10 August 2009
Sangin, Afghanistan

Daily dramas unfolded, including the bangs, booms and small-arms fire that punctuated the times. At 1800, I was preparing to go to orders with 1 Platoon, A Company of 2 Rifles, when shots from a large-caliber rifle began cracking low over base. I passed by sniper, Kris Griffith, and said, “Hey Kris, why don’t you grab your rifle and go shoot that guy?” Kris replied that two other sniper teams were on it. “He’s close,” I said, and Kris answered, “About 600 meters.” Then we went our separate ways.

Orders were given and then the soldiers performed final checks on their gear and tried to fall to sleep in the sweltering evening heat. Some nights I would go to sleep using the sleeping bag as a pillow, only to wake up with it drenched in sweat.

The alarm was set for 0213 hours, but at 0211 I sat up and turned it off before it could wake the soldiers who were not going on the mission. I had nineteen minutes to pull on my boots, body armor, and small rucksack, before I had to get to breakfast, engage in final conversations, and then show up for the mission at 0310.

The mission was to begin at 0330; my section was to slip off base at 0345.

The following series of photos were taken during the early morning hours of August 2nd . The conditions were “red illume,” meaning there was less than 10 millilux of ambient light and it was too dark for most helicopters to fly, even while using night vision gear. It was plenty dark.

Soldiers and section leaders did “final check” after “final check” of their gear, and talked quietly among themselves while last-minute updates came over the radio.

In red illume, the soldiers used dim red lights that were harder for the enemy to see. Red light also preserved our night vision. By showing up a half-hour before departure and sitting quietly, our eyes and senses had time to adjust and tune in to the battlefield. The battlefield was a thirty-second walk away.

Some soldiers smoked cigarettes before stepping out into the wild zone. Most were quiet. There was little talking during the last ten minutes.

In Green: Lance Corporal Jamie Nicholls, section commander for 1 Platoon, A Company, 2 Rifles

My section assembled…

…While another section waited.

The first section moved out nine minutes before the mission for my section began.

Six minutes to departure.

Final red lights were out. Our mission started three minutes early.

Despite low ambient light, the market in Sangin was dangerously lighted.

By 0357 hrs, some shops were already open, including this shoe store. The Taliban in this area did not seem to wear running shoes as did some of the enemy groups elsewhere in Afghanistan. Here, the enemy mostly wore sandals or went barefoot. (Many often ran right out of their sandals, especially during combat.)

Shops on this very street sold fertilizer used to make bombs. They might as well have sold dynamite. (The fertilizer also happened to be good for growing opium.) The bombs regularly blow the limbs off troops around Afghanistan. Soldiers may lose their legs, or their legs and an arm and their eyesight, or worse. But what can we do, really? Gasoline, like fertilizer, can be an incredible weapon. Are we to ban gasoline and attack gas shipments while trying to build a country from scratch? We talk about weapons flowing in from Pakistan, while in reality most of the casualties in this area come from bombs made from fertilizer sold in the open markets. We talk about Pakistani Taliban flowing in, while the local ANA Commander, Colonel Wadood, tells me that some of the fighters are Tajiks from places like Ghor Province. Tajiks generally hate the Taliban but they come to make money, he says.

1 Platoon, A Company, 2 Rifles moved silently through darkness cut by bare bulbs.

The sensitive camera and fine lens seemed to amplify low light.

The crux of the mission was a raid, but the task of our section was to provide security and fire support for the raiders. If the enemy were to try to hit our guys during the raid, our job was to kill the enemy, and so our objective was a farmhouse that overlooked the target.

British soldiers moved into an occupied farmhouse as the man willingly opened the gate to let us in. Several cute children were sleeping under the stars. The soldiers were so quiet the kids were not disturbed. I thought to myself, “What would the kids think if they woke up and saw the soldiers?” About fifteen minutes later, one of the children woke up, and his voice could be heard through the silence of the night. The man with the turban stepped over and spoke quietly to the child who immediately zonked out again, as if it were all part of a dream.

After the compound was quietly and respectfully searched, some of the soldiers sat down while others pushed into security positions.

The soldiers were perfectly early: not so early that they risked tipping their hand too soon, but early enough that they had time to collect thoughts and tune-in after the movement and get into good positions while the raiders skulked in on the nearby target, only 150 meters away.

