Black Hawk Down (19 page)

Moore figured if he stayed up and kept on shooting, at least he'd get shot trying to save
himself and the guys. It was a defining moment for him, a point of clarity in the midst of
chaos. He would go down fighting. He would not consider lying down again.

Not long after he saw Joyce shot, which really shook him up, Private Carlson felt a
sudden blow and sharp pain in his right knee. It felt like someone had taken a knife and
held it to his knee and then driven it in with a sledgehammer. He glanced down to see
blood rapidly staining his pants. He said a prayer and kept shooting. He had been wildly
scared for longer than be had ever felt that way in his life, and now he thought he might
literally die of fright. His heart banged in his chest and he found it hard to breathe.
His head was filled with the sounds of shooting and explosions and visions of his friends,
one by one, going down, and blood splashed everywhere oily and sticky with its dank,
coppery smell and he figured, This is it for me. And then, in that moment of maximum
terror, he felt it all abruptly, inexplicably fall away. One second he was paralyzed with
fear and pain and the next ... he had stopped caring about himself.

He would think about this a lot later, and the best he could explain it was, his own life
no longer mattered. All that did matter were his buddies, his brothers, that they not get
hurt, that they not get killed. These men around him, some of whom he had only known for
months, were more important to him than life itself. It was like when Telscher ran out on
the road to pull Joyce back in. Carlson understood that now, and it was heroic, but it
also wasn't heroic. At a certain level he knew Telscher had made no choice, just as he was
not choosing to be unafraid. It had just happened to him, like he had passed through some
barrier. He had to keep fighting, because the other guys needed him.

In the second of the three Humvees behind the trucks, Private Ed Kallman sat behind the
wheel amazed and alarmed by what he was seeing. He saw a line of trees on the sidewalk up
ahead begin to explode, one after the other, as if someone had placed charges in each and
was detonating them at about five-second intervals. Either that or somebody with a big gun
was systematically taking out the trees, each about two stories high, thinking that they
might be hiding snipers. He found it strange, anyway, the blasts walking their way toward
him splintering the trees one by one.

Kallman, who had felt such a rush of excitement an hour earlier as he encountered battle
for the first time, now felt nothing but nauseating dread. So far neither he nor anyone in
his vehicle had been hit, but it seemed like just a matter of time. He watched with horror
as the convoy disintegrated before him. Ho was a soldier for the mast powerful nation on
earth. If they were having this much trouble, shouldn't somebody have stepped in? Where
was a stronger show of force? Somehow it didn't seem right that they could be reduced to
this, battling on these narrow dirt streets, bleeding, dying! This wasn't supposed to
happen.

He saw men he knew and liked and respected bellowing in pain on the street with gunshot
wounds that exposed great crimson flaps of glistening muscle, men wandering in the smoke
bleeding, dazed, and seemingly unconscious, their clothing torn off. American soldiers.
Those who were not injured were covered with the blood of others. Kallman was young and
new to the unit. If these more-veteran soldiers were all getting hit, sooner or later he
was going to get hit. Oddly, the surprise he felt overshadowed the fear.

He kept telling himself; This is not supposed to happen!

And Kallman's turn did come. As he slowed down before another intersection he looked out
the open window to his left and saw a smoke trail coming straight at him. It all happened
in a second. He knew it was an-RPG and he knew it was going to hit him. Then it did. He
awoke lying on his right side on the front seat with his ears ringing. He opened his eyes
and was looking directly at the radio mounted under the dash. He sat up and floored the
accelerator. Up ahead he saw the convoy making a left-turn and he raced to catch them.

Later, when he'd had a chance to inspect his Humvee, he saw that the RPG had hit his
door, deeply denting it and poking a hole through the steel. He and the others inside had
evidently been spared by the bullet-proof glass panel behind the door-Kallman had the
window rolled down. The brunt of the grenade's force had been absorbed by the Humvee's
outer shell, and the glass barrier had been thick enough to stop it. Kallman's left arm
began to swell and discolor, but otherwise he was fine.

