Victory Point - Ed Darack [45]
The order blindsided Wood; he viewed the construct as a blatant and unbelievable smack in the face of the basic command and control rules to which his institutional Marine Corps DNA governed him to adhere. The order—founded on USSOCOM doctrine (and issued through that doctrine’s strict interpretation)—roared down the pike directly from CJSOTF-A, and ⅔ would have to live with it. But the op had to proceed. SIGINT and HUMINT hits trickled in; nothing ground-breaking, but Westerfield was steadfastly working hard with his Marines to zero in on Shah; more importantly, the intel officer and his chief, Staff Sergeant Chuck Atherton, were developing a feel for the target’s movements, enabling Wood to sketch a general plan of attack against the insurgents and terrorists, allowing the Marines to further the stabilization work that 3/3 had begun, but that had been disrupted.
Wood—who first became a Marine as an enlisted grunt before working through a university degree to become an infantry officer—redoubled his efforts and hatched a plan that would use conventional forces exclusively: Marines would hit the ground from the very beginning of the op, with later phases merging local Afghan National Army soldiers into the mission. Like the initial Stars model (the concept of which had already been approved by Colonel Donahue by early June), a small reconnaissance and surveillance team would monitor the target cell’s suspected area of interest from a clandestine location, shaping the op through their continuous feed of information about the target area. Once the team positively identified the target(s), the main force would insert by helicopter—at night for maximum surprise—both cordoning the area and, with the help of the reconnaissance and surveillance team, taking down the cell. Later phases would have Marines maintaining security and presence by undertaking humanitarian and MEDCAP work.
For the opening phases of the op, Tom looked to use Ronin, one of four scout/sniper teams that composed the Battalion’s Scout/Sniper Platoon (part of Headquarters and Services Company). Ronin was led by thirty-three-year-old Sergeant Keith Eggers, an unassuming Californian who had not only completed both the grueling summer and winter Mountain Leader Courses at the Mountain Warfare Training Center (courses with student attrition rates upward of 50 percent in which select Marines train to lead units through mountainous and cold-weather environments), but had been a mountain leader instructor at the base during the nineties, making him ideally suited for the Kunar’s terrain. Almost superhumanly athletic, Keith regularly carried over 120 pounds of gear—including encrypted radios, MREs and water, an M4 carbine, an M9 9 mm sidearm, a rangefinder and scope, and the M40A3 7.62 mm bolt-action USMC sniper rifle—throughout the Hindu Kush, leading his team for miles at a time, often covering thousands of feet of altitude gain in single movements. Tom’s plan would have Eggers lead a team of six (a standard sniper team “plussed up” with two additional Marines for added security) deep into the Korangal Valley region to surveil Ahmad Shah’s suspected safe houses, positively identify Shah, any of his underlings, and his exact location, then pass word to the COC for the op to press ahead. A company-size force of Marines would then insert by helicopter,