Black Hawk Down (22 page)

The injury to his partner heightened Wilkinson's sense of urgency. He had thought they'd
have a few minutes to set up before the pressure came. In the past, it had usually taken
ten to twenty minutes for a Somali crowd to gather around any action on the streets.
Clearly this time was different. Speed was critical. Going in they had been told that the
main body of the assault force would be moving from the target house in vehicles to this
crash site, so he expected them at any minute. They had to have the wounded and dead out
of the chopper, perform any emergency medicine necessary, and place them on litters by the
time the convoy approached. Now he'd lost his team leader.

Wilkinson moved up to the front. A Delta sniper, Sergeant First Class James McMahon, who
had been on Super Six One when it crashed, was already on top of the bird pulling out Bull
Briley. McMahon's face was badly cut and swollen and had already turned black and blue. He
looked like he was wearing a fright mask. Briley was obviously dead. On impact something
had sliced cleanly through his head, angling up from just under his chin. He was
relatively easy to get at because he was strapped in the right seat, which was now on the
high side. Wilkinson helped McMahon pull Briley up and out, and then handed his body down.
McMahon climbed down into the cockpit and checked on Elvis.

“He's dead,” he told Wilkinson.

The PJ felt the need to see for himself. He told McMahon to get some attention for his
face, and then climbed up and into the bird.

It was eerily quiet inside. There had been no fire, and there was no smoke. Wilkinson was
surprised at how intact it all was. Everything inside that hadn't been strapped down had
come to rest on the left side, which was now the bottom. Most had been thrown to the
front, and was now piled up against the back of the pilot's seat. There was a slight odor
of fuel inside, and there were liquids draining from places. He ran a finger into some
fluid dripping down the side, smelled and tasted it. It wasn't fuel. It was probably
hydraulic fluid. Sunlight came through the wide right-side doors that now faced the sky.

He observed all this suspended upside down through the right side door. Reaching down, he
checked Wolcott's neck for a pulse. He was dead. Both pilots had taken the brunt of the
impact, and Wolcott, because his side had hit the ground, had gotten the worst of it. The
whole front end of the helicopter had folded in on him from the waist down. He was still
in his seat. His head and upper torso were intact, but the rest of him was wedged tightly
under the instrument panel. Wilkinson tried to slide his hand between the panel and the
pilot's legs, but there was no space above or below. He could not be lifted or pulled
free.

Wilkinson then slid completely into the helicopter and crawled behind the pilot's seat to
see if it could be pulled back or reclined, so he could slide Wolcott out that way, but
that vantage looked no better. He then climbed out and got down on the dirt by the smashed
left underside of the cockpit, digging to see if there was a chance of creating an opening
underneath the wreck out of which Elvis's body could be extracted. But all the tonnage of
the Black Hawk had plowed hard into the soil. There was going to be no easy way to get him
out.

3

Shortly before the other Rangers came down ropes to the crashed helicopter, Abdiaziz Ali
Aden had darted out from under the green Volkswagen. The slender Somali teenager with the
head of thick, bushy hair had seen the helicopter clip the roof of his house before
falling into the alley. He had helped his family to safety and then returned to protect
the house from looters, only to find himself in the middle of a gunfight.

He saw one of the Americans who roped down pick up an M-16 from a man he had just shot.
As the soldier came toward him, Aden panicked. He slid out from under the car and ran back
into his house, slamming the door shut. He ran to a small storage room in the front that
had two windows, one that faced out over the alleyway where the helicopter lay, the other
that looked out at Marehan Road where more Rangers were descending. The intersection and
alley then swarmed with American soldiers, and the shooting was loud, constant, and
accelerating. The walls of his house were built of heavy stone, so he had a safe, ringside
seat.

Aden watched the American soldiers climb hurriedly in and out of the wrecked helicopter.
They pulled a pilot out and carried him to the tail end of it. The pilot had a deep and
terrible cut across his face and he looked eerily white and was clearly dead. Two of the
Rangers placed a big gun on top of the Fiat across the street, which struck Aden as funny.
It turned the little car into a kind of technical. Another of the soldiers crawled right
into the trash hole. Aden's family and their neighbors disposed of trash by digging holes
or ditches in the street outside their house, and filling it with their dumpings. When it
was full, they burned it. This soldier just dug himself into the trash. Only his head and
rifle stuck out from the debris. He was shooting steadily.

