Seal Team Six

by Howard E. Wasdin

  “If we aren’t going to pull the trigger,” I finished his sentence. “We had Aidid.”

  “You’re damn right we had him!”

  At the time, I was mad at Garrison, too. Delta launched on the dry hole at the Lig Ligato house, but they couldn’t launch when we really had Aidid. It wasn’t going to do any good to punch anything or yell at anybody. When I become ultrafurious, I become ultraquiet. After Condor and I shared our misery, I went mute. The others let me have my space. We all mourned the loss of that mission.

  SEPTEMBER 6, 1993

  At 0400, on the roof of Pasha, Casanova and I heard a tank make a wide circle. We didn’t even know Aidid had a tank. We readied our AT-4s.

  Hours later, Casanova and I told Little Big Man and Sourpuss.

  “There can’t be a tank here,” Sourpuss argued. “We’d have seen a tank by now.”

  “We know what we heard,” I said.

  “I’m not impressed,” Sourpuss said. “You might impress the CIA with your nonsense, but I’m not impressed.”

  “Whatever.”

  That same morning, one of our assets was shot stepping out of his vehicle.

  Before long, a second asset, our maid’s brother, was killed—shot in the head. He was one of the good guys. He wasn’t in it for the money as much as he was in it to help his clan end the civil war. She couldn’t hide the sadness in her eyes.

  As if things weren’t bad enough for us, a third asset was beaten almost to death. By the Italians.

  A report came in that Aidid possessed antiaircraft guns. Aidid continued to grow stronger and more sophisticated thanks to help from al Qaeda, the PLO, and the Italians turning a blind eye. The locals recognized the growth, too, and were encouraged to join Aidid.

  Delta had intelligence that Aidid was in the old Russian compound. So Delta went after him and took seventeen prisoners—but no Aidid. Only two of the seventeen were considered to be of interest. They were detained, interrogated, and then freed. Delta had given Aidid’s people another exhibition of how they operate: fly in, fast-rope down, and use a Humvee blocking force of Rangers to protect the operators as they take down the house. This would come back to bite us in the ass.

  SEPTEMBER 7, 1993

  One of our primary assets, Abe, called in four hours late. We feared him dead.

  Finally, he showed. “I do tonight’s mission.”

  “Sorry, you’ve already been scratched.”

  “Scratched?”

  “Mission canceled. No mission for you tonight.”

  * * *

  In the evening, Casanova and I escorted Condor to deliver $50,000 to an asset. The high-level assets were wealthy and influential and had a number of people working under them. Condor went to the high-level assets rather than making them come to him: checking the number of new recruits, collecting their pictures, finding out how they would divvy up the money with their own assets, briefing them about procedures. The whole meeting took about an hour and a half. While Casanova and I stood guard outside, we heard a firefight approximately 200 yards north.

  Little Big Man and Sourpuss saw the tracers from the firefight in our direction. “Do you guys need assistance?” they radioed us.

  “No, we weren’t involved.” If we fired a green flare, Little Big Man and Sourpuss would call in a helo extract, then fight their way to our position to assist until the helo arrived.

  Later that night, back at Pasha, I got my second confirmed rat kill.

  SEPTEMBER 8, 1993

  The Rangers reported that they spotted an old Russian tank a couple miles out of town and destroyed it. I reminded Sourpuss about the tank Casanova and I had heard several nights earlier, “See? It’s called a tank. You know—they make a certain sound while moving.”

  Sourpuss walked away.

  That day, Abe became our main asset. We gave him an infrared strobe light and a beacon with a magnet attached. He seemed confident he could get close to Aidid, so we put Delta on alert.

  “Aidid is moving,” Abe called. As the night grew old, Abe couldn’t pinpoint Aidid’s position.

  Although no communication traffic reached SIGINT, several large explosions came from the direction of the airport. Aidid’s mortar crews had figured out how to communicate their fire and control without being intercepted by us. Damn, they are resilient.

