Black Hawk Down

by Mark Bowden

  “If you see somebody coming through this doorway and they’re not yelling ‘Ranger! Ranger!’ you go ahead and shoot ’im because we’re all out here dead.”

  Goodale was shocked. The quiet had lulled him into a false sense of safety. He reasoned with himself. Okay, I might die here. I’d rather not but if I do, then that’s what’s supposed to happen and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. And he thought about what a terrible thing it was to have turned over responsibility for his life, his very existence, to the U.S. government, and that because of it he might be breathing his last breaths in this shithole back room, on this back street dirt floor in Mogadishu-fucking-Somalia. He thought about how much he’d wanted to go to war, to see combat, and then he thought about all those great war movies and documentaries he’d seen about battles. He knew he’d never see another of those films and feel the same way about it. People really get killed. He found the best way to accept his predicament was to just assume he was dead already. He was dead already. He just kept on doing his job.

  One block up, Sergeant Yurek was now positioned at a window peering east down the crash alley. It was sketched in soft shades of blue, the pale earth of the alley, the thickets of cactus and a wall about eight feet high with a fence just beyond it, no more than two car-lengths away. Yurek tried to sit as quietly as he could, figuring he’d hear somebody coming in before he’d see them. Then he saw the fence shake. He brought his M-16 up to his shoulder and drew a bead on the top of the fence as first one, and then another Sammy lightly pulled themselves up and then squatted on the adjacent wall, evidently looking for a place to jump down. This is getting too easy. One of the men spotted Yurek just before the sergeant squeezed the trigger. He had just enough time to begin a shout and reach for his weapon before Yurek’s rounds blew him and the other backward off the wall. One of the men’s weapons dropped on Yurek’s side. He heard a commotion on the other side and then it was quiet again.

  Looking out on the main road, Sergeant Howe still felt boxed in. He’d been stuck in a bad position, and for the first time he began to feel like he might not make it out of here alive.

  The Somalis had been sending three- to six-man teams down the alleys, probing their positions, trying to figure out exactly where they were. Howe could see these men and knew exactly what they were doing. One put his weapon around the corner and fired toward Miller’s position across the street, then waited, hoping to see muzzle flashes to guide his shooting. When he saw none he edged around the corner. Howe decided to let him move well down the street in front of his position before shooting him, because if he shot the man and didn’t kill him, he could return to point out Howe’s position. Then they’d be a fat target for an RPG. Just as he prepared to fire two D-boys across the road did and dropped the man. He did not get back up. At the same time they lit up a group of five Somalis preparing to move around the corner. Wounded, these men dragged themselves back up the street.

  The quiet was in some ways more unnerving than the early din of battle. It was hard not to imagine large groups of Sammies forming up just around the corners. If there was a sudden rush from a large enough group, Howe felt, they could all be overrun. He began preparing a checklist for himself, the steps he would take in his final fight. He was going to take as many of them with him as was humanly possible. He still had six or seven magazines left for his CAR-15, along with his .45 and some shotgun ammo. He would shoot his rifle until it ran out of ammo, then the shotgun, then his pistol, and finally he would use his knife. Hopefully he’d find an enemy weapon to pick up.

  Howe called together his team and told them to hold their fire on any Somalis until they were fully committed down the street, as he had been doing. They were all to conserve ammo, pick their shots with care. All of the other operators would radio whenever they used their weapons, telling each other what they shot at and where, and whether they hit where they aimed. It helped keep track of emerging trouble spots. The night had reached a critical juncture.

  The Little Birds took care of the two large elements of approaching Somalis. Goodale heard one of the helicopters come screaming down Marehan Road and after the rattle of its guns and the satisfying boom! of a rocket, he shouted, “Make that one large element!”

  Another gun run eliminated the second threat.

