2RHPZ
06-05-2004, 02:46 PM
I havenīt read the book yet, but got excellent references from friends. I must buy it soon. Here is the excerpts, chapter 1.
http://www.thehuntforbinladen.com
Chapter 1: THE TIGER ROARS
Darye Suf valley, Northern Afghanistan
5 November 2001
Late morning
"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."
---George Orwell on a BBC broadcast, April 4, 1942
It was dawn when the two dark matte green Special Operations MH-47 "Chinook" helicopters landed on the alien moonscape of the Darye Suf valley floor in Northern Afghanistan, one dropped off half of the 12-man A-Team that would be known as TIGER 02. The other held the quick reaction force that would be needed if the insertion turned out to be hot.
Flaring out above the desert sands, the large fat chopper reduced the power to its rear rotor blades and brought its nose slightly up. The sand blacked out windshield?s view as the Green Berets on board checked the magazines on their weapons, made sure a round was chambered, and took off their safeties. The first two ran off the tailgate and took up security positions in the sand as the others threw off their rucksacks and bags of equipment. A fine-tuned killing machine had just been inserted into Northern Afghanistan, and their prey would be bin Laden and his terrorists.
Once the six Green Berets touched down, Captain Mark Nutsch, the Team Leader, had his Team Sergeant Paul Evans split the A-Team in half once again. Half of the 12-man A-Team separated into 2 three-man Close Air Support teams. Close Air Support, also known as CAS, or "calling air strikes" and would be one of the key components to less than 400 Green Berets winning the war in Afghanistan in just under six months. In fact, in the first 90 days of the war, there were less than 120 Green Berets on the ground, fighting a Taliban and AQ army comprised of tens of thousands of hardened "holy warriors."
Nutsch and Evans were assigned in early October to General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Northern Alliance warlord commanding the troops who would bear the brunt of the fighting. The young Captain and the tough Master Sergeant were preparing to advise and assist Dostum to take back the key northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif before Christmas when the Afghan winter turned its worst.
General Dostum was a big man, and ethnically, he was Uzbek. He had been trained by the Soviet army to fight against the Afghans, but defected after becoming disenchanted with the Soviets? methods. Dostum spoke almost no Arabic, but communicated in a smattering of Dari, Russian, and Uzbek. He was viewed by his enemies as a brutal military commander, over six feet tall, with an intense hatred of Islamic Fundamentalists that was documented back into the 1980s, before the Taliban?s rise to power in Afghanistan. With his crew-cut hair, barrel chest and imposing presence, Dostum was a gregarious commander who had changed sides many times.
The Taliban forces were arrayed against the Northern Alliance in vastly superior numbers and they held defensive posts all along Dostum?s intended route of attack.
As the press spent their time hypothesizing America?s tactics, the Green Berets laughed at the notion that the war would take a hiatus during the terrible Afghan winter and of course Ramadan, the Muslim month-long period of fasting, contemplation and prayer. So did their ultimate commander, President George W. Bush.
The addition of the two Air Force personnel to the Special Forces? 12-man A-Teams was entirely new, and it took place after the Green Berets had been on the ground for three weeks. The Air Force combat controllers were experts at calling in air strikes and performing air traffic control functions.
According to the Green Berets, the greatest benefit of the additional two Air Force personnel is that they brought two extra satellite radios with them. This allowed Evans and the other Team Sergeants to break their teams into 4 three-man elements during close air support missions. They could form a "half-moon" shape with their teams, effectively controlling and overlapping their fire support, drastically improving the already devastating firepower they called in.
Master Sergeant Evans picked one of the Air Force CAS specialists for his three-man CAS team, so he could see firsthand what all the fuss was about. He never had a problem calling CAS, and there had never been a case of a Green Beret Sergeant calling in friendly fire on his own team. The only cases they had ever heard about had involved officers, who were not as adept at such tasks. Evans, Sergeant Elmore, and the Air Force Sergeant were dressed in the local garb worn by the Northern Alliance. They wore long checkered scarves and round brownish tan or gray wool "Massoud"caps, named after Ahmad Shah Massoud, the assassinated legend and former leader of the Northern Alliance. Their attire allowed the Green Berets to blend in with the locals from a distance. The three men also all sported beards they had started growing in mid-September back in the United States when they were first alerted for their deployment to Afghanistan.
The three special operators crouched behind a mound of dirt in an old bomb crater and set up their equipment. The first piece was a large olive green, rubberized spotting scope, and the second piece resembled something akin to a giant pair of olive drab binoculars mounted on a small tripod, with a trigger attached to a coiled length of cable. It was called a SOFLAM. SOFLAM (Special Operation Forces? Laser Marker) is special ops lingo for a laser designator, which shoots out a laser beam to mark the enemy target so that a laser-guided bomb can strike it.
