldiers are almost always on the defense, and two, usually there is not much action. On his second tour to Afghanistan, Bobby’s team was tasked with training the men who would be protecting the newly elected Afghanistan president, Hamid Karzai.

Bobby had graduated SOTIC months before and could now put the tactics to use. In Kabul, he and civilian snipers from DynCorp International, a security contracting company, trained indigenous troops on the role of marksmen during personal security. Their focus concentrated heavily on counter-sniper roles, specifically for protection.

Most times, when the president traveled, Bobby and his group moved into the intended area days in advance. He taught the indigenous troops to set up landing zones for the president and how to scout the area where he would be staying. Normally, the snipers would observe the area from rooftops for days, and then secure the area before the president arrived. There is much to consider during counter-sniper operations, especially for PSD. Searching for possible enemy shooting positions, ambush sites, routes and routines, and suspicious activity is what counter-snipings is about. Spending hours behind a scope, meticulously combing buildings and roads exhausted Bobby. Fortunately, he enjoyed the company of his teammates, and they passed the time talking about family or home.