  Sergeant Bray, the air force combat controller at Miller’s position, asked for a gun run on the two-story house adjacent to their courtyard. The building overlooked them and had a separate entrance around the corner. If there were Somalis inside that house, they’d be able to shoot right down at them. The building was adjacent to the Delta command post courtyard and no more than twenty yards in front of Howe’s position, which meant hitting it from the air without hurting any of the Americans on the ground would take one hell of a shot. Howe’s men marked the building with lasers for the Little Bird pilot, who radioed down to ask if they were sure they wanted his miniguns firing that close. From the air, it was like trying to paint a thin line between two friendly positions.

  “Keep your heads down,” the pilot warned.

  His fire was right on the mark. Watching the miniguns tear the house apart, Howe turned to one of his teammates and said, “Don’t try this at home!”

  Some time later, two Somalis came walking down the middle of the street as though out for a stroll. The moon was high now and lit the scene about half as bright as a cloudy afternoon. The men were spaced about forty yards apart. Howe watched the first walk down past his position. He tried to put his infrared cover on his gun light, and for a moment accidentally shone the white light out the door. He watched the first man double back, looking for where the flash had originated. Howe pulled out his .45. He didn’t want to shoot the man with his rifle, because there were D-boys in the building directly across the street, and the bullets would likely pass right through him and on toward them. He also knew the muzzle flash from either rifle or handgun would be clearly visible to the second man. Howe radioed for one of his men to shoot the guy as soon as he passed out of the perimeter. As the man moved on, one of the men across the street shot him in the right lower back. The man spun around with a startled look and was immediately hit by four more bullets that knocked him flat. Howe was disgusted that it had taken so many rounds to drop the man. The second Somali walked down the same way minutes later and was also shot dead.

  By midnight the rescue convoy was getting close. The men pinned down listened to the low rumble of nearly one hundred vehicles, tanks, APCs (armored personnel carriers), and Humvees. The thunderclap of its guns edged ever closer. After a while, the rhythm of its shooting sounded like an extended drum solo in a rock song, very heavy metal. It was the wrathful approach of the United States of America, footsteps of the great god of red, white, and blue.

  It was the best fucking sound in the world.

  N. S. D. Q.

  Mike Durant as he appeared on the videotape shot by his Somali captors the day after he was shot down and taken captive. Courtesy: Cable News Network. Copyright © 1998 Cable News Network, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  View from a Black Hawk doorway over one corner of Mogadishu’s Bakara Market. Courtesy: Lance Twombly.

  Enraged Somalis drag the body of Black Hawk crew chief Bill Cleveland through the streets of Mogadishu the morning after the battle. Courtesy: Paul Watson/The Toronto Star.

  1

  Michael Durant heard the guns of the giant rescue convoy roaring into the city. The injured Black Hawk pilot was flat on his back bound with a dog chain on a cool tile floor in a small octagonal room with no windows. Air, moonlight, and sounds filtered in through a pattern of crosses cut high in the upper third of the concrete walls. He tasted dust in the air and he smelled of blood and gunpowder and sweat. The room had no furniture and only one door, which was closed.

  When the angry mob had closed over him, he thought he was going to die. He still did not know the fate of the three other men on his crew, copilot Ray Frank and crew chiefs Tommy Field and Bill Cleveland,
or of the two D-boys who had tried to protect them. Durant did not know those men’s names.

  He had passed out when the mob carried him off. He’d felt himself leaving his body, watching the scene from outside himself, and at the worst of the chaos and terror it had calmed him. But the feeling hadn’t lasted. He’d come to when he was thrown into the back of a flatbed truck with a rag tied around his head, surprised to still be alive and expecting at any moment to die. He was driven around. The truck would go and then stop, go and then stop. He guessed it was about three hours after the crash when they’d brought him to this place, removed the rag, and wrapped his hands with the chain.

