Black Hawk Down (8 page)

“I can't get to that guy through those people.”

So Nelson threw a flashbang, and the group fled so fast the man left his gun in the dirt.

Several grenades plopped into the alley. They were of the old Soviet style, which looked
like soup cans on a wooden stick. Some didn't explode, but one or two did. The blasts were
far enough away that none of the Rangers was hit. Nelson screamed to DiTomasso and pointed
at the brick wall on the east side of the road.

He watched the lieutenant and three other Rangers cross over to a half-open gate, which
opened on a parking lot. DiTomasso lobbed a grenade into the space, and, then he and the
other Rangers burst in. They found and took prisoner four Somalis who had been standing on
car roofs shooting down over the top of the wall.

The fire was not yet intense, but Sergeant Yurek was amazed at it. At twenty-six, Yurek
was a crusty veteran with a grim sense of humor and a big soft spot for animals,
especially cats. He had a small pride of cats back home in Georgia, and had adopted a
litter of kittens he'd found in the hangar here in Mog. When the D-boys complained about
the kittens crying and meowing through the night, and threatened to silence them, Yurek
had taken a stand. Nobody touched the kittens without going through him.

He didn't like the idea of shooting anything or anybody, but accepted the necessity of
it. When people were shooting at him, then it became necessary. So far in Mog, the
Skinnies would just fire off a wild burst and then run away, which suited Yurek fine. But
this shooting today, right from the start, was more stubborn. It was also picking up.
Yurek figured this target must really house some high-priority people. Maybe Aidid
himself. Chalk Two was shooting in three directions at once, west, east, and especially
north. Yurek had picked off a man who had been firing from a low tower to the northeast.
Then one of the squad's medics shouted from across the street, pointing to a flimsy tin
shed just east of their perimeter at the intersection.

“Hey, we've got people in the shed!”

Which was very bad news. Yurek sprinted across the street, and, with the medic, plunged
into the front door.

He just about trampled a huddled crowd of terrified children and a woman who was
evidently their teacher.

“Everyone down!” Yurek shouted, his weapon still up and ready.

The children began to wail with fright, and Yurek quickly realized he needed to throttle
things down a notch. Tiger in the kitten den.

“Settle down,” he pleaded. “Settle down!”

But the wailing continued. So, slowly and carefully, Yurek bent over and placed his
weapon on the ground. He motioned for the teacher to approach him. He guessed she was
about sixteen years old.

“Lay down,” he told her, speaking evenly. “Lay down,” gesturing with his hands.

The young woman was hesitant, but she did as told.

Yurek pointed to the children now, gesturing for them to do the same. They did. Yurek
picked up his weapon and spoke to the teacher, enunciating every word in the way people
will when vainly trying to communicate through a language barrier.

“Now, you need to stay here. No matter what you see or hear, stay here.”

She shook her head, and Yurek hoped that meant yes. As he left, Yurek told the medic to
stay by the door to the shed and make sure nobody else decided, to check it out and enter
blasting.

From his position behind the car, peering down one of the streets at their intersection,
Nelson saw a man with a weapon ride out into the road on a cow. There were about eight
other men around the cow, some with weapons, some without. It was the strangest battle
party he'd ever seen. He didn't know whether to laugh or shoot at it. He and the rest of
the Rangers at once started shooting. The man on the cow fell off, and the others ran. The
cow just stood there.

And at that moment, a Black Hawk slid overhead and opened fire with a minigun. The cow
literally came apart. Great chunks of flesh flew up in splashes of blood. When the
miniguns stopped and the chopper's shadow passed, what had been the cow lay in steaming
pieces on the road.

As horrific as that was, the presence of those guns overhead was deeply reassuring to all
the men in the streets. Here they were in a strange and hostile city with people trying to
kill them, riding at them on animals with automatic weapons, massing from all directions,
bullets snapping past their ears, sights of horror and the smell of blood and burned flesh
mingled with the odor of dust and dung.. . and the calm approach of a big Black Hawk with
the rhythmic beat of its rotors and the terrible power of its guns was a reminder of the
invincible force behind them, a reminder of their imminent release, of home.