  SEPTEMBER 9, 1993

  General Garrison received permission to go to Phase Three—going after Aidid’s lieutenants. Delta flew over Mogadishu as a show of force with the entire package: ten to twelve Little Birds and twenty to thirty Black Hawks. Delta snipers rode in the light Little Bird helicopters, which could carry guns, rockets, and missiles. In the medium-sized Black Hawk helicopters, also armed with guns, rockets, and missiles, the Delta entry teams and Rangers had fast ropes ready in the doorway to make an assault at any moment. The idea was to show Aidid that ours was bigger than his—making him less attractive to the local population and, hopefully, hurting his ability to recruit.

  On the same day, near the pasta factory, two kilometers away from the Pakistani Stadium, the Army’s 362nd Engineers worked to clear a Mogadishu roadway. A Pakistani armored platoon protected them while the Quick Reaction Force (QRF) stood by in case they needed emergency reinforcements. The QRF was made up of men from the conventional army’s 10th Mountain Division, 101st Aviation Regiment, and 25th Aviation Regiment, their base located at the abandoned university and old American Embassy.

  The engineers bulldozed an obstacle from the road when a crowd of Somalis gathered. One Somali fired a shot, then sped away in a white truck. The engineers cleared a second obstacle. Then the third: burning tires, scrap metal, and a trailer. Someone on a second-story balcony fired at them. Engineers and Pakistanis returned fire. The enemy fire increased, coming at them from multiple directions. The crowd moved obstacles to block the soldiers in. The engineers called in the QRF helos. In three minutes, armed OH-58 Kiowa and AH-1 Cobra helicopters arrived. Hundreds of armed Somalis moved in from the north and south. Enemy RPGs came in from multiple directions.

  The Cobra opened up on the enemy with 20 mm cannons and 2.75-inch rockets. More QRF helos were called in for help while the engineers tried to escape, heading for the Pakistani Stadium. Aidid’s militia fired a 106 mm recoilless rifle, blasting the lead Pakistani tank into flames. A bulldozer stopped dead, so the engineers abandoned it. As thirty Somalis tried to take the abandoned bulldozer, two TOW missiles destroyed them and the bulldozer. The engineers, two wounded, and the Pakistanis, three wounded, fought on until they reached the stadium. One Pakistani died. It had been the largest battle in Somalia to that point.

  Our intelligence sources told us that Aidid had commanded the ambush from the nearby cigarette factory. More than one hundred Somalis died, and hundreds more were wounded, but Aidid had succeeded in keeping the road closed, restricting the UN forces’ movement. In addition, the media assisted Aidid by reporting the many “innocent” Somali deaths. I hate our liberal media. Must be easy to sit back and point fingers when you’re not involved. President Clinton also helped Aidid, halting combat operations in Mogadishu until an investigation could be completed. Political popularity trumps American lives.

  Aidid launched artillery over Pasha. Machine-gun fire and firefights reached closer to us. We remained on full alert and high pucker factor. Aidid’s militia also launched mortars on the Nigerian checkpoint at the Port of Mogadishu—turned over by the Italians.

  Condor’s assets infiltrated a rally held in a vehicle repair garage where Aidid tried to pump up his troops. If Aidid was actually there at the rally, we wanted to know. He wasn’t.

  SEPTEMBER 10, 1993

  At 0500 the next day, Aidid’s militia fired more artillery at the Port of Mogadishu checkpoint. That same day, an asset told us that Aidid’s people knew about Pasha. They described our guns and vehicles, and they knew Condor from before we set up Pasha.

  Aidid ambushed CNN’s Somali crew. Their interpreter and four guards were killed. Aidid’
s militia had mistaken the CNN’s crew for us.

  We also found out that an Italian journalist had arranged to do an interview with Aidid. One of our assets put a beacon on the journalist’s car, so we could track him. The journalist must’ve suspected something was wrong, because he went to the house of one of the good guys instead, probably hoping we’d launch an attack there. Fortunately, we had an asset on the ground verifying the location.

  Even so, the CIA was screwed. So were we. We had good intel that Aidid’s people were going to ambush us. Instead of two SEALs on watch and two resting, we went to three SEALs on watch and one resting.

  SEPTEMBER 11, 1993

  I finally got to bed at 0700 the next morning—no ambush. Sourpuss woke me up at 1100 to tell me that our assets were reporting that Aidid’s militia was closing in on us.

