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Chapter One
At liftoff, Matt Eversmann said a Hail Mary. He was curled into a seat
between two helicopter crew chiefs, the knees of his long legs up to his
shoulders. Before him, jammed on both sides of the Black Hawk helicopter,
was his "chalk," twelve young men in flak vests over tan desert
camouflage fatigues.
He knew their faces so well they were like brothers. The older
guys on this crew, like Eversmann, a staff sergeant with five years in at
age twenty-six, had lived and trained together for years. Some had come
up together through basic training, jump school, and Ranger school. They
had traveled the world, to Korea, Thailand, Central America ... they
knew each other better than most brothers did. They'd been drunk together,
gotten into fights, slept on forest floors, jumped out of airplanes,
climbed mountains, shot down foaming rivers with their hearts in their
throats, baked and frozen and starved together, passed countless bored
hours, teased one another endlessly about girlfriends or lack of same,
driven out in the middle of the night from Fort Benning to retrieve
each other from some diner or strip club out on Victory Drive after getting
drunk and falling asleep or pissing off some barkeep. Through all
those things, they had been training for a moment like this. It was the
first time the lanky sergeant had been put in charge, and he was nervous
about it.
Pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death, amen.
It was midafternoon, October 3, 1993. Eversmann's Chalk Four was
part of a force of U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force operators who were
about to drop in uninvited on a gathering of Habr Gidr clan leaders in
the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. This ragged clan, led by warlord
Mohamed Farrah Aidid, had picked a fight with the United States of
America, and it was, without a doubt, going down. Today's targets were
two of Aidid's lieutenants. They would be arrested and imprisoned with
a growing number of the belligerent clan's bosses on an island off the
southern Somali coast city of Kismayo. Chalk Four's piece of this
snatch-and-grab was simple. Each of the four Ranger chalks had a corner of the
block around the target house. Eversmann's would rope down to the
northwest corner and set up a blocking position. With Rangers on all
four corners, no one would enter the zone where Delta was working,
and no one would leave.
They had done this dozens of times without difficulty, in practice
and on the task force's six previous missions. The pattern was clear in
Eversmann's mind. He knew which way to move when he hit the ground,
where his soldiers would be. Those out of the left side of the bird would
assemble on the left side of the street. Those out of the right side would
assemble right. Then they would peel off in both directions, with the
medics and the youngest guys in the middle. Private First Class Todd
Blackburn was the baby on Eversmann's bird, a kid fresh out of Florida
high school who had not yet even been to Ranger school. He'd need
watching. Sergeant Scott Galentine was older but also inexperienced
here in Mog. He was a replacement, just in from Benning. The burden
of responsibility for these young Rangers weighed heavily on Eversmann.
This time out they were his.
As chalk leader, he was handed headphones when he took his front
seat. They were bulky and had a mouthpiece and were connected by a
long black cord to a plug on the ceiling. He took his helmet off and settled
the phones over his ears.
One of the crew chiefs tapped his shoulder.
"Matt, be sure you remember to take those off before you leave,"
he said, pointing to the cord.
Then they had stewed on the hot tarmac for what seemed an hour,
breathing the pungent diesel fumes and oozing sweat under their body
armor and gear, fingering their weapons anxiously, every man figuring
this mission would probably be scratched before they got off the ground.
That's how it usually went. There were twenty false alarms for every
real mission. Back when they'd arrived in Mog five weeks earlier, they
were so flush with excitement that cheers went up from Black Hawk to
Black Hawk every time they boarded the birds. Now spin-ups like this
were routine and usually amounted to nothing.
Waiting for the code word for launch, which today was "Irene,"
they were a formidable sum of men and machines. There were four of
the amazing AH-6 Little Birds, two-seat bubble-front attack helicopters
that could fly just about anywhere. The Little Birds were loaded
with rockets this time, a first. Two would make the initial sweep over
the target and two more would help with rear security. There were four
MH-6 Little Birds with benches mounted on both sides for delivering
the spearhead of the assault force, Delta's C Squadron, one of three
operational elements in the army's top secret commando unit. Following
this strike force were eight of the elongated troop-carrying Black
Hawks: two carrying Delta assaulters and their ground command, four
for delivering the Rangers (Company B, 3rd Battalion of the army's 75th
Infantry, the Ranger Regiment out of Fort Benning, Georgia), one carrying
a crack CSAR (Combat Search and Rescue) team, and one to fly the
two mission commanders — Lieutenant Colonel Tom Matthews, who
was coordinating the pilots of the 160th SOAR (Special Operations Aviation
Regiment out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky); and Delta Lieutenant
Colonel Gary Harrell, who had responsibility for the men on the ground.
