Operation Pineapple Express
The Incredible Story of a Group of Americans Who Undertook One Last Mission and Honored a Promise in Afghanistan
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
An edge-of-your-seat thriller about a group of retired Green Berets who come together to save a former comrade—and 500 other Afghans—being targeted by the Taliban in the chaos of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In April 2021, an urgent call was placed from a Special Forces operator serving overseas. The message was clear: Get Nezam out of Afghanistan now. Nezam was part of the Afghan National Army’s first group of American-trained commandos; he passed through Fort Bragg’s legendary Q course and served alongside the US Special Forces for over a decade. But Afghanistan’s government and army were on the edge of collapse, and Nezam was receiving threatening texts from the Taliban. The message reached Nezam’s former commanding officer, retired Lt. Col. Scott Mann, who couldn’t face the idea of losing another soldier in the long War on Terror. Immediately, he sends out an SOS to a group of Afghan vets (Navy SEALs, Green Berets, CIA officers, USAID advisors). They all answer the call for one last mission.
Operating out of basements and garages, Task Force Pineapple organizes an escape route for Nezam and gets him into hiding in Taliban-controlled Kabul. After many tense days, he braves the enemy checkpoints and the crowds of thousands blocking the airport gates. He finally makes it through the wire and into the American-held airport thanks to the frantic efforts of the Pineapple express, a relentless Congressional aide, and a US embassy official. Nezam is safe, but calls are coming in from all directions requesting help for other Afghan soldiers, interpreters, and at-risk women and children. Task Force Pineapple widens its scope—and ends up rescuing 500 more Afghans from Kabul in the three chaotic days before the ISIS-K suicide bombing. Operation Pineapple Express is a thrilling, suspenseful tale of service and loyalty amidst the chaos of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mann, a retired army lieutenant colonel and Afghan War vet, makes the chaos and trauma of the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan palpable in this gripping account of Task Force Pineapple. Mann founded the task force in August 2021, initially to rescue one man he served with, a former member of the Afghan Army Special Forces, but it soon expanded to include "a loose confederation of American, Afghan, and allied men and women to rescue as many of their Afghan partners as they could after the fall of Kabul." Modeled after the Underground Railroad, the task force saved more than a thousand Afghans before a suicide bombing at the Hamid Karzai International Airport disrupted its operations. Beyond delivering a real-life action thriller, the author provides yet another negative postmortem on the U.S. government's handling of the crisis. Mann notes that the country that "had liberated Nazi concentration camps, pulled off the Berlin Airlift, and delivered aid to disaster-struck countries across the globe" left thousands of its allies behind who continue to be at risk of violence. This is a valuable addition to the growing literature on the ending of America's longest war.
