None Braver Page 2

  Speaking of needs, there is no enclosed lavatory on an HC-130. At the rear of the plane, just beyond the hinge of the loading ramp, is a funnel mounted to the bulkhead, which leads to a tube, which leads outside the plane. If all one needs to do is urinate, and one is a male, the low-tech solution is to climb onto a bar in the sidewall, hang on, and aim well. This trip, after all, is a prelude to combat, and privacy is a luxury. If one happens to be a female, or has a need for more extensive relief, the accommodations are even less accommodating.

  The first leg of the journey lasted about eight hours. It was long; it was loud. Even wearing earplugs underneath the headphones for my CD player didn’t keep the drone of the engines away. Conversation is virtually impossible; all interpersonal communication is done at a shout, except for those on the crew who are wearing headsets hooked up to the intercom system. In order to kill time, nearly everyone tried to sleep. Perhaps because I was a guest, I was offered the opportunity to stretch out on one of the two crew bunks overhead, which I wasn’t shy about accepting. The steel floor would be there another day.

  A flight like this gives one a lot of time to think. What was I doing there? Why did I press hard to get the Air Force to embed me with an Air Combat Command unit—something they hadn’t yet done in Operation Enduring Freedom—to take me to where I could live with, talk to, and observe the pararescuemen who were flying missions out of Karshi-Khanabad, Uzbekistan; Jacobabad, Pakistan; and Kandahar, Afghanistan?

  I’d learned about the PJs when I wrote my first book, Pararescue—The True Story of an Incredible Rescue at Sea and the Heroes Who Pulled It Off. I’d been impressed with their credo, “That Others May Live,” as it applied to that particular civilian rescue during which they put their lives at risk for complete strangers. Now they were in combat and the credo was that much more significant.

  The PJs, and the guys who fly them to where they have to go, define “selfless.” While each may have his personal motivation for what he does—don’t we all?—the result is that coalition forces who go out on combat operations know that there are Americans standing by who are ready to come get them if bad things happen. Theirs is clearly a story worth telling.

  I want to be perfectly clear here, as I was in my letter to the Air Force seeking permission for the trip: Even if it were physically possible, which it isn’t in the back of the already crowded Pave Hawk helicopters, I had no intention of going out on combat operations. I’d had my turn doing that as an Army combat correspondent with the 25th Infantry Division at Cu Chi, Vietnam, during most of 1966, where I covered the 1/27th and 2/27th Wolfhounds. Besides, I was writing a book, not reporting for the nightly news. Debriefing the guys when they returned from a mission would yield great stories.

  That said, I was prepared for whatever the conditions on the ground turned out to be. I’d brought four large jars of peanut butter, sleeping gear, boots, and clothing for temperatures ranging from zero in the north to one hundred in the south. I’d promised my wife and kids that I wouldn’t do anything stupid. My son said it was too late; I’d already broken that promise by making the trip. Or as he put it, “You’re Jewish. You’re going to Pakistan. Does the name Daniel Pearl ring a bell?”

  No amount of explaining could convince them that my plan was to stay with the Air Force, on bases I had access to, access that no other reporter had been given to that point. I was quite clear that the odds of being wounded or killed in combat were minuscule; if something bad were going to happen to me, odds were it would be in an aircraft accident. The chances of that happening were only slightly better than the chance of getting knocked off by a wrong-way senior-citizen driver on the interstate in southwest Florida, where I now live. (I didn’t know at the time that the base I’d be going to had a ten-hour bug-out plan in the event it looked like Pakistan and India were going to duke it out with nukes.)

  It was on the second leg of the journey that I discovered the joys of stretching out on my air mattress, basking in the warmth generated by the below-floor heaters. For about two hours. Then suddenly I was in the Arctic. The heaters had switched off, and for some unfathomable reason a gale was blowing from front to rear, about a foot above the floor. That’s when I knew why I’d been advised not to pack my sleeping bag, but to keep it handy. That day we were in the air almost twelve hours, and I’m firmly convinced that we landed with little more than fumes in the gas tank. The copilot, known by the self-chosen nom de guerre Anita Schpanken, had just switched from flying Air Force VIP Learjets to the lumbering HC-130, and she bounced the landing. Someone on the intercom said, “Yep, we’re down,” and the master sergeant seated next to me said, “If she’d bounced it one more time, she could have logged two landings.”

