13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  As bullets passed overhead, Oz saw his enemies attempting to shoot out the lights illuminating the eastern exterior of the Annex.

  The gelatina bomb apparently was the attackers’ signal to commence firing, but it wasn’t the only explosive they’d brought. Somewhere in the trees east of the wall, an attacker shouldered a rocket-propelled grenade and fired it toward the Annex. Tanto heard the signature sound of the launch, a sizzling gargle then a whoosh, followed a few seconds later by an explosion. The shooter evidently aimed too high, and the RPG flew over the Annex entirely, landing somewhere beyond the far west wall.

  Yet Tanto’s hearing was so bad from the gunfight at the Compound that he still wasn’t entirely sure that an Annex firefight had just begun. Even after seeing the attacker take a knee, Tanto held a sliver of concern that the sounds he heard came from firecrackers.

  “Dude,” he asked D.B., “did somebody just shoot at us?”

  “Man, I think so,” D.B. answered. He radioed the Team Leader to ask if he knew whether 17 February militiamen were en route to the Annex, to be sure this wasn’t a friendly-fire incident.

  “We don’t know,” the T.L. said. “But if you’re fired on, fire back.”

  “Fuck this,” Tanto said. He began shooting.

  D.B. did the same, targeting the armed men he’d identified earlier, even as he seethed about the Team Leader remaining safely inside Building C. D.B. didn’t need anyone to tell him the rules of engagement, especially when that person wasn’t holding a gun. Angering him further, D.B. interpreted the T.L.’s “fire back” comment as a smartass way of responding, when all D.B. wanted was to be sure that he didn’t kill a good guy.

  Tanto lined up the kneeling attacker with the infrared gunsight mounted on his assault rifle, but when he fired, he watched as the first few rounds splashed in the dirt as far as ten feet to the left of his target. Tanto didn’t have time to adjust his sight, so he corrected his aim using a method that shooters call “Kentucky windage,” fine-tuning where he shot by experience and feel. With his corrections made, Tanto watched as men that he and D.B. had targeted earlier began to flinch from being hit. Some of the injured attackers tried to conceal themselves or regroup. Some zigzagged as they limped back and forth through the trees and brush. The operators kept shooting, leaning their weapons on the rooftop parapet and aiming down at the attackers coming toward them from beyond the east wall.

  While Tanto and D.B. engaged the shooters, the Tripoli-based DS agent did his job by covering the area to the south, beyond the Annex’s front wall. No one approached from a large open area in that direction, but the operators were covering the east and northeast, so they were happy to know that the DS agent was watching their flank.

  Tanto found himself entranced by the sight of tracers and rounds whizzing into the dark. The night-vision goggles even picked up the heat signature of bullets. It looked like a laser light show, and Tanto felt like a kid inside a video game. After the frustration of being on the defensive at the Compound, Tanto sensed that the tables had turned. The attackers were falling back in disarray, apparently having expected a repeat of what had happened at the Compound three hours earlier.

  We’re fucking kicking these dudes’ asses, Tanto thought.

  The exchange of gunfire continued. Rounds zipped above the operators’ heads and pinged against the walls, gouging craters in the cinder block.

  Standing alongside Oz on the tower, Tig turned sideways to the wall as he unloaded his assault rifle toward the attackers. During a volley of incoming rounds, Tig felt the wind get knocked from his lungs.

  “Aw fuck, I think I got shot,” he told Oz.

  Tig doubled over in pain and let loose a stream of curses. He snaked his right hand inside his shirt, beneath his vest and armor, but didn’t feel any blood or find any holes in his skin. He concluded that shrapnel must have punched him like a heavyweight, then bounced off his protective gear. Tig’s side ached but he wasn’t seriously injured, so he resumed shooting, answering muzzle flashes with rounds of his own. With his helmet back at Building C, Tig knew that he was lucky the shrapnel hadn’t reached him eighteen inches higher.

