Spycraft - Melton [204]
During an intense thirty-six hours, the team assembled enough gear, about 5,000 pounds, to sustain them for a series of operations whose length and intensity could not be known in advance. The gear they loaded into the C-17 Globemaster at Andrews Air Force base outside Washington included everything from portable x-ray devices to explosives and ammunition.
Handwritten receipt for one million dollars in cash carried in a duffel bag by an OTS officer to Afghanistan, December 2001.
As the plane’s cargo doors swung shut and the four jet engines were about to rev up, an urgent message arrived that a final package was en route. With the deadline for departure perilously close, they waited. Then an unmarked truck raced across the runway and pulled up to the plane. Lugging an ordinary-sized duffel bag from the truck, the courier presented a three-by-five card that served as a receipt for the package. “Just sign,” the courier instructed the team leader, Mark Fairbain. “You have a million in U.S. hundred-dollar bills bound in $10,000 stacks. Trust me, you don’t have time to count it.” Looking inside the bag, Mark saw stacks of bills held together by small lengths of cotton string. That was enough and he signed the receipt.
With the gear and million-dollar duffel bag secured, the plane lifted off into the night sky over Washington. Then, as the heavy transport gained altitude, the smell of burning electrical insulation filled the cavernous cargo area. The team did not argue with the pilot’s decision to divert to Charles-ton, South Carolina, rather than continue the transatlantic flight with a cargo that included a good deal of explosives.
After swapping out the two and a half tons of gear to the second plane, the team took off for another try to cross the Atlantic. “As soon as we were in the air we were off the jump seats to find a spot on the floor to get some rest,” remembered one tech. “The only problem was we had packed away the sleeping bags and ground mats. So we slept on the metal floor with just our coats draped over us.”
After an uncomfortable night, and already six hours behind schedule, they awoke in Ramstein, Germany, for a refueling stop. When airborne again, they continued on to Bahrain and from there to a secret airbase in Pakistan. Unable to make up for the six-hour delay, and with dawn breaking, the techs were informed the plane would attempt a dangerous daytime landing, the first U.S. aircraft to do so since the war began.
The southwest area of Pakistan, although not technically hostile territory, had yet to be declared completely secured. The airbase, which had first served as a launching point for search-and-rescue missions into Afghanistan, was now hosting large transport aircraft, such as C-130s and C-17s. The increasing Western presence ignited the ire of local militants whose protests included random ground fire ranging from small arms to antiaircraft guns. Pakistani armed forces found it difficult to suppress the dangerous but largely ineffective attacks.
On approach, the team strapped themselves into their seats just in case the aircraft needed to deploy countermeasures or take evasive action. The precaution, to the team’s relief, proved unnecessary and after an uneventful landing, the techs set about off-loading the two pallets of gear and rested in tents that had sprung up in the “boom town” airbase. They would make the trip to Kandahar that night under the cover of darkness.
The final leg would be a 300-mile trip from Pakistan to Kandahar in Air Force MH-53J Pave-Low helicopters. Outfitted with advanced avionics that allow flight close to the terrain’s contours,