Like all kids of the eighties, he’d grown up watching the movies his parents would have never approved of on cable long after they’d gone to bed. One of these cinematic masterpieces had kept him from swimming in the ocean for far too many years, while another had given him a healthy fear of both evil spirits and the priests who exorcised them. Still others had simply been too much for his young mind to comprehend. This category included a flick about Vietnam that touched his warrior soul even though he had little understanding of the film’s dark theme. The one thing he did remember were the cowboy hats.
Black Stetsons to be exact.
Coleman found himself awash in a sea of black Stetsons as he slipped onto the aviation compound.
Stetsons and flight suits.
“Here for the BBQ?”
Coleman turned from the sight of three charcoal grills belching clouds of smoke to the Stetson-wearing soldier who’d asked the question. The gold chevrons flashing from his hat marked him as a staff sergeant, which probably explained why he was wearing a desert camouflage uniform rather than a flight suit. Apache gunships were two-seaters, meaning that, unlike Chinooks or Black Hawks, the enlisted men and women who served as crew chiefs didn’t fly with their birds. But this restriction apparently didn’t apply to cowboy hats or the silver spurs that glittered from the staff sergeant’s brown suede desert boots.
“No,” Coleman said. “I need to talk with someone about flying a mission.”
“Nothing’s flying,” the sergeant said. “It’s a safety stand-down day.”
Coleman waited for the punch line, but the NCO stared back at him with a straight face, apparently not seeing the irony in stopping operations to talk about safety in the middle of a war. Then again, this was an aviation unit. Aviators might be in the military, but their reality was worlds away from the lives of normal grunts.
“How about taking me to your CO?” Coleman said.
“No problem,” the sergeant said. “Want to stop by the mess tent first? Another batch of steaks just came off the grill. And there’s ice cream. Chocolate’s gone, but there’s still a carton of strawberry.”
Once again, Coleman waited for the punch line.
Once again, the sergeant stared back with a blank expression.
Aviators.
“I hear you’ve got a mission for us.”
The comment came from a fit-looking man wearing the twin silver bars of an Army captain on his Stetson. With his sunglasses, Bristol Aviator watch, tan flight suit, and fat cigar, the cavalry trooper more than matched the stereotype Coleman had first encountered in Apocalypse Now years ago. Contrary to Robert Duvall’s iconic character, this aviator didn’t seem interested in surfing. But he did appear eager to work.
“I do,” Coleman said, “but your NCO said you weren’t flying today.”
“Headquarters isn’t flying today,” the captain corrected. “But headquarters is all the way up in Bagram. We’re down here where the rubber meets the road. My boss told me we had to comply with the brigade’s safety stand-down day, no excuses. However, he also said that we have to remain responsive to the operational needs of the units we support.”
“What does that mean?” Coleman said.
“This is the cavalry,” the captain said. “When confronted with orders that are vague, cavalry troopers err on the side of initiative. Which brings me to an important question—who the hell are you?”
Coleman hesitated, thinking about the best way to answer. While the CIA’s presence in Afghanistan wasn’t exactly a secret, there was a reason why intelligence personnel were sequestered from the general population of soldiers and civilians who fought the war. Case in point, Coleman was addressing the aviation captain in the midst of a table full of pilots piled with plates of surf and turf and empty bottles of nonalcoholic beer.
At least Scott hoped the beverages were nonalcoholic.
Either way, for CIA officers, anonymity was a way of life, especially in a small outpost like FOB Fenty. While the smaller FOB had nowhere near the number of Afghans present at the sprawling city of Bagram, there were still more ears than Coleman would have liked. And the local nationals weren’t the only people who talked. Soldiers were as notorious for their propensity to gossip as aviators were for telling flying stories.
But Coleman had to say something.
Even if the aviators weren’t on a safety stand-down day, they didn’t just fly on behalf of whoever walked in the door. The captain’s cavalier attitude aside, Apache gunships were a finite resource, and Coleman was willing to bet that the number of mission requests the cavalry troop received far outnumbered their capacity to support them. Coleman needed to give the man something, but “Mitch Rapp’s Lonely Hearts Club” didn’t seem like the way to go either.
“My name is Scott Coleman. I’m OGA.”
Coleman’s pronouncement brought a round of snickers from the aviators.
Not the reaction he’d anticipated.
“Of course you are,” the captain said. “My name is Kelsey Smith and let me guess—you need gunship support and the 160th boys are all in Iraq?”
This was a common refrain in Afghanistan, especially the more mountainous areas whose steep elevation precluded the use of AH-6 Little Birds, or Killer Eggs, as the ground pounders called the aircraft. Though the single-engine helicopters had been heavily modified in the almost four decades since they’d originally entered service, the birds still lacked the power to fly at the elevations needed to service mountaintop landing zones.
The Direct Action Penetrators, or DAPs—Black Hawks the 160th SOAR had transformed into gunships by adding rocket pods, miniguns, and a fixed chain gun—had no problem filling this role, but the airframes had by and large been moved to the conflict in Iraq. More often than not, rotary-wing close air support in Afghanistan was provided by conventional units. In Coleman’s experience, no gunship pilot worth his or her salt shied away from missions supporting SOF, but this support didn’t come without a little good-natured ribbing.
“Here’s the deal,” Coleman said. “I need to interdict a set of high-value targets. Are you in or not? Because I can always go down the road and see what the Hog pilots are doing.”
Coleman’s threat to use A-10s was mostly bluster. Though the Warthog was undoubtedly the best close air support aircraft ever fielded, winding mountain roads combined with an unknown target location equaled helicopters as far as he was concerned.
“Please,” Smith said. “Everyone knows the Air Force doesn’t fly when the chow hall’s serving surf and turf. Save the BS and fill me in on the mission specifics.”
“Convoy of three vehicles entering Afghanistan via the Torkham border crossing,” Coleman said. “I need you to smoke the lead and trail cars. My team will take the remaining one.”
“Why not just let us hit all three?” Smith said.
“Because I need to talk to the HVTs in the middle vehicle,” Coleman said.
“Okay,” Smith said. “Do you have eyes on the convoy?”
“No,” Coleman said with a sigh. “They’re currently on the move, and I don’t have a location. I was hoping you could find them.”
“Hope is not a method nor a combat multiplier,” Smith said, “but you’ve come to the right place. This is a cavalry troop, which means we know a thing or two about conducting a reconnaissance.”
