Two more explosions ripped the night, hitting the airfield out by the helicopters. Then quiet set in and, this time, spun out into an unbroken string of explosionless minutes. Finally, it appeared the Somalis were ready to turn in for the night. McKnight and I peeled ourselves off the Conex and jogged toward the JOC to inspect the damage.
The Sammies hadn’t launched more than a half-dozen rounds. The blow to our operations center seemed like a lucky strike, with the shooters managing only to knock out a radio and blow over an antenna. From the flightline, a couple of the crew chiefs ran into the JOC and told us that a chopper mechanic had taken a piece of shrapnel in the arm. Somebody else came in and said that our hangar had been hit by shrapnel, but nobody was hurt. Damage wise, that was about it.
Still I had to admire the Somalis’ guts. They used an American technique: Fire for effect. They had shown they knew who we were and why we were there, and that they weren’t afraid of us. Fired right into our base, striking fear into a good portion of our troops, a couple of hundred young Rangers sitting in a vulnerable position, men who had never seen combat. The Sammies may have been terrible marksmen, but launching the attack was the kind of macho intimidation tactic that was probably the best thing they could have done. The incident formed in me a grudging respect.
As McKnight and I stood in the JOC, Garrison walked in, chewing his stogie. “McKnight, tell me where the last place was we saw this sombitch,” he said mildly, referring to Aidid.
McKnight and Garrison walked over to a map of Mogadishu, and called over an analyst who immediately pointed to a house near the center of the city. “We haven’t had a positive sighting in awhile, but that’s the last place we know Aidid was for sure,” he said. “That was a few days ago.”
“Then that’s our target,” Garrison said. “I don’t care if Aidid’s there or not. Jerry, get the men ready. We’re gonna let ’em know we’re here.”
An hour later, Garrison ordered the Ranger and Delta team leaders to assemble their men in front of the JOC. Now he stood before the task force on the open concrete, his arms crossed, cigar jutting from his mouth at a thoughtful angle.
“Now, some of you have never been mortared before,” he said as casually as if the whole group had only fallen off a bicycle. “I just wanted to tell you that if one of them piddly-ass mortars lands in your pocket, it’s probably going to hurt. If it doesn’t land in your pocket, you don’t have to worry about piddly-ass mortars.”
I stood among the men, some as young as eighteen, and heard the intensity of their hush. Garrison let steel creep into his voice. “Now we’re gonna go in there tonight and let ’em know we’re here. And I have confidence in every one of you. So let’s get it on and go do it.”
It was as good as any Knute Rockne pre-game talk. Garrison motivated everybody, including me. When he finished, there was no loud cheer, but I could hear the low, approving rumble of young men ready to strike back. Most of the Delta operators were already battle hardened, but the Rangers had been stung, jarred into the reality that we weren’t playing G.I. Joe. This was not an exercise. There was a real enemy out there, people who really wanted to kill them.
Two hours later, an assault force of eighteen heavily armed helicopters roared into the city and sixty very pissed off elite American soldiers hit the house where informants last spotted Aidid. The raid force captured several men, plus a large cache of Somali money, which we concluded was connected with Aidid’s financial operation. The next day, we turned both the prisoners and the cash over to the UN.
In the larger picture, the raid didn’t get us any closer to capturing the warlord. But from a morale standpoint, it served a vital purpose, particularly for the uninitiated young Rangers. They had been hit and it was important they hit back, that they not feel impotent in the face of Aidid’s brazen strike.
Aidid had given us the finger. We gave him the finger right back.
3
THROUGHOUT SEPTEMBER, we gathered intel and launched five more strikes, all designed to capture elements of Aidid’s infrastructure. Taking out a despot is a chess game. A dictator seizes control with a wave of violence and holds it with the threat of more. But iron fists leak. Exploit those leaks, mission by mission, systematically leveraging mistakes. Learn, profile, move closer, and even the most feared and cloistered man can be knocked down like rotten fruit.
