Among those in Eldon’s element were Major Gary Harrell, an East Tennessee native who looked like a cross between a linebacker and a professional wrestler, as thick as he was tall. But as intimidating as he looked, he was also relentlessly upbeat. Every day was a great day for Gary.
Also with Eldon were Sergeant First Class Sam Joseph, Staff Sergeant Tom Caldwell, Sergeant First Class Kelly Venden, and Sergeant First Class Jim Suderth. Intensely serious about every aspect of soldiering, Jim was also an outgoing and gregarious man who laughed a lot. Manuel Noriega didn’t know it, but at the moment he issued his standing execution order for Kurt Muse, he also prompted another death order: It became Jim Suderth’s job to execute the executioner.
As soon as the cupola door was blown, Jim would pin his ears back, race down the steps and get to the guard before the guard could get to Muse. As a contingency, before we blew the door, operator Pete Jacobs would rappel silently off the roof of the prison carrying a CAR-15 rifle, and hover outside one of three windows into Muse’s cell. If the guard appeared in the cell doorway with his weapon raised, Jacobs would take him out like a duck in a shooting gallery.
Now, in the command-and-control bird, helos in the flight began checking in.
“OSCAR 10: Ready.”
“OSCAR 20: Ready.”
The Black Hawk’s rotor cycled up and we surged off the deck into the warm midnight sky. One by one, the other helos followed, then gelled into formation as we headed out across the Canal.
Strapped in on my left side was Gordy Hernsberger, the air mission commander with the 160th. My comm officer, Chief Warrant Four Paul Zeisman, also sat on my left along with two other characters: a five-foot-six, two-hundred-fifty-pound fireplug named Jim Owens, the communications chief from the 160th; and Ike Eisenbarth, who was literally the largest man in the Army. Ike, my fire support officer, was the human equivalent of a redwood. Seven feet tall and two hundred eighty pounds, he had to get a waiver every year just to stay in the Army.
Gordy was in contact with all the helos, while Big Ike was on the AC 130 Gunship frequency. As the mission commander, I was in charge of the whole shooting match, so I kept the radios on the command frequency so I could talk to Pete, as well as one on the sniper channel to talk to Pat Hurley. Paul and Jim had comms with the rest of the world.
We were airborne for less than two minutes when I called Pat at Quarry Heights. “X-RAY 9, X-RAY 3. Take out the gun emplacement down there at the intersection.”
Pat came back, “Roger. Executing now.”
Less than thirty seconds later, the PDF soldier manning the fifty cal trigger fell dead on Fourth of July Avenue. His companions fled, then came back. Bad move: Pat’s team took them out, too.
“XRAY 03, we just took out the gun and are standing by for more targets,” Pat said.
“Roger. Good shootin’.”
In the command-and-control bird, we crossed the canal then roared over Panama City proper at four hundred feet. I could see the high-rise apartments across from the prison. A quarter-mile out, tracers needled toward us, announcing gunfire from the roofline and in the same instant, small-arms fire pinged up from the streets. We banked right, veering out of the hail of incoming.
From my right, I saw the Little Bird guns screaming toward the high-rise, and the Comandancia directly behind it. They attacked in pairs, muzzles flashing red and blue, raining tracer-fire down on the PDF shooters. The helos skimmed the high-rise roof, then fired rockets into the Comandancia on the back side, each one exploding in a multi-colored burst with a fireball center. Each pair of helos then separated, breaking right and left, then looping back around in a butterfly pattern to join up for another attack run.
I turned to Ike, who was talking to the AC-130’s: “Fire on the Comandancia.”
He gave the order. A Specter gunship fired.
Bullseye.
The roof of the comm center vaporized and a massive explosion visibly shook the compound, sending up a volcano of debris. Now thick red tracers seared down on the Comandancia as both Spectres unleashed fusillades of forty millimeter grenades. Rubble erupted into the sky, followed by showers of light, like confetti sparkling white against the night.
Suddenly I remembered it was the holidays. In the Black Hawk, I smiled. Merry Christmas, Noriega.
