Black Hawk Down

by Mark Bowden

  Steele bellowed, “Smith!”

  Corporal Jamie Smith came running. He was the best marksman in the chalk. Steele pointed out the shooter and slapped Smith’s back encouragingly. Both men took aim. Their target was a long shot away, more than 150 yards. They couldn’t see if they hit him, but after they fired the Somali on the rooftop was not seen again.

  Across the alley, hiding behind the inverted frame of a burned-out vehicle, squatted Sergeants Mike Goodale and Aaron Williamson. They were resting their weapons on the hulk, which sloped down from them toward the center of the alley. All the alleys rose from the center in uneven sandy berms to stone courtyard walls and small stone houses on both sides. There were small trees behind some of the walls, and just to the north was the boxy shape of the three-story back side of the target house. The thick rope they had come down on now lay stretched across the alley. The earth had that slightly orange color, which stained the walls and imparted a rusty tint to the air close to the ground. Goodale could smell and taste the dust mixed with the odor of gunpowder. He heard the shooting at the other side of the block, but their corner was still relatively quiet.

  Goodale had never felt farther from home in his life, and had a quiet moment or two crouched at that position to wonder how he’d gotten there. Just before leaving for Somalia he’d gotten engaged to a girl named Kira he’d met in a feckless freshman year at the University of Iowa. They had both escaped little Pekin, Illinois, for one of the great party campuses of the Midwest, promptly flunked out, and then determined to straighten up. For Mike that had meant joining the army; for Kira it was taking a low-level job with an advertising agency. They saw each other frequently when Mike was at Benning, but since the Rangers had been away on a training exercise in Texas before getting the summons for Somalia, they had been apart now for more than two months, since the day they’d decided to spend their lives together. The day before he’d gotten his first chance to phone home since leaving Fort Benning, and he’d gotten the answering machine. He would get another chance to call tonight, and he’d told her on the answering machine to expect it. He knew she’d be waiting by the phone.

  “Kira, I love you so very much it hurts,” he had written her that morning. “I’m reluctant to call again because I know it will just make me miss you that much more. On the other hand, I really want to hear your voice.”

  A Somali about one hundred yards down the street to their left stuck his head out from behind a wall and rattled a burst with an AK-47. Dirt popped up around Goodale and Williamson. Williamson stepped around to the north side of the hulk. Goodale, who was closest to the shooter, panicked momentarily, thinking the shots were coming from the south. He leapt up and ran from the wreck, hopping as rounds kicked up around him, trying to find someplace better to hide. There was no cover. He dove down behind a pipe sticking up from the road. It was only about seven inches wide and six inches high and he felt ridiculous cowering behind it but there was no place else. When the shooting stopped momentarily he jumped up and rejoined Williamson behind the hulk, just as the Somali started shooting again.

  Goodale saw the spray of bullets walk up the side of the car, right down the side of Williamson’s rifle, and take off the end of his friend’s finger. Blood splashed up on Williamson’s face and he screamed and cursed. Goodale leaned over, checking the blood on Williamson’s face first and then his hand.

  Despite the blood and pain, Williamson seemed more angry than hurt.

  “If he sticks his head out again I’m taking him,” he said.

  Severed fingertip and all, Williamson coolly leveled his M-16 and waited, motionless, for what seemed like minutes.

  When the man down the alley leaned out, Williamson fired, and the man’s head seemed to explode and he fell over hard. With his uninjured hand, Williamson and Goodale exchanged a high five and some victory whoops.

  Moments later, they shot and killed another Somali. The man darted out into their alley and sprinted away from them. As he ran his loose shirt billowed back to reveal an AK, so they shot him. About five Rangers squeezed off rounds at the same time. The man lay on the street only a half block away and Goodale wondered if they had killed him. He asked the medic if they should check him out, help him if he was just injured, and the medic just shook his head and said, “No, he’s dead.” It startled Goodale. He had killed a man, or helped anyway. It troubled him. The man had not actually been trying to kill him when he fired, so in the purest sense it wasn’t self-defense. So how could he justify what he had just done? He watched the man in the dirt, his clothes tangled around him, splayed awkwardly where the bullets had felled him. A life, like his, ended. Was this the right thing?

