Under Fire

by Fred Burton

  To maximize their visual reach, the snipers and their spotters would have also carried Leica spotting scopes and laser pocket range finders. Other gear included thermal optics, night-vision optics, and the Insight M6X Tactical Laser Illuminator.*

  When the spotter glanced south, toward Charlie-3 gate, the shadows revealed a target-rich environment; it certainly appeared as if there were a large mob assembled behind the wall. But the high fence shielded many of the terrorists now mounting a second phase of the attack from the GRS sights.

  The perch showed a large mob was gathering near the south gate.

  “COBRA 3 to TL [team leader].”

  “Go, 3.”

  “Tangos mustering, fifty to seventy-five. Recommend we exfil [exfiltrate].”

  “Copy.”

  “We gotta get out of here. The next wave is coming.”

  The gunfire went from sporadic to intense in an instant. The fact that more fighters were now assembling at the compound was ominous. The terrorists, confident in their growing numbers, became brazen. Small groups, using the flaming vehicles in front of the February 17 structure for cover, unleashed magazine-emptying bursts of AK fire as their comrades inched closer to the GRS positions. The GRS response was measured and double-tap accurate: two shots to the chest, one to the head for good measure, sight alignment done quickly with the red-dot lasers. Suppressors muffled the sound, to also help the ears of the shooters.

  The operators encountered men coming toward them with a hodgepodge of weapons. The operators split up and worked in teams of two, moving about in a dizzying fashion of bouncing red dots, the laser sights tap-dancing on terrorist center mass. The movement resembled a combination of combat ballet and a strange game of Twister. When a threat was discovered coming from behind the burning trucks in front of the militia building, the team would coordinate their response as one. “Hostile left” would be heard in the earpiece, “RPG northwest corner.” Time slows down for the shooters, with a fixated tunnel vision on the target. In each case the operator would raise his shoulder weapon and fire two rounds into the chest, followed with a third round into the head. The threat was considered over once the terrorist’s AK-47 dropped to the floor.

  Head shots were an imperative. The GRS shooters had no way of knowing if any of the terrorists were wearing body armor. The Gulf Arabs had delivered enormous supplies of top-flight combat gear to the Libyan rebels during the civil war, and these tools of the trade—everything from combat radios, flashlights, cases of QuikClot, and body armor—were available in the markets of Benghazi and at smuggler bazaars in the desert.

  GRS operators communicated among themselves on Motorola radios. Amid the roar of the fire and inside the earsplitting noise of the firefight, the operators’ high-decibel-mitigating Peltor earmuff headsets ensured that the triggermen could talk to one another during the firefight. Some carried communications gear produced by Silynx, a world leader in tactical hearing-protection/enhancement headset systems.

  Communication was critical; it was essential each GRS operator vocalized which target he would be engaging. With a limited supply of ammunition there was no need for overkill.

  The terrorists seemed defiantly arrogant in challenging the GRS responders. Even when a three-round burst of 5.56 mm fire took out one of their comrades, they simply continued to advance. Spent shell cases littered the area where the GRS operators stood; spiraling plumes of smoke emerged from the ejected brass. The terrorists made little effort to retrieve those cut down by the GRS fire. Their religiously fueled courage in the face of such daunting firepower was impressive. The terrorists didn’t care about their brothers in arms being hit. There would be time later to grab the wounded or, God willing, transport a martyr toward a hero’s burial in town or at his ancestral village. Even when they were wounded, the terrorists didn’t cry or beg for aid. Many didn’t stop their push against the American line until they were shot dead.

  The terrorists knew that there were another six hours until daylight. Time was on their side.

  Gunmen began to take aim at the villa and the area in which the GRS and DS contingents had gathered to continue their search for the ambassador. Entering the burning building was challenging enough without 7.62 mm rounds whizzing by overhead. But the DS agents were unencumbered by the gunfire, which was now directed from the south and the east. Even though they were, man for man, suffering from the effects of smoke inhalation, they were fueled by sheer determination and raw adrenaline. Their faces were wrought with anguish, and their hearts sank lower each and every second that passed in which they could not locate Stevens. Although rounds were impacting quite close to their location at the villa and the GRS team was engaged in a pitched battle with a seemingly endless flow of men with RPGs, assault rifles, and even Soviet-produced light machine guns, the agents were not going anywhere until Stevens was found.

