13 Hours The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi (31 page)

Tanto squeezed his left hand around an area near the barrel of his assault rifle that the operators called the “broom handle,” to illuminate his laser sight for three-second intervals. He switched the beam to a setting that was invisible to the naked eye, but appeared as a bright dot on any object it hit when seen through night-vision goggles.

Tanto moved the beam from one approaching figure to the next, allowing a pause between sightings in case any of the men outside the walls had night-vision goggles, too. If so, they could use the goggles to reverse-target the laser-firing Americans on the rooftops. Each time he hit one with the beam, he’d ask D.B., “Is that the guy you’re seeing?” When D.B. confirmed it, Tanto moved to another. That way, they knew that both had identified the same potential enemies. When the targeting began, the DS agent didn’t have night-vision goggles, so he could only strain his eyes and hope to spot the oncoming men on his own.

As Tanto pointed out each possible target, he called on the radio to Oz, whose vantage point on the northeast corner tower gave him a similar view of the approaching men. Oz saw them coming, too, replying “Roger” each time he saw Tanto’s laser hit one. Although the technology gave them an advantage, the operators knew that the area beyond the wall was rife with dead spots, dark areas where their goggles couldn’t help them see.

As they prepared to engage, the operators kept thinking about the teenagers who lived in the nearby house. The Americans resolved that they wouldn’t shoot until
fired upon, or until some other action demonstrated that the figures outside the Annex were enemies, and not quasi-friendly militiamen or tough local teens armed with nothing more powerful than firecrackers.

Tanto kept watching men trying to conceal themselves in his assigned sector, but he didn’t see weapons. Then D.B. spotted an armed man in his sector. He called out: “I got AKs.” Tanto looked again and saw rifles, too.

From their stealthy movements to the weapons they carried, by all indications the men were enemy attackers approaching the Annex from the area east of the wall. But the Americans wanted even more confirmation before engaging. The possibility remained, no matter how small, that the men were 17 February militiamen coming to help. All Tanto could say on the radio was: “Guys, be advised. I believe we’ve got bad guys coming up on us. Stand by.”

Then Tanto saw a man drop to one knee.

Before Tanto and D.B. noticed the arriving cars and the approaching men, Tanto had called to ask if anyone had a spare pair of night-vision goggles for the DS agent on Building B. A case officer at Building C produced a pair and gave them to Tig, to bring to Building B on his rounds. On his way to deliver the goggles, Tig stopped at Building A to grab two cases of water from a front hallway.

He climbed the ladder on the side of Building B and dropped off the goggles. By then, Tanto, D.B., and the DS agent were already occupied watching the men nearing the Annex wall.

His rifle hanging loose on its straps in front of him, Tig
walked to the east side of Building C, toward the area the operators called their prison gym. He could see Oz in position at the northeast tower, some thirty yards ahead, so he lugged the water bottles that way. As Tig approached the workout area, something flew over the wall in his direction.

He couldn’t see what it was, but sparks sputtered from one end. It had a lit fuse.

TEN

Hard Target

T
IG WAS MID-STRIDE, APPROACHING THE OPERATORS’
prison gym, when the bomb landed at the far edge of the workout area. He had protection from his heavy Rhodesian vest and his body armor, but Tig’s head was bare. He’d accidentally left his helmet around the corner at Building C while talking with the Team Leader about the nosy neighbor. Tig froze, dropped the water he’d brought for Oz, and braced for impact.

His mind focused on a single thought:
This is gonna hurt.

But when the white light flashed and the boom sounded, the twenty-five feet that separated Tig from the explosion was just enough to save him. He took stock and, to his surprise, found himself intact and without a scratch.

Tig couldn’t be certain, but based on the sight and sound of the blast, and the absence of shrapnel, he believed
that the improvised explosive device lobbed over the wall was a small “jelly” or “gelatina” bomb. An easy-to-produce favorite of radical Libyan militias, gelatina bombs were cheap, moldable explosives made from gelignite, a material similar to dynamite but more stable and abundant. Benghazi fishermen used gelatina bombs to ease their labors, tossing them into the Mediterranean, waiting for the geyser, then collecting the fish that rose to the surface. The attackers seemed to be using the bomb for a similar purpose, to stun or distract the Americans before swooping in for the kill.

