Black Hawk Down (34 page)

“Cover me,” he said.

And he ran, and ran, plowing across the wide road, head down as the volume of fire
suddenly surged. Wilkinson's buddies would later joke that he wasn't shot because he was
so slow the Sammies had all miscalculated his speed and aimed too far in front of him. To
the medic, it just felt like he had willed himself safely across the street. Once inside
the Delta command-post courtyard he began to assess the wounded, making quick triage
decisions. It was obvious Rodriguez needed help first. He was bleeding heavily, and was
very frightened. Wilkinson tried to calm him.

The medic cut open Rodriguez's uniform to assess the damage. Rodriguez had been hit by a
round that entered his buttock and bored straight through his pelvis, blowing off one
testicle as it exited through his upper thigh. The first goal was to stop Rodriguez from
bleeding out. If his femoral artery had been hit (as with Smith, across the street), he
knew there wasn't much chance of stopping the bleeding. Wilkinson began applying field
dressings and stuffing wads of Curlex into the gaping exit wound. He wrapped the area
tightly with an Ace bandage.

Wilkinson then

slipped rubber, pneumatic pants over Rodriguez's legs and pelvis, and pumped them with air
to apply still more pressure to the wound. The bleeding stopped. He dosed Rodriguez with
morphine and started an IV to replenish fluids, which he quickly exhausted trying to get
the private stabilized.

He radioed over to Fales, “You guys got any more fluids?”

They did. Wilkinson told them to just bag them up and toss them as far as they could in
his direction. He watched across the street as one of the men there wound up for the
heave, and realized that was a bad idea. He called back over and told them not to throw
it. If the contents broke open, or were hit by a round, they'd waste precious fluids. If
the bags spilled out, he'd be stuck in the middle of Marehan Road gathering it all up. He
decided it would be better to brave the road twice at full speed than stop in the middle
of it.

He ran across, again moving at what seemed tortoise pace, and again arriving unscathed.
The men watching from their positions hunkered down around the intersection were amazed at
Wilkinson's bravery. Wilkinson told Fales that he would have to go back for good this
time. Rodriguez was in a critical state. He needed to be taken out immediately. Wilkinson
would care for him until that happened. Then, with the fluids cradled in his arms, head
down, he dashed across the road for the third and last time. Again, he arrived unhurt.

As he burst back into the courtyard, one of the D-boys told him, “Man, God really does
love medics.”

It was fast growing dark. Wilkinson got help moving Rodriguez and the others into a back
room. He learned then that the convoy coming to rescue them had turned back, and that they
were going to be spending the night.

Wilkinson sought out Captain Miller.

Look, I've got a critical here,“ he said. ”He needs to get out right now. The others can
wait, but he needs to come out."

Miller gave him a look that said: We're in a bad spot here, what can I say?

6

Specialist Stebbins had his eyes closed but he still saw bright red when the grenade
exploded. He felt searing flames and then he just felt numb.

He smelled burned hair and dust and hot cordite and he was tumbling, tumbling, mixed up
with Heard, until they both came to rest sitting upright staring at each other.

“Are you okay?” Heard asked after a long moment.

“Yeah, but I don't have my weapon.”

Stebbins crawled back to his position, looking for his weapon. He found it in pieces.
There was a barrel but no hand grip. The dust was still thick in the air he could feel it
up his nose and in his eyes and could taste it. He could also taste blood. He figured he'd
busted his lip.

He needed another weapon. He stood up and started for the door of the courtyard where the
D-boys were holed up, figuring he'd grab one of the wounded's rifles, but he fell down. He
got up and took a step and then fell down again.

His left leg and foot felt like they were asleep. After falling the second time he
walked, dragging his leg, toward the courtyard. He found his buddy Heard standing in the
doorway telling one of the D-boys, “My buddy Steb is still out there.”

Stebbins put his hand on Heard's shoulder.

“Brian, I'm okay.”

Wilkinson grabbed hold of Stebbins, who looked a fright.

He was covered with dirt and powder and dust, his pants were mostly burned off, and he
was bleeding from wounds up and down his leg. He was groggy and seemed not to have noticed
his injuries.

“Just let me sit down for a few minutes,” Stebbins said. “I'll be okay.”

