In his latest book, The Rescue, former SAS hero ANDY McNAB delivers the true story of the SAS and Navy SEALs’ attempts to save hostages from the Taliban in Northern Afghanistan in 2012. This edited extract gives us an insight into the inner workings of the Special Forces and a real-life serach and recovery operation…
Kunar Province, Afghanistan, October 2010
The moon was full as they flew into the Valley of Death. It was American soldiers who had given the Korengal its nickname, and they had a good reason to do so: the steep, wooded mountains were hard to resupply, and even harder to patrol and defend. This valley had been the site of some of the most brutal fighting of the war, with outposts almost overrun by the swarming enemy. In the end, the US Army had decided that staying here was too costly. As other parts of Afghanistan saw increasing troop numbers, the Korengal had been abandoned to the Taliban. The last US troops pulled out of the deadly valley in April. Tonight, they were coming back.
Accompanied by a pair of Apache Attack Helicopters riding shotgun, two CH-47 Chinooks flew high in the moonlight, their twin rotors beating in a thudding rhythm that was familiar to friendly forces and enemy alike. The Chinooks belonged to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) and were operated by arguably the best aircrews in the world. Almost everyone on board would have agreed to that. They were American, after all, but not Sergeant Harry Allen.
Born in Sterling, Scotland, Allen had a soft spot for the crews of the Royal Air Force. He’d worked with them in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Thirty years old, but with a thick black beard and sun darkened skin that made him look older than he was, Allen wasn’t put off by the Korengal’s nickname. He hadn’t joined the SAS looking for a picnic. The Scotsman lived and breathed soldiering. He trained hard with his squadron, and in his own time he pushed himself physically, and read about wars, and how to win them. Allen wasn’t interested in the pub. He’d grown up with a dad who’d prioritised booze over his own children, and Allen wouldn’t choose hangovers over his career. He was only interested in being the best, just like the recruiting adverts had offered back when he was a kid. He’d come a long way since then.
Despite the danger that they were heading into – and more likely, because of it – Allen smiled to himself. The sound of the Chinook’s beating rotors was an ever-present sound that stifled all but shouted conversation. In the darkness, a man was left with his thoughts, and in his, a memory came back to Allen. He’d been a recruit when the cavalry officer had made his men learn the poem about the charge of the Light Brigade, and a few of the lines returned to him now.
Theirs not to reason why
Theirs but to do and die
Into the Valley of Death
Rode the six hundred
Allen agreed with the first two lines – he didn’t question why he was at war, he just gave it everything he had – but there wouldn’t be 600 riding into the Valley of Death tonight.
Little more than 50 men were heading into the Korengal – 20 of them from the elite SEAL Team 6, which had been founded by legendary SEAL Richard ‘Dick’ Marcinko, and carried out similar roles to the SAS and SBS. There were some 2,400 active duty Navy SEALs, but less than ten percent of them served in Team 6, known as the Development Group, or DEVGRU, by those in the job.
A SEAL could pass the demanding challenge of the Basic Underwater Demolition Training, and its famous Hell Week, but DEVGRU had its own entry process that was more akin to the special forces selection of Britain’s elite Tier 1 units. The Brits and Americans cross-trained often, and since the Global War On Terror had begun in 2001, they were often fighting side by side. SEALs sent men to learn from the Brits, and the SAS and SBS sent men to learn from the Americans. Allen was on an 18 month embed to watch, learn, advise, and, on special occasions, join the action. Tonight was one of the latter.
A British hostage was being held in the Korengal, and her time was running out. Usually a nation like Britain, with elite units trained in hostage rescue, would go after their own people, but the SEALs were in the right place at the right time. They knew Kunar as well as any unit, and America had offered their help to rescue the British hostage. America was Britain’s closest ally, and it was critical that a rescue be launched immediately.
“Local elders have been encouraging the Taliban to kill her,” the intelligence officer had told them in the briefing. ‘They’re saying that they should do the same thing to her as they did to the Russian. No doubt a Soviet soldier had fallen into their hands during the last war. However he died, it wouldn’t have been quick. Before Al Qaeda became famous for it, the Mujahideen of Afghanistan were filming their executions, cutting the throats of prisoners, or pulling them apart limb by limb with horses.’
Places like the Korengal weren’t just valleys of death. They were valleys of horror. There were no guarantees in war, but on this mission, Allen was certain of two things: any mistake could be fatal, and falling into enemy hands was a fate worse than death.
As well as the Chinook full of SEALs, 24 US Army Rangers were also inbound to the target. Tonight the Rangers would provide a cordon of security while the SEALs hit the compound where the hostage was being held, and would need to fight off any Taliban attempts to reinforce the kidnappers. Given the history of the valley, it seemed impossible that the enemy would let the Americans come in without a fight.
Suddenly, Allen felt his stomach rise as the Chinook fell steeply to drop altitude. They were heading down into the mountain passes, and as the helicopter drew closer to the peaks, strong winds began to hit the bulky frame from all sides. The Chinook began to buck like an unbroken horse, the pilot’s using every bit of their training and skill to ride their choppers through the twists and turns of the hostile land. Looking through their Night Vision Goggles, the land ahead was a sea of different shades of green. The full moon was good for the pilot’s night vision, but there were two sides to every coin: the Taliban would be able to see better, too.
