by Fred Burton
It was an understatement. A. thought that the terrorists would use explosives or an RPG to blast their way into the safe haven; they had, reportedly, used an RPG to blast through the doors at the main entrance.2 RPGs and satchels of Semtex were virtually supermarket staples in Benghazi, and one pull of the grenade launcher’s trigger or one timed detonation, and the armored door to the safe haven would be an easily entered smoldering twist of ruin. But fire was a much cheaper and far simpler solution to a frustrating obstacle.
Burning down an embassy or a diplomatic post was so much easier than blowing it up. Historically, when a diplomatic post’s defenses had been breached, the end result always ended in an inferno. It had happened before in Benghazi when, in June 1967, a mob set fire to the U.S. diplomatic post in the city:
I was at the foot of the wide marble staircase when the breakthrough occurred. Fanatical knife-carrying intruders, bleeding from cuts received as they were pushed through broken windows, ran down the hall. Putting on gas masks and dropping tear gas grenades, we engaged them on the stairs with rifle butts. In seconds tear gas saturated the area. We then moved into the vault, securing the steel combination door, locking in ten persons. My greatest fear, which I kept to myself, was that gasoline for the generator would be found, sloshed under the vault door and ignited. When after minutes this did not happen, our hearts sank, nonetheless, as outside smoke wafted in and we knew the building had been set afire.3
As the frenzy of destruction began to simmer down, the roar of a fire being set bellowed loudly and ominously. The fuel that flowed from the jerry cans proved to be an ideal accelerant to spread a blaze inside the debris of the ransacked mansion. All that it took to turn bedlam into homicide was a cigarette. R. radioed A. with the ominous news. “Smoke is seen from the villa’s windows, over.” The message was superfluous. The three men could hear the flames engulf the building, and they could feel the oven-like heat growing hotter and more unbearable as each moment passed. The lights from behind the door began to flicker. The electricity began to falter, and then it died.
Once the fires began and the gunmen discovered the path to the safe haven, A. moved onto his knees, behind a wall, to take aim with his M4 and engage the attackers if they made it through this final barrier. The men were basically indistinguishable from one another. They flailed their hands wildly in the attempt to pry the gate open, looking for any opportunity to manipulate the door that was securely locked from inside. None fired into the room; the mesh steel made it difficult for them to poke the barrels of their AK-47s to a point where they would be able to safely launch a few rounds into the darkened room. Stevens, Smith, and A. were all safely out of view; had the attackers known that their target was behind the gate, they would have spared no effort to puncture through the metal barrier. A. cradled his long gun with his left hand, wiping the sweat from his right hand in brief moments to be ready for the breakthrough and the three-shot bursts. He knew he had to be frugal with his ammunition. His magazine held ****** rounds of **** mm ammunition. Each round traveled at 3,020 feet per second. He knew that he would bring down whomever he hit. A.’s service SIG held ******* * mm rounds. He didn’t know, should the men burst through, if he had enough rounds to stop ten or fifty. The crowd of mustached men shouting loudly in Arabic appeared all the more menacing concealed by the darkening clouds of smoke; as A. moved his sights from target to target, the fiery orange glow behind them made the dozen or so men look like a hundred.
Just before the fire was set, the gunmen emerged from the villa joyously animated by the engulfed destruction. They fecklessly fired their AK-47s into the air and watched the villa erupt in a wild and uncontrollable inferno. They stood by with a sense of satisfaction. Whoever was inside the doomed building would most certainly die. Their work for the night was partially done.
The smoke spread fast, a wild and free-moving metastasized vapor of burning wallpaper, fabrics, and plastics. A. ordered Stevens and Smith to drop to their knees and led them in a crawl from the bedroom, where he had been taking aim with his long gun, toward the bathroom, which had a small exterior window; interestingly, and perhaps shockingly, diplomats, even those destined for critical-threat posts, were not mandated to undergo survival-type instruction before leaving the United States. Towels were taken off their fancy racks and doused quickly with water. A. then rolled them loosely and forced them in between the doorjamb to keep the poisonous air from entering the smaller space the three men retreated to. The black acrid vapor was eye searing and blinded the men in the safe haven. The three crawling on the ground, hoping for a last gasp of clean air to fill their lungs, couldn’t see a thing in the hazy darkness. The men began to vomit inside the toilet. At first they expelled the lunch and dinner that they had yet to digest. They then began to puke sputum laced with lines of burned tar and other carcinogens that were the natural by-products of the plastics and cushioning that so easily erupted into an out-of-control blaze.