Instead of pushing everyone into position immediately—increasing the chance of compromise—most of the team waited down in the compound until just before first light.

This man seemed unconcerned. The British soldiers respected the locals while the Taliban acted out on a whim, murdering innocents or splashing acid in the faces of schoolgirls. Within hours of the time this photo was taken, we felt the rumble as the Taliban blew up a local bridge and killed two ANA soldiers. In addition to the killing, the bridge was important to the locals. This was not a fight for terrain, but for the sentiments of the people.

As with al Qaeda, the Taliban is our best weapon against themselves. The Taliban issued a code of conduct, which likely was a blunder on their part. Why? Because the Taliban are undisciplined savages, and every time they violate their own code of conduct—which happens every day and night—the good guys have a chance to broadcast the transgression.

Rifleman Robert Welsh

More soldiers moved to the roof at 0442 while the raiders got into final position. At 0500 the raid began, but only two air rifles were found. At 0510 “dickers” (watchers) were spotted on motorcycles and on a roof, as the FST plots potential enemy positions.

Fire Support Team members: Hatton, Wotherspoon, Beale

Though it might seem like a simple raid, it would take many long dispatches for the untrained reader to develop a reasonable understanding of this three-dimensional battlefield and what the soldiers were doing. There was more going on than just “1 Platoon, A Company, 2 Rifles, with guns on a roof in Afghanistan.” 1 Platoon was a small part of a larger package.

Embedded within 1 Platoon was a handful of specialists from 636 (Arcot 1751 Battery), 40 Regiment Royal Artillery, “The Lowland Gunners,” simply called the “Fire Support Team.” Most soldiers just say FST.

The primary function of 1 Platoon was to provide security for the raiders, and to deliver the FST, whose primary function also was to provide security for the raiders.

The FST controls air assets, mortars, cannons, howitzers, and remote rocket systems known as GMLRS, (which Americans pronounce “Gimmlers” while the British say each letter: G-M-L-R-S).

GMLRS (Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System) scares the heck out of the enemy; GMLRS can be launched from dozens of miles away and reliably kill a man—or a lot of men—without warning. GMLRS are like the ultimate sniper rifle, only the bullet is a large explosive warhead. The system is so reliable and accurate that during operation Arrowhead Ripper during the summer of 2007 in Iraq, our people were hitting IEDs from dozens of miles away. Whereas the enemy can see or hear most aircraft, they get no warning with GMLRS. Even with the invisible and silent Predators and Reapers firing the small Hellfire missiles, the enemy has a few seconds warning. Hellfires are like gigantic hand grenades with a homing system. A Hellfire can hit a car and not necessarily kill everyone. But if GMLRS hits a sturdy two-story house, the house is gone. The Taliban hate it.

The FST had an array of tricks up their camouflaged sleeves; the primary weapons of this mission were the devastating 81mm mortars, the even more devastating 105mm howitzers, and the GMLRS many miles away. Overhead were two American A-10s; British Apaches attack helicopter; and a supersonic American B-1B bomber that was designed to deliver hydrogen bombs into the heart of the Soviet Union. The call sign for the B-1B might as well have been “Strangelove” and it’s not difficult to imagine Slim Pickens at the controls. (A message came that a B-1B crew who had covered us on a recent mission, had read the dispatch and sent a message to me. The Brits relayed the message; thank you B-1B! During upcoming missions, I’ll be the one waving up at you in the stratosphere. The enemy has IEDs, but the riflemen are monkey-stomping these guys. Thank you for the top cover.)

FST soldiers plotted all suspected enemy firing points and listed the coordinates while other soldiers were ready near the mortars and howitzers and would fire into the target mere moments after a “FIRE MISSION…” radio call came in. At 0521 a man was spotted in a dark dishdasha moving through a woodline. Sergeant Wotherspoon, a Scottish soldier who sounds very much like the Scotsman on the Simpsons, pulled out his laser range finder, checked the distance and plotted a fire mission. The “dicking screen” seemed to be increasing so the FST stayed busy plotting potential targets. At 0544 the first raid was over and the raiders moved to hit a second compound. Amazingly, some people in the United States believe that the raiders should take time to gather forensic evidence for later court cases. This would spell many death sentences for us, and prove a potent disincentive to soldiers who risk their lives to capture suspects alive. If soldiers at war are held to the same evidence collection standards as law enforcement officers at home, we need to end the war before we sink further into the quicksand. If the judiciary enforces unbearable standards in this ugly war, a fair-minded, informed person likely would say that we need to conclude our attempts to raise up Afghanistan, and we should bring home the troops.

