Victory Point - Ed Darack [68]
Just over a mile away from their destination, the SEALs wasted no time putting the insert point well to their rear. The four moved quickly and with utmost stealth, despite portaging a full suite of gear: desertcamo “SOPMOD” M4 carbines each fitted with a flash/sound suppressor, an M203 40 mm grenade launcher, a visible wavelength laser pointer (producing a red dot on a target), an ACOG sight, and a PEQ-2A infrared floodlight/IR laser pointer (to be used with their night-vision goggles). Of course, they carried dozens of 5.56 mm thirty-round magazines and 40 mm high-explosive grenade rounds for their M4s and 203 launchers, as well as hand-lobbed fragmentation grenades should they make contact with Shah and his force. They also carried the MBITR, the Iridium satellite phone, infrared strobes to mark the insert point for the following night’s direct-action raid, red and white pen flares, a GPS unit, laser rangefinders, Steiner binoculars, a large Leupold long-range spotting scope, a tripod on which to mount the scope, a digital camera, and a Panasonic “Toughbook” laptop on which they could process digital images of possible target individuals then interface with the MBITR to pass the photographs to the COC for positive identification via secure satellite transmission. The team also carried a “Phraselator,” a wallet-size device loaded with prerecorded Pashto phrase files selectable in English on a menu screen, with the ability, through a speech recognition algorithm, to also translate phrases from English to Pashto by speaking into an attached microphone. As well, the team carried a 7.62 mm semiautomatic sniper rifle, similar to one Eggers had tested (designated an MK11 by the Marine Corps), to use for acquired targets of opportunity during phase two of the op. Should the unthinkable happen, and Shah’s force overrun the small team, they carried incendiary grenades, which would render their valuable and sensitive gear useless in a white-hot conflagration as they egressed from harm’s way.
The team maneuvered through the complex terrain of Sawtalo Sar’s upper ramparts through the dark night. With dense carpets of low-lying ferns, steep rock outcroppings, fields of dead upright and fallen trees, and large deodar cedars reaching into the thin air at over nine thousand feet, upper Sawtalo Sar presents confusingly treacherous navigational challenges during the height of midday, much less during the depths of a moonless night. Further complicating operational difficulties, this time of year sees the influx of moisture from the Indian monsoon, fueling volatile, unpredictable thunderheads that lash the slopes of the peak like angry clenched fists, leaving the mountain’s reddish-brown soil and sharp chunks of shale dangerously slick, even to daytime-traveling locals who know Sawtalo Sar and its trails, trees, outcrops, and villages like their own backyard. By midnight, however, with no sun to infuse convective energy for thunderheads to thrive, these storms typically disintegrate, revealing effervescent fields of stars, the brilliant view occasionally dashed by roving threads of dissipating clouds, the seasonal moisture then lying in wait for the pounding sun’s energy to once again engender the powerful, capricious, and operationally vexing storms. The recon team traversed some of the earth’s most unforgiving land that night, a forbidding yet uniquely beautiful labyrinth on which extremists could create a storm of fury for the Americans.
“They dropped the rope! I can’t believe it! They dropped the fucking fastrope!” Lieutenant Rob Long overheard one