American lay dead or badly wounded. At Mo’Alim’s signal, his men opened fire all at once on the Americans. After a furious exchange of fire that lasted at least two minutes, the Americans stopped firing. The crowd followed Mo’Alim and his men into the clearing.
The mob descended on the Americans. Only one was still alive. He shouted and waved his arms as the mob grabbed him by the legs and pulled him away, tearing at his clothes. People with knives hacked at the bodies of the dead Americans. Others in the crowd pulled and tore at the dead men’s limbs. Soon people were running, shouting and cackling, parading with parts of the Americans’ bodies.
When Mo’Alim ran around the tail of the helicopter, he was startled to find two other Americans. One, stretched on the ground, looked badly wounded or dead. The other, a pilot, was still alive. The man did not shoot. He set his weapon on his chest and folded his hands over it.
The crowd surged past Mo’Alim and fell on both men. Those who went for the pilot began kicking and beating him, but the bearded militia leader felt suddenly protective of the man. He grabbed the pilot’s arm, fired his weapon in the air and shouted for the crowd to stay back.
One of his men struck the pilot hard in the face with his rifle butt, and Mo’Alim pushed him back. The pilot was at their mercy. It occurred to Mo’Alim that this American was more valuable alive than dead. The Rangers had spent months capturing Somalis and holding them prisoner. They would be willing to trade them, perhaps all of them, for one of their own.
Mo’Alim and some of his men formed a ring around the pilot to protect him from the mob, which sought only revenge. Several of Mo’Alim’s fighters tore off Durant’s clothing. The pilot had a pistol strapped to his side, and a knife, and the Somalis were afraid he had other hidden weapons. They knew the American pilots also wore beacons in their clothing so that the helicopters could track them, so they stripped him.
Durant kept his eyes on the sky. The Somalis were screaming things he couldn’t understand. His nose was broken, and the bone around his eyes was shattered from the blow to his face.
When they started pulling off his clothes, they were unfamiliar with the plastic snaps on his gear, so Durant reached down and squeezed them open. His boots were yanked off, then his survival vest and his shirt. A man started unzipping his pants, but when he saw that the pilot wore no underwear (for comfort in the equatorial heat) he zipped the trousers back up. They also left on his brown T-shirt. All the while he was being kicked and hit.
A young man leaned down and grabbed at the green ID card Durant wore around his neck. He stuck it in Durant’s face and shouted in English, “Ranger, Ranger, you die Somalia!”
Then someone threw a handful of dirt in his face, and it filled his mouth. They tied a rag or a towel over the top of his head and eyes, and the mob hoisted him up, partly carrying and partly dragging him. He felt the broken end of his femur pierce the skin in the back of his right leg and poke through.
He was buffeted from all sides, kicked, hit with fists, rifle butts. He could not see where they were taking him. He was engulfed in a great chorus of hate and anger. Someone, he thought a woman, grabbed his penis and testicles and yanked at them.
And in this agony of fright, Durant suddenly left his body. He was no longer at the center of the crowd. He was in it, or above it, perhaps. He was observing the crowd attacking him, apart somehow. He felt no pain. The fear lessened, and he passed out.
CHAPTER 10
At the Base, Bravery and Hesitation
FOR THE RANGERS left behind at the American airport base on the beach in Mogadishu, the battle seemed immediate and distant at the same time. Unlike the commanders at the Joint Operations Center nearby, they couldn’t watch the fight unfold on video screens.
All they had was the radio, and that was enough. They could tell the mission had gone to hell. The snatch- and-grab mission had clearly become a pitched battle. They heard the voices of men who never got rattled shouting with fear and cracking with emotion. Their best friends, their brothers, were trapped and dying.
They heard the radio describe Cliff Wolcott’s Blackhawk going down, and then Mike Durant’s. The fight really hit home when Sgt. Dominick Pilla’s humvee rolled in, all shot up and mangled. Pilla had been shot in the head and killed. His vehicle had been part of a convoy carrying Pfc. Todd Blackburn, who fell from a helicopter at the start of the mission. Blackburn looked awful. His eyes were closed, his mouth was bloody, and he wasn’t moving.
No one was more fired up than Spec. Dale Sizemore, a husky blond kid from Illinois. The Rangers called him “Adonis.” He had the word Ranger tattooed twice on his bulging left deltoid.
Earlier that day, Sizemore had felt miserable when his buddies had suited up for the mission. He couldn’t go because he had a cast on his arm. He had banged up his elbow a few days earlier wrestling with a Commando colonel who had flung him down.
Now word came that the remnants of Pilla’s convoy were to be joined by fresh Rangers and vehicles from the base. They were going to fight their way to the Durant site and rescue the crew.
Not everyone was as eager as Sizemore. Spec. Steve Anderson, hearing the distant gunfire and the radio traffic, had a sick feeling. Anderson and Sizemore were both Rangers from Illinois, and were friends, but they were quite different. Anderson was slender and quiet, with a bad case of asthma. He had shrapnel in his legs from a night mission a few weeks earlier. Until then he had been as gung ho as the rest of the guys, but his wounds, while minor, had cracked his Hoo-ah spirit.
Anderson was dismayed by the confusion of shouting and shooting. It seemed to him that everybody was using the radio twice as much as usual, as if they needed to stay in touch, as if talk were a net to prevent their free fall. As much as it made Sizemore want to join the fight, it made Anderson want to be someplace else. He dared not show it. His stomach was churning, and he was in a cold sweat. Do I have to go out there?
Seeing Pilla dead and Blackburn busted up brought things into immediate and dire focus. What are we doing in this place? Then Anderson got a good look at Spec. Brad Thomas. Pilla had dropped dead in Thomas’ lap inside the humvee. Thomas rode the whole way back bathed in his dead friend’s blood.
As Thomas emerged from the humvee now, his eyes were red. He looked at Anderson and choked out, “Pilla’s dead.” Thomas was crying, and Anderson felt himself start to cry and he realized, I do not want to go out there. He was ashamed, but that’s how he felt.
He looked at the Commados and SEALs who had climbed off the little convoy. These guys were like machines. They were already rearmed and ready to charge back out. There was no hesitation whatsoever. But the Rangers were all shaken, to a man.
Thomas lost it. “I can’t go back out there!” he shouted. “I can’t! They’re shooting from everywhere!”
Even those Rangers who remained composed felt the same way. How could they go back out into that? They’d barely escaped with their lives. The whole damn city was trying to kill them!
The commander of Pilla’s tiny convoy, Staff Sgt. Jeff Struecker, felt his own heart sink. His vehicles were all shot up. His men were freaking out. One of the Commadno guys pulled him aside.
“Look, sergeant, you need to clean your vehicle up,” he said, pointing to the blood-splattered humvee. “If you don’t, your guys are going to get more messed up. It’s going to mess them up. They’re going to get sick.”
Struecker strode over to his Rangers.
“Listen, men. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I’ll do it myself if I have to. But we have to clean this thing up right now because we’re fixing to roll right back out. Everybody else go resupply. Go get yourselves some more ammunition.”
Struecker asked his 50-gunner, “Will you help me clean up? You don’t have to.”
The gunner nodded glumly. Together they set off for buckets of water. Sizemore saw all this, and it made him wild with anger.
“I’m going out there with you guys,” he said.
“You can’t, you’re hurt,” said his team leader, Sgt. Raleigh Cash.
Sizemore didn’t argue. He was wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt. The rest of his gear had been packed away for his medevac flight home the next day. He ran into the hangar, pulled on pants and a shirt, and began
