Under Fire

by Fred Burton

  The alleyway separating the ambassador’s half of the compound and the DS half had the potential of being a kill zone—a trap where well-positioned men, either seizing the high ground or in superior tactical locations, could pick off anyone attempting to pass in a cross fire of death. The three DS agents rushed to their armored Toyota Land Cruiser, threw an extra ballistic vest and helmet, as well as extra ammunition, into the vehicle—just in case—and rushed to the villa; a fully armored vehicle, or FAV, was also a weapon and could be used, in the vernacular, to “run the bastards over.” The agents still didn’t know what was out there awaiting them. R. attempted to use his DVR surveillance camera system as a guide, but there were so many blind spots and potential firing positions for a terrorist with an RPG; the wall separating the two compounds would provide ideal cover for an armed assailant with an RKG-3 antitank grenade.

  A. was on the roof. He was burned and in dire condition; his face, hands, and forearms were red and black. The agent, known to barrel his way through any obstacle, was vomiting and coming in and out of consciousness. “I can’t find the ambassador, we need to find Stevens,” A. kept uttering to himself. The medical training that the agents underwent prior to shipping out proved to be a lifesaver. The sandbags on the roof provided safety, allowing the agents who climbed up the ladder that was positioned next to the villa to check on A. The agents knew that Stevens was missing and A. was under fire. As the trio deployed from the safety of the armored Land Cruiser, they climbed the fixed ladder to the roof. “We’ll find Stevens and Smith,” the two agents offered in unison. It was imperative to show confidence to a victim in shock, and A. was in a state of shock. The agents had been trained in the TacMed course to conduct a quick patient assessment: airway, breathing, and circulation (known as the ABCs) become the first responder’s mantra; they were taught to check for severe arterial bleeding and neck injuries and to stabilize major trauma with QuikClot from the trauma kit. Burns were evident, but there was zero time to assess. Blood was on his sleeves. He could squeeze his hands in a quick handshake. His legs were movable. No major back or head trauma was visible or evident.

  Emergency first aid was administered to the agent in distress and great care given to stabilize him and bring him safely from the burning building. A. motioned down, waving his arms and pointing toward the egress window, struggling to get the word out to his colleagues that Stevens and Smith were still unaccounted for and probably still inside the smoldering remains of the safe haven. “We gotta get Stevens and Smith,” A. expressed. “I’m okay.”

  The three agents needed to improvise in order to survive. They immediately grabbed a rope from their Land Cruiser, tied it around their waists, and cracked open the egress window to enter the safe haven and search for Smith and Stevens. In such situations, all of the men thought, “At least we won’t leave an agent behind,” but no one dared say it aloud. They all thought, “Hell, you could feel it. If we go down, we’ll go down together.”1 There was no time to ponder the outcome. A gunshot from the perimeter whizzed by; most likely someone had taken a sniper shot at the agents, but looking back, it was as if someone had fired the gun to signal the start of a race. In this case, it was a race for their lives.

  The brunt of the blaze was still roaring inside the main reception area of the villa, and the building was hot—skin-roasting hot. The gaping hole in the main door, as well as the smashed skylight, ventilated the fire and let it breathe and grow. Waves of cream-like smoke wafted toward every opening and crevice throughout the building. Entering the safe haven was like diving into murky and treacherous waters with zero visibility. One wrong turn inside the blinding mess would result in death, and hopefully that death would be a rapid one.

  One agent remained with A. at all times to tend to his critical smoke inhalation; a second agent ventured through the window opening to search while always tied to a third agent. It was impossible to yell for either Smith or Stevens; even attempting to breathe was likely to result in a spiraling-out-of-control domino effect of respiratory distress. It was unlikely that either man was still conscious in the suffocating smoke. The search was conducted on hands and knees. It was a grisly undertaking. When the agent emerged from the safe haven, he hovered on all fours and pointed his head down, hacking heavily and spewing out the poisonous elements that had raced into his lungs. His nostrils were blackened like West Virginia coal miners’. When he raised his eyes, his fellow agents poured water over his eyes from a Kevlar helmet, scooped up from the swimming pool. Cushions from a couch, as well as other assorted debris, floated in the pool. The sky overhead had turned reddish gray.

