Victory Point (14 page)

That left Wood with two alternatives. The first would have him plan the operation with the direct-action and associated cordon phase going down during daylight hours, using Sabre. But based on Priddy’s earlier counseling on the ISR of the Korangal, Tom knew that the insurgent and terrorist cells would know immediately that an operation was imminent as Marines who would form the operation’s blocking positions would almost certainly tip off the innumerable “eyes” of the hills throughout the region as the grunts readied to move. Most Afghans in Kunar’s mountains run their lives with the sun—up at dawn, to sleep just after dusk—a nighttime insert would best position the Marines for surprise, leaving Wood with just one option: Task Force Brown, the in-country designation of the Special Operations Air Regiment (Airborne), or 160th SOAR(A)—the “Night Stalkers.”

One of the most secretive of USSOCOM’s units, the 160th hails from Army SOF and primarily supports direct-action hard-hit units—inserting special operations personnel for shockingly fast counterterror and other surgical-strike operations—often by fastrope, which their helicopters have special modifications to quickly deploy. The aviators of the 160th aren’t just capable of low-illum missions, they fly, with rare exception,
only
at night, seeing the world before them through the most advanced visualization equipment available. In Afghanistan, TF-Brown flew the MH-47D and MH-47E Chinooks, comprehensively modified conventional CH-47 Chinooks (hence the M designation) giving the craft higher speeds (faster than even attack helicopters), extended range, and heavier armaments and more robust onboard defense systems, among a number of other attributes. Wood saw TF-Brown as the vital cornerstone for his mission concept’s success. But the 160th fell under SOF rules, and therefore, by doctrine, the Night Stalkers couldn’t theoretically support ⅔. But Wood felt that CJSOTF-A could make a reasonable exception, as he wasn’t seeking to control a ground SOF element, but an aviation support unit. The operations officer, fiercely devoted to the young enlisted “trigger puller” Marines who would carry out his plans, had to formulate a mission that was tactically rock solid from a command and control perspective, but one where the Marines who would undertake the actual operation would have the best available chances of success and survivability. The OpsO would have to scrap his plan for a conventional-forces-only operation and begin anew with a plan that utilized TF-Brown—but to what extent would he be forced to compromise the rigid command and control structure he knew to be vital to get support from the 160th? As the days ticked away and the intel on Shah trickled in, he would find his answer.

That intel trickle would roar to a torrent of information—actionable, specific information—that would allow Wood to finalize his plan within just a few weeks. ⅔’s main element had wasted no time jumping into the campaign throughout their respective provinces as they arrived in Afghanistan, keeping at least 50 percent of the Marines of each base on patrols at all times—through the mountains, in the towns and villages of the provinces, sleeping, eating, and living with the Afghans themselves. And while sophisticated SIGINT mechanisms churned away for Westerfield, his big payoff came as a dividend of this outside-the-wire mind-set when Second Lieutenant Regan Turner, commander of Whiskey Company’s Second Platoon, ventured into the village of Khewa, about ten miles northeast of Jalalabad in the Kuz Kunar district of Nangarhar province in mid-June, just after the official turnover of authority to ⅔ from 3/3. Turner, a quick-witted and disarming officer whose natural charm transcends pretty much all language and cultural barriers, scored what would be the first of a small number of pivotal interviews with credible intel sources during a meeting with elders in the small village. Removing his flak jacket, ballistic glasses, and helmet to best engage the elders at the
shura
meeting through eye contact and nonintimidating body posturing, Turner and his interpreter sat and drank tea with the locals as the group went through rounds of introductions.

