Service: A Navy SEAL at War (29 page)

Wookie copied Mercury’s order while he was making a gun
run on a Taliban fighting position. Focused on the target in front of him, he alerted his flight lead as a matter of course: “Two’s in hot”—meaning that he was about to open fire. This news put Mercury into a minor panic. He was expecting a simple acknowledgment. Thinking that Wookie had heard him wrong and was preparing to blast the landing zone with high explosives instead, Mercury shouted, “Negative! Abort! Use your laser marker, not the gun!”

Recognizing the harmless confusion, Wookie smiled. Coolly finishing his strafing run, he pulled his aircraft into a climb and turned it sharply onto its right wing. Then he activated his targeting pod and slaved it to the coordinates for the LZ. Even in his elite peer group, Wookie’s touch at the stick was exceptional, but a divine hand must have guided him, too. The mass of low-level clouds down on the deck was still substantial, but there was an opening in that thick carpet, right where we needed it to be. When Wookie triggered his targeting laser, that small patch of open sky was passing right between his aircraft and the landing zone. Luckily for me, the critical window stayed open for about twelve seconds and his beam hit it dead center.

Still hovering, Spanky saw the beam shine down through the hole in the clouds. As his copilot, Dave Gonzales, would say, it was like the finger of God marking the landing zone with infrared light.

The two helo crews had gotten the idea from aerial photography that the LZ was about the size of a football field—an easy mark for an experienced HH-60 driver. However, owing to the optical illusions created by the satellite camera’s angle, they had no idea how steep and tight it really was—a small shelf in the mountain near a cluster of gingerbread huts. Spanky knew that
no sane pilot would ever try landing there, even by day. It was nearly midnight. As he made his final approach, a warning came over his headset: “Known enemy one hundred meters south of your position.” The back of his neck prickled—the LZ was just as hot as they feared it would be. But there was no backing out now.

This close to landing, a pilot and crew have to work as a team. The pilot has his hands on the stick, controlling the helicopter’s three axes of movement. The copilot is on the throttles, ready to pull emergency power and get out of Dodge. The flight engineer monitors the engines and other systems, while the gunner and the PJs in back stay alert for any obstacles and follow the aircraft’s progress toward touchdown, talking to the pilot all the way. If, for example, the gunner says, “Stop left,” the pilot knows he has to correct his leftward drift immediately. This is tough to do by day, much harder at night, and just about impossible when the helicopter, as it did at that moment, starts kicking up a storm of sand and dirt with the downwash of its rotors. Spanky was lost in a brownout, flying totally blind.

It was after 11:30 p.m. when I saw the helo approaching the ledge, descending, descending, then holding, and holding, and holding… Just above the brownout, I could locate Spanky’s main rotor by the luminescent disk it sparked in the sky, fifty-four feet in diameter—a disk made by the friction of the titanium blade tips striking particles of sand and dirt. Seen through NVGs, it was a floating green halo, standing in the night.

The danger meter was pegged all the way to the right. If Spanky touched one of his tires down on the ground while the bird had any sideways drift, it would roll over into the mountain. If it drifted too far left, it would pile into the cliff’s stony face,
burying its rotors and balling up in flames on the ledge. If it rolled right, it would fall straight off the precipice, plunging to the rocks fifteen hundred feet below—or falling right down on top of us.

Huddled with T.O., Gulab, and the rest of the Army team just below the landing zone, on the other side of that low stucco-and-rock wall, we pulled as much of the prayer load as we could. Let me tell you, I’ve never taken such a bath of flying crud in all my life. The helicopter’s twin engines, producing more than three thousand shaft horsepower between them, made an unending metallic scream, loud enough to drown out all thought. If the darkest place in the world was that Persian Gulf sewer pipe that Master Chief had explored, the loudest place in the world is right in the dust-choked footprint of a landing helicopter.

Even all these years later, some of the events that night remain a bit of a blur. I think there were troops in contact not far away from us. I believe the LZ itself—that is, we—may even have been taking some fire, though it was hard to tell in all the noise and dust. The Air Force was still working a few ridgelines nearby. And right there above us, in the middle of it all, the helicopter’s crew was keeping calm and collected as they called adjustments to Spanky over the radio headset. The space they occupied between life and death was narrow. But I guess their legacy was assured. If they died here on this mountain, they would go out as heroes, pushing a daring mission to the limit. And if they lived, well, the result would speak for itself. Heroes all around.

