Black Hawk Down (40 page)

Durant's right leg ached where the femur was broken and he could feel the ooze of blood
inside his pants where one end of the broken bone had pushed through his skin in the
manhandling. It did not hurt that badly. He didn't know if that was good or bad. He was
still alive, so the bone had not punctured an artery. His back was what really bothered
him. He figured he'd crushed a vertebra in the crash.

He managed to work one hand free of the chain. He was sweating so his hand slid out
easily when he relaxed it. It gave him his first sense of triumph. He had fought back in
some small way. He could wipe the dirt from his nose and eyes and straighten his broken
leg somewhat and get a little more comfortable. Then he wrapped his hand back into the
chain so that he still appeared to be bound.

At one point he heard several armored vehicles roll right past outside. He heard shooting
and thought he was about to be rescued, or killed. There was a furious firefight. He heard
the low pounding of a Mark 19 automatic grenade launcher and the explosion of what sounded
like TOW missiles. He had never been at the receiving end of a barrage and he was shaken
by how powerful and frightening it was. The explosions came closer and closer. The
Skinnies holding him grew more and more agitated. They were all young men with weapons
that looked rusty and poorly maintained. He listened to them shouting at each other,
arguing. Several times one or more barged into the room to threaten him. One of the men
spoke some English. He said, “You kill Somalis. You die Somalia, Ranger.”

Durant couldn't understand the rest of their words but he gathered they would shoot him
before letting the approaching Americans take him back.

He listened to the pitched battle with hope and fear. Then the sounds marched off and
faded. He felt disappointed, despite the danger. They had been so close!

Then a gun barrel poked around the door. Just the black barrel Durant caught the motion
in the corner of his eye and turned his head just as it flamed and the room rang with a
shot. He felt the impact in his left shoulder and his left leg. Eyeing his shoulder, he
saw blood and the back end of a bullet protruding from his skin. It evidently had hit the
floor first and had ricocheted into him without enough force to fully penetrate. A bit of
shrapnel had punctured his leg.

He slid his hand from the chain and tried to wrench the bullet from his shoulder. It was
an automatic move, a reflex, but when his fingers touched it they sizzled and he winced
with pain. It was still hot. It had burned his fingertips.

He thought: Lesson learned: Wait until it cools down.

2

Word of the big fight in Mogadishu reached Washington early Sunday. General Garrison had
received a call several hours into the battle from General Wayne Downing, an old friend
who was commander in chief of U.S. Special Operations Command. Downing had come to his
office at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa after a morning jog, and had decided to ring up
his friend in Mogadishu to see how things were going. This was about two hours into the
fight. Garrison quickly summarized what had happened so far. There had been a successful
mission, two of Aidid's lieutenants and a slew of lesser lights had been captured, but two
helicopters were down, lots of lead was flying, and the boys were still in the thick of
it. Downing asked Garrison if there was anything he could do right away, and then got off
the phone. The last thing his friend needed at that moment was some desk jockey thirteen
thousand miles away looking over his shoulder.

Downing spread the word. National Security Adviser Tony Lake was given the bare outline
at the White House that morning, two Aidid lieutenants captured, two helicopters down,
rescue operation under way. Lake was more preoccupied just then with events in Moscow,
where Russian President Boris Yeltsin was fending off a right-wing coup d'etat. President
Clinton did not mention Mogadishu at a press conference that morning, which took place at
the same time Task Force Ranger was pinned down around the first crash site. Clinton and
the rest of America remained ignorant of the drama in faraway Mogadishu. After the press
conference, the president flew to San Francisco for a planned two-day speaking tour.

Garrison's move back into the city came with crushing force. If Aidid wanted to play, the
U.S. Army would play. Centered around twenty-eight Malaysian APCs and four Pakistani
tanks, the convoy numbered almost a hundred vehicles and was nearly two miles long, with
enough firepower to blaze their own roads if necessary. Lieutenant Colonel Bill David was
given responsibility for quickly assembling this force at the New Port, about two miles up
the coast from the Ranger base.