At 0546 there was a large caliber rifle shot that kicked up dust about a hundred meters from us. A minute later there was another shot but we saw no splash. Wotherspoon said, “That’s how it started last time; single shots trying to find us.” (Wotherspoon really does sound like the Scotsman on the Simpsons but I didn’t dare say it.) They had gotten into a serious firefight here before and expected another. I fell asleep when shots woke me up at 0633. There were sounds of motorbikes and sporadic shots being fired as I fell back to sleep. While most soldiers worked some were switching watch and a few slept. An infantryman’s rule of thumb: never miss a chance to fill canteens or sleep.

Modern battlefields bring countless strange sounds. What does a bomb sound like when it slices overhead through the dark to a target? An RPG launch? How about a Javelin or Hellfire or 81 or 105 or 107 or 155 or A-10 or Shadow? Everyone reading this likely knows the sound a train rumbling by, or a car horn, yet out here on the battlefields there are probably hundreds of new sounds to learn. While falling back to sleep, an incident came to mind from my first day or two at FOB Jackson. The mess tent was crowded and we all heard a THUMP, which sounded remarkably like an incoming mortar launch. This base – despite all the combat – does not take mortar and rocket fire (touch wood), so nobody hit the deck. But in the seconds after the THUMP, the loud mess tent went completely silent as all ears strained to hear. And then came a slight whistle and at least fifty people were on the ground in a second or two. But one soldier, Corporal Ryan Hone, just sat there and said “What?” Corporal Hone was temporarily deaf because he had been flat-blasted by an enemy bomb some days back, and so he didn’t hear the whistle. And there was no incoming mortar. I’ve never heard one whistle, anyway. The whistle came from Serjeant Rob Grimes from 2 Platoon!

In addition to plotting potential enemy FPs (Firing Points), any potential enemy group who came within our reach was also immediately plotted. The machine guns, rifles and grenades the soldiers carried were the least things the enemy should have been concerned about. Fine training and attention to detail are crucial in this job. All targets were “danger close” to us, and often to the other elements on the ground.

“Danger close” means that even if everything goes just right, friendly troops are so close to our fires (such as bombs, mortars or the guns), that we might take casualties from our own fires. Any fire missions that the FST would have called from the position we were in would have been danger close, to us and probably to the raiders. Most fire missions in the Green Zone are danger close.

So if one of these soldiers made a mistake—even one digit off—the mistake could have wiped out an innocent family, us, or both. To safeguard, they train constantly, and during missions two FST members plot each target separately then compare answers.

Lance Bombardier Matthew Hatton

FST soldiers must be able to pass the tests during firefights and when bombs are exploding or when people are screaming with horrible injuries. They must reliably call fire missions during all conditions, such as fitful, dark nights when the men are tired, hungry, and in need of rest.

L to R: Corporal Pat Cunningham; Sgt Lee Wotherspoon; Gunner Jake Beale. Many soldiers adapted the camouflage to blend into the local condition. The green shirts help in the Green Zone.

While the soldiers on the roof worked radios on different nets, plotted their own solutions and shared information, the family below offered bread and tea to the soldiers.

From the roof, the FST can call a fire mission from scratch and have rounds landing in — let’s not give the enemy a clue, and just say “very fast.” Since the FST had already plotted all likely enemy positions, the fire mission would be accelerated Time Of Flight (TOF) for the 105mm Howitzer shots would be 22 seconds while the 81mm mortar bombs will fly for about 33 seconds before detonating. All fuses are dialed to “proximity low” to reduce structural damage and increase damage to Taliban fighters.

On the roof, Gunner Jake Beale mentioned that he turned 19 in May, and later Corporal Mark Foley recounted how he saw Gunner Beale shoulder his 40mm grenade launcher and take aim at a Taliban who was about 200m away. Beale launched the grenade, which arced lazily to apogee and fell straight into the Taliban and detonated. While shots were being fired in the distance, the soldiers joked that it takes eight washings to get the smell of Afghanistan out of your gear. Beale said that if you iron your uniform, the smells take you on a tour around Afghanistan with smells from fields, compounds, markets, irrigation ditches and shit.