The medic helped Stebbins limp into the back room where the other wounded were gathered.
It was dark, and Stebbins smelled blood and sweat and urine. The RPG that had exploded
outside had briefly set fire to the house, and there was a thick layer of black smoke now
hanging from the ceiling about halfway to the floor. The window was open to air things
out, and everyone was sitting low. There were three Somalis huddled on a couch. Rodriguez
was in the corner moaning and taking short, loud sucking breaths. He had an IV tube in his
arm and these weird inflated pants around his middle. Fucking got his dick shot off.

Heard was arguing with a medic, “Look, I've just got a little scratch on my wrist. I'm
fine. Really. I should put a bandage on it and go back.”

The Somalis moved to the floor and Wilkinson eased Stebbins down on the couch and began
cutting off his left boot with a big pair of shears.

“Hey, not my boots!” he complained. “What are you doing that for?”

Wilkinson slid the boot off smoothly and slowly, removing the sock at the same time, and
Stebbins was shocked to see a golf ball-sized chunk of metal lodged in his foot. He
realized for the first time that he'd been hit. He had noticed that his trousers looked
burned and singed, and now, illuminated by the medic's white light, he saw that the
blackened flaking patches along his leg were skin! He felt no pain, just numbness. The
fire from the explosion had instantly cauterized all his wounds. He could see the whole
lower left side of his body was burned.

One of the D-boys poked his head in the door and gestured toward the white light.

“Hey, man, you've got to turn the white light out,” he said. “It's dark out there now and
we've got to be tactful.”

Stebbins was amused by that word, “tactful,” but then he thought about it-tactful, tact,
tactics-and it made perfect sense.

Wilkinson turned off the white light and flicked on a red flashlight.

Stebbins thrust his hand back into his butt pack for a cigarette, and found the pack had
been burned as well. Wilkinson wrapped Stebbins's foot.

“You're out of action,” he said. “Listen, you're numb now but it's gonna go away. All I
can give you is some Percocet.” He handed Stebbins a tablet and some iodized water in a
cup. Wilkinson also handed him a rifle. “Here's a gun. You can guard this window.”

“Okay.”

“But as your health care professional, I feel I should warn you that narcotics and
firearms don't mix.”

Stebbins just shook his head and smiled.

He kept hearing sounds out the window, coming up the alley. But there was no one there.
His mind was playing tricks on him. Once or twice he shouted in panic and blasted a few
rounds at the window, but it was just shadows.

Stebbins's outbursts and the blast of occasional RPG hits against the outside wall roused
Rodriguez from has morphine reverie. He laughed and shouted out the window what bad shots
the Somalis were. As bad as his wound was, he felt no pain, just discomfort. The rubber
pants had the lower half of his body in a vise. He asked Wilkinson once or twice if be
would release some of the pressure. The medic said no.

One of the D-boys came in and asked Stebbins where the RPG had come from that got him,
which direction? Stebbins wasn't sure.

“From down the alley west,” he said.

But that had been the direction he was facing, and his injuries were all on his back
side. Then Stebbins remembered he had turned and looked back when he had seen it coming at
him. It must have come from behind him.

“No, east. Not from over the bird though,” he said. “From farther up the street.”

Finally he was left to sit there alone, his pants blown off, clutching his rifle,
listening to Rodriguez breathing steadily and to the Somali woman complaining with words
be didn't understand that her husband's flex cuffs were too tight. He realized he had to
urinate badly. There was no place to go. So he just released the flow where he sat. It
felt great. He looked up at the Somali family and gave them a weak smile.

“Sorry about the couch,” he said.

7

Still out on the street one and a half blocks south, Private David Floyd was shooting at
everything that moved. At first he had hesitated firing into crowds when they massed
downhill to the south, but he had seen the Delta guy, Fillmore, get hit, and Lieutenant
Lechner, and about three or four of his other buddies, and now be was just shooting at
everybody. The world was erupting around him and shooting back seemed the only sensible
response. But no matter how many rounds he and Specialist Melvin DeJesus poured down
Marehan Road, the crowds kept on creeping in. Out in the street, still flat in his little
dip in the middle of the road, Specialist John Collett was doing the same. They were the
southernmost point on the perimeter and had no idea what was happening down around the
crash site, or anywhere else for that matter. When Floyd hit someone with rounds from his
SAW, he could see their bodies begin to twitch, like they were being zapped with
electricity. They would usually make it only a step or two more before failing over.

