SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper (27 page)

Later that day, I heard .50 caliber shots, the kind that can penetrate bricks, fired in the northwest 300 to 500 yards from our location.

With shooting nearby and a recent ambush, we knew our ticket was about to get punched. On full alert now, we took up battle stations. I called in an AC-130 Spectre to fly overhead in case we needed help. Capable of spending long periods of time in the air, the air force plane carried two 20 mm M-61 Vulcan cannons, one 40 mm L/60 Bofors cannon, and one 105 mm M-102 howitzer. Sophisticated sensors and radar helped it detect enemy on the ground. You could let loose a rabbit on a soccer field, and the AC-130 Spectre would make rabbit stew. I had trained in Florida at Hurlburt Field on the plane’s capabilities and how to call for its fire to rain down on the enemy. It aroused me to know we were getting ready to light up some of Aidid’s people. Instead, fortune smiled on them as they chose to fight another day.

That same day, we found out that one of our primary assets had been made, so we had to fly him out of the country.

At 2000, an asset told us that Aidid was at his aunt’s house. Condor called in a helo to fly Stingray and the asset to the army base and brief General Garrison. All of us in Pasha were ecstatic. Everything we had done at Pasha—running the assets, SIGINT, everything—had led to this moment. We had good intel and the cloak of darkness to protect our assault team. The asset even had a diagram for the house—ideal for special operators doing room entries. Aidid was ours.

The request was denied. I still don’t know why. Condor and Stingray were outraged. “We will not get another chance this good!”

The rest of us couldn’t believe it either. “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!” In the military phonetic alphabet, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” is
WTF
—“What the f***?”

I was angry that we had worked so hard for such an important mission only to be ignored. It seemed that military politics were to blame. I also felt embarrassed at how my own military had treated the CIA. “Condor, I’m really sorry. I don’t know what the hell … I don’t know why we didn’t do this…”

Condor wasn’t mad at us SEALs, but he was mad at General Garrison. “If Garrison isn’t going to do it, why did he even send us out here?! Why do all this work, spend all this money, put ourselves at risk, put our assets at risk…”

“If we aren’t going to pull the trigger,” I finished his sentence. “We had Aidid.”

“You’re damn right we had him!”

At the time, I was mad at Garrison, too. Delta launched on the dry hole at the Lig Ligato house, but they couldn’t launch when we really had Aidid. It wasn’t going to do any good to punch anything or yell at anybody. When I become ultrafurious, I become ultraquiet. After Condor and I shared our misery, I went mute. The others let me have my space. We all mourned the loss of that mission.

SEPTEMBER 6, 1993

At 0400, on the roof of Pasha, Casanova and I heard a tank make a wide circle. We didn’t even know Aidid had a tank. We readied our AT-4s.

Hours later, Casanova and I told Little Big Man and Sourpuss.

“There can’t be a tank here,” Sourpuss argued. “We’d have seen a tank by now.”

“We know what we heard,” I said.

“I’m not impressed,” Sourpuss said. “You might impress the CIA with your nonsense, but I’m not impressed.”

“Whatever.”

That same morning, one of our assets was shot stepping out of his vehicle.

Before long, a second asset, our maid’s brother, was killed—shot in the head. He was one of the good guys. He wasn’t in it for the money as much as he was in it to help his clan end the civil war. She couldn’t hide the sadness in her eyes.

As if things weren’t bad enough for us, a third asset was beaten almost to death. By the Italians.

A report came in that Aidid possessed antiaircraft guns. Aidid continued to grow stronger and more sophisticated thanks to help from al Qaeda, the PLO, and the Italians turning a blind eye. The locals recognized the growth, too, and were encouraged to join Aidid.

Delta had intelligence that Aidid was in the old Russian compound. So Delta went after him and took seventeen prisoners—but no Aidid. Only two of the seventeen were considered to be of interest. They were detained, interrogated, and then freed. Delta had given Aidid’s people another exhibition of how they operate: fly in, fast-rope down, and use a Humvee blocking force of Rangers to protect the operators as they take down the house. This would come back to bite us in the ass.