  As Oz continued to engage, an incoming round hit the top of the wall directly in front of him. Stone fragments flew into his face just below his night-vision goggles. A stream of blood flowed from the bridge of his nose. Stunned, Oz composed himself and realized that he wasn’t shot or seriously hurt. He wiped away the blood and returned to the fight.

  An enemy round hit an exterior floodlight to the right of their tower position, shredding the bulb in an explosion of glass.

  As they repelled the assault, the operators and DS agents kept their rifles set on semi-automatic, to conserve rounds and keep their aim true. Fantasy soldiers, video-game players, and young militiamen might favor the wild spray of bullets from a fully automatic rifle, but the operators considered that a tactical error and a waste of good ammo.

  As the firefight continued, the shooting wasn’t constant. They shot in controlled bursts, one or two well-aimed rounds, then a pause, then one or two more. During a ten-minute period, several operators said, each shot anywhere from thirty to sixty rounds. They didn’t know how many attackers they hit in the dark.

  Tanto and Oz couldn’t be sure how many men they faced overall. But from the silhouettes and white T-shirts they saw through their goggles, plus the number of flashes coming from different places, they estimated fifteen to twenty, possibly as many as thirty.

  All the while, from their tower position Tig and Oz tried to keep track of the two shepherds and the sheep pens, to make sure no one was trying to sneak through the animals to approach the wall. The shepherds stayed out of the line of fire, but Oz thought they seemed oddly nonchalant about the bullets flying around them. He suspected that they were somehow connected to the men shooting at the Annex, but until they displayed a weapon Oz wouldn’t engage.

  Neither he nor Tig had worn earplugs, and soon Oz’s ears throbbed from the thunderous noise created by the two of them firing side by side on the small tower. During a break in the action, Oz tore off hunks of Kerlix gauze from a roll in his medical kit, balled them up, and stuffed them in his ears. He asked Tig if he wanted some, but Tig thought Oz looked too funny to emulate and just funny enough to ridicule.

  “Oh, so that was a little too loud for you?” Tig asked with mock concern.

  Tanto saw some of the attackers turn and run toward the house where he knew the teenagers lived, near the parking area. He continued firing until they reached the house, then stopped. Although Tanto wouldn’t have been surprised if the family that lived there supported the attackers, he didn’t want to shoot anyone who wasn’t clearly a threat to the Annex. As far as he knew, the family might have been innocent bystanders whose house was commandeered by militants. When the attackers reached the parking area, Tanto saw two cars speed away north around the corner from Annex Road.

  After he stopped shooting, Tanto double-checked his decision with D.B.

  “Hey dude,” he asked, “should we keep firing?”

  “Man, I don’t know if there’s still kids in that house,” answered D.B.

  Tanto was tempted to lay waste to the house, but he knew that D.B. was right. If they shot one bystander, no matter how much good they might accomplish this night, they’d be censured or worse.

  With D.B. shooting from four feet away, by the time the firefight ended Tanto’s left ear was ringing and almost useless. “You motherfucker,” he told D.B., a smile softening his accusation. “I can’t hear for shit now. Thanks, man.”

  “Hey,” D.B. answered, smiling back. “Casualty of war. Guess you shoulda worn earplugs.”

  Tanto flipped him the bird.

  Between the banter, both felt as though they’d turned a corner and begun taking control. If the attackers had expected this assault to follow the pattern set by the siege of the Compound, where they’d gained access to the Americans’ sanctum without dodging bullets, the operators wanted them
to know that the Annex wouldn’t be such easy pickings.

  About ten minutes after it started, the shooting from the attackers petered out entirely. When the firefight ended, Oz heard scuffling sounds and groans coming from the bushes where the attackers had tried to conceal themselves, perhaps one hundred yards from the wall. From atop Building B, D.B. heard moaning along with what he thought might be the sound of men trying to reload their weapons.

  From radio calls among the various positions, the operators learned that other than the minor injuries to Oz and Tig, and a cathedral-full of bells ringing in their ears, everyone in the Annex was fine.

  As they gulped water and Gatorade and tried to relax, letting the adrenaline reabsorb into their systems, the air around them reeked of the pungent scent of gunpowder.