Getting some air was more important than facing the wrath of the attackers; without oxygen they could only hold out a few more minutes. The situation from the safe haven was direly critical. A. attempted to pry open one of the windows, but in seeking ventilation he exacerbated the situation; the opening created an air gust that expanded the intensity of the flames and the smoke. The safe haven became a gas chamber. Both Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith struggled to inhale; their lungs were singed, and they couldn’t remove a word from their blackened mouths. A. signaled the two to follow him to an egress emergency window, but he couldn’t see his protectees through the smoke. He banged on the floor as he crawled, hoping that both Stevens and Smith would hear him. A. found himself in a predicament of absolute terror. He was, however, unwilling to surrender to the dire environment. He pushed through toward the window, barely able to breathe or retain focus. With his voice box damaged by smoke, he mustered whatever energy he had remaining to yell and propel Stevens and Smith forward.
The egress window was grilled, and within the grille was a section that can be opened for emergency escape. It had a lock with the key usually located near the window but out of reach from someone outside the window. It did not open easily. Pushing his body strength into his arms and shoulders, A. managed to pry the window slightly ajar. He yelled and motioned to both Stevens and Smith to follow him as he slunk his smoke-blackened body through the opening. The taste of fresh air pushed him ahead, even though his inner survival resources were already signaling his brain to acquiesce. He was determined to get his ambassador and his IMO to safety no matter what.
A. coughed up generous portions of soot at the windowsill as he reached inside to help Stevens and Smith out. There was no response, though; Stevens and Smith had not followed him out. There was, however, gunfire. A. heard the crackling explosions of AK-47 gunfire in the distance, and he heard the whooshing shots flying overhead. Some of the gunmen, who had by now slowly begun to retreat from the bonfire, started firing at the figure emerging from the building’s lower section. A. didn’t care about the gunfire at this point. Showing enormous courage and dedication to preserving the lives he was charged to protect, he went back into the safe haven several times to search for both men. The heat and the intensity of the tornado-like smoke beat him back severely each time he made entry; he could only remain behind inside the room for brief suffocating periods.
The agents inside the TOC, as well as those at the DS quarters barricaded behind a refrigerator and a heavy wooden door, were helpless to render assistance. Fifteen armed men were trying to break through, pounding furiously on the door. The DS agents were besieged and taking fire. The TOC offered them eyes-on-target intelligence of what the gunmen were doing and where they were positioned, but being trapped behind the door made any breakout or counterattack impossible.
The utter confusion and chaos of the horrifically unfolding events was all encompassing. The U.S. embassy in Tripoli informed the TOC, through radio and mobile phone communications, that help was on the way, but there was no wor
d as to when the help would arrive. In any other critical-threat setting, the RSO would have been able to summon emergency medical and firefighting assistance; even at posts in Baghdad, Peshawar, Islamabad, and Sana’a, there was in place government infrastructure standing on call to respond to emergency needs. In a perfect world, the villa would have had sprinklers, foam, and smoke hoods. The Benghazi Fire Service station was approximately three miles from the Special Mission Compound, in the northwestern parcel of the city near the bay; it was situated adjacent to a hospital, a twenty-four-hour convenience shopping mall, and the March 2 School for Girls. The station accommodated dozens of Italian-produced firefighting vehicles; five were on call at any given time. With lights and sirens blaring, it would have taken less than five minutes for the trucks to be through the gates of the Special Mission Compound and hosing the blaze down.
