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B. J. Smith |
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Tagging Osama We imagined walking for days across the rocky, dusty plain to reach the foothills. Occasionally we passed a small caravan of battered pickups and SUVs heading south, sometimes just small bands of refugees on foot looking hungry and exhausted. When our feet began to burn from the march, these people reminded us of why we were here and what we were about to attempt. Big Dan carried most of the weight on his back, carried the most dangerous weapons we possessed. Travis was our pathfinder, our navigator. Every mile or so he would check the GPS unit that attached to his duty belt to make sure we were still on track. I carried our little cache of food in a backpack along with the mountaineer's cookstove and a hastily assembled first aid kit. We each had our own water supply. We slept on the ground, but mostly we kept moving. Yesterday we saw the B-52s high overhead and, a little later, the low rumble in the distance as rock and flesh and metal and wood were pulverized. The airstrike had been called in for us, to soften up the resistance before we arrived. I prayed quietly that our target would be spared, for now. I wanted to see him up close and give him the message before he died. "How much farther, Travis?" I asked when we stopped to rest. Well into the foothills now, we'd climbed about 1,500 vertical feet in the past couple of hours. We could see miles across the plain to the south but only a few yards ahead of us as we climbed. "I'd guess about three kilometers, sir." "Dammit, Travis. You can't guess. Real soldiers don't guess. They know, or they find out." "Sorry, sir," he said. "Three kilometers. In this terrain that will take us about four hours. It's pretty steep for the next two and a half K. The cave is in a small valley just beyond that. Intelligence says we'll see it from the ridge. It's heavily guarded." "That's better, soldier." I patted him on the back. "OK," I said to them. "Let's roll." The battle for Mazar-e Sharif was a distant memory, as were our missions into Kandahar early in the war. Altogether we had lost five from our unit. Biegger, Gear, Quinn, Schmidt and Closner. This would be our last mission together, the three of us. It was hard not to think about the others as we climbed higher into the hills, up the narrow trails, around massive boulders, ever alert for lurking Taliban fighters and Al Qaeda sentinels. Stealth was our only hope, and our dead comrades our inspiration. The pathfinder's estimate wasn't very far off. We covered the last two kilometers in just over four hours and crept to the ridge that overlooked the little valley. It was dusk. "It doesn't look very heavily guarded after all," I whispered as I scanned the opening of the cave and the surrounding area with the high-powered binoculars from Big Dan's pack. "We can do this." "Are you sure?" Travis asked. "Of course, I'm sure. Would I drag you all the way out here if I didn't think we could pull this off?" He shook his head but still looked none too confident. "OK, men. Put on the dead-man clothes, and remember how those turbans were wrapped. If they're not right, it's a dead giveaway and we won't get closer than a hundred yards." "Meters," said Big Dan. "Oh yeah, meters. A hundred meters." Minutes later we were transformed. No longer clean-cut, blue-eyed sons of the Midwest, we clearly were experienced Taliban fighters ready to die for Allah. We fixed Travis up with a bloodstained bandage over one side of his face. Clearly, his injuries had left him incapable of speaking. Big Dan's neck was bandaged, too, and I had apparently been hit in the lung. Dragging our stolen Kalashnikovs behind us, we stumbled down into the valley, supporting each other as wounded comrades in arms. Half a dozen fighters came to meet us a hundred meters from the entrance to the cave. They quizzed us in words we couldn't even hope to understand. We answered in grunts and gestured painfully toward our bloody wounds. They escorted us to the cave's entrance and then a short distance inside and down a tunnel that ran off to the east. Other wounded fighters lay here and there in a spot where the tunnel widened into a makeshift hospital ward. I had learned two sentences of Arabic in preparation for this mission. I repeated the first one to the Taliban officer who approached me as I sat with my back to the cave wall, holding one hand over the bloody mess on the right side of my chest and the other holding the .45 behind my back. "I have a message for Osama before I go to Allah," I said. He seemed surprised to hear me speak, and ran to get another officer. The second officer spoke to me in Arabic. "I have a message for Osama before I go to Allah," I said again. They talked back and forth for a few minutes before turning to me again. Once more, I repeated my few words of Arabic and tried to pretend I was fading away. The second officer rushed off and returned a few minutes later. Behind him was a taller man, all in white, with the familiar dark eyes, slender face and long beard that we'd seen so many times on CNN and the others. I struggled to my feet. Travis and Big Dan were now at my side. Osama bin Laden spoke. I think I understood what he said. "You have a message for me," he said. I nodded and pulled the .45 from behind me, aiming it directly at his nose. He did not flinch. The two officers started toward me but he raised his hand and they halted. "You have a message for me," he said, confidently. "God is great," I said, and I pulled the trigger. He fell instantly to the floor of the cave. His nose was gone, along with a large section of the back of his head. I heard a familiar voice behind me. "What are you guys doing?" Big Dan's dad asked. "We're fighting the Taliban," he answered. "Ben just blew away Osama bin Laden." He chuckled and patted me on the back. "I think I killed Hitler probably five or six times when I was a boy," he said. "Personally saved the world." He looked around the room, nodding at each of us. "Good work, men," he said. We watched him walk back up the stairs and listened until the basement door closed behind him. "All right," Dan said. "We run the mission again, only this time I get to shoot the bastard." |