Bravo Company: Mountain assault

Notes from the front

Bravo Company troops destroyed several cave complexes Sunday during a raid on suspected al Qaeda hideouts in eastern Afghanistan.

Editor's note: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents and consultants share their experiences on location around the world.

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Those of us with the media who jumped from helicopters onto relatively level ground felt the searing heat dry the backs of our throats as we fought the altitude and rushed to covered positions.

But the men of Bravo Company, 2nd Platoon, did not have that option in making Sunday's raid on suspected al Qaeda holdout in eastern Afghanistan.

CNN NewsPass VIDEO CNN's Mike Boettcher and producer Maria Fleet were with U.S. troops as they launched an air assault on caves in eastern Afghanistan. (June 2) Play video   MORE STORIES U.S. targets al Qaeda in eastern Afghanistan    Read more from the Behind the Scenes series on Bravo Company: Poised and ready Meeting the leaders Mountain assault More stories   Mountain assault Meeting the leaders Poised & ready  CNN.COM SPECIAL REPORT  CNN NewsPass Video  Agencies reportedly got hijack tips in 1998  MORE STORIES Intelligence intercept led to Buffalo suspects Report cites warnings before 9/11  EXTRA INFORMATION Timeline: Who Knew What and When? Interactive: Terror Investigation Terror Warnings System Most wanted terrorists What looks suspicious? In-Depth: America Remembers In-Depth: Terror on Tape In-Depth: How prepared is your city?  RESOURCES On the Scene: Barbara Starr: Al Qaeda hunt expands? On the Scene: Peter Bergen: Getting al Qaeda to talk

Having gone in on Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters, with cover from Apaches, the troops had to keep moving, scrambling across millions of pieces of broken shale, every step treacherous.

A new military term being used in Afghanistan for an assault operation of this kind is Sensitive Site Exploitation, or SSE. But this kind of mission, by any name, still requires three components brought together over a week of training:

Additionally, the plan called for extra mortars to fire on the enemy; explosives carried in by engineers to breach any obstacles; snipers to engage enemy forces from a long distance; and a host of intelligence specialty teams to exploit captured material or interrogate the enemy.

We went in with the support-by-fire team, the 2nd Platoon's role among the 177 men of the 101st Airborne Division who moved on the suspected enemy compound southeast of Jalalabad, near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan.

The support-by-fire mission is a make-or-break deal. If soldiers encounter enemy fire on a "hot LZ" -- a landing area being fired on by the enemy -- their best defense is this team's firepower.

Bravo Company's target on Sunday was a hostile piece of rough terrain -- mountains thousands of feet tall surrounded the landing zone. The slope of the climb in most places was better than 45 percent, a very steep walk.

At sunrise, the temperature already had reached nearly 100 degrees. The platoon's support-by-fire mission was to immediately launch from helicopters and sprint at combat speed to the high ground at the top of the mountains. Once there, they were to cover the assault team as it attacked.

Led by Sgt. 1st Class Charles West and Staff Sgts. Andy McMillan, Paul Terrell and Julian Anglen, the men were loaded down with more than 100 pounds of combat gear, body armor (a ballistic vest) and heavy machine guns.

Troops of the 2nd Platoon trained for Sunday's mission in part by going on conditioning marches at Bagram Air Base.

On paper, it was estimated it could take 45 minutes for them to reach the summit and their objective: caves that could serve as al Qaeda hideouts. But the 2nd Platoon cut that in half, getting their machine guns into their assigned positions in under 22 minutes.

"We came here to Afghanistan," West says, "and spent the last six months doing tough, realistic training, starting with individuals and working our way through the team, squad, then platoon and company drills."

And, as anticipated by the training, the entry into the caves was gut wrenching.

The conventional cave-breach technique involves using grappling hooks to try to clear the floor of tripwires or other booby traps, then a five-guy approach -- one looks low, one looks high.

These caves were so big that the men had no choice but for one to go one-way, one to go another.

Despite intelligence estimates that as many as 60 al Qaeda operatives were in the area, Bravo Company encountered no resistance. But it appeared that al Qaeda had been using the caves from time to time, and that this was a way station for them.

The troops did a cave-to-cave search, looking for anything that would be of intelligence value. After removing documents written in Arabic for translation, Bravo Company's troops destroyed several large cave complexes.

Denying the al Qaeda and Taliban the use of Afghan territory is a coalition mission -- in part to keep them from disrupting political reform in Afghanistan. Such raids are meant to keep those forces from regrouping.

Once back at the base, the soldiers know their work is far from over. The men of Bravo Company are cleaning their weapons, getting ready to be called out again.