13 Hours The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi (19 page)

From that distance, seeing the world through the green fog of night-vision goggles, the operators didn’t know whether the Arab men were a platoon of friendly 17 February militiamen or part of the attack force, intent on blocking the road to the Compound. Either way, the operators had no choice. They’d keep moving forward.

Rone turned off the BMW’s headlights and slowed to a crawl before the intersection. He stopped the car next to an eight-foot cement-block wall. Tanto pulled the Mercedes in behind. The Arab men made no hostile moves toward them, so the operators began to hope they were in fact 17 February allies.

As they parked, the operators heard an anxious DS agent in the Compound broadcast another beseeching radio message: “You need to hurry up. The buildings are on fire.” Then he repeated the earlier, desperate plea: “If you don’t get here soon, we’re all going to die!”

Rone warned the other operators in the BMW to get out slowly, so they wouldn’t spook potentially friendly militiamen into thinking they were bad guys.

From the back of the Mercedes, the GRS Team Leader said he believed the intersection was supposed to be their meeting point with 17 February militiamen. When the Arab men remained at ease, the operators prepared to leave their vehicles. Tanto turned to the translator. “Henry, get this stuff coordinated and find out who the commander is. We need to get moving. We’re way behind.”

Henry and the GRS Team Leader warily approached the men in the intersection, hunched forward, weapons in hand but angled downward. Rone, Jack, Tig, Tanto, and D.B. remained on alert by the vehicles, weapons ready.

Suddenly gunshots rang out close by, and everyone
snapped to attention. The sound crackled and echoed off the roadside walls and buildings, making it difficult to tell their origin. The shots came in sporadic and random bursts, one, two, three at a time.

As they tucked close to the walls or inside the vehicles, it occurred to several operators that if anyone got panicky about taking fire, a shootout could easily erupt among the men assembled at the intersection. A gunfight on Gunfighter Road. The operators weren’t worried about each other, but they still weren’t sure what to make of the Arab men with whom they apparently were supposed to join forces. Jack imagined the worst possibility: a deadly friendly-fire incident.

When he first heard the shots, Jack thought someone was firing directly at them from farther north up Gunfighter Road. Then he realized that the shots were coming from the direction of the Compound, some four hundred yards away to the east. Someone was shooting toward the intersection where the Arab men stood. Rounds from that direction couldn’t reach the operators, who remained just south of the intersection, protected by the wall and out of the line of fire.

In the darkness and the confusion, with rounds flying and cars passing and people moving in all directions, Jack wondered if some of the shots came from snipers in the three-and four-story buildings near the intersection. Crouching inside the BMW, the passenger door flung open, he held his assault rifle down between his legs, ready to raise it and return fire.

Henry and the Team Leader were relieved to learn the Arab men at the intersection were, in fact, 17 February militiamen, and that their commander spoke passable English. The commander confirmed that he and his men would
help the Americans to regain control of the Compound. Or at least try.

Still, Tanto didn’t like the scene. He’d already expressed his doubts about the 17 February Martyrs Brigade to his fellow operators, suspecting that the militia was neither adequately trained nor wholly genuine in its claimed friendship with the Americans. Watching the militiamen in action, he judged them undisciplined and disorganized, as they spread out and stood around in no apparent order or military bearing. Several seemed mainly interested in controlling traffic between Gunfighter Road and the Fourth Ring Road. Yet occasionally cars still cruised by, their occupants staring at the armor-wearing, gun-toting, goggle-eyed, helmet-topped Americans in the street.

Incredulous, Tanto turned to D.B.: “We were waiting for
these
guys?”

The only militiaman who impressed Tanto was a black African fighter in a ski mask. As sporadic incoming gunfire continued, the militiaman dropped prone onto the ground and fired a Kalashnikov light machine gun, called a PKM, answering the incoming gunfire by firing east toward the Compound. As far as Tanto was concerned, the masked man’s comrades didn’t seem to know what to do.

Tig heard the militia commander say that he and his men had tried to drive down the road to the Compound but had turned back when they came under fire. The Team Leader, Rone, and the commander discussed a new approach.

As the plan took shape, Tanto and D.B. moved cautiously from their car toward the intersection. They looked down the gravel road. “It’s a fucking fatal funnel,” Tanto said, imagining how exposed they’d be to enemy fire if they tried walking or driving on the road toward the Compound.
They could see swirling black smoke and orange firelight rising from their destination. The sky above buildings close to the Compound seemed to glow amber. Tanto briefly tilted his head back farther and saw pinpoints of starlight, radiating an eerie green in his night-vision goggles. When they wore the goggles, the operators had no peripheral vision and little depth perception, making it seem as though they were looking at the world through narrow cardboard tubes with green cellophane on the ends.

Several minutes after they arrived in the intersection, as strategy talks continued, D.B. turned to Tanto.

“Hey Tanto, let’s get high.”

“Roger that. I’ll try.”

D.B. was thinking like the Marine sniper he’d trained to be. He’d noticed a four-or five-story building on the other side of the eight-foot wall where they’d parked for cover. If they could reach an upper floor, they might be able to establish a vantage point to see who was firing at them and what was happening inside the Compound. They might even be able to pick off the enemy shooters.

First, though, they’d have to get over that eight-foot wall. A thought crossed Tanto’s mind:
Jesus Christ, I’m getting too old for this.
He’d left the Annex still in his cargo shorts, and he knew that he’d be scraping skin the whole way over the wall.

