13 Hours The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi (37 page)

As the call to prayer continued, Jack’s temper rose.
I wonder what they’re saying right now
, he thought.
I wonder if it’s the normal thing, or are they saying, ‘Kill the Americans!’ Or, are they saying, ‘Hey, stop fighting!’ Either way, I just can’t stand to hear it right now.

Jack wasn’t one to wallow in anger, so his thoughts shifted from Benghazans rising to pray, to his wife and children inside the home he hoped to see again.
Here I am, all the way across the world. I’ve barely survived the night. And my wife is probably at home getting ready to go to bed, completely clueless as to what’s going on right now.
That thought led Jack to reflect on the fortunate lives led by many Americans, particularly in contrast to innocent people in places like Benghazi where armed militias roamed the streets, buildings burned, and foreigners huddled inside
high-walled compounds awaiting rescue or the next attack.
People in America get up and go to their nine-to-five jobs every day and are oblivious to all these battles and wars and people dying every minute all over the world. This is life. This is how other countries live. This is a daily occurrence in some places.

The Team Leader came on the radio with a heads-up: “Tripoli guys are coming in.” He said the operators were spread among a ten-car militia escort, but he had few other details. The T.L. asked Tanto, who remained on Building A near the front gate, to confirm their identities before letting them in. The Annex security leader remained at his post near the front gate, but Tanto would have a better view from above.

Tanto wasn’t sure the Tripoli team or their escorts knew the location of the Annex, so he told the Team Leader he’d use his laser to draw a circle in the sky above the gate as they approached, a military technique he called “lassoing” a target. If one of the Tripoli operators wore night-vision goggles, he’d see the laser as clearly as if Tanto had lit up a neon
VACANT
sign outside a roadside motel. Without goggles, the infrared beam would be invisible.

“Roger that,” the T.L. said.

Within minutes, the Team Leader radioed to say the motorcade was heading west on the Fourth Ring Road and would soon drive down Annex Road. Tanto stood atop Building A and twirled his laser above the gate, though it remained unclear whether the Tripoli team got the message to look for the signal. Just in case, D.B. added to the welcome with several discreet flashes of visible light.

At about 5:00 a.m., a line of ten vehicles turned right
onto Annex Road. They drove past the suspicious house and the empty parking area where the attackers had massed two hours earlier. Tanto was surprised that the cars looked like police sedans, painted red and white, several with strips of red and blue emergency lights on their roofs. Having been told that a militia was en route, Tanto expected fierce-looking Technicals with big mounted guns, pickup trucks filled with armed men in camouflage, and other intimidating displays.
They’re traveling a bit light, considering what we’ve gotten into so far
, Tanto thought. Still, he was glad to see them, although he kept his gun trained in their direction, just in case.

The cars parked in a row, one behind another, stretched out along a wall on the south side of Annex Road. The Libyan police or militiamen remained inside the vehicles, while seven well-armed, jocked-up, unmistakably American men stepped onto the gravel road and approached the gate on foot. Tanto lowered his weapon and told the Annex security leader it was OK to let them in.

Tanto had worked with most of the new arrivals when he’d been in Tripoli, so as they walked through the gate he called down from the rooftop and greeted several by their radio call signs. “Hey,” he said, “it’s good to see you. Welcome to the party. We’re having a blast over here.”

Atop Building D, Jack lowered the barrel of his assault rifle and watched the operators enter the Annex. Four were GRS operators, including the Libya country Team Leader; two were active-duty Delta Force members; and the seventh was an older man serving as their translator. Jack briefly lost track of them as they walked past the olive tree toward Building C, so he moved to the east side of the roof for a better view.

Even in the dim light inside the Annex, Jack immediately recognized one team member: Glen “Bub” Doherty. Jack wouldn’t drop his guard and call out to his friend, but he allowed himself a moment of good cheer. The two former SEALs hadn’t seen each other in nearly three years, since they’d gone through the GRS training session with Rone. But Jack knew that when the danger passed, they’d catch up and tell stories. Jack would have preferred to have run into Glen at a bar, drinking his favorite IPA craft beer, but this would have to suffice.

The seven Tripoli team members went inside Building C, to work out details of the evacuation with the Annex chief and his deputy. Their main concern was getting assurances that the roads and the airport were clear of enemies, to minimize the chance that they’d be heading into an ambush en route.