David's reaction, upon being handed this assignment, was, You've got to be kidding me.
His own men, two 10th Mountain Division rifle companies, three hundred men strong, had
amassed at the airport. David's Charlie Company, the “Tigers,” had taken some light
casualties at the K-4 circle ambush trying to get to Durant's crash site, but they were
otherwise fresh and eager to join the fight. They'd been joined by Alpha Company, under
the command of Captain Drew Meyerowich. The armor would be nice, but what was David going
to do with Malaysians and Pakistanis? He huddled with General Gile, second in command of
the 10th. They agreed that once their men linked up with the foreign troops at the New
Port, they would ask the Malaysians to take their own infantry out of the APCs and fill
them with American troops. It would be, Thank you very much, we'll take your vehicles and
drivers, but we don't need your men. David could sense how that was going to go over.

“Do these guys speak English?” he asked.

Most of the officers spoke some, Gile said, and there would be liaison officers to help
smooth the process.

David had walked out of the JOC with his head spinning. The forty-year-old career army
officer (West Point, Class of '75) from St. Louis, Missouri, had just been handed the
assignment of a lifetime. He had been in Mogadishu for two months, commanding a battalion
of peacekeepers there to back up the UN forces. He'd never been particularly happy about
the presence of Garrison's Task Force Ranger, which bad flown in and begun its own secret
missions independent of the force structure already in place. Regular army units both
admire and resent the elite special forces. The conventional divisions don't get nearly as
much money to train, or the choice assignments. Watching Task Force Ranger move into
Mogadishu and steal their thunder was not easy for the proud officers and men of the 10th,
which has its own distinguished battle history. Since the daring mission had gone bad, it
was easy to regard it as foolhardy. What were they doing in Aidid's notorious Black Sea
neighborhood in broad daylight? Where was the reserve force? Now David and his men,
sometimes scorned by the elite forces, were charged with pulling Delta's and the Rangers'
asses out of the fire.

He had to move his men, along with what was now called the “Cook Platoon”. Volunteers
combined with the remnants of the original assault forces, north to the New Port,
negotiate with the Malaysians and Pakistanis, develop a plan, and then allow for his
subordinates to disseminate it up and down the giant convoy. Then he had to steer them out
into the city and keep it all together in the dark as they battled their way to the two
crash sites.

While the commanders were working up this plan, the Rangers assigned to the rescue column
fretted and paced. Their buddies were tapped out there! Those who had already been in the
fight knew how terrible the battle had become. The uninjured had helped move their wounded
and dead buddies from the lost convoy's Humvees and trucks to the field hospital where Dr.
Marsh and his team of doctors and nurses were furiously working to save their lives. The
Rangers known to be dead were Pilla, Cavaco, and Joyce. In bad shape were Blackburn, Ruiz,
Adalberto Rodriguez, and the Delta operator Griz Martin: There were dozens more injured.
It was a ghastly scene. Even those soldiers who had not been hurt were so blood-splattered
they looked injured.

Some of the medical aides approached Sergeant Eversmann, who had commanded Chalk Four and
come out with his men on the lost convoy. Eversmann was unhurt, but most of the men on his
chalk had been hit. On the ride out, he had been sandwiched on the back of a Humvee with
the wounded, so his uniform was caked with blood. As he stood by now, helping to unload
them, two

medics grabbed him and began cutting off his pants.

“Leave me alone!” he said. “I'm okay!”

They paid him no mind. Some of the men who were really wounded protested in the same way.

“Look, I'm fine. Work on them!” he shouted, pointing to men who were waiting for
attention.

Eversmann was losing it. He'd been through a lot this day, and just the sight of all this
blood, and all those mangled men-his men!-dismayed him. It was hard to stay even. He was
venting on the nurses and medics when one, an older man, pulled him aside.

“Sergeant, what's your name?”

“Matt Eversmann.”

“Well, Matt, listen. You need to calm down.”

“Roger.”

"We are going to take care of these guys. They're going to be fine. You just need to calm
down.

“I am calm,” shouted Eversmann, who clearly was not. “I just want you to take care of
them!”

“What these guys need right now from you is to see you being a stand-up guy. Don't let
them see you being nervous because that just makes them nervous.”

Eversmann realized he was making a fool of himself.

“Okay,” he said.

He stood helplessly for a few moments, turned, and walked slowly back to the hangar. It
was hard to remove himself from the emotions of the fight. He felt himself in a kind of
aftershock. Having to identify the dead was chilling. Casey Joyce was one of his men. He'd
last seen Joyce when he ran off with the litter carrying Blackburn back to the convoy.
He'd lost track of him after that. Now he saw his face pale and stretched with the life
drained out. During the fight there hadn't been time to react to the terror or even to
recoil at what was grotesque. Now it all sank in.