Dan Schilling felt better whenever they were moving. But the convoy seemed to inch along,
stopping, starting, stopping, starting. Whenever they stopped the volume of fire would
surge, so many rounds that at times it looked like the stone walls on both sides of the
alley were being sand-blasted. There were plenty of targets to shoot at. Up in the turret,
Pringle unloosed the .50 cal on a group of armed Somalis. Schilling watched as one of
them, a tall, skinny man wearing a bright yellow shirt and carrying an AK-47, came apart
as the big rounds tore through him. Deep red blotches appeared on the yellow shirt. First
an arm came off. Then the man's head and chest exploded. The rest of the Somalis
scattered, moving around the next corner, where Schilling knew they'd again be waiting for
them to cross.

As the Humvee came abreast of the alley Schilling didn't bother to use his sights, the
men were that close. The first man he shot was just ten yards away. He was crouched down
and had a painful grimace on his face. Maybe Pringle had hit him earlier. Schilling put
two rounds in his chest. He shot the man next to him twice in the chest and as he did he
felt a slam and a dull pain in his right foot. When they were through the intersection,
Schilling inspected his boot. The door had taken two bullets. One had passed through the
outer steel and been stopped by the bulletproof glass window inside it. The second had hit
lower, and had passed right through the door. The door, which was guaranteed to stop the
AK-47's 7.62-mm round, had not stopped either bullet. The glass got the first, and the
second had been slowed enough so that it hit with enough force to hurt, but not enough to
penetrate the boot.

Pringle had just put doors on the vehicle earlier that day. They'd done the previous six
missions without them, and these had just arrived in a shipment from the States. Schilling
had mixed feelings about them. He liked the protection, but the doors made it a lot harder
to move. When he had checked them out that morning, he couldn't get his window to roll
down, so he'd started to remove the door. Pringle stopped him.

“Hey, I just put those on!” he shouted.

Schilling had showed him how the window stuck, and Pringle had fetched a hammer and
simply whacked the frame until the window dropped down. Now, Schilling was glad they'd
kept the door, but some of the sense of invulnerability he'd felt was gone. Both bullets
had gone completely through.

They continued north for about nine blocks, all the way up to Armed Forces Road, one of
the main paved roads in Mogadishu. They'd gone past the crash site, only a block west of
it, without stopping. The helicopters had directed them to turn right, but the alleyways
looked too narrow to Schilling and the others in the lead Humvee. If the trucks got stuck
they'd probably all be killed. So they continued on. Some of the men in the convoy saw the
downed Black Hawk just a block over as they went past, but no one had told them that it
was their objective. Many of the men in the vehicles still thought they were heading back
to base. As they approached Armed Forces Street, they stopped again.

Schilling fought back feelings of futility. McKnight seemed dazed and overwhelmed. He was
bleeding from the arm and the neck, and not his usual decisive self. Schilling muttered to
himself; “We're going to keep driving around until we're all fucking dead.”

He then decided to do something himself, since McKnight seemed stymied. Using a frequency
he knew helicopter pilots used to talk among themselves, he bypassed the C2 Black Hawk and
contacted the observation helicopters flying orbits higher up. Coordinating communications
between the air and ground was Schilling's specialty. He asked them to vector him to the
crash site. The choppers were eager to oblige. They told him to steer the convoy west on
Armed Forces Road, and then hang another left. McKnight gave permission for Schilling to
direct them, and the convoy was moving once again.

They made the left turn off Armed Forces and drove through the storm of gunfire for about
seven blocks before Schilling saw up ahead the smoldering remains of the five-ton they had
torched in front of the target building. They'd come full circle. Schilling hadn't told
the observation bird pilots which crash site he wanted. The pilots could see how desperate
things were around Durant's crash, where Somali mobs had begun to encircle the unprotected
downed Black Hawk, and had taken it upon themselves to direct the convoy there. Schilling
hadn't realized it until he saw the target house and the Olympic Hotel again.

“We're headed for the second crash site,” he told McKnight.

The lieutenant colonel knew only what his orders were. He reiterated that they were to
proceed to the first crash site.

On the command net, their wanderings had turned to black comedy. Matters were now
complicated by the fact that a second vehicle convoy had been dispatched from the base to
attempt a rescue at Durant's crash site.

--Danny, I think you've gone too far west trying to look at the second crash. You seem to
have gone about four blocks west and five blocks south, over.

--Romeo Six Four [Harrell], this it Uniform Six Four (McKnight]. Give me a right turn,
right turn! Right turn!

--Uniform Six Four, this is Romeo Six Four ... You need to go about four blocks south,
turn east. There it green smoke marking the site south. Keep coming south.