"Scanning for targets," announced Air Force Staff Sergeant Matt Linehart over his satellite radio. Evans stared through the lens of the spotting scope, scanning from left to right across the face of the barren, rocky ridgelines that lay ahead. Evans abruptly stopped his scan. "I?ve got eyes on a target!" he exclaimed.
Sergeant Elmore began punching data into the Panasonic "Toughbook" laptop computer lying open in front of him. All of their information would be useful for improvement and help with the reports they would be delivering later to TASK FORCE DAGGER headquarters.
"Good to go. SOFLAM ready," Elmore replied.
The Taliban and al-Qaida forces would never quite understand the concept of smart bombs or the lasers that targeted them, and in the weeks ahead, a rumor began wildly circulating among them that the Special Forces possessed a "Death Ray" that would destroy anything they aimed it at. The Death Ray was about to unleash a healthy dose of American vengeance.
Sergeant Elmore aimed the laser marker at the front of a Taliban bunker built into the face of the hillside half a kilometer away. Inside the firing ports of the enemy bunker he could see the muzzle flashes of automatic weapons. Bullets cracked overhead as the Berets began taking enemy fire. Sergeant Linehart picked up the satellite radio and began speaking into it. The snapping of automatic rifle fire raked the shelter just above their heads and made it difficult to hear. The three special operators ducked down behind the berm as the enemy bullets showered dirt onto their backs.
"We have two F/A-18s on deck," Sergeant Linehart announced, his ear pressed to the satellite radio.
"Target is marked," Sergeant Elmore replied, squeezing the trigger that shot the invisible, infrared laser beam into the front opening of the enemy bunker.
The pair of Navy F/A-18 fighters streaked across the sky 20,000 feet in the air above the scene, so high they were virtually invisible to the naked eye. One of the planes banked sharply and swooped down, letting loose a 1,000-pound laser-guided bomb.
As the smart bomb whistled through the air, its internal computer homed in on the laser signature. The bomb?s tail fins directed it on its collision course with the enemy bunker. There was silence for a second as the three special operators braced themselves, keeping their mouths open so the force of the blast wouldn?t rupture their eardrums.
About half a minute passed, then BOOM!
The earth shook as the bomb detonated directly over the top of the bunker, throwing a giant brown cloud of dirt, fire, and black smoke high into the sky. Master Sergeant Evans waited for the aftershock to pass by them and then peered out through the scope. In place of the bunker was a huge, smoking crater. He could see the body parts of slain Taliban soldiers scattered around it.
"Target destroyed!" Evans shouted to his partners as he peered through the spotting scope, a wide grin on his stubbly face.
For a long moment there was silence once again, then the entire hillside erupted into a fierce volley of fire. Now, through the spotting scope, Evans could see the muzzle flash of machinegun fire coming from another bunker on the Taliban-controlled hillside.
"I?ve got eyes on another bunker!" Evans cried out, tapping his partner?s shoulder.
Something looping through the air caught their attention. It looked like the Taliban were shooting Roman candles into the sky above their heads. The smoke trails from the objects began to fall towards the earth in front of the Americans? position.
"RPGs!" Elmore exclaimed. The Taliban were shooting rocket-propelled grenades towards them, but instead of aiming them directly at the Americans? position, they were lobbing them skyward like mortar rounds, hoping to land one behind the mound of dirt in the crater that was protecting the American advisors to the Northern Alliance.
The pair of Green Berets manning the spotting scope and the laser marker slid backwards on their bellies, seeking as much overhead cover as they could find. The RPGs exploded on the ground in front of their position, showering them with rocks and rubble, and filling the air with black smoke and the smell of cordite. Linehart was crouched nearby; his hands clamped over his radio headphones. They glanced behind them, down the ridgeline to their rear, to see if any of the rocket-propelled grenades had flown that far.
About a hundred men crouched down the slope behind them, hidden among the rough boulders. From a distance, they looked the same as the three special operators, but they were in fact Northern Alliance freedom fighters, called mujahadeen, most of them clutching a variety of AK-47 assault rifles. They looked up at the two Green Berets and their Air Force sergeant with a mixture of fear and nervousness.
"It looks like these guys want to leave," Elmore said to his partners, chuckling. One of the crouching Northern Alliance militiamen yelled up to them in Dari, the native dialect, barely distinguishable over the roar of enemy fire and the thuds of detonating grenades.