It helped when Lieutenant Colonel McKnight asked him to reinforce perimeter security at
the airport. There were fears that with all the fighting, Aidid might try storming the
base. So Eversmann packed his brooding away and went to work. He still had six men from
his chalk who were able.

The stitches on Specialist Sizemore's elbow, where he had earlier cut off his cast to
join the fight, were open and bleeding, but he waved the nurses away. He didn't want to be
sidelined again. He was haunted by images of his buddies out there in the city under
siege, waiting for him. He was angry, and like many of his Ranger buddies, he wanted
revenge. He thought about Stebbins, who had taken his place on the bird, and was
infuriated that the company clerk was out there in his place. He had to get out there.

What was holding things up? Sizemore was pacing around the waiting Humvees when a D-boy
approached and asked, “Anybody here know Alphabet?”

Sizemore said he did. They walked together through the gate and past the hospital tent to
the fire station. Behind it the minibunker of sandbags built by Sergeant Rymes was now
covered by a white sheet. The sergeant lifted the sheet. Inside was Kowalewski's body with
the RPG still embedded in his torso.

“Is this Kowalewski?” the D-boy asked.

Sizemore nodded, or he thought he did. He was stunned. The D-boy asked him again.

“Is this Kowalewski?”

“Yes, that's him.”

Lanky Steve Anderson tried to motivate himself for going back out. He had gone out the
first time reluctantly. The events of the day so far had stirred up a mess of strong
feelings, but anger predominated. Until today Anderson had been as gung ho as the rest of
the guys, but now, seeing all the dead and wounded, he just felt used and stupid. His life
was being put at risk and he was being thrust into a situation where he had to shoot and
kill people in order to survive ... and it was hard to see why. How could some politicians
in Washington take men like him and put them in such a position, guys who are young,
naive, patriotic, and eager to do the right thing, and take advantage of all that for no
good reason?

He listened to one of his buddies, Private Kevin Matthews, who had been in the small
Humvee column when Pilla was killed and had gone back out with the first rescue convoy.
Matthews was going on about this guy be had killed out on the street a few hours before,
about how the man shook as five, ten, fifteen rounds slammed into him, and it sounded to
Anderson like Matthews was bragging. Except, as he listened more, he saw that the young
private was actually upset and was going on because he just needed to talk about what had
happened. Matthews was trembling. He wanted to be reassured that he had done the right
thing.

“What else could you do?” Anderson said.

Anderson had just talked to his parents the night before back in Illinois, and he'd told
them everything was okay, nothing was happening, and probably nothing would. And now, this.

An effort was launched to identify men who could drive the five-ton trucks wearing NODs.
The night vision goggles blocked all peripheral vision and sharply foreshortened the view.
It took time to get used to driving with them. Specialist Peter Squeglia, the company
armorer, had some experience riding a motorcycle wearing NODS, so one of the lieutenants
asked him to take a truck.

“Sir, if you're telling me to drive it, I'll drive it. But I've never driven a truck
before.”

The idea of grinding gears and stalling out in the middle of a gunfight, where one
stalled vehicle can hold up an entire column, or, worse, get left behind, terrified
Squeglia. The lieutenant made a face, and walked off to find someone else. Squeglia went
back to collecting weapons off the dead and wounded. Later he would clean and repair them.
For now he just piled them next to his cot, a heap of blood-smeared steel. The
lieutenant's expression left Squeglia feeling deflated and guilty. Everybody was scared.
Some guys were frantic to join the fight while others were looking for a way to avoid
going out. Squeglia was somewhere in the middle. After what he had seen of the lost
convoy, part of him felt like going out into that city was like committing suicide. It was
crazy, but they had to do it. They wore going to load Rangers on the back of flatbed
trucks lined with sandbags that weren't going to stop a damn thing, and roll them out into
the streets where every one of these skinny Somali motherfuckers was trying to kill them,
and for what? At least the Malaysians had armored vehicles. Squeglia was going to go. He
was going to do his part, but he wasn't going to do anything foolish, like decide to learn
how to drive a big truck in the middle of a firefight.