floor all night and day.
When the doctor left, Durant was moved from the room where he had awakened that morning to the sounds of birds and children. He was loaded into the back of a car, and a blanket was placed over him. It was terribly painful. Two men got into the car and sat on him. His leg was moving all over the place. It had swelled badly, and the slightest move was torture.
They brought him to a little apartment and left him in the care of a tall, pot-bellied man with thick glasses, a man he would come to know well over the next 10 days. It was Abdullahi Hassan, a man they called “Firimbi,” the propaganda minister for clan leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid. Durant didn’t know it, but the warlord had paid his ransom.
CHAPTER 29
The Final Chapter: Freeing a Pilot, Ending a Mission
IT WAS ON THE SECOND NIGHT of his captivity in Mogadishu that Blackhawk pilot Michael Durant was brought to Abdullahi Hassan, the man known as “Firimbi.”
Firimbi was a big man for a Somali, tall with long arms and big hands. He had a pot belly, and squinted through thick, black-framed glasses. He was warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid’s “propaganda minister.” Once Aidid’s men had purchased Durant back from the bandits who had kidnapped him, Firimbi was put in charge of his safekeeping.
He was told, “If any harm comes to the pilot, the same shall be done to you.”
Durant arrived at night, angry, frightened and in pain. In the drive through the city he had been under a blanket in the backseat. He had no idea where he was. The men who brought him carried him up steps and along a walkway and set him down in a room.
Firimbi greeted him, but the pilot didn’t answer. Durant’s wounds, a compound-fractured right leg and a wounded shoulder, had become swollen and infected. Firimbi helped wash him and bandage his wounds. He passed word along that Durant needed a doctor.
That night, Monday, Oct. 4, Durant heard American helicopters flying overhead, broadcasting haunting calls:
“Mike Durant, we will not leave you.”
“Mike Durant, we are with you always.”
“Do not think we have left you, Mike.”
FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR to Somalia Robert Oakley was at a party at the Syrian Embassy in Washington on Oct. 5 when he got a phone call from the White House. It was Anthony Lake, national security adviser to President Clinton.
“I need to talk to you first thing in the morning,” Lake said.
“Why, Tony?” Oakley said. “I’ve been home for six months.”
Oakley, a gaunt, plainspoken intellectual with a distinguished career in diplomacy, had been President George Bush’s top civilian in Mogadishu during the humanitarian mission that had begun the previous December and eventually ended the famine. He had left in March along with 20,000 Marines.
Since his return, Oakley had watched with dismay the course of events in Mogadishu. Despite his long experience there, no one from the White House or State Department had consulted him.
“Can you come to breakfast tomorrow at 7:30?” Lake asked.
The White House was in trouble. The day after the Oct. 3, 1993, Battle of Mogadishu, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and Secretary of State Warren Christopher had been grilled by angry members of Congress. How had this happened? Why were American soldiers dying in far-off Somalia?
These were the same questions that Clinton was asking his aides. Until this raid, Clinton had been briefed on missions in advance. This one had been mounted so quickly he had not been informed. He complained bitterly to Lake. He felt he had been blindsided, and he was angry. He wanted answers to a broad range of questions from policy to military tactics.
At the breakfast table in the East Wing on Oct. 6 were Lake and his deputy, Samuel R. Berger, and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine K. Albright. Then they walked with Oakley into the Oval Office, where they joined the President, the vice president, Christopher, Aspin, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and several advisers.
The meeting lasted six hours. The thrust of the discussion was: What do we do now? An American soldier’s body had been dragged through the streets by jeering Somalis. Eighteen soldiers were dead and 73 wounded. Hundreds of Somalis were dead. Durant was being held captive. The public was outraged, and Congress was demanding withdrawal.
Staying in Mogadishu to pursue Aidid was out of the question, even though retired Adm. Jonathan Howe, head of the U.N. effort there, and Maj. Gen. William F. Garrison, commander of Task Force Ranger, thought Aidid had been struck a mortal blow, and that it wouldn’t take much to finish the job. Intelligence reports were that Aidid supporters were fleeing the city, their arsenals of rocket-propelled grenades expended. Others were sending peace feelers, offering to dump Aidid. But it was clear that America had lost its stomach for anything further in Somalia.
The meeting ended with a decision: America was pulling out. Task Force Ranger, reinforced to make a show of military resolve, would stay on—but would make a dignified withdrawal by March 1994. All efforts to capture Aidid would be called off.
Oakley was dispatched to Mogadishu to deliver this message and to try to secure the release of Durant.
There would be no negotiating with Aidid. Oakley was instructed to deliver a stern message: “The President of the United States wanted the pilot released. Now.”
JIM SMITH, the father of Ranger Cpl. Jamie Smith, was in a meeting at a bank in Long Valley, N.J., on Monday, Oct. 4, when, oddly, his boss’ wife walked into the conference room.
“I just got a call from Carol,” she said. “Call home.”
Obviously, his wife, Carol, had felt this was urgent. She had phoned the boss’ home number, looking for a way to track him down.
“What’s the matter?” he asked when Carol answered his return call.
Smith will always remember her next words.
“There are two officers here. Jamie has been killed. You have to come home.”
When Jim got home, Carol told him: “Maybe they’re wrong. Maybe Jamie is just missing.”
But Smith knew. He had been a Ranger captain in Vietnam, and lost a leg in combat. He knew that in a tight unit such as his son’s in Mogadishu, they wouldn’t notify the family of death unless they had his son’s body in hand.
“No,” he told his wife quietly, trying to make the words sink in. “If they say he’s dead, they know.”
Camera crews began to arrive within hours. When everyone in his immediate family had been given the news, Smith walked out in the front yard to answer questions. He was repulsed by the attitude of the reporters and the kinds of questions they asked. How did he feel? How did they think he felt? He told them he was proud of his son and deeply saddened. Did he think his son had been properly trained and led? Yes, his son was superbly trained and led. Whom did he blame? The U.S. Army? Somalia? God?
Smith told them that he didn’t know enough about what happened yet to blame anybody, that his son was a soldier, and that he died serving his country.
A Mailgram arrived two days later with a stark message signed by a colonel he didn’t know. It resonated powerfully with Smith, even though he knew its contents before reading the words. It joined him in a sad ritual as old as war itself, with every parent who ever lost a son in battle:
