Victory Point (19 page)

There would be no ambush that night, however. Kinser stared out at the Pech River, its thunderous roar fed by the massive snowmelt of one of the wettest winters on record. Like clockwork, CAAT-Alpha arrived, with an additional local Toyota truck to help carry the Marines and their gear. Having spent the past month up and down the Pech Road, Kinser had seen the water level slowly climb, nearing the road in some places. He also knew that the road itself was in bad shape, making night driving all the more dangerous with its washouts and deep ruts. He wanted the CAAT drivers to run with headlights, not have to operate blacked out on NVGs (night-vision goggles). But his commander had mandated running dark. So they loaded their gear into the Toyota and the highback Humvee (a troop transport Humvee fitted with benches, surrounded by light armor high enough to protect Marines while sitting), then jumped into the trucks.

“You know, Joyce, you never complain about anything,” Bradley said to the young lance corporal, who, at just 135 pounds, was one of the smallest in the platoon. “I love that about you.” A SAW gunner (squad automatic weapon, or M249, a fully automatic weapon much heavier than an M16), Joyce quickly developed a reputation in the platoon as one of the best Marines of the bunch, one who never once complained about any patrol, food, living quarters—anything—and who always volunteered first for any mission or project. He was tough, but with a magnetically kind demeanor; shy but absolutely reliable. He smiled at Bradley and jumped into the highback. “Okay, bitches, let’s get the fuck back to that wonderful wonderland of Camp Blessing!” Bradley slammed the heavy doors shut on the highback and jumped into the Hilux, then the convoy slipped into the pitch darkness of the June night.

The condition of the road proved even worse than Kinser had remembered. The drivers, who sped the convoy along as fast as possible to minimize time windows for any IED triggermen to set off explosives, slammed the Humvees into ruts and potholes, sending the Marines in the highback flying off their benches. They hit one pothole so hard that the Marines thought they’d been struck by a small IED. Then a slam into a rut knocked the NVGs off the driver of the highback, blinding him as he veered into a deep rut on the edge of the road. The violent jolt flung three of the Marines out of the rear of the truck, over the steep riverbank, and into the icy, roiling waters of the Pech, ten feet below the road. The convoy screeched to a halt. Bradley, Fisher, and the other Marines jumped into action, scrambling down the embankment and wading into the numbing water as Marines who’d fallen into the river clung to rocks and boulders, fighting off the crushing cold and gasping for breath, the weight of their flak jackets with heavy ceramic plates and helmets filled with water adding to their struggle. “Gimme a fuckin’ HEAD COUNT!” Everybody was there, but one: Joyce.

“Where the FUCK is he?” Fish yelled over the thunderous rush of the pitiless river. Kinser immediately got on the hook with Matt Bartels. “Start droppin’ illum rounds. Drop ’em NOW!” The lieutenant passed Matt their coordinates and within seconds the river lit up under the blinding-white light of parachute-suspended 120 mm phosphorus illumination mortar rounds.

“We’re fuckin’ findin’ him!” Kinser roared.

“JOYCE!” the Marines bellowed into the night as they locked arms and waded chest-deep into the water, their breathing crushed by the water’s iciness.
“JOYCE!”

“We got two Apaches and a Dustoff inbound to you guys,” Bartels passed to Kinser. The Dustoff, the call sign for the Army’s famed Air Ambulance units, was a UH-60 Blackhawk, and came equipped with a powerful spotlight. The mortarmen lobbed the illum rounds at perfect intervals; just as one died, another popped open hundreds of yards higher. Once the Dustoff roared in zone, the mortarmen ceased dropping, and under cover of the Apaches, the pilots of the UH-60 flew the craft just ten to fifteen feet above the river, beaming the penetrating spotlight into the water. But the air crew could see nothing, not at the site of the accident, or downstream, during their hours-long search. Lance Corporal Kevin B. Joyce, so young, vital, capable, and recognized by his peers and his commanders as such a great Marine, yet so reserved, kind, and utterly selfless, was gone.

“Sir, everyone’s gonna get hypothermia. We can’t keep goin’ into the water,” Doc Anaya told Kinser. Both soaked from head to toe, they struggled to keep from shivering. The lieutenant just stared at Anaya in the darkness, then nodded. Anaya—a member of one of the most important cadres of U.S. Marine Corps units (and most distinguished groups in the entire U.S. military)—attached Navy Corpsmen—who not only fight side by side with infantry, but stand ready to drop their weapons even in the thickest of battle to save Marines’ lives (as well as those of civilians, and even injured enemy combatants)—realized that each of the group had overtaxed himself, and might go missing in the torrent as well. Anaya’s struggles that night, shoulder to shoulder with the others, proved that although the letters on his camis spelled out
U.S. Navy,
he was a grunt through and through.

