1st Lieutenant John Bradley of the U.S Special Forces, also popularly known as the Green Berets, stood up, put his arms behind his head and stretched in the Cargo Bay of the C-141 as it flew on. It had been a long flight. They had left from Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina this morning, and flown half way around the world. He didn’t particularly like long flights. He never had, but he was OK with this one. He and his men were eager to get into this fight.
He looked at his A-Team in their combat gear and camouflage face paint. He had seen this particular sight many times before, but this time it was different. They had left US soil. They were going into Harm’s way. The C-141 was capable of being refueled in the air, and it had been now, twice. The plan was for no intermediate stops. In spite of their enthusiasm, their exhaustive training, their gung-ho attitude, this time things were different, really different.
This time it was not an exercise.
This time it was real.
In five minutes, more or less, the C-141’s Jumpmaster would start making her preparations. She had already checked the team’s jump gear, and weapons packs for safety and rigging. She’d finished the task hours ago. She would now begin the sequence of procedures that would terminate in the Special Forces A-Team jumping out of the aircraft into eastern Afghanistan near Jalalabad.
A Forbidding, hostile Territory. Territory in which they could be only be resupplied by airdrops, and in which there was no possibility of reinforcement or rapid extraction. Territory in which they were on their own. Completely on their own.
Their mission was to scout the enemy near Jalalabad. It was a difficult and demanding mission. They were to gather intelligence, locate and coordinate targets, conduct psychological warfare ops, and whatever else their Command and Control could come up with
and stay alive if they could.
Lieutenant John Bradley knew that his level of personal responsibility for his men weighed heavily, more heavily than he had though it would.
They could be resupplied, but only by air.
There was no opportunity for extraction if things got hot.
If the shit hit the fan, the guy who had to think fast was him. His guys were all highly skilled, but the person who had to decide how to use those skills was him. He’d known about this for a long time, but the reality had never sunk in before. It had now. It had on this flight.
He had better get this right. A lot of people’s lives depended on the decisions he would make, his included
Lieutenant John Bradley had no mixed feelings about what they were doing. He would have obeyed his orders under any conditions, but there was more to it for him. His brother Sam was a firefighter in Cicero, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. It could have been Sam with the World Trade Center collapsing around him. Other than the fact that it was men and women just like his brother, he had no direct connection to the events in New York, or Washington, but he was an American, and that was direct enough for him.
The first jump warning light came, and the rest of his A-Team stood up, and began their final equipment checks.
This is what he had trained for; this is what the Team had trained for. He felt both he, and the Team were ready. They were about to find out.
---