  The assault on the compound was coordinated and serious. It was not a spontaneous explosion of firepower that had suddenly and surreptitiously commenced. This wasn’t the Benghazi take on a pickup basketball game where anyone with a ball and a pair of Converse All Stars was allowed to play. It was evident to the GRS operators, as well as to the three February 17 men engaging the marauding terrorists, that this was another coordinated attack launched by men with military training and firearms skills who were seizing ground with military precision. This was a battle and one that grew in scope and intensity with each and every round fired. None of the GRS shooters wanted this battle to become a Libyan version of Custer’s Last Stand. Yet Woods and the GRS team lived for moments like this. As clichéd as it might sound, this is what they did for a living.

  The battle was one of sheer volume versus pinpoint talent; in the lineups that constituted the order of battle, the sides were very uneven. The militiamen, zealous in their approach and overwhelming in their numbers, initiated the engagement in true al-Qaeda fashion—a swarm of firepower attempting to overtake an already-battered position. In Kabul and other locations where jihadist terrorist elements had engaged their opponents in open battle, this tactic had proven effective. The terrorists weren’t necessarily concerned about success; they simply wanted to kill as many of the enemy as possible. This tactic, known as the swarm attack, was designed to scupper an enemy’s defenses. Such attacks usually began with a suicide bomber detonating himself near where the defending forces were concentrated. The blast was followed by a secondary suicide strike and then wild gunfire. The attackers in such instances, reminiscent of infantry charges from a century earlier, would wave war flags and scream wildly at the top of their lungs to inject fear into the hearts of the forces they were intent on overrunning. In Benghazi, the calls of “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” were heard coming from the darkness.

  The exact number of attackers remains unknown, though there were, according to sources close to the investigation, “many.” Nobody bothered counting or had time to tend to the enemy combatant wounded. It is believed that the GRS and February 17 force was outnumbered at least ten to one, and certainly the CIA gunmen did not have RPGs or anything near the firepower of the flip-flop-wearing force closing in for the kill.

  The GRS operators would have enjoyed complete technological superiority; their capabilities were augmented by night-vision devices for ballistic helmets (also called NODS) and thermal optic devices. The GRS staffers fielded Dragon Skin flexible body armor. The terrorists did not possess advanced combat optical gun sights. They did not have advanced night-vision capabilities, nor did they have bullet and blast-resistant SUVs that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yet the jihadist force—from one militia or, perhaps, fringes of several—managed to push close inside the Special Mission Compound to overrun it a second time.

  The men who attacked the compound found tactical comfort in the size of their assault. They pushed inside the grounds—slowly, ferociously, and confidently. They lurked in the concealing shadows and emerged when the winds pushed the flames to the east or west and provided them wit
h a few seconds of darkness. Their movement into the compound was likened to an infestation.

  In battles where fervor is pitted against proficiency, proficiency usually wins. But this battle was different from the conventional firefights that the men might have experienced during their military service in the alleyways of Fallujah or a desolate village in Helmand Province. The GRS combat philosophy was decisively dynamic firepower to protect a source, an asset, or even an ongoing operation from being terminated or compromised. The GRS teams were not on the agency payroll to fight long, drawn-out battles that ultimately could warrant the intervention of additional resources. They, like the DS agents, were mandated with creating a safe distance between themselves and hostile threats any which way they could.

  But the battle for the Special Mission Compound already involved an entity that was critically compromised. This was a rescue-and-recovery operation. One man was known to be dead, and another missing and presumed dead; A. was in serious respiratory distress, and all the other DS personnel were injured. The GRS team had rapidly secured a 360-degree perimeter around the smoking building, while the rescue efforts continued, taking the high ground, or perch, on a rooftop. Two or three terrorists would wander into the kill zone toward the rescue team and be very quickly shot by the suppressed weapons. Some were seen running away; others were talking into cell phones. There was a general feeling of angst among the shooters, though; the noose was tightening, and ammunition was running low. But time was dragging on, and even though the GRS ring of fire had already left a dozen or so terrorists dead, the American force was very susceptible to being overrun.