  The process repeated itself without respite. The three agents, their M4s at the ready and their fingers outside the trigger guard, protected A. and tended to his medical condition, and ventured into the smoky confines. A slight breeze blew across the compound. All of the agents were beginning to suffer the consequences of smoke inhalation. R. checked in from time to time; he was coordinating communications at the TOC but knew that the lack of chatter over the airwaves was a foreboding sign. He looked at his watch and checked with the GRS crew at the Annex. It was 2225 hours.

  * * *

  Six GRS operators and a “regional specialist” divided themselves into two teams and entered their armored Mercedes G-Wagons and at least one armored four-door BMW 5 Series. The regional specialist was a translator, someone who spoke impeccable Arabic, probably with North African dialect, and could provide an immediate agency-filtered ear to any word that locals, friendly or otherwise, would have to say. The translator would be essential if the GRS team encountered a wounded terrorist or a prisoner that the DS contingent might have secured. The regional specialists were an interesting collection of intellectuals, native sons, and first-generation American-born Arabs who found their interests and backgrounds offered them unique career opportunities following the new demands forged by the September 11, 2001, attacks. The regional specialists weren’t necessarily operators; most times they weren’t. But in the field, when some Islamic cultural keys were warranted or a dialogue needed to be established, they could be more valuable than an entire entry team of former DevGru triggermen.

  The Annex security officer lowered the wedge gate—a barrier that could stop a fifteen-thousand-pound truck traveling at fifty miles per hour dead in its tracks—and the two Mercedes G-Wagons raced out into the darkness. There was silence in the cars, as in all tactical missions, except for the shooter in the right front of the second car, who keyed his push-to-talk microphone: “We are less than ten ‘mikes’ out.”

  “Roger,” said R. Ten minutes. He phoned Tripoli and updated the RSO.

  The GRS drivers drove with their headlights off. The vehicles made a left turn, heading west for approximately 925 feet, and then, at a sleepy corner, made a sharp left heading north, racing toward the main junction some 2,080 feet away; there were no traffic laws in Benghazi, which was a good thing because the CIA GRS operators were reputed never to drive at the speed limit.

  At the junction, the two vehicles made a left and raced a mile down the road toward the militia compound. The Mercedes G-Wagons crossed a median and pushed forward in both the west and the east lanes, careful to avoid being bottlenecked in a possible ambush or RPG attack. The two agency vehicles passed Charlie-3 gate at the Special Mission Compound and could see an orange glow in the northerly sky and smell the acrid stench of smoke. The rescue mission suddenly became more urgent. Nothing needed to be said; you could see it and smell it. From the right front of the first G-Wagon, the former SEAL Tyrone Woods had rolled up on countless similar battles in the past. Rescue operations had been his life.

  “COBRA five to seven minutes out.”

  “Copy,” was the reply from the TOC. There was a saying among many of the DS “Dirty Harry” agents who had served in the civil wars of Africa and South America, as well as in the fratricides of the Balkans and Beirut: “When rolling into hell, keep moving forward. Reverse is not an option.”

&nbs
p; The February 17 Brigade maintained a base at the junction southwest of the Special Mission Compound, and the GRS team leader wanted to have his men lead a much larger and more substantive force to break through any terrorist opposition still lurking inside or near the besieged post. The GRS force was geared for war: full battle kit, night-vision equipment, helmets, and face-concealing balaclavas. Some of the men wore their lucky team baseball caps from their SEAL and Marine Corps units. To the commanders at the militia’s headquarters, it was time for tea—it always was. Anytime a guest ventured into the office of the senior officer, the revered fa’ed, or commander, the guest would be offered a small and sinister cup of rocket fuel, Bedouin coffee laced with cardamom, followed by cup after cup of sweet tea; the hosts were generous, and the teacup was stuffed with mint leaves. There was one civilian, employed by a Middle Eastern military unit, whose sole job was to make tea, clean the thin glasses in which tea was served, and then offer the tea to the commander and his guests. With refreshments being served, the militiamen seemed to be in no hurry to suit up and enter into battle. The team leader and the interpreter entered the commander’s office and, in very diplomatic terms, said something to the effect of “What the fuck? Why aren’t you guys ready?”

