Foxtrot in Kandahar, Part 1: Snakes and Lightning | CIA
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I'm Rhianna Needs, and this is True Spies from Spyscape Studios. Foxtrot in Kandahar, part one. Snakes and lightning. It's early morning in Washington, D.C. A CIA officer, freshly home from his latest overseas assignment, sits outside a cafe opposite a looming brutalist block of concrete and glass. Patiently, he waits.

I was technically on leave at that moment, but I had gone over to the FBI headquarters. I was going to be meeting a friend of mine and a former colleague from the last station that I had just served at and just returned from, who was escorting a foreign delegation to the FBI for briefings on, of all things, the threat of international terrorism. It's a topic at odds with the mood on the street around him. It is a truly glorious morning.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous. It was one of the most beautiful September days you can have. And so, early for his appointment, the CIA officer savors these few moments in the sun, knowing that soon he'll be swallowed up by the J. Edgar Hoover building. So I was sitting there just sipping on a cappuccino, just marveling, really, at what a beautiful day it was. You know, I was just out there waiting for my friend Frank and the delegation to arrive. A few minutes later, a van pulls up.

When the doors open, the pleasing babble of Spanish pours into the street. The voices are immediately familiar. I went over across the street and met with Frank and the delegation and said our hellos. It was nice to see everybody again and it was really a good atmosphere. It was nice being together with these guys. They bring the rapturous atmosphere of reunion with them as they head into the lobby of the FBI headquarters.

We all had to get our badges, you know, go through the normal things you go through when you're going into a facility like that. And then we went on up to a floor where their ops center is, and that's where we were going to get the briefing. The men continue to trade jokes and jives as they settle around a conference table. By this time, it's getting close to 9 a.m. The floor should be easing into the focused hum of a new workday.

But somehow, something about the scene feels off. The guy that we're supposed to meet, Frank's FBI colleague, wasn't there. You can tell something's going on. It seems to be a little bit of confusion and not chaos, but just some stuff going on there. FBI staffers flip past with furrowed brows. Phones ring and ring. And then someone comes over to us and explains that there's been a plane that has hit a

a building in New York, and I think they said the World Trade Center. The first thought that comes to mind is of a terrible accident. A small passenger plane somehow strayed from its course.

The men are told that there will be no briefing today. We took the delegation down to the cafeteria because we really didn't know what else to do at the moment. So we go down, by the time we get down to the cafeteria, we walk in and there's some FBI employees who were all there. They're looking at the television mounted on the wall and that's when we realized what has happened in New York. We can see the trade center, you know, on fire and smoke billowing out.

And we knew instantly that, whoa, this was not some little plane that had crashed into the building, but it was a major aircraft. In the shocked silence, he grasps around for some kind of explanation. The first plane could have been unlikely, but maybe it was some kind of accident, or it could have been the pilot decided he was going to commit suicide and take the aircraft with him and the passengers with him. Not likely, but possible. But at 9.03...

a terrible clarity descends on the room. When the second plane hit, that instantly changed everything. I knew instantly, boom, we're under attack. All over the world, people are watching these profoundly distressing images, but few can be better placed to understand them than the men and women gathered in this canteen. I knew also at the same moment that was al-Qaeda, that al-Qaeda had done the attack.

fit in with the pattern of other previous attacks they've done. They like to do things simultaneously. And there'd been a lot of indications that something big was going to happen. And of course, everyone was working, trying to figure out what that could be. So it all came together for me instantly that, okay, this is it. This is the attack that we've been worried about. In all of his career, all of his life, he has never seen anything approaching this magnitude.

We're standing there for some time watching this. I'm just thinking of the horror that these people went through, both on the aircraft, but also in the buildings. And I was just filled with hate and outrage at what had been done. I thought it was probably going to be a war. Didn't know for sure what the details were going to be, but I knew that this would be a major undertaking. As a styrofoam cup of coffee goes cold on the table in front of him, another understanding arrives.

clear as the late summer sunlight that he was basking in not an hour before. I wanted and had to be, I mean, literally felt I had to be part of this response. I actually felt kind of like fate hadn't just tapped on my shoulder and said, hey, this is for you, guy. And really, it was a factor of vengeance there that I wanted to avenge this. And I wanted also to, of course, prevent it from ever happening again.

