* * *
That night, we spotted a man with an AK-47 on the balcony of one of the houses out back and a couple of streets over. I flicked the safety off my sound-suppressed CAR-15 and held the red dot of my sight on his head—an easy shot. Over each of our CAR-15s, we had mounted Advanced Combat Optical Gunsights (ACOGs), a 1.5-power close-range point-and-shoot scope made by Trijicon. At night, it dilated ten times more than my pupil, giving me extra light. Its red dot appears in the scope, unlike a laser that actually appears on the target itself. The ACOG worked just as well in the night as it did in the day. I waited for the man to level his AK-47 in our direction. He never did. After consulting with our guards, we found out the man with the AK-47 was one of our young guards at his own house trying to mimic the SEALs’ tactics of defending from the roof. Of course, the idiot never told us of his plans, and he probably couldn’t conceive our capability to see him with night vision. We told him, “That was good thinking, but if you’re going to be on the rooftop with a weapon at night in this neighborhood, let us know. Because that was almost your ass.”
SEPTEMBER 2, 1993
Thursday morning, we held a meeting to discuss future plans and personnel. Pasha was doing well, so we needed to keep the machine running after we completed our stay and it came time for someone to relieve us.
Later in the day, we received the break we needed. Aidid was wealthy, and his college-age daughter had friends in Europe, Libya, Kenya, and other places. Someone slipped her a cell phone, and SIGINT tapped it. Although Aidid moved around a lot, his daughter made a mistake, mentioning on the phone where he was staying. An asset helped pinpoint the house. Our navy spy plane, a P-3 Orion, picked up Aidid’s convoy, but the convoy stopped, and we lost him in the maze of buildings.
In the evening, Casanova and I lay on Pasha’s roof, protecting the perimeter. During our time at Pasha, we had been playing a game of trying to trap rats, using peanut butter from our MREs as bait. We tied string to a stick and propped a box on it. Through our night-vision goggles, we saw the rat go in. Casanova pulled the string, but the rat escaped before the box fell down on top of it. Our technique evolved into a science. I took apart some ballpoint pens and used the springs to make a one-way door into a box. Inside the box sat the peanut butter. Soon the rat sniffed around the trap. It slipped inside the door. The springs slammed the door shut behind the rodent.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Casanova smiled.
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“Kill it.”
“How?”
“What do you mean how?”
While we discussed how to dispatch the rat, it escaped.
The next time, we made the box smaller, so the rodent wouldn’t have wiggle room to escape. The rat crawled inside. Trapped. I stomped my boot down on top. Dead rat—but I had sacrificed the trap. One trap, one kill.
I felt proud to have the only confirmed rat kill. Now I was screwing around with another trap trying to get my second rat.
“Hey, come here,” Casanova whispered.
“What?” I slid over next to him.
He pointed to a house across the street where we had just placed two guards the day before. Three men were attempting to break in. They picked the wrong house in the wrong neighborhood. If they’d tried it before our guards were in there, we would’ve said, Screw it. None of our business. Now our guards were inside, and it was our business.
Casanova took the man on the left side, and I took the one on the right. Lining up the red dot on my first target, I squeezed the trigger. His legs buckled before he sank. Casanova’s ate the dirt, too. Although the man in the middle had a moment longer to live, both Casanova and I hit him at the same time. If the three would-be intruders were only burglars, they paid a heavy price for thievery.
Later, SIGINT heard chatter from the bar around the corner that Aidid’s people might gather. Maybe they were planning to do a hit on us. Pasha went to full alert. We staged AT-4 antitank rockets and took up perimeter positions. It turned out Aidid’s people were only having a recruiting rally.
An asset sighted Aidid but couldn’t pinpoint his building. This was our logistical nightmare. Even though our assets had spotted Aidid, they couldn’t relay to us his exact building.
A SIGINT aircraft, having flown in from Europe and now dedicated to us, arrived in the evening to help track and pinpoint Aidid. This tremendously increased our surveillance abilities. We could use transmitters and beacons more effectively. It also made us able to intercept communications better than from the rooftop of our building.