  “TOC, COBRA. We’ve hit a roadblock. Stand by.”

  “Copy,” said R. “Shit.” There were formalities, acts of honor, that had to be attended to before business could be discussed. Outside, in the courtyard of the base—actually, a small compound that the militia had taken over—men in camouflage fatigues wandered about inside their compound without their personal kit, or weapons. The pickup trucks with multibarrel machine guns stood idly by; some had no fuel inside them, and none of them were fired up and ready to go.

  But the February 17 Brigade still had enough mobility and firepower to beat off any possible threat; the Soviet-era 12.7 mm and 14.5 mm heavy machine guns were game changers in any free-moving battle, and the GRS operators could certainly have inflicted enormous damage with such weapons at their disposal. “Borrowing” the weapons would require some finesse. So the GRS leader, through his interpreter, tried to bargain a compromise—another Middle Eastern specialty—where the CIA operatives would return the weapons and pay handsomely for any ammunition used. With great respect, though with a typical sense of American urgency, some sort of deal was offered for the heavy weapons. The militia commander would have none of it. The notion of the multinational QRF was a farce. Host-nation security in a host nation without any semblance of host-nation central government was a bizarre and untenable reality. The CIA shooters were uninvited and unwelcomed foreign fighters on Libyan soil. Libya was a nation with a violent past of being colonized, and the centerpiece of the national identity was its resistance to the Italian occupiers.

  The February 17 Brigade had been embroiled in a pay dispute with its State Department paymasters; brigade members were, in effect, down-and-out with a Libyan case of blue flu and were under no compulsion to head into harm’s way for a client that was nickel-and-diming them. Ambassador Stevens was supposed to have met with the local commander on September 11. The meeting was supposed to have transpired at the Special Mission Compound just after a long and leisurely breakfast, but the meeting was mysteriously rescheduled for a later date by Stevens; a handwritten note confirming the need to move the meeting to later in the week was scribbled on Ambassador Stevens’s official itinerary.

  The February 17 Brigade demanded the protocols of Middle Eastern foreplay before engaging in discussions concerning tactical backup, but the GRS force had no time or patience for it. The team leader radioed the TOC at the Special Mission Compound that his men would be there in a matter of minutes.

  Three members of the militia, though, volunteered to accompany the GRS operators to the Special Mission Compound. The DS contingent, and the MSD teams before them, had developed a unique rapport with some of the Libyan fighters. They equipped them, they trained them, they ate together, and ultimately they became friends. The DS art form of gaining support through human interaction and respect was paying off a dividend under the most desperate of circumstances. The response force now numbered ten men.

  “COBRA rolling, two-three mikes out.”

  “Copy, COBRA. Our guys at VICTOR building,” which was improvised code for the villa. R. felt it was possible the radio frequency had been compromised and the terrorists were listening in to the radio channel.

  “Roger, VICTOR,” said the shift leader. R. checked in with Tripoli on his cell and learned that a drone was up and in the area. With luck, we may get out of here, he anxiously hoped.

  The GRS vehicles sped out of the February 17 compound and headed west for a few feet before making a sharp turn north along a busy thoroughfare; the motorcade was observed by armed men emerging from a mosque on the southwest corner of the nearby junction. The men watching, and the motorists whizzing past, knew that the men in the Mercedes weren’t Libyan. Libyans, recent history had shown, honked their horns and waved flags when they went to war. These men didn’t.

