Black Hawk Down (6 page)

They operated strictly in secret. The army would not oven speak the word “Delta.” If you
had to refer to them, they were “operators,” or “The Dreaded D.” The Rangers, who
worshiped them, called them D-boys. Secrecy, or at least the show of it, was central to
their purpose. It allowed the dreamers and the politicians to have it both ways. They
could stay on the high road while the dirty work happened offstage. If some Third World
terrorist or Colombian drug lord needed to die, and then suddenly just turned up dead,
why, what a happy coincidence! The dark soldiers would melt back into shadow. If you asked
them about how they made it happen, they wouldn't tell. They didn't even exist see? They
were noble, silent, and invisible. They did America's most important work, yet shunned
recognition, fame, and fortune. They were modern knights and true.

Howe did little to disguise his scorn for lower orders of soldiering which pretty much
included the whole regular U.S. Army. He and the rest of the operators lived like
civilians, and that's what they told you they were if you asked-although spotting them
down at Fort Bragg wasn't hard. You'd meet this guy hanging out at a bar around Bragg,
deeply tanned, biceps rippling, neck wide as a fireplug, with a giant Casio watch and a
plug of chew under his lip and he'd tell you he worked as a computer programmer for some
army contract agency. They called each other by their nicknames and eschewed salutes and
all the other traditional trappings of military life. Officers and noncoms in Delta
treated each other as equals. Disdain for normal displays of army status was the unit's
signature. They simply transcended rank. They wore their hair longer, than army regs. They
needed to pose as civilians on some missions and it was easier to do that it they had
normal haircuts, but it was also a point of pride with them, one of their perks. A cartoon
drawn by a unit wit showed the typical D-boy dressed for battle with his hip holster
stuffed, not with a gun, but a hair dryer. Every year they were obliged to pose for an
official army portrait, and for it they had to get Ranger-style haircuts. They hated it.
They'd had to sit for buzzes before this trip to better blend in with the Hoo-as, and the
haircuts had just made them stick out even more; the sides and back of their beads were as
white as frog bellies. They were allowed a degree of personal freedom and initiative
unheard of in the military, particularly in battle. The price they paid for all this, of
course, was that they lived with danger and were expected to do what normal soldiers could
not.

Howe wasn't impressed with a lot of things about the regular army. He and others in his
unit had complained to Captain Steele, the Ranger commander, about his men's readiness.
They hadn't gotten anywhere. Steele had his own way of doing things, and that was the
traditional army way. Howe found the spit and-polish captain, a massive former University
of Georgia football lineman, to be an arrogant and incompetent buffoon. Howe had been
through Ranger school and earned the tab himself, but had skipped straight over the
Rangers when he qualified for Delta. He disdained the Rangers in part because he believed
hard, realistic, stair-stepped training made good soldiers, not the bullshit macho
attitude epitomized by the whole Hoo-ah esprit. Out of the 120 men who tried out for Delta
in his class, (These were 120 highly motivated, exceptional soldiers), only 13 had made it
through selection and training. Howe had the massive frame of a serious bodybuilder, and a
fine, if impatient, analytical mind. Many of the Rangers found him scary. His contempt for
their ways colored relationships between the two units in the hangar.

Now Howe's misgivings about the younger support troops were confirmed. They were shooting
at their own men! Howe and his team left the room with the mattress and then moved out to
clear the flat roof over the front of the house. It was enclosed by a three-foot concrete
wall with decorative vertical slats. As the Delta team fanned out into sunlight, they saw
the small orange fireball of an AK-47 erupt from a rooftop one block north. Two of Howe's
team returned fire as they ducked behind the low wall for cover.

Then another burst of machine-gun rounds erupted. There were inch-wide slits in the
perimeter wall. Howe and his men crouched and prayed a round didn't pass through an
opening or ricochet back off the outside of the house. There were several long bursts.
They could tell by the sound and impact of the rounds that the shots were being fired by
an M-249, or SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon), this tune from the northeast Ranger blocking
position. The Rangers were under fire, they were overeager and scared, and so when they
saw men with weapons, they fired. Howe was furious.

