American Heroes in Special Operations Page 21

  But the enemy was waiting.

  Gunfire exploded above them from three rooftops less than thirty feet away. The Special Operators dove behind a short mud wall jutting from the building, then began to return fire. But the enemy had constructed “spider holes” in the walls around each rooftop that would allow them to fire their AK-47s without exposing themselves in the process. Small arms fire rained down from these concealed fighting positions smacking the wall behind which the operators were crouched. Then, a PKM machine gun opened up on them from ground level, blasting rounds at them from down an alleyway. As the ODA fought to improve their position, a cow appeared in the alley, scared up by the gunfire. Disoriented, it charged the machine gun position, taking the majority of the bullets meant for the Green Berets.

  The team took advantage of the diversion caused by the bovine’s demise and made for the doorway of the target building. Gutierrez and another man took up positions to draw the enemy’s fire and unloaded on the enemy fighters shooting down on them so the rest of the team could get inside. Then the Captain and another Green Beret charged forward so Gutierrez and his partner could move inside. As he moved, Gutierrez was on the radio talking with two Air Force F-16s overhead. The aircraft had visual contact on the objective and warned Gutierrez they identified more enemy reinforcements moving toward their position. This was bad news, but not wholly unexpected, since they knew any fighters in the area would definitely run to the guns as soon as the shooting started. The ODA had been engaged for just a few minutes—and time was already running out.

  The support-by-fire element positioned outside the village was trying to engage the enemy and give the assault team some relief, but the height of the walls obstructed their ability to deliver accurate fire. They repositioned to try and get better fields of fire but began taking RPG rounds into their midst. Forced to relocate again, the fire-support element was, for the time being, out of the fight. Inside the compound, the assault team was now on its own.

  Then Digger got hit. The bullet made through-and-through holes in his thigh. Two other men caught shrapnel from a grenade as well, both superficial wounds. They were able to reach the relative safety of the target building, however, where the SF medic quickly went to work dressing their wounds. But the enemy began throwing hand grenades onto the rooftop of the room they were in, and the explosions caused mud and debris to cascade on top of them. Then rocket-propelled grenades started slamming into the outside walls, turning the plaster-like mud into shrapnel and blowing holes in the structure.

  With the Captain in a mild state of shock from his leg wound, the Team Sergeant took charge of one corner of the compound, sending men to defend the approach from the direction of the alleyway and ordering two men up on the rooftop to discourage the grenade throwers. A warrant officer in front of Gutierrez was firing out the doorway at Taliban fighters on the rooftop across the alley when his weapon jammed.He spun out of the doorway to clear it and change magazines. The battle-hardened Latino Combat Controller stepped in to replace him and saw two Taliban shooting down on his buddies from the two-story building across the yard. He stepped out and put two well-aimed shots center mass, watching them fall.

  Then another man in black pajamas stood up at the corner of the rooftop. Gutierrez snapped his weapon up and pulled the trigger just as the man’s AK-47 spat flame. The man dropped his weapon and toppled over, but Gutierrez felt like someone had just punched him in the lower back. He ignored the sensation because another man stood up and took the place of the one he’d just engaged. He shot that man, too, and watched him fall.

  Back on the radio, Gutierrez began trying to find a way for the F-16s to help them out of their predicament. With Taliban fighters crawling over the rooftops only a few meters away, there was no way to use the fighter jets’ onboard missiles to take them out without killing Americans in the process.

  Gutierrez suddenly felt exhausted. Then he coughed and was surprised to taste blood in his mouth. He dropped to his knees and spit blood—too much blood. That was when he realized how badly he’d been shot.

  The terrorist’s bullet entered just above his armpit and punched a fist-sized hole in the small of his back. In between, it torn up his insides and caused his left lung to collapse. The medic appeared at his side and dragged him into a doorway, rolling him onto his uninjured side so he wouldn’t drown in his own blood.

  Rob Gutierrez was no stranger to combat and saw plenty of men die. As the medic worked frantically to remove his combat harness and body armor, the wounded Staff Sergeant realized he had about three minutes left to live. Images of Julie, his wife, seven months pregnant with their first child and thoughts of his mother—the Mexican immigrant who realized the American dream when she married his father. A part of him knew they would be okay. It would be sad, but theirs was a strong, close-knit family.

  Another part of him, though, was saying “This really sucks!”

  An instant later, both sentiments were overcome by one fiery emotion—anger. He wasn’t going to let his team down. If this was it and he only had minutes to live, Robert Gutierrez was going to go down fighting, protecting his team. He rolled his head to the side and could see out the doorway into the courtyard. Silhouetted in the moonlight was a Taliban fighter, blazing away with his AK-47. Summoning his remaining strength, Gutierrez raised his rifle and fired.

  “Rob! Hey Rob!” It was the medic. He was busy stuffing curlex into the hole in Gutierrez’s back. “You’ve got a sucking chest wound, buddy. Your lung is filling up with fluid. If we don’t get you to a hospital, you’re not going to make it.”

  Tell me something I don’t already know, Rob thought.

