Matt Gannon looked down the row at his companions. Each of the men exhaled breaths of foggy vapor which dissipated in the reaches of the red lit interior of the aircraft. He and a seven man SEAL team sat on flip down webbed aluminum frame seats on the starboard side of a C-130. All eight of them were relaxed. A few even appeared introspective, absorbed in deep thought as they bounced through a patch of turbulent air. They were one hour and forty-five minutes into the mission and their senses, despite outward appearances, were at their highest peak -- focused on the operation, anticipating the jump.
Despite the heaters running at full, the interior of the compartment was chilly. The arctic winds outside the aircraft were undiminished as they swept down from the old USSR across Uzbekistan. The flow of icy air from the steppes of Siberia whistled through unbroken strings of desolate, rocky peaks, and stretched frozen tentacles 150 miles southward toward Kabul.
The four 4,910 horsepower engines of the MC-130H Combat Talon II echoed through the cargo compartment. They vibrated across the fuselage as the transport bored into the black sky. The spongy yellow earplugs proffered by the crew chief at takeoff diminished the din, but inhibited conversation. The jumpers had retreated from banter acknowledging their defeat to the roar of the engines.
The plane was on loan from the Sixteenth Special Operations Wing, home based at Eglin in Florida and on temporary assignment to the Ninth Special Operations “Night Wings” Squadron. Their missions, for the most part, ranged over the east and northern reaches of Afghanistan. The hand picked crew had been flying clandestine combat support missions out of the Dalbandin airbase in Pakistan for five months and would rotate home in another four weeks. A moment earlier, at 250 mph and a little over five and a half miles above sea level, the bulbous nosed C-130H thundered from the southwestern skies of Pakistan and made a subtle course change. The plane no longer paralleled the Afghani border. They had crossed the imaginary line and were now flying more northward and into the stark beauty of the isolated mountain province of Badakhshan in northeastern Afghanistan.
Matt glanced at his watch as he rested his arms and upper body against the bulky equipment bag which was strapped to his body along with an MC-5 parachute. The plan called for them to be in position on the western side of the target village before the sun touched the highest peak behind the mountain settlement. He figured they should be coming up on the release point any moment now.
A change in the pitch of the Allison T56-A-15 turboprops announced the engines were being throttled back in preparation for a lower parachute speed. The shrill ring of the jump bell declared they were getting close to the programmed drop point. Each of the men fumbled to fasten his personal oxygen mask in place, anticipating depressurization of the cargo compartment. The whine of twin hydraulic-electric motors which controlled the rear ramp of the Combat Talon II focused all eyes on the aft section of the aircraft. The motors pushed the overhead upward, creating a maw like opening. As the ramp of the transport eased open, it revealed a cold forbidding void, an inky black alien world. At 30,000 feet the wind whistled into the stick of jumpers at a temperature well below zero. The chill wind of the mountains refrigerated the interior of the aircraft as the dim lit space splayed its light into the fathomless black sky. The jump warning light flashed on and burned with a steady red light.
The SEAL team leader, Lieutenant Calvin Watts, rose and turned to face his men. He extended his arms outward and moved them in a rising motion while he mouthed the words “Stand up.” The men stood, turned and waddled toward the rear of the plane to form parallel lines along the outboard edges of the ramp. Their equipment bags, slung securely between their legs, rendered them penguin like in their movement. They stood humped over, clumsy under their packs, gear, and parachute harnesses. Unexpectedly, the Hercules bucked on a sudden mountain updraft and staggered the awkward balance of the jumpers who steadied themselves against the framing of the cargo compartment and seats.
Watts tugged in exaggerated fashion at the chute, straps and gear strapped to his body and the others mimicked his actions for one final check. The jumpers took a last visual inspection of the gear of the man next to him. The men sucked on the cold bottled air, testing the flow, one eye on the jump light anticipating the switch from red to green and their leap out into the void. High Altitude, Low Opening, or HALO jumps as they are known, were routine for the SEAL team, but Matt had very limited experience with high altitude jumps with or without the aid of oxygen. Night jumps were always hairy -- even when from a static line where there was an interval between jumpers. This one would be a dicey altimeter based group free fall leap into darkness amid immense mountains.
The crew chief of the C-130 pointed to the jump light which flickered red and then to his watch. He extended one finger and then pointed to the now altogether opened rear of the aircraft. They were less than a minute out.
