The sixteen Guards of the assault teams followed the support men through the fence, throwing out smoke grenades and staying away from the backblast areas behind the rocket gunners. The Guards spread out on the grass in a line, facing the West Wing entrance, firing their own rockets and automatic weapons, waiting for the smoke to billow up. It took only seconds. The wind was blowing toward the White House, and the different clouds of white, green, and yellow mixed into a thick surreal mass and floated over the grounds.
The fast chattering of the squad automatic weapons blended with the more deliberate hammering of the M-240 machineguns, the crash of the rockets, and the smaller explosions of the 40mm grenades, which seemed almost delicate by comparison. The heavy volume of automatic fire the Iranians were putting out was suppressing the defenders' return fire.
As the smoke covered the grounds, the support teams shifted to prearranged sectors of fire. To the right of the West Wing entrance and the driveway leading up to it was a tall tree. The Guards of one support team sighted in on the tree before the smoke came up, the machine gunner driving his bipod into the grass so the barrel could not swing to the left. Now, even with the area covered by smoke, they could restrict their fire to the right of that tree. Another team did the same with a tree to the left of the West Wing entrance. This formed a clear channel, a bullet-free tunnel, encompassing the small driveway and the entrance to the West Wing. Where seconds before they had been under open skies, the Iranians were now encased in a dense, multicolored fog.
Ali was on the far left of the assault team line. When the smoke had covered the entire area, he shouted into his radio, "Assault teams, go!" He tapped the man on his right and crawled toward the driveway. The rest followed in single file, keeping low.
The driveway was slightly lower than the lawn, and the lawn sloped downward from the central fountain. So moving low along the drive gave the Guards good cover. More important, the driveway was their path; the smoke was so thick they could not even see the White House. And no one in the White House could see them. They were being fired upon, but it was aimed blindly through the smoke. They could hear the support teams' machine-gun bullets snap past on both sides but were safe so long as they stayed in the driveway.
The smoke was acrid and choking. Ali flipped the valve on his gas mask and began breathing filtered air. The smoke grenades lasted for over a minute, and when they began to dissipate more were thrown out.
The driveway dipped downward and the entrance loomed out of the haze. Ali stopped, and the Guards spread out beside him. "Grenades!" Ali shouted. Those in front lofted fragmentation grenades toward the portico, to clear away anyone hiding behind the hedge. When the grenades exploded, Karim's assault team charged toward the entrance while Ali and the others fired into the adjacent windows.
Karim chose to enter through an office window to the left of the door; he didn't relish coming in where he was expected. The armored glass had been pierced by a rocket but was still intact. Karim attached a charge of plastic explosive to the lower part of the window. He pulled the fuse igniter and jumped out of the way.
Seconds later the window and part of the wall exploded in a shower of splinters. Karim tossed a grenade through the hole. When it exploded he knocked away the loose glass with the butt of his SAW and jumped into the room. The fluorescent and emergency lights had been blown out. Karim jumped to his left and sprayed the room with fire, the red tracers bright flashes in the darkness. The Guard following him jumped right and sprayed his sector. Only then did Karim remember the flashlight taped to the front stock of his weapon. Embarrassed, he switched it on. A bleeding man was hiding in a corner of the room, behind a file cabinet. The short burst from the SAW blew him open from the navel to the collarbone.
Someone fired at them from the doorway of the adjacent office, and Karim's partner went down, shot in the throat. Karim dropped behind a desk and stitched a long burst across the doorway and the nearest walls, at the same time yelling over the radio for the rest of his men to come in and help. The belt-fed SAW made it easy to keep up a continuous fire, and the high-velocity 5.56mm rounds punched right through the wall. The two other members of his team came through the window and fired at the doorway. Karim whipped a grenade through the open door, and his teammates moved up to fire into the office. Karim made another radio call, and Ali and the rest of the men in the driveway got up and ran for the entry.
Once Ali was inside, he took stock. Three of the assault element, including Karim's man, had been killed in the move. Without the smoke it would have been many more. He made a call on the radio, "Support, up!" The support teams threw the last of the smoke and sprinted toward the West Wing.
