by Mark Bowden
When the moon came up, Steele kicked himself for letting the men leave behind their NODs. Here he was, the inflexible by-the-book-robot-Ranger tyrant, and he’d relaxed procedures this one time for what seemed like ample reason, and now they were in the fight of their lives, at night, lacking the most significant technological advantage they had over their enemy. If ever there was a more perfect illustration of why not to ignore procedure.
Still, it had seemed like such an obvious call that Sergeant Goodale had ridiculed Private Jeff Young back in the hangar for even asking about them as they had prepared to go out.
“Young, think about it. What time is it?”
“About three o’clock.”
“How long have our missions been?”
“About two hours.”
“Is it still light out at five?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why would you want to bring your night vision?”
Steele was mortified by the stupidity of his call. In an hour or two it was going to be darker than four inches up a goat’s butt. He made a quick check around the courtyard to see if anybody, maybe just accidentally, had brought NODs along. No one had. Out the half-opened metal doorway it now looked dark as a cavern. From where he stood in the second room at the north end of the courtyard—it appeared to be the kitchen—Steele could see moonlight reflecting blue off the barrels of his men’s weapons sticking out of doorways. He called out to them one by one to make sure no one nodded off.
Miller wasn’t sure what was going on down the block. After he’d relayed the first request for Steele and his men to move up, Steele had declined an offer to speak directly to Miller via one of the D-boys’ headsets. From the Delta command position, there was no telling what was wrong with Steele. There was some concern that the captain had been injured— the Ranger commander had broadcast that the “command element” had been hit, and nobody was sure if that meant him (Steele had been talking about Lechner). Miller had relayed a request for Steele to move at least some of his force down, if not across the intersection, then to the corner building on their block where they could help cover the southern intersection. The Ranger commander had heard the urgings from the command helicopter, arguing that it would be easier for the Little Birds to do gun runs if the forces were in a tighter perimeter. The idea of stepping out of the relative safety of their fortified courtyard back into the street was hardly appealing; nevertheless, when the C2 bird made the initial request, Steele agreed.
He radioed Perino and asked him to throw a blue Chemlite out his courtyard door into the street.
“Roger, it’s out,” said the lieutenant.
Steele then stepped briefly out into the street. He was surprised how close the light was, only a short sprint up the road.
He radioed back to Harrell, “Okay. Hoo-ah.”
Then he went back to tell Sergeant Watson to get ready for the move. Watson was blunt.
“Hey, sir, uh-uh,” he said. “No way.”
Watson said he thought the idea was crazy. They could expect a hail of bullets and grenades the second they stepped out the door. They had five wounded men, two of whom (Lechner and Goodale) would have to be carried. Fillmore’s body would also have to be carried. To move quickly, that would mean four men for each litter, which would make convenient cluster targets for Somali gunmen. What was wrong with the position they had? The shooting had died down and it would take one hell of a lot to overrun that courtyard. If they stayed where they were, they had a bigger perimeter. Why move?
The Rangers listened nervously to the discussion. To a man, they sided with Watson. Private Floyd thought Steele was nuts to even suggest moving. Goodale certainly didn’t relish the thought of making such a trip on a litter. Moving was unnecessary and dangerous. It was asking for more trouble when they already had plenty. Steele took a deep breath and reconsidered.
“I think you’re right,” he told Watson.
He conferred with the D-boys in the courtyard briefly, then radioed Harrell.
“Right now we’re not going to be able to move, not with all these wounded.”
This was frustrating news for Captain Miller. Nobody had clearly sorted out who was in charge on the ground. If some part of Steele’s force moved just to the end of their block, they could better cover the wide alley that ran between them. Harrell refused to order Steele to make the move.
—If you stay separated I cannot support you as well, Harrell told Steele. You’re the guy on the ground and you have to make the call.
Steele had made his call, and that was that. When one of the operators again offered Steele his headset so the captain could confer directly with Miller, Steele waved him away. So there were effectively two separate forces pinned down now, and their commanders were not talking to each other.