"The muj want to get out before the Taliban can launch a counter-attack," Linehart shouted over the gunfire. In fact, General Dostum had warned his soldiers that he would personally kill every one of them if an American were so much as superficially wounded.
"Tell them we?re going to hold tight, we?ve got the high ground," Evans responded.
Ignoring the danger, the three soldiers low-crawled up to the top of the berm yet again. The hailstorm of gunfire continued to whiz by, peppering the ground in front of them and cracking through the air overhead.
The glint of metal caught the three soldiers? eyes as they saw something large rolling out from behind a hidden position on the Taliban-held ridgeline. For a second they thought it was a Russian T-55 tank, but in the place of a main gun there were four smaller barrels. It was a ZSU-23-4, a Russian anti-aircraft gun left over from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Through the spotting scope, Evans could see the operator?s head sticking up out of the turret, and as the enemy soldier swung the turret towards them, the four 23mm barrels bristling out of the turret?s center began flashing rapidly, throwing out clouds of smoke.
"I?ve got two more F/A-18s on deck!" Linehart shouted.
By this time, the ZSU, or "Zeus," as the Afghans call it, began throwing a volley of rounds in their direction. To them it sounded like the chugging of a steam locomotive, and the rounds blasted rocks and dirt into the air all around them.
Sergeant Elmore aimed the laser marker at the ZSU?s turret. At the same time, the Zeus began rolling backwards towards cover once again. Elmore held the laser beam steady on the front of the berm the anti-aircraft vehicle now hid behind. The only thing that gave away its position was the black puffs of diesel smoke that rose from behind the berm.
BOOM! Another 1,000-pound bomb exploded, throwing a mushroom cloud of dust and thick black smoke high into the sky.
"I can?t tell, but I think we neutralized the ZSU," Sergeant Linehart called in.
The 23mm cannon fire from the Zeus had just been eliminated, but the Taliban rifle and RPG fire was increasing. It was a constant barrage, and down the hill on the friendly side the Northern Alliance soldiers began to grow very nervous and weary.
"Tell them if they can hang on another ten minutes, I?ve got a B-52 on the way!" Linehart shouted to his partners over the roar of the battle as he held his ear to the radio headset.
"Hoo-ah!" shouted Sergeant Elmore, unable to contain his excitement, and then he relayed the message to the cowering muj hunkered down behind them.
"It better be quick," Sergeant Evans replied, "because we?ve got enemy troops in the open out here!"
The Green Berets were carrying the M-4, a special version of the M-16 assault rifle, shortened, with a collapsible stock and outfitted with a scope, laser designator, and an improved 5.56mm boat-tailed 70-grain bullet.
The scene on the enemy hillside became a stream of charging Taliban, running down the hillside towards them. Both Green Berets began returning fire, picking off Taliban fighters who tumbled down the slope like rag-dolls after being hit by the special operator?s bullets.
Ten minutes seemed to stretch into an eternity as the wave of charging Taliban grew closer. The terrorists were closing the gap, running up the front of the friendly hillside, less than two football fields away from the Americans? position.
The Green Berets looked to their rear, and saw the muj behind them starting to beat a hasty retreat back towards the east, where they had originated. The Northern Alliance commander waved for them to follow and grabbed some of the Green Berets? equipment, throwing it on his horse and galloping off towards the east.
At that instant, the B-52 bomber checked in, and Evans smiled skyward and gave a thumbs-up. He mouthed the phrase "Bombs away!" and dove for cover. The two other special operators hastily followed his example.
The earlier set of explosions was puny compared to the devastation that was unleashed as the rolling thunder of twelve 500-pound bombs carpeted the hillside with a cascade of brilliant fireballs. The shockwave bounced the three special operators up off the ground, and covered them in dust and debris. For the first time in what seemed like forever, the enemy fire began to subside. As the dust settled, they scrambled back up the berm at the crater?s edge to assess what had happened.
Assuming the banzai charge of the frenzied Taliban would have been stopped completely by the B-52 strike, they were amazed to see a large number of enemy soldiers still advancing up the hill. They were so close now the Americans could see their faces: some Arab, some Chechen, some Pakistani, but all fighting under the banner of Osama bin Laden?s Taliban and al-Qaida (AQ) network.
The close air support team fired a few more shots with their M-4s before deciding to follow their partisans down the hill to the east. Glancing backward as they ran, they saw the first of the Taliban fighters were already cresting the hill, standing on the position the Americans had just abandoned. Elmore, Evans, and Linehart ducked behind a boulder, and Linehart got on the radio once again. A Navy F-14 "Tomcat" checked in with the team and the Air Force sergeant quickly explained the situation to the pilot. The F-14 pilot responded by saying he could see plenty of enemy troops out in the open, advancing on their position. The pilot also relayed that he could see several trucks and tracked enemy vehicles coming out of hiding in covered positions, starting to roll down the ridgeline towards them.