A voice came over the busy command frequency pleading for order.

--Stop giving directions! ... I think you're talking to the wrong convoy!

--This is Uniform Six Four, you've got me back in front of the Olympic Hotel.

--Uniform Six Four, this is Romeo Sir Four. You need to turn east.

So the convoy now made a U-turn. They had just driven through a vicious ambush in front
of the target house and were now turning around to dive right back through it. Men in the
vehicles behind could not understand. It was insane. They seemed to be trying to get
killed.

Things had deteriorated so badly that up in the C2 bird Harrell was considering just
releasing the prisoners, their prize, the supposed point of this mission and of all this
carnage. He instructed the Delta units on foot now closing in on the first crash site.

--As soon as we get you linked up with the Uniform element throw all the precious cargo.
We're going to try and get force down to the second crash site.

The voices from various helicopters now trying to steer poor McKnight recorded the
frustration of his fruitless twists and turns.

--Uniform Six Four, this it Romeo Six Four. Next right. Next right! Alleyway! Alleyway!

--They just missed their turn.

--Take the next available right, Uniform.

--Be advised they are coming under heavy fire.

--Uniform Six Four, this it Romeo Sir Four.

--God damn it, stop! God damn It, stop!

--Right turn! Right turn! You're taking fire! Hurry up!

In this terrible confusion the men on the convoy saw strange things. They passed an old
woman carrying two plastic grocery bags, walking along calmly through the barrage. As the
convoy approached, she set both bags down gently, stuck fingers in her ears, and kept on
walking. Minutes later, heading in the opposite direction, they saw the same woman. She
had the bags again. She set them down, stuck fingers in her ears, and walked away as she
had before.

At every intersection now Somalis just lined up, on both sides of the street, and fired
at every vehicle that came across. Since they had men on both sides of the street, any
rounds that missed the vehicle as it flashed past would certainly have hit the men on the
other side of the road. Sergeant Eversmann, who had found some better cover for himself in
the back end of his Humvee, watched with amazement. What a strategy! He felt these people
have no regard for even their own lives! They just did not care!

The city was shredding them block by block. No place was safe. The air was alive with
hurtling chunks of hot metal. They heard the awful slap of bullets into flesh and heard
the screams and saw the insides of men's bodies spill out and watched the gray blank
pallor rise in the faces of their friends, and the best of the men fought back despair.
They were America's elite fighters and they were going to die here, outnumbered by this
determined rabble. Their future was setting with thin sun on this day and in this place.

Schilling felt disbelief and now some guilt. He had steered the convoy the wrong way for
at least part of this calamity. Stunned by the confusion, he struggled to convince himself
this was all really happening. Over and over he muttered, “We're going to keep driving
around until we're all fucking dead.”

Specialist Spalding was still behind the passenger door in the first truck with his rifle
out the window, turned in the seat so he could line up his shots, when he was startled by
a flash of light down by his legs It looked like a laser beam shot through the door and up
into his right leg. A bullet had pierced the steel of the door and the window, which was
rolled down, and had poked itself and fragments of glass and steel straight up his leg
from just above his knee all the way up to his hip. He had been stabbed by the shaft of
light that poked through the door. He squealed.

“What's wrong, you hit?” shouted Maddox.

“Yes!”

And then another laser poked through, tins one into his left leg. Spalding felt a jolt
this time but no pain. He reached down to grab his right thigh and blood spurted out
between his fingers. He was both distressed and amazed. The way the light had shot
through. He still felt no pain.

He didn't want to look at it.

Then Maddox shouted, “I can't see! I can't see!”

The driver's helmet was askew and his glasses were knocked around sideways on his head.

“Put your glasses on, you dumb ass,” Spalding said.

But Maddox had been hit in the back of the head. The round must have hit his helmet,
which saved his life, but hit with such force that it had rendered him temporarily blind.
The truck was rolling out of control and Spalding, with both legs shot, couldn't move over
to grab the wheel.

They couldn't stop in the field of fire, so there was nothing to do but shout directions
to Maddox, who still had his hands on the wheel.

“Turn left! Turn left! Now! Now!”

“Speed up!”

“Slow down!”

The truck was weaving and banging into the sides of buildings. It ran over a Somali man
on crutches.