13 Hours The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi (7 page)

Twenty-first-century CIA case officers, or COs, were more likely to be Ivy League valedictorians than licensed-to-kill Jason Bourne types. That meant they needed GRS operators, even if the COs often acted as though they’d handle danger fine on their own. The Benghazi operators felt that the COs treated them as excess baggage, slowing them down and getting in the way. Yet every operator in Benghazi had a story about young, inexperienced case officers walking blithely into trouble or failing to perceive a threat, only to be steered clear of danger by a GRS escort.

One night not long after Jack arrived, he and Rone teamed up to protect a case officer on an intelligence-gathering operation in the heart of the city. Rone and Jack conducted countersurveillance to make sure the CIA staffer wasn’t being followed. Jack watched unseen as two Arab men began trailing the case officer, who was oblivious as he strolled toward Rone’s car. Jack tried to call Rone
to inform him about the tail and to set up a new meeting place, so Jack’s cover wouldn’t be blown when he returned to the car. That proved impossible, so Jack got in the passenger seat and told the case officer in back, “You’re being followed.” The unknown men jumped into a car and began driving close behind the Americans. Rone hit the gas, expertly avoiding the usual traffic snarls and roadblocks. Eventually Rone lost the tail and returned them safely to the Annex.

Benghazi GRS operator Kris “Tanto” Paronto described the case officers’ failings in the salty vernacular of a gung-ho former Army Ranger: “They’re not combat COs, they’re intel collectors. They’re fucking glorified desk jockeys, that’s what they are. They’re smart people, but smart doesn’t outsmart a bullet. They don’t want us there, until something bad happens.” Tanto had felt a similar attitude among certain CIA staffers earlier in his GRS career, but he considered none worse than Bob, the Benghazi CIA base chief: “As far as he’s concerned, we’re Walmart security guards.”

No one on the GRS team, and perhaps no one in Benghazi, had a bigger personality than Tanto. The basic outline of his life could describe any number of people: forty-one years old; five foot nine; 175 pounds; brown hair; hazel eyes; the middle child of a college football coach and a first-grade teacher; gifted athlete; fishing enthusiast; twice married; devoted father of a boy he called “Bubba” and a girl he called “Princess”; former member of the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment; holder of a master’s degree in criminal justice; owner of an insurance adjusting business.

A more vivid picture of Tanto emerged from his candid self-assessment: teenage vandal; adrenaline junkie;
onetime steroid dealer; “loose cannon”; go-too-far practical joker; “a bit of an egomaniac”; take-a-bullet friend, warrior, and teammate; “worst student-body president” in his high school’s history; serially imperfect husband; contract operator who rolled through Kabul blasting the Ricky Martin song “La Bomba” with his windows open. A brief version of his life philosophy: “If you’re going to die, go down laughing. Laughing and fighting.”

Tanto’s other distinguishing characteristics were tattoos on his muscular body. One on his rib cage made it appear as though his skin was being ripped open to reveal an American flag within. One on his shoulder displayed the Army Rangers’ tab and scroll insignia. Another, covering his back from shoulder to shoulder, was a customized version of the iconic painting by Raphael of St. Michael vanquishing Satan. Instead of Raphael’s wooden spear, Tanto told the tattoo artist to give the saint a Crusader shield and a spear made from a crucifix. The design reflected Tanto’s desire for God to help him destroy the demons in his life, demons that ended his first marriage and interrupted his military career. “It also symbolizes my job,” he’d say. “You feel yourself as an avenging angel. You’re killing or destroying or pushing back the evil in this world. There’s a lot of it that’s out there, and people still don’t understand that. People think they can reason with it. You can’t. They’re evil and they will kill you.”

“I don’t wish the Crusades would come back,” added Tanto, who’d spent a decade working as a contract operator, much of it in Muslim countries. “But I sometimes feel that they
should
come back. The tattoo is more or less a Christian warrior emblem, which a lot of us think that we are and believe that we are. We believe that we’re warriors for the US, warriors for each other, but also warriors for
God. Same as the terrorists, I guess. Warriors for God. It’s just, I don’t blow up and kill little girls. I don’t go blow myself up and kill women indiscriminately. I’ve never shot anybody that hasn’t been shooting at me.”

Another Tanto-ism: “The last thing in the world that you’re going to have when the money runs out or everybody leaves you is your word. Your balls and your word. If you can’t say that you have stuck those out there and done everything you can to protect people, you ain’t got anything. If you’re not honest and willing to give your life for your brother, you’re not worth your weight in piss.” Tanto had a special place in his heart for the Ranger Creed, particularly the fifth stanza, which begins: “Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of battle for I am better trained and will fight with all my might. Surrender is not a Ranger word.”

Tanto kept things lively at the Benghazi CIA Annex.

The garrulous Tanto usually partnered with his good friend and roommate, the taciturn Dave “D.B.” Benton. At thirty-eight years old, D.B. had black hair, brown eyes, and a compact, muscular build. A middle child born to mixed-race parents, D.B. grew up in Pennsylvania, where he hated school, loved the outdoors, and idolized a grandfather who taught him “respect, integrity, courage, humility, empathy, and discipline.” Above all, “He taught me how to win, and he taught me how to lose.”