* * *
Shaukat Pashwar Khan, one of the three Pakistani air traffic controllers on the grave-yard shift at the Islamabad International Airport civilian tower, looked at his watch. The time was 0242 hours. He yawned, rubbed his eyes and drew his forefinger across his well manicured, jet black mustache. These rotations through the dog hours shifts were almost always dull and tedious. Shaukat was bored. Despite the altitude and chill of the April night, the closeness in the cramped operational area amplified the odor of human sweat and sour clothes overwhelming the equipment laden space. A blue haze of tobacco smoke filled the confined air. The smells mixed with odors of hot electrical wiring and stale, burnt tobacco which rose from the remnants of long extinguished cigarettes. The butts spilled over the several ash trays scattered about the observation and radar deck of the tower. A delicate white-gray residue dangled from the end of Shaukat’s Player Gold Leaf cigarette. He ignored the ash as it fell from between his nicotine stained fingers and onto the radar console faceplate. The faded gray-green circular screen mounted at his station was blank except for the searching linear pulse of the radar which rotated over the display. Like the laser saber of a Star Wars Jedi Knight, Shaukat romanticized. The movie was fresh in his mind. He was a Star Wars fan and earlier in the day he had taken his son, Radni, to see Episode I, The Phantom Menace. A single bright blip, an echo, drifted onto the lower left quadrant of the screen. The green dot tracked against the terminal’s background from the southwest and moved closer to the center of the screen in a general east-northeast direction, parallel to the Pakistan Afghani border. The dot, with a military transponder code, captured the controller’s avid attention. When he mentally backtracked the radar return southward, Shaukat surmised the origin of the aircraft as Dalbandin. Dalbandin was an infrequent adjunct port of call to the Pakistan Air Force Base at Samungli, located at Quetta. Constructed by the British in the 1930s, the airfield was operated by them at an early stage of World War II, and by the mid 1960s since had fallen into disuse. The base had deteriorated and remained dormant until the Americans had come in ever increasing numbers. Now once again Samungli was very active. Shaukat knew the base as one of three provided by the Pakistani government to allied forces for the support of Operation Enduring Freedom. The other two bases, at Pasni, on the coast of the Arabian Sea, and Shamsi, in the Kharan district, were used mostly for American helicopter operations and didn’t fit the flight profile for larger fixed wing aircraft such as the C-130s or more modern military transport jets. Yes, he launched from Dalbandin, Shaukat Pashwar-Khan decided. He glanced at his watch. Thirty or so minutes ago, perhaps more. The air traffic controller watched the blip move across the faded luminescent screen and puzzled at the course of the aircraft.
This is strange indeed, even for the Americans, he thought.
He punched at the push-to-send button on his radio headset to call the flight, but then stopped to reconsider. He stroked the transmit key with a thick thumb and contemplated the implications which twisted through several scenarios in his mind. The Pakistani military air traffic controllers at Rawalpindi, the Pakistani Air Force Base on the other side of the civilian terminal’s main runways, would have the flight on their monitors as well. They were no doubt in contact with it. Would it not irritate the Pakistani Air Force for Shaukat, at a civilian facility, to question an obviously sensitive military flight? The controller tightened his jaws and worried a betel nut between his gums and cheek, the red juice of the mild narcotic mixing with his saliva, staining his teeth and mouth.
Arrogant Giaou, shit eating Americans. They come and go at any time they please -- as if they owned Pakistan – as if this was their own country.
Aggravated, Shaukat swiped at a rivulet of perspiration which had escaped from behind his ear and traced a path down his neck. The grit and dirt on his exposed skin, a result of walking to work earlier in the evening through the ever present smog of the city, clung in his perspiration as he tracked the Hercules. He reached to the console and dialed to a longer, wider ranging radar sweep. The aircraft continued to fly parallel to the border east of the Indus River. He watched and re-adjusted the scope to a shorter range radar pass of the controlled airspace surrounding Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan. Shaukat observed the blip of his annoyance as it danced along the edge of the screen. The green dot executed a turn and took up a new northeasterly course, converging toward the Afghani border. Unless there was another change of direction, the track would take the aircraft just east of Konar and deeper into the Hindu Kush Mountains on a direct path toward an inaccessible region of Afghanistan. The antenna of Shaukat’s curiosity was altogether engaged. This new crazy routing would project the Americans’ flight across the border at an especially remote location.
Very unusual. Certainly not a supply or photo reconnaissance mission – not at this hour. This is exceptionally suspicious indeed. Why would the Americans be flying an obscure route from Dalbandin into a sparsely populated area at such a strange hour?
The air traffic controller worried the question in silence for several seconds as he mulled the possibilities and turned them over in his mind.
There are many elite American troops stationed at the Dalandin airfield. But why then do they send a single plane and why now?
The answer came to him in a flash of insight.
The aircraft bore down on the rugged and uninhabited province of Badakhshan, one of the mountain strongholds of Osama bin Laden – bin Laden whom the Americans had come to Afghanistan to destroy.
Perhaps they think they have found him and are sending a team of assassins to kill him. Fools. They will fail, he thought. Al Qu’ida pays well for such information.
Shaukat Pashwar Khan took a final drag from the cigarette and ground the stub out in the over brimming ashtray, a nervous smile on his face. He removed his cell phone from his belt and placed an urgent call.
Miles to the north, the light, mounted on an exposed rib on the portside of the C-130’s airframe, switched from red to green. Watts gave a thumbs-up, turned and executed a clumsy belly flop dive from the starboard side of the extended, open ramp. The leap into space was mimicked quickly by the remaining seven men. The anesthetizing chill cut the thin air. The cold penetrated even the insulated black uniforms. They jumped almost as a group from the starboard and port corners of the ramp one by one, until all had disappeared into the bottomless black empty space, suspended between misshapen, cloud shrouded mountains looming below and the brilliant shining stars from far above.