  At his corner, about ten yards east of Goodale and Williamson, Lieutenant Perino watched Somali children walking up the street toward his men, pointing out their positions for a shooter hidden around a corner further down. His men threw flashbang grenades and the children scattered.

  “Hey, sir, they’re coming back up,” called machine gunner Sergeant Chuck Elliot.

  Perino was on the radio talking to Sergeant Eversmann about Blackburn, the Ranger who had fallen from the helicopter. The lieutenant was relaying Eversmann’s information and questions to Captain Steele, who was across the street from him. Perino told Eversmann to hold for a second, stepped out, and sprayed a burst from his M-16 toward the children, aiming at their feet. They ran away again.

  Moments later, a woman began creeping up the alley directly toward the machine gun.

  “Hey, sir, I can see there’s a guy behind this woman with a weapon under her arm,” shouted Elliot.

  Perino told him to shoot. The 60 gun made a low, blatting sound. The men called the gun a “pig.”

  Both the man and woman fell dead.

  7

  As he roped in at the northeast corner of the target block, Specialist John Waddell delayed his descent long enough to avoid piling into Specialist Shawn Nelson, Chalk Two’s 60 gunner, who usually took a second or two longer to untangle himself and his big gun. On a training mission one time Waddell had plowed into the guy beneath him, and then they’d both been hit by the guy coming after them. That time he’d bitten his tongue right through.

  This time it went well. Waddell got both feet on the ground and then hurried to a wall on the right side of the street, just the way that Lieutenant Tom DiTomasso had drawn it up. Chalk Two was one long block east of where Sergeant Eversmann’s Chalk Four was supposed to have roped down. The lieutenant was concerned because he couldn’t see Chalk Four. He managed to reach the embattled sergeant on the radio, and Eversmann explained how they’d roped in a block north of their position. DiTomasso sent a team one block north to see if they could spot Chalk Four from that alley, but they hustled back to report a large crowd of Somalis was massing in that direction.

  As he ran to take a position against the north wall, Waddell was surprised to find that all his gear, weapons, and ammo weren’t slowing him down. There was a lot of it, and it was bulky and heavy, including a SAW. It was a prestige item, a highly portable machine gun that could deal death at seven hundred rounds per minute. Normally, fully kitted up like that, it felt like gravity had doubled. But Waddell was surprised to find, as he scrambled for a wall, that his arms and legs felt a little numb, but that was it. He figured this was adrenaline, from the excitement and fear, and regarded it with his usual calm detachment.

  Waddell was a bit of a loner, a precise young man whose dark hair looked especially stark in the standard Ranger buzzcut. After a month of equatorial sun only his face, neck, and arms were tan. The stupid regs required T-shirts at all times. He was a newcomer to the rifle company, another of Bravo’s babies, just eighteen years old. Despite a perfect grade point average in high school back in Natchez, Mississippi, he had decided, to his parents’ horror, to temporarily forgo college and enlist in the army, to jump out of airplanes and climb cliffs and engage in the other high-risk behavior of an elite infantry unit.

  Rangering had met his
expectations so far, but it whetted his appetite for real action. On this deployment to Mog he had spent most of his time waiting around and reading. He went through pulp fiction by the box load. Just today he’d read through to the last chapter of a John Grisham novel that really had him hooked. He’d found a quiet spot on top of a Conex container and had planned to finish it. But then they were called to suit up for a possible mission. They’d sat out in the bird ready to ride out, only to have the mission scrubbed. So he’d stripped down and taken the book back up on the Conex, only to be called back down again to go on a profile flight. He’d suited up again, taken the ride, stripped back down, and was back into the last chapter when they were called for this mission. It felt like the world was conspiring against his finishing that novel.

  When everybody was down, the rope jettisoned, and the Black Hawk gone, Waddell’s team was ordered by the lieutenant to set up to help cover Nelson, who had placed his “pig” on a bipod at the crest of a slight rise in the road and was already shooting steadily. The chalk’s two machine gunners tended to draw most of the fire.

  Nelson had been working his gun hard before he’d even left the helicopter. Looking down from the open doorway he’d seen a man with an AK step out to the middle of the street and shoot up through the dust cloud at the bird. Nelson got off six rounds at the guy and didn’t notice if he’d hit him until he saw him splayed out where he’d been standing. He figured either he’d hit him or the crew chief alongside him had scored with the minigun.