  We were supposed to go into billeting for the night, and depart bright and early for Jbad, but, in Air Force parlance, “the plane broke.” Getting a replacement part took a couple of days, during most of which I was restricted to the base by our not-so-friendly allies, even though they’d already made me pay a hundred bucks for the privilege of entering their country.

  Since everyone on our plane knew that this was the last opportunity for a cold beer or a legal drink for some time, no one seemed especially upset by the delay. A few days later, at eight in the morning, we took off, heading east to Afghanistan, then turning south, flying over the war zone, and crossing the border into Pakistan. We were in the midst of a blacked-out tactical approach to Shahbaz Air Base when an unfamiliar, pungent odor permeated the aircraft. The master sergeant seated next to me said, “Smell that? Welcome to Pakistan.” At about ten-thirty P.M. local time, we touched down.

  We were taken by bus to the headquarters building and given the “Welcome to Jacobabad” briefing. Everyone was cordial, until a tall, slender, mature female in a civilian dress stepped into the room, and was introduced to us as the base mission support commander, Colonel S. (We actually were given her full name, but I’ve chosen not to use it.) She made it clear that one of her jobs was to monitor water usage on the base, because the Pakistanis were supplying us through a water pipe that she said was no more than two inches in diameter. We were to take “Navy showers. Thirty seconds on. Turn off the water. Wash. Then no more than thirty seconds to rinse off.” The colonel seemed smugly pleased when she told us how she’d ordered all the hot water for showers turned off on the entire base because one individual had been timed taking a seventeen-minute shower. My immediate reaction was that she had all the personnel management skills of Hot Lips Houlihan, with none of her charm. No one dared to ask her why 780 people were punished because one person with a stopwatch decided it would be better to snitch than intervene.

  After her departure, we were led across the way to the housing supply tent, and got our first pleasant surprise of the trip. The Air Force provided everyone with sheets, a pillow and pillowcase, and a comforter—mine had cute little blue soccer balls on it. I was then assigned to a tent adjacent to the CSAR aircrews. The sign on the door (the tents had real doors because they did a better job of keeping the heat and bugs out) read, Welcome to the Ice Cave. It didn’t take long to figure out what that meant. With the powerful air-conditioning /heating unit out back, the tent could have done double duty as a meat locker. It was designed for twenty people, but there were only two airmen in it. I had a cot, a homemade table and desk, and shared a small refrigerator. So much for expectations of rugged camping out.

  But there were more pleasant surprises to come. Latrines and shower facilities in combat zones often range from nonexistent to primitive (later in the month, at Kandahar, we’d find the latter). Who would’ve thought that we’d have access to what they called “Cadillac shower units”? These are essentially an RV shell with real flush toilets, sinks with hot and cold running water, mirrors on the walls above them, and individual shower stalls, each one featuring a photo of Colonel Hot Lips with the caption, She’s Watching You. Okay, so there weren’t any photos. Just my imagination working overtime.

  It was moments after discov
ering the high-class bathrooms that I heard a phrase that didn’t bode well for one planned aspect of my trip: “Midnight chow is in ten minutes.”

  A bit of explanation. As you can see from my author photo, I can afford to shed a few pounds. I’d been warned by a couple of journalists who’d been to OEF that I should bring plenty of Imodium, since I would definitely get sick. And a combat surgeon who’d done a tour there suggested bringing antibiotics to cope with the gastrointestinal bugs he said I’d be certain to acquire. Far from finding this news dismaying, I looked on it as a good thing. In Vietnam, I’d come down with what I’m wont to say was dysentery, six weeks running, and lost sixty-five pounds. Preparing for the trip to OEF, I declared that I was going on the “Afghan Diet Plan.” By eating only peanut butter, occasional MREs, and being sick, I would come home a slimmer, trimmer me.