This A-10 had just popped flares and headed straight over the unfolding ambush. British soldiers love to see a couple of American A-10s on station. It’s like having a backup battalion in the sky. The A-10s are not sexy like F-15s, but they are fantastic platforms operated by capable pilots.

There were various shots as the morning unfolded and at 0743 there were two explosions that we thought were an RPG attack. Actually it was an IED attack with two bombs on the ANA. The sun was rising and the morning was already hot when we heard random scattered shots and a short but brisk firefight. The soldiers were in good spirits. I said, “Those guys out there with guns are not very friendly,” and they laughed and told jokes of their own.

Bones the B-1B had flown over a couple times, and at 0759 the two A-10s flew over and popped flares nearly over our heads. The ANA, some hundreds of meters away, had been ambushed by a bridge and the bridge was destroyed. One soldier was dead and another dying. We could hear bullets flying but could not see the action other than some dust. A British rescue helicopter carrying a MERT (Medical Emergency Response Team) was dispatched from Camp Bastion and headed straight into the danger.

The raids were over and the raiders had pulled back, so we departed the roof. I saw a couple soldiers say goodbye to the turbaned man who was waving his farewell.

As we entered the first funnel between two compounds which ended at an open area, we were in the perfect position to sustain a hit. When we entered the open area we saw a half dozen men watching us from a mud building that had been melting through time. We seemed to have surprised them. No weapons were visible but my danger alarms kicked to red-alert, and the same happened with the soldiers who immediately prepared for combat. It seemed to me that soldiers were clicking rifle selector switches to FIRE, but I am not certain. Some kids were also watching from another position. Everything seemed wrong.

One man, among the group of men in the melting building, pushed a small child in front of him and at least two British soldiers told all the men to “Get out of here right now!” I could sense that British trigger-fingers were a glance away from pulling into action. No shots were fired and we moved on.

Were those men and the children part of something bigger, or just onlookers? A European or American likely would have taken cover if they saw a firefight brewing, but that doesn’t mean these people would. Combat veterans of the Iraq war might remember seeing women and children walking down the streets during the middle of firefights. Hundreds or thousands of bullets might be snapping by, yet some woman with a couple kids would appear and leisurely cross the street like nothing was going on, as if protected by a force field.

Some people say the Taliban are cowardly for planting bombs, but I do not believe this makes them any more cowardly than the A-10s, Apaches, B-1Bs and Reapers make us cowardly. We didn’t come here for a fair fight. We came to win. Some troops even say that if you show up to a battle and find it’s evenly matched, you didn’t plan well. What most of us find cowardly and despicable are the enemies who hide behind children. The bombs they plant for us are fair play. But males who hide behind children are not worthy of respect.

It’s difficult to move unpredictably in tight areas. There are choke points and only so many ways to travel in the limited battle space. And so we were bottlenecked, and the point man detected something suspicious.

Most of the bombs here are command detonated, requiring only that someone push the button or connect the battery. Despite the danger, the point man crawled on his belly to the suspected bomb. If what he saw was a command detonated bomb, he likely would die suddenly and we would be pelted by the blast. If what he saw was a pressure plate, he might save the life or limbs of one or more of those behind him.

A cow was munching green just to my right. The soldiers were quiet, as they scanned the danger areas. Everyone was quiet: If you’ve got nothing to say, now is a good time to not say it. Should the point man have been killed we would likely have been in a firefight right there. By this time the British helicopter is just minutes out from picking up the dying ANA soldier who had been blown up earlier, while his buddies loaded up the dead soldier.

Point man said quietly back, “Barbed wire,” and it was relayed back to me and I said, “barbed wire” to the man behind, who said, “command wire” and the file behind immediately started to pull back. I said, “No, no, barbed wire, not command wire,” and he understood then, so we all moved forward. The point man found no bomb.

We pushed farther into another fatal funnel.

The enemy often plants bombs in the walls, or they can easily dig under a wall and put a bomb under the path without leaving visible disturbance. These are normal tactics. They also shoot through small holes in the walls. At this range, the A-10s and Bones the B-1B could do little more than watch.

The soldiers cleared through the funnels and moved back onto the market street.

The suicide bomber threat was high, and unfortunately we had become an irritant to the people. We could not let motorcycles and cars just roll by or it would be just a matter of time until a bunch of guys would get flattened.