“Call just came in that we need to mount up in the convoy and get back to Blessing,” Kinser stated firmly. Kinser’s company commander wanted CAAT to keep moving. The Marines solemnly loaded up and headed back home.

But just a couple hours after arriving at Blessing, Bradley and Fish organized a foot patrol to continue searching for the missing Marine, keeping their hopes alive that he’d washed ashore and survived the ordeal. Under the steel-blue glow of an eastern Afghan dawn, the Marines passed once again outside the wire, and hiked down to the spot where they last saw their friend. Then again, with arms locked, they waded into the river, combing for the young Marine for hours. But no sign of Joyce.

Later that day, a local farmer noticed that the furrows in his fields, normally inundated with slowly flowing irrigation water, had gone dry—something had clogged a main feeder channel. Walking his land, the local noticed an odd bundle of items blocking one of his main canals. Up close, he found what he recognized to be gear from Marines he’d seen in the area. He gathered the gear—a SAW, a belt of 5.56 mm rounds for the weapon, a flak jacket, and a Kevlar helmet. The helmet had a name tape: JOYCE. The villager immediately brought the items to Blessing, dimming the Marines’ hope for the lance corporal’s survival. Days later, Joyce’s body was found twenty miles downstream. The Marines at Camp Blessing held a memorial; with no requisite trumpet available at the small firebase, one of the Marines used his harmonica to play taps. The moment was somber and wrenchingly emotional, but one that left the incredible Marines with ever-greater resolve for their still-long road ahead. Joyce would forever occupy a place in their hearts.

 

 

 

“So the intel hits died off again?” Tom Wood looked at Westerfield like he wanted to punch the intel officer in the face.

“Didn’t die off, Tommy. Just changed. Relax. He’s
gonna
be there on the night of the twenty-seventh and stay there for at least two days. Structure 11, it’s an IED factory and weapons-cache location. With those SOF guys heloing in—basically announcing their presence—we don’t want the recon team lingering around any longer than they have to. They gotta insert on the twenty-seventh, not tonight. That’d be a day too soon, especially in that area.” Wood sat down and dropped his face into his hands.

“And we still figure that he’s got between six and twelve guys with him?” the OpsO asked.

“At the very, very most, he’s got twenty fighters, and some other nonfighters he pays for support. Realistically, though, from the latest hard intel, we know he has between six and twelve. But those six to twelve are well-trained foreign fighters with experience,” Westerfield responded.

“Okay. They helo-insert on the twenty-seventh. Brown’s been doin’ decoy drops all week, so let’s hope that Shah or any of his lookouts figures its just another unlit helicopter buzzing around the villages up there.” Westerfield stared back at Tom blank-faced, just as uneasy as the OpsO about NAVSOF’s planning decisions for phase one, as well as what both felt to be a tenuous at best command structure that was inviting disaster. Even if disaster were to strike, however, the Marines had their component of
Red Wings’
quick reaction force (QRF) in place, prepared to speed to the rescue of NAVSOF personnel during the first two phases of the op. The QRF would consist of twenty-four Marines from Golf Company, led by Captain Pete Capuzzi, who would form the main effort of phase three of the mission with their job of outer cordon.

With the Marines of the QRF fastrope qualled and ready to act with lightning speed,
Red Wings
stood ready to launch on the night of 27 June 2005. Just hours prior to the scheduled insert of the reconnaissance team, Kristensen and other members of NAVSOF met with ⅔’s commanders at the JAF COC and “rock-drilled” phase two and the segue into phase three. Confidence swelled at the meeting—the SEALs impressed with the Marines and the grunts confident in NAVSOF’s fighting prowess—as they hashed out the final air support, indirect fires assets, deconfliction, and QRF details. By 6 P.M. at Jalalabad Airfield, as the scorching sun sank toward the dusty plains to the west,
Red Wings
seemed destined to become yet another success in joint operations in the area, despite the hardened stance on USSOCOM doctrine at the CJTF-76 and CJSOTF-A levels.