Take Colombia, for example. Under the leadership of Hugo Martinez and with American intel support, the Search Bloc was systematically tearing the Medellin cartel apart. The body count was horrific: Pablo Escobar was fighting back savagely, ordering bombings and assassinations. Through the first six months of the hunt, more than sixty-five police officers were killed. But the Colombian government was winning the war of attrition, picking off major players in Escobar’s power structure. Escobar’s men began to turn on him, offering to provide information in return for concessions from the government, and the drug lord himself had gone to ground. Teams of Delta operators rotated through Medellin, assisting the Search Bloc as forward observers and advisors while being very careful not to get into the shooting end of the operations. Doing so earned them the Search Bloc’s respect.
Then, a vigilante group calling themselves Los Pepes (an acronym for People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar) burst onto the scene in January 1993. The day after Escobar ordered a massive bookstore bombing that massacred innocent people in the streets of Bogota, his mother’s hacienda burned to the ground. Then a pair of car bombs exploded outside Medellin apartment buildings where Escobar’s family was staying. Soon after, the drug lord’s mother and aunt were wounded in another bombing. While the Search Bloc confined its assaults to Escobar’s known cartel associates, Los Pepes had no such manners: They went after the drug lord’s family, his lawyers, his accountants, and his friends—and vowed in writing to do so every time Escobar injured innocent people.
Delta, Busby, and U.S. intelligence agencies suspected that the families of Fernando Galeano and Gerardo Moncada—the murdered men whose blood I thought I’d seen at La Catedral—were part of the force behind Los Pepes. Whoever it was, one thing was certain: Where Escobar had long had the advantage of fighting a government enemy that played by legal rules, now he was fighting a second enemy, and this one played by his rules: the rules of terror. Garrison and I agreed that if any evidence surfaced that the Colombian elements we were working with were involved, Delta was out of there.
And so, the noose was tightening around Escobar in Colombia. In Mogadishu, I was confident we’d get Aidid, too. It was only a matter of time.
Sunday, October 3, was my mother’s birthday and I woke up wondering how I was going to manage to call her from this east African hellhole. By then we had already captured Osman Atto, Aidid’s chief financial advisor, and he and I had our little meeting in the Conex where I told him he’d “underestimated our God.”
After that, we published a list of targets: wanted men. These were Somalis we knew were either tied to Aidid, or whom we felt could provide us with useful intel. The idea was to stir the pot, to get Aidid’s men wary and moving—or perhaps worried and ready to turn.
It worked. The CIA station chief came down to the airfield from UN headquarters to tell me a very worried Somali had come to visit American agents there.
“My name shouldn’t have been on that list,” the Somali complained to CIA. If the Americans would take his name off the list, he said, he would reveal the location of a secret meeting of many of Aidid’s top lieutenants.
As the station chief briefed me, I listened, intent and skeptical. Top lieutenants? We’d heard that before and busted down courtyard gates only to frighten women and children. So far, the quality of intelligence in Mogadishu had succeeded as much in alienating the people we were trying to help as it had in getting us closer to Aidid.
Still, I listened. “Aidid’s lieutenants are meeting to discuss strategy,” the CIA liaison told me. “Today. In Bakara Market.”
The place we least wanted to go. Loca
ted in the heart of downtown Mogadishu, Bakara Market was like a sprawling, open-air farmer’s market, rummage sale, and arms dealership all rolled into one. It was, and is, the largest and busiest market in Mogadishu. In better times, Bakara had been alive with men dickering over bags and barrels of maize, sorghum, and rice, with scampering children, and wives getting out of the house for a friendly visit or a snatch of gossip, their hijabs vibrant against their dark skin. Now, food was scarce, and trade had turned darker, with stalls and vendors selling everything from illicit drugs and foreign passports to RPGs and anti-aircraft guns. And it could all be had cheap—and no questions asked—with money changers deciding on the spot the going exchange rate of the Somali shilling against the dollar.
Aidid controlled Bakara, and vendors paid protection money to his thugs. People would do anything to prop up one end of the war between the clans. Some tribe members fought with guns; others fought with money and information. Businessmen not only profited from trading contraband, but used their gains to finance rival militias.
