Welcome Aboard Blackwater Airlines

Two days after Thanksgiving 2004, a double-turboprop transport plane began its early-morning taxi toward the runway at Bagram Air Base, a half-hour north of Kabul. Army Spc. Harley Miller was one of two military passengers.

The young, stocky, square-jawed chopper crew chief had just finished a few days of R&R and was headed back to his air cavalry unit 450 miles west in Farah—a front line in the U.S. war with the Taliban. He'd chatted on the phone with his wife in Spokane and e-mailed his mother near Seattle. "Love you bunches," he wrote.

Farah's hair-raising gravel runway, like other remote Afghan airstrips, is best maneuvered by short-takeoff-and-landing planes such as the Spanish-made CASA 212. In Afghanistan, the planes are owned and operated by private contractors working for the U.S. government—in this case, Blackwater Worldwide.

Blackwater had just launched its operations in Afghanistan under a two-month-old, $35 million Pentagon contract, part of the Bush administration's expanded privatization of military services, a shift intended to create what then–Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called a leaner, lighter war machine. Blackwater's duties included shuttling military personnel and cargo over the mountainous Afghan topography, where the ground always seemed to be rising. Upon departing Bagram, a contract pilot had to know the terrain and be ready to wing it without radio or radar tracking.

But then, Blackwater's gung-ho pilots weren't being paid $600 or more a day because it was easy.

In the cockpit that morning were Capt. Noel English, who formerly flew cargo planes in Alaska, and First Officer Loren "Butch" Hammer, a onetime smoke-jumper pilot in Washington state. Both were in their mid-30s and experienced with the C-212. They had arrived together in Afghanistan only two weeks before and had requested joint assignments. A Blackwater mechanic also rode up front. In addition to their two Army passengers, the three-man crew was transporting 400 pounds of low-explosive illuminating mortar rounds used to light up enemy positions.

Taxiing to Bagram's Runway 3, English suddenly stopped the plane. "Uh, apparently they got a last-minute passenger for us here," he told Bagram control. Lt.Col. Michael McMahon, a battlefield commander and one of the highest-ranking U.S. officers in Afghanistan, hopped aboard. He'd been late leaving a command meeting.

As they lifted into the cool, clear Afghan morning, the passengers on the flight, known as Blackwater 61, likely didn't know they were traveling a route rarely taken over the Hindu Kush mountains—and one never before flown by this crew. But 20 minutes into the trip, as the C-212 banked over the Bamian Valley about 150 miles south of the Uzbekistan border, that inexperience had clearly become a problem. According to a transcript from the cockpit voice recorder—in which expletives were deleted—Blackwater's pilots were already lost.

Capt. English: I hope I'm goin' in the right valley.

First Officer Hammer: That one or this one?

English: I'm just gonna go up this one. . . . We'll just see where this leads.

The pilots suspected it could be a dead end, but continued on, chatting about looping back if they had to. No one sounded worried.

Hammer: Yeah, this is fun!

English: We're not suppose to be havin' fun though.

Hammer: Exactly.

English: No fun allowed god-(expletive).

Hammer: It's supposed to be all work, we can't enjoy any of it.

English: Exactly.

Hammer: 'Cause we're getting paid too much to be havin' fun.

Blackwater mechanic Mel Rowe, 43, a onetime Army chopper pilot, seemed to be trying to caution them. "I don't know what we're gonna see," he said from his cockpit jump seat. "We don't normally go this route."

English: All we want is to avoid seeing rock at twelve o'clock.

Hammer: Yeah, you're an X-wing [Star]fighter Star Wars man!

English: You're (expletive) right. [Pause] This is fun!

The fun continued as the plane swung through a canyon. English fiddled with his MP3 player to get appropriate mood music.

English: Philip Glass or somethin' suitably New Age'y.

Hammer: No, we gotta have butt rock, that's the only way to go. Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister.

English: I swear to God they wouldn't pay me if they knew how much fun this was.

But within minutes, the happy chatter turned to urgent pleas. They suddenly realized they were boxed into the canyon and the plane was dangerously low. The pilots began an emergency climb.

English: Come on baby, come on baby, you can make it.

Rowe: Okay, you guys are gonna make this, right?

English: Yeah-h-h, I'm hopin'.

Rowe: Hope we don't have a downdraft comin' over that, dude.

[A stall-warning device gives off one beep.]

Rowe: Got a way out?

English: Yeah. [Pause] We—we can do a one-eighty up in here.

Rowe: Yeah, I'd pick one side or the other to . . . ah.

English: Drop a, drop a quarter flaps.

Rowe: Okay, yeah, you're . . . ah.

Hammer: Yeah, let's turn around.

English: Yeah, drop a quarter flaps.

Rowe: Yeah, you need to, ah, make a decision.

[Sound of heavy breathing begins.]

English: God (expletive)!

Rowe: Hundred, ninety knots, call off his airspeed for him (unintelligible).