SEPTEMBER 7, 1993

One of our primary assets, Abe, called in four hours late. We feared him dead.

Finally, he showed. “I do tonight’s mission.”

“Sorry, you’ve already been scratched.”

“Scratched?”

“Mission canceled. No mission for you tonight.”

*   *   *

In the evening, Casanova and I escorted Condor to deliver $50,000 to an asset. The high-level assets were wealthy and influential and had a number of people working under them. Condor went to the high-level assets rather than making them come to him: checking the number of new recruits, collecting their pictures, finding out how they would divvy up the money with their own assets, briefing them about procedures. The whole meeting took about an hour and a half. While Casanova and I stood guard outside, we heard a firefight approximately 200 yards north.

Little Big Man and Sourpuss saw the tracers from the firefight in our direction. “Do you guys need assistance?” they radioed us.

“No, we weren’t involved.” If we fired a green flare, Little Big Man and Sourpuss would call in a helo extract, then fight their way to our position to assist until the helo arrived.

Later that night, back at Pasha, I got my second confirmed rat kill.

SEPTEMBER 8, 1993

The Rangers reported that they spotted an old Russian tank a couple miles out of town and destroyed it. I reminded Sourpuss about the tank Casanova and I had heard several nights earlier, “See? It’s called a tank. You know—they make a certain sound while moving.”

Sourpuss walked away.

That day, Abe became our main asset. We gave him an infrared strobe light and a beacon with a magnet attached. He seemed confident he could get close to Aidid, so we put Delta on alert.

“Aidid is moving,” Abe called. As the night grew old, Abe couldn’t pinpoint Aidid’s position.

Although no communication traffic reached SIGINT, several large explosions came from the direction of the airport. Aidid’s mortar crews had figured out how to communicate their fire and control without being intercepted by us.
Damn, they are resilient.

SEPTEMBER 9, 1993

General Garrison received permission to go to Phase Three—going after Aidid’s lieutenants. Delta flew over Mogadishu as a show of force with the entire package: ten to twelve Little Birds and twenty to thirty Black Hawks. Delta snipers rode in the light Little Bird helicopters, which could carry guns, rockets, and missiles. In the medium-sized Black Hawk helicopters, also armed with guns, rockets, and missiles, the Delta entry teams and Rangers had fast ropes ready in the doorway to make an assault at any moment. The idea was to show Aidid that ours was bigger than his—making him less attractive to the local population and, hopefully, hurting his ability to recruit.

On the same day, near the pasta factory, two kilometers away from the Pakistani Stadium, the Army’s 362nd Engineers worked to clear a Mogadishu roadway. A Pakistani armored platoon protected them while the Quick Reaction Force (QRF) stood by in case they needed emergency reinforcements. The QRF was made up of men from the conventional army’s 10th Mountain Division, 101st Aviation Regiment, and 25th Aviation Regiment, their base located at the abandoned university and old American Embassy.

The engineers bulldozed an obstacle from the road when a crowd of Somalis gathered. One Somali fired a shot, then sped away in a white truck. The engineers cleared a second obstacle. Then the third: burning tires, scrap metal, and a trailer. Someone on a second-story balcony fired at them. Engineers and Pakistanis returned fire. The enemy fire increased, coming at them from multiple directions. The crowd moved obstacles to block the soldiers in. The engineers called in the QRF helos. In three minutes, armed OH-58 Kiowa and AH-1 Cobra helicopters arrived. Hundreds of armed Somalis moved in from the north and south. Enemy RPGs came in from multiple directions.

