Black Hawk Down (15 page)

The number of Somalis killed in the attack was disputed. Mohammed Hassan Farah, Abdullahi
Ossoble Barre, Qeybdid, and others present claimed 763 dead, including women and children
who had been on the building's first floor.

They said hundreds were wounded. The reports Howe got after the attack placed the number
of dead at 20, all men. The International Committee of the Red Cross set the number of
dead at 54, with total casualties at 250. But the dispute over the number of dead Somalis
was quickly eclipsed by the deaths of 4 Western journalists who rushed to the Abdi home to
report on the attack, only to be killed by an enraged Somali mob.

The journalists' deaths focused worldwide anger on the Somalis, but in Mogadishu the
shock and outrage was over the surprise attack. The massacre bolstered Aidid's status, and
badly undercut the UN's humanitarian image. Moderates opposed to Aidid now rallied behind
him. From the Habr Gidr's perspective, the UN and, in particular, the United States, had
declared war.

Howe kept pushing for Delta. It was the clearest way out he could see. At Fort Bragg,
teams of Night Stalker pilots and Delta officers worked up a plan in June that would
require only about twenty men. They would slip into the country surreptitiously and use
the QRF's helicopters and equipment. An Intelligence assessment found Aidid still snaking
public appearances and moving around Mogadishu with his conspicuous escort of technicals.

But through July and most of August there was no green light from Washington.

Howe's pleas won out finally in August when remote-controlled land mines first killed
four American soldiers and then, two weeks later, injured seven more. Vacationing on
Martha's Vineyard, President Clinton assented. Delta would go. Aidid became America's
white whale.

Task Force Ranger arrived on August 23 with a three-phase mission. Phase One, which would
last until the thirtieth, was just to get the force up and running. Phase Two, which would
last until September 7, would concentrate exclusively on finding and capturing Aidid. The
command staff already suspected this would be futile, since widespread publicity about the
Rangers intentions quickly drove Aidid underground. Phase Three would target Aidid's
command structure. This was the meat of Task Force Ranger's mission. It the D-boys
couldn't catch the warlord, they were going to put him out of business.

Howe had initially envisioned a small unit of stealthy operators, but he was delighted to
get the whole 450-man task force. He weathered with patience, its early missteps. As
September rolled on, despite the glitches, the force achieved mounting success. Howe was
especially pleased on September 1l when a surprise daylight assault on a convoy of cars
resulted in the capture of Osman Atto, the arms dealer and Aidid's chief banker, who was
now imprisoned with a growing number of other SNA captives on an island off the coast of
the southern port city of Kismayo, in pup tents surrounded by razor wire.

Aidid was feeling the heat. A Habr Gidr leader cooperating with U.S. forces told them,
“He [Aidid] is very tense; the situation out there is very tense.” In late August the
Somali warlord sent a letter to former president Jimmy Carter pleading for him to
intervene with President Clinton. The general wanted an independent commission “composed
of internationally known statesmen, scholars and jurists from different countries,” to
investigate the allegations that he was responsible for the June 5 incident--Aidid claimed
it had been a spontaneous uprising of Mogadishu citizens who feared the UN was attacking
Radio Mogadishu. He also called for a negotiated solution to his standoff with the UN.

Carter had taken this message to the White House, and the suggestion was received warmly
by Clinton, who directed that efforts to resolve matters peacefully be renewed. The State
Department began quietly working on a plan to intercede through the governments of
Ethiopia and Eritrea. The plan called for an immediate cease-fire, and for Aidid to remove
himself from Somalia until the international inquiry was done. It set a new round of
nation-building talks in November. There were other feelers being put out in Mogadishu by
Howe through Habr Gidr elders alarmed at the recent turn of events. Howe and his
supporters in Washington were convinced that Aidid's sudden flexibility was a direct
result of Garrison's pressure.

Peace had been the reason for Howe's journey this weekend. On his long flight over the
dry wasteland, watching the shadow of his plane racing ahead of it across the dunes, he
felt like the UN at last was dealing from a position of strength.