The F-14 pilot announced to the team that he would do a "gun run" for them. A gun run is a low sweep over the enemy, in which the fighter strafes the enemy with cannons, rockets, machine guns, and everything else it can turn loose, all at once.
The "Tomcat" swooped down, destroying everything in sight with a volley of automatic cannon fire. After several high speed passes from the F-14 every single one of the enemy vehicles were reduced to smoking hulks of twisted metal.
With the Taliban offensive momentarily halted, the three special operators took the opportunity to work their way down the hill and onto the riverbed, taking temporary shelter behind a rocky outcropping, where the CAS team took up a defensive position and caught their breath for a minute.
Sergeant Elmore glanced at his watch. It was 2pm already. The sun was high in the sky, and the shade of the outcropping felt good. A short whistle drew their attention to the rocks on their left.
A Northern Alliance soldier was hiding behind an adjacent boulder, holding the tethers to three Afghan horses. He waved the trio over and they jumped on the horses, following the stay-behind muj down a ravine and up an incline towards a ridgeline adjacent to the one that had just been overrun by the Taliban. The two Green Berets and their Air Force Sergeant smiled at him and then went back to business. They set up their spotting scope and laser marker, staring out at their hastily abandoned Observation Post. The place they had just evacuated was now swarming with Taliban fighters.
Sergeant Elmore called out to his partners, "Holy ****, we were just on that ridgeline. We must still have the GPS coordinates of where we just were on the computer." Evans punched a few buttons on the GPS, and cried out triumphantly, "Sure enough!"
Linehart got on the radio, and was informed that the B-52 "Stratofortress" was still in the area. The B-52?s navigator asked Elmore to be sure that they were no longer in or near the coordinates. "We wouldn?t want to drop an egg on where you happen to be standing right now," the navigator explained.
Linehart shuddered at the concept and asked if they had any satellite-guided bombs on board.
"Roger that," the bombardier called back over the headset.
Sergeant Evans had a chuckle, and repeated the coordinates of the ridgeline position from which they had been surveying the enemy until they had to retreat. As they waited for the two minutes to pass, they watched the Taliban and for the first time realized just how many there were, scurrying around like ants trying to dig bodies of their fallen comrades out of the rubble with their rifle butts.
The B-52 bombardier announced to the team over their radio that he was on station and called out "Bombs Away!"
The three special operators watched as the 2,000-pound satellite-guided bomb detonated exactly fifty feet over the heads of the Taliban.
"Holy ****! Un-****ing believable!" one of Americans screamed. He couldn?t believe his eyes, it was amazing. They witnessed a tremendous explosion in the air and the bodies of maybe a hundred Taliban and AQ troops drawn from the ground upwards, arms and legs kicking for a fraction of a second before disappearing into a pink haze without a trace of solid matter left of the bodies or clothing. America?s enemies had been "obliterated."
That single bomb killed everybody on the hill, as well as the Taliban fighters behind it. Not one enemy soldier was left alive. Most of the bodies had been completely vaporized inside the intensity of the explosion.
The Northern Alliance soldiers stormed back up over the ridgeline, retaking the smoky, ruined hilltop, and cheering in victory. With only three special ops personnel they had just won their first key battle over the Taliban without sustaining any major casualties.
The Northern Alliance soldiers had never seen anything like it. They congregated around the three special operators, patting their backs and praising the Americans. The offensive push to the city of Mazar-e-Sharif was just two days northwest through the Darye Suf valley.
As the two Green Berets rode their wiry little Afghan horses over the rocky, uneven terrain, they sang a song together, a song that both of them knew by heart. Even Linehart, the Air Force Sergeant from the Special Tactics Squadron knew it. They often sang this song to pass the time, but no matter how many times they sang it, it always made them feel proud of their chosen profession.
Fighting soldiers from the sky,
Fearless men who jump and die.
Men who mean just what they say,
The brave men of the Green Beret.
Trained to live off nature?s land,
Trained in combat, hand-to-hand.
Men who fight by night and day,
Courage take from the Green Beret.
Silver Wings upon their chests,
These are Men, America?s Best.
One hundred men we?ll test today,
But only three win the Green Beret.
Back at home a young wife waits,
Her Green Beret has met his fate.
He has died for those oppressed,
Leaving her this last request:
Put Silver Wings on my son?s chest,
Make him one of America?s Best,
He?ll be a man they?ll test one day?
