Front Burner (11 page)

Chris relayed Mooney's account of the attack to the security team. One of the team's members found me within less than a minute, and corrected my misinterpretation of the rafts. “Captain, it wasn't those rafts alongside the ship that blew us up. It was another boat that came out from shore. We thought it was the third garbage barge. Those rafts are
our
rafts, look.” He pointed to the now empty twenty-five-man life raft racks on the port side of the ship. Almost every one of the life rafts had been blown out of its fiberglass container.

So: we had been attacked by kamikaze terrorists. One of the most modern twenty-first-century destroyers of the world's most powerful navy had been successfully attacked by a technologically primitive, explosive-laden suicide boat. We might as well have been in 1945.

Chris had been below the flight deck, well aft of the explosion's epicenter, when it had happened. The force of it almost blew him off his feet. He set off toward the forward part of the ship to see what had happened, but was quickly overcome by smoke and ordered the watertight door leading forward closed to keep it from spreading aft.

Crossing over to the starboard side to try to continue forward, he saw crew members streaming back, fleeing the blast zone. Though he knew
almost everybody aboard by name or by face, he was unable to recognize many of them, so much blood was streaming down their faces, arms, and hands. Some had been on the mess decks or standing in the mess line picking up their meals. There, at the focal point of the blast, the force of the explosion had shattered the plastic coating that kept the steel decks of the ship from rusting and blown it into the sailors like flechettes from a grenade. Chris also found sailors who had been outside at the moment of the attack almost unrecognizable because they were covered from head to toe with residue from the black, sooty wave of water that the explosion had washed up onto the ship. Their eardrums were ruptured and they were dazed and confused.

Despite his shock at the scene around him, Chris quickly got his bearings and fell back on the training provided by hundreds of damage control drills. The Navy trains repetitively for this very reason: during a crisis, people don't have time to think, they only have time to react, and everyone had to get to work immediately to save the ship.

The standard list of tactics, techniques, and procedures—manning general quarters stations, manning the repair lockers, closing all hatches and doors, assessing the damage to the ship—this is what everyone was thinking, as if each step had been indelibly imprinted on their brains. At this point, Chris did not know if the captain was killed, wounded, or incapacitated. He began barking out orders, and the crew organized itself to stop the flooding, stop the spread of smoke, prevent fire, and man the battle-dressing stations to treat the wounded. With the ship's communications system knocked out and the battery-powered backup system out of commission, all that could be heard were the shouts of crew members as they went to work to save their ship and shipmates.

Making his way to the central control station, Chris was shocked to come across one of
Cole
's leading damage control experts on the Damage Control Training Team, Gas Turbine System Technician-Mechanical Chief Mark Darwin, lying seriously wounded on the deck. Ships like
Cole
in the
Arleigh Burke
–class of guided missile destroyers were intended to have a chief petty officer in charge of the damage control division. However,
chiefs with that kind of experience and leadership were scarce. Our ship had worked hard to train and educate other personnel, including Darwin, to fill the gap with their background and experience in the Engineering Department. Now, with him wounded and unable to directly contribute to the damage control effort, Chris began to seriously worry about our prospects for saving the ship. Kneeling down, he saw that Darwin was having trouble breathing. Some of his ribs had been cracked or fractured. In the past, Darwin and Chris had had a very contentious relationship—now all Chris wanted was to stay and give comfort. Even so, Darwin told Chris the best thing he could do for him was to keep moving and look after the ship and crew.

Topside, with Chief Larson standing by me, I now understood what had happened. My mind was clear and sharp. I told Larson, “I have got to get to the bridge to tell the Yemeni port authorities what's happened. Do not allow any more boats to come alongside the ship. We cannot afford another hit.”

I walked up the port side, opened up a watertight door, and in the dark began to climb the stairs leading to the bridge. Why us? Why now? What did we miss that allowed this to happen?

As I opened the door and stepped onto the bridge, I came upon the Navigator, Lieutenant Ann Chamberlain, as well as my leading electronics technician, Senior Chief Pam Jacobsen and leading operations specialist, Senior Chief Al Trapani. I still held my 9 mm handgun at the ready as the three of them looked at me wide-eyed and asked what was going on. Although they were shocked by what I told them, I needed them to focus on getting me in touch with the Yemeni port authorities immediately. Without power on the bridge to operate the ship's bridge-to-bridge radio, used earlier to contact the Aden Port Authority, Ann found an alternative and passed me the hand held bridge-to-bridge walkie-talkie that operated on the same channel. As the operations officer, Lieutenant Derek Trinque, came onto the bridge from the port side. I keyed the radio.

“Aden Port Control, this is USS
Cole
, over.”

“This is Aden Port Control.”

“This is USS
Cole
. We have experienced an explosion amidships. I need your assistance, over.”

“This is Aden Port Control. We understand. What do you need us to do?”

“Aden Port Control, request you stop all harbor movements until we know what has happened and we know the status of the security situation. I say again, request no ship movements in the harbor, over.”

“This is Aden Port Control, we understand. We will not allow any ships to move in or out of the harbor. Is this correct?”

“This is USS
Cole
. Roger, that is correct.”

“I need you to notify your local hospital. We have wounded on the ship and they will need medical treatment. Do you have a facility available, over?”

“Yes, yes, we have two hospitals. We will notify them and get ambulances down to the pier to take your wounded to them.”

Time was of the essence, and the “golden hour” for saving those most seriously hurt was inexorably ticking away.

But when
Cole
pulled into Aden, I had made that decision not to put a picket boat in the water. As with any decision you make in command, even the best ones given the surrounding conditions can have effects that cannot be anticipated. In this case, the result was that the ship's boats were now not available for use at all. They were still in the boat skids on the starboard side of the ship. Since we were moored starboard side to the pier and without power, there was no way to lower them to the water, since we were too close and the large rubber fenders keeping us off the pier would have hemmed them in. So I had one last request for the port authorities.