About thirty minutes into the meeting, Turner met a man named L.C. (his actual name omitted for security reasons) who proudly stated that he fought the Soviets as a mujahideen and then took up arms against the Taliban—whom L.C. despised so much that he sacrificed three years with his family in order to fight against the much-hated group. Regan, a diligent student of the region’s history, smiled that he was now sitting face-to-face with a warrior who not only helped fend off the Communists, but fought against those who willfully harbored Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks. Taking a very easy, relatively passive approach to his HUMINT work (at first), Turner didn’t ask L.C. a single intel question during their introduction—and as it turned out, he didn’t have to: within a minute of their meeting each other, the former mujahideen uttered the words that Regan wanted to hear more than any others: Ahmad Shah. Westerfield had instructed Turner to be on the lookout for anything and everything on Shah, whom the intel officer personally considered to be a high value target, but warned the lieutenant that he might not hear as much as a peep about him from anyone. L.C. seemed to know everything that Westerfield didn’t—information that the intel officer desperately yearned to uncover. “His family is here, in Khewa. Right
here
!” Turner’s interpreter, “Bobby,” yelped—not just translating L.C.’s words, but emulating his enthusiasm. “L.C. has nothing personally against Ahmad Shah—really, he just hates the Taliban and the al-Qaeda guys and these other azz-holes.” Turner laughed at Bobby’s reference, which he took to mean HIG and other extremist types. Regan burned through pages in his notebook as L.C. rattled off the vital details to Bobby. “Ahmad is a real azz-hole. Really. He killed another man just because he wanted his wife—and then he stole her and now she’s his wife! No shitting, Commander Regan! Really, this big azz-hole, he works with the Taliban, and the al-Qaeda guys.”

“Calm down, Bobby. I know. He’s an
azz-hole,
” Turner carefully enunciated. “But just give me the facts. This is important.”

“Right. My sorries.” Bobby then continued, “Shah and his three brothers, Muhummad Azam, Ruhola Amin, and Palawan, all sell opium and have illegal weapons throughout the area, and that supports Ahmad Shah’s fightings. And the people around here don’t like him, especially for murdering the man for his wife.”

“Bobby, ask L.C. where Shah is actually from, any other names he uses, and where he operates.”

“Right, sir.” The normally soft-spoken interpreter jumped back into the Pashto intel dump with L.C. “He is from the Dara-I-Nur, north of here, this means ‘the Valley of Light.’ This is the area that was the Kafirs’, but now enlightened. His full name is Ahmad Shah Dara-I-Nur, Ahmad Shah of the Valley of the Enlightened Ones.”

“Wow.” Turner shook his head, “Is he a Nuristani?”
Westerfield’s gonna flip when he hears all this,
he thought.

“No, not from Nuristan itself, but almost Nuristan. He looks Nuristani. Thin, light-colored eyes, and has an orange beard. He is midthirties-years-old. He speaks in the Pashto, the Dari, and the Pashai—he is a Pashai. He is the only person in this entire area to have really supported the Taliban. He is such an angry man, that is why. He went to seek Mullah Omar, and he fought for the Taliban, and then also the al-Qaeda.”

“And where does he do his attacks, his ambushes,” the second lieutenant asked, inciting a further spate of L.C.’s hand gesturing and pointing, speaking so fast that Turner, who knew a little Pashto, couldn’t pick out a single word.

“The Korangal. High in the Korangal, he has people up there who protect him, they hide weapons and supplies for him up there. It is the village of Chichal mostly, but also the lower village of Korangal, far up the valley. They are Pashai, too, and he pays them. He ambushes the Marines in the Korangal, and he sets off IEDs on the Pech Road against the Marines and the police. From the top of the Sawtalo Sar mountain he can see everything. He has a small team of about ten to twenty men with him who he directs during ambushes, using the ICOMs for communication, as he is often not part of the actual attack—but sometimes he is, and he always carries a PK machine gun. He also has phones, the Roshan cellular for when he is in the cities and the Thuraya satellite for when he is in the Korangal and on Sawtalo Sar, to talk to his contacts in eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

“Pakistan? Does he ever go into Pakistan, and if so, where?” Turner leaned in, sipping tea with his left hand as he shook out his right from all the note taking.

“The Shamshatoo camp. By Peshawar. He lives there much of the time when he is not out here.”

“Bobby, has L.C. ever told this to anyone else from coalition forces?”

