Black Hawk Down (24 page)

The movie room had three TVs and three VCRs. Guys always crowded in to watch CNN.
Sometimes their own missions were featured. In fact, when the force got back from their
first mission with their flex-cuffed Somali prisoners, before they had even finished
stripping off their gear, they were astonished to see themselves on their top secret
mission on CNN, with footage shot from a distance by infrared cameras. Nobody ever
answered the reporters' questions, and they would laugh and groan about how outrageously
wrong they got everything in the newspapers and on TV.

There were two armed forces radio stations, one that played almost all country music and
one that divided its play time between “white” music, mostly classic rock, and “black”
music, mostly rap. The Rangers, who unlike the 10th Mountain Division guys based across
the city were nearly all white, would get a kick out of the dedications during “black”
time: “Yo, my brothahs and sistahs, this is 2-G Smoothie 4-U flippin' out a disc fo'
Regina at the 271st Supply from Dope Gangsta at the 33rd. Peace!” In the evening they
practically wore out the collection of videotapes shipped over in boxes, mostly old heroic
action-adventure-type stuff. One week they had a James Bond film festival, a different
feature every night. One of the few new releases was Last of the Mohicans, which some of
the guys had just finished watching twice in a row one night when Captain Steele came in,
saw the final credits, and announced he hadn't seen that one yet. So they rewound it and
watched it a third time.

Most days when there wasn't a mission they trained, which was totally cool. They got to
go north of the city into the desert and blow things up, or practice lobbing grenades and
rockets at targets or perfecting their marksmanship with various automatic weapons. In the
dunes outside Mog there were lots of toys and more ammo than usual to go around, and they
didn't have all the range restrictions that applied back home. Out there under the hot sun
in their desert fatigues with their floppy camouflage aim hats on they were like a' bunch
of overgrown kids playing soldier... with real bullets and grenades. It was the sort of
thing that made Rangering so cool. It was real soldiering. Hard core, heavy metal. It was
way more fun than college. They were on an adventure, Sizemore and the rest of the guys
bunked in that hangar. They were in Africa, not behind some desk or cash register or
sitting in class staring out the window across a sleepy campus. They did things like jump
out of airplanes, fast-rope out of helicopters, rappel down cliffs... stuff like what they
were doing over here, doing good, chasing around an exotic Third World capital after a
murderous warlord.

Sizemore had talked the doctor into letting him return to the hangar to spend his last
day with his unit, and had just been packing his stuff up at the hospital for the chopper
ride back when two men were brought in who had just been wounded in a Humvee in the city
by a remote-controlled mine. There was a 10th Mountain Division guy who was all right, and
a Somali-American interpreter who had been torn in half. From the waist down he was gone.

His insides were lying next to him on the gurney.

Sizemore had never seen such a thing. One of the man's arms just twisted off the side of
the stretcher, swinging, attached to the trunk by a hunk of meat. Who were these People?
What made them think they could get away with this?

When he returned to the hangar, guys were suiting up for this mission. Sizemore had
seethed with frustration and disappointment. All the guys were saying this might be a hot
one. What if they were right? Had he come this far to miss out on it? In his place they
were sending Specialist Stebbins, the company's training room clerk. Stebbins! Sizemore
couldn't believe his luck.

The hangar had buzzed with jitters. Even Sergeant Lorenzo Ruiz, the boxer, was uneasy.
Nothing usually bothered Lo.

“I got a bad feeling, Dale,” he said.