He radioed Captain Scott Miller; the Delta ground commander down in the courtyard. He
told him to get Steele on the radio immediately and tell him to stop his men from shooting
at their own people!

-6-

Specialist John Stebbins ran as soon as his feet hit the ground. Just before boarding the
helicopter Captain Steele had tapped him on the shoulder.

“Stebbins, you know the rules of engagement?”

“Yeah, roger, sir. I know 'em.”

“Okay. I want you to know I'm going to be on the fast rope right after you, so you better
keep moving.”

The prospect of the broad-beamed commander fully laden with battle gear bearing down on
his helmet had haunted Stebbins the whole flight in. After roping down, he scrambled so
fast from the bottom of the rope that he collided with Chalk One's M-60 gunner, and they
both fell down. Stebbins lay there for a moment, waiting for the dust to clear, and then
spotted the rest of his team up against a wall to his right.

He was scared, but thrilled. He couldn't shake the feeling that this was all too good to
be true. Here he was, an old timer in the Ranger company at age twenty-eight, having spent
the last four years of his life trying to get late combat, to do something interesting or
important, and now, somehow, through an incredible chain of pleading, wheedling, and
freakish breaks, he was actually in combat--him, stubby Johnny Stebbins, the company's
chief coffee maker and training room paper-pusher, at war!

His trip to this Mogadishu back alley had started in a bagel shop at home in Ithaca, New
York. Stebbins was a short, stocky kid with pale blue eyes and blond hair and skin so
white and freckly it never turned even the faintest shade darker in the sun. Here in Mog
it had just burned bright pink. He had gone to Saint Bonaventure University, majoring in
communications and hoping to work as a radio journalist, which he had in fact done for
minimum wages at a few mom-and-pop stations in upstate New York. When the bagel shop
offered to make him head baker, the hourly wage was enough to chuck his infant
broadcasting career. So he made bagels and dreamed of adventure. Those “Be All You Can Be”
commercials that came on during football games spoke straight to his soul. Stebbins had
gone to college on an ROTC scholarship, but the army was so flooded with second
lieutenants when he got out that he couldn't get assigned to active duty. When Desert
Storm blew up in 1990, as his luck would have it, his National Guard contract was up. He
started looking for a way out of the kitchen and into the fire. He put his name on three
volunteer lists for Gulf service and never even got a response. Then he got married, and
his wife had a baby, and suddenly the hourly wage at the bagel shop no longer covered
expenses. What he needed was a medical plan. That, and some action. The army offered both.
So he enlisted as a private.

“What do you want to do in the army?” the recruiter asked him.

Stebbins told him, “I want to jump out of airplanes, shoot a lot of ammo, and shop at the
PX.”

They put him through basic training again. He'd done it once in the ROTC program. Then he
had to do RIP (the Ranger Indoctrination Program) twice because he got injured on one of
the jumps toward the end and had to be completely recycled. When he graduated he figured
he'd be nut there jumping and training and roping out of helicopters with the younger
guys, except somebody higher up noticed that his personnel form listed a college degree
and, more important, typing ability. He was routed instead to a desk in the Bravo-company
training room. Stebbins became the company clerk.

They told him it would just be for six months. He got stuck in it for two years.

He became known as a good “training room” Ranger, and fell prey to all the temptations of
office work. While the other Rangers were out climbing cliffs and jumping out of planes
and trying to break their records for forced marches through dense cover, old man Stebby
sat behind a desk chain-smoking cigarettes, eating donuts and practically inhaling coffee.
He was the company's most avid coffee drinker. The other guys would make jokes: “Oh yeah,
Specialist Stebbins; he'll throw hot coffee at the enemy.” Ha, ha. When the company got
tapped for Somalia, no one was surprised when ol' Stebby was one of those left behind at
Fort Benning.

“I want you to know it's nothing personal,” his sergeant told him, although there was no
way to disguise the implied insult. “We just can't take you. We have a limited number of
spots on the bird and we need you here.” How more clearly could he have stated that, when
it came to war, Stebbins was the least valuable Ranger in the regiment?