Somalis continued to mass to the north. In the distance it looked like thousands; smaller
groups would probe south toward Chalk Two's position. One group moved down to just a block
and a half away. Maybe fifteen people. Nelson tried to direct his machine gun only at
those with weapons, but there were so many people, and those with guns kept stepping from
the crowd to take shots, so that he knew he either had to just let the gunmen shoot or lay
into the crowd. After a few moments of debate, he chose the latter. That group dispersed,
leaving bodies on the street, and another larger one appeared. They seemed to be coming
now in swarms from the north, as though chased from somewhere else. They were closing in,
just forty or fifty feet up the road, some of them shooting. This time Nelson didn't have
time to weigh alternatives. He cut loose with the 60 and his rounds tore through the crowd
like a scythe. A Little Bird swooped in and threw a flawing wall of lead at it. Those who
didn't fall, fled. One minute there was a crowd, the next minute it was just a bleeding
heap of dead

and injured.

“Goddamn, Nelson!” said Waddell. “Goddamn!”

-8-

At the front door of the target house, Staff Sergeant Jeff Bray, an air force CCT (Combat
Control Technician), shot a Somali man who came running at him wildly firing an AK-47.
Bray was part of a four-man air force special operations unit made up of experts at
coordinating ground/air communications, like himself, and parajumpers (PJs), daredevil
medics who specialized in rescuing downed pilots. The other CCT in the unit, Sergeant Dan
Schilling, was with the ground convoy. The two PJs were aboard the CSAR Black Hawk, along
with about a dozen Rangers and D-boys. Bray was assigned to the Delta command element that
had roped in from a Black Hawk about a block west of the target house. The man he shot had
just come blazing , straight at him from up an alley. What was he thinking? How could
anybody be such a bad shot?

Behind Bray in the target house, the Delta assaulters were assembling the Somali
prisoners. They were laid out prone in the courtyard and were being flex-cuffed. In
addition to the two primary targets, in the group was Abdi Yusef Herse, an Aidid
lieutenant. It was an even better haul than they had hoped for. Checking out other rooms
in the house, Sergeant Paul Howe pumped a shotgun blast into a computer on the first
floor. Sergeant Matt Rierson, whose men had taken the prisoners, would be responsible for
moving them out to the vehicles. Howe, Sergeant Norm Hooten, and their teams went back up
to the second floor to help provide cover from the windows and roof.

Back at the JOC, watching images from the aerial cameras, General Garrison and his staff
knew the D-boys' work was done when they saw Howe's team move back out on the roof. Other
than the Ranger who had fallen, things had gone like clockwork. The Rangers were holding
their own at the blocking positions. It was

3:50 P.M. The whole force would be on their way back inside of ten minutes.

-9-

After the helicopters had lifted off from the Ranger compound, Sergeant Jeff Struecker had
waited several minutes in his Humvee with the rest of the ground convoy, engines idling
just inside the main gate. His was the lead in a column of twelve vehicles, nine Humvees
and three five-ton trucks. They were to drive to a point behind the Olympic Hotel and wait
for the D-boys to wrap things up in the target house.

Struecker, a born-again Christian from Fort Dodge, Iowa, had more experience with the
city than most of the guys. His vehicle platoon had gone on water runs and other details
daily. He had been in on the invasion of Panama, so he thought he'd seen the Third World.
But nothing prepared him for Somalia. Garbage was strewn everywhere. They burned it on the
streets, that and tires. They were always burning tires. It was just one of the mysterious
things they did. They also burned animal dung for fuel. It made for a potent olfactory
stew. The people here, it seemed to Struecker, just lounged, doing nothing, watching the
world go by outside their shabby round rag huts and tin shacks, women with gold teeth
dressed in brightly colored robes, old men wearing loose cotton skirts and worn plastic
sandals. Those dressed in Western clothes wore items that looked like Salvation Army
handouts from the disco era. When the Rangers stopped and searched the men they'd usually
find a thick wad of khat stuffed in their back pockets. When they grinned their teeth were
stained black or orange from chewing the weed. It made them look savage, or deranged. To
Struecker it was disgusting. It seemed like such a purposeless existence. The abject
poverty was shocking.