A military career seemed a natural inheritance: D.B.’s father served as a corpsman in the Navy and his uncles served in the Army and Marine Corps. His older brother preceded D.B. in the Marines, and the two served together from 1993 to 2000. During his years as a Marine sergeant, D.B. served as a member of a Maritime Special Purpose Force, a
Special Operations–capable unit trained for everything from hostage rescue to direct-action assaults. D.B. was a scout sniper whose specialties included surveillance, reconnaissance, and close-quarters battle.

After leaving the Marines, D.B. joined a police SWAT team in Georgia, but after 9/11 he felt compelled to return to military service. He’d already been in contact with a Marine recruiter when a friend told him about an opportunity to work for the State Department as a contract personal security specialist. Since then, D.B. had collected multiple awards for performance under fire in hot spots including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Haiti. One of those awards came in Iraq in 2004, when D.B. worked for the State Department under a contract with Blackwater. He was the Team Leader in a five-vehicle convoy ambushed while driving through Baghdad after escorting Secretary of State Colin Powell to the airport. As the driver of the lead vehicle sped toward safety, D.B. calmly kept the rest of the convoy updated on what was happening, allowing them to respond to the insurgents and escape the ambush without casualties, according to the citation he received.

Married to his high school sweetheart, D.B. had a son and two daughters. His biggest worry was that he might let someone down who relied on him, so he remained on permanent guard to prevent that from happening. His favorite author was Joseph Campbell, who wrote famously about mythmaking and the hero’s journey. D.B. considered one of Campbell’s maxims especially apt: “A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”

D.B.’s friendship with Tanto was sealed when they worked together for the State Department in Baghdad in 2004. At the end of a workday, they were relaxing atop a
Humvee when a Russian-made Katyusha rocket flew over their heads into a tent with more than thirty military contractors inside. D.B. knew that a natural reaction for some people would be to run the other way. But he and Tanto simultaneously had the opposite response, sprinting side by side into the smoke-filled tent to see who needed help. In the years that followed, both felt they’d developed a sixth sense that allowed each to know how the other would react when all hell broke loose.

Trips beyond the Annex walls, called “moves,” could happen at any time, day or night. Though Benghazi was unsafe for most Westerners, the operators prided themselves on knowing the city like natives and on being comfortable and confident enough to move by car or on foot almost anywhere they chose. The engines of their cars and SUVs were meticulously maintained, while the exteriors were invariably beaten up. Cars without dirt and dings in Benghazi revealed their owners as rich people, Americans, or both.

Growing beards and wearing local clothes, the operators tried to blend in, or at least not to stand out quite so much. They ate in restaurants, frequented coffee shops and hotels, shopped in stores and bazaars, and even walked like tourists through a small art museum located in an ancient palace near the port. Tanto’s travels formed his impression of Benghazi as a seedy, savage city, ruled by dangerous militias and fueled by oil, guns, and “the almighty dinar.”

Still, the operators knew that their lack of Arabic language skills and their distinctly American way of carrying themselves could put targets on their backs. So they took pains to attract as little notice as possible.

Usually the operators traveled armed with concealed knives and pistols. Some had custom leather holsters that allowed them to hide their guns without conspicuous bulges. Jack developed a quick-draw technique—lifting his shirt with his left hand, grabbing his pistol with his right—that an Old West gunfighter would have envied. Their cars carried their long guns, lethally dependable assault rifles.

Depending on the perceived danger of a move, the operators might drive armored vehicles and wear body armor with bullet-stopping inserts they called “chicken plates.” Just as often they’d use locally purchased cars, which they called “soft-skinned” vehicles, and eschew personal armor to avoid calling attention to their movements. Sometimes they found greater safety in stealth than armor.

Occasionally the entire Global Response Staff team would be on duty for a move, but more often they worked in small units, with Jack and Rone frequently assigned together. Jack’s roommate, Tig, usually partnered with contractor Mark Geist, whose call sign was “Oz.”

Beefy and self-assured, at forty-six Oz was the oldest member of the team. A shade under six feet tall, weighing more than two hundred pounds, Oz had thick blond hair, sharp blue eyes, and a country boy’s way about him. In junior high school and high school, Oz rode bulls in rodeos and broke wild horses. Since childhood he’d dreamed of becoming a soldier, a police officer, a cowboy, or a firefighter. He’d achieved the first three.

The grandson of a World War II tank commander, Oz had youthful memories of stacking hay, saving a calf during birth by turning it around in its mother’s womb, and
plucking the feathers off chickens whose necks had been wrung by his grandmother. He had a half-inch scar across his upper lip from being kicked in the mouth while branding a calf. Oz had joined the Marines when he turned eighteen. After a dozen years in the service, including time in an intelligence unit, Oz left to become a deputy sheriff and a police investigator. Later he became chief of police in the small town in eastern Colorado where he grew up, then started a private investigation business where he did bail bonding and bounty hunting.

Before going to work as a GRS operator, Oz did contract security work for the State Department in Iraq, starting in 2004. He’d also trained Iraqi SWAT teams and provided personal protection for a former prime minister of Iraq while working for another American contracting firm. Oz’s unusual résumé included security work on a contract basis for Russian and Ukrainian airlines. Twice married, Oz had a son with his first wife and a teenage stepdaughter and an infant daughter with his second wife.

Working with Rone, Jack, Tig, Tanto, D.B., and Oz was a young CIA staffer. He didn’t have the military background or training of the contract operators, but agency rules made him the Benghazi GRS Team Leader. His identity was confidential, so the other GRS operators usually called him by his radio call sign or referred to him by his title, abbreviated as “T.L.”