Mark Owen - No Hero

Our plans were always pretty simple, but I tried to give my guys a chance to shoot holes in it. I started with the basic questions.

What are we missing?

Does what the intelligence folks are saying match with what we are seeing?

What were everyone’s responsibilities for the night?

Which team would lead the assault?

Everyone on the team had input, even the newest guy. I knew I definitely wasn’t the smartest guy in the room, and I had learned a long time ago to ask for outside opinions.

It took about an hour to get everything in place. When we were done, Steve and I went back to the troop chief and briefed the plan. The troop chief and troop commander sat in the operations center listening carefully as we detailed the routes to and from the target and the assault plan.

Although our intelligence analysts were confident the fighters were not going to move again the rest of the night, we kept a watchful eye on the compound. The drones kept a constant vigil overhead.

We planned to land about five kilometers from the target and patrol to the compound. This allowed us to keep the element of surprise. Nothing gives away your position like a massive helicopter hovering above. With the high mountain peaks and long valleys, the helicopter noise would float for miles and everybody up and down the valley would know we were coming. Sometimes we’d land one valley over in order to keep the rotor noise down. The only problem with that idea was you had to walk your happy ass up and over a mountain.

I watched the troop chief and troop commander carefully as we briefed. They nodded their heads as we laid everything out. The plan was simple, so I didn’t anticipate any issues. The troop commander blessed off on the plan, and a couple hours later we were airborne, headed to the compound.

I was excited as I sat in the Chinook, trying to think warm thoughts. In the back of my mind I wasn’t nervous about anything. I was confident, not arrogant, that I knew how to handle almost anything on target. By my thirteenth deployment, I was light-years ahead of my first missions. I’d come a long way from the kid in a T-shirt hoping to be a SEAL. I’d learned valuable lessons on the streets of Baghdad on my first combat deployment.

There was no stopping a lucky shot or well-placed roadside bomb, but after thirteen deployments there was little that surprised me. I’d been sent to a compound rigged to explode when I arrived. I’d walked into countless houses in Iraq and Afghanistan and faced fighters waiting to ambush me. The missions weren’t any easier, but I had a wealth of experience behind me.

Partof the reason my teammates and I were so capable was we constantly tried our best to evolve. The enemy was always changing their tactics, and if we didn’t change ours as quickly, we would fall behind, putting ourselves at risk.

At the start of the war in Afghanistan, few of us had seen any real combat. We were highly trained with no experience, but after a decade of war, almost ninety percent of the force had real-world combat experience and close to double-digit deployments under their belts.

During every deployment, we pushed to change tactics and techniques as quickly as our enemy did. We never rested on what worked in the past; instead we pushed to develop what would work in the future.

I closed my eyes and let the hum of the helicopter’s engines wash over me. Some of my teammates were already asleep. I rested my eyes and went over the mission in my head. I tucked my hands between my body armor and my stomach, trying to keep them as warm as possible for as long as possible. It wasn’t Alaska cold that night, but it was still cold enough that I could feel it through my gloves.

We were used to this routine. At this point in the war and our careers, we had become somewhat numb to the pain, suffering, and sacrifice of going on missions. I rationalized it all as “just part of the job.” Some people had chosen different professions, but this was ours and we were getting really fucking good at it.

I felt the helicopter dip down and heard the engine pitch change as it landed. A mix of dust and snow greeted us as we dashed off the back ramp. I got about fifty yards from the helicopter and started to piss into the dirt. I’d been holding it for the hour-long flight and I knew once we got moving I wouldn’t have a chance to go. All around me my teammates were doing the same thing. As the helicopter’s engines faded away, we got into patrol formation and started toward the compound.

No words had to be spoken. No order given. This was another day at work for us. Everyone knew what to do, where to go, and what was expected of him. Sure the bureaucracy and bullshit rules from senior officers were always there, but we always worked with them and around them and otherwise did our best to block it all out of our minds.

In the green hue of my night vision goggles, I could see my teammates spread out before me. We had been patrolling toward the target for about an hour when the radio crackled to life.

“We’ve got two MAMs [military-age males] coming out of a door on the west side of the compound,” I heard over the radio. “They just moved over to a door on the east side.”

Shit, the fighters were still awake. If people in the compound were awake, it meant we would have to use different tactics on the assault. We wouldn’t be able to silently pick the lock and slowly make our way into their bedroom and catch them by surprise.

As it stood, based off the latest report from ISR, we’d have to call them out, giving up our element of surprise and allowing them time to arm themselves to make a stand. I’d been around long enough to know that folks who really had no clue what was happening on the ground made most of the rules we operated under.

But we still had a long walk ahead of us. I hoped by the time we got to the compound the fighters would be asleep. I kept scanning for threats and focused on the long patrol. As we got closer, the ISR pilot was on the radio again.

“The two movers just returned to their original doorway and went inside,” the pilot said.

We patrolled over a few small hills and into a thicket of trees near the compound. This was our final set point before we assaulted the target. From the trees, I caught a glimpse of the compound. At night and in the dark, it looked like just another compound in Afghanistan. It had high mud walls and a heavy wooden gate.

Since the last warning, the compound had been quiet.

No movement.

No more sleepwalkers.

We waited a few minutes to make sure no one got up again. Finally, the troop chief made the call to continue with the assault. Because of the freezing temperatures, our troop commander made the decision to sneak over the wall instead of conducting a callout because a callout would only expose the women and children to the bitter cold. Plus, if the Taliban decided to fight, the women and children would be stuck in the crossfire.

We quietly moved into position. My team fell in behind the snipers and we made our way to the front gate of the compound. I watched the snipers scale the walls and set up overwatch positions.

The gate was made of wood with an old iron latch as a handle. The point man tried the latch, but it was locked on the inside. He called to one of the new guys who was carrying the extendable ladder on his back. We placed the ladder against the wall and the point man slowly climbed the giant mud wall. Another ladder was passed to the point man as he straddled the ten-foot-high wall. As we passed the ladder up to him, he seemed to wobble a little and quickly reached down and got his balance.

We were wearing more than sixty pounds of gear and the point man was doing gymnastic-style moves on the top of a ten-foot-high wall with a room full of sleeping Taliban fighters thirty feet away.