13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi (15 page)

Another factor might also have contributed to the delay: The CIA chief seemed genuinely concerned that the Annex might come under fire. If all the GRS operators were at the Compound, the Americans left behind at the Annex would have little chance against a large force of attackers. The contract operators, routinely treated like excess baggage by many of the CIA case officers, were suddenly the most popular Americans in Benghazi.

Another radio call came from the Compound. The warbling voice of a DS agent was so tightly controlled it sounded constricted. Several GRS operators sensed fear edging toward panic:

“If you guys do not get here, we’re going to die!”

That was all it took. Roughly twenty minutes, possibly more, had elapsed since the operators had first mustered at Building C. They were long past ready to go. If a cavalry wanted to do any good, it needed to move out. With or without approval.

“We need to go,” Tanto told the Team Leader. It wasn’t a question. The four other operators felt the same. Tanto told the T.L.: “Get in the fucking car.”

The Team Leader ended his phone call and got in.

They still lacked clearance or a firm idea what support they might get from the 17 February militia. And with the DS agents holed up, the operators had no inside intelligence on what they were about to face. But Rone, Jack, and Tig mounted up in the BMW at the head of the two-
vehicle convoy. The GRS Team Leader got into the backseat of the Mercedes SUV, alongside Henry and behind Tanto and D.B.

Tanto put his hand on the gearshift and hailed Rone on the radio. “Is you up?” he asked, using slang to ask if the BMW team was ready.

Rone leaned out of the half-open driver’s-side door. He glanced back at the BMW with a we-got-this smile. Rone stuck out his muscular arm, balled his hand into a fist, and flashed a thumbs-up. Tanto returned the thumbs-up.

Rone shifted the BMW into gear and Tanto did the same in the Mercedes.

As Tanto drove around the grassy triangular roundabout at the center of the Annex, heading for the gate, he tried to spot the little family of turtles that lived there. He wasn’t sure why, but it was a small comfort, like saying goodbye to a family pet when leaving home for work.

During the delay, Rone had called Oz at dinner and told him to return to the Annex immediately. “There’s something going on over at the consulate,” Rone said without elaborating. “Be very careful and don’t go anywhere near there. There’s a lot of activity going on.”

Oz and the CIA case officer had already eaten dessert and thanked their hosts, but the case officer lingered over goodbye.

“We need to go,” Oz told her in a low growl. He didn’t mention Rone’s call, not wanting to tip their hosts to what was happening. She continued making small talk. In a steelier tone he repeated himself: “We need to go. Right now.”

She shot him a look.

Oz’s patience ran out. “Get in the car. We’re leaving.”

Oz called a final goodbye to their hosts as he hustled the case officer into their vehicle, a small black Toyota SUV with dark-tinted windows. He explained what he knew as he turned on his two-way radio and drove toward the Annex. The case officer started firing questions, making suggestions, and giving Oz driving directions.

“You need to be quiet, sit back, and keep your eyes open,” Oz told her. “You’re in our world now. Let me do what I know how to do.” She complied.

Oz already had in mind a circuitous route that would return them to the Annex while avoiding the diplomatic Compound. His route also would steer clear of potential roadblocks in an area where he knew that a black al-Qaeda-inspired flag regularly flew from an apartment building. He blended the Toyota into traffic, driving with a Goldilocks touch: neither too hot nor too cold, neither too fast nor too slow. The case officer wore a headscarf, but Oz was every inch the blond, blue-eyed, beef-fed Westerner. The last thing he wanted was to get stopped at a hostile checkpoint or an impromptu roadblock and try to explain why two Americans were out driving near 10:00 p.m. on a night when the American Compound was under attack.

Over the radio Oz could hear plaintive calls from the Compound. He wasn’t sure whether the DS agent on the mic said they were “under fire” or buildings were “on fire.” Either way, he knew it was bad. He focused his mind on the fight ahead.

Oz drove along the Third Ring Road to the Mediterranean coast, then turned onto the main coastal road heading toward the outskirts of Benghazi. He navigated back roads
to cut through fallow farm fields; that brought them back onto the street they called Racetrack Road, southeast of the Annex. About twenty minutes after they left their hosts’ home, Oz and the case officer turned onto Annex Road and pulled through the gate. The BMW and the Mercedes were already gone.

The situation at the Compound kept getting worse. After reentering the villa’s safe-haven area through the bedroom window, DS agent Scott Wickland searched the smoke-filled hallway but still couldn’t find Chris Stevens or Sean Smith. Wickland knew that the two men couldn’t survive long in such conditions, but neither would he if he didn’t get fresh air.

