Black Hawk Down (32 page)

Howe was in a good spot. There was nothing in front or behind him that would stop a
bullet, but there was a tree about twenty feet south against the west wall of the street
that blocked any view of him from that direction. The bigger tree across the alley where
Nelson, Twombly, and the others were positioned blocked any view of him from the north. So
the broad-beamed Delta sergeant could kneel about five feet off the wall and pick off
targets to the north with impunity. It was like that in battle. Some spots were safer than
others. Up the hill, Hooten had watched Howe and his team move across the intersection
while he was lying with his face pressed in the dirt, with rounds popping all around him.
How can they be doing that? he'd thought. By an accident of visual angles, one person
could stand and fight without difficulty, while just a few feet away fire could be so
withering that there was nothing to do but dive for cover and stay hidden. Howe recognized
he'd found such a safety zone. He shot methodically, saving his ammunition.

When he saw Perino, Smith, and Elliot creeping down to a similar position on the other
side of the street, he figured they were trying to do what he was doing. Except, on that
side of the street there were no trees to provide concealment.

He shouted across at them impatiently, but in the din he wasn't heard.

3

Perino and his men had moved down to a small tin shed, a porch really, that protruded from
the irregular gray stone wall. They were only about ten yards from the alley where Super
Six One lay. A West Point graduate, class of 1990, Perino at twenty-four wasn't much older
than the Rangers he commanded. His group had gotten out ahead of Captain Steele and most
of the Ranger force. They had pushed across the last intersection to the crash site after
Goodale had been hit. They had cleared the first courtyard they passed on that block, and
Perino had then led several of the men back out in the street to press on down Marehan
Road. He knew they were close to linking up with Lieutenant DiTomasso and the CSAR team,
which had been their destination when they started this move. The shed was just a few
steps downhill from the courtyard doorway.

Sergeant Elliot was already on the other side of the shed. Corporal Smith was crouched
behind it and Perino was just a few feet behind Smith. They were taking so much fire it
was confusing. Rounds seemed to be coming from everywhere. Stone chips sprayed from the
wall over Perino's head and rattled down on his helmet. He saw a Somali with a gun on the
opposite side of the street, about twenty yards north of Nelson's position, blocked from
those guys' view by the tree they were hiding behind. Perino saw the muzzle flash and
could tell this was where some of the incoming rounds originated. It would be hard to hit
the guy with a rifle shot, but Smith had a grenade launcher on his M-16 and might be able
to drop a 203 round near enough to hurt the guy. He moved up to tap Smith on the
shoulder-there was too much noise to communicate other than face-to-face-when bullets
began popping loudly through the shed.

The lieutenant was on one knee and a round spat up dirt between his legs.

Across the street, Nelson saw Smith get hit. The burly corporal had moved down the street
fast and had taken a knee to begin shooting. Most of the men at that corner heard the
round hit him, a hard, ugly slap. Smith seemed just startled at first. He rolled to his
side and, like he was commenting about someone else, remarked with surprise, “I'm hit!”

From where Nelson was, it didn't look like Smith was hurt that badly. Perino helped move
him against the wall. Now Smith was screaming, “I'm hit! I'm hit!”

The lieutenant could tell by the sound of Smith's voice that he was in pain. When Goodale
had been hit he seemed to feel almost nothing, but the wound to Smith was different. He
was writhing. He was in a very bad way. Perino pressed a field dressing onto the wound but
blood spurted out forcefully around it.

“I've got a bleeder here!” Perino shouted across the street.

Delta medic Sergeant Kurt Schmid dashed toward them across Marehan Road. Together, they
dragged Smith back into the courtyard.

Schmid tore off Smith's pants leg. When he removed the battle dressing, bright red blood
projected out of the wound in a long pulsing spurt. This was bad.

The young soldier told Perino, “Man, this really hurts.” The lieutenant went back out to
the street and crept back up to Elliot.

“Where's Smith?” Elliot asked.

“He's down.”

“Shit,” said Elliot.