Over the coming days and weeks, this man will throw himself headfirst into a quest to answer destiny's shoulder tap, to play his part in a conflict that is taking shape before his eyes. Already, he has had a long and dazzling career, but it is this chapter, above all others, that will burn bright in his memory for years to come. And now, you are about to share in those memories too.

Without further ado, it's time for you to formally meet this story's true spy. My name is Dwayne Evans. I'm the author of Foxtrot and Kandahar, a memoir of a CIA officer in Afghanistan at the inception of America's longest war. The road to the sun-baked valleys of Afghanistan will be long and dangerous. But already, Dwayne Evans is moving towards his destination, one footstep after another.

In one sense, that journey begins right here, on the morning of September the 11th, 2001. But in another sense, Duane has been walking towards Kandahar for his entire life. I was born in Georgia. I really was raised in New Mexico. That's where I still consider home, my home state, to be New Mexico. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Duane Evans grew up listening to the war stories of his formidable father.

After the war, Evans went to college, got his degree, and rose to the rank of officer in the military.

just in time for America's next conflict. Fought in the Korean War as a tank company commander, combat decorations there, but then he ended up resigning at some point after that and went into federal law enforcement. In fact, became the national director of law enforcement for the U.S. Forest Service before he had retired. For the young Duane, his father's polished boots must have seemed impossible to fill. And yet he never even considered another path.

My father was such a huge influence on me, he did follow in his footsteps. In fact, I got a degree in police science with the idea that I was going to go into federal law enforcement. And I also went through ROTC as my father had and was commissioned regular army into the army. I actually was commissioned into the military intelligence branch, although I later would also serve in special forces.

In 1980, Duane transferred into the Army's much-storied Green Berets, or Special Forces. It was here that he developed a skill set that would serve him for decades to come.

The Special Forces, one of their major work areas, if you want to call it that, is unconventional warfare. And what that involves is the idea of working with indigenous forces. In other cases, it's more for supporting guerrilla movements against an established government. This is part of the whole unconventional warfare thing. Training for admission to the Special Forces is a famously demanding process, one that culminates in a notorious exercise known as Robin Sage.

In this simulation, an armed conflict rages in North Carolina. You parachute in, you link up with a guerrilla force, and you organize training for that force. You integrate yourself with them, and you carry out missions. One of the big missions was to attack a bridge, which required a lot of reconnaissance and planning with the guerrilla force that you're working with. And then the final climax of the exercise is the attack on that bridge.

As fate would have it, that exercise was the closest Duane would come to active combat during his military career. His six years of active duty occurred during peacetime. By the end of his tenure, he was considering his next move.

And my dad actually pointed out in the ad in the Army Times, he said, how about this outfit? And it was the CIA. And they were advertising for operations officers. So I applied to the agency based on my father pointing out that ad. And I, you know, lo and behold, managed to get hired. Hello, True Spies listeners. I want to use this break to fill you in on something that could prove useful, either for you or others close to you.

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In 1983, Dwayne Evans began his new career as a recruit of the CIA.

If his stint in the Special Forces had given him his foundational education in the art of unconventional warfare, the agency's training program was like finishing school. I won't mention where it is, but you go to the CIA's main training center and you spend quite a few months training to be a case officer or operations officer. And then you may have, from that point, depending on what assignments you're getting, you may have additional training, whether it be language, whether it be some advanced tradecraft skills,

I was in training mode in one form or another for about two years.

Of the career that followed that training, Duane Evans can only offer a few tantalizing details. Initially, I was interested in Latin America. And so I actually put in for an assignment in Latin America division, was assigned to that division. I did a tour there and I did tours in Europe, tours in South Asia. I think I've been to like 60 countries doing one thing or the other operationally. So it was a great career.

