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The Ambush
Aukai Collins was searching for a holy war. In June 1995 he was in Chechnya, a region fighting to secede from Russia. He became a member of a Chechen mujahideen unit. One day his unit heard that the feared Russian special forces, the Spetsnaz, had entered a nearby village. The unit moved to engage them.
It was the usual gig: make contact and take them out before they took us out. We had very little information. We doubted that they had any armor, but perhaps there were Shark helicopter gunships waiting down the valley.
Regardless of what we were up against, we were ready to make contact and kick ass. After all, we were Nokche Bores—Chechen Wolves—and we had vowed that not one Russian soldier would set foot in our village.
As usual Commander Musa [the unit’s leader] didn’t have much of a plan. We simply started to advance down the road. The fog had become so thick that our visibility was less than 20 feet.
I had a bad feeling about the shack ahead of us. I set my AKM [automatic rifle] in the low ready position and motioned for Musa to stop for a minute. I signaled that maybe there were Russians in the shack ahead.
I saw the outline of a barrel move behind one of the windows. Having no time and no other choice, I pushed down the selector on my AKM to full auto and stepped out from behind the tree. I took one step forward and started to pull the trigger, but never made it.
Two explosions ripped through the air. I saw flashes of light and puffs of smoke. Still clutching my AKM, I started to pivot, but when I tried to take a step my right leg gave out. There was a pain so intense I couldn’t breathe. The lower halves of my fatigues were ripped with big holes, and bright red blood squirted out from them.
I looked up to see an RPK squad automatic weapon open up on me. I swung my AKM and mashed the trigger down. I didn’t care where my rounds were going. Two of the rounds from the RPK ripped through my right thigh. Another almost tore off my left ankle. I figured this was it. I thought for sure I was dead.
The Convert
Aukai Collins was born in Honolulu on February 13, 1974, the son of a Vietnam vet and an Air Force colonel’s daughter. His parents’ marriage was troubled; his father struggled with his war experience and his mother with drugs. They divorced when Aukai was four. When he was eight his mother got into trouble with drug dealers. One night two huge Samoan gangsters showed up at Aukai’s house. They put his mother in their car while Aukai wailed. One of the Samoans sat him down and said, “Everyting gon’ be all right fo’ you. I see you eyes. Dem is da kind loco eyes only people who kick ass got. You gon’ be one bad bruddah.”
Three days later his mother’s decomposing body was found in a swamp a few hundred meters from their house.
Aukai eventually moved back to San Diego to be with his dad and soon got involved with gangs. At age 17 he was sentenced to the infamous California Youth Authority. Through his friendship with an African-American inmate, he discovered Islam and converted.
Once out he decided that the ultimate test of his newfound religion would be to fight jihad and defend the faith. He eventually went to Pakistan to join the mujahideen, or freedom fighters, in Kashmir. He was sent to a training camp to become an expert on the weapons and tactics used in holy war. The camp was funded by a shadowy figure named Osama bin Laden.
A man named Umar and I became a source of entertainment for some in the camp. Umar was Pakistani by blood but was born and raised in the U.K. He had bulging forearms; back in the U.K., he’d been a professional arm-wrestler. Umar was a tough guy. We would often bug the guy at the armory to give us bigger weapons. Sometimes an explosion and a plume of smoke revealed our whereabouts as we detonated homemade bombs behind the hills.
After a while the camp commanders started to get frustrated. We ignored their orders regularly. Umar was affiliated with the Harakat-ul Ansar fighting group, and he was here on an exchange program. Harakat-ul Ansar was funded by Osama bin Laden and was the same group that John Walker Lindh later belonged to. By running around with Umar, we were creating tension with the Harkat-ul Jihad guys.
One day Umar and I were sitting on the firing range. A group of guys were climbing the hill on the opposite side of the valley with an RPG [rocket propelled grenade]. I watched as they fired the first round, which impacted about 100 meters above us. It didn’t bother us in the slightest. What did bother us was when the next round slammed into the hill about 20 meters in front of us. Sooner or later, the arguments and tensions were going to escalate.