  To amuse his fellow operators, at around 12:45 a.m. Tanto called the Team Leader on the radio: “Well, I guess we’re not going to get that Spectre gunship, are we?” The T.L. didn’t answer, so Tanto filled in the blank: “Roger that. Just asking.”

  Reflecting on the freshly won firefight, Tanto wished that he’d been able to find the grenade launcher he’d searched for earlier. A couple of those would have just killed all of them, he told himself.

  Because the attack came from the east side of the Annex, the men atop Buildings C and D were forced to remain on the sidelines during the firefight. They knew that they couldn’t shoot toward the east wall because they’d be firing at the backs of Oz and Tig on the tower and Tanto, D.B., and the DS agent on Building B.

  Frustrated that he couldn’t participate in the fight, Jack kept close watch over the areas beyond the north and west walls. If the attackers wanted to open a second front, that might be their choice. Jack was particularly concerned with the narrow north-south pathway close to the Annex that the operators knew as “Smuggler’s Alley,” which ran between Annex Road and the Fourth Ring Road. During moves, he and Rone had driven on the dirt alley several times, to vary their routine in case someone was watching them. Jack knew that high walls on both sides made it almost a concealed corridor that attackers might use to approach the Annex from the back gate of the burning diplomatic Compound.

  Jack scanned in the direction of the alley for signs of movement but saw none. Still, he knew his job was to remain vigilant no matter how bleary-eyed he might become. Occasionally Jack’s mind wandered to his family and the hope that he’d live to see his third child born. In the stretches of silence punctuated by gunshots, Jack also wondered how the praying mantis in the olive tree next to his post had fared amid the fight.

  Several times Jack looked toward the southwest corner of the Annex, to a shack that housed a gardener who kept the property lush. Tall and thin, a clean-shaven man in his forties, the gardener repeatedly wandered outside his shack as the bullets flew, smoking cigarettes and dropping onto his knees to pray. Jack found it almost comical. Here we are in a fight for our lives, Jack thought, and he’s just down there, hoping for the best, smoking a cigarette.

  During and after the firefight, Jack, Dave Ubben, and the DS agent on Building D imagined different scenarios for new or related attacks on their position. They worried especially about a four-story building under construction to the southeast. The building was a concrete shell that an enemy could use as a sniper position, with a direct view of the Annex rooftops. To the Annex defenders’ surprise it apparently remained empty. They felt grateful that their enemies seemed to be poorly trained in battle tactics and techniques.

  Jack also watched a residential compound to the immediate northwest, with a large house only twenty-five yards from the Annex wall. As the firefight raged, two unarmed men walked out the front door and stood outside smoking cigarettes, as though it was just another Tuesday night in Benghazi. Jack passed word of the men over the radio, so no one mistook them for hostile attackers. The call was part of Jack’s straightforward battle mantra: It’s all about communicating. If you communicate well and shoot, you’re ahead of the game.

  After the firefight ended, Tanto reached for his night-vision goggles. But a screw that attached them to his helmet had come loose, and the goggles fell and broke. You’ve got to be shitting me, Tanto thought. He called over the radio to see if anyone had a spare pair. When no one offered, Tanto climbed down to look for one.

  On his way to Building C, eating a Snickers bar, Tanto decided to check on the three local men who’d been hired to serve as the Annex guard force. Tanto knew that Tig and Oz had placed them in fighting positions, so he figured he’d see if they needed ammunition or anything else. But when he reached the guards’ assigned places, they were gone. When he looked outside the Annex, their cars were gone, too. “They split,” Tanto told his fellow operators.

  He went to the GRS Team Room in Building C, but couldn’t find an extra pair of goggles. An Annex security team member sought him out. “I’ve got these,” the security member said, holding out a pair. “I’m not going to need them.” The gift provided more evidence that the operators had won the staffers’ respect.