Back in May, a motorcycle rammed a patrol and when soldiers got out to help, he detonated, killing two British soldiers. This happened in nearby Gereshk. One of the soldiers had been a Gurkha. Word came to Brunei where I was training with Gurkhas. The soldiers halted the exercise briefly and held a moment of thought, then returned to training for a return to Afghanistan. That attack had occurred in Gereshk. There had been four suicide attacks in Sangin.

When we stopped traffic the people would become irritated; most of them were just going about their lives. I saw a letter wherein one American officer said that he did not see people irritated when he stopped traffic in Kabul, but he must not have been paying attention. The people do get upset, and so it was important to smile, wave and act as non-threatening as possible. Sometimes there was little else you could do.

Typical transport on the main road in the district capital of Sangin.

There are many tractors in Sangin. Diesel fuel can be mixed with the fertilizer to make bombs (ANFO: Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil), but here the bomb-makers had been mixing the fertilizer with fine aluminum powder used in spray paints.

Apparently this ANP is not accustomed to shoes or boots with laces. The golden sacks on the right are fertilizer that can be used in bombs.

We made our way through the market and one motorcycle looked like he would crash the patrol and a soldier immediately shouldered his rifle, aimed at the man and yelled, “STOP!” The man skidded to a stop. I waved and he actually waved back.

Nobody liked doing this, pointing a rifle at someone who was probably in his hometown.

Back where we started: Soldiers clear their weapons, head back to clean their gear and go for a swim in the river. The blonde and bespectacled Jake Beale turned 19 years old in May. Rifleman Matty Meakin (far right).

Some of the soldiers out here might seem young, but there are no young soldiers here. Not even one.

Guarding the body

The British MERT helicopter had landed on the battlefield and picked up the severely wounded Afghan soldier. He was delivered to Camp Bastion where he died that day.

While the helicopter had evacuated the soldier who died shortly thereafter, the Afghan soldiers loaded up the dead soldier, the one who was killed in the initial attack, and brought him to our base despite the fact that he obviously was dead. Maybe they thought the British could do something but he was dead and nothing could be done, so the Afghan soldiers kept guard on the body and for a time at least two of them cried for their comrade. I brought them water. They wanted a British helicopter to come take the body somewhere, but this was not going to happen.

It’s a bad idea to land helicopters here in broad daylight other than for casualty extractions, and the ANA has helicopters; their own commander could request the same. FOB Jackson is a busy little base where Afghan soldiers also live, so most people probably had no idea why the Afghan soldiers were even sitting there—but the medics had told me.

Later that afternoon the two Afghan soldiers were still there, but had lightened up and wanted their photo taken. That day like every day kept unfolding, and ended just as it had begun.

I cannot operate in the war without your support. If support does not substantially increase, I will be forced to abandon war reporting in September. There has seldom been much interest in the Afghanistan war. True interest has been starkly reflected in the support for this mission. Each journey into Afghanistan, since 2006, has bled out resources from my operations. Reporting from Afghanistan is not sustainable at this rate.

Nevertheless, I continue to crack on: Please consider signing up for free Twitter updates at Michael_Yon (not Michael Yon without the underscore), for the most timely snippets possible.

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The Hurt Locker is not about Iraq, why we went there, what we did when we got there, or whether we should have gone in the first place. It is not about American foreign policy or domestic disagreement over that policy; it’s not even about soldiers or their qualities or character …  it’s not about politics at all.

The Hurt Locker is about an adrenaline junkie who gets off defusing bombs.

Sgt. Will James is very good at this narrow work. He is occasionally a fool who takes unnecessary chances. Far more often he is an expert who enjoys that his wisely bold tactics occasionally make him appear a fool—because a fool’s luck has nothing to do with his success. Early in the picture and after much prodding, Sgt. James admits to a superior officer that he has defused “873 bombs, counting today.”

Nobody’s luck is that good.

This is a telling scene for another reason: He’s happy for the recognition, but painfully shy about it, too. He fairly leaps from the truck to reply to the officer—but it’s because his inquisitor is an officer, not because the question will give him a moment of glory. The officer, played by the always interesting David Morse, has to pry the information out of him and turn it into a boast on Sgt. James’ behalf. Morse’s officer is so unabashedly enthusiastic with his praise that we’re not sure—and apparently neither is Sgt. James—if it is genuine, or a set-up to a dressing-down for the apparently insane risks he’s just taken.