It is not known if any of the Western Fwayhat residents summoned the fire service begging that they hurry up and help put out the fires blazing at the Special Mission Compound. It was hard to ignore the gunfire—even harder to ignore the stench of burning plastics and melting metals. The smoke had by now sifted through the entire neighborhood. The city’s who’s who, sitting on their verandas drinking the haram nectar of the Westernized well-to-do, simply refused to get involved.
The wafting smell of smoke and the unmistakable sounds of gunfire littered the not-so-distant landscape at the Annex as well.
A. would not remember the number of attempts he made in order to search for Stevens and Smith, but there had been many. His hands were already severely burned, and the smoke inhalation had already battered his body to the point where minor movement caused excruciating pain. He was not going to leave until he found them; he was determined to get them out of the inferno dead or alive. Even the most determined of men, fueled by dedication to mission and the surges of adrenaline, are halted by unbeatable elements of heat, fire, and pain. At about his fifth reentry into the safe haven, the area had become too hot to enter. The oven-like hell of the rooms buttressed by window grating and armored door was simply inaccessible to a properly equipped firefighter, let alone a man who had been trying to survive a large-scale terrorist assault for nearly thirty minutes. At approximately his sixth attempt inside, A. couldn’t go back anymore. His body, weakened by a lack of oxygen and unimaginable pain, had been humbled by a hellacious reality. His body reeling from the suffering and his lungs attempting to recover and relish the breaths of air that he was inhaling, A. gathered himself stoically as he fought on. He ran toward an emergency ladder near the egress window and raced up to the roof as he tried to clear an air path, coughing up the toxins as he climbed. Flames rushed upward from the windows that had exploded open in the fiery violence. There was a metal grate over a skylight on the top of the roof he tried to pull off, while rounds were flying by him. The building resembled a funeral pyre.
Atop the building, A. struggled his way toward the wedge-shaped sandbag firing emplacement that the MSD operators had affixed the last time they had been to Benghazi. The sandbags protected A. from the odd shots still ringing out in the night; greenish laser beams of tracer fire littered the roofline as the gunmen were still hoping to have a chance to engage some of the Americans in a battle to the end. A.used his radio and weapon to smash open a skylight in the hope of ventilating the building. In better times, on a night like this, the skylight was a beautiful accoutrement to the villa and opened up the sparkling stars of a Benghazi night onto the main sitting area of the palatial home. Tonight, A. prayed, it would allow the fire to burn itself out and enable him to rush down into the labyrinth of destruction and hopefully save the lives of the ambassador and Sean Smith.
As pillars of fire and smoke rushed upward through the shattered remnants of the skylight, the collapse of the weakened roof was near imminent. A. refused, however, to get down. Struggling with every breath he took, he gathered his strength and pressed down on the talk button of his Motorola handset. “I don’t have the ambassador,” he yelled, knowing that anything he said in his regular voice would be unintelligible. “Repeat, over?” B. responded, having a hard time hearing what he said; the flames around him were still roaring, and A. found it hard to utter a complete sentence. A. struggled to gather his voice and his thoughts. He found it hard to hold the radio in hands burned severely in the fire; he found it excruciatingly painful to grip the call button to talk to the TOC. But they had to know. He righted himself slightly and took one last lung-filling gasp of air. “I don’t have the ambassador!”
It was 2220 hours.
Part Three
RESCUE
15.
End of Siege
2205 hours (approximately): Benghazi, Libya.
The attack on the Special Mission Compound provided great theater to the who’s who of Western Fwayhat. Some neighborhood residents emerged from their homes to watch the flames burn in the distance; these concerned neighbors, some wearing robes and flip-flops, shot video of the chaos and called family and friends to let them know of the live-fire Benghazi vaudeville transpiring right before their eyes. The chief Italian diplomat in Benghazi, identified as Guido De Sanctis,* reportedly watched the attack unfold from his vantage point, a reserved table at the Venezia Café.** There was no wine with dinner.