As the calls of “Stop left” and “Stop right” became increasingly urgent, several of the crew in back lay down flat on the deck of the crew compartment—standard aviation fieldcraft for anyone looking to avoid a fractured spine. Though as calm as he
could be, Spanky couldn’t prevent thoughts of his wife, Penny, and his four sons from pushing through.

Though the finger of God—also known as Wookie’s targeting laser—had shown Spanky the way, yet another heavenly sign arrived. Through the cyclonic vortex, Spanky suddenly saw something ahead and to the side: the trembling branches of a shrub of some kind. I think his rotors must have washed half the dirt off that mountainside before it was possible for him to see it. But there it fluttered, fixed in space and calling to him like a sign from the Old Testament. As I said, sometimes you have to let a situation develop. With the shrub as a visual reference, Spanky adjusted to a steady hover and eased nineteen thousand pounds of steel to the earth. The two Air Force PJs bounded out of the helicopter’s right-side door as soon as it landed.

Time for us to move, too. As T.O. slapped me on the leg, I rose to my feet, knowing in the back of my mind that if there were any enemy nearby, they would be sure to send an RPG downrange and blow us all to kingdom come. As Gulab and I came over the stucco wall and began walking toward the helo from behind, the more immediate danger, of course, was getting our heads split in half by the spinning tail rotor. It was hard to figure out where the aircraft even was.

Looking for their prize, the PJs saw us approaching them, about fifty meters away. I was dressed in a pair of Gulab’s “man jammies”—traditional local garb—just like a mujahideen. Gulab was looking a little bit fierce, too, I’m sure. Both of the pararescuemen, Chris Piercecchi and Josh Appel, were based in Arizona. When 9/11 happened, Chris (known as “Checky”) had retired from a 1990s stint in the PJs and was working as a paramedic
with the Albuquerque fire department. Then the crumbling towers in New York called him back to full-time service in the reserves. Josh had just finished medical school at the University of Arizona en route to becoming an emergency-room doctor. When the war started getting hot, he had the same feeling Checky did: there were greater challenges out there, and more valuable ways for him to serve. That was Josh’s route into the elite pararescue community.

I was glad to see them—except that they almost killed me before they saved me. Suspecting we were hostiles, Checky and Josh dropped the Stokes litter they were carrying and drew their M4s. Through the monocular night-vision scope mounted on his helmet over his left eye, Checky studied our hazy green figures hobbling toward him and put the infrared dot of his laser sight on my chest. He saw I was armed, but the way I was holding my rifle—stock in hand, barrel pointing toward the ground—gave him the small margin of comfort he needed to keep from blowing me away in an instant. They didn’t shoot. They let the situation develop.

When I stumbled and fell while approaching them, they noticed a third figure behind us. One of the PJs fixed his laser on this new presence—producing bright glare off the IR-reflective American flag on the figure’s chest. It was T.O.’s Old Glory patch, glowing green in Checky’s NVGs, that saved us. The PJs knew in that instant that he was one of theirs. The state of alarm downshifted from red to orange, so to speak.

Checky rushed toward us, raising his forearm and stiff-arming us to keep us from blundering into the tail rotor. (Now
that
would have made for a hell of an ending to the Redwing story,
though you can bet it never would’ve made the papers.) He grabbed T.O. by his harness, pulled him close, and above the whine of turboshaft engines yelled, “Where’s the package?”

The Ranger medic pointed at me. “Here’s your valuable cargo!”

Checky turned to me and asked, “Who’s your favorite superhero?”

Both PJs had memorized my ISOPREP form, the compilation of personal data that’s kept on file for all special operations personnel and is used to authenticate our identities.

My reply—Spider-Man—matched my ISOPREP form and ensured my passage to safety. Thanks, Spidey.

Checky brought Gulab and me to the side door of the helo. I saw that about a dozen crates of bottled water and MREs were in the compartment with us. (No vodka. Still, it was full-service rescue.) There was no room for twenty soldiers in a small HH-60, of course, so the Rangers and Green Berets were going to stay behind. The helo’s crew pushed those crates out the side door and hoped they could make do till a larger Chinook could come get them.