  Another asset told us that the bad guys had targeted our head guard, Abdi, because they knew he was working for the CIA. One of the guards in his employ was his own son. The head guard took responsibility for paying the guards; moreover, he had responsibility for their lives. He held an important status in his clan. The head guard put his family and clan at risk to help the CIA. Part of his motivation was money, but the greater motivation seemed to be a better future for his family. Now he was made. Later we would find out who ratted him out: the Italians.

  Condor called General Garrison. “We’ve been compromised, and we need to get the f*** out of here.”

  At 1500, leaving nonessential equipment such as MREs, everyone in Pasha packed up, and we drove to the Pakistani Stadium. Helicopters extracted us at 1935, taking us back to the hangar on the military compound.

  In retrospect, on the first day at Pasha, we should’ve flexicuffed the Italians and taken them out of the area, and we should’ve assassinated the Russian mercenary. Then we would’ve had a better chance of running our safe house and capturing Aidid. Of course, it would’ve helped if our own military had let us capture Aidid when we had him at his aunt’s house.

  Although we had lost Pasha, we still had targets to act on.

  11.

  Capturing Aidid’s Evil Genius

  SEPTEMBER 12, 1993

  Casanova and I walked into the hangar, beard and hair still growing out. I didn’t get a haircut the whole time I was in Mogadishu. In the hangar, everyone seemed happy to see us. They knew we’d been living for nearly fifteen days in booger-eater territory, and they’d heard rumors about some of the work we’d done. Several Rangers approached us. “Wish you guys would’ve been with us when we were ambushed.” Others wanted to ask, “What’ve you guys been doing?”

  We lived with Delta Force, the Combat Control Team (CCT), and pararescuemen (PJs). CCTs were the air force’s special operations pathfinders who could parachute into an area and provide reconnaissance, air traffic control, fire support, and command, control, and communications on the ground—particularly helpful to us in calling down death from above. SIGINT drafted many of their people from the CCTs. The air force’s PJs, also special operations, focused on rescuing pilots downed in enemy territory and administering medical treatment. Both Delta and SEAL Team Six had begun augmenting their forces with CCTs and PJs. On a SEAL Team Six boat crew of eight men assaulting a building, the addition of a PJ, who could take care of patching up bullet wounds, freed up a SEAL hospital corpsman to kick more doors. Likewise, the addition of a CCT carrying a radio on his back and calling for air support freed up a SEAL radioman to carry other mission-essential gear on his back and help with the door-kicking. Although the air force CCTs and PJs were not as specialized in skills like door-kicking, they were experts in their fields—to a higher level than SEAL or Delta operators. Integrating them into SEAL Team Six and Delta was one of the best moves JSOC ever made. Although not held to as high a tactical standard (standards such as physical fitness remained the same) as SEALs, particularly for close-quarters combat training, they received Team Six’s Green Team training. During my Green Team, although a CCT and a PJ were among the four or five who failed, a CCT and a PJ passed. The CCTs and PJs also rotated over to Delta Force for their training. Then, after some time at home with their air force units, they rotated back and forth between Six and Delta again. In the hangar, the four of us SEALs mostly hung out with CCTs and PJs because we knew them from training together in Dam Neck, Virginia. Like most of Delta, they had high-and-tight haircuts to blend in with the Rangers, but the pale skin on their scalps gave them away.

  One of our CCTs was Jeff, a pretty boy who was a woman magnet like Casanova; they even hung around together sometimes. Another CCT was Dan Schilling, a thirty-year-old laid-back Southern Californian. Dan left the Army Reserves to become a CCT. In the middle of the hangar, when we played cards on the fold-up planning table, Dan often gave me a cigar—he liked to smoke Royal Jamaica Maduros.

  Tim Wilkinson quit his electrical engineering job for the adventure of becoming a PJ. Scotty served as the PJs’ team leader.

  Near the air force planning table in the middle of the hangar, the CCTs and PJs set a blowup doll named Gina the Love Goddess on a chair with a sign around her neck advertising services and prices. She was a birthday gift from Dan Schilling’s wife and Jeff’s girlfriend for one of the air force guys who never got mail and didn’t have a girlfriend. After a congressional visit, Gina disappeared. No sense of humor!