By September of 2001, Duane was well into his forties,

He naturally assumed that his most adventurous days were behind him. You know, retirement was in sight. It wasn't like the next year, but it was, you could see it, you know. Felt like I'd had a good career. The last assignment I'd had just before 9-11 in South America was with the Counterterrorist Center. I was actually the chief of station during this assignment. It was a fantastic assignment. But yeah, I was mature in my career. Let me put it that way.

But as he watched smoke billow from the World Trade Center, from the FBI's canteen, he knew instinctively that he would have to take part in the fight that followed. Already, a plan was formulating. I couldn't leave the FBI headquarters right away. They had evacuated D.C. and there was a traffic jam, so I just waited until it kind of cleared out. Frank took the delegation back to their hotel.

And when traffic cleared out, I got in my car and I drove over to CIA headquarters. And I remember crossing the Roosevelt Bridge there in D.C., coming out of D.C., and you could see the smoke arising from the Pentagon. So that really brought it home that, yeah, this is real. We're under attack.

When Duane arrived at CIA headquarters, he discovered that it too had been evacuated. But I did find someone at my division that I was assigned to. I let him know, hey, I'm on leave, but I'm ready to come back, ready to do whatever you guys need me to do. In this moment of crisis, Duane felt the pull of responsibility to protect his country.

But there was another responsibility fighting for his consideration. I'm married and I have two children and they were always a big part of my calculus in terms of what assignments could I take and how it would impact on them. As he left the CIA headquarters, his thoughts returned to his family.

and the mark that this day would leave on them. I decided I'd pick up my son from school. It was chaos over there, you know. All the parents did the same thing I did. So I picked up my son and, you know, he'd heard about it, but he didn't really understand exactly what had happened. And he was in middle school at that point. And I tried to explain it to him in a way that I thought he could process it and understand it. And then, of course, once we got to the apartment, he saw on television, that was the first time he actually saw the videos they were, of course, showing constantly.

of the towers falling. Through his son's eyes, Duane saw the fabric of a comfortable American life ripped to shreds.

Duane understood that this would be a whole generation's watershed moment. The experience I think of was really my first experience of a shock like this as a young person was 1963, going way, way back when President Kennedy was assassinated. I remember that day. I was in grade school and I remember the whole event. It was just so shocking. And I really equated it with that kind of an experience for them. 9-11 would be for them what Kennedy's assassination was for me.

Duane didn't want to leave his family behind, especially during a moment of such existential crisis. But he knew that if he could play some small part in restoring order to their world, then he had to. In the chaotic days that followed 9/11, CIA case officer Duane Evans returned to agency headquarters and declared himself ready to join any mission destined for Afghanistan.

The reason we're focused on Afghanistan, of course, is because the leadership for al-Qaeda is located in Afghanistan. We want to destroy al-Qaeda. That is the mission. But weeding out this terrorist organization would not be straightforward. In Afghanistan, al-Qaeda enjoyed protected status from the ruling Taliban.

Al Qaeda was the target, and our goal was to destroy Al Qaeda so it could never carry out attack against the U.S. again. Taliban, on their hand, wasn't really in our crosshairs at that time, but it was an important factor because, you know, there were negotiations going on or diplomatic efforts with the Taliban to get them to round up Al Qaeda, turn them over to us.

But they didn't choose to do that. They chose to ally themselves with al-Qaeda, which meant to get to al-Qaeda, we basically had to go through the Taliban. As the nuance of this situation revealed itself, a plan, mandated from the very top of the U.S. government, began to take shape.

President Bush, his preference was that our response in Afghanistan not be to send in conventional forces. He saw what happened when the Russians got entangled in Afghanistan when they went in in 79, over their 10 years, and it turned into a disaster for them. And so he was looking for another option, basically. How can we get al-Qaeda without committing a large number of forces there?

