Black Hawk Down (39 page)

Floyd had a hard time climbing through carrying all that gear. Watson gave him a pull and
he landed in a space much larger than the one where Captain Steele and the others were.
Fillmore's body was laid out in the middle in the moonlight. The D-boys had flex-cuffed
the dead operator's arms down by his sides and his feet together to make him easier to
carry. Across the alley from the window they had entered was another on the wall that
divided them from the wounded next door. They smashed the shutters so they could more
easily talk back and forth.

The D-boys set infrared strobes around the new space to mark it for the helicopters.
Floyd searched the courtyard and found a full fifty-five-gallon drum under a dripping
spigot. He sniffed at it first to see if it was gasoline, then he stuck his finger in and
licked it. It was water. Kurth and the rest of the men had been sternly warned about
drinking the local water. Nothing will make you sicker quicker, the docs had said. Well,
Kurth decided, to hell with the docs. If he got sick, fine, he'd deal with that later. He
filled his canteen and swallowed just enough to wet his throat.

Then he and Sergeant Ramaglia, who was in the room across the alley, began passing
canteens back and forth on a broomstick. Ramaglia rounded up all the empties he could
find, passing the stick through the holder on the plastic cap that screwed on the top of
the canteen. One by one, Floyd filled the canteens from the big drum.

Then he and Collett sat for a long time and talked in whispers. The D-boys had all the
windows and doorways covered, so there was nothing for them to do. The moon was up,
casting soft light over Fillmore's body in the middle of the courtyard. Collett kept
checking his watch. Floyd poked around the courtyard, his pants flapping open around his
bare middle. On the ground next to his boot he found a brand-new dustcase for an M-16.

“Hey, Collett, look at this 'ere.”

They'd been told all the Sammies had were beat-up old weapons. This one still had the
packing grease on it.

Collett was feeling bored. He couldn't believe it, bored in a combat zone? How could that
happen? The whole scene was weird, too weird for belief. Nobody would ever believe this
shit back home. They listened to the gun runs overhead and to the approaching roar of
weaponry as the giant rescue convoy fought its way in.

“Hey, Floyd.”

“Yeah.”

“I've got an idea.”

“What?”

“Wanna get a Combat Jack?”

Floyd couldn't believe his ears. Collett was suggesting they both beat off. This was a
running joke with the Rangers, getting a “jack” in exotic places. Guys would brag about
getting a Thailand Jack, or an Egypt Jack, or a C-5 Jack.

They both laughed.

“Collett, you're fuckin' high, man. Yer crazier 'n hell,”

Floyd said.

“No, man. Think about it. You would definitely be the first kid on your block. How many
people can say they got one of those, huh?”

-13-

From overhead, the commanders watched the contested neighborhood through infrared and
heat-sensitive cameras that sketched the blocks in monochrome. They could see crowds of
Somalis moving around the perimeter in groups of a dozen or more, and kept hitting at them
with helicopters. Aidid's militia was trucking in fighters from other parts of the city.
The Little Birds made wall-rattling gun runs throughout the night. One of the birds shot
at a Somali carrying an RPG who must have been toting extra rounds on his back. They
placed a seventeen-pound rocket on him, which killed him and must have blown the extra
rounds, because he went up like a Roman candle. When the chopper went back to refuel they
found pieces of the man's body pancaked on their windshield.

Sergeant Goodale, lying with his wounded butt cheek off the ground, had resumed the job
of coordinating gun runs from inside Captain Steele's courtyard. He couldn't see anything
from where he sat, but be acted as a clearinghouse for all the other radio operators
calling in fire. He decided which location needed the help most and relayed it up to the
command bird.

Late in the evening he got word that two very large forces of Somalis were moving from
south to north.

For the first time, Steele felt a stab of panic. Maybe we're not going to make it out of
here. If a determined Somali force stormed the entrance to the courtyard, he and his men
would kill a lot of them but probably couldn't stop them. He moved around making sure all
of his men were awake and ready. He was kicking himself now for having let his men rope in
without carrying bayonets, another item called for in the tactical standing procedures but
which they had jettisoned to save weight. Who would have thought they'd need bayonets?
Steele poked his head in the back room where Goodale was with the rest of the wounded, and
informed him with grim humor:

“If you see somebody coming through this doorway and they're not yelling 'Ranger!
Ranger!' you go ahead and shoot 'im because we're all out here dead.”