Have him win the Green Beret!
http://www.thehuntforbinladen.com
Chapter 1: THE TIGER ROARS
Darye Suf valley, Northern Afghanistan
5 November 2001
Late morning
"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."
---George Orwell on a BBC broadcast, April 4, 1942
It was dawn when the two dark matte green Special Operations MH-47 "Chinook" helicopters landed on the alien moonscape of the Darye Suf valley floor in Northern Afghanistan, one dropped off half of the 12-man A-Team that would be known as TIGER 02. The other held the quick reaction force that would be needed if the insertion turned out to be hot.
Flaring out above the desert sands, the large fat chopper reduced the power to its rear rotor blades and brought its nose slightly up. The sand blacked out windshield?s view as the Green Berets on board checked the magazines on their weapons, made sure a round was chambered, and took off their safeties. The first two ran off the tailgate and took up security positions in the sand as the others threw off their rucksacks and bags of equipment. A fine-tuned killing machine had just been inserted into Northern Afghanistan, and their prey would be bin Laden and his terrorists.
Once the six Green Berets touched down, Captain Mark Nutsch, the Team Leader, had his Team Sergeant Paul Evans split the A-Team in half once again. Half of the 12-man A-Team separated into 2 three-man Close Air Support teams. Close Air Support, also known as CAS, or "calling air strikes" and would be one of the key components to less than 400 Green Berets winning the war in Afghanistan in just under six months. In fact, in the first 90 days of the war, there were less than 120 Green Berets on the ground, fighting a Taliban and AQ army comprised of tens of thousands of hardened "holy warriors."
Nutsch and Evans were assigned in early October to General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Northern Alliance warlord commanding the troops who would bear the brunt of the fighting. The young Captain and the tough Master Sergeant were preparing to advise and assist Dostum to take back the key northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif before Christmas when the Afghan winter turned its worst.
General Dostum was a big man, and ethnically, he was Uzbek. He had been trained by the Soviet army to fight against the Afghans, but defected after becoming disenchanted with the Soviets? methods. Dostum spoke almost no Arabic, but communicated in a smattering of Dari, Russian, and Uzbek. He was viewed by his enemies as a brutal military commander, over six feet tall, with an intense hatred of Islamic Fundamentalists that was documented back into the 1980s, before the Taliban?s rise to power in Afghanistan. With his crew-cut hair, barrel chest and imposing presence, Dostum was a gregarious commander who had changed sides many times.
The Taliban forces were arrayed against the Northern Alliance in vastly superior numbers and they held defensive posts all along Dostum?s intended route of attack.
As the press spent their time hypothesizing America?s tactics, the Green Berets laughed at the notion that the war would take a hiatus during the terrible Afghan winter and of course Ramadan, the Muslim month-long period of fasting, contemplation and prayer. So did their ultimate commander, President George W. Bush.
The addition of the two Air Force personnel to the Special Forces? 12-man A-Teams was entirely new, and it took place after the Green Berets had been on the ground for three weeks. The Air Force combat controllers were experts at calling in air strikes and performing air traffic control functions.
According to the Green Berets, the greatest benefit of the additional two Air Force personnel is that they brought two extra satellite radios with them. This allowed Evans and the other Team Sergeants to break their teams into 4 three-man elements during close air support missions. They could form a "half-moon" shape with their teams, effectively controlling and overlapping their fire support, drastically improving the already devastating firepower they called in.
Master Sergeant Evans picked one of the Air Force CAS specialists for his three-man CAS team, so he could see firsthand what all the fuss was about. He never had a problem calling CAS, and there had never been a case of a Green Beret Sergeant calling in friendly fire on his own team. The only cases they had ever heard about had involved officers, who were not as adept at such tasks. Evans, Sergeant Elmore, and the Air Force Sergeant were dressed in the local garb worn by the Northern Alliance. They wore long checkered scarves and round brownish tan or gray wool "Massoud"caps, named after Ahmad Shah Massoud, the assassinated legend and former leader of the Northern Alliance. Their attire allowed the Green Berets to blend in with the locals from a distance. The three men also all sported beards they had started growing in mid-September back in the United States when they were first alerted for their deployment to Afghanistan.
The three special operators crouched behind a mound of dirt in an old bomb crater and set up their equipment. The first piece was a large olive green, rubberized spotting scope, and the second piece resembled something akin to a giant pair of olive drab binoculars mounted on a small tripod, with a trigger attached to a coiled length of cable. It was called a SOFLAM. SOFLAM (Special Operation Forces? Laser Marker) is special ops lingo for a laser designator, which shoots out a laser beam to mark the enemy target so that a laser-guided bomb can strike it.
