Black Hawk Down (5 page)

That episode didn't, but among official circles the task force again looked like Keystone
Kops. Never mind that every one of these missions was a masterpiece of coordination and
execution, difficult and dangerous as hell. So far none of his men had been seriously
hurt. Never mind that their latest outing had netted Osman Atto, Aidid's moneyman and one
of his inner circle. Washington was impatient. Congress wanted American soldiers home, and
the Clinton administration wanted to remove Aidid as a player in Somalia. August had
turned to September and September had turned to October. One more day was one day too long
for the wishes of America and the world to be stymied by this Mogadishu warlord; this man
America's UN Ambassador Madeleine K. Albright had labeled a “thug.”

Garrison could ill afford another misstep, even though caution could mean missing
opportunities. He knew that his superiors and even some people on his own staff thought he
was being too tentative about choosing missions. With such shaky work on the ground, what
could you expect?

“As a rule, we will launch if [a member of the local spy ring] reports he has seen Aidid
or his lieutenants, our RECCE [reconnaissance] halo picture approximates what is being
reported, and the report is current enough to be actionable,” Garrison wrote in his memo
to Hoar. "There is no place in Mogadishu we cannot go and be

successful in a fight. There are plenty of places we can go and be stupid."

And just that morning, like manna, the general's rigid criteria had been met.

Every Sunday morning the Habr Gidr held a ra11y out by the reviewing stand on Via Lenin,
where they hurled insults at the UN and its American enforcers. One of the main speakers
that morning was Omar Salad, Aidid's top political adviser. The clan had not caught on yet
that the Rangers had targeted the entire top rung of Aidid's gang, so Salad wasn't even
trying to hide.

He was one of the UN's 'Tier One Personalities." When the rally broke up, his white
Toyota Land Cruiser and some cars were watched from on high as they drove north toward

the Bakara Market. Salad was observed entering a house one block north of the Olympic
Hotel. At about 1:30 P.M. came confirmation from a Somali spy who radioed that Salad was
meeting with Abdi “Qeybdid” Hassan Awale, Aidid's ostensible interior minister. Two major
targets! Aidid might also be there, but, again, nobody had actually seen him.

High above, the Orion zoomed its cameras in on the neighborhood, and the observation
choppers took off. They moved up over the Black Sea to watch the same street. The TV
screens in the JOC showed many people and cars on the streets, a typical weekend afternoon
at the market.

To mark the precise location where Salad and Qeybdid were meeting, a Somali informant had
been instructed to drive his car, a small silver sedan with red stripes on its doors, to
the front of the hotel, get out, lift the hood, and peer into it as if he were having
engine trouble. This would give the helicopter cameras a chance to lock on him. He was
then to drive north and stop directly in front of the target house where the clan leaders
had convened. The informant did as instructed, but performed the check under his hood so
quickly that the helicopters failed to fix on him.

So he was told to do it again. This time he was to drive directly to the target building,
get out, and open the car hoed. Garrison and his staff watched this little drama unfold on
their screens. The helicopter cameras provided a clear color view of the busy scene as the
informant's car entered the picture driving north on Hawlwadig Road.

It stopped before a building alongside the hotel. The informant got out and opened the
hood. There was no mistaking the spot.

Word passed quietly to the hangar and the Rangers and D-boys started kitting up. The
Delta team leaders met and planned out their attack, using instant photo maps relayed from
the observation birds to plan exactly how they would storm the building, and where the
Ranger blocking positions would be. Copies of the plan were handed out to all the chalk
leaders, and the helicopters were readied. Just as Garrison was preparing to launch,
however, everything was placed on hold.

The spy had stopped his car short. He was on the right street, but he'd chickened out.
Nervous about moving so close to the target house, he'd stopped down the street a ways and
opened the hood there. Despite Garrison's finicky precautions, the task force had been
minutes away from launching an assault on the wrong house.

