Victory Point - Ed Darack [78]
After a quick meeting with planners from yet another SOF unit—the Army Rangers based at JAF (Task Force Red, which, commanded directly by CENTOM’s special operations element—SOCCENT—fell completely out of the command structure of even the highest echelons of Afghan-based command, including CJSOTF-A)—Wood briefed MacMannis and Scott: “SOCCENT just slapped down a JSOA [Joint Special Operations Area—an ad hoc SOF geographic operating area superior in command to any area of operation already in place], and the Rangers are going to take the lead in the recovery effort from here out.” The command of Red Wings, initially intended to be placed with the Marines at JAF when Wood built the mission plan, then relocated to Bagram with NAVSOF (with special operations liaisons placed at the Marines’ COC), now shifted half a world away—to Tampa, Florida, at CENTOM’s headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base.
“That’s fuckin’ great, Wood. We’re all the better for it—aren’t we?” Rob Scott sarcastically began. “I mean—” He stopped and half laughed as he shook his head. “They have some great fucking golf courses there at MacDill, don’t they? I hear the op planners love sunny Florida—and the orange juice. Makes up for the hurricanes and summer humidity.”
“You’re just a dumb grunt, Rob. Shut up. What do you know?” Wood responded, the two majors resorting to humor as their only outlet as they watched the mission’s last gasps of operational rationality shatter into stunning absurdity before their eyes. “Didn’t the same sort of thing happen just a few years ago . . . Anaconda, wasn’t it?” Wood, maintaining the sarcastic tone, referenced the operational melee that resulted from poor command and control and essentially nonexistent SOF-conventional-forces integration during March 2002’s Operation Anaconda. “We should’ve just had ’em walk in. We should have just had Eggers and Team Ronin walk in for this, and then had Kinser and his crew walk in, and then had Golf Company walk in, too—anything would have been better than what we got with this setup.
“This is way worse than Anaconda, Tom—on a whole lot of levels,” Rob responded.
“No shit.”
Despite the storm of chaos raging at the JAF COC before them, the fate of the now essentially abandoned recon team continued to dominate the Marines’ thoughts. They not just hoped, but expected, that all four had survived the ambush, and were holding firm somewhere on Sawtalo Sar. But they knew that as plans for Red Wings II were devised, discarded, augmented, and argued over, the SEALs of the recon team had to cling to life completely on their own that evening, doing anything and everything they could to reunite themselves with friendly forces, including seeking refuge with locals—a frightening proposition given the inimical allegiances many of the people living on the slopes of Sawtalo Sar had forged.
Knowing that survivors of the ambush could have traversed to virtually any point on Sawtalo Sar’s many facets by late on the twenty-eighth, MacMannis, Wood, and Rob Scott worked up ⅔’s part of Red Wings II in short order. They developed a simple scheme of maneuver: Golf and Echo companies would push south into the Shuryek and Korangal valleys, sweep for surviving members of the recon team, hunt for Shah and his men, and continue their campaign of outreach toward the local population—granted that their plan was approved within the new command structure. While SOCCENT designated Red Wings II as a rescue/recovery mission, the Marines still hoped to attain some of the goals of their original operation.
Wood contacted Kinser early in the evening of the twenty-eighth. “You and Eggers and your best guys take some ASF and get into the Korangal. There are some missing personnel, four of them, and they’re somewhere on Sawtalo Sar. Some may be injured, some may be dead—or all of them may be dead—for all I know. But right now we’re assuming that they’re all alive and well. That’s all I can tell you right now. The worst place they could be is in the Korangal, and that’s why you’re