The remaining smoke was not enough to cover them completely. As it blew away, a Secret Service counter-sniper team that had courageously rushed back to the White House roof after the mortar fire lifted was finally able to make out targets. The Sergeant Major was waving his arms at the other Guards, urging them to run faster. They picked him out as the leader. The sniper fired just before Musa disappeared behind the cover of a tree. The jacketed hollow point bullet tore away the lower part of his face, leaving a gruesome red mask. He dropped to the asphalt without a sound. Ali saw it happen from the window. Before he could speak four Guards from the support element ran back into the driveway to get their Sergeant Major. Ali screamed for them to stop. The Secret Service sniper killed all four in succession, and Sgt. Maj. Musa Sa'ed drowned in his own blood.
Ali turned away from the window. Karim was still waiting beside the door. "Go!" Ali screamed at him. "Go! Kill them all!"
Karim threw another grenade into the adjoining office, and Ali led his team in. The room was abandoned. Two Secret Service agents lay dead on the floor, killed either by the grenades or Karim's men firing through the walls. One more room down and they would be in position to assault the Oval Office entrance across the hallway. They were already able to cut off anyone trying to escape out the West Wing exit. Ali assigned two men to cover the hallway. It was filled with white smoke; the Americans were throwing tear gas.
The other two assault teams passed them to clear all the offices to the left and cut off any escape back into the main White House. Even if Ali did not find the President in the Oval Office, they had the West Wing isolated and could hold out long enough to search every room for him.
The four-man assault teams leapfrogged through the rooms with quick, well-practiced efficiency, using small explosive charges to blow open doors, throwing in grenades, and spraying automatic fire. The trail teams checked for hidden survivors, killing any they found, and upon leaving the rooms threw in firebombs as the coup de grace.
The surviving members of the support teams moved in to cover them. The machine gunners kept up a steady fire down the length of the hall, through the tear-gas smoke, to keep the Secret Service from moving up.
When the Iranians took casualties, the wounded were stripped of ammunition and grenades and left to fend for themselves. Every man carried a morphine injector with an overdose, knowing there would be no way to remove casualties from the White House.
The SEALs of Team 6 stood in groups before the turning helicopters on the Andrews tarmac. Captain Hasford had opted to use the Blackhawks for transport, along with four AH-6 gunships for support. When the helicopters were ready, the crew chiefs signaled the waiting SEALs and each group began boarding.
Hasford would, travel with his radiomen in a special command Blackhawk outfitted with extra communications equipment and flown by Lieutenant Colonel Van Brocklin.
Hasford was plugging his headset into the radio console when Richard Welsh climbed through the helicopter door.
"Get the fuck out of here!" the SEAL shouted over the screaming of the turbines. "No way," Welsh shouted back. "If you think I'm going to hang around and greet the general when he arrives, you're fucking crazy."
As Welsh had calculated, the captain had no time to argue and little inclination to boot him out forcibly. He threw up his hands in
resignation, and the Blackhawk lifted off, followed in turn by the others.
There was less opposition than Ali had expected. The diversionary explosions caused the Secret Service to spread themselves too thin throughout the White House and the gates. The remaining agents had to be split between the family quarters and the West Wing.
Corporal Hawkins dived out of the office where he'd been hiding, just ahead of an Iranian assault team's grenade. He ran across the hall to the alcove facing the Oval Office, and only his dress blues kept him from being shot by the five Secret Service agents behind a heavy barricade of furniture.
The first thing Hawkins did when he got over the barricade was strip off his blouse. He felt twenty pounds lighter. An agent slapped a gas mask and an M-4 carbine into his hands. "Know how to use these?" the man snapped.
"Are you fucking kidding?" Hawkins replied. That brought faint smiles to the others' faces. While Hawkins was putting on the mask, a grenade exploded against the barricade, and everyone ducked. The furniture absorbed the fragmentation. The agents opened fire and threw concussion grenades and tear gas, all they had, out into the hall.