  The Rangers outnumbered everyone, but they remained cautious about crossing the imaginary line, like a wall that reached the ceiling, into our area. Maybe we had a mystique that they respected—or a body odor. Whatever the reason, they gave us our space. A lot of the Delta guys seemed to have the attitude, If you aren’t Delta, we don’t want anything to do with you. We probably had some of the same attitude, but there were only four of us. If we’d had all of Red Team, we might have been more arrogant. Being the only four SEALs in Africa, we had to hang out with somebody.

  Around the hangar, we wore shorts, T-shirts, and Teva flip-flops. When we wore military uniforms, we didn’t wear names or rank insignia. Military rank held less meaning for us than it did for Rangers and the conventional military. In the Teams, we often followed leaders because of reputations they earned or a certain skill set they possessed. Unlike the conventional military, our enlisted men usually called officers by their first names or nicknames. We didn’t subscribe to the robot-like military mentality of top-down leadership, either. Just because a person outranks someone else in the Teams doesn’t mean he’ll be leading anything—other than on paper. We adapted our weapons and tactics to changing environments and situations.

  * * *

  At 2100, we received mortar fire, now becoming such a regular occurrence that guys in the hangar cheered. Some had a mortar pool going. A person could buy a time slot for a dollar. Whoever chose a slot closest to the actual time the mortar hit won the pool.

  No one had leads on Aidid.

  SEPTEMBER 13, 1993

  The next day, true to form, although he was the senior SEAL, Sourpuss didn’t initiate much of anything and didn’t exert control. He was content to sit around and write his wife letters. Little Big Man checked into using QRF helicopters as sniper platforms. We were also encouraged to go out on patrol with the Rangers when we didn’t have anything else going on.

  A Pakistani convoy came in to resupply. Under General Garrison’s orders, Casanova and I rode with Steve (a Delta sniper working a lot with military intelligence), Commander Assad, and Assad’s Pakistani troops. We drove across town to the northwest, near Pakistani Stadium, where the Pakistanis ran a tight compound. Their troops exhibited excellent military bearing and a by-the-book attitude. They kept the area tidy. Nothing like the sloppy Italians who were constantly trying to undermine us.

  During the night, Aidid’s militia fired on one of our helicopters, and they used the abandoned Somali National University as their sniper hide. Casanova and I climbed six stories to the top of a tower. From there, we could see the house of Osman Ali Atto—Aidid’s financier and evil genius. Atto allegedly use
d income from drug trafficking (mostly khat), arms trafficking, looting, and kidnapping to buy more weapons and support for Aidid’s militia. Next to Atto’s house stood his vehicle repair garage, an enormous open-top concrete building where his mechanics worked on cars, bulldozers, and technicals—pickup trucks with .50 caliber machine guns on tripods bolted onto the truck bed. This was the same garage where Aidid had held the rally to pump up his militia while we were in Pasha. If we capture Atto, we cut off the financial support for Aidid’s militia. He who controls the purse strings controls the war.

  Nothing significant happened at Atto’s house except that the porch light flickered on and off three times. Probably some kind of signal, but we didn’t see any movement in the house. It was only a matter of time before we captured Atto.

  SEPTEMBER 14, 1993

  We continued to observe Atto’s garage. People constantly came and went. Three mechanics worked on vehicles. Casanova and I spotted someone who looked like Atto, flashing a big white smile, having a meeting.

  We took a picture, then transmitted the data via secure link back to the intel guys so they could make sure the man in the garage really was Atto. We lost him when he left the garage and drove away.

  The same day, a Ranger thought he spotted Aidid in a convoy. Delta hit a building to find out they had captured General Ahmed Jilao instead, even though Jilao was much taller, heavier, and lighter-skinned than Aidid—and was a close ally of the United Nations. Aidid had become like Elvis—people saw him where he wasn’t.

  At night, the Pakistani compound received fire from the area of nearby trees and buildings. Commander Assad said, “We keep receiving fire from there on a regular basis. Can you help us?”

  “We can spot them with our infrared scopes and fire tracers at them, and your machine gunners can open fire on that area.” (The tracers are phosphorous covered rounds that burn with a glow.)