After circling out over the water for nearly an hour, Howe's plane was finally cleared to
land at the Ranger base late Sunday afternoon. He knew there was a battle raging, but he
didn't get the full picture until he returned to the UN compound early that evening.
General Montgomery was at work there piecing together an enormous international convoy to
go in and rescue the downed Rangers and pilots.

There was little for Howe to do but to find a place to sit and observe.

Montgomery had his hands full. The Malaysians and Pakistanis, who had the necessary armor,
wanted no part of the Bakara Market. These were the same troops that had effectively
backed out of the city streets after the Marines had left. They did want to help, but were
balking at the idea of sending big armored vehicles into the hornet's nest. In those
densely populated neighborhoods, moving slowly through narrow streets, armor was highly
vulnerable.

The Italians, whom loyalties had been at best suspect throughout the intervention, were
nevertheless ready to commit, as were the Indians, who had tanks of their own they could
throw into the fight. It would take longer to get the Italians and Indians into position,
so Montgomery warn pushing the Malays end Pakis hard.

Howe couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if such a determined international
response had greeted the June 5 slaughter of the Pakistani troops, as he had urged. Still,
he was pleated to see it now. It was a shame the task force had gotten stung, but once the
bleeding there would be more of an appetite in Washington to get rid of this upstart
warlord once and for all.

-11-

Word that there was big trouble in the city spread quickly through the Somali staff at the
U.S. embassy compound. Abdi Karim Mohamud worked as a secretary for Brown & Root, one of
the American companies providing support services to the international military force. He
had had been a twenty-one-year-old college student when the Barre regime was toppled. He
had furthered his education on his own ever since. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, spoke
fluent English, wore neatly pressed blue oxford shirts, and had about him and air of
eager, cheerful efficiency that won him increasing responsibility. He was also a pair of
smart eyes and ears for the Habr Gidr, his clan.

Abdi had been hopeful about the UN when the humanitarian mission began. He'd found a job
and the effort seemed good for his country. But when the attacks began on his clan and
General Aidid, and every week there was a mounting toll of Somali dead and injured, he saw
it as an unwarranted assault on his country. On July 12, the day of the Abdi House attack,
he had seen victims of the bombing who were brought to the U.S. embassy compound. The
Somali men, elders of his clan, were bloody and dazed and in need of a doctor. Instead the
Americans photographed them and interrogated them and then put them in jail. Abdi kept his
job but for a different reason.

He could hear waves of gunfire crackling over the city, and heard the fight was at the
Bakara Market.

At Brown & Root, all Somali employees were sent home.

“Something has happened,” Abdi was told.

Abdi lived with his family between the market and the K-4 traffic circle, which was just
north of the Ranger base. The rickety jitneys, so crammed with passengers that the
American soldier called them “Kling-on Cruisers” (a nod to Star Trek), were still running
up Via Lenin. The sounds of gunfire increased and the sky was thick with helicopters
speeding low over the rooftop, flying great looping orbits over the market area. There
were bullets snapping over his head when he got home. He found his father there with his
two brothers and sister. They were in the courtyard of their home with their backs against
a concrete wall, which was the piece they always went when bullets flew.

It seemed to Abdi that there were a hundred helicopters in the sky. The shooting was
continual sad seemed to be directed everywhere. Aidid's militia would fight from hundreds
of places in the densely populated neighborhood, not in any one place. So the fight raged
in all directions. As bad as it was, Abdi found that he grew accustomed to the shooting
after a while. It all seemed to be passing overhead anyway. After waiting an hour or so
with his family against the wall, he became restless and began moving around the house,
looking out windows. Then he ventured outside.

Some of his neighbors said the Rangers had taken Aidid. Many people were running toward
the fight. Abdi wanted to see for himself, so he joined the crowds moving that way. He had
relatives who lived just a few b1ocks from the Olympic Hotel and he was eager for news of
them. With all the bullets and blasts it was hard to believe anyone in the market area had
not been hit.

