PERATION
O
MILSIM
As the hunt for Taliban High Value Targets continues James Phillips finds
himself on the frontline again, embedded in a covert Task Force operation
as part of Tier 1’s Operation Rolling Thunder
I
t was sometime after 02:00. The
grass under my face was cold and
wet and I could feel the remnants
of last night’s rain seeping
through my trousers as I tried to
force myself even closer to the ground.
The searchlight blinked back on and
its ghostly beam swept back and forth
just above my head. I knew the staccato
chatter of a machine gun would soon
weave a more deadly path if I was
spotted.
The light moved away and we moved
too – on our bellies, our elbows and knees
and sometimes crouched over like a line of
old men in the dark. Somewhere up ahead,
the patrol we were to link up with was
waiting – and so were the Taliban.
“Get yourself out to Bagram, my editor
”
told me, “you’re going to accompany a Joint
Special Operations Command covert mission
into Pakistan.
”
A few days later I found myself standing
in the searing heat and noise that is Bagram
Airbase, just a couple of hundred miles from
the Pakistani border, wondering what the hell
I was doing there – and more to the point,
would I be coming back. I was whisked
through Kabul and onto somewhere close
to the border.
Listening in to the briefing much later
that night, I realised what the guys were
going to be up against and how deadly
their mission could become. The last
effort to capture Mullah Kazim Numair
(designated Objective Kingston, aka
Panther), a high ranking Al Qaeda leader,
resulted in near-disaster and Panther
escaping with the aid of militia fighters.
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