Ruiz and Sizemore were tight. They had absolutely nothing in common, but for some reason
they'd hit it off years back. Ruiz was a tough kid from El Paso, Texas, a former amateur
boxer, who had joined the army after a judge had given him a choice between the military
or prison. In the Ranger Regiment, Ruiz had pulled his life together and excelled. He was
married and had a little girl. Sizemore was just a big suburban kid, something of a
ladies' man - his buddies had nicknamed him, with his full lips and big blue eyes and
broad shoulders, “Adonis.” But Ruiz was the real romantic. Out drinking with the guys his
temper would flash one minute and the next minute he'd be wiping away a tear, sniffling
with his Mexican accent, “I luff you guys.” Ruiz was superstitious, and had struggled with
premonitions of his death in Somalia. Sizemore wasn't superstitious at all, but he'd made
a pact with his buddy, to humor him. They would both write final letters to their families
that were to be mailed only if they were killed. They had exchanged them for safekeeping.
Sizemore's was addressed to his mom and stepfather and aunt, and mostly just told them how
much he loved them. Ruiz's told his wife he loved her, and instructed his brother, Jorges,
to care for their mother and grandmother. Both wrote that if they had been killed, they
had died doing what they wanted to do. There was no need to say much more. That afternoon,
as Ruiz kitted up for the mission to the Black Sea, he had reminded Sizemore about the
letter.

“Shut up, Lo,” he told him. “You'll be back in here in a few minutes.”

But now Ruiz was out there with the rest of the guys catching hell. Sizemore didn't know
it, but his buddy had already been mortally wounded. Sizemore wondered where Ruiz was, and
how Goodale and Nelson were making out. He worried about Stebbins. Jesus, Stebby was the
guy who made coffee for them! Here he was, probably the best man with a SAW in the unit,
and the company clerk was out there fighting his battle. Sizemore was glued to the radio
outside the JOC with some other guys who had been left behind because they had gone out on
a water run shortly before the mission came up. This group had their Humvees parked in a
semicircle outside the big open front doors to the hangar, ready to roll if needed.

Listening to the sounds on the radio had a different effect on Specialist Steve Anderson.
It scared him. Anderson had wanted to be a soldier so bad that he had lied about having
severe asthma when he joined. He carried his inhaler with him everywhere. On the first day
of basic training they were all warned sternly that any drugs were contraband and if
caught with any they were in deep, dark shit. A box was passed around the barracks and
they were told they had one last chance, an amnesty, to chuck anything they weren't
supposed to have. Anderson panicked and threw in his inhaler, and then suffered such a
terrible asthma attack three or four days later that he had to confess and was shipped out
to a hospital. The next day the drill sergeant told Sizemore and the rest of the guys in
the platoon that Anderson had died.

A month later, at airborne school, Sizemore spotted this tall, skinny ghost doing KP
duty, walked over, and rubbed his eyes for a better look. Anderson had not only survived
the asthma attack, somebody in the chain of command had admired his determination enough
to let him stay in and keep his inhaler.

But now, faced with the prospect of such pitched battle, Anderson was infected by the
panic on the radio. Everybody was talking twice as much as usual, as if they needed to
stay in touch, as if the radio was a net to prevent their free fall. Anderson didn't show
it but he was quaking. His stomach churned and he was in a cold sweat. Do I have to go out
there? Until this mission, nobody had gotten seriously hurt. The missions were a gas. When
the megaphone sounded; “Get it on!” he had always felt, cool, action. Just like all the
other guys. Not now.

The horror hit home when Sergeant Struecker's three-Humvee convoy had raced in, all shot
up, and the docs lifted out the broken body of Private Blackburn, the Ranger who had
fallen from the helicopter to the street. Specialist Brad Thomas emerged from one of the
Humvees with red eyes. He saw Anderson and choked out. “Pilla's dead.” Thomas was crying
and Anderson felt himself start to cry. The fear was palpable. Anderson was glad to be
someplace safe. He was ashamed of himself, but that's how he felt.

He wasn't alone. Moments after they unloaded Pilla and Blackburn, they got orders to go
back out. A second Black Hawk, Durant's, had crashed and was in danger of being overrun.
Over the radio they learned that Casey Joyce, another of their buddies, was dead. Mace and
the SEALS who had helped bring Blackburn back were already rearmed and ready. Anderson saw
no hesitation whatsoever with these guys. But the younger Rangers, to a man, seemed shaken.

Brad Thomas couldn't believe it. He had been on the beach with Joyce and Pilla when they
were called for this mission. Within the Ranger company, Thomas, Joyce, Pilla, Nelson, and
a few other guys hung together. They were a few years older and had had a little more
experience. Joyce and Thomas were both married. Thomas had gone to college for a few
years, studying classical guitar, before enlisting. They were less boisterous and, when it
came to taking risks, still willing but less eager.