The ground convoy, which was lined up and idling out by the front gate,
consisted of nine wide-body Humvees and three five-ton trucks. The
trucks would be used to haul the prisoners and assault forces out. The
Humvees were filled with Rangers, Delta operators, and four members
of SEAL (Sea, Air, Land) Team Six, part of the navy's special forces
branch. Counting the three surveillance birds and the spy plane high
overhead, there were nineteen aircraft, twelve vehicles, and about 160
men. It was an eager armada on a taut rope.
There were signs this one would go. The commander of Task Force
Ranger, Major General William F. Garrison, had come out to see them
off. He had never done that before. A tall, slender, gray-haired man in
desert fatigues with half an unlit cigar jutting from the corner of his
mouth, Garrison had walked from chopper to chopper and then stooped
down by each Humvee.
"Be careful," he said in his Texas drawl.
Then he'd move on to the next man.
"Good luck."
Then the next.
"Be careful."
The swell of all those revving engines made the earth tremble and
their pulses race. It was stirring to be part of it, the cocked fist of America's
military might. Woe to whatever stood in their way. Bristling with grenades
and ammo, gripping the steel of their automatic weapons, their
hearts pounding under their flak vests, they waited with a heady mix of
hope and dread. They ran through last-minute mental checklists, saying
prayers, triple-checking weapons, rehearsing their precise tactical
choreography, performing little rituals ... whatever it was that prepared
them for battle. They all knew this mission might get hairy. It was an
audacious daylight thrust into the "Black Sea," the very heart of Habr
Gidr territory in central Mogadishu and warlord Aidid's stronghold.
Their target was a three-story house of whitewashed stone with a flat
roof, a modern modular home in one of the city's few remaining clusters
of intact large buildings, surrounded by blocks and blocks of tin-roofed
dwellings of muddy stone. Hundreds of thousands of clan members lived
in this labyrinth of irregular dirt streets and cactus-lined paths. There
were no decent maps. Pure Indian country.
The men had watched the rockets being loaded on the AH-6s.
Garrison hadn't done that on any of their earlier missions. It meant
they were expecting trouble. The men had girded themselves with
extra ammo, stuffing magazines and grenades into every available pocket
and pouch of their load-bearing harnesses, leaving behind canteens,
bayonets, night-vision goggles, and any other gear they felt would be
deadweight on a fast daylight raid. The prospect of getting into a scrape
didn't worry them. Not at all. They welcomed it. They were predators,
heavy metal avengers, unstoppable, invincible. The feeling was,
after six weeks of diddling around they were finally going in to kick
some serious Somali ass.
It was 3:32 P.M. when the chalk leader inside the lead Black Hawk,
Super Six Four, heard over the intercom the soft voice of the
pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Mike Durant, clearly pleased.
Durant announced, "Fuckin' Irene."
And the armada launched, lifting off from the shabby airport by
the sea into an embracing blue vista of sky and Indian Ocean. They eased
out across a littered strip of white sand and moved low and fast over
running breakers that formed faint crests parallel to the shore. In close
formation they banked and flew down the coastline southwest. From
each bird the booted legs of the eager soldiers dangled from the benches
and open doors.
Unrolling toward a hazy desert horizon, Mogadishu in midafternoon
sun was so bright it was as if the aperture on the world's lens was stuck
one click wide. From a distance the ancient port city had an auburn hue,
with its streets of ocher sand and its rooftops of Spanish tile and rusted
tin. The only tall structures still standing after years of civil war were
the ornate white towers of mosques — Islam being the only thing all Somalia
held sacred. There were many scrub trees, the tallest just over
the low rooftops, and between them high stone walls with pale traces of
yellow and pink and gray, fading remnants of pre-civil war civility. Set
there along the coast, framed to the west by desert and the east by gleaming
teal ocean, it might have been some sleepy Mediterranean resort.