  The rescue team pushed north for five hundred feet and then moved in toward the Special Mission Compound, making a right, traveling east, until they hit Charlie-1 and Bravo-1 gates. The operators readied their HK416s and their heavy machine guns in anticipation of pulling up in front of the gate. The GRS team did not know what to expect once they arrived. Eerily, one of the shooters flashed back to FDNY and NYPD running toward the World Trade Center buildings, eleven years ago this day. Would the response force be met by thirty or so armed men with AK-47s and RPGs? Would an IED be waiting for them in front of the diplomatic mission? These threats were very real concerns to the team from the Annex, especially as sporadic gunfire from the direction of the Special Mission Compound was now thrown toward them.

  The terrorists, taking cover, threw down a gauntlet of AK-47 fire at the GRS operators, creating an impenetrable wall of fire. The northeast corner of the Special Mission Compound became a kill zone, and the shooters would have to engage in a full-blown firefight just to gain access to the villa and the DS agents inside. They were it. They were the only tactical rescue force that would and could be coming. The GRS team would have to find another way in.

  Instinctively, the GRS vehicles rushed forward toward the fire and then J-turned, retreating west. They reversed their route toward the compound and backtracked on ground they had already traversed. The two vehicles banked a sharp left turn once they reached the junction with the Fourth Ring Road and then proceeded west in the eastbound lane. The vehicles pulled up in front of Charlie-3 gate. The gate, locked from the inside, was also reinforced by two vehicles parked next to the entrance; the vehicles were parked in such a way so as to mitigate the risk of the compound being rammed by a VBIED.

  The GRS operators rolled out of their vehicles, in tactically defensive positions, while two men threw their HK416s over their shoulders and scaled the gate. The terrorists had not identified their movements yet, as the smoke billowing from the ambassador’s villa covered their entrance. Once the gate was open, the two G-Wagons pushed their way past the blocking parked vehicles and rolled up to the villa, coming in from the rear and then positioning the vehicles in front of the main entrance.

  The GRS operators immediately radioed the TOC that they had arrived. R. was grateful that help had finally reached the scene. His mind thought solely of Chris Stevens and Sean Smith. The thirty-thousand-foot view of their predicament, the big picture of what was transpiring for U.S. foreign policy in Libya, mattered little. Henry Kissinger’s view that there was a “higher purpose” to all this was irrelevant. Men were down, and they needed to be saved. The higher purpose was to save as many men as possible now.

  16.

  Diplomatic Pouch

  An embassy is not the usual setting for the frenzy of emergency late-night contingency planning. An embassy is where meetings are conducted in the polite foreign language known as “diplo-speak”; direct language, “real-speak,” is never used. Embassies ar
e lavish bastions that display a nation’s wealth and influence; these buildings are fancy, blessed with Michelin-star-capable chefs, and have banquet halls that are stocked handsomely with enough Moser crystal champagne flutes to enable a brigade of men to make toast after toast and can hold annual gala balls. Embassies are places of business and bureaucracy. These sovereign grounds in foreign lands are designed to promote diplomatic relations and commerce between nation X and host nation Y and to serve expatriates in need of consular and emergency assistance.

  American embassies are bastions of the “yes, ma’am” and the “no, ma’am.” From the local uniformed guard manning the identity check and the X-ray machine at forward gates to the Marine Corps sergeant at Post One (located at the front entrance to all embassies), an American embassy is a city of pure polite. With the exception of a few lavish grounds, located in the historical linchpins of U.S. foreign policy, embassies are cookie-cutter antiseptic fortresses. The State Department is very much into the trappings of government purchasing and bureaucracy. Brussels, Athens, Tel Aviv, or Prague, the inside of an embassy looks and feels the same: the incandescent light, the artwork, the computers, and the people—it is all interchangeable. It’s designed to be. The company that had the contract for photograph frames must have made a fortune: there were framed eight-by-ten photographs of President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton on just about every office wall in the city. Staffers—from the ambassador to the deputy assistant of a deputy—swap postings every three or four years. Embassies, thanks to American cleaning products purchased en masse on Government Accountability Office solicitations, even smell like federal office buildings in the United States.