getting harder and harder to post this stuff,and there is definitely no reprieve with current affairs that is for damn sure.These chapters focus on Waugh in the kingdom trying for his photo.The last two chapters will have you just wondering what the hell are we doing here 19 years later, talk about bat s#*t crazy!

... “For a split second, I wondered if my kids were safe,” he says.

Then instantly, instinctively, he shut that thought down. In the combat zone, behind enemy lines, “you never think of anything that makes you vulnerable,” he says. “It interrupts the forward momentum that’s been ingrained in you through training. This is a momentum you must maintain every second of every mission, no matter what.”

Suddenly there were flashlights going off. Flashlights. Afghans signaling to one another, from just outside their homes. This was optical telegraphing. Shark’s first thought: Saif the Snake. The enemy had been informed.

Technically, this was a kill-or-capture mission: four high-value targets, a bomb maker and his three lieutenants. But when someone knows you’re coming, capture is off the table. The mission becomes kill or be killed.

“Having Saif the Snake on any mission was very much like putting together a ticking time bomb and bringing it along with you for the ride,” says Shark. Driving eighty-seven miles from Gecko base to Sangin seemed to take forever, every curve in the road presenting some fresh danger. Thirty minutes outside the target, the convoy came to a halt. There was a guard tower problem. A guard tower problem? An old Soviet-era guard tower that never had anyone in it now suddenly had someone in it. Comms said something about the Afghan national police.

“Every minute you’re sitting still on an operation] is a very bad minute,” says Drew Dwyer.

“‘Sitting ducks’ is the term,” says Hawk.

Shark adds context. “We had Spooky, the [AC-130] gunship, overhead. And that takes away a lot of concerns, but it doesn’t eliminate them altogether.”
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2020/09/part-9surprisekillvanishimad.html