As the helicopter force swept in over it, gliding back in from the
ocean and then banking right and sprinting northeast along the city's
western edge, Mogadishu spread beneath them in its awful reality, a
catastrophe, the world capital of things-gone-completely-to-hell. It was
as if the city had been ravaged by some fatal urban disease. The few
paved avenues were crumbling and littered with mountains of trash,
debris, and the rusted hulks of burned-out vehicles. Those walls and
buildings that had not been reduced to heaps of gray rubble were pockmarked
with bullet scars. Telephone poles leaned at ominous angles like
voodoo totems topped by stiff sprays of dreadlocks — the stubs of their
severed wires (long since stripped for sale on the thriving black market).
Public spaces displayed the hulking stone platforms that once held
statuary from the heroic old days of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, the
national memory stripped bare not out of revolutionary fervor, but to
sell the bronze and copper for scrap. The few proud old government
and university buildings that still stood were inhabited now by refugees.
Everything of value had been looted, right down to metal window
frames, doorknobs, and hinges. At night, campfires glowed from third- and
fourth-story windows of the old Polytechnic Institute. Every open
space was clotted with the dense makeshift villages of the disinherited,
round stick huts covered with layers of rags and shacks made of scavenged
scraps of wood and patches of rusted tin. From above they looked
like an advanced stage of some festering urban rot.
In his bird, Super Six Seven, Eversmann rehearsed the plan in his
mind. By the time they reached the street, the D-boys would already
be taking down the target house, rounding up Somali prisoners and
shooting anyone foolish enough to fight back. Word was there were two
big boys in this house, men whom the task force had identified as "Tier
One Personalities," Aidid's top men. As the D-boys did their work and
the Rangers kept the curious at bay, the ground convoy of trucks and
Humvees would roll in through the city, right up to the target house.
The prisoners would be herded into the trucks. The assault team and
blocking force would jump in behind them and they would all drive back
to finish out a nice Sunday afternoon on the beach. It would take about
an hour.
To make room for the Rangers in the Black Hawks, the seats in
back had been removed. The men who were not in the doorways were
squatting on ammo cans or seated on the flak-proof Kevlar panels laid
out on the floor. They all wore desert camouflage fatigues, with Kevlar
vests and helmets and about fifty pounds of equipment and ammo
strapped to their load-bearing harnesses, which fit on over the vests. All
had goggles and thick leather gloves. Those layers of gear made even
the slightest of them look bulky, robotic, and intimidating. Stripped down
to their dirt-brown T-shirts and shorts, which is how they spent most
of their time in the hangar, most looked like the pimply teenagers they
were (average age nineteen). They were immensely proud of their
Ranger status. It spared them most of the numbing noncombat-related
routine that drove many an army enlistee nuts. The Rangers trained
for war full-time. They were fitter, faster, and first — "Rangers lead the
way!" was their motto. Each had volunteered at least three times to get
where they were, for the army, for airborne, and for the Rangers. They
were the cream, the most highly motivated young soldiers of their
generation, selected to fit the army's ideal — they were all male and,
revealingly, nearly all white (there were only two blacks among the
140-man company). Some were professional soldiers, like Lieutenant
Larry Perino, a 1990 West Point graduate. Some were overachievers in
search of a different challenge, like Specialist John Waddell on Chalk
Two, who had enlisted after finishing high school in Natchez, Mississippi,
with a 4.0 GPA. Some were daredevils in search of a physical challenge.
Others were self-improvers, young men who had found themselves
adrift after high school, or in trouble with drugs, booze, the law, or all
three. They were harder-edged than most young men of their generation
who, on this Sunday in early autumn, were weeks into their fall
college semester. Most of these Rangers had been kicked around some,
had tasted failure. But there were no goof-offs. Every man had worked
to be here, probably harder than he'd ever worked in his life. Those with
troubled pasts had taken harsh measure of themselves. Beneath their
best hard-ass act, most were achingly earnest, patriotic, and idealistic.
They had literally taken the army up on its offer to "Be All You Can Be."
They held themselves to a higher standard than normal soldiers.
