Black Hawk Down (30 page)

He saw a street below. An alley, really. If he could keep the bird heading toward that
alley they might be able to slide down into it. It was so narrow it would shear off the
rotors but they might impact upright, which was the key. Keep it upright. He saw hard
buildings to the left and the street was fairly wide but there was a row of poles on the
right and he wasn't going to clear the poles. Maybe only the right rotor system would
impact and maybe it would just shear the rotors. Goffena saw the poles out the right side
window and he was just twenty feet over them when Yacone came back to life and shouted
into the radio that they were going down and gave grid coordinates. An they cushioned
themselves for impact, Goffena began instinctively pulling back on his control stick
trying to keep the nose of the bird up, and he realized suddenly that the helicopter was
responding! It wasn't dead! The controls weren't working properly but he did have some
pitch control, enough to keep it in the air. They flew right on over and past the alley
and the poles. Goffena held the nose of the bird up and it continued flying. He had no
idea how long they would stay up. Were the engines unwinding? How long would bin controls
hold out? But the bird stayed fairly level, and the power stayed on. The road beneath them
abruptly ended and what opened in front of him in the distance was what Goffena recognized
as the new port facility, friendly ground! The helicopter was slowing and he was now in a
gradual descent. He crossed low over the fence around the port and aimed the bird down.
They touched ground at about fifteen knots and Goffena was about to congratulate himself
on a perfect landing when the bird, instead of rolling to a stop, just keeled over to the
right, crunching metal on sand. The right main landing wheels had been blown off. The
chopper skidded and Goffena worried they would flip, but instead it just came to a stop
and he shut everything down.

As he climbed out of the cockpit to check on the fate of the men in back he saw the
familiar shape of a Humvee racing toward them.

-18-

Mike Durant still thought things were under control. His leg was broken but it didn't
hurt. He was tying on his back, propped against a supply kit by a small tree, using his
weapon to keep back the occasional Skinny who poked his head into the clearing. There was
just about a fifteen-foot space between the wall to his left and the tail of the chopper.
Durant admired the way the Delta guy had positioned him.

He could hear firing over on the other side of the helicopter. He knew Ray Frank, his
copilot, was hurt but alive. And there were the two D-boys and his crew chief, Tommy
Fields. He wondered if Tommy was okay. He figured there were at least. Four men on the
other side of the bird and probably more from the rescue team. It was only a matter of
time before the vehicles showed up to take them out.

Then he heard one of the operators-it was Gary Gordon-cry out that he was hit. Just a
quick shout of anger and pain. He didn't hear the voice again.

The other one-it was Randy Shughart-came back to Durant's side of the bird.

“Are there any weapons on board?” he asked.

There were. The crew chiefs carried M-16s. Durant told him where they were kept, and
Shughart stepped into the craft and rummaged around and returned with

both. He handed Durant Gordon's weapon, a CAR-15 loaded and ready to fire.

“What's the support frequency on the survival radio?” Shughart asked.

It was then, for the first time, that it dawned on Durant that they were stranded. The
pilot felt a twist of alarm in his gut. If Shughart was asking how to set up
communications, it meant he and the other guy had come in on their own. They were the
rescue team. And Gordon had just been shot!

He explained standard procedure on the survival radio to Shughart. There was a channel
Bravo. He listened while Shughart called out.

“We need some help down here,” Randy said.

He was told that a reaction force was en route. Then Shughart wished him luck, took the
weapons, and moved back around to the other side of the helicopter.

Durant felt panicked now. He had to keep the Skinnies away. He could hear them talking
behind the wall, so he fired his weapon into the tin. It startled him because he had been
firing single shots, but this new weapon was set on burst. The voices behind the wall
stopped. Then two Somalis tried to climb over the nose end of the chopper. He fired at
them and they jumped back. He didn't know if he had hit them or not.

A man tried to climb over the wall and Durant shot him. Another came crawling from around
the corner with a weapon and Durant shot him.

Then there came a mad fusillade on the other side of the helicopter that lasted for about
two minutes. Over the din he heard Shughart cry out in pain. Then it stopped.

Overhead, worried commanders were watching.

-Do you have video over crash site number two?

-Indigenous personnel moving around all over the crash site.

-Indigenous?

-That's affirmative over.

The radio fell silent.

Terror washed over Durant. He heard the sounds of an angry mob. The crash had left the
clearing littered with debris and he heard a great shuffling sound as the mob pushed it
away like some onrushing beast. There was no more shooting. The others must be dead.
Durant knew what angry Somali mobs could do, gruesome, horrible things. That was now in
store for him. His second weapon was empty. He still had a pistol strapped to his side but
he never even thought to reach for it.

Why bother? It was over. He was done.

A man stepped around the nose of the plane. He seemed startled to find Durant. The man
shouted and more Skinnies came racing around. It was time to die. Durant placed the empty
weapon across his chest, folded his hands over it, and just turned his eyes to the sky.

-19-

Hassan Yassin Abokoi had been shot in the ankle by a helicopter as he stood with the crowd
around the crashed one. He now sat beneath a tree watching. His ankle stung at first and
then had gone numb. It was bleeding badly. He hated the helicopters. His uncle that day
had his head blown off by a cannon shot from a helicopter. It removed his head neatly from
his shoulders, like it had never been there. Who were these Americans who rained fire and
death on them, who came to feed them but then, had started killing? He wanted to kill
these men who had fallen from the sky, but he couldn't stand.

From where he sat, Abokoi could see the mob descend on the Americans. Only one was still
alive. He was shouting and waving his arms as the mob grabbed him by the legs and began
pulling him away from the helicopter, tearing at his clothes. He saw his neighbors hack at
the bodies of the Americans with knives and begin to pull at their limbs. Then he saw
people running and parading with parts of the Americans' bodies.