4

Sergeant First Class Al Lamb was grateful for the hole. He didn't care what was in it.
They were taking fire from all directions, and there wasn't much to hide behind. Sammies
were sticking their AK-47s down over the tops of the walls. Lamb had gone to the end of
the alley at the front of the chopper with a Delta operator, Ranger Sergeant Mark Belda,
and eager young Specialist Rob Phipps.

Phipps had roped down to the street with Specialist John Belman, and the two had
immediately knocked in a door to get off the street. They barged in on a woman in a turban
and scarlet checkered robe who was missing a front tooth. She screamed. Phipps saw five or
six small children hiding under a bed. The woman dropped to her knees and put her hands
up, begging them with words they didn't understand. The Rangers backed out the door and
then ran down to the alley, where they saw the tail of the helicopter. Standing there was
Sergeant McMahon, who just shouted at them through his swollen, bruised face, “The twelve!
The twelve!” meaning they needed more covering fire at the twelve o'clock position.

Phipps took a spot by the stone wall the chopper had fallen against. There was a small
intersection about twenty feet ahead where another sandy alley crossed. On the opposite
two corners were stone walls and behind them clumps of trees. Directly behind him, jutting
up from under the wreck and growing halfway to the corner, was a big cactus bush. That and
the downed chopper hid his position from anyone behind him. He stayed back from the corner
so that he didn't present a target from the alley in front of him. At first he was there
by himself. He got jumpy, so he called Sergeant Lamb on his handheld radio and asked for
help. Then Staff Sergeant Steven Lycopolus moved up and crouched on the other side of the
alley, just past the hole the Black Hawk had knocked in the south wall. His rear was
protected by the heap of stone and mortar from the pulverized concrete. They were mainly
looking to pick off gunmen to the east who were sending a steady flow of rounds up the
alleyway, and to prevent any Sammies from approaching the crash from that direction. It
didn't take long for one to try. A man in a loose white cotton shirt, baggy pants, and
sandals came creeping up the alley right toward them with an AK, walking at a crouch with
the weapon held forward. Phipps shot him and he fell sideways into the alley. Then another
man ran out to retrieve the gun. Phipps shot him. Then another man ran out. Phipps shot
him, too. Then Lamb, Belda, and Specialist Gregg Gould moved up to join Phipps and
Lycopolus. Belda joined Phipps on his side of the alley, Gould went over by Lycopolus, and
Lamb dug into the hole.

The Chalk Two Rangers who had been first to arrive had the six o'clock position covered.
They'd fanned out to take all four corners of the big intersection west of the crash. The
five men at the twelve o'clock spot dug in as best they could, covering the smaller
intersection to the east. They stayed close to the helicopter. Lamb felt that moving his
men across the intersection might break down the perimeter and risk getting them cut off.

It appeared as though many of the shots coming their way were from the clump of trees
about twenty yards over, behind a high wall at the southeast corner across the
intersection. Rounds were chipping stone and earth around Phipps and he could hear them
puncturing the Black Hawk's thin metal hull.

Lycopolus and Gould were closest to the wall, and at Lamb's direction they began throwing
their grenades over it. One by one they exploded, but the shooting continued.

So Belda shot up the trees with his SAW while Phipps tossed his own grenades to
Lycopolus. The staff sergeant threw them, and these, too, exploded, again without effect.
So Belda tossed Lycopolus his grenades. The staff sergeant threw the first, which
exploded, and then tossed the second. This time there was no blast. Instead, seconds
later, what looked to be the same grenade came flying back over the high wall at them.
Either Lycopolus had not removed the safety strap on the last grenade he threw, or that
one had been a dud and the Somalis behind the wall had an American grenade of their own.

Phipps dove forward as several voices shouted, “Grenade!” The blast was like a gut punch.
It just sucked all the air out of him. He felt like he was on fire and his ears rang from
the blast and his nose and mouth were filled with a bitter stabbing metallic taste. When
the initial ball of fire was gone he still felt terrible burning on both legs and on his
back. The explosion had clobbered him. His face was blackened and beginning to swell and
his eyes were puffing shut. As Phipps regained his senses, he lifted his head and looked
back over his shoulder. Gould had also been hit and was bleeding from the buttocks. A
Somali had run into the roadway and picked up the AK from the pile of dead and wounded
where he had been shooting earlier. The man was taking aim when one of the D-boys back by
the hole in the wall dropped him with a quick burst. The man's head just popped apart.