Sunrise was still about an hour away, but inside the Annex walls it began to feel as though the worst of the night and the battle might be over. Although the Benghazi operators remained at their rooftop posts along with Dave Ubben and the two DS agents from Tripoli, several said the arrival of reinforcements and a militia escort made them feel as though they’d soon be safely away from Benghazi.

Yet as the minutes continued to tick by, the operators again grew tense. They couldn’t afford any more delays. As students of military history, Rone and Oz could rattle off examples through the ages of attacks at first light. Standing together near the northwest corner of Building C’s roof, they suspected that as the sun neared the horizon, the attackers would use the dim light to test the mettle of fatigued Americans who’d spent all night defending the Compound and the Annex. Rone and Oz knew that if their
enemies timed it right, the operators would lose the advantage of night-vision goggles, and their fighting positions would become visible.

“We need to get the heck out of here,” Oz said. “It’s getting light.”

After the Tripoli team spent about ten minutes inside Building C, the door opened and one of the new arrivals strode around to the backyard, to find the ladder leading to the roof. Glen Doherty wanted to say hello to Rone.

As Glen approached the ladder, a call came over the radio telling all Annex residents that they had one last chance to visit their rooms to gather essential belongings before assembling at Building C for departure.

The evacuation plan called for members of the Tripoli team to lead a tightly controlled withdrawal of the five survivors from the Compound and most of the Annex staff. The Americans would be sprinkled among the motorcade of militia police cars that remained parked outside the front gate. They’d retrace their route to the airport, then fly to Tripoli on the small jet that the response team had chartered for the flight to Benghazi.

One complication was that the commercial jet was too small to carry all of the roughly thirty Americans, including the Tripoli team, inside the Annex. As a result, the initial evacuation wouldn’t include the Benghazi operators, several other shooters, or the remains of Sean Smith.

Under the plan, rather than wait in the open at the airport, the men left behind would stay in the relative safety of the Annex with Smith’s body until they got word that another plane had arrived for them. When the second plane
landed, the militia motorcade would return to the Annex to escort the remaining men and Smith’s body to the airport.

Attempts also were under way to coordinate with trusted local contacts to retrieve Ambassador Stevens’s body from the Benghazi Medical Center, so his remains could fly with the operators and Smith’s body to Tripoli. From there, the plan called for the operators to arrange flights home or to Washington, and the two fallen Americans to be received with honors at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

When Tanto learned that he wouldn’t be part of the first evacuation, he asked D.B. to cover the south side of the Annex from Building B. Tanto climbed down from Building A for a bathroom break. When he returned up top, he noticed that the militia motorcade had remained stationary since its arrival outside the Annex. Tanto called the Team Leader to ask why the militia hadn’t set up blocking positions on surrounding streets, to prevent anyone from attempting a third attack on the Annex.

Tanto had barely released his thumb from the radio’s talk button when he heard a strange whooshing sound. He squeezed the button again.

“Incoming?”

TWELVE

Mortars!

A
S THE EVACUATION PLANS TOOK SHAPE INSIDE
Building C, Glen Doherty knew that he’d soon be leaving the Annex and that his friends on the Benghazi security team would remain behind for the second plane. They might connect when they all reached Tripoli, but Glen wasn’t the sort of man who passed up an opportunity to see a pal. Rone was directly above his head on the building’s roof. Maybe they’d have enough time for a brief visit.

Up on the roof, Rone stood in a half crouch, partially shielded by the parapet at the far northwest corner, his helmet and body armor securely in place, a twenty-pound, belt-fed machine gun in his hands. Oz was a foot to Rone’s right, similarly jocked up, armed with an assault rifle. At their feet were several thousand rounds of linked
ammunition. Their eyes darted left and right as they looked out over Zombieland.

In the event of an attack, the two operators had choreographed a reloading strategy under which one would signal the other before ducking down behind the parapet. While one reloaded, the other would increase his rate of fire, to keep rounds flying and their enemies back on their heels.

The third man on the Building C roof was Dave Ubben, who stood watch with his assault rifle at the far northeast corner, near the top of the ladder. Building C was built on an angle to the Annex’s rear wall, so from his post Ubben was less than ten yards from the wall, while Rone and Oz were about twice as far.

Ubben’s post was about forty-five feet to the right of Oz. At that distance, Oz and Ubben could barely see each other in the early-morning darkness. But with each passing minute, visibility faintly improved. As 5:00 a.m. passed, more than seven hours into the battle, the twilight before sunrise silhouetted the big DS agent with a faint orange glow when Oz looked in his direction.