The commanders all hustled back into the JOC to regroup. The informant, who wore a small
two-way radio strapped to his leg, was instructed to go back around the block and this
time stop in front of the right goddamn house. They watched on the screens as the car came
back up Hawlwadig Road. This time it went past the Olympic Hotel and stopped one block
north, on the other side of the street. This was the same building the observation
choppers had observed Salad entering earlier.

It was now three o'clock. Garrison's staff informed General Thomas Montgomery, second in
command of all UN troops in Somalia (and direct commander of the 10th

Mountain Division's “Quick Reaction Force” [QRF], that they were about to launch. Then
Garrison sought confirmation that there were no UN or charitable organizations
(Non-Governmental Organizations, or NGOs) in the vicinity--a safeguard instituted after
the arrests of the UN employees in the Lig Ligato raid. All aircraft were ordered out of
the airspace over the target. The commanders of the 10th Mountain Division were told to
keep one company on standby alert. Intelligence farces began jamming all radios and
cellular phones--Mog had no regular working phone system.

The general made a last-minute decision to upload rockets on the Little Birds. Lieutenant
Jim Lechner, the Ranger Company's fire support officer, had been pushing for it. Lechner
knew that if things got bad on the ground, he'd love to be able to call in those
rockets--the two pods on the AH-6s each carried six missiles.

In the quick planning session, Lechner asked again, “Are we getting rockets today?”

Garrison told him, “Roger.”

-4-

Ali Hassan Mohamed ran to the front door of his father's hamburger and candy shop when the
choppers came down and the shooting started. He was a student, a tall and slender teenager
with prominent cheekbones and a sparse goatee. He studied English and business in the
mornings and afternoons manned the store, which was just up from the Olympic Hotel. The
front door was across Hawlwadig Road diagonal from the house of Hobdurahman Yusef Galle,
where the Rangers seemed to be attacking.

Peering out the doorway, Ali saw American soldiers sliding down on ropes to the alley
that ran west off Hawlwadig. His shop was on the corner of that street and the gate to his
family's home was just down from there. The Americans were shooting as soon as they hit
the ground, shooting at everything. There were also Somalis shooting at them. These
soldiers, Ali knew, were different from the ones who had come to feed Somalia. These were
Rangers. They were cruel men who wore body armor and strapped their weapons to their
chests and when they came at night they painted their faces to look fierce. Farther up
Hawlwadig, to his left about two blocks over, another group of Rangers were in pitched
battle. He saw two of them drag another who looked dead out of the street.

The Rangers across the street entered a courtyard there and were shooting out. Then a
helicopter came down low and blasted streams of fire from a gun on its side. The gun just
pulverized his side of the street. Ali's youngest brother, Abdulahi Hassan Mohamed, fell
dead by the gate to the family's house, bleeding from the head. Abdulahi was fifteen. Ali
saw it happen. Then the Rangers ran out of the courtyard and across Hawlwadig toward the
house of Hobdurahman Yusef Galle, where most of the other soldiers were.

Ali ran. He stopped to see his brother and saw his head broken open like a melon. Then he
took off as fast as he could. He ran to his left, down the street away from the Rangers
and the house they were attacking. At the end of the dirt alley he turned left and ran
behind the Olympic Hotel. The streets were crowded with screaming women and children.
People were scrambling everywhere, racing around dead people and dead animals. Some who
were running went toward the fight and others ran away from it. Some did not seem to know
which way to go. He saw a woman running naked, waving her arms and screaming. Above was
the din of the helicopters and all around the crisp popping of gunfire.

Out in the streets there were already Aidid militiamen with megaphones shouting,
“Kasoobaxa guryaha oo iska celsa cadowga!” (“Come out and defend your homes!”)

Ali was not a fighter. There were gunmen, they called them mooryan, who lived for rice
and khat and belonged to the private armies of rich men. Ali was just a strident and
part-time shopkeeper who joined the neighborhood militia to protect its shops from the
mooryan. But these Rangers were invading his home and had just killed his brother. He ran
with rage and terror behind the hotel and then turning left again, back across Hawlwadig
Road to the house of his friend Ahmed, where his AK-47 was hidden. Once he had retrieved
the gun he met up with several of his friends. They ran back behind the Olympic Hotel,
through all the Chaos. Ali told them about his brother and led them back to his house and
shop, determined to exact revenge.