In the big house next to Pasha on the right was the Italian ambassador’s residence, where the ambassador threw a big party with many Italian officers in attendance. Italy had occupied Somalia from 1927 to 1941. In 1949, the UN gave Italy trusteeship of parts of Somalia. Then, in 1960, Somalia became independent. Now the Italians were real bastards, playing both sides of the fence. Whenever the Black Hawks spun up for an operation, the Italians flashed their lights to let the locals know the Americans were coming. Their soldiers employed electric shock on a Somali prisoner’s testicles, used the muzzle of a flare gun to rape a woman, and took pictures of their deeds.
The UN accused the Italians of paying bribes to Aidid and demanded that Italy’s General Bruno Loi be replaced. The Italian government told the UN to stop harassing Aidid.
One of Italy’s main players was Giancarlo Marocchino, who left Italy, following allegations of tax evasion and married a Somali woman in one of Aidid’s clans. When the UN confiscated weapons from the militia, the Italian military gave them to Giancarlo, who is suspected to have sold them to Aidid.
Italy dumped trillions of lire into Somalia for “aid.” With help from people like Aidid, even before he became an infamous warlord, most of the money went into the pockets of Italy’s government officials and their cronies. The Italians constructed a highway that connected Bosasso and Mogadishu—from which Giancarlo Marocchino, in the trucking business, is reputed to have received kickbacks. Marocchino also cultivated a close relationship with news correspondents by wining and dining them during their stay in Mogadishu.
Also living in our neighborhood and playing both sides of the fence was a Russian military veteran with some intelligence background, now a mercenary operating out of a building two houses down from Pasha. He would work for either side as long as they paid. We suspected he helped both sides with finding safe houses and recruiting. He and the Italians seemed to be working together. The Sicilian family that taught me how to cook loved America; in contrast, the behavior of the Italians in Somalia came as a huge punch in my gut.
We received a report that Aidid might have acquired portable infrared homing surface-to-air missiles—Stinger missiles—which can be used by someone on the ground to shoot down aircraft.
Casanova, the SIGINT medic, and I did another hard entry on the house of the boy with wounded legs. The family wasn’t as scared the second time, but they weren’t relaxed, either—a hard entry is a hard entry. We cuffed them again, then held security as we tended to the boy. He looked a lot better and didn’t need to scream or pass out as we cleaned him up.
SEPTEMBER 3, 1993
The following morning, we prepared for a trip to the army compound. Our Somali guards did an advance, making a recon of the route before we headed out. During the actual trip, the guards used a decoy that split from us to a different route. Anyone trying to follow would’ve had to split their forces to follow both vehicles or flip a coin and hope they followed the correct vehicle. Although I received formal training for such tactics, our guards figured this out on their own. Their experiences fighting in the civil war taught them to adapt out of necessity. They were highly intelligent.
The inside of the army compound was fortified with sniper hides, guard towers, and fighting positions. We picked up some infrared chemlights and fireflies in preparation for upgrading Pasha’s perimeter security. While there, we also held a meeting with Delta, tell
ing them about the mortar attack details and suspected firing points. They climbed up onto the roof of the hangar and did a recon by fire: Snipers shot into suspected areas of mortars and hoped our SIGINT would pick up communication of near hits, verifying locations. When General Garrison found out, he whacked our pee-pees. He didn’t like the recon-by-fire action.
That night, back at Pasha, in order to help our guards have a better understanding of what we were doing and how we were doing it, Casanova attached an infrared chemlight to himself and walked around the perimeter of the house. To the naked eye, the chemlight was invisible. I let the other guards look through our KN-250 night-vision scopes, so they could see the glowing light on Casanova. The guards gasped, their faces looking like they’d just seen their first UFO land. They lowered the scopes and looked with their naked eyes. Then they looked through the scopes at Casanova again. Their speech became rapid and their bodies animated, as if they were now riding on the UFO that had just landed. Casanova and I chuckled at their reaction.