Thomas had seen his friend Pilla killed, and had felt through the rest of that insane
ride back to the base that he wasn't going to make it. When they arrived he had felt an
enormous sense of relief. He figured the mission was over. Things had gone completely to
shit and the rest of the guys would be rolling back in any minute. Emotionally, for him,
the fight was done.

So when Struecker approached and instructed the men to start rearming, they were going
back out, Thomas was incredulous.

How could they go back out into that? They'd barely escaped with their lives. The whole
fucking city was trying to kill them!

Struecker felt his own heart sink. His vehicles were all shot up. The rear of his Humvee
was splattered with Pilla's blood and brains. When the body was pulled out it didn't even
look like Pilla anymore. The top of his head was gone and his face was grotesquely swollen
and disfigured. Struecker's men were freaking out.

Mace, the grim Delta warrior, pulled Struecker aside.

“Look, Sergeant, you need to clean your vehicle up. If you don't, your guys are going to
get more messed up.”

So Struecker strode over to his squad.

“Listen, men. You don't have to do this if you don't want to. I'll do it myself if I have
to. But we have to clean this thing up right now because we're fixin' to roll right back
out. Everybody else go re-supply. Go get yourselves some more ammunition.”

Struecker asked his .50 gunner, “Will you help me clean up? You don't have to.”

Together they set off for buckets of water, and working with sponges, they soaked up the
blood and brain and scraped it from the interior.

Sizemore saw all this and it made him wild with anger.

“I'm going out there with you guys,” he said.

“You can't, you're hurt,” said Sergeant Raleigh Cash, who had been in charge of the squad
that had gone on the water run.

Sizemore didn't argue. He was wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt and his own gear had been
packed away for the flight home tomorrow, so he ran into the hangar, pulled on his pants
and shirt, and grabbed any stray gear he could find. He found a flak vest that was three
sizes too big for him and a helmet that lolled around on his head like a salad bowl. He
grabbed his SAW and stuffed ammo in his pockets and pouches and came running back out to
the convoy with his boots unlaced and his shirt unbuttoned and just climbed into Cash's
Humvee.

“I'm going out,” he told Cash.

“You can't go out there with that cast on your elbow”

“Then I'll lose it.”

Sizemore ran back into the hangar and found a pair of scissors. He cut straight up the
inside seam of the cast and then flung it away. Then he came back and resumed his place on
the vehicle.

Cash just shook his head.

Anderson admired Sizemore's eagerness and felt all the more ashamed of himself. He had
donned his own gear, as instructed, but he was mortified. He didn't know whether to feel
more ashamed of his fear or his sheeplike acceptance of the orders. When it came time to
climb in the vehicles he again followed orders, amazed at his own passivity. He would go
out into Mogadishu and risk his life but it wasn't out of passion or solidarity or
patriotism, it was because he didn't dare refuse. He showed none of this.

Not everyone was as passive. Brad Thomas pulled Struecker aside.

“Man, you know, I really don't want to go back out.”

The sergeant had been expecting this to happen, and dreading it. He knew how he felt
about driving back into the city. It was a nightmare. Thomas's words expressed how
everyone felt. How could he force those men back out into the fight, especially the men
who had just come through hell to get back to base? The sergeant knew all the men were
watching to see how he'd handle it. Struecker was a model Ranger, strong, unassuming,
obedient, tough, and strictly by-the-book. He was like the prize pupil in class. The
officers loved him, which meant at least some of the men regarded him with a slightly
jaundiced eye. Challenged like this, they expected Struecker to explode.

Instead, he pulled Thomas aside and spoke to him quietly, man to man. He tried to calm
him, but Thomas was calm. As Struecker saw it, the man had just decided he'd taken all he
could take. Thomas had just been married a few months before. He had never been one of the
chest-beaters in the regiment. It was a perfectly rational decision. He did not want to go
back out there to die. The whole city was shooting at them. How far could they get?
However steep a price the man would pay for backing down like that, and for a Ranger it
would be a steep price indeed, to Struecker it looked like Thomas had made up his mind.