"Scanning for targets," announced Air Force Staff Sergeant Matt Linehart over his satellite radio. Evans stared through the lens of the spotting scope, scanning from left to right across the face of the barren, rocky ridgelines that lay ahead. Evans abruptly stopped his scan. "I?ve got eyes on a target!" he exclaimed.
Sergeant Elmore began punching data into the Panasonic "Toughbook" laptop computer lying open in front of him. All of their information would be useful for improvement and help with the reports they would be delivering later to TASK FORCE DAGGER headquarters.
"Good to go. SOFLAM ready," Elmore replied.
The Taliban and al-Qaida forces would never quite understand the concept of smart bombs or the lasers that targeted them, and in the weeks ahead, a rumor began wildly circulating among them that the Special Forces possessed a "Death Ray" that would destroy anything they aimed it at. The Death Ray was about to unleash a healthy dose of American vengeance.
Sergeant Elmore aimed the laser marker at the front of a Taliban bunker built into the face of the hillside half a kilometer away. Inside the firing ports of the enemy bunker he could see the muzzle flashes of automatic weapons. Bullets cracked overhead as the Berets began taking enemy fire. Sergeant Linehart picked up the satellite radio and began speaking into it. The snapping of automatic rifle fire raked the shelter just above their heads and made it difficult to hear. The three special operators ducked down behind the berm as the enemy bullets showered dirt onto their backs.
"We have two F/A-18s on deck," Sergeant Linehart announced, his ear pressed to the satellite radio.
"Target is marked," Sergeant Elmore replied, squeezing the trigger that shot the invisible, infrared laser beam into the front opening of the enemy bunker.
The pair of Navy F/A-18 fighters streaked across the sky 20,000 feet in the air above the scene, so high they were virtually invisible to the naked eye. One of the planes banked sharply and swooped down, letting loose a 1,000-pound laser-guided bomb.
As the smart bomb whistled through the air, its internal computer homed in on the laser signature. The bomb?s tail fins directed it on its collision course with the enemy bunker. There was silence for a second as the three special operators braced themselves, keeping their mouths open so the force of the blast wouldn?t rupture their eardrums.
About half a minute passed, then BOOM!
The earth shook as the bomb detonated directly over the top of the bunker, throwing a giant brown cloud of dirt, fire, and black smoke high into the sky. Master Sergeant Evans waited for the aftershock to pass by them and then peered out through the scope. In place of the bunker was a huge, smoking crater. He could see the body parts of slain Taliban soldiers scattered around it.
"Target destroyed!" Evans shouted to his partners as he peered through the spotting scope, a wide grin on his stubbly face.
For a long moment there was silence once again, then the entire hillside erupted into a fierce volley of fire. Now, through the spotting scope, Evans could see the muzzle flash of machinegun fire coming from another bunker on the Taliban-controlled hillside.
"I?ve got eyes on another bunker!" Evans cried out, tapping his partner?s shoulder.
Something looping through the air caught their attention. It looked like the Taliban were shooting Roman candles into the sky above their heads. The smoke trails from the objects began to fall towards the earth in front of the Americans? position.
"RPGs!" Elmore exclaimed. The Taliban were shooting rocket-propelled grenades towards them, but instead of aiming them directly at the Americans? position, they were lobbing them skyward like mortar rounds, hoping to land one behind the mound of dirt in the crater that was protecting the American advisors to the Northern Alliance.
The pair of Green Berets manning the spotting scope and the laser marker slid backwards on their bellies, seeking as much overhead cover as they could find. The RPGs exploded on the ground in front of their position, showering them with rocks and rubble, and filling the air with black smoke and the smell of cordite. Linehart was crouched nearby; his hands clamped over his radio headphones. They glanced behind them, down the ridgeline to their rear, to see if any of the rocket-propelled grenades had flown that far.
About a hundred men crouched down the slope behind them, hidden among the rough boulders. From a distance, they looked the same as the three special operators, but they were in fact Northern Alliance freedom fighters, called mujahadeen, most of them clutching a variety of AK-47 assault rifles. They looked up at the two Green Berets and their Air Force sergeant with a mixture of fear and nervousness.
"It looks like these guys want to leave," Elmore said to his partners, chuckling. One of the crouching Northern Alliance militiamen yelled up to them in Dari, the native dialect, barely distinguishable over the roar of enemy fire and the thuds of detonating grenades.
"The muj want to get out before the Taliban can launch a counter-attack," Linehart shouted over the gunfire. In fact, General Dostum had warned his soldiers that he would personally kill every one of them if an American were so much as superficially wounded.