With their buff bodies, distinct crew cuts — sides and back of the head
completely shaved — and their grunted Hoo-ah greeting, they saw themselves
as the army at its gung ho best. Many, if they could make it, aspired
to join Special Forces, maybe even get picked to try out for Delta,
the hale, secret supersoldiers now leading this force in. Only the very
best of them would be invited to try out, and only one of every ten
invited would make it through selection. In this ancient male hierarchy,
the Rangers were a few steps up the ladder, but the D-boys owned
the uppermost rung.
Rangers knew the surest path to that height was combat experience.
So far, Mog had been mostly a tease. War was always about to happen.
About to happen. Even the missions, exciting as they'd been, had
fallen short. The Somalis — whom they called "Skinnies" or "Sammies" — had
taken a few wild shots at them, enough to get the Rangers' blood
up and unleash a hellish torrent of return fire, but nothing that qualified
as a genuine balls-out firefight.
Which is what they wanted. All of these guys. If there were any
hesitant thoughts, they were buttoned tight. A lot of these men had
started as afraid of war as anyone, but the fear had been drummed out.
Especially in Ranger training. About a fourth of those who volunteered
washed out, enough so that those who emerged with their Ranger tab
at the end were riding the headiest wave of accomplishment in their
young lives. The weak had been weeded out. The strong had stepped
up. Then came weeks, months, years of constant training. The Hoo-ahs
couldn't wait to go to war. They were an all-star football team that had
endured bruising, exhausting, dangerous practice sessions twelve hours
a day, seven days a week — for years — without ever getting to play a game.
They yearned for battle. They passed around the dog-eared paperback
memoirs of soldiers from past conflicts, many written by former
Rangers, and savored the affectionate, comradely tone of their stories,
feeling bad for the poor suckers who bought it or got crippled or maimed
but identifying with the righteous men who survived the experience
whole. They studied the old photos, which were the same from every
war, young men looking dirty and tired, half dressed in army combat
fatigues, dogtags hanging around their skinny necks, posing with arms
draped over each other's shoulders in exotic lands. They could see themselves
in those snapshots, surrounded by their buddies, fighting their
war. It was THE test, the only one that counted.
Sergeant Mike Goodale had tried to explain this to his mother one
time, on leave in Illinois. His mom was a nurse, incredulous at his bravado.
"Why would anybody want to go to war?" she asked.
Goodale told her it would be like, as a nurse, after all her training,
never getting the chance to work in a hospital. It would be like that.
"You want to find out if you can really do the job," he explained.
Like those guys in books. They'd been tested and proven. It was
another generation of Rangers' turn now. Their turn.
It didn't matter that none of the men in these helicopters knew
enough to write a high school paper about Somalia. They took the army's
line without hesitation. Warlords had so ravaged the nation battling
among themselves that their people were starving to death. When the
world sent food, the evil warlords hoarded it and killed those who tried
to stop them. So the civilized world had decided to lower the hammer,
invite the baddest boys on the planet over to clean things up. 'Nuff said.
Little the Rangers had seen since arriving at the end of August had altered
that perception. Mogadishu was like the postapocalyptic world of
Mel Gibson's Mad Max movies, a world ruled by roving gangs of armed
thugs. They were here to rout the worst of the warlords and restore sanity
and civilization.
Eversmann had always just enjoyed being a Ranger. He wasn't sure
how he felt about being in charge, even if it was just temporary. He'd
won the distinction by default. His platoon sergeant had been summoned
home by an illness in his family, and then the guy who replaced him
had keeled over with an epileptic seizure. He, too, had been sent home.
Eversmann was the senior man in line. He accepted the task hesitantly.
That morning at Mass in the mess he'd prayed about it.
Airborne now at last, Eversmann swelled with energy and pride as
he looked out over the full armada. It was a state-of-the-art military force.
Already circling high above the target was the slickest intelligence support
America had to offer, including satellites, a high-flying P3 Orion
spy plane, and three OH-58 observation helicopters, which looked like
the bubble-front Little Bird choppers with a five-foot bulbous polyp
growing out of the top. The observation birds were equipped with video
cameras and radio equipment that would relay the action live to General
Garrison and the other senior officers in the Joint Operations Center
(JOC) back at the beach. Moviemakers and popular authors might
strain to imagine the peak capabilities of the U.S. military, but here was
the real thing about to strike. It was a well-oiled, fully equipped, late-twentieth-century
fighting machine. America's best were going to war,
and Sergeant Matt Eversmann was among them.