The thick smoke made vision almost impossible and caused the fighting to take place at very short range. Hawkins and the Secret Service cut down the first three Guards who tried to reach them. The Iranians threw more grenades across the hall, but the furniture rendered them ineffective.
From a nearby doorway Ali moved two grenadiers into position, but even 40mm high-explosive dual-purpose grenades could not dislodge the men behind the barricade.
The volume of grenades slowed as one of the launchers jammed. The heat from repeated firing had caused the plastic shell of the M203 to swell—the action was frozen shut. The glue securing the handguard on the other grenadier's launcher melted, and the handguard fell off. The Guard had to wrap a bandana around his hand to operate the hot mechanism.
Ali knew he was running out of time. He called for an M-240 machinegun. The big 7.62mm bullets would do the job.
Then Ali was knocked against the doorframe when someone pushed by him. It was Karim. Ali knew what was going to happen as soon as he saw the look on Karim's face. Karim sprinted down the hall with a firebomb in each hand, screaming, "Allahu Akbar!" He threw one bomb at the barricade, and it burst into flame.
Hawkins had just slapped in a fresh magazine when the fire blew up in front of him. Through the flames he could see a terrorist come screaming down the hall. Though his face felt like it was being broiled, Hawkins centered his front sight post on the man's chest and squeezed off three rounds, single shot, just as he'd been taught.
Karim staggered, then dropped. He fell on the other firebomb and it exploded, showering him with burning napalm. Karim writhed on the floor, screaming and beating madly at the flames. Ali leaned out of the doorway and fired into his friend's body,
"I got him," Hawkins yelled, "I got the son of a bitch!"
One of the agents had been badly burned. "Take him in the office," the leader ordered Hawkins.
"You got it," said Hawkins. He picked up the burned agent in a fireman's carry. The Oval Office door opened to admit him.
In a cold fury, Ali slung his rifle behind his back, took up a grenade in each hand, and charged the barricade. He let the spoons fly free, underhanded both grenades over the flaming furniture, and rolled away to one side. There were two sharp explosions, and no more firing from the barricade.
Ali stopped to put a fresh magazine in his rifle and shouted to the Guards to use their rifles to push the burning furniture out of the way. The flames were too intense; they couldn't get close enough. The attack was stalled. Ali ran back into an office. He emerged with heavy window drapes wrapped around his head and shoulders. Taking a running start, he crashed into the burning barricade, knocking it over. His momentum carried him over the top, and he quickly shed the drapes. Some of the napalm stuck to his clothing, and he rolled to put it out. It took him through an open doorway. Three Guards followed, leaping over the flames.
They found themselves in the office of the President's secretaries. The Oval Office door was directly in front of them. The torn bodies of four Secret Service agents lay nearby. One was still alive. The Guards finished him off.
"Where are the others?" Ali shouted. One of the Guards shook his head. "Move up to the barricade," Ali called over his radio. There was no answer. He repeated the message. After a quick check he found that the radio had broken in the fall. He told the other Guards to try. The heat from the gas and the fire was brutal. Alarms were still sounding but, amazingly, the sprinklers were not working.
One of the men managed to get through. "Ten are covering the hall," he reported. "But there are no more left."
"What of the other two assault teams?" Ali shouted.
"That is everyone," the Guard said flatly, making a chopping motion with one hand.
Ali glanced at his watch: 10:16. Only sixteen minutes. He stayed low to the floor—the smoke was making it hard to get air through the gas mask filter. The sweat had poured down his face and pooled in the bottom of the mask. It felt like being underwater, but he didn't dare break the seal.
The Guard with the working radio cupped his hand over his earphone. "They say the fire is becoming too great in the hall," he informed Ali.
"Have two men stay to cover our rear," Ali commanded. "The rest move into the main White House and escape through the East Wing. Burn everything they can. God go with them."
The Guard relayed the order.