And the plan was basically developed by Counterterrorist Center to combine forces with special forces with a goal of using Afghan fighters

to be our surrogate forces on the ground to go after al-Qaeda. And we would support them with all the materials that they would need and intelligence and even air support, which was critical to do this. So that way we kept a very, very small American footprint on the ground, just small teams of CIA and special forces and work with the Afghan fighters to do this.

With the plan being to keep American presence in Afghanistan to an absolute minimum, Duane would need to make a strong case for his inclusion. When I was trying to get on these teams we were putting together and going to be sending into Afghanistan, my selling points to them was I've been in charge of things before. I was a former chief of station, a platoon leader, special forces qualified. But the other thing I threw in there was, hey, and I also speak Farsi. As part of his training for an earlier tour...

Duane had learned to speak Persian, or Farsi. In Afghanistan, you know, there's a number of languages they speak, but one of the languages they speak there is Dari, which is basically the Afghan Persian. Another selling point was his absolute determination. Duane spent the days after 9-11 hunting down anyone who might be able to bring him into the fold.

The first team that was going to deploy was a team we called the NALT, the Northern Alliance Liaison Team, later codenamed Jawbreaker. Jawbreaker's job would be to support the Northern Alliance, a militarized collective of various minorities that already held territory in northern Afghanistan and had experience fighting the ruling Taliban. If Duane could get assigned to the NALT, he would be headed to the thick of the action.

And it was led by a guy named Gary Schroen. He was taking the first team out. And I picked this up after a few days back at headquarters when things were being sifted around and I managed to track him down. I said, "Hey, Gary, listen, I'd like to be on your team." Gave him a kind of quick rundown of my background.

And he got back to me the next day, said, "Yes, looking good." Told me to go ahead and start getting some gear together. But he told me, he goes, "You better hurry because I don't know what they're talking about moving that deployment up." You know, I said, "Okay, great." Well, lo and behold, that very day, that night, I guess it was, Gary got notified they wanted him to go ahead and deploy. And so they left the next day without me. After getting so close, it was back to square one. Duane had no choice but to redouble his efforts.

Counter-terrorist center special operations would be the office responsible for coordinating the effort in Afghanistan, tactically deploying small teams to support local efforts against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

So I joined CTCSO, hoping I'm going to get on one of these other teams. The problem was for me, most of the team was, in most cases, was just were CIA paramilitary officers. I wasn't a CIA paramilitary officer. Yeah, I had related experience, but that was like almost 20 years in the past for my military time. So I didn't know if I was going to be able to, you know, be one of the ones that got to go.

As news of the Northern Alliance's successes in Afghanistan filtered back to headquarters, Duane began to wonder if he would ever get his opportunity to join the fight. And then finally, a break.

Myself and a guy, first name Jimmy, who was also a case officer in the agency and who had retired out of the military, retired out of the Army, was actually Delta Force. Incredible guy. Anyway, he and I got called into the deputy chief for CTC Special Operations, and he sat us down and said, listen, things are looking good here in the north with the NALP, lashed up with the Northern Alliance, but we need to get something going in the south.

I want you guys to get out to Pakistan, to Islamabad, and work with the station out there on getting something going in the south. And that was it. As far as mission briefs go, this one was vague, but it was enough. Dwayne Evans had his ticket to the theater of war. Over the following days, as he made his hasty preparations for departure, Dwayne readied himself to say goodbye to his family.

And Dwayne had to be realistic. There was every chance that something bad would happen. He was heading into the unknown.

It was kind of hard to define all the risks because it was really kind of an unknown activity that we're getting involved in. Now, Dalt and the guys up there with the Northern Alliance, they were now well into it with them. So we knew from our communications with them what was going on up there. We knew when there was a dangerous situation, there was fighting going on, all the things that, all the risks that comes along with that.

But of course, I was going south and there was no southern alliance that we could join forces with. So we didn't really know what form that was going to take for sure. That was still a canvas waiting to be painted, so to speak. So much of Duane's mission remained unclear. But one thing that he knew for certain was that any attempt to control the southern part of Afghanistan would have to involve the historic city of Kandahar.