It was just like Desert Storm all over again. Somebody up there did not want John
Stebbins to go to war. He helped his friends pack, and when it was announced the next day
that the force had arrived in Mogadishu, he felt even more left out than he had two years
before as he watched nightly updates of the Gulf action on CNN. At least he had company.
Sergeant Scott Galentine had been left behind, too. They moped around for a few days. Then
came a fax from Somalia.

“Stebby, you better grab your stuff,” his commanding officer told him. “You're going to
war.”

Galentine got the same news. Some Rangers had received minor injuries in a mortar attack
and they needed to be replaced.

On his way to the airport Stebbins stopped by his house to say a quick good-bye to his
wife. It was the tearful scene you'd expect. Then when he got to the airport they told him
he could go home, they wouldn't be leaving until the next day. A half hour after their
emotional parting, Mr. and Mrs. Stebbins were reunited. He spent the night dreading a
phone call that would change the order.

But it didn't come. A little more than a day later, he and Galentine were standing on the
runway in Mogadishu. In honor of their arrival they were ordered to drop for fifty
push-ups, a ritual greeting upon entering a combat zone.

Stebby was thrilled. He'd made it!

There weren't enough Kevlar vests (Ranger body armor) to go around so he got one of the
big bulky black vests the D-boys wore. When he put it on he felt like a turtle. He was
warned not to go outside the fence without his weapon. His buddies briefed him on the
setup. They told him not to sweat the mortars. Sammy rarely hit anything; they had been on
five missions at that point, and they were all a piece of cake. We go in force, they told
him, we move quickly, the choppers basically blow everybody away from the scene, we let
the D-boys go in and do their thing. All we do is provide security. They told him to watch
out for Somalis who hid behind women and children. Rocks were a hazard. Stebbins was
nervous and excited.

Then he got the news. See, they were glad to have him there and all, but he wouldn't
actually be going out with the rest of the guys on missions. His job would be to stay back
at the hangar and stand guard. Maintain perimeter security. It was essential. Somebody had
to do it.

Who else?

Stebbins took out his ire on the folks trying to get past the front gate. He took the
guard job as seriously as it was possible to be taken. He was a major pain in the ass.
Every Somali got searched from head to toe, every time, in and out. He searched trucks and
trunks and cars and climbed up under vehicles and had them open their hoods. It annoyed
him that he couldn't figure out a way to search the big tanks on the back of the water
trucks. Intel had said the Skinnies were smuggling heavy weapons across the border from
Ethiopia. They were told the Ethiopians checked out all trucks. Stebbins doubted they were
checking the Water trucks. You could put a lot of RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) in the
back of one of those things.

He finagled his way onto the helicopters for the profile flights, fastening the chin
strap on his helmet tight as they zoomed low and fast over the city, cheering like kids on
a carnival ride. He figured that was about as close to action as he was going to get, and
compared to manning the coffeemaker in the training room back at Benning, it wasn't bad.

Then, this morning, just as the runner from the JOC showed up to shout, “Get it on!” one
of the squad leaders strode up with news.

“Stebbins, Specialist Sizemore has an infected elbow. He just came back from the doctor's
office. You're taking his place.”

He would be the assistant for 60-gunner Private. First Class Brian Heard. Stebbins ran
through the hangar, trading in his bulky tortoiseshell vest for a Kevlar one. He'd stuffed
extra ammo in his pouches, and gathered up some frag grenades. Watching the more
experienced guys, he discarded his canteen--they would only be out an hour or so--and
stuffed its pouch with still more M-16 magazines. He picked up a belt with three hundred
rounds of M-60 ammo, and debated trying to stuff more in his butt pack, where he kept the
goggles and the gloves he needed for sliding down the rope. He decided against that. He'd
need someplace to put them when he took them off. He was trying to think through
everything. Trying to stay calm. But damn! It was exciting.

“Talk to me, Steb. What you got? What's on your mind?” prodded Staff Sergeant Ken Boorn,
whose cot was alongside his. Boorn could see his friend was in a state. He told him to
relax. Keep it simple. His job was to secure whatever sector they asked him to point his
rifle at, and give ammo to the 60 gunners when they needed it. They probably wouldn't even
need it.