They saw Sergeant Ken Boorn get hit in the foot. Then Private Rodriguez rolled away from
his machine gun, bleeding, screaming, and holding his crotch. He felt no pain; but when he
had placed his hand on the wound his genitals felt like mush and blood spurted thickly
between his fingers. He screamed in alarm. Eight of the eleven Rangers in Perino's Chalk
One had now been hit.

At the north end of the same block there was a huge explosion and in it Stebbins went
down. Nelson saw it from up close. An RPO had streaked into the wall of the house across
the alley from him, over near where Stebbins and Heard were positioned. The grenade went
off with a brilliant red flash and tore out a chunk of the wall about four feet long. The
concussion in the narrow alley was huge. It hurt his ears. There was a big cloud of dust.
He saw-and Perino and Elliot saw from across the street-both Stebbins and Heard flat on
their backs. They're fucked up, Nelson thought. But Stebbins stirred and then slowly stood
up, covered from head to foot in white dust, coughing, rubbing his eyes.

“Get down, Stebbins”' shouted Heard. So he was okay, too.

Bullets were hitting around Perino and Elliot with increasing frequency. Rounds would
come in long bursts, snapping between them, over their heads, nicking the tin shed with a
high-pitched ring and popping right through the metal. Rounds were kicking up dirt all
over their side of the street. It was a bad position, just as Howe had foreseen.

“Uh, sir, I think that it would be a pretty good idea if we got into that courtyard,”
said Elliot.

“Do you really think so?” Perino asked.

Elliot grabbed his arm and they both dove for the courtyard where Schmid was working
frantically to save Smith.

Corporal Smith was alert and terrified and in sharp pain. The medic had first tried
applying direct pressure on the wound, which had proved excruciatingly painful and
obviously ineffective. Bright red blood continued to gush from the hole in Smith's leg.
The medic tried jamming Curlex into the hole. Then he checked Smith over.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” he asked.

“I don't know.”

Schmid checked for an exit wound, and found none.

The medic was thirty-one. He'd grown up an army brat, vowing never to join the military,
and ended up enlisting a year after graduating from high school. He'd gone into Special
Forces and elected to become a medic because he figured it would give him good employment
opportunity when he left the army. He was good at it, and his training kept progressing.
By now he'd been schooled as thoroughly as any physician's assistant, and better than
some. As part of his training he'd worked in the emergency room of a hospital in San
Diego, and had even done some minor surgery under a physician's guidance. He certainly had
enough training to know that Jamie Smith was in trouble if he couldn't stop the bleeding,

He could deduce the path the bullet had taken. It had entered Smith's thigh and traveled
up into his pelvis. A gunshot wound to the pelvis is one of the worst. The aorta splits
low in the abdomen, forming the left and right iliac arteries. As the iliac artery emerges
from the pelvis it branches into the exterior and deep femoral arteries, the primary
avenues for blood to the lower half of the body. The bullet had clearly pierced one of the
femoral vessels. Schmid applied direct pressure to Smith's abdomen, right above the pelvis
where the artery splits. He explained what he was doing. He'd already run two IVs into
Smith's arm, using 14-gauge, large-bore needles, and was literally squeezing the plastic
bag to push replacement fluid into him. Smith's blood formed an oily pool that shone dully
on the dirt floor of the courtyard.

The medic took comfort in the assumption that help would arrive shortly. Another
treatment tactic, a very risky one, would be to begin directly transfusing Smith. Blood
transfusions were rarely done on the battlefield. It was a tricky business. The medics
carried IV fluids with them but not blood. If he wanted to transfuse Smith, he'd have to
find someone with the same blood type and attempt a direct transfusion. This was likely to
create more problems. He could begin reacting badly to the transfusion. Schmid decided not
to attempt it. The rescue convoy was supposed to be arriving shortly. What this Ranger
needed was a doctor, pronto.

-Perino radioed Captain Steele. “We can't go any farther, sir. We have more wounded than
I can carry.”

“You've got to push on,” Steele told him.

“We CANNOT go farther,” Perino said. “Request permission to occupy a building.”

Steele told Perino to keep trying. Actually, inside the courtyard they were only about
fifty feet from Lieutenant DiTomasso and the CSAR force, but Perino had no way of knowing
that. He tried to reach DiTomasso on his radio.