When you talk about the south, really the key thing about the south is Kandahar. And that's because that's basically the birthplace of the Taliban and also where Al-Qaeda had their big training base. We knew that more people probably as the north went well for us and especially once they'd captured Kabul, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda would be heading down to Kandahar. And so it was important to get in there because that's where they're going to be coming and that's where we would find them.

In October 2001, Duane and Jimmy departed from Dulles International Airport and made their long and circuitous journey to Islamabad in Pakistan. It was here that their mission would take shape. Islamabad station up to that point, up to 9-11, it had been what we call the station in exile for Afghanistan because we didn't have a station in Afghanistan.

And so they were responsible for all intelligence activities in Afghanistan, whether that be intel collection or whatever it might be. So when 9-11 happened and CTC Special Operations was formed up and put in charge of what we did in Afghanistan, it kind of changed the dynamic in terms of responsibilities. They were not in charge like they used to be.

It was into this shifting power dynamic that Duane and Jimmy arrived, like ambassadors for the new regime. So when myself and Jimmy arrived at station, it became really apparent that we weren't seen as welcome guests, really. The station was hoping to do at the time, basically negotiate with the Taliban. They were already in talks with some senior Taliban officials about abandoning the al-Qaeda presence in their country.

and assisting us in getting rid of them. But at headquarters, the analysis was that that ain't going to happen. For Duane's first few days in Islamabad, this conflict over the best direction to take raged over his head until finally... We get word that the decision's been made by headquarters. We want to support Hamid Karzai. Hamid Karzai was a fierce opponent of the Taliban in southern Afghanistan.

He also had a strong network of supporters. This made him an ideal candidate for CIA support.

He'd already gone into Afghanistan to try to raise a rebellion on his own. He was already in the country. He had been a previous contact of the CIA up to that point. It wasn't like he was a new guy unknown. He was well-spoken, well-educated, a respected guy. He understood the situation very well. He'd actually been early on associated with the Taliban for a period of time. They actually had assassinated his father at one point. Anyway, he broke off from his support in the early days for what the Taliban said it was trying to do.

And so he was a critical person to ally ourselves with. Duane and Jimmy were placed on a new team with that explicit purpose in mind.

It was called Echo Team. An officer who was serving there in Pakistan, paramilitary officer, Greg. Greg was made the team leader for Echo Team. And Greg, Jimmy and myself were the first three members. And we traveled down via, actually by Pakistani military aircraft down to Khobad to start setting up a base to begin planning, working with Karzai and his fighters in Afghanistan. ♪

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When Duane and the rest of Team Echo arrived in Jacobabad, in the south of Pakistan, the man of the hour, Hamid Karzai, was nowhere to be found. He was in Afghanistan, and he very quickly got ready to get run over by...

Taliban who were cornering him and his fledgling force that he was trying to raise. And so we had to get him out of there. And so Jimmy and Greg and the SEAL team flew in one night, dark night, and actually extracted him and brought him back to Jacobabad. And the night that they arrived was when I first met him. As the SEAL team bundled Karzai off a fixed-wing aircraft...

Dwayne got his first glimpse of the leader on whom Team Echo's success depended. He walked past me. I recognized him, even in the dark. He had his hands kind of clasped in front of him, almost like a prayer. He nodded to me as we went by and said, hello. He just struck me.

as a religious figure. And the idea that this guy had just gone into Afghanistan to try to raise this rebellion against the Taliban, but he seemed so gentle and meek at that moment, was just kind of an interesting first impression of him. Over the days that followed, Duane would have the opportunity to build on that first impression. He was assigned to be Karzai's point person as preparations for the next phase of his rebellion got underway.

So I actually got a room right beside him and I had a lot of contact with him during those few days. I got to know him quite well and frankly I really liked the man. And I really think I don't know anybody who didn't like him. And I thought he was the right guy for the job. He had a huge, huge task in front of him, no question.

but he had already demonstrated his courage. I mean, he'd gone into Afghanistan on his own, trying to raise his rebellion. He was the perfect guy, perfect choice for this mission that we were trying to accomplish. Team Echo would do anything they could to assist Karzai in his fight against the Taliban.