The little-known (for now), Jeremy Renner plays Sgt. James, and he plays him like a guy who would enjoy solving a Rubik’s Cube while sitting on a high-wire over a pit of rabid alligators. Renner’s James is incapable of simply existing. Every moment must be a deadline or the run-up to some test. In his off-hours he plays punch-out with another soldier, and not just for the sake of taking a punch. The two are working through a grudge right out in the open. He creates a brief mission for himself that can have no benefits in its outcome aside from having survived on the quality of its execution. He looks for reasons to get next to live bombs, once on the pretext of rescuing a pair of entirely disposable gloves. Yet even this has more danger attached to it than anyone first thinks, but Sgt. James knows (at least, I think he does), and gets off on the errand all the more because of it.

The Hurt Locker is also a good-looking picture. For instance, the shots of explosions are carried out much more thoughtfully than with the standard “cover it with cameras” action-picture approach. Director Kathryn Bigelow (whose last great pictures were 20 years ago—Blue Steel and Point Break) shoots the gravelly ground rising in slow motion; she gets the shuddering and the debris exactly right (again, as someone like me who hasn’t seen this stuff for real will imagine they should look)—there is never an obvious, go-for-broke FX shot for its own sake here. At times our view of the explosions is mostly one-off detail, and rather than distracting us from the moment, it enhances how we perceive it. That is the purpose of good direction and good camera work: not to draw attention to itself, but to enhance the story.

Which is a little ironic, because The Hurt Locker is not a story at all, but a character study. It is rare that a character study is carried out with so much expert attention to making a truly engaging and entertaining picture. The Hurt Locker is an apolitical and very entertaining movie about a very interesting man.

On a hot summer evening, in a bar in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico just across the bridge from Laredo, Texas; a thirty year-old man, on his knees, surrounded by a dozen armed guards, can be heard begging for his life, he cries for one more chance to make it right with the boss, one more chance to see his family—one more chance at life.

His boss happens to be the man who dictates the life and death of every soul in the Laredo corridor, listens to the pleas but has already made up his mind. He stands as judge and jury in this court and it’s clear, he’s heard enough. So he pulls a diamond studded, pearl handled pistol from his belt and slowly hands it over to one of his newest recruits. He tells the recruit to put a bullet in the condemned mans head as he sobs uncontrollably—and so, without hesitation the young man pulls the trigger four times over.

This was the new recruit’s first kill and his first real test for initiation to become an assassin of the Gulf Cartel’s enforcement arm known as the Zetas. He had never killed anyone before that night and when his cartel boss handed him the pistol and he pulled that trigger— he knew he loved it. He told me later that it gave him a rush that he had never felt before, “to kill a man and know I was going to get a way with it gave me a feeling of power” —He spoke of that night as if he had found his true calling—“I knew right then I was born to be a sicario” (Spanish for “hit-man”) He was thirteen years old.

I’ve met and talked with numerous players in the drug war being waged on our border and beyond, that have often left me feeling more than a little disturbed. The utter disregard for human life that’s evidenced in the daily tortures and executions taking place down here, certainly wears on the most seasoned of us reporting on it. But when I looked into the eyes of this young man and saw how he lit up inside while speaking so nonchalantly yet eloquently about how he “lived to kill” ever since he pulled that trigger for the first time, it sent cold chills down my spine—and still does. “I’ve killed men while they were tied and bound but that there is no thrill, no excitement in that for me. I prefer to stalk my target, hunt them down and then, after I know his moves front to back, I sneak up on them, look’em in the eyes and pull the trigger—now that’s a rush.”

I interviewed him a year before the mainstream media ever heard his name, Rosalio Reta, was born and raised in Laredo, Texas and recruited by the Zetas when he was barely in the 7th grade.

The first time I met Reta he was barely 18 years old and awaiting his first murder trial in Webb County. We had to meet in private because to be seen talking with someone like me, would have been a death sentence for someone like him. Sheriff Rick Flores, one of the courageous men I ever known, had him moved into his personal office so I could meet with the most infamous prisoner in his jail at the time. Even though Reta was in leg irons and shackles he had an arrogant look about him, wearing a smirk on his face that made you think he thought all of this was funny.