"Tell them we?re going to hold tight, we?ve got the high ground," Evans responded.
Ignoring the danger, the three soldiers low-crawled up to the top of the berm yet again. The hailstorm of gunfire continued to whiz by, peppering the ground in front of them and cracking through the air overhead.
The glint of metal caught the three soldiers? eyes as they saw something large rolling out from behind a hidden position on the Taliban-held ridgeline. For a second they thought it was a Russian T-55 tank, but in the place of a main gun there were four smaller barrels. It was a ZSU-23-4, a Russian anti-aircraft gun left over from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Through the spotting scope, Evans could see the operator?s head sticking up out of the turret, and as the enemy soldier swung the turret towards them, the four 23mm barrels bristling out of the turret?s center began flashing rapidly, throwing out clouds of smoke.
"I?ve got two more F/A-18s on deck!" Linehart shouted.
By this time, the ZSU, or "Zeus," as the Afghans call it, began throwing a volley of rounds in their direction. To them it sounded like the chugging of a steam locomotive, and the rounds blasted rocks and dirt into the air all around them.
Sergeant Elmore aimed the laser marker at the ZSU?s turret. At the same time, the Zeus began rolling backwards towards cover once again. Elmore held the laser beam steady on the front of the berm the anti-aircraft vehicle now hid behind. The only thing that gave away its position was the black puffs of diesel smoke that rose from behind the berm.
BOOM! Another 1,000-pound bomb exploded, throwing a mushroom cloud of dust and thick black smoke high into the sky.
"I can?t tell, but I think we neutralized the ZSU," Sergeant Linehart called in.
The 23mm cannon fire from the Zeus had just been eliminated, but the Taliban rifle and RPG fire was increasing. It was a constant barrage, and down the hill on the friendly side the Northern Alliance soldiers began to grow very nervous and weary.
"Tell them if they can hang on another ten minutes, I?ve got a B-52 on the way!" Linehart shouted to his partners over the roar of the battle as he held his ear to the radio headset.
"Hoo-ah!" shouted Sergeant Elmore, unable to contain his excitement, and then he relayed the message to the cowering muj hunkered down behind them.
"It better be quick," Sergeant Evans replied, "because we?ve got enemy troops in the open out here!"
The Green Berets were carrying the M-4, a special version of the M-16 assault rifle, shortened, with a collapsible stock and outfitted with a scope, laser designator, and an improved 5.56mm boat-tailed 70-grain bullet.
The scene on the enemy hillside became a stream of charging Taliban, running down the hillside towards them. Both Green Berets began returning fire, picking off Taliban fighters who tumbled down the slope like rag-dolls after being hit by the special operator?s bullets.
Ten minutes seemed to stretch into an eternity as the wave of charging Taliban grew closer. The terrorists were closing the gap, running up the front of the friendly hillside, less than two football fields away from the Americans? position.
The Green Berets looked to their rear, and saw the muj behind them starting to beat a hasty retreat back towards the east, where they had originated. The Northern Alliance commander waved for them to follow and grabbed some of the Green Berets? equipment, throwing it on his horse and galloping off towards the east.
At that instant, the B-52 bomber checked in, and Evans smiled skyward and gave a thumbs-up. He mouthed the phrase "Bombs away!" and dove for cover. The two other special operators hastily followed his example.
The earlier set of explosions was puny compared to the devastation that was unleashed as the rolling thunder of twelve 500-pound bombs carpeted the hillside with a cascade of brilliant fireballs. The shockwave bounced the three special operators up off the ground, and covered them in dust and debris. For the first time in what seemed like forever, the enemy fire began to subside. As the dust settled, they scrambled back up the berm at the crater?s edge to assess what had happened.
Assuming the banzai charge of the frenzied Taliban would have been stopped completely by the B-52 strike, they were amazed to see a large number of enemy soldiers still advancing up the hill. They were so close now the Americans could see their faces: some Arab, some Chechen, some Pakistani, but all fighting under the banner of Osama bin Laden?s Taliban and al-Qaida (AQ) network.
The close air support team fired a few more shots with their M-4s before deciding to follow their partisans down the hill to the east. Glancing backward as they ran, they saw the first of the Taliban fighters were already cresting the hill, standing on the position the Americans had just abandoned. Elmore, Evans, and Linehart ducked behind a boulder, and Linehart got on the radio once again. A Navy F-14 "Tomcat" checked in with the team and the Air Force sergeant quickly explained the situation to the pilot. The F-14 pilot responded by saying he could see plenty of enemy troops out in the open, advancing on their position. The pilot also relayed that he could see several trucks and tracked enemy vehicles coming out of hiding in covered positions, starting to roll down the ridgeline towards them.