So Echo's plan was to get Karzai, get his senior elders that we had now had there in Jacoba, plan out the campaign. A special forces team came down and joined us. We began planning for the insertion. There was going to be an air insertion by helicopter into Afghanistan with Karzai in tow. Duane and the rest of Team Echo would be there on the ground alongside Karzai as he raised an army and went to battle with the Taliban.

This was the purpose he had been waiting for. We were really fully 120% into this plan, into getting into Afghanistan, and we were all on the same sheet of music. We all felt the same. We wanted to get in there and get going on this. Finally, the day of departure arrived, and Duane was ready for it. The day we're getting ready to leave, so we're literally loading our gear, loading our rucksacks up on the back of a truck and getting ready to go,

And Greg had gone off to meet with the special ops wing guys who were going to infill us in to coordinate the final stuff. He comes back and he comes over to me and he said, hey, listen, bad news. We got too much gear, got too many people. He said the SF team leader had already designated two people he was going to leave behind and said that I would be Echo Team's stay behind guy. The news landed in Dwayne's stomach like a punch.

He was devastated. I mean, we're literally on the verge of getting on the aircraft to go. We're all ramped up to do it. It's like you're getting ready to go in the Super Bowl, you know, and they say, oh, well, you're not going to get to play. Greg promised that Duane would be on the first supply flight into Afghanistan to meet them. But Duane was experienced enough to understand that in this environment, plans could change on a dime as the rest of Team Echo climbed aboard a truck...

He headed back to camp, deflated. Went back and actually went right away and over and found Karzai and told him goodbye. Told him, hey, I'm not going to be going in with you, but hopefully I'll be meeting up with you a little bit later down the road and say goodbye to him. Dwayne's suspicion that this may be farewell turned out to be a pressing one. The very next day, he received a secure line call from headquarters saying,

They tell me that they want to set up another team. This would be Foxtrot team. And they wanted to go in to support this guy named Gulaga Shirzai. And Shirzai was another Pashtun leader who had fought the Russians back in the day. At that point, he had moved a force not too far over the border into Afghanistan, but he had raised a small force. And the agency had actually supplied arms to these guys. And they wanted to put a team with them. They wanted me to be the team leader. And they wanted us team to be joining with them in five days.

A plane was sent to bring Duane back to Islamabad, where he could rapidly begin preparing for his new assignment. This, in itself, would be no straightforward exercise. The problem was, it was a lot of problems. One, there really wasn't a team. There was me. There was no SF team. For the time being, Duane had only one teammate, a fellow CIA officer by the name of Mark.

and unless things changed rapidly, they would be heading into enemy territory drastically under-resourced.

We had no comms. We had no commo gear. Mark didn't even have a weapon. I had my AK and a Glock that had been assigned to me from the Echo team. Mark had nothing. And the station had given out all its weapons, but they did another search and figured out they actually had one more. I think they had a Brownie high-power 9mm handgun. Didn't have a holster for it, though, and they didn't have any ammunition at first. We had to tear the place apart to find a box of 9mm for his handgun.

Duane was told that a 12-man special forces team would be sent to join Foxtrot at the earliest opportunity to provide vital military assistance.

That would solve at least one of the issues he was staring down. The comms problem was the biggest problem because we had to have a means to communicate with the world, so to speak. So finally I found out that there was a team of special ops guys, two guys, that were there at the embassy in Islamabad. And they had the comms equipment, the hardware that we needed, and it had the right software. There was only one catch.

