Hawlwadig Road, load up Somali prisoners, the Commando teams and the Rangers, and bring them back out.
He had three men in his vehicle: Spec. Derek Velasco, Spec. Tim Moynihan and a company favorite, Sgt. Dominick Pilla. Dom Pilla was a big, powerful kid from Vineland, N.J.—he had that Joy-zee accent—who used his hands a lot when he talked. Pilla was just born funny. He loved practical jokes. He had bought tiny charges that he stuck in guys’ cigarettes. They’d explode with a startling Pop! about halfway through a smoke. Most people who tried that kind of thing were annoying, but people laughed along with Pilla. His cutting impression of Capt. Steele was a highlight of the little skits the Rangers sometimes put on in the hangar.
Struecker and the rest of the column timed their departure so they wouldn’t arrive at the hotel before the assault on the target house had begun. Then they immediately got lost. Struecker, who was leading the convoy, took a wrong turn and watched with alarm as the rest of the vehicles drove in a different direction. He’d found his way back, but only after the rest of the vehicles had already moved up to the target house to load prisoners.
One of the humvees in the column held a group of Commando soldiers and Navy SEALs, that service’s elite commando unit. They raced on ahead of the convoy to join the assault force, which had found 24 Somalis in the house and were handcuffing them. As this humvee approached the house, SEAL John Gay heard a shot and felt a hard impact on his right hip. He cried out. Master Sgt. Tim “Grizz” Martin, a commando in Gay’s humvee, tore open Gay’s pants and examined his hip, then gave Gay good news. The round had hit smack on the SEAL’s knife. It had shattered the blade, but the knife had deflected the bullet. Martin pulled several bloody fragments of blade out of Gay’s hip, and bandaged it. Gay limped out, took cover, and began returning fire.
In the mounting gunfire, they were startled to see a Ranger running toward them down Hawlwadig Road. It was Casey Joyce. He quickly explained Blackburn’s condition, and pointed back to where the others were waiting. He jumped into the humvee, and they drove up a block to where the young private waited on the litter with Sgt. McLaughlin and the two medics.
They set Blackburn in the back of the SEAL humvee and got permission to take him back to the base immediately.
Struecker and his companion humvee had just found their way back to the main convoy and were ordered to escort the SEAL humvee. It had no big gun on top. Struecker’s had a 50-caliber machine gun, and his companion humvee had a Mark 19, which could rapidly fire big, grenade-like rounds. The three-vehicle column began racing back to base through streets now alive with gunfire and explosion.
This time Struecker knew which way to go. He had mapped a return route that was simple. Several blocks south of Hawlwadig was a main road that would take them all the way down to the beach, where they could turn right and drive straight into the base.
But things had worsened. Armed street fighters were sprinkled into the crowds of civilians. Roadblocks and barricades had been erected. The humvees drove around and through them, with Struecker in the front vehicle and Blackburn in the middle humvee. Good, the medic, was holding up the IV bag for him with one hand while firing his rifle with the other.
They started taking fire. A Ranger in Blackburn’s humvee shot down two Somali gunmen who ran right up to the rear of the vehicle as they moved past an alley. At every intersection came a hail of rounds. People were shooting from rooftops and from windows and from all directions.
Up in Struecker’s humvee, he instructed his M-60 gunner, Dom Pilla, to concentrate all his fire to the right, and to leave everything to the left to the 50-caliber. They didn’t want to drive too fast, because a violently bumpy ride couldn’t do Blackburn any good.
Pilla wheeled his gun toward a Somali standing on the street just a few feet away. They both fired at the same time, and both fell. A round tore into Pilla’s forehead and the exit wound blew blood and brain out the back of his skull. His body flopped over into the lap of Spec. Tim Moynihan, who cried out in horror.
“Pilla’s hit!” he screamed.
Just then, over the radio, came the voice of Sgt. First Class Bob Gallagher, leader of the vehicle platoon.
How things going?
Struecker ignored the radio, and shouted back over his shoulder at Moynihan.
“Calm down! What’s wrong with him?” Struecker couldn’t see all the way to the back hatch.
“He’s dead!” Moynihan shouted.
“How do you know he’s dead? Are you a medic?” Struecker asked.
Struecker turned for a quick look over his shoulder and saw that the whole rear of his vehicle was splattered red.
“He’s shot in the head! He’s dead!” Moynihan screamed.
“Just calm down,” Struecker pleaded. “We’ve got to keep fighting until we get back.”
To hell with driving carefully. Struecker told his driver to step on it, and he hoped the others would follow. They were close to National Street, a main east/west highway. Struecker saw rocket-propelled grenades flying across the street now. It seemed as if the whole city was shooting at them. They drove wildly now, shooting at both sides of the street.
Inside Struecker’s humvee, Sgt. Gallagher’s voice came across the radio again.
How’s it going?
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Struecker said into the radio.
Gallagher didn’t like that answer.
You got any casualties?
“Yeah. One.”
Struecker tried to leave it at that. So far nobody on their side had been killed, as far as he knew, and he didn’t want to be the one to put news like that on the air. Men in battle drink up information as if downing water; it becomes more important than water. Unlike most of these guys, Struecker had been to war before, in Panama and the Persian Gulf, and he knew soldiers fought a lot better when things were going their way. Once things turned, it was real hard to reassert control. People panic. It was happening to Moynihan and the other guys in his humvee right now. Panic was a virus.
Who is he and what’s his status? Gallagher demanded.
“It’s Pilla.”
What’s his status?
Struecker held the microphone for a moment, debating with himself, and then reluctantly answered:
“He’s dead!”
At the sound of that word, all radio traffic stopped. For many long seconds afterward, there was silence.
CHAPTER 2
Dazed, Blood-Spattered and Frantic
WITH BADLY INJURED Pfc. Todd Blackburn on board, the little convoy sped out of the treacherous side streets of Mogadishu to a wide road, and for a stretch the firing abated. As they approached the sea, well south of the target building, the road was mobbed with Somalis. In the lead humvee, Staff Sgt. Jeff Struecker’s heart sank. How was he going to get his three humvees back to base through all these people?
His driver slowed to a crawl and leaned on the horn. Struecker told him to keep moving. He threw out loud but harmless flash-bang grenades. Then he told his 50-gunner to open up over people’s heads.
The sound of the big gun scattered most of the people, and the column sped up again. They may have run over some people. Struecker didn’t look back to see.
About three miles north, near the Olympic Hotel, the commandos had 24 Somalian prisoners handcuffed and ready for loading on the main ground convoy. Among them were the primary targets of the raid, two Somalian clan leaders.
Struecker’s three-vehicle convoy had left to get emergency treatment for Blackburn, a young Ranger who had fallen out of a helicopter. On the way they’d been badly shot up. In the back of Struecker’s humvee, Sgt. Dominick Pilla had been shot dead.