  What Durant didn’t know was that he had been taken from the first group of Somalis who seized him. Yousef Dahir Mo’alim, the neighborhood militia leader who had spared him from the attacking crowd after it had overwhelmed and killed the others, had intended to carry Durant back to his village and turn him over to leaders of the Habr Gidr. As they’d left the crash site, however, they were stopped by a better-armed band of maverick mooryan, who had a technical with a big gun in back. This group considered the injured pilot not a war prisoner to be swapped for captured clan leaders, but a hostage. They knew somebody would pay money to get him back. Mo’alim’s men were outnumbered and outgunned, so they’d reluctantly given Durant up. This was the way things were in Mogadishu. If Aidid wanted the pilot back, he would have to fight for him, or pay.

  Durant’s right leg ached where the femur was broken and he could feel the ooze of blood inside his pants where one end of the broken bone had pushed through his skin in the manhandling. It did not hurt that badly. He didn’t know if that was good or bad. He was still alive, so the bone had not punctured an artery. His back was what really bothered him. He figured he’d crushed a vertebrae in the crash.

  He managed to work one hand free of the chain. He was sweating so his hand slid out easily when he relaxed it. It gave him his first sense of triumph. He had fought back in some small way. He could wipe the dirt from his nose and eyes and straighten his broken leg somewhat and get a little more comfortable. Then he wrapped his hand back into the chain so that he still appeared to be bound.

  At one point he heard several armored vehicles roll right past outside. He heard shooting and thought he was about to be rescued, or killed. There was a furious firefight. He heard the low pounding of a Mark 19 automatic grenade launcher and the explosion of what sounded like TOW missiles. He had never been at the receiving end of a barrage and he was shaken by how powerful and frightening it was. The explosions came closer and closer. The Skinnies holding him grew more and more agitated. They were all young men with weapons that looked rusty and poorly maintained. He listened to them shouting at each other, arguing. Several times one or more barged into the room to threaten him. One of the men spoke some English. He said, “You kill Somalis. You die Somalia, Ranger.”

  Durant couldn’t understand the rest of their words but he gathered they would shoot him before letting the approaching Americans take him back.

  He listened to the pitched battle with hope and fear. Then the sounds marched off and faded. He felt disappointed, despite the danger. They had been so close!

  Then a gun barrel poked around the door. Just the black barrel. Durant caught the motion in the corner of his eye and turned his head just as it flamed and the room rang with a shot. He felt the impact in his left shoulder and his left leg. Eyeing his shoulder, he saw blood and the back end of a bullet protruding from his skin. It evidently had hit the floor first and had ricocheted into him without enough force to fully penetrate. A bit of shrapnel had punctured his leg.

  He slid his hand from the chain and tried to wrench the bullet from his shoulder. It was an automatic move, a reflex, but when his fingers touched it they sizzled and he winced with pain. It was still hot. It had burned his fingertips.

  He thought: Lesson learned; wait until it cools down.

  2

  Word of the big fight in Mogadishu reached Washington early Sunday. General Garrison had received a call several hours into the battle from General Wayne Downing, an old friend who was commander in chief of U.S. Special Operations Command. Downing had come to his office at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa after a morning jog, and had decided to ring up his friend in Mogadishu to see how things were going. This was about two hours into the fight. Garrison quickly summarized what had happened so far: There had been a successful mission, two of Aidid’s lieutenants and a slew of lesser lights had been captured, but two helicopters were down, lots of lead was flying, and the boys were still in the thick of it. Downing asked Garrison if there was anything he could do right away, and then got off the phone. The last thing his friend needed at that moment was some desk jockey thirteen thousand miles away looking over his shoulder.

  Downing spread the word. National Security Adviser Tony Lake was given the bare outline at the White House that morning, two Aidid lieutenants captured, two helicopters down, rescue operation underway. Lake was more preoccupied just then with events in Moscow, where Russian President Boris Yeltsin was fending off a right-wing coup d’état. President Clinton did not mention Mogadishu at a press conference that morning, which took place at the same time Task Force Ranger was pinned down around the first crash site. Clinton and the rest of America remained ignorant of the drama in faraway Mogadishu. After the press conference, the president flew to San Francisco for a planned two-day speaking tour.