Goodale was shocked. The quiet had lulled him into a false sense of safety. He reasoned
with himself. Okay, I might die here. I'd rather not but if I do, then that's what's
supposed to happen and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. And he thought about
what a terrible thing it was to have turned over responsibility for his life, his very
existence, to the U.S. government, and that because of it he might be breathing his last
breaths in this shithole back room, on this backstreet dirt floor in Mogadishu-fucking
Somalia. He thought about how much he'd wanted to go to war, to see combat, and then he
thought about all those great war movies and documentaries he'd seen about battles. He
knew he'd never see another of those films and feel the same way about it. People really
get killed. He found the best way to accept his predicament was to just assume he was dead
already. He was dead already. He just kept on doing his job.

One block up, Sergeant Yurek was now positioned at a window peering east down the crash
alley. It was sketched in soft shades of blue, the pale earth of the alley, the thickets
of cactus and a wall about eight feet high with a fence just beyond it, no more than two
car-lengths away. Yurek tried to sit as quietly as he could, figuring he'd hear somebody
coming in before he'd see them. Then he saw the fence shake. He brought his M-16 up to his
shoulder and drew a bead on the top of the fence as first one, and then another Sammy
lightly pulled themselves up and then squatted on the adjacent wall, evidently looking for
a place to jump down. This is getting too easy. One of the men spotted Yurek just before
the sergeant squeezed the trigger. He had just enough time to begin a shout and reach for
his weapon before Yurek's rounds blew him and the other backward off the wall. One of the
men's weapons dropped on Yurek's side. He heard a commotion on the other side and then it
was quiet again.

Looking out on the main road, Sergeant Howe still felt boxed in. He'd been stuck in a bad
position, and for the first time he began to feel like he might not make it out of here
alive.

The Somalis bad been sending three- to six-man teams down the alleys, probing their
positions, trying to figure out exactly where they were. Howe could see these men and knew
exactly what they were doing. One put his weapon around the corner and fired toward
Miller's position across the street, then waited, hoping to see muzzle flashes to guide
his shooting. When he saw none he edged around the corner. Howe decided to let him move
well down the street in front of his position before shooting him, because if he shot the
man and didn't kill him, he could return to point out Howe's position. Then they'd be a
fat target for an RPG. Just as he prepared to fire, two D-boys across the road did and
dropped the man. He did not get back up. At the same time they lit up a group of five
Somalis preparing to move around the corner. Wounded, these men dragged themselves back up
the street.

The quiet was in some ways more unnerving than the early din of battle. It was hard not to
imagine large groups of Sammies lining up just around the corners. If there was a sudden
rush from a large enough group, Howe felt, they could all be overrun. He began preparing a
checklist for himself, the steps he would take in his final flight. He was going to take
as many of them with him as was humanly possible. He still had six or seven magazines left
for his CAR-15, along with his .45 and some shotgun ammo. He would shoot his rifle until
it ran out of ammo, then the shotgun, then his pistol, and finally he would use his knife.
Hopefully he'd find an enemy weapon to pick up.

Howe called together his team and told them to hold their fire on any Somalis until they
were fully committed down the street, as he had been doing. They were all to conserve ammo
and pick their shots with care. All of the other operators would radio whenever they used
their weapons, telling each other what they shot at and where, and whether they hit where
they aimed. It helped keep track of emerging trouble spots. The night had reached a
critical juncture.

The Little Birds took care of the two large elements of approaching Somalis. Goodale
heard one of the helicopters come screaming down Marehan Road and after the rattle of its
guns and satisfying boom! of a rocket, he shouted,

“Make that one large element!”

Another gun run eliminated the second threat.