Everything came to a boil. Umar and I sat down with the commanders. I told them I hadn’t come from America to sit and watch other mujahideen fight. They told me to hit the road if I didn’t like the way things were going.
After the meeting, I went to pack my things. I left Pakistan disillusioned. Although I had learned a great deal, I never came close to my goal.
Umar, also known as Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, is on trial in Karachi for the kidnapping [and murder] of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was abducted in Pakistan and killed.
The Execution
Collins made his way back to Arizona, where he settled in with an old girlfriend. Friends at his local mosque told him about the war in Chechnya, where Muslim separatists were fighting the Russian army. “I had a feeling about the place,” says Collins. “I knew Chechnya would haunt me the rest of my days.”
He gathered money and equipment, and traveled to Baku, in Azerbaijan. From there he was smuggled into Chechnya. Eventually, he found a unit of warriors who, he was told, were “a few sandwiches short of a picnic.” He decided “these were my kind of guys.”
On patrol one day, his unit met another group that had captured four Russian soldiers. Because these Russians were known in the area for raping and murdering civilians, their captors decided they must be executed.
It was a cold, dark day with a light drizzle in the air that chilled to the bone. There was a fresh pit dug for the occasion. None of the four Russian soldiers said a word. They looked like four eerie, breathing cadavers. The field commander finished his sentence.
“In the name of Allah, I sentence you to death for your crimes against the Chechen people.”
He nodded to a burly, bearded Chechen fighter. The fighter pulled a knife from a sheath. He yanked the soldier’s head back by his hair and ran the knife back and forth over his neck in a ghastly sawing motion. Bright red blood squirted out. A noise came from his throat as his last breath escaped.
The youngest Russian stared at the scene in front of him with horror. A different Chechen executioner took him by the arm and led him to the body of the first soldier, whose legs were still kicking. The younger soldier muttered a prayer. Before he was finished, the Chechen pulled the trigger on his AK-74. The Russian’s torso split open, and he slumped over and fell on his face.
A third Chechen now took the next Russian. The soldier walked to the spot where he knew he would die and got on his knees. The Chechen pulled a pistol from his waistband, walked to the Russian’s side, put the pistol to his temple, pulled the trigger, and the soldier simply slumped over and lay motionless in the mud.
The last soldier still hadn’t moved, but silent tears ran down his face. The first burly Chechen walked over to him. He grabbed the Russian by the throat. The Chechen didn’t waste any time and started sawing away at the Russian’s neck. This one kicked harder than the first soldier but made the same noise as the air in his lungs rushed out of his gaping neck. His legs continued to twitch for a good 30 seconds, and then he was still.
The Ambush, Part II
For nearly a year, Collins fought alongside his Chechen comrades, participating in several ambushes and killing his fair share of Russian soldiers with his AK-74 and in hand-to-hand combat.
His career as a Chechen freedom fighter nearly came to an end the day the Spetsnaz entered his unit’s village and his unit went out to engage them. Collins was right about the shack. When they opened up on his position, bullets tore through his legs. As he lay in the open, the Russians continued firing at him, hitting him again and again. He was sure that soon a Russian bullet was going to end his life.
I started to scream “Allah-u-Akbar” [God is great] at the top my lungs. At this time the other guys started firing on the shack. Ruslan opened up with his PKM [machine gun], and someone hit the shack with a Mukha [disposable rocket]. I was close enough to the shack to get hit with debris from the explosion. After that I lost track of what was happening.
They tried to bandage my legs, but there were so many holes that we didn’t have enough gauze. When they picked me up, I could hear bones crunching.
The driver honked the horn when we arrived at the hospital. The staff rushed out and lifted me onto the stretcher and bounced me up the steps of the building, which was chaotic with the activity of a field hospital. I was brought into a makeshift triage room.
A Chechen woman and a couple of guys from our unit were out in the hallway while I got my treatment. They came in, and after my comrades greeted me they straightened up and took a more official tone. “We have nothing to offer you in the way of medals, but endure your wounds with honor and rest easy knowing you have earned your place amongst the Nokche Bores.”
A man who fights for something he believes in doesn’t need medals. The Chechens are a strong people with courage unlike anything I’ve ever seen. From that day on I considered myself a Chechen, my blood mixing with their soil earned me the right.