The F-14 pilot announced to the team that he would do a "gun run" for them. A gun run is a low sweep over the enemy, in which the fighter strafes the enemy with cannons, rockets, machine guns, and everything else it can turn loose, all at once.
The "Tomcat" swooped down, destroying everything in sight with a volley of automatic cannon fire. After several high speed passes from the F-14 every single one of the enemy vehicles were reduced to smoking hulks of twisted metal.
With the Taliban offensive momentarily halted, the three special operators took the opportunity to work their way down the hill and onto the riverbed, taking temporary shelter behind a rocky outcropping, where the CAS team took up a defensive position and caught their breath for a minute.
Sergeant Elmore glanced at his watch. It was 2pm already. The sun was high in the sky, and the shade of the outcropping felt good. A short whistle drew their attention to the rocks on their left.
A Northern Alliance soldier was hiding behind an adjacent boulder, holding the tethers to three Afghan horses. He waved the trio over and they jumped on the horses, following the stay-behind muj down a ravine and up an incline towards a ridgeline adjacent to the one that had just been overrun by the Taliban. The two Green Berets and their Air Force Sergeant smiled at him and then went back to business. They set up their spotting scope and laser marker, staring out at their hastily abandoned Observation Post. The place they had just evacuated was now swarming with Taliban fighters.
Sergeant Elmore called out to his partners, "Holy ****, we were just on that ridgeline. We must still have the GPS coordinates of where we just were on the computer." Evans punched a few buttons on the GPS, and cried out triumphantly, "Sure enough!"
Linehart got on the radio, and was informed that the B-52 "Stratofortress" was still in the area. The B-52?s navigator asked Elmore to be sure that they were no longer in or near the coordinates. "We wouldn?t want to drop an egg on where you happen to be standing right now," the navigator explained.
Linehart shuddered at the concept and asked if they had any satellite-guided bombs on board.
"Roger that," the bombardier called back over the headset.
Sergeant Evans had a chuckle, and repeated the coordinates of the ridgeline position from which they had been surveying the enemy until they had to retreat. As they waited for the two minutes to pass, they watched the Taliban and for the first time realized just how many there were, scurrying around like ants trying to dig bodies of their fallen comrades out of the rubble with their rifle butts.
The B-52 bombardier announced to the team over their radio that he was on station and called out "Bombs Away!"
The three special operators watched as the 2,000-pound satellite-guided bomb detonated exactly fifty feet over the heads of the Taliban.
"Holy ****! Un-****ing believable!" one of Americans screamed. He couldn?t believe his eyes, it was amazing. They witnessed a tremendous explosion in the air and the bodies of maybe a hundred Taliban and AQ troops drawn from the ground upwards, arms and legs kicking for a fraction of a second before disappearing into a pink haze without a trace of solid matter left of the bodies or clothing. America?s enemies had been "obliterated."
That single bomb killed everybody on the hill, as well as the Taliban fighters behind it. Not one enemy soldier was left alive. Most of the bodies had been completely vaporized inside the intensity of the explosion.
The Northern Alliance soldiers stormed back up over the ridgeline, retaking the smoky, ruined hilltop, and cheering in victory. With only three special ops personnel they had just won their first key battle over the Taliban without sustaining any major casualties.
The Northern Alliance soldiers had never seen anything like it. They congregated around the three special operators, patting their backs and praising the Americans. The offensive push to the city of Mazar-e-Sharif was just two days northwest through the Darye Suf valley.
As the two Green Berets rode their wiry little Afghan horses over the rocky, uneven terrain, they sang a song together, a song that both of them knew by heart. Even Linehart, the Air Force Sergeant from the Special Tactics Squadron knew it. They often sang this song to pass the time, but no matter how many times they sang it, it always made them feel proud of their chosen profession.
Fighting soldiers from the sky,
Fearless men who jump and die.
Men who mean just what they say,
The brave men of the Green Beret.
Trained to live off nature?s land,
Trained in combat, hand-to-hand.
Men who fight by night and day,
Courage take from the Green Beret.
Silver Wings upon their chests,
These are Men, America?s Best.
One hundred men we?ll test today,
But only three win the Green Beret.
Back at home a young wife waits,
Her Green Beret has met his fate.
He has died for those oppressed,
Leaving her this last request:
Put Silver Wings on my son?s chest,
Make him one of America?s Best,
He?ll be a man they?ll test one day?
Have him win the Green Beret!