Danger Close

All right, gentlemen...

Right here is Black Rock Mountain, men.

Fifteen to twenty minutes ago,

Alpha Coy, became engaged by 50 to 100 fighters,

up, around, and on the vicinity of Black Rock mountain.

They're also taking some indirect fires from this location.

They hope to have them, uh, backstopped by Bravo Coy

and compress the enemy between the two of 'em,

setting the conditions for us to come in

and do our air assault.

What's our plan for this evening?

Basically, we're rolling in with the attack of the Command Element

in order to secure a, uh, high-traffic region

for the, uh... The Taliban.

So you'll be with Command Element in a Black Hawk

and I'll be up with the Joe's in a Chinook, yeah?

Absolutely. Yeah, you get the better spot, though.

Beck Becks. I actually have an L-10-11 going out.

Upper foresight is good.

Internals are incomplete.

30 mag, all cooling.

- You can go ahead, over. - Roger, work it off.

Arrow 2-5, I have contact on all friendlies.

We have good situational awareness.

Arrow's clear.

- Plug it in. - Yep, Roger.

Truckade... Her movement's the tree line.

- Got anybody in there? - I'm looking, sir.

Right there, clock him, hold on a second.

Oh, shit, right.

Arrow 2-5, we have multiple enemies

in trees, engaging west of road.

Ah, we're getting shot at.

- Roger... - Oh, shit, their in...

That's affirmative. We are taking fire

from the west side...

And, Hard Rock, this is Arrow,

we need permission to engage the tree line,

where the RPG came from.

Roger, you're clear to engage.

Uh, fucking light that tree line up, hit it.

Roger.

- Just to the left. Hit it. - Roger.

Okay, make sure that-Okay, looking good.

- Oh, shit. - Hit it, hit it.

- RPG right over there. - Right, hit it!

We have multiple RPGs coming from that side

at the aircraft, I copy.

Right, hit it.

Hit it again.

Hit it again.

Good man, good man.

We neutralized the one RPG site.

Roger, that's good, copy.

- Come up the road. - Up the road, Roger.

Up the road, up the road to the left... to the left.

- Right there in that building. - Arrow 2-5, are you seeing

- or we're taking more contact? - Okay.

Roger, we're engaged.

Oh my god, I got a bucket.

Oh, shit...

On, shit.

2-5, 2-5, one of our vehicles got hit.

We lost the line of...

Standby, we're missing friendlies.

We're trying to get him out of there.

There was a huge, huge air assault operation.

This was involving the first and 5-0-8,

the parachute infantry regiment, an entire regiment.

It was involving 7th Special Forces Group,

more than 15 different air assets.

It was a huge operation,

and it was going to be going on for weeks and weeks and weeks,

and within that first hour,

one of the Chinooks had been shot down

by a Taliban Surface-to-Air missile.

They had to try to secure this huge,

flaming crash site,

and they didn't know if there were any survivors.

What happened when you touched down?

We had heard that there had been a Chinook

that was shot down, but I just focused

on my job of shooting video

and trying to get the story.

1-3-6, over.

Air Humvee.

Roger, we heard there was a downed aircraft. Can we confirm that?

Is anybody looking to our North route?

I'd linked up with the Commander,

Lieutenant Colonel Brian Menace.

And we were moving to clear a compound

so he'd have a secure location

because they needed to control 15 aircraft

that were racked and stacked in the sky.

This had now become a combat search-and-rescue mission

in addition to the ongoing offensive operation.

Spread out.

- Moo. - I need to get by you.

Do you speak English?

Hey, he does.

Hey, get him over here now.

Get him over here now. Get him out here.

Come on.

Let me see it. Here, all right.

Yeah, these guys check out. They're friendlies.

Thank you.

Who the fuck is our...

- All right, you guys ready? - Yeah.

Which contact...

- That one right there. - Okay.

Up, up, right there. Hit it.

Roger.

Take that, fucker. Here we go.

- Coming up left. - Roger.

We nailed the shit out of that one.

Hey, Jimbo, what are we hearing?

Thank you.

I think what's important to remember

with this huge operation is that...

And it was an operation that still went on

for weeks and weeks thereafter.

And there were many battles that still followed

and towns that these troops had to clear, and...

but the important thing that... That can't get lost in this

is that seven souls were lost.

The five crew of the flipper

and our coalition partners,

a Brit and a Canadian...

And that it... it made no difference

that... that it was internationals

or that they might be reporters...

That we had Americans that were willing to risk their lives

and go after and make sure to recover the fallen.

They had to count the bodies of the fallen.

And when I tracked down Sergeant Greg Strickland,

whose little six-man platoon...

He had gone in there and had counted five bodies.

And he thought, okay, well, I found the crew.

And he was ordered over the radio

to go back in and count the bodies again

because the reporters are missing.

And he told me on camera that he went back in there

to look for the reporters,

and he said he... That... to look for me.

I didn't know I was supposed to be on that...

On that helicopter, on that Chinook.

It was the guys who told me afterwards.

It was a punch to the gut

because it was this realization that...

men put their lives at risk to come after reporters,

to come after people like me,

even though I'm not a service member.

It's not that I have a purpose,

but it's that I have this huge responsibility.

I have a debt to pay back to these guys.

I have to tell their stories.

Did you stay embedded with this group

for the entirety of their mission?

No, I... I was with them for a good week or so

and then it was time for me to dis-embed.

I was trying to get in with the Special Forces Teams in Iraq

and I had a hit date to try to get in there.

And so it was time for me to hitchhike my way to Iraq.

I went to Diyala province,

which is the size of Massachusetts

along the Iranian border,

because that's where I was going to embed

with the Operational Detachment Alpha 0-7-2.

O.D.A 0-7-2 was a so-called rough team...

Very austere, out there on the fringe of the empire...

Where every day was truly a fight for survival.

Even their Special Forces Commander

called these twelve men hard-charging

and living the Special Forces Dream...

but they'd just lost one of their own,

Rob Pirelli, who I knew from an earlier SF mission.

Tell me... um... tell me about Rob.

Rob was the senior engineer on our team.

- He... - Which means what? What does an engineer do?

Well, the engineer is responsible for

anything that we have to build or destroy,

or... he's responsible for movement of all our equipment,

accountability for all our equipment.

Um, basically he's the logistics expert on the team.

So an engineer-— So building stuff and also, like, blowing stuff up?

- Yeah. - Okay, so, but building stuff too

because I think a lot of folks don't understand

- that you guys do all sorts of things. - Right.

When we moved into this outpost,

it was a house, basically in desert,

surrounded by barbed-wire fence.

Within a month, Rob had built the camp.

to running electricity for the house,

repairing generators.

He was literally working until he went to bed.

He'd wake up in the middle of the night to play some online poker,

go back to sleep, wake up in the morning,

still in his AC-Which and his boots,

ready to work in the morning with a smile on his face.

We thought it appropriate to name the camp after him