  But then they brought us to midnight chow. It’s when I discovered that to accommodate crews who fly ’round the clock, the Air Force serves four hot meals a day, and at midnight one can get either breakfast or dinner. I love breakfast. Pancakes. Scrambled eggs. Cereal. Bacon. Sausage. Potatoes or grits. And believe it or not, bagels with cream cheese. The Afghan Diet Plan was doomed to failure.

  On our first morning at Jbad, as Lieutenant Harvey and I were walking from tent city to the hangar where the CSAR operations center was located, we ran smack into Colonel Hot Lips, this time looking very intimidating in her crisply pressed desert camouflage uniform (DCU) with a cap bearing the eagle insignia of her rank. Without provocation she braced the young lieutenant. “Why didn’t we know that you were coming here with a civilian?” she demanded. The LT proffered our official orders, but Hot Lips wasn’t interested. The lieutenant informed her that everyone in the Air Force public affairs chain, all the way up to the brigadier general in the Pentagon, knew and supported the trip. She told her that my presence in the AOR (area of responsibility) had been cleared through CENTCOM public affairs headquarters at both Tampa and Bagram, Afghanistan. The paperwork for my trip had passed through more hands than the collection basket at a revival meeting. It didn’t seem to matter. Even though the 71st and 38th Expeditionary Rescue Squadrons at Jbad had been informed of and agreed to my stay with them, no one higher up the food chain had notified the management of the base, the 438th Air Expeditionary Wing. And Hot Lips was determined to make the young lieutenant pay for the perceived slight.

  Finished, for the moment, with the lieutenant, she turned to me, and with a snarl asked, “What security clearance do you have?”

  I responded, “I don’t have one.”

  Hot Lips’ eyes burned. “Then how did you get onto this secret base?”

  Now I was really annoyed. Her unnecessary nastiness to a defenseless second lieutenant was bad enough; but that question to me deserved nothing more than a Hawkeye-type insouciant response. I spoke it as a question. “The U.S. Air Force flew me here?”

  Later in the day, the LT and I went to the headquarters building to see about setting up e-mail accounts. Everybody on the base has one that lets them communicate with the folks back home. The lieutenant’s husband, Brian, was anxious to hear from her, and my wife and kids wanted to know that I’d arrived safely. But in life, as in comedy, timing is everything.

  Colonel Hot Lips spotted us in the hallway and demanded to know what we were doing. The lieutenant’s explanation drew another winning response from Hot Lips. “You don’t get anything here unless I say so.”

  And then she clapped us in irons.

  Okay, I exaggerate—but only slightly. It was more like house arrest. She ordered us into the conference room and we had to sit for the next three hours while she purported to contact higher headquarters. You know you’re being treated badly when the wing’s chief master sergeant drops by and rolls his eyes when told why we’re in the penalty box. Finally, with no resolution in sight—my best guess is that the powers that be at CENTCOM in Bagram had more important things to worry about than an indignant bird colonel paper shuf fler with, as rumor had it, a star in her eyes—we were released from custody.

  Later that same day, we were summoned to the office of the base commander, Col. James Robinson, an Alaska Airlines pilot called up by the Alaska Air National Guard, and then assigned to run Jbad. After our experiences with Hot Lips, his cordiality was a relief. The colonel invited us in to talk about how they could deal with the lack of appropriate paperwork on us, and then get on to helping me accomplish what I came over there to accomplish. From that point on, we never had another unpleasant moment. In fact, after venturing up north to K-2 and spending a few days on that Army-run facility, the LT began referring to our home base as Jacobagood.

  Even after my return to the United States, there’s been ongoing discussion about the notion that the base at Jacobabad was “secret” and that I should not reveal the American presence there. My response has been based on logic. I know. How silly can I be? But nevertheless, here’s what I said.