  Rounds had been snapping around his head when Nelson came down the rope. Not many, but one bullet coming at you is too many. It made him mad. It was always hard to slow his drop down the rope with that big 60 gun strapped on, and Nelson fell over at the bottom. Staff Sergeant Ed Yurek had run out to help him to his feet and guide him to a wall.

  “Man, this is getting hairy fast,” Nelson said.

  Nelson had set up near the center of the road facing west. Up to his right was an alley, where he could see Somalis aiming guns his way. Nelson’s gun scattered them, all but one, an old man with a bushy white Afro, further down, who seemed so intent on shooting west that he was unaware of the big gun down the alley to his left. He was still a little too far away to shoot, but Nelson could see the man maneuvering in his direction. The 60 gunner knew what the old man was trying to do. DiTomasso had spread the word that Chalk Four was stuck one block northwest of their position. The old man was obviously looking for a better vantage point to shoot at Eversmann and his men.

  “Shoot him, shoot him,” urged his assistant.

  “No, watch,” Nelson said. “He’ll come right to us.”

  And, sure enough, the man with the white Afro practically walked right up to them. He ducked behind a big tree about fifty yards off, hiding from Eversmann’s Rangers, but oblivious to the threat off his left shoulder. He was loading a new magazine in his weapon when Nelson blasted about a dozen rounds into him. They were “slap” rounds, plastic-coated titanium bullets that could penetrate armor, and he saw the rounds go right through the man, but the guy still got up, retrieved his weapon, and even got off a shot or two in Nelson’s direction. The machine gunner was shocked. He shot another twelve rounds at the man, who nevertheless managed to crawl behind the tree. This time he didn’t shoot back.

  “I think you got him,” said the assistant gunner.

  But Nelson could still see the Afro moving behind the tree. The man was kneeling and evidently still alive. Nelson squeezed off another long burst and saw bark splintering off the bottom of the tree. The Afro slumped sideways to the street. His body quivered but he seemed to have at last expired. Nelson was surprised how hard it could be to kill a man.

  As this was going on, Waddell crept up the rise cautiously alongside Nelson. Both men lay prone. Alongside them, Waddell saw the body of the Somali who had been shot from the helicopter. Looking for a better spot to cover Nelson, Waddell moved over to a wall on the south side of the alley. As he did, he saw another Somali step out from behind a corner to the west and shoot at Nelson, who was absorbed by his duel with the white Afro. Waddell shot the man. In books and the movies when a soldier shot a man for the first time he went through a moment of soul searching. Waddell didn’t give it a second thought. He just reacted. He thought the man was dead. He had just folded. Startled by Waddell’s shot, Nelson hadn’t seen the man drop. Waddell pointed to where he had fallen and the machine gunner stood up, lifted his big gun, and pumped a few more rounds into the man’s body to make sure. Then they both ran for better cover.

  They found it behind a burned-out car. Peering out from underneath toward the north now, Nelson saw a Somali with a gun lying prone on the street between two kneeling women. The shooter had the barrel of his weapon between the women’s legs, and there were four children actually sitting on him. He was completely shielded in noncombatants, taking full cynical advantage of the Americans’ decency.

  “Check this out, John,” he told Waddell, who scooted over for a look.

  “What do you want to do?” Waddell asked.

  “I can’t get to that guy through those people.”

  So Nelson threw a flashbang, and the group fled so fast the man left his gun in the dirt.

  Several grenades plopped into the alley. They were of the old Soviet style, which looked like soup cans on a wooden stick. Some didn’t explode, but one or two did. The blasts were far enough away that none of the Rangers was hit. Nelson screamed to DiTomasso and pointed at the brick wall on the east side of the road.

  He watched the lieutenant and three other Rangers cross over to a half-open gate, which opened on a parking lot. DiTomasso lobbed a grenade into the space, and then he and the other Rangers burst in. They found and took prisoner four Somalis who had been standing on car roofs shooting down over the top of the wall.