The Assassination
Only partially recovered from his wounds, Collins crossed the dangerous frontier into Azerbaijan. Ducking Russian patrols, he made it to Baku, where he was taken into a hospital that treated wounded Chechen fighters. Knowing he’d never fully recover in such a primitive hospital, Collins decided to head back to America to heal and gather funds for a return trip.
By June 1996 Collins had raised enough money to buy several crates of equipment for his comrades back in Chechnya. His contacts in Baku turned out to be gangsters profiteering from the war. They robbed him blind. Collins threatened to expose the ringleaders. One night a driver was sent to pick him up for a meeting…a meeting from which he was not supposed to return.
I got the peculiar sense that something was about to happen when the car pulled up. I saw that there was a local Azeri guy driving. He was a large, muscular guy, and he wore an expensive leather coat that was the uniform for most of the gangsters of Baku. I think he enjoyed the tough guy role too much. The handgun in my waistband was comforting, but I knew I had to do something before we stopped.
I waited too long. We’d stopped by a big steel gate in front of a house. I pulled the gun. As I swung it up to his head, he grabbed the gun and my hands. He had massive hands that completely enveloped my hands and the gun. Oh, shit, I thought. This is definitely not good. The big Azeri started turning the barrel of the gun toward me. He slipped one of his fingers over my trigger finger.
Instinctively, I swiveled in my seat and kicked him in the face. I was able to rip the gun free from his grip. As blood dripped down his face, his eyes made contact with mine. He knew he was dead.
The bullets entered his neck, then rose up the side of his head. The window behind him turned red from the spray of blood and then shattered. Except for the ringing in my ears, everything was silent.
Two men came out of a small metal door next to the large gate. A series of pops went off, and the passenger window exploded inward. I’m screwed, I thought. I swiveled back to the right and dumped the rest of my magazine toward the two guys. I jumped out of the car and ran toward the rear to put some cover between us. Before I rounded the back end, I already had a fresh magazine out of my coat pocket and was dropping the chamber.
Aukai Collins was searching for a holy war. In June 1995 he was in Chechnya, a region fighting to secede from Russia. He became a member of a Chechen mujahideen unit. One day his unit heard that the feared Russian special forces, the Spetsnaz, had entered a nearby village. The unit moved to engage them.
It was the usual gig: make contact and take them out before they took us out. We had very little information. We doubted that they had any armor, but perhaps there were Shark helicopter gunships waiting down the valley.
Regardless of what we were up against, we were ready to make contact and kick ass. After all, we were Nokche Bores—Chechen Wolves—and we had vowed that not one Russian soldier would set foot in our village.
As usual Commander Musa [the unit’s leader] didn’t have much of a plan. We simply started to advance down the road. The fog had become so thick that our visibility was less than 20 feet.
I had a bad feeling about the shack ahead of us. I set my AKM [automatic rifle] in the low ready position and motioned for Musa to stop for a minute. I signaled that maybe there were Russians in the shack ahead.
I saw the outline of a barrel move behind one of the windows. Having no time and no other choice, I pushed down the selector on my AKM to full auto and stepped out from behind the tree. I took one step forward and started to pull the trigger, but never made it.
Two explosions ripped through the air. I saw flashes of light and puffs of smoke. Still clutching my AKM, I started to pivot, but when I tried to take a step my right leg gave out. There was a pain so intense I couldn’t breathe. The lower halves of my fatigues were ripped with big holes, and bright red blood squirted out from them.
I looked up to see an RPK squad automatic weapon open up on me. I swung my AKM and mashed the trigger down. I didn’t care where my rounds were going. Two of the rounds from the RPK ripped through my right thigh. Another almost tore off my left ankle. I figured this was it. I thought for sure I was dead.
The Convert
Aukai Collins was born in Honolulu on February 13, 1974, the son of a Vietnam vet and an Air Force colonel’s daughter. His parents’ marriage was troubled; his father struggled with his war experience and his mother with drugs. They divorced when Aukai was four. When he was eight his mother got into trouble with drug dealers. One night two huge Samoan gangsters showed up at Aukai’s house. They put his mother in their car while Aukai wailed. One of the Samoans sat him down and said, “Everyting gon’ be all right fo’ you. I see you eyes. Dem is da kind loco eyes only people who kick ass got. You gon’ be one bad bruddah.”