Allen braced himself by pushing his back against the wall and his feet into the deck. He pulled his own night vision into place, and looked up and down the airframe, seeing the aircrew’s gunners in position behind their miniguns, searching out enemy targets. If someone did open fire on the Chinook, they’d be greeted by an unbroken stream of 7.62mm bullets, the miniguns firing at a rate of 2000-6000 rounds a minute: almost sixty a second. Allen wouldn’t want to be on the end of that.
He turned as he felt someone tapping his leg. It was the SEAL beside him, a big guy from Fort Worth who went by the nickname Tex. Tex had won a scholarship to football at the University of Austin, and Allen didn’t envy the people that had played against him: the man was built like the side of a stadium. Tex put a palm sized tin of something into Allen’s hand. “What is it?” Allen shouted over the noise of the rotors. “Dip!”
Allen had tried ‘dip’ once, and only once, back in the SEALs’ base in Virginia Beach. Chewing tobacco was popular with a lot of the American military, who would place it between their lip and gum, claiming that it gave them energy and focus. It had just made Allen feel sick. There were plenty of British soldiers who smoked, but Allen had never been one of them. He was a straight edged guy, and the thought of flying into combat was giving him all the focus that he needed. He handed the tin back without opening it and heard the Texan laugh. A few seconds later the smell of tobacco hit Allen’s nostrils as Tex put a huge pinch of the stuff in his mouth.
Seated on Allen’s other side was Justin Miller, a wiry man from Montana. Miller had been a ranch hand before Al Qaeda’s attacks on 9/11. The next day he was at the front of a hundred-metre-long line at a recruiting office, ready to play his part in taking the war to those who had attacked America. Miller was calm and collected, and from everything that Allen had seen, an excellent assaultman.
Like most of the men on the chinook, Allen was armed with the HK416. The 5.56mm carbine, manufactured by Heckler & Koch, was based on the American M4 but was less prone to malfunction. In the close quarter combat that SEAL Team 6 usually found themselves in, any stoppage in a weapon could prove deadly. The HK416 also had a rail system which could be fitted with a variety of optics, and devices such as torches, laser modules, and various grips. Allen was a big fan of the weapon system. Like him it wasn’t flashy, but it did its job, and it did it well.
Some of the assaulters also carried Benelli shotguns, and all had Sig Sauer sidearms. Two SEAL snipers would be staying onboard the chinook, and providing more precision top cover than the door gunners and Apaches could give. The Rangers that were flying in support of DEVGRU were primarily armed with the M4 carbine, but they were also bringing along sniper rifles and machine guns to deal with more long-range threats that might engage the rescue force. In Allen’s experience, nothing settled a fire fight like a belt-fed machine gun.
Of course, the Taliban had their own guns, and no doubt they would be dug in and positioned along the high ground of the Korengal. US military helicopters had been shot down here before. Darkness and speed were the helicopter’s best defence against enemy machine guns and RPGs, and flying at night was a speciality of the 160th SOAR – their nickname was ‘The Nightstalkers’ – but once over the target, there would be a moment where the Chinooks were sitting ducks. Allen could only hope that the Taliban hadn’t sited and ranged weapons to cover the compound where the hostage was being held.
Allen didn’t have access to the radio channel between the aircraft – that was the job of the Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (JTACs) – but he knew from the briefing that the Chinooks and Apaches weren’t the only NATO aircraft in the sky over Korengal that night. Predator drones had been relaying information on the target compound, and a soldier’s best friend, the AC130 Spectre Gunship, would be on station to provide fire support if things got loud and angry.
The AC130 was a flying battleship, the converted Hercules carrying everything from miniguns to a 105mm howitzer. The AC130’s had a few nicknames – Spooky and Ghostrider were a couple – but Allen’s favourite was ‘The Angel of Death’. It felt good to know that such a powerful weapons platform was watching your back. The sergeant was broken from his thoughts as a shout came from the cockpit, relayed from man to man until it reached Allen’s ears. “One minute!” he shouted, passing the message on to Tex. Allen unclipped the heavy gloves from his plate-carrier and pulled them on. With such wooded and uneven terrain, the fastest way onto the target was by rope.
The pilot suddenly pulled the helicopter into a tight turn, pushing Allen back on the bench. In the back of the Chinook, no one was talking. A few of the more religious men were silently offering prayers, but most were thinking back to their briefing, playing through their minds the actions that would unfold in the next few minutes.
Allen lurched towards the cockpit as the pilot flared the aircraft’s nose, dropping speed quickly to make as hard of a target as he could. Seconds later, the aircraft hung still in the air. On the ramp the crew tossed out thick ropes that were fixed inside of the airframe. They pulled on them to test the strength, then pushed the ropes into the hands of the two closest assaultmen.
“Go!”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andy McNab joined the infantry as a boy soldier. In 1984 he was ‘badged’ as a member of 22 SAS Regiment and was involved in both covert and overt special operations worldwide. Awarded both the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) and Military Medal (MM) during his military career, when McNab left the SAS in 1993, he was the British Army’s most highly decorated serving soldier. Since then, McNab has become one of the world’s best-selling writers and has written over 30 books. On top of his writing work, he lectures to security and intelligence agencies in both the USA and UK and is a patron of the Help for Heroes campaign.
The Rescue by Andy McNab (Welbeck Publishing, $34.99rrp) is available at all good book stores
By ANDY McNAB
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