Hiding behind a wall behind the hotel, they fired their first shots at the Rangers on the
corner. Then they moved north, ducking behind cars and buildings. All would jump out and
spray bullets toward the Rangers, then run for cover. Then one of his friends would do the
same. Sometimes they just pushed the barrels of their guns around the corners and sprayed
bullets without looking. None of them was an experienced fighter.

The Rangers were better shots. Ali's friend, Adan Warsawe stepped out to shoot and was
hit in the stomach by a Ranger bullet that knocked him fiat on his back. Ali and another
friend risked the shooting to drag Adan to cover. The bullet had punched a hole in Adan's
gut and made a gaping wound out his back that had sprayed blood on the dirt. When they
dragged him it left a smear of blood on the street. Adan looked both alive and dead, as
though he were someplace in between.

Ali moved on to the next street, leaving Adan with two friends. He would shoot a Ranger
or die trying. Why were they doing this? Who were these Americans who came to his
neighborhood spraying bullets and spreading death?

-5-

After bursting into the storehouse off Hawlwadig, Sergeant Paul Howe and the three other
men on his Delta team rounded the corner and entered the target building from the southern
courtyard door. They were the last of the assault forces to enter the house. A team led by
Howe's buddy Matt Rierson had already rounded up twenty-four Somali men on the first
floor, among them two prizes: Omar Salad, the primary target, and Mohamed Hassan Awale,
Aidid's chief spokesman (not Abdi “Qeybdid” Hassan Awale, as reported, but a clan leader
of equal stature).

They were prone and docile and Rierson's team was locking their wrists together with
plastic cuffs.

Howe asked Sergeant Mike Foreman if anyone had gone upstairs.

“Not yet,” Foreman said.

So Howe took his four men up to the second floor.

It was a big house by Somali standards, whitewashed cinder-block walls and windows with
no glass in them. At the top step Howe called for one of his men to toss a flashbang
grenade into the first room. It exploded and the team burst in as they were trained to do,
each man covering a different firing lane. They found only a mattress on the floor. As
they moved around the room, a volley of machine-gun fire slammed into the ceiling and
wall, just missing the bead of one of Howe's men. They all dropped down. The rounds had
come through the southeast window, and had clearly come from the Ranger blocking position
just below the window. One of the younger soldiers outside had evidently seen someone
moving in the window and fired. Obviously some of these guys weren't clear which building
was the target

It was what he had feared. Howe was disappointed in the Rangers. These were supposed to
be the army's crack infantry? Despite all the hype and Hoo-ah horseshit, he saw the
younger men as poorly trained and potentially dangerous in combat. Most were fresh out of
high school! During training exercises he had the impression that they were always craning
their necks to watch him and his men instead of paying attention to their own very
important part of the job.

And the job demanded more. It demanded all you had, and more... because the price of
failure was often death. That's why Howe and the rest of these D-boys loved it. It
separated them from other men. War was ugly and evil, for sure, but it was still the way
things got done on most of the planet. Civilized states had nonviolent ways of resolving
disputes, but that depended on the willingness of everyone involved to back down. Here in
the raw Third World, people hadn't learned to back down, at least not until after a lot of
blood flowed. Victory was for those willing to fight and die. Intellectuals could theorize
until they sucked their thumbs right off their hands, but in the real world, power still
flowed from the barrel of a gun. If you wanted the starving masses in Somalia to eat, then
you had to outmuscle men like this Aidid, for whom starvation worked. You could send in
your bleeding-heart do-gooders, you could hold hands and pray and sing hootenanny songs
and invoke the great gods CNN and BBC, but the only way to finally open the roads to the
big-eyed babies was to show up with more guns. And in this real world, nobody had more or
better guns than America. If the good-hearted ideals of humankind were to prevail, then
they needed men who could make it happen. Delta made it happen.