Sergeant Bray, the air force combat controller at Miller's position, asked for a gun run
on the two-story house adjacent to their courtyard. The building overlooked them and had a
separate entrance around the corner. If there were Somalis inside that house, they'd be
able to shoot right down at them. The building was adjacent to the Delta command post
courtyard and no more than twenty yards in front of Howe's position, which meant hitting
it from the air without hurting any of the Americans on the ground would take one hell of
a shot. Howe's men marked the building with lasers for the Little Bird pilot, who radioed
down to ask if they were sure they wanted his miniguns firing that close. From the air, it
was like trying to paint a thin line between two friendly positions.

“Keep your heads down,” the pilot warned.

His fire was right on the mark. Watching the miniguns tear the house apart, Howe turned
to one of his team-mates and said, “Don't try this at home!”

Some time later, two Somalis came walking down the middle of the street as though out for
a stroll. The moon was high now and lit the scene about half as bright as a cloudy
afternoon. The men were spaced about forty yards apart. Howe watched the first walk down
past his position. He tried to put his infrared cover on his gun light, and for a moment
accidentally shone the white light out the door. He watched the first man double back,
looking for where the flash had originated. Howe pulled out his .45. He didn't want to
shoot the man with his rifle, because there were D-boys in the building directly across
the street, and the bullets would likely pass right through him and on toward them. He
also knew the muzzle flash from either rifle or handgun would be clearly visible to the
second man. Howe radioed for one of his men to shoot the guy as soon as he passed out of
the perimeter. As the man moved on, one of the men across the street shot him in the right
lower back.

The man spun around with a startled look and was immediately hit by four more bullets
that knocked him flat. Howe was disgusted that it had taken so many rounds to drop the
man. The second Somali walked down the same way minutes later and was also shot dead.

By midnight the rescue convoy was getting close. The men pinned down listened to the low
rumble of nearly one hundred vehicles, tanks, APCs (armored personnel carriers), and
Humvees. The thunderclap of its guns edged ever closer. After a while, the rhythm of its
shooting sounded like an extended drum solo in a rock song, very heavy metal. It was the
wrathful approach of the United States of America, footsteps of the great god of red,
white, and blue.

It was the best fucking sound in the world.

N.S.D.Q.

1

Michael Durant heard the guns of the giant rescue convoy roaring into the city. The
injured Black Hawk pilot was flat on his back bound with a dog chain on a cool tile floor
in a small octagonal room with no windows. Air, moonlight, and sounds filtered in through
a pattern of crosses cut high in the upper third of the concrete walls. He tasted dust in
the air and he smelled of blood and gunpowder and sweat. The room had no furniture and
only one door, which was closed.

When the angry mob had closed over him, he thought he was going to die. He still did not
know the fate of the three other men on his crew, copilot Ray Frank and crew chiefs Tommy
Field and Bill Cleveland, or of the two D-boys who had tried to protect them. Durant did
not know those men's names.

He had passed out when the mob carried him off. He'd felt himself leaving his body,
watching the scene from outside himself, and at the worst of the chaos and terror it had
calmed him. But the feeling hadn't lasted. He'd come to when he was thrown into the back
of a flatbed truck with a rag tied around his head, surprised to still be alive and
expecting at any moment to die. He was driven around. The truck would go and then stop, go
and then stop. He guessed it was about three hours after the crash when they'd brought him
to this place, removed the rag, and wrapped his hands with the chain.

What Durant didn't know was that he had been taken from the first group of Somalis who
seized him. Yousef Dahir Mo'alim, the neighborhood militia leader who had spared him from
the attacking crowd after it had overwhelmed and killed the others, had intended to carry
Durant back to his village and turn him over to leaders of the Habr Gidr. As they'd left
the crash site, however, they were stopped by a better-armed band of maverick mooryan, who
had a technical with a big gun in back. This group considered the injured pilot not a war
prisoner to be swapped for captured clan leaders, but a hostage. They knew somebody would
pay money to get him back. Mo'alim's men were outnumbered and outgunned, so they'd
reluctantly given Durant up. This was the way things were in Mogadishu. If Aidid wanted
the pilot back, he would have to fight for him, or pay.