“Aden Port Control, request you send boats out to the ship to take wounded ashore. Do you have any boats available to help do this, over?”

“Yes, we have boats available and will send them out to your ship.”

“Aden Port Control, thank you, but I must insist that they approach the ship in the following manner. When they come toward the ship, they must not approach my port side any closer than 100 meters. They should
stay clear of my port side, come around the stern of the ship, the back of the ship, and make a very slow approach to the back side of the refueling dolphin.” I repeated the message to them again and added: “If you come any closer than 100 meters to my port side, I will shoot you. I repeat. Do not come any closer than 100 meters to my port side or I will shoot you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes, we understand. We understand. Do not come any closer than 100 meters. We will come around your stern to the back of the refueling pier. Yes we understand.”

I placed Derek, the senior officer on the bridge, in charge, and told him we were changing the rules of engagement. If another boat approached on the port side and came within a 100-meter arc, it was to be considered a danger to the ship and given warning with the battery-powered bullhorn to stay away. If it continued to close on the ship, he was to direct the security team to fire a warning shot in the boat's direction. If it kept coming after that, the security team was to open up with every weapon available.

We were now listing at over five degrees to port and over one degree down by the bow, and I had to get to the central control station, the nerve center of the ship, to oversee the damage control effort. “Make sure the security teams know about the rules of engagement and don't let them accidentally shoot any of the boats coming out to take off the wounded; otherwise, we are screwed,” I told him. He looked me square in the eye and said, “Got it, Captain.”

On shore, Major Mark Conroe, the assistant defense attaché of the U.S. embassy to Yemen, soon got a vivid experience of what these instructions meant. He had been at the refueling pier while we moored the ship, making sure the arrangements made with the Yemeni firms to resupply
Cole
were working. Once refueling began, he had taken a boat and gone back into town. He was sitting at an outdoor café sipping coffee when he heard the explosion; the defense attaché, Lieutenant Colonel Bob Newman, in Aden on leave with his family, also heard it while playing with his children near his hotel swimming pool. Separately, they both made their way to the harbor to see what had happened.

As the first to arrive, about twenty-five minutes after the explosion, Conroe had commandeered a boat and, minutes after the attack, tried to make his way out to the ship. As he approached, he saw the sailors in the security force pointing a number of guns at his boat. If he had proceeded within 100 meters, he may well have been fired upon. He then made the wise decision to turn around and wait until he could communicate with us to approach. Back at the pier, he found Newman and briefed him on what had happened. Together they went to the port control office and were able to get through to
Cole
's bridge team. Within another half-hour, they were on a Yemeni boat back to the ship. Newman had a cellular phone—a rarity back then—and was telling his office at the embassy in Sana'a that there had been an explosion of some kind on the ship when he suddenly interrupted himself: “Oh my God! We're coming around to the other side of the ship. There's a big hole in the side—maybe forty feet wide, right in the center of the ship. We're going to try and get on board. I'll call you later.”

Reaching the refueling pier, Conroe saw me and yelled up to me to ask what he could do to help. By that time, almost an hour after the explosion, our rescue and damage control efforts were in overdrive, and I told him we needed water for the crew as soon as possible; the temperature was in the nineties and the humidity was high, and without a fresh-water supply, there was the danger of dehydration. He said he would take care of it and left with the next boat in search of bottled water, returning about twenty minutes later with 240 one-liter bottles that were tossed up to crew members. “Keep bringing us water until I tell you to stop, and that isn't going to be for awhile,” I said. “Tell every boat coming out here to bring more water.”

Newman walked over the pier to get within speaking range and asked me, “Have you had a chance to tell Fifth Fleet what has happened to you?” There was no way to communicate with them. Radio central, with all the communications equipment on the ship, was without power, and so far we had been unable to restore it. Hearing this, Newman pulled out his cell phone, which had the global system for mobile communications
(GSM) capability, and held it above his head and yelled up to me: “I have the number to the Ops Center at Fifth Fleet. Do you want to use it to give them a call?” With an underhand motion, he tossed it in my direction.

As the phone tumbled through the air, I quickly flashed back to high school and the Naval Academy. “Lippold,” I thought to myself, “you played two sports—tennis and golf. If there was ever a time in your life that you need to catch something, this is it.”

It was a perfect toss, and I got it with relative ease.

After three rings, the Fifth Fleet Tactical Flag Command Center, in Bahrain, answered. “Fifth Fleet Surface Ops, Commander Schnell speaking, may I help you?”

“Yes, this is Commander Kirk Lippold, Commanding Officer of USS
Cole
,” I said, speaking as clearly and slowly as possible. “I have an OPREP-3, Pinnacle, Front Burner Report.” OPREP-3 is a military report used to inform the highest levels of command of a major event or incident; Pinnacle indicated that this would be a matter of national-level media interest; Front Burner signified a report of an attack on American forces—with the highest priority for transmission. An act of war, in other words.

“Are you sure?” the duty officer asked. I stared at the phone in disbelief. I had looked into the hole in the side of my ship and was standing amongst wounded still being evacuated off the ship. Oh, yes, I was sure.

In about a minute's time, I gave him an initial voice report detailing the attack and recounting how the boat, ostensibly a trash barge, had come alongside and detonated. Then I gave the status of the ship, what compartments were flooded, what I knew of the progress of the damage control effort, and, finally, the status of the wounded. Since we were still in the middle of triage, I omitted any report of crew members killed because that could be premature or inaccurate. I said I would report again when I had more information, folded the phone shut and slipped it into my left pocket, where it clanked against the two clips of 9 mm ammunition. I still felt a need for the pistol in the other pocket. At least now help was on the way.