When he got close to the shooting there was terrible confusion on the streets. There were
dead people on the road, men, women, and children. Abdi saw an American soldier up one
alley lying in the road, bleeding from the leg and trying to hide himself. When a woman
ran out in front of Abdi, the American fired. The woman was hit but got off the street.
Abdi ran around the corner just as one of the Little Birds zoomed down that alley. He
pressed himself against a stone wall and saw bullets kick up in a line at the alley's
center toward and then past him. Venturing out like this had been a bed idea. He could not
have imagined such madness. After the helicopter passed, a of Somali men with rifles ran
to the corner, trying to find a better angle to fire at the American.

Abdi ran then to the house of a friend. They let him in and he got on the floor with
everyone else.

-12-

In the minutes before Super Six One was shot down, the Rangers and Delta operators back at
the target house had boon preparing to leave. It was taking longer than it should have.
First, they had the wounded Ranger, Blackburn, who had fallen from a Black Hawk. Three
Humvees had been separated from the ground convoy to return Blackburn to bus. Sergeant
Pilla had been killed on that ride. After those three vehicles departed, the convoy just
sat.

All of the men had heard veterans talk about the fog of war," which was shorthand for how
even the best laid plans went to hell fast once shooting started, but it was shocking
nevertheless to see how hard it was to get even the simplest things done. Staff Sergeant
Dan Schilling, the air force CCT in the convoy's lead Humvee, finally got fed up waiting
and went looking for what was holding things up. It turned out, the D-boys had been
waiting with the prisoners for some signal from the convoy, who had been waiting for the
D-boys to come out. Schilling ran back and forth a few times and finally got things moving.

Schilling was a laconic man from southern California, a lean, athletic former army
reservist who, eight years earlier, had gambled his pay grade and rank to join the air
force and see if he could get past the rigorous selection process for combat controllers.
It was a quicker path into special ops than any the army offered, and it sounded like fun.
CCTs specialized in dropping into dangerous places and directing pinpoint air strikes from
the ground. Since this mission called for clone coordination between forces on the pound
and I the air, Schilling had been assigned to ride with the convoy commander, Lieutenant
Colonel Danny McKnight It was exactly the kind of adventure Schilling had sought. He was
now thirty, a six-year veteran of special ops, and he was earning his danger pay today. He
fidgeted while the flex-cuffed Somalis were packed into one of the flatbeds. The rest of
the assault force had set off on foot for the crash site. The longer the convoy waited
like this out on the street, the more vulnerable they were. Every minute of delay gave
Aidid's militia and the armed mob time to amass. There was a noticeably steady increase in
the volume of fire. From the outset they'd assumed a thirty-minute window. If they could
get in and out in that time, they'd probably be okay. Schilling looked at his watch.
They'd been on the ground now for thirty-seven minutes.

Then Super Six One went down and everything changed. They were ordered to move to the
crash site, pronto.

There were already wounded men in nearly every vehicle. Thick smoke was in the air and
there was the odor of gunpowder and flames. Up alleys and in the main road and before some
of the buildings along Hawlwadig there were Somali bodies and parts of bodies. There were
upended carts and burning riddled hulks of automobiles. One of the convoy's three flatbed
five ton trucks was hugely aflame. It had been hit and disabled by an RPG, and a thermite
grenade had been ignited to completely destroy it. Big holes had been blasted in the
cinder-block walls of the Olympic Hotel and surrounding buildings. Trees had been leveled
with gunfire. In the alleyways and at intersections the sandy soil had soaked up of blood
and turned brown. The noise was deafening, but had increased gradually enough that the men
had grown accustomed to it. A loud snap or the chip of nearby stone would signal alarm,
but the mere sound of gunfire no longer stopped anyone. They moved cautiously but without
fear in the din. McKnight seemed particularly heedless of the danger. He strode
confidently across streets and up to men crouched behind cover as though nothing was out
of the ordinary. Shortly he began waving Rangers into the vehicles.