When Mo'alim ran around the tail of the helicopter he was surprised to find anther
American, a pilot. The man did not shoot. He set his weapon on his chest and folded his
hands over it. The crowd surged past Mo'alim toward him and began kicking and beating him,
but the bearded fighter felt suddenly protective. He grabbed the pilot's arm and 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 injured and could not fight anymore. 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. The pilot
was more valuable alive than dead. He directed his men to form a ring around the pilot to
protect him from the mob, which was hungry for revenge. Several of Mo'alim's men stooped
and began tearing Durant's clothing away. The pilot had a pistol strapped to his side, and
a knife, and they were afraid he had other hidden weapons and they knew the American
pilots wore beacons in their clothing so that the helicopters could track them, so they
stripped the layers away.

-20-

Durant kept his eyes on the sky as the mob closed over him. They were screaming things he
couldn't understand. When the man struck him in the face with a rifle butt it broke his
nose and shattered the bone around his eye. People pulled at his arms and legs, and then
others began tearing at his clothes. They were unfamiliar with the plastic snaps of his
gear, so Durant reached down and squeezed them open. He gave himself over to them. His
boots were yanked off, his survival vest, and his shirt. A man half unzipped his pants,
but when he saw that Durant 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, “Ranger, Ranger, you die
Somalia!”

Then someone threw a handful of dirt in his face, which went into his mouth. They tied a
rag or towel over the top of his head and eyes, and the mob hoisted him up in the air,
partly carrying and partly dragging him. He felt the broken end of his femur pierce the
skin in the back of his leg and poke through. He was buffeted from all sides, kicked, hit
with fists, and rifle butts. He could not see where they were taking him. He was engulfed
in a great wave of hate and anger. Someone, he thought a woman, reached out and grabbed
his penis and testicles and yanked at them.

And in this agony of fright suddenly Durant 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. And he felt no pain and the fear lessened and then he passed out.

THE ALAMO

1

Air force parajumper Tim Wilkinson climbed back into the wrecked helicopter looking for a
way to get more leverage to free pilot Cliff Wolcott's body. Maybe there was some way he
hadn't seen at first to pull the seat back and get more room and a better angle. But it
was hopeless.

He climbed back out. Kneeling on top of the wreck in the shattering din of automatic
weapons fire, he peered down through the open right side doors into the rear of the
aircraft. He thought they had accounted for everyone on board. He knew some of the men had
been rescued earlier by the Little Bird that landed right after the crash. So Wilkinson
was looking for sensitive equipment or weapons that would have to be removed or destroyed.
PJs are trained to quickly erase the memory banks of any electronic equipment with
sensitive data. All of the avionics equipment and every piece of gear that hadn't been
strapped down had come to rest at the left side of the aircraft, which was now the bottom.

In the heap he noticed a scrap of desert fatigues.

“I think there's somebody else in there,” he told Sergeant Bob Mabry, a Delta medic on
the CSAR crew.

Wilkinson leaned in farther and saw an arm and a flight glove. He called down into the
wreck and a finger of the flight glove moved. Wilkinson climbed back into the wreckage and
began pulling the debris and equipment off the man buried there. It was the second crew
chief, the left side gunner, Ray Dowdy. Part of his seat had gotten slammed and broken off
the hinges but it was still basically intact and in place. When Wilkinson freed Dowdy's
arm from under the pile, the crew chief began shoving things away. He still hadn't spoken
and was only half conscious.

Mabry slithered down under the wreck and tried without success to crawl in through the
bottom left side doorway. He gave up and climbed in through the upper doors just as
Wilkinson freed Dowdy. The three men stood inside the wreck as a storm of bullets suddenly
poked through the

skin of the craft. Mabry and Wilkinson danced involuntarily at the sharp burst of snapping
and crashing noises. Bits of metal, plastic, paper, and fabric flew around them like a
sudden snow squall. Then it stopped. Wilkinson remembers noting, first, that he was still
alive. Then he checked himself. He'd been hit in the face and arm. It felt like he'd been
slapped or punched in the chin. Everyone had been hit. Mabry had been hit in the hand.
Dowdy had lost the tips of two fingers.

The crew chief stared blankly at his bloody hand.

Wilkinson put his hand over the bleeding fingertips and said, “Okay, let's get out of
here!”

Mabry tore up the Kevlar floor panels and propped them up over the side of the craft
where the bullets had burst through. Instead of braving the fire above, they tunneled out,
digging through the dry sand at the rear corner of the left side door. They slid Dowdy out
that way.

Then the two rescuers climbed back inside, Wilkinson looking for equipment to destroy,
Mabry handing out Kevlar panels to be placed around the tail of the aircraft where they
had established a casualty collection point. Fire was coming mostly up and down the alley.
They were still expecting the arrival of the ground convoy at any moment

Wounded Sergeant Fates was too busy shooting to take notice Of the Kevlar pads. He had a
pressure dressing on~ his calf and an IV tube in his arm and he was lying out by the
broken tail boom looking for targets.

Wilkinson poked his head out the top. “Scott, why don't you get behind the Kevlar?”

Fates looked startled. He had been so absorbed firing he hadn't seen the panels go up
behind him.

“Good idea,” he said.

Bullet hole after bullet hole poked through the broken tail boom.

Wilkinson was reminded of the Steve Martin movie The Jerk~, where Martin's moronic
character, unaware that villains are shooting at him, watched with surprise as bullet
holes begin popping open a row of oil cans. He shouted Martin's line from the movie. -

“They hate the cans! Stay away from the cans!”

Both men laughed.

After patching up a few more men, Wilkinson crawled back up into the cockpit from
underneath, to see if there was some way of pulling Wolcott's body down and out.