  The terrorists sprayed their gunfire in inconsistent yet steady bursts. The GRS operators were frugal with their ammunition. They had to be. For all they knew, there were a thousand armed men descending on Western Fwayhat that night, and even though the operators knew that help was arriving from Tripoli, there was no estimated time of arrival established; it could be in one hour or in one day.

  Many of those hit by GRS fire were struck by the sniper team from their high-ground emplacement. The attackers near Charlie-1 and Bravo-1 gates were roughly two hundred feet away; those attacking the compound from the south were four hundred feet away. Engaging targets from such distances enabled the sniper to terminate the heavy-weapon threats attempting to enter the grounds. It was a priority for the GRS team to neutralize any attempt by the terrorists to introduce the weapon-carrying pickup trucks into the fray. Some of the trucks carried crew-served multi-barreled 23 mm cannon shells and could chew apart the GRS/DS position without the slightest difficulty. Another weapon that the terrorists had at their disposal was the 14.5 mm heavy machine gun, whose armor-piercing projectile could penetrate an inch and a half of armored steel at a range of a hundred meters. The terrorists also managed to fire an ample arsenal of RPGs at the American defenders.

  Firefights usually last for a minute or two before they end abruptly (of course, anyone who has ever been in battle will always say that those seconds have felt like hours), but the battle for the compound lasted more than fifteen minutes. The fight was so fierce that, it has been reported, Tyrone Woods was down to a spare magazine for his pistol. The manicured lawn was quickly filling with the dead; the bodies of the killed terrorists were illuminated by an eerie orange light coming from the roaring flames shooting into the dark crimson skies. The smell of the fires did not mix well with the sweet and pungent smell of blood and the bouquet of ripening guava fruit.

  For every terrorist killed, two would take his place. Those shot and injured by GRS gunfire were quickly evacuated behind Charlie-1 gate and brought to safety. Sedans and pickup trucks raced about outside the main perimeter. This jihadist ambulance service proved to be quite effective.

  The DS agents continued their search for Ambassador Stevens unfazed by gunfire, but each time they ventured deeper into the safe haven, the smoke and heat forced them to retreat. The GRS operators were awed by these young men and their unbreakable determination to pull the ambassador out of the inferno, but after close to an hour on the compound, the time had come to withdraw and return to the Annex. The GRS operators were not known for being long-winded or for adding hyperbole to any statement of tactical fact, but in the middle of the search for Stevens, under intense terrorist fire, the team leader pulled R. aside and said, “We have to get the fuck out of here.” The February 17 militiamen concurred, but in a somewhat more animated manner. There was no choice anymore. The DS agents were ordered out.

  The combined efforts had found Smith, but where the hell was Stevens? The agents were adamant about not leaving Stevens behind, but after approximately twelve trips in, they believed Stevens could have been kidnapped. They were working off the theory that perhaps one objective was to kidnap, not kill, the ambassador. They argued and they struggled with the decision, but the GRS team leader realized that Stevens was most likely dead already, and if they remained behind any longer, there would be a dozen dead Americans in Benghazi before dawn’s first light. He pulled rank and tried to articulate his case in a loud and unshakable voice. It was a struggle to hear him over the sounds of gunfire and bullets whizzing over the heads of the American contingent.

  It was 2330 hours.

  20.

  Breakout

  The breakout plan called for both the DS and the GRS teams to depart simultaneously from the Special Mission Compound and burst their way through the kill zone in a motorcade configuration, through Charlie-1 gate, and to then head west, before heading south on a primary thoroughfare, and then east again to the Annex. The Annex would be a true safe haven. It was fortified, and the remaining security staff at the location was already mobilized and at the ready in defensive firing positions. The DS agents would take one of the armored Land Cruisers that was on the compound, and the GRS team would return in their vehicles. It was decided that the GRS personnel would take Sean Smith’s body back with them since they had more room in their two G-Wagons. It became a logistical issue, even though the agents wanted Smith with them. The GRS and DS contingents made sure, even under heavy terrorist fire, that Smith was treated with the utmost dignity and respect.