They said, for you to have this equipment, the two special operators, Mike and Gary, they said, we've got to come with it. That was okay with me. I'd love to have them. But trouble was, since they were going into a different country, they had to get Rumsfeld, who was Secretary of Defense at the time, they had to get his signature. He had to sign off on them deploying into Afghanistan with us. Time was running out, so Mark and I went down to Chocobo without them.

and they were going to try to get them there before we deployed. We also did get an SF team to join us there at the last minute at Jacoba Bay. So literally the same day we deployed, the two special operators, Mike and Gary, came down, and so they were able to deploy in with us. It was all rather last minute, but Duane's mission was finally becoming a reality.

His final order of business, before deployment, was an intelligence briefing on the task ahead. They give a pre-infiltration briefing to describe what the threat situation is. Based on all sorts of intelligence, they had estimates of the number of fighters. I'm talking about Taliban, al-Qaeda fighters, and also other issues like landmines left over from the Soviet days. And there were a ton of them in different parts of Afghanistan. Of all the possible dangers that he might encounter...

It was the prospect of this that most terrified Duane. I hate the idea of landmines. I hate the idea of arturiling. I hate the idea of landmines. It's like lightning and snakes to me. You know, the military equivalent of that. Now, Echo Team, I was so relieved when I thought I was going in with Echo Team and the briefing said, you know, the area we were going to didn't have any concentrations of landmines.

And so that was great. But then when it turns out, when the Foxtrot team turns out, because we were now going into Kandahar province is where we'd be going, the map looked like just a, it was shaded red, the areas that we were going to be in. In other words, there would be snakes everywhere. So that was an eye-opener and it did educate us to what the threat level was, the number of forces that were still in the Kandahar area.

Fully briefed on the scale of hostile forces awaiting them, Team Foxtrot was finally ready to deploy.

It was the 19th of November. Turns out we had to change our plans a bit because, again, last minute change. Originally it was going to be, you know, we'd been planning the whole 12-man SF team that was with us would be going. But then, kind of at the last minute, 5th Special Forces decided they didn't want the whole SF team to go in. Apparently they wanted at least 500 guerrilla fighters on the ground before they committed a team. So they wanted us to go in first and figure out how many fighters there actually were. And if there were enough fighters, they'd bring the rest of the team in.

This meant Duane would be heading into hostile territory with just a skeleton crew of three special forces men to protect him. Far from ideal, but at this stage, he was determined to press ahead, whatever the risk. As night fell, Team Foxtrot prepared for departure. So we went down to the airfield that was near where we were bivouacked.

and loaded up on these MH-53s. It was interesting because it was pitch black, we were in blackout conditions, and I unwisely had packed away my night vision goggles in a place in my gear that I couldn't reach when I was sitting in the aircraft. We were crammed in there and we couldn't really move around very much.

When they touched down in Afghanistan, it would be essential that Team Foxtrot move as quickly as possible. To minimize the risk of attack from any local forces, they had been drilled on the plan over and over. The helicopter pilot plan was, he'd sure as I had set three fires that would help point him to where he's supposed to put down the helicopter.

And of course, I couldn't see outside, so I couldn't see what was going on. But I could tell from the movements of the aircraft that they must have spotted it. And we were landing, coming down, and it was a little bit wobbly coming down. We kind of touched down, but then he lifted back off again, came down again a second time. And that's when it was like, okay, go, go, go, everyone get off the aircraft.

And so we did. We all exited to the rear of the aircraft on either side. And MH53 has, it's got one of these tail rotors that's vertical, and it's not very far away when you come out those doors. And all the wind and the sand blowing, you have to be really careful when you step down off that. You don't walk into the rotor. In the pitch black, loaded down with heavy bags of gear and weapons, Duane took his first uncertain steps onto Afghan soil.

stumble away from the aircraft and just basically trip and fall. I just want to get down and I had such a heavy rucksack I actually kind of landed on my back. Here I am like a turtle laying upside down and then I watched the helicopter lift off kind of above me and go off into the distance. It had not been the most graceful entrance but finally he had arrived.

I felt like at last I'm here. And I literally, I remember when I was on my back and everything got quiet. What amazed me really, what struck me at that moment, even though it was night, there was a little bit of light, there was a partial moon out, was how much it reminded me of New Mexico. Even amidst the chaos of the landing, Dwayne Evans allowed himself to savor this echo of home for a few moments. And then it was back to the task at hand.