Three days later his mother’s decomposing body was found in a swamp a few hundred meters from their house.
Aukai eventually moved back to San Diego to be with his dad and soon got involved with gangs. At age 17 he was sentenced to the infamous California Youth Authority. Through his friendship with an African-American inmate, he discovered Islam and converted.
Once out he decided that the ultimate test of his newfound religion would be to fight jihad and defend the faith. He eventually went to Pakistan to join the mujahideen, or freedom fighters, in Kashmir. He was sent to a training camp to become an expert on the weapons and tactics used in holy war. The camp was funded by a shadowy figure named Osama bin Laden.
A man named Umar and I became a source of entertainment for some in the camp. Umar was Pakistani by blood but was born and raised in the U.K. He had bulging forearms; back in the U.K., he’d been a professional arm-wrestler. Umar was a tough guy. We would often bug the guy at the armory to give us bigger weapons. Sometimes an explosion and a plume of smoke revealed our whereabouts as we detonated homemade bombs behind the hills.
After a while the camp commanders started to get frustrated. We ignored their orders regularly. Umar was affiliated with the Harakat-ul Ansar fighting group, and he was here on an exchange program. Harakat-ul Ansar was funded by Osama bin Laden and was the same group that John Walker Lindh later belonged to. By running around with Umar, we were creating tension with the Harkat-ul Jihad guys.
One day Umar and I were sitting on the firing range. A group of guys were climbing the hill on the opposite side of the valley with an RPG [rocket propelled grenade]. I watched as they fired the first round, which impacted about 100 meters above us. It didn’t bother us in the slightest. What did bother us was when the next round slammed into the hill about 20 meters in front of us. Sooner or later, the arguments and tensions were going to escalate.
Everything came to a boil. Umar and I sat down with the commanders. I told them I hadn’t come from America to sit and watch other mujahideen fight. They told me to hit the road if I didn’t like the way things were going.
After the meeting, I went to pack my things. I left Pakistan disillusioned. Although I had learned a great deal, I never came close to my goal.
Umar, also known as Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, is on trial in Karachi for the kidnapping [and murder] of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was abducted in Pakistan and killed.
The Execution
Collins made his way back to Arizona, where he settled in with an old girlfriend. Friends at his local mosque told him about the war in Chechnya, where Muslim separatists were fighting the Russian army. “I had a feeling about the place,” says Collins. “I knew Chechnya would haunt me the rest of my days.”
He gathered money and equipment, and traveled to Baku, in Azerbaijan. From there he was smuggled into Chechnya. Eventually, he found a unit of warriors who, he was told, were “a few sandwiches short of a picnic.” He decided “these were my kind of guys.”
On patrol one day, his unit met another group that had captured four Russian soldiers. Because these Russians were known in the area for raping and murdering civilians, their captors decided they must be executed.
It was a cold, dark day with a light drizzle in the air that chilled to the bone. There was a fresh pit dug for the occasion. None of the four Russian soldiers said a word. They looked like four eerie, breathing cadavers. The field commander finished his sentence.
“In the name of Allah, I sentence you to death for your crimes against the Chechen people.”
He nodded to a burly, bearded Chechen fighter. The fighter pulled a knife from a sheath. He yanked the soldier’s head back by his hair and ran the knife back and forth over his neck in a ghastly sawing motion. Bright red blood squirted out. A noise came from his throat as his last breath escaped.
The youngest Russian stared at the scene in front of him with horror. A different Chechen executioner took him by the arm and led him to the body of the first soldier, whose legs were still kicking. The younger soldier muttered a prayer. Before he was finished, the Chechen pulled the trigger on his AK-74. The Russian’s torso split open, and he slumped over and fell on his face.
A third Chechen now took the next Russian. The soldier walked to the spot where he knew he would die and got on his knees. The Chechen pulled a pistol from his waistband, walked to the Russian’s side, put the pistol to his temple, pulled the trigger, and the soldier simply slumped over and lay motionless in the mud.