  Tanto thanked him and attached the goggles to his helmet. He grabbed a handful of candy and rejoined D.B. and the DS agent on Building B. They sat in the white lawn chairs trying not to focus on how mentally exhausted they were. D.B. was comfortable with silence, but Tanto wasn’t the type to sit quietly for long.

  “Hey man,” Tanto told D.B. “If they come at us with anything bigger than RPGs or AKs, or they come with a Technical mounted, bro, we’re not going to be able to fight that off. We don’t have the weaponry for that.”

  “Yeah, I know,” D.B. told him.

  “Well fuck, I hope they don’t come with the Technical, ’cause if they do, me and you we’re going to have to get down off this building and start getting out of this compound. We’re going to have to move towards them. And we’re going to have to attack them direct.”

  Again D.B. nodded and said, “Yeah, I know.”

  D.B.’s brief acknowledgment was exactly what Tanto had hoped to hear. When D.B. said he accepted the odds they might face together, Tanto considered it reaffirmation of the bond they’d developed over the previous decade, responding to each other’s close calls in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya. Tanto’s comments also were his way of saying that if they had to leave the Annex with fewer than a dozen fighters to confront a large, heavily armed force, he’d feel confident with D.B. beside him. Knowing Tanto as he did, D.B. got the message.

  The discussion of what weapons and tactics they might encounter beyond rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s made Tanto think about his wife and children. The idea that he might not talk to them again gave him chills. Tanto tried to force the thought from his mind.

  Tanto recalled a scene from the HBO television series Band of Brothers in which an officer tells a frightened soldier in a foxhole to start fighting. He remembered a line about embracing death as a way to find the strength to fight. I don’t want to die, Tanto thought. None of us wants to die. But it’s a possibility, and if you don’t accept that, it’s just going to be in the back of your head the whole time, and you’re not going to be able to function. So you accept it, you realize that you’re not going to be able to talk to your family possibly ever again.

  Tanto took comfort in knowing that he’d told his wife and children how much he loved them during their most recent phone call, less than twenty-four hours earlier. But again he tried to squeeze them out of his thoughts. He knew that it was a vicious cycle. The more Tanto focused on his family, the less he could focus on doing his job well, which was the very thing that would increase his chances of returning to them.

  Tanto took off his helmet and poured water over his head, then shook it off like a dog emerging from a stream. He slid from the lawn chair to the rooftop, sitting with his elbows on his knees, his fingers intertwined in front of his face. Tanto checked his pockets for ammo and his knife, to be sure that he was ready for whatever came next. His assault rifle within reach, he made a point of trying to remember everything that had
happened so far, down to the smallest detail. If he made it home, he wanted to be able to tell the story of what occurred this night in Benghazi. And if one of his fellow operators didn’t make it home, Tanto wanted to be able to tell that man’s family how brave he’d been and how much good he’d done.

  Sitting on the roof, Tanto thought back to the amount of time they’d lost at the beginning of the battle, waiting for the OK to respond to the Compound. His anger at Bob the Annex chief flared.

  “Why did he keep telling us to stand down?” Tanto asked rhetorically, then launched into a profanity-laced attack on Bob. He added sarcastically: “He’s probably trying to get 17 Feb to come save us right now, too.”

  D.B. felt the same way. He believed that Sean Smith wouldn’t be dead and Chris Stevens wouldn’t be missing, if only they’d rushed to the Compound when they first jocked up.

  Tanto called quietly to the DS agent, who’d been sitting on his own on the far side of the roof, watching the area beyond the south wall.

  “Hey dude,” Tanto said. “What happened over there?”

  “We’re sitting enjoying ourselves,” he told the operators, “about ready to go to bed. We’re smoking hookahs. And then all of a sudden we hear some chanting and guys are at our gate, and all of a sudden all shit goes to hell and they start firing.”

  “So you guys had no alert at all?”

  “Nope.”

  “What did your 17 Feb guys do?”

  “Man, they weren’t even around.”

  “Where were your Blue Mountain guys?”

  “I don’t know where they were, either,” the DS agent said. “We didn’t know, we had no alert. By the time we knew what was going on, they were already on top of us.”