The Cobra opened up on the enemy with 20 mm cannons and 2.75-inch rockets. More QRF helos were called in for help while the engineers tried to escape, heading for the Pakistani Stadium. Aidid’s militia fired a 106 mm recoilless rifle, blasting the lead Pakistani tank into flames. A bulldozer stopped dead, so the engineers abandoned it. As thirty Somalis tried to take the abandoned bulldozer, two TOW missiles destroyed them and the bulldozer. The engineers, two wounded, and the Pakistanis, three wounded, fought on until they reached the stadium. One Pakistani died. It had been the largest battle in Somalia to that point.

Our intelligence sources told us that Aidid had commanded the ambush from the nearby cigarette factory. More than one hundred Somalis died, and hundreds more were wounded, but Aidid had succeeded in keeping the road closed, restricting the UN forces’ movement. In addition, the media assisted Aidid by reporting the many “innocent” Somali deaths.
I hate our liberal media. Must be easy to sit back and point fingers when you’re not involved.
President Clinton also helped Aidid, halting combat operations in Mogadishu until an investigation could be completed.
Political popularity trumps American lives.

Aidid launched artillery over Pasha. Machine-gun fire and firefights reached closer to us. We remained on full alert and high pucker factor. Aidid’s militia also launched mortars on the Nigerian checkpoint at the Port of Mogadishu—turned over by the Italians.

Condor’s assets infiltrated a rally held in a vehicle repair garage where Aidid tried to pump up his troops. If Aidid was actually there at the rally, we wanted to know. He wasn’t.

SEPTEMBER 10, 1993

At 0500 the next day, Aidid’s militia fired more artillery at the Port of Mogadishu checkpoint. That same day, an asset told us that Aidid’s people knew about Pasha. They described our guns and vehicles, and they knew Condor from before we set up Pasha.

Aidid ambushed CNN’s Somali crew. Their interpreter and four guards were killed. Aidid’s militia had mistaken the CNN’s crew for us.

We also found out that an Italian journalist had arranged to do an interview with Aidid. One of our assets put a beacon on the journalist’s car, so we could track him. The journalist must’ve suspected something was wrong, because he went to the house of one of the good guys instead, probably hoping we’d launch an attack there. Fortunately, we had an asset on the ground verifying the location.

Even so, the CIA was screwed. So were we. We had good intel that Aidid’s people were going to ambush us. Instead of two SEALs on watch and two resting, we went to three SEALs on watch and one resting.

SEPTEMBER 11, 1993

I finally got to bed at 0700 the next morning—no ambush. Sourpuss woke me up at 1100 to tell me that our assets were reporting that Aidid’s militia was closing in on us.

Another asset told us that the bad guys had targeted our head guard, Abdi, because they knew he was working for the CIA. One of the guards in his employ was his own son. The head guard took responsibility for paying the guards; moreover, he had responsibility for their lives. He held an important status in his clan. The head guard put his family and clan at risk to help the CIA. Part of his motivation was money, but the greater motivation seemed to be a better future for his family. Now he was made. Later we would find out who ratted him out: the Italians.

Condor called General Garrison. “We’ve been compromised, and we need to get the f*** out of here.”

At 1500, leaving nonessential equipment such as MREs, everyone in Pasha packed up, and we drove to the Pakistani Stadium. Helicopters extracted us at 1935, taking us back to the hangar on the military compound.

In retrospect, on the first day at Pasha, we should’ve flexicuffed the Italians and taken them out of the area, and we should’ve assassinated the Russian mercenary. Then we would’ve had a better chance of running our safe house and capturing Aidid. Of course, it would’ve helped if our own military had let us capture Aidid when we had him at his aunt’s house.

Although we had lost Pasha, we still had targets to act on.

11.

Capturing Aidid’s Evil Genius

SEPTEMBER 12, 1993

Casanova and I walked into the hangar, beard and hair still growing out. I didn’t get a haircut the whole time I was in Mogadishu. In the hangar, everyone seemed happy to see us. They knew we’d been living for nearly fifteen days in booger-eater territory, and they’d heard rumors about some of the work we’d done. Several Rangers approached us. “Wish you guys would’ve been with us when we were ambushed.” Others wanted to ask, “What’ve you guys been doing?”