Tanto approached the Team Leader and the 17 February commander.

“Me and D.B. are going on foot,” Tanto said. “We can’t wait any longer.”

The Team Leader gave them the go-ahead, and Tanto went to Rone. “Hey buddy, we’re going. I’ll maintain contact, let you know when I think it’s clear to go down that road.”

Tanto slung his assault rifle over his left shoulder, grabbed his light machine gun, and draped a two-hundred-round bandolier across his chest. He threw his go-bag over his right shoulder. He filled his pockets with magazines. As he finished jocking up, Tanto caught sight of two young 17 February militiamen with AK-47s, watching him.

“Hey, you two, come with us.” The militiamen nodded their heads in agreement. Tanto and D.B. led them toward the wall.

Locked inside the Compound TOC, DS agent Alec Henderson continued to communicate with the Annex, the embassy in Tripoli, and the State Department in Washington. He spread word that Scott Wickland was suffering from severe smoke inhalation on the roof of Villa C, and that Chris Stevens and Sean Smith remained missing. He described the fires and the attackers roaming the Compound.

DS agent David Ubben knew that they needed only one agent in the TOC to maintain communications. From what he and Henderson could see on the monitor, it looked as though the attackers had moved away from the TOC and the Cantina after unsuccessfully trying to reach the Americans inside both. If Ubben could get to the two Tripoli DS agents still barricaded in the Cantina with a local guard, maybe they could team up and find the lost men. He described his plan to the agents in the Cantina via radio.

In full combat gear, weapon in hand, Ubben cracked open the door to the TOC and threw a smoke grenade into the brick walkway separating the TOC from the Cantina. Henderson provided cover as Ubben prepared to leave. Using the white smoke to conceal his movements, Ubben
ran across the walkway and inside the looted Cantina. Making his way through the ransacked building, Ubben found the room where the two Tripoli DS agents were waiting with the Blue Mountain guard. They removed the barricade that had kept out the attackers, and the two Tripoli DS agents joined Ubben in the effort to reach Villa C. They told the local guard to stay hidden in the Cantina.

Unsure where the attackers might be, going on foot seemed like a death wish. Outside the TOC was an armored vehicle that the attackers had failed to burn when they ran out of diesel. After retrieving the keys from inside the TOC, Ubben and the two Tripoli-based agents leapt in and drove the short way to the villa. They ran to the patio where Wickland had come through the open bedroom window. The three DS agents climbed the ladder up to the roof and found Wickland vomiting from severe smoke inhalation and on the brink of unconsciousness.

Desperate to find Stevens and Smith, Ubben and the two Tripoli-based agents scrambled back down. Noxious diesel smoke still filled the safe haven. Visibility remained poor. Two of the agents set up a defensive perimeter to guard the window, while the third went inside, crawling across the floor to search for the ambassador and the communications expert. He could only remain inside briefly before the lack of air drove him back to the window.

Ubben and the two other DS agents rotated between the grim, strenuous search duty and manning the defensive perimeter. Each time one man came out of the villa breathless and empty-handed, a new man went in.

SIX

Gunfighter Road

U
PON DRIVING INTO THE
A
NNEX,
O
Z HEADED DIRECTLY
for Building C. There he found Bob the base chief and several other agency staffers standing outside, talking on their cell phones. Oz’s dinner companion rushed from the Toyota and went inside Building C to find out what was happening. Other Annex staffers roamed the walled property, moving at will from building to building. Some grabbed personal belongings from their living quarters. To Oz, several Annex residents seemed caught up in the commotion, unsure where to go or what to do.

This is gonna be like herding cats
, Oz thought.

His body armor and kit were in his room, but there wasn’t yet time for that. Still in the brown pants and long-sleeved collared shirt he’d worn to dinner, Oz strode directly to Bob and swamped him with questions. “What’s the latest? Did the guys take enough weapons? Where, exactly, is everyone who’s still here?”

Bob hurriedly brought Oz up to speed then returned to his phone calls. Oz didn’t object, understanding that Bob needed to help coordinate the response, deal with the 17 February militia, and update Washington and Tripoli on the ongoing attack.

As he looked around the Annex, an uneasy feeling settled in Oz’s stomach. From the way people were milling around, it seemed as though it hadn’t occurred to them that the Compound might not be the only target for violent anti-American extremists. Defenses needed to be organized and hardened immediately at the Annex. That job fell to him as the only GRS operator not en route to the Compound.

Even as Oz swept into action, he tamped down a gnawing sense of frustration and disappointment that had begun during the drive back from dinner. Years earlier, his wife had given him a T-shirt with a question on the front: “Do you know the difference between you and me?” The answer was on the back: “You’re running away from fire and I’m running toward it.” Oz wore the shirt proudly and lived by its message. Now, though, as the only operator not on the Compound rescue squad, he felt sidelined.
I want to be taking the fight to them, instead of sitting here waiting for them to come to us
, he thought.
I don’t want to be blocking and tackling. I want to be running the football to the end zone.

Oz knew he couldn’t dwell on those thoughts, so he occupied his mind and devoted his energy to devising an improvised defensive plan using the limited assets and personnel at hand. Although all the CIA case officers at the Annex had some training and familiarity with weapons, Oz considered most of them ill-equipped for combat. In other words, non-shooters. He took a mental roll call and
concluded that his core team consisted of six fighters with varying degrees of military experience and training, three Americans and three Libyans.