Just after sunset, as the orange glow of dusk began to succumb to night’s grip, pilots readied two MH-47Ds of the 160th at a remote hangar at Bagram for another mission into the darkness. The modified Chinooks were some of the most impressive of Aviation’s creations, and their crews looked after every maintenance and operational detail with an eye for perfection—the “birds” were masterpieces, and the maintainers sought to keep them in prime condition, despite innumerable combat flights. The two ships ready, the pilots “spun up” the large craft and lifted into the night, one a decoy bird and the other carrying seven NAVSOF personnel, including the four members of the recon team: Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy of SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1 out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, who would lead the team; Petty Officer Second Class Danny P. Dietz from SDVT-2 (based in Virginia Beach, Virginia); Petty Officer Second Class Matthew G. Axelson from SDVT-1; and Navy Hospital Corpsman Second Class Marcus Luttrell, of SDVT-1. Landing at JAF to refuel, three of the NAVSOF passengers jumped out to aid in liaising, while Kristensen and Wood climbed aboard. Ever concerned about the small team’s success and safety, Wood made certain to pass to both Kristensen and then directly to Murphy six ten-digit grid reference points (a ten-digit grid reference point indicates a location on the ground to a resolution of one square meter) for calls for fire from Doghouse, who had those six coordinates preset into their mission package. If all went according to the detailed plan, in just over twenty-four hours, the direct-action team of
Red Wings
—composed primarily of members of SEAL Team 10—would envelop Shah and his operations, and that restive nook of the Hindu Kush would take yet another leap forward in stability. The powerful jet turbines roared to launch power under the control of the seasoned aviators, the big rotors dug into the night air, and the sounds of the “invisible” craft melted into silence.
Red Wings
had taken flight.

6

W
ith the waning glow of dusk a faded memory and the moon still hours from cresting the high, serrated complex of mountains to their east, the aviators piloting the two MH-47s guided their Chinooks through the darkest of Hindu Kush nights. Bound for Sawtalo Sar, they sped ghostlike over the village-dotted expanses of the lower Kunar Valley, then pressed ever higher above the vicious peaks surrounding the target zone. Viewing the world around them from behind the eerie green glow of their NVGs’ reticules, the Army special operations aviators drove the powerful, heavily armed helicopters deep into the heart of the very worst of the enemy’s lair. Intimate with the terrain from previous nights’ decoy drops, the pilots once again hovered their craft over insert zones surrounding the village of Chichal and the summit region of Sawtalo Sar before the lead ship peeled off, arcing to the south of the mountain’s uppermost triangular bulk. As the decoy bird roamed near more populated areas above the upper Korangal, the Chinook carrying the recon team slowed as it approached a point about a third of a mile south-southwest of, and three hundred feet in elevation lower than, the peak’s true summit, the “saddle” between Sawtalo Sar and Gatigal Sar. With the
clak-clak-clak
of the craft’s twin rotors resonating in muffled
ka-klatter-ka-klatter-ka-klatter
echoes off the walls of the Korangal and Shuryek valleys, the SOAR(A) aviators eased the muscular bird into a perfect hover about thirty-five feet above a patch of lightly treed ground as the MH-47’s crew chief lowered the Chinook’s rear ramp and deployed a single three-inch-thick fastrope. The four members of the recon team, laden with a broad array of gear from food and water to weapons, donned their lightweight Pro-Tec helmets and calmly stood in anticipation of their phase of the mission, then approached the very rear of the craft. Both “torquing” with stacked clenched hands and pinching the line with their boots’ inner soles, the SDVT SEALs slid into the abyss of the night’s dimensionless pitch darkness and connected with the ground just seconds later, fanning out away from the MH-47’s rotor wash as soon as their boots hit the deck. Feeling the fastrope go limp once the last of the team reached firm ground, the crew chief—trained for and accustomed to direct-action raids where he’d jettison the fastrope as soon as a team hit the ground—instinctively detached the line; the olive-drab fastrope snaked to the earth with a dull
whump
as the crew chief alerted the pilots that all four had successfully inserted. As the Chinook’s turbofans’ screams and its rotors’
clak clak clak
s melted into the silence of the staid night with the MH- 47’s quick departure, Murphy, Dietz, Axelson, and Luttrell moved toward OP-1. But the four didn’t know about the dropped fastrope—this
wasn’t
a direct-action hard-hit raid, but a covert insert, necessitating as small a footprint as possible. And for the SDVT recon team on the ground that night, that meant
no
footprint whatsoever, given that they were operating on Sawtalo Sar, literally in the den of some of the most viciously determined extremist fighters in the world. Relatively unfamiliar with each respective unit’s comprehensive standard operating procedures, neither the SOAR(A) planners nor those of NAVSOF discussed the post-insert fate of the rope during mission planning. The SEALs assumed the SOAR(A) crew would retract the fastrope, as this was a covert insert; but the TF-Brown aviators assumed that the SEALs would cache the line, as they felt—based both on their doctrine and experience—that lingering over enemy territory, even for a few extra seconds to reel in a fastrope, invited disaster. It allowed time for an enemy to put rounds into the large craft, and the attached fastrope presented a snagging danger (on trees or buildings) as the bird moved to exfil. The result of a seemingly small communications oversight during the planning phases of
Red Wings,
the rope just might prove the undoing of the entire operation . . .