The last soldier still hadn’t moved, but silent tears ran down his face. The first burly Chechen walked over to him. He grabbed the Russian by the throat. The Chechen didn’t waste any time and started sawing away at the Russian’s neck. This one kicked harder than the first soldier but made the same noise as the air in his lungs rushed out of his gaping neck. His legs continued to twitch for a good 30 seconds, and then he was still.
The Ambush, Part II
For nearly a year, Collins fought alongside his Chechen comrades, participating in several ambushes and killing his fair share of Russian soldiers with his AK-74 and in hand-to-hand combat.
His career as a Chechen freedom fighter nearly came to an end the day the Spetsnaz entered his unit’s village and his unit went out to engage them. Collins was right about the shack. When they opened up on his position, bullets tore through his legs. As he lay in the open, the Russians continued firing at him, hitting him again and again. He was sure that soon a Russian bullet was going to end his life.
I started to scream “Allah-u-Akbar” [God is great] at the top my lungs. At this time the other guys started firing on the shack. Ruslan opened up with his PKM [machine gun], and someone hit the shack with a Mukha [disposable rocket]. I was close enough to the shack to get hit with debris from the explosion. After that I lost track of what was happening.
They tried to bandage my legs, but there were so many holes that we didn’t have enough gauze. When they picked me up, I could hear bones crunching.
The driver honked the horn when we arrived at the hospital. The staff rushed out and lifted me onto the stretcher and bounced me up the steps of the building, which was chaotic with the activity of a field hospital. I was brought into a makeshift triage room.
A Chechen woman and a couple of guys from our unit were out in the hallway while I got my treatment. They came in, and after my comrades greeted me they straightened up and took a more official tone. “We have nothing to offer you in the way of medals, but endure your wounds with honor and rest easy knowing you have earned your place amongst the Nokche Bores.”
A man who fights for something he believes in doesn’t need medals. The Chechens are a strong people with courage unlike anything I’ve ever seen. From that day on I considered myself a Chechen, my blood mixing with their soil earned me the right.
The Assassination
Only partially recovered from his wounds, Collins crossed the dangerous frontier into Azerbaijan. Ducking Russian patrols, he made it to Baku, where he was taken into a hospital that treated wounded Chechen fighters. Knowing he’d never fully recover in such a primitive hospital, Collins decided to head back to America to heal and gather funds for a return trip.
By June 1996 Collins had raised enough money to buy several crates of equipment for his comrades back in Chechnya. His contacts in Baku turned out to be gangsters profiteering from the war. They robbed him blind. Collins threatened to expose the ringleaders. One night a driver was sent to pick him up for a meeting…a meeting from which he was not supposed to return.
I got the peculiar sense that something was about to happen when the car pulled up. I saw that there was a local Azeri guy driving. He was a large, muscular guy, and he wore an expensive leather coat that was the uniform for most of the gangsters of Baku. I think he enjoyed the tough guy role too much. The handgun in my waistband was comforting, but I knew I had to do something before we stopped.
I waited too long. We’d stopped by a big steel gate in front of a house. I pulled the gun. As I swung it up to his head, he grabbed the gun and my hands. He had massive hands that completely enveloped my hands and the gun. Oh, shit, I thought. This is definitely not good. The big Azeri started turning the barrel of the gun toward me. He slipped one of his fingers over my trigger finger.
Instinctively, I swiveled in my seat and kicked him in the face. I was able to rip the gun free from his grip. As blood dripped down his face, his eyes made contact with mine. He knew he was dead.
The bullets entered his neck, then rose up the side of his head. The window behind him turned red from the spray of blood and then shattered. Except for the ringing in my ears, everything was silent.
Two men came out of a small metal door next to the large gate. A series of pops went off, and the passenger window exploded inward. I’m screwed, I thought. I swiveled back to the right and dumped the rest of my magazine toward the two guys. I jumped out of the car and ran toward the rear to put some cover between us. Before I rounded the back end, I already had a fresh magazine out of my coat pocket and was dropping the chamber.
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