As we took off, I never shook loose the fear that we were all soon going to get hit by an RPG. But we had angels on our shoulder: a two-ship element of A-10 Warthogs in a holding pattern to our west, ready to light up the mountainside again should the enemy make a move, and an AC-130, playing quarterback from on high. All were listening for news that the pilot had been successful. Finally confirming that he had rescued us, Spanky broadcast, “Popcorn plus two,” indicating that the rescue bird was taking off—popping like corn—along with two additional passengers. Panic flared over the number of people Spanky
took aboard. Some were expecting just me (“Popcorn plus one”) and feared that the extra passenger might have been a muj wearing a suicide vest. Finally it was straightened out—Gulab was legit—and the A-10 flight lead announced to everyone: “All players, this is Sandy One. Home run! Home run!”

Checky leaned over and asked me if I needed anything. He checked my vital signs. Then he let out a deep breath and looked at me closely for a moment. We both registered the intensity of the hours just passed. He grasped my hand and shook it. His eyes still fixed on mine, he said, “Welcome home, brother.”

A skeleton version of this story appeared in
Lone Survivor,
but I wanted to revisit it here because, when I was working on that book, I didn’t know the men who had saved me and didn’t understand what a close-run thing it had been for them to pull it off. Wrapped up in our busy lives since that night, we haven’t spent much time together. I can’t claim to know them as well as I do my teammates. But they have a story that deserves to be told. I consider them members of my extended family, a family of warfighters brought together by tragic circumstances. They belong proudly to the larger family of those who have served their country by putting themselves in harm’s way. This story is my small tribute to all who wear Air Force blue.

During the short flight to Asadabad, I held Gulab as though he were my own son. We were sitting on the deck of the helo right behind Spanky, with my head leaning against the skin of the aircraft. Gulab was seated between my legs with his arms wrapped around my calves. My left arm was wrapped around his head, my right hand on my rifle. I was overcome with gratitude
and sorrow, and Gulab was scared nearly to death. During this, his first ride in a helicopter, the dynamic between us had switched 180 degrees. He had been my protector in his world. Now, in mine, I was his. He had been a tower of strength in my time of need. Now he cowered at my feet. I held him tight. I told him, “It will be okay. I promise.” That was when Checky turned to me and shouted above the engine noise, “We have to stop and drop off Gulab.”

What? I was shocked that the man who had saved me was to be taken from my company. The military had different plans for us.

When we landed at A-bad and the door opened, Checky took Gulab and they stepped out of the helicopter. Gulab hesitated and tried to make his way back toward me, but the door was slid shut in his face. I never was able to say good-bye to him. I yelled at Checky through the door, “Take good care of him.” He shouted back, “I will. Like my own family.”

At the time, Checky didn’t know much more than I did about the Afghan people. He certainly didn’t know Gulab. I think he considered him dangerous. Leaving the flight line, the PJ grabbed him by the upper arm, took control of him, and directed him toward the ops center. Passing through the gate in the nearly pitch-dark night, Checky tripped on some rocks. Feeling Gulab pull away from him, he became alarmed. Was the strange Afghan making a move? As Checky lost his balance, the Afghan reached down, grabbed his hand, and pulled him back to his feet. It turned out all Gulab wanted to do was save him from a hard fall. It’s exactly what the rescue team had just done for me.

The emotions of the rescue’s endgame were overwhelming for everyone involved, but as is so often the case, there was no time
to sit back and reflect on what had happened. With hardly a pause, everyone piled back on board the helicopter for a short flight to Jalalabad air base. When they landed, Spanky’s helo had just five minutes of fuel left. I was transloaded to an MC-130 for the flight back to Bagram, where the odyssey of Operation Redwing had begun more than a week earlier.

When they strapped me down, the docs went to work. I remember how calming it was to hear a woman’s voice asking me if I was in a lot of pain. After I nodded my head, she said, “I will fix that, sweetie.” It reminded me of how my mother would take care of me when I was sick. I never learned her name or had a chance to thank her, but if she reads this, I hope this belated thank-you will do.