If Steele wouldn’t budge, Miller would at least move his own men. As the D-boys prepared to leave, Steele was angry. If they moved out, it would more than halve the number of able-bodied men at his position. He felt it didn’t make sense, and regarded Miller’s move as a kind of “Fuck you,” directed at him—and his men. But he did nothing to stop it.
The operators lined up in the courtyard. When the first group of four dashed out into the night, the whole neighborhood erupted. It sounded like the city of Mogadishu had sprung viciously back to life. Within seconds, all four of the D-boys came flying back into the courtyard, tripping over the same metal rim at the bottom of the door that had tripped Steele up early in the afternoon. They wound up in a heap on the ground, their gun barrels clinking together as they untangled.
Relieved that none had been injured, Steele watched them regroup with sober satisfaction.
—Hey, Captain, we’ve got to get Smith out. He’s getting worse, came another radio call from Perino.
“Roger,” Steele said.
He knew it was hopeless, but he felt he had a responsibility to Smith to at least try. He tried the command net once more. He called up to Harrell.
“Romeo Six Four, this is Juliet Six Four. Our guy is fading fast. There’s a wide intersection suitable for LZ [landing zone] directly outside.”
—Can you mark it, Juliet? Is it big enough to bring in a Hawk?
Steele said it was, and that they could mark it. He waited a few moments for a decision. He could hear the frustration in Harrell’s voice when it returned.
—We put a Hawk in there to resupply and it got shot so bad the bird is unusable. I think if we try to bring another MH [MH-60, a Black Hawk], we are just going to have another bird go down on the ground, over.
“This is Juliet Six Four. Roger. What is the ETA on the armored vehicles?”
There was no answer for a few minutes. Steele called back, knowing he was pushing.
“Romeo, this is Juliet.”
—Go ahead, Juliet
“Roger. Do you have an ETA for me?”
—I am working on it now, standby.
Harrell’s irritation showed.
Steele then heard Harrell pleading with the JOC.
—We’ve got two critical pax [Carlos Rodriguez was also in critical condition] that are going to die if we do not get them out of that location. I don’t think that it is secure enough to bring in a bird. Can you get an ETA for the ground reaction force, over?
Then, minutes later.
—If the QRF does not get there soon, there will be more KIAs [Killed in Action] from previously received WIAs [Wounded in Action]. Get the one-star [Brigadier General Greg Gile, commander of the 10th Mountain Division] to get his people moving!
From the commanders’ perspective, other than the plight of Smith and Rodriguez, it made little sense to rush back out into the fray. Given the roadblocks and ambushes that had turned back the earlier convoys, the commanders were not taking any chances with the next one. They were going back out in major force, with hundreds of men led by Pakistani tanks and Malaysian armored personnel carriers. But it was taking time to assemble and organize this force. Harrell was told it would be at
least an hour (it would actually take three hours) before they were ready to move. Harrell reported back:
—It is going to be an hour before they get in there. I don’t think they will be able to get there within an hour.
Steele told him that an hour was too long. Air commander Matthews explained:
—Roger. I want to try to put a bird in but I’m afraid if I do that we are just going to lose another aircraft, over.
Nobody wanted to write off the two young soldiers. Back at the JOC, the generals again considered landing a helicopter to take out Smith and Rodriguez. The pilots were ready to attempt it. Miller and Steele were asked again if they could adequately secure a landing zone to get a Black Hawk in and out. Perino walked out and consulted with Sergeant Howe, who told him a chopper could get in, but it damn sure wouldn’t get back out.
Captain Miller’s Delta command post was consulted. He answered:
—We are willing to try and secure a site, but there are RPGs all over the place. It is going to be really hard to get a bird in there and get it out. I’m afraid that we are just going to lose another bird.
Harrell delivered the reluctant verdict.
—We are going to have to hold on the best we can with those casualties and hope the ground reaction force gets there on time.
Steele sadly passed this word to Perino. “It’s just too hot,” Steele told him.
