True Story: 'This Was The Kind Of Mission Most Folks Can Only Experience In A Video Game Or A Cinema...'

John McPhee has spent a lifetime in some of the most dangerous war zones of the last 20 years, including Bosnia, South America, Iraq and, as told here, Afghanistan.

An army ranger and a United States Army Special Forces ‘Green Beret’, John quickly rose to the top of the US’s premier counter-terrorism unit, Delta Force, where he was one of the first operators dropped into Afghanistan after 9/11.

“THE YEAR WAS 2002 AND I WAS A DELTA SNIPER, ALREADY ON MY THIRD TOUR IN AFGHANISTAN. My squadron and I had been running rampant in the region for one specific purpose: to hunt and kill Osama Bin Laden. Various sources had said that he’d skated to Pakistan, while others believed he’d been winged by one of the smart bombs we’d dropped on al-Qaeda hideouts deep in the Tora Bora mountains.

“We found a source who told us about an al-Qaeda safe house in a village deep in a mountain valley where a senior MAM [Military Aged Male], a leathery man dubbed Ghul Ahmed, was the same cat that had hid the wounded Bin Laden when he fled there the previous December. That was enough to shuffle Ghul Ahmed’s centre mass into the unit’s sights.”

“I WAS ASKED DIRECTLY BY MY TROOP COMMANDER IF I’D VOLUNTEER FOR A SOLO MISSION. It was to infiltrate the village and gather intel on Ghul Ahmed. It was the rare kind of mission that isn’t assigned. The type where the outcome is so uncertain that they only ask for volunteers. The kind of gig most folks can only experience from a seat in the local theatre or tunnel visioned in a video game.

“The brief was simple. Go alone with no support, obtain video evidence of Ghul Ahmed’s presence and get information on the target building. Then I’d move out unseen – and alive – to lead an assault force back to the village to capture or kill Ghul Ahmed. It all sounded sketchy, but as a Delta Force sniper, a mission like this is part of the job description.”