In Bakara, armed militia openly patrolled the streets on foot and in technicals. Women and children were armed and loyal to the Habr Gidr clan. The American policy was not to even drive through Bakara. Now we were talking about hitting Aidid there.
So the question was, is the CIA’s informant reliable?
Danny McKnight sat across the battered table from me. “What do you think?” I asked him.
“Bakara?” he said. “I’d want to be sure.”
“The informant has a good motive for turning,” Garrison said. “He’s trying to save his own ass.”
“If he’s telling the truth, there’ll be a lot of targets at that meeting,” I offered. “Might be too good to pass up.”
Garrison sat back in his chair and considered the rafters. “All right,” he said after a long pause. “If he’ll I.D. the precise location of the meet, we’ll hit it.”
4
THAT AFTERNOON, Garrison, Dave McKnight, and I gathered in front of the JOC video monitors and watched a rickety sedan weave its way up Hawlwadig Road. In an adjoining room, an Arabic-speaking interpreter was in radio contact with the sedan’s driver, our CIA informant. Hovering in the doorway between the two rooms, the CIA station chief relayed comms from the informant to the interpreter to us. According to our agreement, the driver was to park his car directly in front of the building where Aidid’s lieutenants were to meet. As we watched the screen, the sedan crept slowly up the street away from the Olympic Hotel, then stopped.
“Is that it?” Garrison said.
“No, he passed it and stopped down at the corner,” the station chief said. “It’s back down at the other end of the street.”
“Not good enough,” I said. “Tell him to go back and park directly in front of the building. I don’t want any confusion.”
From the flightline, we could hear eighteen helos turning up, the Black Hawks’ low thudding beat under the lighter hum of the Little Birds. Gary Harrell and Lieutenant Colonel Tom Matthews, a ruddy Irishman from Philly, were in the command-and-control bird. Among the Black Hawk pilots were two Special Ops veterans, Chief Warrant Officer Cliff Wolcott, piloting Super Six-One, and in Super Six-Four, Chief Warrant Officer Mike Durant. Mike had been with us in Panama, and we’d gotten to know each other better during the run-up to Mogadishu. I had known Cliff for several years, and thought of him as nothing short of a warrior. During Desert Storm, he flew SCUD-hunting missions deep into Iraq and was so coolheaded, he’d earned the nickname Elvis.
Between them, the helos carried an assault force of thirty Rangers under the command of Captain Mike Steele, a big ex-football player from the University of Georgia. In addition there were fifty Delta operators, four SEALs, and a couple of P.J.s. The entire assault force was under the command of Delta Captain Scotty Miller, a low-key, tactically savvy officer. The Rangers were to fast-rope into the streets from Black Hawks and set up a security perimeter while Delta and the SEALs stormed the target building and captured Aidid’s men. This operation would be Scotty’s first as an element commander. But only if the informant kept his word. If not, we’d scrub the mission.
On the monitors, I saw the informant turn around and drive back in the direction he had come, picking his way past merchants, and knots of women and children criss-crossing the street. He moved as slowly as if he were driving in his own funeral procession. From his point of view, he likely was. Finally, he stopped in front of a large two-story house on a corner opposite the Olympic.
Other than being a building with a lot of bedrooms, the Olympic bore little resemblance to the American idea of a hotel. Instead it was a virtual headquarters for the HG militia. An assault on the meeting venue would be like launching an attack across the street from an army base. Except that these guys kept their weapons locked and loaded.
Back in the JOC, I could see the informant step out onto Hawlwadig. A high wall surrounded the target building, forming the traditional Somali courtyard. The house had a perfectly flat roof where the residents could lounge in the sun chewing khat, or lie in wait for an ambush. A Somali man dressed in a loose shirt and slacks appeared at the wrought iron gate that formed the only entrance to the courtyard.
I turned to my operations officer and two of the communicators. “Okay, guys, that’s the house.” I stood briefly, and then knelt beside my seat and said a quick and silent prayer.
Lord, be with us on this mission. Protect these men, and give us success.
Then I stood and glanced at Garrison who with a nod, signaled that the op was a go.
I keyed my mike and issued the execute codeword.