The operator waved at Phipps, shouting, “Come on! Come on!”

Phipps tried to stand but his left leg gave out. He tried again and fell again.

“Come on!” shouted the D-boy.

Phipps crawled. The burning sensation was fierce now and his left leg wasn't working
right. When he got close enough the D-boy grabbed his face and pulled him the rest of the
way in.

Phipps was panicked.

“Holy shit! I'm hit! I got shot! I got shot!”

“You're all right,” the D-boy reassured him. “You'll be all right.”

He tore open his pants and applied a field dressing.

The wind was out of young Phipps's sails. He was out of the fight.

5

Across the city about a mile southwest, Black Hawk pilots Mike Goffena and Jim Yacone
circled over Durant's wrecked bird worriedly. The men in Super Six Four had been lucky.
Most of this part of the city consisted of stone houses, hard structures, but the spot
where Durant and his copilot Ray Frank had gone down was just rag shacks and tin huts,
nothing hard enough to flip the chopper over. The bird was built with shock absorbers to
withstand a terrifically hard impact so long as it landed in an upright position, which
the Black Hawk had.

In other ways they were less lucky. The CSAR team had already fast-roped in at Wolcott's
crash site. No one had anticipated two choppers going down. Durant and his copilot Ray
Frank and their crew would have to be rescued by ground forces, which meant there was
going to be a dangerous wait. Watching now from above, Goffena and Yacone could already
see Somalis spilling into alleyways and footpaths, homing in on the downed helicopter.

A company of the QRF (2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry, 10th Mountain Division) had been
summoned to help. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Bill David, 150 soldiers on nine
deuce-and-a-half trucks and a dozen Humvees were making their way toward the Ranger base
by a roundabout route that took them out of the city. Nobody was sure exactly how to find
Durant's crash site. They could see it all too clearly on the screens in the JOC, but the
picture couldn't tell them exactly where the downed chopper was. Instead of just waiting
for the QRF to arrive, Garrison ordered up another emergency convoy with whatever force
could be assembled at the base. Leading it out would be the Rangers and D-boys who had
evacuated Private Blackburn, and joining them would be dozens of support personnel-
armorers, cooks, ammo handlers, and communications specialists, including an air force air
traffic controller--who volunteered to join the fight.

Even as this emergency convoy was leaving the base, it was apparent to the pilots over
Durant's crash site that help would not come fast enough for the downed crew of Super Six
Four. They were minutes from being overrun by a violent, angry Somali mob.

Trying to hold the crowds back were two Little Birds and Goffena's Black Hawk, Super Six
Two. In addition to the two crew chiefs on Six Two, there were three D-boys, snipers
Sergeant First Class Randy Shughart, Master Sergeant Gary Gordon, and Sergeant First Class
Brad Hallings. With Sammy dosing in, the Delta operators told the pilots they could be
more effective on the ground. They might be able to hold off the mob until help arrived.
Goffena requested permission to insert them.

“Hey, wait, we don't even know if anybody's alive yet,” answered Colonel Matthews, the
air commander sitting alongside Harrell in the C2 bird.

Hearing nothing from the crew on the radio, Goffena made a low pass and caught a glimpse
of Durant sitting in the cockpit pushing at a piece of tin roof that had caved in around
his legs. So he was alive. Yacone saw Ray Frank moving. Goffena flew low enough to catch
the frustrated look on his friend's face. Frank had been in a tail-rotor crash just like
this one several years before on a training mission. A number of men in that aircraft had
been killed. Frank had broken his leg and crunched his vertebrae. He had been involved in
a drawn-out legal battle over it ever since. To Goffena, the look on his friend's face
said, Shit I can't believe this happened to me again! In the back of the aircraft they
discerned some movement, which meant either Bill Cleveland or Tommy Field had survived,
per-haps both.

Goffena informed Matthews that there were survivors. The colonel told him to hold on.

So Shughart, Gordon, Hallings, and the crew chiefs of Super Six Two did what they could
from the air. There were plenty of targets. The RPG gunners especially, it seemed, had
been emboldened by success. When Goffena flared the Black Hawk in low, the wash from his
rotors would literally blow thickening crowds back. As the crowd retreated, they exposed
those with RPG tubes, who seemed determined to hold their ground. This made them easy
targets for the snipers. Trouble was, once the snipers dropped them, others would dart out
and pick up their weapons.