  “I’ve got to stay and call in the aircraft,” he wheezed through bloody lips. Just breathing was becoming more and more difficult. It felt like someone was pumping his chest cavity full of concrete.

  “I’ve got to decompress this lung.” The medic pulled out a needle the size of a ballpoint pen. “This is gonna hurt like hell, buddy. But it will make it easier to breathe.”

  It already hurt like hell. How much worse could it get? Gutierrez gave a feeble nod, “Do it.”

  The medic was right. He lifted Rob’s armor plate and jabbed the needle between his ribs. If he could have, Gutierrez would have screamed. But within seconds, the pressure in his chest started to ease, and he could feel breath coming back. He gulped in the sweetest lungful of air he’d ever tasted and said, “Thanks, Doc.”

  Then he got back on the radio.

  The F-16s orbiting overhead were armed with hellfire missiles and five-hundred-pound bombs. But there was no way they could use either weapon system without killing Americans and enemy alike. The two jet pilots had a clear picture on their thermal scopes as the Taliban swarmed in, only feet away from the team of ten Special Operators who were now trapped inside the compound and about to be overrun. And they were almost out of gas.

  Gutierrez had an idea. He keyed his radio and said to the fighter pilots, “How about a show of force, over?” If the jets could make a high-speed pass and get low enough, they might just scare the enemy fighters into taking cover.

  The jets’ fuel tanks were hovering just above “bingo”—the absolute minimum they needed to make it back to base. But the pilots agreed to try. A moment later, they dove their planes to rooftop level and screamed over the target area with full afterburners. The noise was so deafening everyone who wasn’t wearing ear protection had their eardrums blown out as the jets screamed by. Taliban fighters were literally blown off the rooftops by the fiery jet wash and Gutierrez and his mates were sure the building they were in would collapse.

  But it didn’t slow the enemy for long. The Taliban fighters renewed their attack with a vengeance as soon as the jets turned for home.

  Gutierrez heard the handover as the jets left and passed the battle space to two incoming A-10 Thunderbolt aircraft. In addition to missiles like t
he fighters, the “warthogs” were armed with seven-barrel rotary cannons capable of firing seventy rounds of 30-mm high explosive and incendiary ammunition per second. Regulations said friendlies had to be no less than two hundred feet away from where the aircraft were shooting in order to be safe.

  They barely had twenty feet, much less two hundred. But at that point, they didn’t have much of an option. Gutierrez discussed it with the captain, who would have to authorize such a “danger close” gun run by the A-10s. The enemy grenades exploding on the roof of their position and RPGs still blasting holes in the walls of their enclave were enough to convince him it was worth the risk.

  Gutierrez got on the radio and tried his best to calmly relay the information to the A-10 pilots. When he got to the part about them being thirty feet away from the enemy, the pilot asked him to re-send his transmission. Even if the pilot’s aim was perfect, the slightest turbulence could cause the impact to vary as much as sixty feet. There were Green Berets half that distance from the enemy.

  When the pilots finally agreed to the gun run, Gutierrez turned to the men around him and said, “Everyone had better cover up. This is going to get loud.”

  The operators got into the prone position, huddled together in the corner of the room. The medic draped himself over Gutierrez and they waited for the firestorm.

  When it came, it felt like the end of the world. The walls around them imploded and then crumbled, flaming debris was falling everywhere and the sound was something you felt, not heard—like it was raining house-sized meteors. For a moment Gutierrez wondered if any of them would survive.

  After the first A-10 made its run, Gutierrez coughed dust and blood and heard the team sergeant checking to see if everyone was alive. Miraculously they were. But there was still some incoming gunfire, though much less than before. So Gutierrez keyed his mike and cleared the second aircraft hot.

  Again, it felt like they were inside the apocalypse, and again, they all survived. After that, more Taliban moved in to replace their fallen comrades, so after a few minutes, in anticipation they’d soon be able to pull out, the CCT airman slid his body armor back on over the still-bleeding wound in his back. Then Gutierrez ordered a third pass.

  These guys just didn’t learn.

  The village exploded again in a rain of high-explosive rounds. When the A-10s pulled up and shot skyward at the end of their run, the only sound was the crackling of flames as the destroyed buildings around the team burned. Then the aircraft radioed that a large group of enemy reinforcements was heading their way. There was no time to lose.

  The team sergeant dragged himself to his feet. “Lets’ get out of here.” One by one, the Special Operators got up and moved out, single file, helping the injured along as best they could. They picked their way through the dust, smoke, and burning rubble, sidestepping the bodies of their foes.

  A-10C Thunderbolt II

  They had to walk almost two kilometers to find a safe extraction point where helicopters could come in and get them. During this movement Gutierrez held onto the harness of the man in front of him, but otherwise walked under his own power. Every step became more difficult, however, as his punctured lung slowly filled with blood once again. Despite his pain and blood loss, he maintained contact over the radio with the A-10 pilots, who prowled the skies above, escorting the team to safety. After he called in the helicopter that would take them home, Staff Sergeant Gutierrez passed out from loss of blood.