There were places in the city where charitable organizations handed out food daily, and
the Rangers had been warned not to drive near those places during business hours.
Struecker had come close enough to see why. There were not just thousands but tens of
thousands of people, throngs who would mob those feeding stations, waiting for handouts.
These were not people who looked like they were starving. Some of the Somalis fished, but
most had apparently forgotten how to work. Most seemed friendly. Women and children would
approach the Rangers' vehicles with smiles and their hands out, but in some parts of town
the men would shake their fists at them. A lot of the guys would throw an MRE (Meal Ready
to Eat) to kids. They all felt sorry for the kids. For the adults they felt contempt.

It was hard to imagine what interest the United States of America had in such a place.
But Struecker was just twenty-four, and he was a soldier, so it wasn't his place to
question such things. His job today was to roll up in force on Hawlwadig Road, load up
prisoners and the assault and blocking forces, and bring them back out. Directly behind
him was the second Humvee of his team, driven by Sergeant Danny Mitchell. Behind that was
a cargo Humvee manned by D-boys and SEALs, who would proceed straight to the target
building to reinforce the assault team already there. Behind the SEAL vehicle was another
Humvee, three trucks, and then five more Humvees, including one carrying Lieutenant
Colonel Danny McKnight, who was commanding the convoy. In the front seat of the Humvee
with Struecker was driver Private First Class Jeremy Kerr. In back were machine gunner
Sergeant Dominick Pilla, a company favorite; Private First Class Brad Paulson, who was
manning the .50-caliber machine gun up in the turret; and Specialist Tim Moynihan, an
assistant gunner.

Dom Pilla was a big, powerful kid from New Jersey-he had that Joy-zee accent-who used his
hands a lot when he talked and was just born funny. He loved practical jokes. He had
bought these tiny charges that he stuck in guys' cigarettes that would explode halfway
through a smoke with a startling pop! Pilla would just crack up. Some people who tried
that kind of thing were annoying, but not Pilla. People laughed with Pilla. The most
famous outlet for his comedic gifts were the little skits he and Nelson put on, poking fun
at their commanding officers. The skits had become such a big hit that Nelson and Pilla
found themselves pressed into repeat performances on just about every development. One of
the running favorites was their spoof of “Coach” Steele.

Like any tough commanding officer, Steele had a complex relationship with his men. They
respected him, but sometimes he annoyed the hell out of them. Steele had been a blocker,
an offensive guard, on a national championship Georgia Bulldog team under Coach Vince
Dooley in 1980. Football had been the shaping experience in the thirty-two-year-old
officer's life. Some of the guys were bugged by his outspoken Christian fervor and
fondness for the football metaphor. He'd call the big guys in his platoon his “defensive
tackles,” and the little skinny guys were his “wide receivers” or “running backs.” He was
fond of huddling up the guys and having them all put their hands to the center for a
bonding cheer, and would quote from the pregame speeches of great NFL coaches. He'd also
been infected with the fervent jock Christianity so much a part of the football
subculture. Steele would stop guys and ask them, “You go to church on Sundays, son?” Some
of the guys found it all a bit much. They never called him Coach to his face, except
during the skits. Then it was no-holds-barred.

Nelson was the writer, but Pilla was the star. He was tall and had a weightlifter's
build, but he still needed a few layers of extra undershirts to approximate Steele's
girth. They would improvise something goofy for the helmet and paint it with a Bulldog,
and Pilla would take it from there. He had a natural comic presence. The skit would open
with Pilla. Steele alone in his office practicing his blocking and tackling, and go
downhill from there. Steele laughed along good-naturedly most of the time. But in one of
the skits Nelson and Pilla had suggested, with gratuitous locker-room hilarity, that there
might be something of a don't-ask-don't-tell thing going on between the captain and his
ever loyal second-in-command, Lieutenant Perino. That had the guys rolling in the aisle,
but this time. Coach didn't laugh. He later chewed out Nelson and Pills for “portraying
alternative lifestyles.” It was so funny, in retrospect, Nelson and Pilla thought, that it
might make a perfect scene for their next skit.