If you don’t count the lightening bolts tattooed on his face, he looks like any ordinary kid until he opens his mouth to speak. Calculating and conniving, I’d call him street smart for sure. He ended up asking me as many questions that first day as I did him.

He took notes as we talked, he asked me all kinds of personal questions, in fact the more personal I got with my questions he did the same. At first I didn’t know what to think about this quid pro quo interview, but after a while I realized he was trying to intimidate me or back me off more than anything else. Knowing what I already knew about this kid, it almost worked.

He told me that he frequently went to Nuevo Laredo looking to work as a drug runner or whatever he could to make the kind of money that type of work pays. This part of his story is played out everyday all along the border, and recruitment of young teenagers into drug gangs is nothing new either, but giving them para-military training and state of the art weaponry is. Reta is part of a new wave of young recruits that are giving the drug cartels a bumper crop of highly trained and highly motivated soldiers and giving us our worst nightmare—domestic narco-terrorists.

Training for these kids starts as soon as they are deemed by their elder Zeta commander as being ready, usually after they have proven their ability to kill someone. Once that right of passage has been taken then the real training can begin.

The core group of men commanding los Zetas, were trained and outfitted here in the United States at the School of the Americas in the 1990’s. Trained to handle all types sophisticated weaponry: automatic assault rifles, heavy-caliber machine guns, bombs, and grenade launchers. They are experts in explosives, GPS technology, wiretapping, and counterintelligence. And even though many of the founding members have been captured or killed in the last few years—they have managed to duplicate themselves many times over with this new generation of better Zetas.

My interview with Reta and numerous other sources revealed that the Zetas have training camps all over northern Mexico, central America and have even been known to use property on the U.S. side of the border to conduct training.

And what exactly are they training these boys and girls to do? It starts out as any other military boot camp with physical training, running and obstacle course drills and then classes later in the day.

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for six months; the same training that is given to the most elite special-forces anywhere is given to these teenagers, all in the consorted effort to build a generation of narco-terrorists better than their predecessors. They are indoctrinated to the ways of the Zetas. “Leave no man behind” is one of those creeds a Zetita is taught to live by, Reta told me “if you go out with ten other men and they get killed, you come home with ten corpses or not at all.” At a time in his life when Reta should have been learning geometry, basic biology and how to muster up the courage to ask a girl out on a date—he was learning how to calculate wind and distance to take out a target and the best ways to torture a man to extract information.

The ones signing up to be assassins aren’t just taught to kill with weapons, but they are given martial arts training and taught first how to kill with their hands. They are taught how to run the most sophisticated surveillance and weaponry available today. They are taught how to dis-assemble and re-assemble every weapon they are issued, and then they learn how to use it with deadly precision; they handle all forms of handguns, AK-47’s, AR-15’s, .50 caliber machine guns, fragment grenades and rocket launchers. They are taught how to properly form a sniper team and take out a target from distances of a thousand yards or more. To hone their urban assault training to a higher level, they encourage the teams here in the U.S., to enter into paintball tournaments and report their scores.

They have an extensive course in SERE, the acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. They are taught how to dispense torture to obtain information and how to take being tortured, in case they are ever captured. They are taught how to drive their vehicles in high speed chases and how to box in their intended targets at intersection as to create the best possible kill zone and at the same time limit the potential for collateral damage and injury to innocent bystanders.

As you would probably guess many of these kids “washout” of the program and for those recruits that can’t cut the rigors of para-military training, the option is given to go into a complete smuggling training program or sign up for an advanced school in electronics and even college.

Operating in the States is a necessity for every drug trafficking organization including the Zetas. These American recruits serve as great benefit to the DTO’s because these kids don’t stand out, they blend right into our society. They speak perfect English, they dress like every other teenager, they know the roads and they know the customs. They can guard a million dollar load of narcotics from Laredo to Dallas and pass right through a border checkpoint and never look suspicious. When the narcotics reach their destination they act as the cartel bankers, collect the money, and drive that cash back safely to Mexico and never miss a day of school to do it.

I just recently spoke at a law enforcement conference of gang investigators and the question that’s being asked by the law enforcement community, “How does a police force seeking to act within the law and respect human rights successfully combat an enemy, made up of teenagers armed with heavy weapons, all of whom will kill a police officer without thought and who, if arrested, can only be held in custody for a few hours?