Hawkdove-Afghanistan, 11 December 2012

Chapter 01 Disclaimer

This is not what happened, according to the brave women and men who survived it and the government sources with top secret access who have denied it.

None of the places where it happened on Tuesday, 11 December 2012 in eastern Afghanistan are real either.

The names of certain persons and unit names are true in some cases (160th Special Operations Air Regiment) and have been deliberately obscured in almost all others to protect the brave men and women who survived these events, and all of the sources inside the government and out who have denied them on the record.

The senior U.S. government diplomat and all other persons who were injured during it have recovered.

The dead were honored, although the precise details of their passing have never been acknowledged or released.

Until now.

Chapter 02 1425hr, 11 December 2012 / Eastern Afghanistan

Two Coalition helicopters flew above a folded gray brown landscape in eastern Afghanistan. There was nothing unusual about a Blackhawk and an Apache (or even two) as escort flying around this area when the weather allowed it.

What was unusual was that today the weather was actually beautiful in this area of Afghanistan, just over one hundred miles northeast of Jalalabad. Good weather was a rarity in December, especially at the very end of Fall; it was far above the usual seasonal minimums that dared anyone to fly.

It could not have been a nicer day to fly high above the harsh, beautiful combat zone below.

In the Blackhawk, First Lieutenant Michelle Paris, U.S. Army, liked the way the flight was going, although that made her twice as nervous about it.

Big Dog was letting her fly right now, and that was nice right there!

Major Seth Big Dog Boyle, U.S.Army, 160th Special Operations Air Regiment, would not be one to entrust that job over to just anyone, period. Add in the V.I.P. passenger aboard, and it showed confidence and trust in Paris she was determined to meet with excellence in performance.

The passenger –

What is SHE doing here?

No one had said a word about her being anywhere but back in the U.S. after a short diplomatic trip through Europe!

The way this mission had all been underplayed for security purposes meant this was no simple post-election morale boosting trip for the U.S. Secretary of State.

She probably got out of an armored cargo jet inside that hangar at Jalalabad, where no one could see her.

No one had seen her getting into this bird, either.

As to why…

Negotiating aspects of the U.S. withdrawal ahead was most likely, decided Paris, given the deliberate types of security choices made so far. And assigning one Apache as a standard escort (helicopters always flew in pairs) wouldn’t draw undue attention to their flight through Afghan skies, whereas a larger formation of three or more might be noticed.

The weather was so nice, that would be hard to miss today.

And at the moment, Paris was just flying their bird and enjoying the job. The weather was clear, the sun wouldn’t be setting for another four hours or so, and the sleek MH-60C Blackhawk was behaving beautifully.

Boyle looked over, gave her a thumbs up, then said on the intercom, I’ll take over at the pass. We’ll both keep an eye on Whirlyclaw. He pointed at the Apache ahead on her left side, then drank some coffee from his thermal cup.

Yes, sir. She wondered if the coffee was still warm, now two hours since they had left Jalalabad.

The pass was the lowest point of a ridgeline leading up to Mount Nowheri, which gave the local Nowheri Valley and a tiny town nearby their names. The river valley ran south, from northeast to southwest, and in the immediate area averaged just eight to ten kilometers (~8 miles) in width, some of it taken up by the Kunar river running southwest through it. There were high mountains on both sides of the valley for most of its entire length and just twelve kilometers distant to the west there were many peaks much taller than Mount Nowheri.

The town of Nowheri was ten kilometers to the southwest of Mount Nowheri.

Two kilometers further southwest of the town of Nowheri was Forward Operating Base Loverri, where Paris and Dustoff 31 had been living for the past nine months plus (when not flying around together).

Another seventy five kilometers southwest down the river valley lay Jalalabad; Bagram Airfield (near Kabul) was almost two hundred kilometers west, with high mountains and weather determining actual routes available at any given moment, their flight distances varying.

She had flown to Bagram a few times during the day, so it was familiar, but Paris knew the Valley between Asadabad (to the northeast) and Jalalabad to the southwest and the areas all around Nowheri well enough by now to fly in the dark without night vision goggles (NVGs – no, she would never actually do that, but she probably could if her nods ever failed one night, or the batteries died early).

The Nowheri Pocket was a teardrop shaped Afghan-style box canyon into the high mountains to the east. It was a mile long, three quarters of a mile wide, opening through a gap between two steep mountains (Mount Nowheri north, Hill 628 south). The Pocket was poorly watered, steep sided, and as uninhabited as the mountains below her now were. Not even the scattered trees below were worth the labor it would take to cut them down and take them anywhere for anything.

Definitely the sort of terrain Paris preferred to fly over, rather than walk on, but it meant the current combat odds were also that no one else who might start shooting at them with anything would be out in it, either.

The flight would cross the Nowheri Pocket’s eastern ridgeline at a five hundred eighty three meter low point section they called the pass, fly over the mile long Pocket, fly out into the Nowheri Valley over the gap between Mount Nowheri and Hill 628, and then turn southwest toward Nowheri, ten miles distant, for their next LZ evolution –

The next landing, in territory far more likely to be unsecure than the first area had been!

Paris put that out of her mind: she was flying the bird, and that LZ worry was a whole other evolution to follow.

The tall rock folds crumpled below them would soon become slightly lower, then there would be a north-south ridgeline ahead, and when they reached that ridgeline, the land would drop away below them into the narrow pocket leading out onto the floor of the Nowheri Valley beyond.

She looked over at the Apache and drifted the Blackhawk right, putting just a bit more room between the helicopters.

Because they were flying at higher altitudes, and for some uncertain lengths of time, the Apache was travelling light load (slightly more than a minimum ordnance load, but it was no more than half combat heavy). She bet the Apache pilot was more used to flying Whirlyclaw either fully loaded, or empty after a mission, not just a third to three eighths full, or something.