Later in the evening, we went with Stingray, working under Condor, to do a dog and pony show with the chemlights and other gear for the chief of police, one of our major assets and responsible for recruiting a number of others, giving him a taste of how we operated. As a result, the chief of police felt more secure about putting his people at risk working for us. Fifty thousand dollars made him financially secure. Maybe he only used a thousand dollars of that to pay his twenty or thirty assets and pocketed the rest of the money.
Casanova and I hit the house of the wounded teenager again. Mom and Dad obediently took their positions on the floor next to the wall before we put them there. The aunt went down on a knee and held up a tray of tea for us.
I took a drink and offered the family some.
They refused.
We had brought our interpreter with us this time to direct the family as to the boy’s care. The family had gone to great lengths to get the tea, and it was all they had. It was the only way they knew to say thank you. They’d been using a witch doctor, but he obviously hadn’t been much help in curing the boy.
By now, the stink of the boy’s wounds had almost gone. Some of his fever remained. Still, we did another surgical scrub. We gave the family some amoxicillin, an antibiotic for infections. “Give this to the boy three times a day for the next ten days.”
I noticed his gums were bleeding. The inside of his mouth was a bloody mess.
“He’s got scurvy,” our medic said. Scurvy is caused by vitamin C deficiency. Sailors of old used to get this disease before Scottish surgeon James Lind, of the British Royal Navy, figured out that sailors who ate citrus fruits had fewer problems with scurvy. With limes readily available from British Caribbean colonies, the Royal Navy supplied men with lime juice. This is how British sailors got the nickname “limey.”
SEPTEMBER 4, 1993
Casanova and I went out for a drive to recon alternate E&E routes, find out about mortar attack locations, and get a better feel for the area. Later, an asset told us that two mines had been placed on a road and were to be detonated on American vehicles—the same road I’d traveled the day before to meet with Delta at the army compound. They must’ve found out about our trip and just missed us.
In our neighborhood, little girls walked a mile a day just to get drinking water and carry it back home. A four-year-old washed her two-year-old sister in the front courtyard by pouring water over the top of her. Most Americans don’t realize how blessed we are—we need to be more thankful.
By this time, we had become celebrities, controlling a two- to three-block area. When Casanova saw schoolkids, he’d flex and kiss his huge biceps. They imitated him. A small group of kids would gather, and we’d hand out parts of our MREs: candy, chocolate cookies, Tootsie Rolls, and Charms chewing gum. Yes, we gave up our cover, but Condor thought this was good for winning the hearts and minds of the locals. I agreed.
I took a bag of oranges to the crippled boy next door, but he couldn’t eat because the citric acid stung his bleeding gums. Casanova held his body down while I put him in a headlock and squirted the liquid into his mouth. After two or three more visits, the oranges didn’t sting. Eventually the scurvy would go away. To help the boy, Condor told the CIA that the boy was related to one of our assets even though he wasn’t. We had an asset take him some crutches, and I requested a wheelchair.
Later, the boy next door stayed on the porch to spot us when we made our rounds up on the roof of Pasha. He gave us a wave and a smile. It was my most successful op in Somalia, and I had to disobey direct orders to get it done. Better to ask forgiveness than permission.
Aidid ran his own hearts-and-minds campaign. He made public announcements against Americans and started recruiting in our area: anyone from children to the elderly.
Our assets informed us of a trail to be used to supply Aidid with Stinger missiles: Afghanistan to Sudan to Ethiopia to Somalia. The missiles were leftovers from those that the United States gave Afghanistan to fight the Russians. Years later, the United States offered to buy the Stingers back: $100,000 for each one returned with no questions asked.
Aidid received help from al Qaeda and the PLO. Al Qaeda had snuck in advisers from Sudan. Not too many people knew about al Qaeda then, but they supplied Aidid with weapons and trained his militia in urban warfare tactics like setting up burning barricades and fighting street to street. If Aidid didn’t have the Stingers yet, they’d be arriving soon. In the meantime, al Qaeda taught Aidid’s militia to change the detonators on their RPGs from impact detonators to timed detonators. Rather than having to make a direct hit on a helicopter, the RPG could detonate near the tail rotor, the helo’s Achilles’ heel. Firing an RPG from a rooftop invited death by back blast or the helicopter guns. So al Qaeda taught Aidid’s men to dig a deep hole in the street—a militiaman could lie down while the back of the RPG tube blasted harmlessly into the hole. They also camouflaged themselves, so the helos couldn’t spot them. Although I didn’t know it at the time, the al Qaeda advisers in Somalia probably included Osama Bin Laden’s military chief, Mohammed Atef. Similarly, the PLO helped Aidid with advice and supplies. Now Aidid wanted to hit high-profile American targets.