9
NOW, TO THE LEFT OF NORIEGA’S burning headquarters, I watched the Little Bird troop carriers zip in low over the western wall at Carcel Modelo. One by one, they touched down on the roof, deposited Delta operators, and lifted off again. Silently, I prayed that Jim Suderth could kill Muse’s executioner before the executioner could kill Muse.
From my Black Hawk, I saw red tracer fire strafe the prison rooftop. It was coming from the Comandancia and I would later learn that an even heavier barrage came in from the prison kitchen located diagonally across the prison yard from Muse’s cell. Pete Jacobs had already driven a spike into Modelo’s roof, spidered down in front of Muse’s cell, and was hanging there as bullets chipped the concrete wall around him. Eldon Bargewell and the assault element returned fire from the roof.
The PDF’s assault was brave but suicidal. Eldon called in support from the Little Bird guns. A pair of MH-6s broke away from the high-rise and roared down on the prison kitchen, muzzles flaring as their mini-guns shredded the kitchen wall and collapsed its roof. Aftermath pictures would show several hundred narrowly grouped holes in the wall from the ground to the roof. Not even Gumby could have escaped alive.
Now from the Black Hawk, I watched as the Spectres and Little Bird guns made run after run on the Comandancia, systematically blasting it to rubble. Below us, civilian vehicles careened through the streets trying to escape the firestorm. A group of wood-frame buildings along Fourth of July Avenue caught fire, and flames licked up into the night.
Six minutes after Delta touched down atop Carcel Modelo, Eldon Bargewell called me on the radio. “We have the Precious Cargo.”
They have Muse! I was absolutely elated. Still, we weren’t home yet: We had Moose, but we still had to get him out alive.
I keyed my mike. “Roger that.”
Then, I keyed up the Little Bird troop carriers and gave the order to extract.
Moments later, a transmission from a Little Bird gun: “This is OSCAR 20. I’ve lost my wingman.”
“Roger two zero,” I said. “Where did he go down?”
“I don’t know. We made a run on the Comandancia, punched off some rockets, and came off-target. When we passed the apartment buildings, I went left and he went right. Haven’t seen him since. I think he might have gone down in the Comandancia.”
Gordy started trying to raise the lost Little Bird on the radio. I turned to Big Ike. “We’ve got a Little Bird down. Call the ACs. Tell them to fly over the Comandancia and see if they can spot a Little Bird.”
Instantly, Ike relayed: “Check fire! Check fire on the Comandancia and survey the area. See if there’s a Little Bird down there.”
As Ike transmitted, I saw the Little Bird troop carriers touch down on the roof and begin the Modelo extraction. Moments later they buzzed off again with Noriega’s prize hostage safely aboard.
The Spectre reported in, and Ike turned to me, “The ACs can’t find anything in the Comandancia. Can we continue firing?”
“Yes, engage targets.”
Ike to the Spectres: “That’s affirmative. Continue firing.”
Where had the Little Bird gone?
I knew the 5th Mech was standing by at Quarry Heights with M-113 APCs, ready to get into the fight. Our liaison there was a major whose real, honest-to-goodness name was Howard Humble.
I called him on the FM: “ECHO17, we’ve got a gun down. Get down by the Comandancia, and see if you can find a Little Bird in the streets.”
“Roger,” Humble said. “We’re moving.”
Humble and the 5th Mech rolled off the large mountain overlooking Panama City en route to the Comandancia. As they passed Hurley’s sniper position, I learned la
ter, they noticed a dead PDF soldier on the side of the road. Hurley and his band of merry men had caught him trying to sneak up Quarry Heights and, with a single shot, had ruined his day.
10
AT LEAST TEN MINUTES had passed since the Little Bird gun went down. Also, I hadn’t heard from Eldon. I was about to radio him for an update on the Precious Cargo when Howard Humble came alive in my ear: “I’ve found the Little Bird and the Precious Cargo is okay.”
“What?” I didn’t think I’d heard him right. “Say again?”
“I’ve found the Little Bird and the Precious Cargo is okay,” Howard repeated.
“What are you talking about? The bird we’re looking for is a gun. It was a gun that crashed, not the Precious Cargo bird.”