  The fact that American forces were there had been reported in the press, including a Los Angeles Times article that spelled out what special-ops units had been there and what they were doing. The roughly two hundred thousand Pakistanis who lived in the city of Jacobabad, many of whom, we were told, would kill us if we were to somehow wander off base, certainly knew we were there. The two hundred or so Pakistanis who worked on the American side of the base, cleaning latrines and doing other menial tasks, knew we were there. The Pakistani base commander, who rumor had it was pocketing more than half the money we were paying the laborers, knew we were there. The Pakistani government, which leased us the base and levied a fee every time one of our aircraft landed, knew we were there. The Al Qaeda sympathizers who had welcomed Americans to Jbad by randomly shooting at arriving aircraft and into the base knew we were there. And two weeks before I got there, the entire Jacksonville Jaguars cheerleading squad had been given the run of the base, including a tour of the supersecret Predator drone operation. When I asked for the same tour, it was denied because I didn’t have a security clearance. Or legs like a cheerleader.

  The question remained, “From whom are we keeping our presence a secret?”

  Months later, I was informally told that it wasn’t so much a “secret” as it was “politically sensitive” for the government of Pakistan, which was getting criticized internally for cooperating with the Americans. I understood the problem, and to resolve it, promised that my publisher would not attempt to distribute copies of None Braver in Karachi.

  During my time with the Air Force, we spent a lot of time with the PJs at Jacobabad, where they fly missions on the HC-130s, and made two trips up to visit the PJs at Kandahar and Karshi-Khanabad, where they fly rescue missions on the HH-60G helicopters. The personal highlight of the trip was on a flight up north, where I got to sit on the open ramp of a Herc at night, watch four PJs do a high-altitude parachute jump to the drop zone at K-2, and then go down to about twelve hundred feet and race across Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan refueling helicopters. Sitting there (wearing a harness and tether, of course) and looking out through night-vision goggles was a huge rush. Without the NVGs, you see nothing. Put them on and the helicopters seem close enough to reach out and touch.

  In mid-December, it looked as though world events might be catching up with us. The LT was told that the plane we were supposed to ride home in early January “may be going in another direction.” Making alternative arrangements to get home proved to be almost as complicated as getting to OEF. Getting home directly from Jbad was not possible, so we went up to K-2 to hitch a ride. But after a couple of weather-related false starts there, we caught a Christmas Day ride on a Herc going in the wrong direction, to Kandahar, with a crew that had decorated their cockpit with a two-foot-high tree, tinsel, lights, and Santa hats on top of their helmets. We ended up spending several days with the PJs at Kandahar, or K-1, and early on the night of the twenty-eighth, got a ride on a C-17 headed to points west. After twenty hours of travel time, including two unsc
heduled stops and a change of planes, we arrived at the U.S.-run Ramstein Air Base in Germany. That’s where I parted company with the LT, and headed for Frankfurt International Airport and a commercial flight home to begin writing.

  I’ve gone into detail about my trip to Operation Enduring Freedom because when civilians I meet find out I’ve been there, they invariably want to know “what it was really like.” But there should be no confusion: None Braver is not about Michael’s Excellent Afghan Adventure. It is about a group of men who have volunteered to undertake in combat a mission that is near the top of the “Most Dangerous” list even in peacetime. As one senior noncom said to me, “Back in the late eighties, I quit counting—because I’d counted twenty friends who had died—not just PJs but people involved in the rescue community. I just quit counting. And that was fourteen years ago.”

  Why do they do what they do? Most of the younger PJs can’t articulate it, and the older ones seem to be long past thinking about it. Early on in their PJ careers, after they get past the notion that they can jump from airplanes, scuba dive, mountain climb, and travel the world, all on Uncle Sam’s tab, there is ultimately just a quiet, unspoken acknowledgment that somewhere during the fifteen-month-long training pipeline, they bought into the concept of offering up their own life, if need be, to save another. Clearly they are very special people who possess a selfless dedication to their mission, to their fellow servicemen and -women, and to the United States of America. If there is nobility to be found in war, it can be found with the PJs.

  “Perish yourself but rescue your comrade!”