  The fire was not yet intense, but Sergeant Yurek was amazed at it. At twenty-six, Yurek was a crusty veteran with a grim sense of humor and a big soft spot for animals, especially cats. He had a small pride of cats back home in Georgia, and had adopted a litter of kittens he’d found in the hangar here in Mog. When the D-boys complained about the kittens crying and meowing through the night, and threatened to silence them, Yurek had taken a stand. Nobody touched the kittens without going through him.

  He didn’t like the idea of shooting anything or anybody, but accepted the necessity of it. When people were shooting at him, then it became necessary. So far in Mog, the Skinnies would just fire off a wild burst and then run away, which suited Yurek fine. But this shooting today, right from the start, was more stubborn. It was also picking up. Yurek figured this target must really house some high-priority people. Maybe Aidid himself. Chalk Two was shooting in three directions at once, west, east, and especially north. Yurek had picked off a man who had been firing from a low tower to the northeast. Then one of the squad’s medics shouted from across the street, pointing to a flimsy tin shed just east of their perimeter at the intersection.

  “Hey, we’ve got people in the shed!”

  Which was very bad news. Yurek sprinted across the street, and, with the medic, plunged into the front door.

  He just about trampled a huddled crowd of terrified children and a woman who was evidently their teacher.

  “Everyone down!” Yurek shouted, his weapon still up and ready.

  The children began to wail with fright, and Yurek quickly realized he needed to throttle things down a notch. Tiger in the kitten den.

  “Settle down,” he pleaded. “Settle down!”

  But the wailing continued. So, slowly and carefully, Yurek bent over and placed his weapon on the ground. He motioned for the teacher to approach him. He guessed she was about sixteen years old.

  “Lay down,” he told her, speaking evenly. “Lay down,” gesturing with his hands.

  The young woman was hesitant, but she did as told.

  Yurek pointed to the children now, gesturing for them to do the same. They did. Yurek picked up his weapon and spoke to t
he teacher, enunciating every word in the way people will when vainly trying to communicate through a language barrier.

  “Now, you need to stay here. No matter what you see or hear, stay here.”

  She shook her head, and Yurek hoped that meant yes. As he left, Yurek told the medic to stay by the door to the shed and make sure nobody else decided to check it out and enter blasting.

  From his position behind the car, peering down one of the streets at their intersection, Nelson saw a man with a weapon ride out into the road on a cow. There were about eight other men around the cow, some with weapons, some without. It was the strangest battle party he’d ever seen. He didn’t know whether to laugh or shoot at it. He and the rest of the Rangers at once started shooting. The man on the cow fell off, and the others ran. The cow just stood there.

  And at that moment, a Black Hawk slid overhead and opened fire with a minigun. The cow literally came apart. Great chunks of flesh flew up in splashes of blood. When the minigun stopped and the chopper’s shadow passed, what had been the cow lay in steaming pieces on the road.

  As horrific as that was, the presence of those guns overhead was deeply reassuring to all the men on the streets. Here they were in a strange and hostile city with people trying to kill them, riding at them on animals with automatic weapons, massing from all directions, bullets snapping past their ears, sights of horror and the smell of blood and burned flesh mingled with the odor of dust and dung ... and the calm approach of a big Black Hawk with the rhythmic beat of its rotors and the terrible power of its guns was a reminder of the invincible force behind them, a reminder of their imminent release, of home.

  Somalis continued to mass to the north. In the distance it looked like thousands. Smaller groups would probe south toward Chalk Two’s position. One group moved down to just a block and a half away. Maybe fifteen people. Nelson tried to direct his machine gun only at those with weapons, but there were so many people, and those with guns kept stepping from the crowd to take shots, so that he knew he either had to just let the gunmen shoot or lay into the crowd. After a few moments of debate, he chose the latter. That group dispersed, leaving bodies on the street, and another larger one appeared. They seemed to be coming now in swarms from the north, as though chased from somewhere else. They were closing in, just forty or fifty feet up the road, some of them shooting. This time Nelson didn’t have time to weigh alternatives. He cut loose with the 60 and his rounds tore through the crowd like a scythe. A Little Bird swooped in and threw a flaming wall of lead at it. Those who didn’t fall, fled. One minute there was a crowd, the next minute it was just a bleeding heap of dead and injured.