The Blackhawk rocked slightly. Winds did funny things as they crossed over the ridgelines and splashed up against the mountains surrounding them. She couldn’t even see the ridgeline ahead yet, and already the winds were acting up.

The Apache seemed to buck, then the Blackhawk shook as a hard gust hit it.

Paris drifted their bird some more to starboard, noting the Apache now moving just a bit to port, each pilot slightly increasing their distance.

She grinned. Flying formation wasn’t difficult, but this was differently exhilarating than getting Dustoff 31 in somewhere – that was what she did every day. But what am I doing here?

Major Seth Boyle was from the U.S. Army’s 160th SOAR (Special Operations Air Regiment). No one ever said exactly what he had actually done, but everyone knew Big Dog stories about what he might have done, which I could tell you, if it wasn’t secret, but since it never happened – well, just keep it to yourself, I heard that –

That explained why Boyle was here, flying this V.I.P. around Afghanistan in some senior officer’s MH-60C Blackhawk.

As for Paris…

She was here because the V.I.P. needed a flight through one of the very few places in country that Major Seth Big Dog Boyle had not had to visit at least once in his long career in Special Ops: a small area of the Nowheri Valley that Lieutenant Paris had been flying over and around in for months, and Lieutenant Paris was available because her bird was down with a mechanical in Jalalabad, and wasn’t.

Right.

Paris didn’t really think they had asked for her because someone was trying to show a State Department V.I.P. just how fully integrated the U.S. Army was these days… although she knew she would be one hell of a Full Equalities For All poster girl if they wanted one.

Michelle Paris was a young, trim, very fit, black woman, an Army aviator, an officer, and a Medevac pilot. She was locally known for flying her Dust Off helicopter into places local goats hated getting to, wherever there was a wounded soldier who needed more help, whenever they asked.

She had even evacuated an injured K-9 not very long ago… Wait, didn’t that brave, lucky dog’s handler claim he was some sort of Special Ops?

Maybe he wasn’t the wannabe that Palmiero thought he seemed to be.

Is that why my name was on their radar?

Paris usually flew Dustoff 31, an HH-60L Blackhawk based out of FOB Loverri, covering medical evacuations.

Medical evacuations, even when under fire, were still handled by the U.S. Army.

Unlike Kandahar, where U.S. Air Force CSAR birds were also available for straight medical evacuations, the CSAR Pedro flights at Bagram Airfield were not generally used for those missions. There were many times in a guerilla war when a combat rescue was needed, and the Air Force CSAR birds and crews were tasked specifically for that mission profile.

The crews based at Bagram stayed ready for those.

With her bird down at Jalalabad, there was no Dust Off capacity at FOB Loverri right now. Any evac needed locally would have to come from Jalalabad, fifteen minutes each way at least… half of any golden hour used up solely by transport time (as soon as a bird became available to take the call), and it might take twenty or twenty five minutes if the weather worsened (especially in early mid-December).

And that did not include any travel time taken by a patient to reach the initial treatment facility at FOB Loverri. Surgical intervention there might extend the golden hour, but head injuries needed the medical facilities at Jalalabad, and more ideally the ones at Bagram.

A trip west to Bagram took about forty five minutes from FOB Loverri. With no Dust Off at FOB Loverri, anyone who got a serious head injury within thirty kilometers of the base was not getting to Bagram within the golden hour.

Paris checked the Apache, which had been staying steady, and remained so. It was a sleek and deadly looking machine, but she loved her Blackhawk.

Nothing made her happier than flying, and she did it very well.

Getting a bird into small spaces or while under fire took as much nerve in 21st century Afghanistan as it had in 20th century Vietnam. After the last thirty seven weeks (plus four days), Hawkdove Paris had some true mission stories about her that explained why Apache pilots kept on telling her she should transfer over to combat helos… and probably why Big Dog was letting her fly this bird.

The Apache crews had kept saying she had ended up in the wrong bird, that she should put in for a transfer and retraining, that the way she flew was Apache all the way…

She looked over at the Apache. It was a quick machine, very combat capable, and fun to fly (yes, she had flown one… and what a date that had been!)

Michelle J. Paris had Hawkdove as her callsign for a reason, though: she had a burning desire to do anything she could to help others, but she did not really want to hurt anyone herself.

She knew Hawkdove was oxymoronic, and she had gotten into only one serious fight about it at the very start of her tour (although it was successfully attributed to slips and falls when it was investigated).

Once she started flying, nobody in her unit had ever made another crack (although there was at least one slip and fall incident, many months ago now, between a local grunt and a cherry just in, who had).

And Paris wanted to fly a Blackhawk, a nice big bird with a wide range of uses even after she left Army life (if she ever did).

The Navy and Coast Guard used marine service modified Seahawks for Search And Rescue missions, the Air Force used armed Pave Hawks for Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) pararescue operations, and 160th SOAR probably had two Stealth Hawks again by now. Back at home, Blackhawk variants were what the President and Vice President and many other government officials flew in.

The bird had a service ceiling, but for Paris, the sky was the limit when it came to where flying a Blackhawk might take her next.

She would have loved to fly a CSAR Pave Hawk here, but the Air Force did not allow women to test for their pararescue programs or serve in their units. If that ever changed, she would be ready!

Until then, she had the Army to thank for the opportunity, the training, and this fine MH-60C Blackhawk she was now copiloting around, high over the sunlit mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

Hard wind gusts made the Blackhawk shimmy.

I’ve got the bird, Hawkdove, said Boyle, taking formal command early.

Big Dog, you have the bird, sir, she