A bullet or a casing or something hit him. Floyd jumped a foot. He fell down, afraid to
take his eyes off the road ahead, and found that his pants had been ripped from his crotch
to his boot, but the round hadn't even scratched him. It had evidently come through the
tin wall.

“Whooo!” he said, looking over at DeJesus, grateful and frightened.

His ears were ringing but for some reason he could still hear. DeJesus was starting to
freak out. He was getting jumpier and jumpier, saying he couldn't stay there anymore. He
had to move. He and Floyd had felt safe for a time pressed behind the tin shed wall on the
west side of the road in shadow, but as it grew darker now, DeJesus wasn't staying low. He
was up on his feet, hopping up and down. He said he had to do something. He had a bad
feeling. He had to be somewhere else. Now!

Floyd felt like slapping him.

“Sit yer ass down!” he screamed at him.

As it happened, across Marehan Road men were waving them into the courtyard. Captain
Steele had given up for the time being catching up to Lieutenants Perino and DiTomasso in
the next block. He wanted all the men at this southern end of the perimeter to consolidate
in the courtyard. Already there were three Delta teams and a number of wounded in the
small space, including Neathery and Errico, who both had gunshot wounds to their biceps,
and Lechner, who was still howling with the pain of his shattered right lower leg. Goodale
was still working the radio while a medic stuffed Curlex into the exit wound in his
buttock. The courtyard was a haven, but the wide road that separated Floyd, DeJesus, and
the other members of Chalk Three from it loomed like an impassable gulf.

One by one, they ran or it. Private George Siegler went first. Then Collett jumped up
from his spot in the middle of the road and sprinted for the door. Private Jeff Young, his
big glasses bouncing on his nose and long legs pumping high, made it across next. As each
man ran, Floyd and DeJesus, who had settled down again, blasted rounds to the south to
provide covering fire. Finally, only Floyd and DeJesus were left.

“You're gonna run across that road,” Floyd told his buddy.

DeJesus nodded.

“But, listen here. When you get across, don't you go through that doorway, see? You turn
around and start shooting, because as soon as you're across, I'm coming. Okay?”

DeJesus nodded. Floyd wasn't at all sure he'd gotten through.

He must have blasted fifty rounds as DeJesus ran. And his friend didn't forget. Before
entering the courtyard, DeJesus turned, dropped to one knee, and started shooting. Floyd
felt like he had lead in his boots as he ran. His torn pants were flapping around him like
a skirt, and he wasn't wearing any underwear, so he felt naked in more ways than one as
his legs churned up the road. It seemed like the doorway to the courtyard was actually
receding while he ran.

But he made it.

8

Across the city, back at the Rangers' airfield base an hour or so earlier, the truckloads
of injured and dead off the lost convoy had arrived. This was the kind of catastrophe
Major Rob Marsh had long planned for, hoping he would never see. He had entered the army
in 1976 as a Special Forces medic, and then had gone on to medical school at the
University of Virginia. His father, John Marsh, was then Secretary of the Army. Marsh was
working as a flight surgeon in Texas when he had met General Garrison. The two had hit it
off. A few years later, as Delta commander, Garrison invited Marsh to be the unit's
surgeon - no doubt mindful of the family connection. Marsh said no, fearing that the offer
might have more to do with his father than his medical skills. But when the offer was
renewed about a year later, he'd accepted. He'd been doctoring for the unit ever since,
eight years now.

One of Marsh's proudest innovations were four large trauma chests, four-by-two-foot
trunks, packed with IV fluid bags, gauze, Curlex, petroleum jelly, needles, chest tubes .
. . all the things needed for initial treatment of wounds. Instead of just filling the
chests with the equipment, Marsh and his staff had packaged fifteen separate Ziploc bags
in each trunk, five serious-wound packets and ten for lesser wounds. The idea was to
assess the seriousness of an injury, then grab the appropriate packet.

Marsh had seen British forces do that during the Falkland Islands war. Delta had been
lugging the trunks around with them now for years, not always happily. Officers had
complained about how much space the trunks took up on pallets, and more than once had
tried to have them removed. In Marsh's experience, it was always officers with actual
combat experience like Garrison who would step in to save his chests. Now, for the first
time, they needed them.