Howard’s next transmission knocked me for a loop. “Well, the Precious Cargo bird crashed, too. We’re policing them all up right now and are headed for Howard Air Force Base.”
I had no idea that Muse’s bird had been shot down. While I was looking for the Little Bird gun, Gordy was talking to the troop carriers. Both of us missed the call from Chief Warrant Three Mike Dietrich, the pilot of Muse’s aircraft, when he reported he was down. Then, when another MH-6 began transmitting that he saw a Little Bird go down, Gordy and I both thought he was referring to the Little Bird gun. That’s what they mean by “fog of war.”
I called Howard Humble. “Get Muse back to Howard. We’ll stay airborne until you confirm you’re there.”
“Roger that,” Humble said. “We’re crossing Bridge of the Americas now.”
As we orbited Panama City in the command-and-control bird, watching the Comandancia burn, I suppressed my excitement. If we could successfully return Muse to base, and ultimately to his family, it would be Delta’s first successful rescue of an American hostage. In the ten years since Delta had gone operational, we had planned many, many missions: To rescue American hostages in Beirut. To infiltrate Laos to search for American MIAs. In 1985, to rescue the hostages on TWA 847. All those operations had been called off for one reason or another (all of which could be classified under the heading, “White House Unwilling to Risk It”).
The rescue of Kurt Muse had been our first direct test. Like any war, it got messy. But our tactics worked. And we hadn’t gone in and snatched back a diplomat or an intel agent or the child of a dignitary. In the scheme of world politics, Kurt Muse wasn’t anybody special. But we still rescued him, and for one reason only: He was an American. If only for that, everything I’d been through up until then had been worth it.
11
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Howard Humble called me to say they were rolling through the gates.
“Roger that,” I said, then turned to the Black Hawk pilot. “Take us home.”
Once on the ground at Howard, I found Eldon and Gary. We gathered in the hangar for what we call the “hot-wash,” the immediate after-action brief. The first thing I learned was that Suderth and his team encountered only three PDF inside Modelo. The first surrendered and they let him live. The other two didn’t and Suderth killed them.
Then the assaulters blew the door on Moose’s cell, slapped a Kevlar vest on the man, and hustled him up to the prison roof where they met a barrage of PDF fire. Bullets bit away at the concrete and pinged into the Little Birds, piercing their skin. The Precious Cargo team climbed aboard a helo and the bird took off. But just as Dietrich, the pilot, cleared the roofline, the helo plunged wildly toward the prison yard.
Engine malfunction. Catastrophic.
Just before impact, Dietrich was able to get enough lift to clear the prison wall by inches. First he set the wounded bird down in the street about a block from the inferno that had been the Comandancia. Then he tried to take off again, but couldn’t gain altitude and was forced to steer the helo through the street just a foot or two off the deck.
Overhead, the Little Bird guns blasted away at PDF positions, trying to keep the fire away from the Precious Cargo bird. From inside the helo, Suderth, Tom Caldwell, Sam Joseph, and the rest of the team also engaged. Dietrich maneuvered to the end of the Comandancia block and pivoted in the air. With his damaged engine, he needed a long, running start to get some altitude. He commenced his takeoff run and bullets clanged off the Little Bird as PDF soldiers emptied their magazines in a last bid to prevent Muse’s escape.
Dietrich gained speed, then lift. Ten feet, twenty feet in the air. Suderth told me that’s when he thought they were going to make it.
Then a Delta operator took a PDF bullet square in the chest. The round pierced his Kevlar and he fell out of the helo, twenty feet into the street below.
Moments later, a round slammed into the back of Jim’s knee. Then gunfire shattered the cowling over his head and the Little Bird fell out of the sky. The helo bounced once in the street, ejecting several men, including Suderth, who was secured to the helo by a tether. When the helo came down again, it landed on his left foot, crushing it, and trapping him in the open street.
Gunfire raged around him, but the Little Birds kept PDF troops away. Inside the helo, Kurt Muse was okay. Tom Caldwell was with him, and Muse asked Tom for a gun: “I was in the Army! I know how to shoot!”