“Irene.”
5
AS THE AIRBORNE RAID FORCE LIFTED OFF, Danny McKnight led a ground convoy of trucks and Humvees off the airfield into the city. The convoy’s mission was to transport any detainees back to base and, if the 160th couldn’t land helos to extract the assault force, give the assault team a lift, too. Some Delta operators rode with Danny, including John “Mace” Macejunas, a muscular blond operator who had trained the Colombians at Tola Maida, and Master Sergeant Tim “Griz” Martin. An easygoing combat veteran of more than twenty years, Griz was a demolitions specialist who had this quirky, mischievous laugh he’d emit whenever he did an especially good job of blowing something up.
As the sound of the helos receded out over the beach, I focused on the West-Cam monitors. Any sign of Aidid’s men leaving the target building and we’d immediately scrub the mission. Ten minutes later, the first Black Hawks came into view on the screen, unfurling thick ropes into the streets surrounding the target. I saw the Rangers begin their fast-rope insertion. In Super Six-One, Elvis took up a low orbit over the area of the target building. Then the Little Birds swooped in, discharged the Delta assaulters, and took off again.
Led by Delta Sergeant Matt Rierson, the assault team stormed the target building.
Suddenly, I heard one of the Ranger element leaders report that a Ranger had fallen from the fast rope and was in critical condition. I called Danny and asked if he could evacuate the Ranger.
Danny: “That’s affirmative.” Mace and Delta operator Chuck Esswein—with Ranger Sergeant Dominick Pilla manning an M-60—broke off in two Humvees to help.
Within minutes, Danny McKnight reported that he was on-station and taking heavy fire from the Olympic.
Twenty minutes later, Gary Harrell keyed up. “Target building is secure. We’ve rounded up twenty-three people.”
“Roger,” I said, then keyed up Danny. “They’re ready to evacuate.”
“Roger. We’re moving up to the building now,” Danny said.
This is moving like clockwork, I thought. Once the convoy onloaded the prisoners, the whole force would RTB in no more than fifteen minutes, twenty tops.
In the JOC, we watched Danny’s element take up defensive positions around the convoy. Muzzles flashed as Rangers returned fire in the direction of the Olympic. I could also see four Delta operators moving carefully on
the target building’s flat roof, returning fire in several directions. We had expected a tougher fight in Bakara than on other ops, and we were getting it.
Then, cutting through the radio clutter, I heard Elvis say, “. . . Six-One going down.”
His transmission was as calm as it was ominous. Instantly, the West-Cam pilot panned over and I saw Cliff Wolcott’s Black Hawk, nose over and twist out of control. Hit by a ground-fired RPG, the helo did several complete pancake rotations, sickeningly slow. Then the Black Hawk simply slid out of the sky, snagged the roof edge of a building and keeled over into an alley.
I had seen helos go down before. And from the way Six-One piled in nose-first, I was almost certain Elvis was dead, and probably some in his crew. Still, for a moment, I was in absolute disbelief. Cliff Wolcott was such a leader, so full of life. One of those guys you picture riding invincibly off into the sunset, not dying in a dirty third world street. A piece of my insides went numb.
In the JOC, the immediate priority became getting rescue and force protection to the crash site. Already the West-Cam birds showed the streets filled with thousands of armed Somalis, some moving toward the crash site. We knew that if the Sammies got there first, they’d kill any survivors, and probably mutilate anyone who was already dead.
Garrison called Major General Tom Montgomery at UN headquarters and asked for immediate reinforcements. According to procedure, Mike Durant, in Super Six-Four, would replace Elvis’s bird in the low orbit position.
As those contingencies were set in motion, things were unraveled quickly on the ground. The Somalis blocked the streets with heaps of junk metal and burning tires. As Mace and Esswein evacuated the fallen Ranger, Somali militia riddled them with withering fire. Pilla returned fire from the M-60 until a Somali round caught him in the forehead, killing him instantly.
Mike Steele rounded up his element and began moving through the streets to the crash, encountering heavy fire from every door and window they passed.
Jerry Boykin & Lynn Vincent Page 24