  Garrison’s move back into the city came with crushing force. If Aidid wanted to play, the U.S. Army would play. Centered around twenty-eight Malaysian APCs and four Pakistani tanks, the convoy numbered almost a hundred vehicles and was nearly two miles long, with enough firepower to blaze their own roads if necessary. Lieutenant Colonel Bill David was given responsibility for quickly assembling this force at the New Port, about two miles up the coast from the Ranger base.

  David’s reaction, upon being handed this assignment, was, You’ve got to be kidding me. His own men, two 10th Mountain Division rifle companies, three hundred men strong, had amassed at the airport. David’s Charlie Company, the “Tigers,” had taken some light casualties at the K-4 circle ambush trying to get to Durant’s crash site, but they were otherwise fresh and eager to join the fight. They’d been joined by Alpha Company, under the command of Captain Drew Meyerowich. The armor would be nice, but what was David going to do with Malaysians and Pakistanis? He huddled with General Gile, second in command of the 10th. They agreed that once their men linked up with the foreign troops at the New Port, they would ask the Malaysians to take their own infantry out of the APCs and fill them with American troops. It would be, Thank you very much, we’ll take your vehicles and drivers, but we don’t need your men. David could sense how that was going to go over.

  “Do these guys speak English?” he asked.

  Most of the officers spoke some, Gile said, and there would be liaison officers to help smooth the process.

  David had walked out of the JOC with his head spinning. The forty-year-old career army officer (West Point, Class of ’75) from St. Louis, Missouri, had just been handed the assignment of a lifetime. He had been in Mogadishu for two months, commanding a battalion of peacekeepers there to back up the UN forces. He’d never been particularly happy about the presence of Garrison’s Task Force Ranger, which had flown in and begun its own secret missions independent of the force structure already in place. Regular army units both admire and resent the elite special forces. The conventional divisions don’t get nearly as much money to train, or the choice assignments. Watching Task Force Ranger move into Mogadishu and steal their thunder was not easy for the proud officers and men of the 10th, which has its own distinguished battle history. Since the daring mission had gone bad, it was easy to regard it as foolhardy—What were they doing in Aidid’s notorious Black Sea neighborhood in broad daylight? Where was the reserve force? Now David and his men, sometimes scorned by the elite forces, were charged with pulling Delta’s and the Rangers’ asses out of
the fire.

  He had to move his men, along with what was now called the “Cook Platoon,” volunteers combined with the remnants of the original assault forces, north to the New Port, negotiate with the Malaysians and Pakistanis, develop a plan, and then allow for his subordinates to disseminate it up and down the giant convoy. Then he had to steer them out into the city and keep it all together in the dark as they battled their way to the two crash sites.

  While the commanders were working up this plan, the Rangers assigned to the rescue column fretted and paced. Their buddies were still trapped out there! Those who had already been in the fight knew how terrible the battle had become. The uninjured had helped move their wounded and dead buddies from the lost convoy’s Humvees and trucks to the field hospital, where Dr. Marsh and his team of doctors and nurses were furiously working to save their lives. The Rangers known to be dead were Pilla, Cavaco, and Joyce. In bad shape were Blackburn, Ruiz, Adalberto Rodriguez, and the Delta operator Griz Martin. There were dozens more injured. It was a ghastly scene. Even those soldiers who had not been hurt were so blood-splattered they looked injured.

  Some of the medical aides approached Sergeant Eversmann, who had commanded Chalk Four and come out with his men on the lost convoy. Eversmann was unhurt, but most of the men on his chalk had been hit. On the ride out, he had been sandwiched on the back of a Humvee with the wounded, so his uniform was caked with blood. As he stood by now, helping to unload them, two medics grabbed him and began cutting off his pants.

  “Leave me alone!” he said. “I’m okay!”

  They paid him no mind. Some of the men who were really wounded protested in the same way.

  “Look, I’m fine. Work on them!” he shouted, pointing to men who were waiting for attention.