“No. He says that you are the first. And one more thing.” Bobby turned to listen to L.C. speak. “He says that Ahmad Shah is calling himself a Taliban commander, and intends to destroy the elections in September. He has hired people to watch the roads for him, build the remote bombs, and bring in rockets and mortars and guns and RPGs. He is very hungry for the power. He wants many people for his army, but he only has ten or fifteen men with him now.” Shah seemed to be leveraging his local ties to influence people in the high Korangal who resisted all outside influences, even the early Taliban.

“Can anyone else confirm what he is saying. I
believe
him—but I need to confirm with another source.”

Shaded relief map of the Sawtalo Sar region, including the Korangal Valley, the Shuryek Valley, the Chowkay Valley, the Narang Valley, the Pech River Valley, and the Kunar Valley

Bobby and L.C. continued talking, then the former mujahideen gestured for Regan to jump into his truck. L.C. drove the lieutenant to the home of another man who was involved in security of the region. He confirmed everything L.C. had told Regan, adding also a list of Ahmad Shah’s relatives who didn’t support the terrorist, and told Regan two of Shah’s aliases: Molawi Ibrahim, Ismael, Mullah Mohammed Ismael, and Commander Ismael. “Thank you, thank you both, I’ll see you again.” Turner noted a list of the village’s needs to pass to battalion HQ, then headed back to brief Westerfield.

“You’re amazing, Turner. Absolutely amazing.”

“Thanks, sir. Just doing my job, though.”

“Get a picture of him?”

“No. They didn’t offer one.”

“That’s fine. What you’ve given me is what we need to proceed, it’ll get Tommy Wood rollin’ on the final op plan.”

Westerfield pored over Turner’s notes, compiling a detailed picture of Shah, his small cell, and his area of operation. To Westerfield, the terrorist leader clearly was using his Pashai background to co-opt the locals in the Korangal, who clung to their Safi beliefs. But Shah’s connections seemed to span a broad fundamentalist spectrum, from the Pashtun-dominated Taliban to the Arab-rooted apocalyptic al-Qaeda. But because he spent time—actually lived in—Hekmatayar’s Shamshatoo, Westerfield believed that Shah’s primary allegiance, and substantial financial, personnel, and armament support, came from HIG or associated Pakistani connections. Hekmatyar, who was known in the late sixties to throw battery acid on women who dared to show their wrists and ankles while walking down streets in Kabul, proved to be a continuing thorn in the side of democratic evolution well into the twenty-first century in the region. Far more important—from a tactical standpoint—than his specific connections, Shah seemed to have established a firm network: safe houses, financial aid, arms caches, paid runners and observers, which he intended to utilize to dash the prospects in the Kunar that the Marines had come to secure: the upcoming safe, unfettered democratic national elections.

Gazing at 1:50,000 scale maps of the specific region where Turner reported the location of Shah’s operations—in and around the village of Chichal and the summit of Sawtalo Sar—Westerfield immediately realized that he was staring at the catbird seat for any insurgent or terrorist cell in the region. Sawtalo Sar is a domineering massif, a north-south-trending five-mile-long phalanx of twisted, dark earth that rises over 6,000 vertical feet from its water-lapped base on the Pech River to its apex at 9,282 feet above sea level. Chichal village, a loosely defined medley of stone houses and large timber smuggler-built mansion compounds, lies near the very summit of the peak. An extensive trail network, splaying out from the main “Super Highway” trail that runs along the crest of the peak’s north ridge, interconnects the village’s houses, pastures, and terraces. The mountain is densely covered in Himalayan deodar cedar and broad-leaf ferns on its upper shoulders; numerous rock outcroppings grant vistas of the Pech Valley, the Korangal Valley (of which the peak defines the eastern wall), and the Shuryek Valley, of which Sawtalo Sar forms the western periphery. From Chichal and Sawtalo Sar’s summit, Westerfield noted that Shah could control a number of small units of his team, ambushing convoys, emplacing rocket attacks, and lobbing mortars into villages, through his ICOM two-way radio.