Not long afterward, Smith started hyperventilating, and then his heart stopped. Medic Schmid went into full emergency mode. He tried CPR for several rotations, compressions and ventilations, then he injected drugs straight into the Ranger’s heart. It was no use. He was gone.
Harrell was still pushing hard for the ground rescue force.
—We’ve got guys that are going to die if we don’t get them out of there, and I can’t get a bird in, over.
It was at about eight o’clock when Steele got another radio call from Perino.
—Don’t worry about the medevac, sir. It’s too late.
Steele put out the news on the command net.
—One of the critical WIAs has just been KIA.
Medic Schmid was shattered by Smith’s death. The corporal had gone from a fully alert, strong Ranger complaining, “I’m hurt,” to a dead man in the medic’s hands.
Schmid was the chief medic at his location, so he had other men to attend to and no time to brood, but Smith’s prolonged agony and death would haunt him for years afterward. Still covered with Smith’s blood, he went to work on the others. He felt drained, terribly frustrated, and defeated. Was it his fault? Should he have found someone and tried to set up a direct transfusion early on, back when he expected rescue was imminent? He went back over every step he had taken in treating Smith’s wound, second-guessing himself, blaming himself for every decision that had turned out wrong and had wasted time.
Finally, he did his best to make peace with it. Schmid believed if he could have gotten Smith back to the base, his life would have been saved. He wasn’t certain of it, but that was his gut feeling.
Steele, too, was shaken by news of Smith’s death. He knew nothing yet of Pilla, nor of any of his men who had taken off with the lost convoy and been killed, Cavaco, Kowalewski, and Joyce. He’d seen Fillmore shot dead, but Smith was one of his own. He’d never lost a man before. Steele thought of them as his men, not the army’s or the regiment’s. His. They were his responsibility to train and lead and keep alive. Now he was going to be sending one of them home, somebody’s precious young son, in a flag-draped coffin. He walked back to quietly tell Sergeant Watson. They decided not to tell the other guys yet.
* * *
Goodale was in high spirits for somebody with a second hole through his ass. He showed off his canteen with a bullet hole through it. He felt no pain from the round that had passed through his thigh and left a nasty wound on his right buttock. It wasn’t very dignified. When Floyd had come huffing in after all the men had been waved into the courtyard from the street, he took one look at the medic stuffing Curlex up Goodale’s exit wound and said, “You like taking it up the ass, eh, Goodale?” In the same back room was Errico, a machine gunner who had been wounded in both biceps manning his gun, and Neathery, who’d been wounded in the upper arm when he took over for Errico. Neathery was distressed. The bullet had damaged both bicep and tricep and he couldn’t make his right arm work at all.
One of the wounded men was crying, starting to freak out: “We’re going to die here!” he kept repeating. “We’re never going home!”
“Just shut the fuck up,” said Sergeant Randy Ramaglia. The man fell silent.
Worst off was Lechner, who was now on a morphine drip. When Sergeant Ramaglia first came in the dark back room he flopped down into what felt like a warm puddle. Then he realized it was Lechner’s blood. The room smelled of blood, a strong musky stink with a faint metallic tinge, like copper, an odor none of them would forget.
Watson came back at one point looking for more ammunition. They were down to about half of the supply they’d carried in.
“I have some flashbangs if you want them,” said Goodale.
“No, Goodale, I don’t want flashbangs,” he said with gentle scorn. “We’re not scaring them anymore. We’re going to kill them now.”
Like the rest of the guys, Goodale was frustrated with how long it was taking the rescue convoy to come. He’d ask Steele for an ETA, the captain would give him one, then that time would pass and Goodale would ask again. Steele would give him a new time, then that one would pass.
“Atwater,” he shouted out to Steele’s radioman. “Look, I promised my fiancée I’d call her back tonight and if I don’t I’m really gonna be in some deep shit, so we’ve got to get out of here.”
Atwater just gave him a pained grin.
“Hey, you motherfuckers better all quiet down in there,” came the voice of the one of D-boys. “All it takes is one RPG through that back window and you’re all fucked.”
Word whispered around about Smith.