  The five DS agents were in no condition to drive; the GRS team leaders should have realized this. Their throats were smoked dry, their eyes boiled to a teary mess. They were heartbroken and angry; they were exhausted beyond the usual definition of the word. The worst-case scenario that they could have envisioned, the nightmare scene that went through every rookie agent’s mind the moment he graduated from the Basic Special Agent Course, the loss of not one principal but two, had happened on their watch. But this was no longer training. This was the real world of outposts of diplomacy where the norms of civil decency were dictated by religious and other fanatical rage and at the barrel of an AK-47. What had happened in a remote section of a city that had been abandoned by the rule of law and governance on this night was of course not their fault. They did exactly what they had been trained to do—buy time, buy distance, and keep a level head. The job put them in a position that they should never have been in, and they did the best they could. Their lives, if they made it through the night, would never be the same. As they gasped for air and attempted to sharpen their fight-or-flight senses into focus, they realized that, like Al Golacinski thirty-three years earlier in Tehran, they would forever second-guess themselves, thinking that they could defend eight acres against the rage of an entire city.

  Still protesting against leaving Stevens behind, the DS agents entered the Land Cruiser and moved out. They were equipped with their battle rattle and their M4s. A. was the wheelman. The GRS operators and the three February 17 militiamen laid down a hellish field of fire to cover the DS agents as they pushed toward Charlie-1 gate and safety. Many of the terrorists had hidden behind the thick trees that separated Charlie-1 and Bravo-1 but were cut down by the barrage of 5.56 mm firepower thrown their way. It is not known how many bodies were left in the trees.

  Other gunmen waited outside Charlie-1 and
Bravo-1 with their weapons at the ready. When the gate swung open for the DS agents to emerge, they laid down a full-auto turkey shoot. There were twenty-two bullet holes counted in Charlie-1.1 Errant rounds flew into the night sky or landed in the rows of guava trees.

  The route called for the American vehicles to make a left turn, heading west, back to terrain owned by the February 17 Brigade; the concern, of course, was that the hostile elements would pursue the DS and GRS operators. But A. erred, perhaps overcome by the effects of the smoke inhalation, perhaps confused by a sea of Arab humanity that was awaiting them outside Charlie-1. A. made a right turn, instead of a left, and headed east—just where a large contingent of men in galabiya robes and Afghan jihad uniforms were waiting. A. suddenly found his access out blocked off by men waving black flags and angrily raising their AK-47s in a gesture of defiant victory. The mood in the Land Cruiser was one of absolute exasperation. “What next?” the agents thought. “We have to get out of here now!” A. J-turned out of the danger zone. A J-turn is when a driver breaks suddenly (attack recognition), then backs up at approximately twenty miles per hour, and then turns the wheel sharply to the left, whipping the vehicle around 180 degrees and heading in the opposite direction of the route entered. It is a skill learned after many hours of training at the Bill Scott Raceway in West Virginia. The other agents were belted in, of course, but were jerked violently. But unlike the J-turns that he was trained to execute at the raceway, where DS agents hone their skills in handling ten-thousand-pound FAVs at speeds that sometimes exceed a hundred miles per hour, A. was wary of running over the crowds that had gathered and possibly being entangled in an inextricable cobweb of legs, arms, and chaos. A. reversed course, slowly, and returned close to Bravo-1, before reversing course again and moving onto an easterly path. He heard gunfire; angry hands pounded on the windows and on the hood of the car. The agents clutched their M4s and SIGs; if the crowd managed to swing open one of the doors or the rear hatch, they were ready to fight it out, even though they would have been easily overwhelmed. Several of the agents suffered serious burns on their hands from crawling on the ground at the safe haven. It would have been hard for them to engage a numerically superior enemy even under the best of circumstances. Fighting for their lives with hands barely able to clutch a weapon would have been virtually impossible. The bullet-resistant windows prevented the agents from shooting, unlike in the movies. There was no “well position” in the vehicle where an agent would sit in a rear seat facing traffic ready to shoot at attacking vehicles.