When the Marine brought in the wounded man, Agent Latimer knew he'd made the worst mistake of his life. Mortar bombs were dropping regularly in the Rose Garden. The shrapnel barely scratched the armored windows of the Oval Office, but there would be no escape in that direction. And now the other side of the hallway was closed off. They were in a box. He thought he'd played it right, but it turned out all wrong. Whoever was running this not only had firepower, they knew what the hell they were doing.
There was no alternative but to hold out and wait for help to arrive. Latimer had three agents with him in the office, and he kept calling for help on his radio. They had MP-5's, M-4 carbines, gas masks, and plenty of ammo. All the doors leading to the Oval Office were locked and barricaded. They could hold on. Latimer worried about a rocket coming through one of the windows. The President was holding up well, and the VIPs were so frightened they weren't making much noise.
Hawkins set the burned agent against the wall. The man must have been in terrible pain, but he was hardly making a sound. Hawkins turned around, and the most powerful men in the government were staring directly at him. He looked down at his grimy T-shirt and blackened trousers, grinned self-consciously and blurted out, "How's everybody doing?" He received no answer. Then the grenades exploded in the outer office. Everyone flinched. With an enlisted man's unerring gift, Hawkins picked Latimer out as the man in charge. "I don't want to start a panic or nothing," he said. "But I think we're in a shit sandwich."
As the helicopter formation crossed the Anacostia River, Rich Welsh sat jammed into the cabin of the lead Blackhawk with his knees up around his ears. He was miserable, and it wasn't just the helicopter ride. It was what he'd done. He pictured himself sitting in front of a congressional investigating committee, maybe even something like the Warren Commission, telling them that he wiped his ass with the Constitution because he thought it was a really neat idea. That he might have been right made no difference. Unlike everyone else in Washington Welsh knew that in a democracy the ends are the means.
The helicopters came in low over the Tidal Basin. For the last few miles Captain Hasford had been talking to a very excited White House Secret Service detail on the radio. He ordered the rest of the helicopters to hover over the Tidal Basin while he went in for a look with two of the gunships.
As they came in low over the Mall, Welsh could see what were obviously mortar rounds impacting in the Rose Garden. The two AH-6 gunships broke off to try and find the tube. Noticing some faint smoke over t
he Ellipse, one of the AH-6s moved in lower. A figure with a rifle popped up from a hole in the top of a van and opened fire. The gunship took two M-16 rounds through the windshield, and the pilot quickly whipped the little helicopter over the trees. While he checked his systems for damage, the other gunship pilot asked Captain Hasford for permission to fire. He got it, and an admonition to be careful of civilians.
The AH-6 popped up over the Commerce Department Building. Its 7.62 mm Galling gun gave off a high-pitched whine, firing so fast the tracers flew into the van in what seemed a solid stream. Glass blew out, metal flew off, and the van went up in a series of sharp explosions.
"Yeeaaah!" the gunship pilot whooped over the radio. "Got some secondaries off their ammo."
The Blackhawk flew over the White House, and Hasford knew he'd have to make an immediate assault. It was always a last resort in hostage rescues, but there was no time to set up a containment perimeter and develop a detailed plan.
As they flew back over the Mall, Welsh listened in admiration as Hasford made up his operation order and radioed it to the platoon commanders in the other helicopters. It took only a few minutes. Maybe SEAL standard operating procedures were okay after all.
They linked up with the other helicopters over the Tidal Basin and swept back over the Mall at high speed, with the gunships buzzing out in front.
Most of the SEALs were let off onto the White House roof, joining up with the Secret Service agents who would guide them through the building. The President's family was also there. They were taken off in the first helicopter and flown immediately to Andrews. The SEALs left snipers on the roof to cover the grounds, and began the assault downward.
The rest of the Blackhawks, led by the command helicopter, popped up over the South Lawn in a violent assault landing, almost brushing the trees. Welsh held on tight as the Blackhawk stood on its side. It was disconcerting to look directly at the ground from the side door. Welsh felt weightless—unpleasantly so. If his seat belt had broken, he would have floated right out.
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