“Corporal Smith? What happened to Smith?” asked Goodale.
“He’s dead.”
The news hit Goodale hard. He and Smith were close. Both were smart-alecky, wiseass guys, always ready with a stinger, but Smith was the best. He always kept the guys laughing. Just before they got called up for this thing, Smith had confided in Goodale, “I’ve got this girl. I think I’m gonna marry her.” They’d had a detailed discussion about ring buying, something Goodale had just gone through for Kira. Smith’s decision to pop the question had brought them closer. It had moved them to a more serious level of manhood than the swaggering young cocksmen around them. They’d spent a lot of time together in the hangar playing Risk or just shooting the shit. Smitty was dead?
Private George Siegler guarded the Somalis whom they had found in the house. They had been herded into the back corner room, a bedroom. There was a bed and a night table. The baby-faced soldier, who looked no older than fifteen, trained his M-16 on the two women, a man, and four children. The adults were all on their knees. The youngest of them, a hugely pregnant woman, was crying. The others had been flex-cuffed, but not this woman, who couldn’t hold the baby with her hands tied. She kept indicating with her hands that she was thirsty, so Siegler gave her his canteen. The children were all crying at first. The older ones looked to be between six and ten. One was an infant. In time the children stopped crying. So did the pregnant woman after he gave her water. They couldn’t communicate, but Siegler hoped she understood they meant her no harm.
It got quieter and quieter as the night wore on. So long as they showed no light there was no shooting into the courtyard. Earlier, bullets had been coming through the open door and popping great divots in the concrete latticework in back, but now that had stopped. Specialist Kurth relieved Siegler of the prisoners after a few hours. He sat sweat-soaked and thirsty. Earlier, when they’d taken off on the mission, Kurth had felt like taking a leak but didn’t, figuring they’d be back inside of an hour or so. He had end
ed up laying on his side out in the road behind the tin shack, urinating while gunfire snapped and popped around him, thinking, This is what I get.
This whole terrifying experience was having an effect on Kurth that he didn’t fully understand. When he had been out on the street, crouched behind a rock that was nowhere near big enough to provide him cover, he’d thought about a lot of things. His first thought was to get the hell out of the army. Then, pondering it more as bullets snapped over his head and kicked up clods of dirt around him, he reconsidered. I can’t get out of the army. Where else am I going to get to do something like this? And right there, in that moment, he decided to reenlist for another four years.
It grew quieter every hour as the night wore on. They kept getting situation reports, “sitreps,” from the air force guy up the street monitoring the various radio nets. The convoy was just a half hour away. Then, forty-five minutes later, “the convoy’s an hour away.” You could hear ferocious shooting off in the distance as the rescue force finally moved out. Kurth was cotton-mouthed. They all were terribly thirsty. The taste of dust and gunpowder was in their mouths and their tongues were sticky and thick. Nothing in this world would taste as sweet as a cold bottle of water. Every once in a while a Little Bird would come roaring in low and there would be a frenzy of shooting and loud explosions, and the brass from the bird’s gun would clatter off the tin roof and rain into the courtyard. Then it would get so quiet again Kurth could hear himself breathing and the steady, hurried beat of his heart.
11
Specialist Waddell never actually got to go indoors with the rest of the men. When darkness came and everyone moved inside, Lieutenant DiTomasso told him to pull security at the west side of the hole that had been made by the falling Black Hawk. From where he lay behind some rubble, Waddell was looking out beyond the chopper’s bent tail boom. Sergeant Barton curled up at the other side of the hole, pointing his weapon east past the front of the bird.
Earlier in the afternoon, Waddell had been terrified they wouldn’t get out before dark. But by dusk he was rooting for the sun to finish going down. It seemed to take forever. He figured once it was dark the shooting would die down and they could breathe easier. He watched the Little Birds scream in doing gun runs on the alley west, showering him with brass casings. Their rockets literally shook the ground. They made a sound like a giant piece of Velcro ripping open, and then there would be the flash and tremendous blast. The fact that it was so close felt good. That’s where he wanted them. Close.