Our SIGINT intercepted communication about a plot to launch a mortar attack on the American Embassy. Furthermore, assets informed us that the Italians continued to allow Aidid’s armed militia to cross UN military checkpoints responsible for safeguarding the city. His militia merely had to find out where the Italians had their checkpoints in order to move freely—right into the backyard of the United States and everyone else.
Two of Aidid’s bodyguards wanted to give up their master’s location for the $25,000 reward. Leopard wanted to meet them at Pasha. To get to Pasha, Leopard planned to travel through the Italian checkpoint near an old pasta factory—Checkpoint Pasta.
However, Leopard didn’t know that the Italians had secretly turned Checkpoint Pasta over to the Nigerians. Minutes after the turnover, Aidid’s militia ambushed and killed the seven Nigerians.
That evening, I heard a firefight close to Pasha, and the closest mortar yet. Obviously, the bad guys had started to figure out what was going on and where. Our days at Pasha were numbered.
SEPTEMBER 5, 1993
Sunday morning, before 0800, Leopard and four bodyguards rode two Isuzu Troopers out of the UN compound. When the vehicles reached Checkpoint Pasta, a crowd swarmed around them. A couple of hundred yards ahead, burning tires and concrete blocked the road. Leopard’s driver floored the accelerator, crashing through the ambush. Forty-nine bullets struck their vehicle. One shot passed through a space in Leopard’s flak jacket, striking him in the neck. The driver raced them out of the ambush and helped Leopard to a hospital in the UN compound. After twenty-five pints of blood and one hundred stitches, General Garrison flew Leopard to a hospital in Germany. Leopard survived.
Later that day, I heard .50 caliber shots, the kind that can penetrate bricks, fired in the northwest 300 to 500 yards from ou
r location.
With shooting nearby and a recent ambush, we knew our ticket was about to get punched. On full alert now, we took up battle stations. I called in an AC-130 Spectre to fly overhead in case we needed help. Capable of spending long periods of time in the air, the air force plane carried two 20 mm M-61 Vulcan cannons, one 40 mm L/60 Bofors cannon, and one 105 mm M-102 howitzer. Sophisticated sensors and radar helped it detect enemy on the ground. You could let loose a rabbit on a soccer field, and the AC-130 Spectre would make rabbit stew. I had trained in Florida at Hurlburt Field on the plane’s capabilities and how to call for its fire to rain down on the enemy. It aroused me to know we were getting ready to light up some of Aidid’s people. Instead, fortune smiled on them as they chose to fight another day.
That same day, we found out that one of our primary assets had been made, so we had to fly him out of the country.
At 2000, an asset told us that Aidid was at his aunt’s house. Condor called in a helo to fly Stingray and the asset to the army base and brief General Garrison. All of us in Pasha were ecstatic. Everything we had done at Pasha—running the assets, SIGINT, everything—had led to this moment. We had good intel and the cloak of darkness to protect our assault team. The asset even had a diagram for the house—ideal for special operators doing room entries. Aidid was ours.
The request was denied. I still don’t know why. Condor and Stingray were outraged. “We will not get another chance this good!”
The rest of us couldn’t believe it either. “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!” In the military phonetic alphabet, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” is WTF—“What the f***?”
I was angry that we had worked so hard for such an important mission only to be ignored. It seemed that military politics were to blame. I also felt embarrassed at how my own military had treated the CIA. “Condor, I’m really sorry. I don’t know what the hell … I don’t know why we didn’t do this…”
Condor wasn’t mad at us SEALs, but he was mad at General Garrison. “If Garrison isn’t going to do it, why did he even send us out here?! Why do all this work, spend all this money, put ourselves at risk, put our assets at risk…”
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