  The medic performed a second needle-decompression of his lung and started an IV to replenish his fluids. The injured staff sergeant briefly regained consciousness, only to lose it again as they were loading him on the aircraft.

  It takes time for awards to make their way through the system and be approved. Had Staff Sergeant Gutierrez died that dark night east of Herat, he might well have been awarded the Medal of Honor his team mates wanted him to receive. As it is, he will likely receive the Air Force Cross, which added to his Silver Star from Bari Kowt in 2008 and Bronze Star from the Shok Valley four months later, will make him one of the most highly decorated airmen alive today.

  But Rob Gutierrez doesn’t care about any of that. If anything, the accolades and attention are an additional burden as he does his best to heal quickly so he can get back out with his brothers who are still in harm’s way.

  Staring death in the face has made him a little more philosophical, however. Now the chance to hold his infant daughter and spend time with Julie has a sweeter flavor he appreciates more than he ever thought possible. And he’s grateful, too, for the country that allowed him the opportunity to serve with men for whom he would, even today, lay down his life.

  Staff Sgt Robert Gutierrez

  SSG Damone "D" Brown and his K-9 partner Argus

  SPECIAL OPERATIONS K-9

  The U.S. Special Forces are some of the most highly specialized soldiers in the world. Each soldier trains for years, cross-training for every job in his unit. There are weapons experts, communications specialists, engineers, and Intel officers. They can train a force of foreign fighters or take down a terrorist network with direct action. Years of combat experience hone their senses to a razor’s edge.

  But these super warriors rely on one special member who has skills none of them can match. His name is Argus. Most Green Berets wait until after they finish high school to join the military—Argus was hand-selected to be a Special Operator almost from birth. He has years of combat experience and highly specialized training. He can drop onto a target by parachute, or fast rope in from a helicopter. He can track the enemy across mountainous terrain in freezing weather and take him down without a weapon. In fact, he never carries a gun, because he doesn’t need one.

  Oh, and one other thing Argus has the other Green Berets don’t—four feet and a tail. He’s a Belgian Malinois—one of only a handful of Special Operations qualified military working dogs and he’s proven his worth as a member of the 7th Special Forces Group on three combat tours in Afghanistan.

  Specially trained to find explosives by smell, Argus has been credited with saving dozens of lives by sniffing out IEDs. His handler, Staff Sergeant “D” likes to point out that Argus is as much one of the team as any of the other guys. And most of the time, he swears Argus smells better, too.

  Argus has been trained to go anywhere his team goes—whether that means jumping from an airplane at ten thousand feet (albeit connected to his handler with a special harness) or going out on a twenty-five-mile rucksack march. Argus even wears his own kevlar body armor.

  Since its inception as an experimental program in 2005, the special operations military working dog program has met with great success, and some of its graduates have even been awarded bronze stars for their work saving lives in the war zone.

  It’s a program enjoying huge success and is very popular with the soldiers. Argus always trains as a member of the team. Even during medical refresher training—the Green Berets take turns sticking each other with needles, learning to give each other intravenous fluids which might save a life on the battlefield. Argus gets stuck too, and though he obviously doesn’t like it, SSG “D” points out that Argus is one of the most likely to be injured, so they need to know how to save him if that ever happens.

  The bond between man and dog was never stronger than between these two—they spend nearly every hour of the day together, even sharing a room. “Argus has been there by my side the whole time—it’s like taking my son to war—such a huge responsibility. But one that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. We definitely have a very strong bond.”

  Argus has found dozens of IEDs, thousands of pounds of explosives, and has even survived an IED attack. So far he’s never been injured, but a sizeable percentage of the dogs in this profession will be wounded or killed in the line of duty. It’s likely Argus will complete at least one more combat tour before he retires—at which time he’ll be put up for
adoption if he’s deemed not to be too aggressive.

  SSG “D” plans to be first in line to take him.

  PARARESCUE CREED

  It is my duty as a Pararescueman to save life and to aid the injured. I will be prepared at all times to perform my assigned duties quickly and efficiently, placing these duties before personal desires and comforts. These things I do, “That Others May Live.”

  THE PEDROS

  KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, AFGHANISTAN

  “We’ve got one urgent surgical!” The helmeted Air Force Pararescueman shouted over the whine of the two HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters spinning up on the tarmac. “An auto vehicle accident—a four-year-old local national. It’s a ventilated patient and it’s worsening, so we don’t know what we’re going to get when we get there.”

  Crewmen scurried around the choppers, making quick last-minute checks before we lifted off into the cool morning air over Kandahar. It was to be the first of eight missions flown by this crew today.

  When we arrived in Afghanistan in April 2010 for a month-long embed, one of the first units we went to visit was the 41st Expeditionary Rescue Squadron, also known as the “Pedros.” The unit boasts some of the most experienced helicopter pilots in the military, because they fly nonstop rescue missions during each four-month deployment to the war zone—and these pilots, aircrews, and PJs have made many trips “in theater.”