The Italian diplomat did not have the assets—or the authorization—to intervene. And after all, the violence ended almost as suddenly as it began; the fires of rage still burned wildly out of control, but a semi-silence returned to Western Fwayhat. The attackers fell back into the perimeter of the compound, but they never truly disappeared. Instead, they lay in wait, firing random bursts from their AK-47s into the compound. The attack had hit the Special Mission Compound like a twirling tornado twisting out of control across the American plains. The devastation came with little warning, was indiscriminate, and departed with a whimper. Like someone who had been imprisoned inside a cellar awaiting the storm’s departure, R. scanned the areas of the compound on the DVR camera monitors that were fixed to their mounts and still transmitting imagery to see if the coast was clear. It was not a particular surprise that the camera system was still functioning. This was not an off-the-shelf system purchased at RadioShack. It was designed and produced for DS to function through the most difficult of circumstances, including extreme heat and fire. This not only reflected the prescient thoughts of the DS SEOs but provided insight as to what U.S. diplomats expected to occur in dangerous outposts.
The TOC had lost its cohesive link to A. and the villa. There was silence. The two DS agents inside the cantina were still barricaded, along with the February 17 militiaman, behind the battered door and the refrigerator awaiting a showdown with the terrorists. The custom-molded surveillance earpiece with discreet communications with the TOC was their lifeline.
The RSO’s office in Tripoli, as well as the powers that be representing a dozen or so law enforcement, intelligence, and military commands, were assessing the situation in Benghazi and attempting to respond in as timely a fashion as possible. The Annex instructed R. that help was en route. In this day and age of digital communications and instant messaging, the fog of terror had rendered definitive immediacy into an absolute unknown; interestingly enough, unsecure (those not deemed safe for the transmission of sensitive or classified information) cell phones were the primary means of communications between Benghazi and Tripoli. Nevertheless, R. relayed over the radio to the agents in the line of fire that backup was coming: “Help on the way.” Though R. would have preferred to have heard more specifics about the “help,” the mere thought that they were attempting to send reinforcements assured him that the powers were well aware of the gravity of the situation, and this also allowed him to refocus his thoughts solely on staying alive. In this world of fighting terrorists in places such as Benghazi, “help” could be crashing through the main gate with guns ablaze, or it could be a day away in the form of an AC-130 gunship and a company of marines.
“TOC, B. here, we are moving.” B. grab
bed his M4 and braced for a fusillade of terrorist gunfire. He removed a smoke grenade from his vest carrier and pulled the pin. Holding the spoon down forcefully, B. aligned his back against the north wall while R. slowly unlocked the front door and yanked it open. He flipped the grenade underhand to a halfway point between the TOC and the DS villa, and then R. slammed the door shut to shield the two from potential terrorist fire. The grenade erupted in a slapping thud and then dispensed a thick and impenetrable white smoke. B. raced through the cloud, the EOTech 512 holographic combat sight fitted to his M4 raised firmly at eye level. He ran as fast as he could into the murky darkness, searching for targets that could be lurking in the distance. Distance was good. He knew that the AK-47s that the attackers were carrying might be the most reliable and robust assault rifle in the world, but they were certainly not the most accurate. B. had ninety feet to traverse to make it to the DS villa—the distance from home plate to first base—but under fire that distance could feel like an eternal divide. The sprint through the night took seconds, but it felt as if it lasted hours.
B.used the armored layer of Kevlar wrapped around his shoulders and torso to burst through the door; the terrorists had battered it off one of its hinges. He reached the cantina and radioed that help had arrived. C. and D.used their combined strength to throw the refrigerator aside and open the door. The February 17 guard was grateful to have been rescued, and he embraced the lone member of the cavalry that rushed in. The DS villa was in shambles. The terrorists had thrashed through the living quarters and around the building. There wasn’t an emotion on earth, the agents felt, that could propel another human being into such an act of explosive rage. The destructive lust of the men was daunting. The agents could only imagine what the bastards might have done to the ambassador at the residence. Operating as a small tactical team, the agents knew there was strength in numbers. The high-threat tactical course at Bill Scott Raceway in West Virginia that was part of the DS training curriculum had set the stage. Fortunately for the agents, the DS Training Center in Dunn Loring, Virginia, had written training modules for ground-zero worst-case-scenario possibilities. Even the best training in the world, however, cannot replicate the sheer fear and feeling of loneliness.