Weiss Mitch - No Way Out: A Story of Valor in the Mountains of Afghanistan

A story of valor in the mountains of Afghanistan

MITCH WEISS AND KEVIN MAURER

BERKLEY CALIBER, NEW YORK

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Copyright 2012 by Mitch Weiss and Kevin Maurer

Book design by Laura K. Corless

Front jacket photo: US Army photo by SPC Michael Carter

Maps by Travis Rightmeyer

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FIRST EDITION: March 2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weiss, Mitch.

No way out : a story of valor in the mountains of Afghanistan / Mitch Weiss & Kevin Maurer.1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN: 9781101560761

1. Afghan War, 2001CampaignsAfghanistanShok Valley. 2. Afghan War, 2001Commando operations. 3. Special operations (Military science)Afghanistan. I. Maurer, Kevin. II. Title.

DS371.4123.S56W45 2012

958.104742dc23

2011028877

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

Version_2

For our wives and families

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die

The Charge of the Light Brigade
by
A LFRED , L ORD T ENNYSON

The mission, Commando Wrath, sent three Special Forces teams and a company from the 201st Afghan Commando Battalion to the Shok Valley to capture a high-ranking insurgent commander. Considered a sanctuary of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin terrorist group, the valley is far from any major American base.

It was still dark when Captain Kyle Walton stepped into the mist and bounded toward the B teams operations center. He was sure the drizzle would cancel the mission again. Maybe with another delay it would be scrapped for goodan idea he had been pushing for weeks.

Just a few days before, he and his team of Special Forces soldiers and Afghan commandos had been in helicopters on the way to a target in the Shok Valley. In midflight, they were ordered to turn around after they received word that the target was gone. Plus, everybody had concerns about weather, and this day didnt look any more promising.

Nothing about this mission looked promising.

Their target was Haji Ghafour, a high-ranking commander of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, HIG, militant group. An extremist, Ghafour claimed to have three thousand fighters scattered in northeastern Afghanistan, and was threatening military-aged males in the Shok Valley with conscription. Ghafour was a tier-level-0 targetthe militarys highest priority. It was on the same level as Osama bin Laden.

Walton knew that by all accounts, Ghafours men were heavily armed in well-fortified positions high above the valley floor. They controlled everything that moved in and out of the remote valley buried deep in Nuristan Province.

On paper, the mission was a logistical nightmare. Walton knew it. His team knew it. So did his commanders. Uneasy, Walton awoke just before 3 a.m. As the commander of Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 3336, he wanted to check in with the overnight staff at the operations center to see if the intelligence picture was any clearer.

The valley was a major HIG stronghold in the Hindu Kusha picturesque five-hundred-mile mountain range that stretched between central Afghanistan and northern Pakistan with peaks topping twenty-five thousand feet. Isolated and surrounded by a wall of mountains, the valley was accessible only by pack mule. Intelligence sources said Ghafour had spent part of the winter in a compound in one of the villages in the valley. Several other nearby compounds were home to HIG subcommanders.

A source in one of the villages said Ghafours fighters and supporters were armed with PKM machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). His men were stockpiling DSHK heavy machine guns, ZPU antiaircraft guns, and had collected eight surface-to-air missiles.

Walking into the headquarters at the sprawling Army base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, Walton nodded to one of the support crew and moved to the flat-screen monitor hanging on a wall. On the screen was a black-and-white image of a village built into the cliffs possibly hundreds of feet above the valley floor. The Predator, an unmanned plane used for reconnaissance, circled high above, showing the thick mud houses. It made a long sweeping turn and shot video of the wadia dry creek bed that snaked through the valley.

On the white eraser board hanging next to the monitor were notes from the units source on the ground. Waltons eyes scanned the bullet points. It was mostly atmospherics stuff.

• They dont know youre coming.
• HLZ has no running water on it.
• There is no snow and running water.

Waltons eyes flicked back to the Predator feed. He could clearly see snow. On the spots where the helicopters were supposed to land, a river of melted snow raged like white-water rapids. To Walton, the water had to be at least waist-high.

He was worried. Not only did the intelligence reports seem unreliable, but the source knew where the helicopters were supposed to drop off his team. Not a good sign.

And he had no idea who the source was. As the ground force commander, he was uncomfortable basing so much on just one source, especially when the Predator feed in real time was telling him the source was wrong. Walton had been uncomfortable with the reporting from the start. Staring at the snow and water on the landing zones only reaffirmed his concerns.