Skeptical, but knowing they were down in enemy territory, Tom gave Muse a .45. Muse and Caldwell climbed out of the twisted Little Bird and—bam!—Tom’s head lurched sideways. He dropped like a flour sack, taking Muse with him. Lying beside Caldwell in the roaring street, Muse could see blood trickling down the operator’s face, inches away, and thought he was dead, hit by a sniper. Muse braced himself for more incoming.
Suddenly, Caldwell’s eyes snapped open, and he saw Muse, already mourning him.
“Moose! You okay?” Tom said.
Muse was shocked. “What happened to you! I thought you were dead!”
“Rotor blade hit me in the head.”
Little Bird guns roared overhead, but PDF bullets still zinged through the streets. They needed cover. But when Caldwell stood to walk, he couldn’t make his feet work. Muse, a big man, slung Tom’s arm over his shoulder and the two linked up with the pilot and the other operators, who had already established a defensive position, on a sidewalk with a brick wall behind them and some parallel-parked cars in front. They had found the operator who was shot in the chest, and carried him with them. He was alive, but barely hanging on. Minutes later, Suderth came limping in. He had managed to free his mangled foot from under a thousand pounds of helicopter, but his toes were ruined.
Overhead, the Spectres continued to pulverize the Comandancia. While the Little Bird guns held off the PDF, an operator used an infrared strobe to signal their position. Almost immediately, a Black Hawk flew overhead, rocking back and forth to acknowledge their position. And a few minutes after that, Howard Humble and his APCs rolled up to the rescue.
During the hot-wash, I also learned that the Little Bird gun had crashed in the Comandancia—crash-landed, actually. Shot down by PDF fire, the MH-6 slammed down in the compound grounds, skidded across the pavement, crashed through a wall, and into a building. Inside, the fire from their burning helo raged. Outside, the Spectres were chewing the Comandancia into dust. Finally, the Little Bird pilots had to make a choice.
“We decided we could either stay inside and burn up, or go outside and take our chances,” one pilot said at the hot-wash.
They chose the latter. The pilots bolted outside and rushed toward the Comandancia wall. Tangled barbed wire ran along the top of it; a street lay on the other side. If they made it out of the compound, it would still be a long trek through enemy territory to find safety. But both men were armed with .45s, and they had them ready.
One pilot took off his Kevlar vest and flung it upward, where it landed like a drape over the barbed wire.
Behind them, they heard footsteps and a voice: “¡No disparen! Me rindo! No disparen! Me rindo!”
Don’t shoot! I surrender!
The pilots whirled to see a PDF soldier running toward them. They raised their weapons to shoot
him, but then held their fire.
The soldier had his hands up.
He was surrendering. To Americans. Who were trapped inside Noriega’s headquarters and trying to escape.
“Me rindo,” the soldier said. “¡Llévame contigo!”
I surrender. Take me with you.
The pilots looked at each other, surprised, then at the PDF soldier.
“Okay,” they said.
The two American pilots and their brand new POW then hoisted themselves over the Comandancia wall and jumped into the street. And just at that moment, one of the 5th Mech APC’s rolled up and scooped them aboard.
12
AFTER THE HOT-WASH, I went to meet the Precious Cargo. I found Kurt Muse sitting on a bloody Kevlar vest inside an empty tent, one of several, including a hospital tent, set up near the hangar. He had on khaki pants and a golf shirt, both of which told the story of the battle he’d just been through. I also noticed he was much thinner than he appeared in his photographs. Panamanian prison will do that to a guy.
He started to rise. “No, no, don’t get up,” I said. “You’ve had a rough night.”
“It’s been an amazing night,” he said, then put out his hand. “Kurt Muse.”
“Jerry Boykin,” I said, smiling as we shook. “I wanted to be the first to say welcome back to freedom.”
“Thank you, sir,” Muse said.
“Is there anything else I can do for you right now?”
Muse didn’t miss a beat. “Yes, sir, I’d like to meet my rescuers.”
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” I said. “Security issues.”
Muse looked worried. “They were hurt. Badly. Some of them . . .”
I reassured him. “Doctor says they’re all going to make it. Nothing life-threatening.”
That wasn’t entirely true, but again, the operators’ condition presented a security issue.
Jerry Boykin & Lynn Vincent Page 19