The mic comes over, I'm trying to get up, and one of the special operators helps me stand up. And then we watched and waited and took a few minutes, but we finally saw the signal we were looking for that indicated it was Sherzai's guys. And we started moving toward that and linked up with them. Sherzai's fighters greeted Team Foxtrot and loaded them onto vehicles. In convoy, they drove a short distance to Sherzai's base camp.

For the first time, the true vulnerability of their position dawned on Duane. Basically, at that moment, we were totally at the mercy of whoever was in that camp. We could only go by Shirzai's word that everybody in there was vetted and that these guys were not either Taliban or al-Qaeda-affiliated people.

As the trucks pulled to a stop at the camp, Duane tried to take him what he could in the dark. Where we got out of the trucks, I did notice that when we went up the trail, our little house that we were going to stay in, this mud house, was up a little hillside. And there were little campfires around the trail going up the hillside with little groups of Afghans kind of swarming.

squatting around these fires. And so we come walking through there, and I noticed that this one group, they're sitting there and they're really looking at us. They were looking at us like very orally. We kind of tromped right past them. Hardly the hero's welcome that Foxtrot might have hoped for. With trepidation, Duane and the team continued up the trail and were led into a humble mud hut. When you walk in, there's this carpet on the floor,

There's a whole bunch of guys around it, you know, AK-47s laying around. And one of them stands up and walks over to me and through an interpreter, Shirzai introduced himself to us. In the flickering low light of the hut, Dwayne gets his first impression of the large, imposing man that he is to go to war with. He welcomes us.

He says he's prepared a meal in our honor, and these are his lieutenants that are sitting around the carpet. And we sit down, and before we have the meal, he makes a little speech about how he is so glad we're there, but also that he hates the fact that his country is being used as a base for al-Qaeda. And he said he wanted to convey his condolences to the American people about what had happened on 9-11. It wasn't much to go on.

But Duane knew that he would have to put his trust in the man. He looked the part, let me put it that way. In fact, these guys all looked to me when I walked in there. You might have seen them for Taliban, the way they were dressed and the way they looked. You know, everyone's big beards, all the kind of the classic look you think of when you see things about the Taliban and all this. And so they looked the part, but they were our allies. And yet, as the night wore on...

Duane came to realize that the same could not be said of everyone they had encountered since their arrival to Afghanistan. Remember the group sat around the fire, who had watched Foxtrot arrive with barely contained contempt? We would learn later that that group was actually a Taliban group that had come in to supposedly negotiate a surrender of their garrison, which was just up the mouth of the Shindore Valley.

Well, they didn't surrender, and they left after having seen us. The whole goal there was to keep our presence secret so that the bad guys didn't know we were there at all. And so within an hour of us landing, Taliban forces, at least there in that area, knew that Americans were on the ground. Welcome to Afghanistan, Dwayne Evans. Cover well and truly blown. Coming up in part two of Foxtrot in Kandahar.

I was in this open piece of ground there in Toctipool and all of a sudden this mob of Afghan fighters comes around the corner and they were all agitated. It was really kind of a blurting scene. Duane continues on the treacherous road to Kandahar. Everything went into slow motion.

You know, these guys are struggling for the gun, but the guy is really fighting hard. And the enemy shows its unflinching face. Suddenly I hear this little noise, like fizzing sort of sound almost. Then within seconds, there's this series of explosions, right, very close to us. That's next time on True Spies.

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Dwayne follows Khaled into the quiet village. For the first time,

Dwayne looks directly into the enemy's eyes. And he immediately reaches down and just tries to yank the AK-47 out of the guy beside his hands. Instantly, Dwayne knows that the man intends to kill him. You know, these guys are struggling for the gun, but the guy is really fighting hard and at one point loses his grip. As he reaches for the gun again, the man's hands close around its barrel.

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