The moment the blast went off, the men who’d been sneaking toward the east wall opened fire on the Annex.

Tig sprinted to reach Oz at the northeast tower. He climbed on, stood to Oz’s left, and found his friend already engaging their enemies.

Before the blast, Oz stood on the steel platform looking forward to Tig’s arrival with the water bottles. He heard the
whoosh
of something flying over the east wall, but wasn’t immediately sure what it was. When the explosion hit and gunfire followed, Oz understood that the bomb was the attackers’ signal to begin their assault, just as the Americans sometimes used stun grenades or “flash bangs” to initiate an action.

From the laser spotting he’d done via radio with Tanto, Oz already had a general idea where some of the attackers were located, spread out in the dark among the trees and brush. He focused on those areas when the shooting began, watching for muzzle flashes and snatches of white shirts in
the moonlight. Whenever he spotted one, Oz fired in that direction.

As bullets passed overhead, Oz saw his enemies attempting to shoot out the lights illuminating the eastern exterior of the Annex.

The gelatina bomb apparently was the attackers’ signal to commence firing, but it wasn’t the only explosive they’d brought. Somewhere in the trees east of the wall, an attacker shouldered a rocket-propelled grenade and fired it toward the Annex. Tanto heard the signature sound of the launch, a sizzling gargle then a
whoosh
, followed a few seconds later by an explosion. The shooter evidently aimed too high, and the RPG flew over the Annex entirely, landing somewhere beyond the far west wall.

Yet Tanto’s hearing was so bad from the gunfight at the Compound that he still wasn’t entirely sure that an Annex firefight had just begun. Even after seeing the attacker take a knee, Tanto held a sliver of concern that the sounds he heard came from firecrackers.

“Dude,” he asked D.B., “did somebody just shoot at us?”

“Man, I think so,” D.B. answered. He radioed the Team Leader to ask if he knew whether 17 February militiamen were en route to the Annex, to be sure this wasn’t a friendly-fire incident.

“We don’t know,” the T.L. said. “But if you’re fired on, fire back.”

“Fuck this,” Tanto said. He began shooting.

D.B. did the same, targeting the armed men he’d identified earlier, even as he seethed about the Team Leader
remaining safely inside Building C. D.B. didn’t need anyone to tell him the rules of engagement, especially when that person wasn’t holding a gun. Angering him further, D.B. interpreted the T.L.’s “fire back” comment as a smartass way of responding, when all D.B. wanted was to be sure that he didn’t kill a good guy.

Tanto lined up the kneeling attacker with the infrared gunsight mounted on his assault rifle, but when he fired, he watched as the first few rounds splashed in the dirt as far as ten feet to the left of his target. Tanto didn’t have time to adjust his sight, so he corrected his aim using a method that shooters call “Kentucky windage,” fine-tuning where he shot by experience and feel. With his corrections made, Tanto watched as men that he and D.B. had targeted earlier began to flinch from being hit. Some of the injured attackers tried to conceal themselves or regroup. Some zigzagged as they limped back and forth through the trees and brush. The operators kept shooting, leaning their weapons on the rooftop parapet and aiming down at the attackers coming toward them from beyond the east wall.

While Tanto and D.B. engaged the shooters, the Tripoli-based DS agent did his job by covering the area to the south, beyond the Annex’s front wall. No one approached from a large open area in that direction, but the operators were covering the east and northeast, so they were happy to know that the DS agent was watching their flank.

Tanto found himself entranced by the sight of tracers and rounds whizzing into the dark. The night-vision goggles even picked up the heat signature of bullets. It looked like a laser light show, and Tanto felt like a kid inside a video game. After the frustration of being on the defensive at the Compound, Tanto sensed that the tables had turned.
The attackers were falling back in disarray, apparently having expected a repeat of what had happened at the Compound three hours earlier.

We’re fucking kicking these dudes’ asses
, Tanto thought.

The exchange of gunfire continued. Rounds zipped above the operators’ heads and pinged against the walls, gouging craters in the cinder block.