“Tom, where are you?”

DiTomasso tried to explain their position, pointing out landmarks.

“I can't see,” said Perino. “I'm in a courtyard.”

DiTomasso popped a red smoke grenade, and Perino saw the red plume drifting up in the
darkening sky. He guessed from the drift of the plume that they were about fifty yards
apart, which in this killing zone was a great distance. On the radio, Steele kept pushing
him to link up with DiTomasso.

“They need your help,” he said.

“Look sir. I've got three guys left, counting myself. How can I help him?”

Finally, Steele relented.

“Roger, strongpoint the building and defend it.”

Schmid was still working frantically on Smith's wound. He'd asked Perino to help him by
applying pressure just over the wound so he could use his hands. Perino pushed two fingers
directly into the wound up to his knuckles. Smith screamed and blood shot out at the
lieutenant, who swallowed hard and applied more pressure. He felt dizzy. The spurts of
blood continued.

“Oh, shit! Oh, shit! I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die!” Smith shouted. He knew he had an
arterial bleed.

The medic talked to him, tried to calm him down. The only way to stop the bleeding was to
find the severed femoral artery and clamp it. Otherwise it was like trying to stanch a
fire hose by pushing down on it through a mattress.

He told Smith to lean back.

“This is going to be very painful,” Schmid told the Ranger apologetically. "I'm' going to
have to cause you more pain, but I have to do this to help you.

“Give me some morphine for the pain!” Smith demanded. He was still very alert and engaged.

“I can't,” Schmid told him. In this state, morphine could kill him. After losing so much
blood his pressure was precariously low. Morphine would further lower his heart rate and
slow his respiration, exactly what he did not need.

The young Ranger bellowed as the medic reached with both hands and tore open the entrance
wound. Schmid tried to shut out the fact that there were live nerve endings beneath his
fingers. It was hard. He had formed an emotional bond with Smith. They were in this
together. But to save the young Ranger, he had to treat him like an inanimate object, a
machine that was broken and needed fixing. He continued to root for the artery. If he
failed to find it, Smith would probably die. He picked through the open upper thigh,
reaching up to his pelvis, parting layers of skin, fat, muscle, and vessel, probing
through pools of bright red blood. He couldn't find it. Once severed, the upper end of the
artery had evidently retracted up into Smith's abdomen. The medic stopped. Smith was
lapsing into shock. The only recourse now would be to cut into the abdomen and hunt for
the severed artery and clamp it. But that would mean still more pain and blood loss. Every
time he reached into the wound Smith lost more blood. Schmid and Perino were covered with
it. Blood was everywhere. It was hard to believe Smith had any more to lose.

“It hurts really bad,” he kept saying. “It really hurts.”

In time his words and movements came slowly, labored. He was in shock.

Schmid was beside himself. He had squeezed six liters of fluid into the younger Ranger
and was running out of bags. He had tried everything and was feeling desperate and
frustrated and angry. He had to leave the room. He got one of the other men to continue
applying pressure on the wound and walked out to confer with Perino. Both men were covered
with Smith's blood.

“If I don't get him out of here right now, he's gonna die,” Schmid pleaded.

The lieutenant radioed Steele again.

“Sir, we need a medevac. A Little Bird or something. For Corporal Smith. We need to
extract him now.”

Steele relayed this on the command net. It was tough to get through. It was nearly five
o'clock and growing dark.

All of the vehicles had turned back to the air base. Steele learned that there would be
no relief for some time. Putting another bird down in their neighborhood was out of the
question.

The captain radioed Perino back and told him, for the time being, that Smith would just
have to hang on.

4

Stebbins shook with fear. Having his friends around him kept him going, but that was about
all that did. You could be prepared for the sights and sounds and smells of war, but the
horror of it, the blood and gore and heart-rending screams of pain, the sense of death
perched right on your shoulder, breathing in your ear, there was no preparation for that.
Things felt balanced and on edge, threatening at any moment to spin out of control. Was
this what he had wanted so badly? An old platoon sergeant had told him once, “When war
starts, a soldier wants like hell to be there, but once he's there, he wants like hell to
come home.”