Fighting for breath, nearly overcome by the heat, Wickland returned to the bedroom and climbed out the window through the open grate. Out on the patio, he regained his bearings and caught his breath. He went back inside, only to be forced out again by the heat and smoke. Still Wickland saw no sign of the ambassador or the communications officer.

While Wickland continued his rescue effort, attackers swarmed the Cantina, where the two Tripoli-based DS agents were barricaded in a back room with a Blue Mountain guard. Another group of invaders approached the TOC, where Alec Henderson and Dave Ubben were locked inside the secure communications room.

As they watched the large video monitor, Henderson and Ubben saw multiple attackers trying to break through the building’s reinforced wooden door to reach them. Ubben held his M4 assault rifle and Henderson gripped a
shotgun, preparing for close-quarters combat. The intruders approached the TOC in ones, twos, and threes, testing the door and its steel drop bar with flying kicks. One crouched in a football stance some twenty-five feet away and rushed forward at full speed. He plowed his full body weight into the door but it held.

The intruders looted and sacked the Cantina, and tried unsuccessfully to break through the barricade. Back outside, with Ubben and Henderson watching them on the security monitors, the attackers hauled jerry cans to cars parked near the TOC. But the cans were almost empty, foiling the plan to set more vehicles ablaze.

Back at the villa, Wickland made several more unsuccessful attempts to find Stevens and Smith. Spent and unable to return inside for another try, Wickland knew that remaining on the patio would expose him to gunfire. If he blacked out, as he feared he would, he’d be easy prey. A few feet from the patio, a ladder leaning against the side of the villa led to the roof. Wickland climbed it and leapt over a nearly four-foot parapet around the edge of the villa’s flat roof.

Wickland radioed his fellow DS agents Alec Henderson and David Ubben in the TOC for help, but his throat and lungs were so ravaged by smoke inhalation he could barely choke out the words. Finally his colleagues understood the awful message: Wickland couldn’t find Ambassador Stevens or Sean Smith, and Villa C was in flames. After making the call, Wickland collapsed on the rooftop.

Until that moment, in the relative safety of the TOC, Henderson and Ubben had only a vague idea what was happening at the ambassador’s residence some fifty yards away. The monitors in the TOC showed smoke but not
fire at Villa C, and Henderson and Ubben had no line of sight from their location to the ruin that had been Château Christophe.

Before Wickland’s call from the roof, all that the DS agents in the TOC knew was that Wickland had ushered Ambassador Chris Stevens and communications specialist Sean Smith into the locked safe haven. To the best of their knowledge, the three men had remained there, waiting for help. Henderson and Ubben had no reason to presume otherwise. As a result, the DS agents’ early radio and telephone calls to the Annex, Tripoli, Washington, and elsewhere didn’t inform potential rescuers that the three Americans at Villa C had been separated in an inferno of fire and diesel smoke, and that they were in mortal peril. Whether that information would have shortened the delay in the operators’ departure from the Annex can’t be known.

Henderson and Ubben immediately spread word that Stevens and Smith were missing, and that Wickland was hurt and exhausted on the roof. With the surveillance monitor showing the attackers starting to peel away, Ubben decided to leave the TOC to see if he could help Wickland and find the missing Americans.

As the operators drove toward the Annex’s front gate, D.B. turned his head to the backseat of the Mercedes and peppered the Team Leader with questions. They had moved out without a clear understanding of the arrangement, if any, with the 17 February militia. D.B. knew that the militia had a large base nearby, and depending on their route, the operators’ vehicles might pass it on the way to the Compound. He didn’t want any surprises or misunderstandings.

“How many guys are we linking up with from 17 February?” D.B. asked. “Do they know that we’re coming? Do they know what they’re looking for?”

The Team Leader wasn’t sure, but he understood the potential hazards. He got on the radio to warn Rone and the men in the BMW: “Be advised, as we may be coming into friendly fire. We don’t know if 17 Feb knows we’re coming.”

“Roger that,” Rone said. “We’re gonna take the back route.”

They reached the front gate of the Annex, a guard raised the steel traffic bar, and Rone turned left onto the dark street they called “Annex Road.” With Tanto following about fifty yards behind in the Mercedes, Rone drove a short distance and turned right onto an unnamed road. He soon reached an intersection and turned right again, onto Racetrack Road, driving past the dirt oval horse track as he headed west toward Gunfighter Road. There, he turned right a third time and headed north in the direction of the Compound.

Rone’s intent was to minimize their time spent on the busy Fourth Ring Road. If they approached via the Fourth Ring, attackers at the Compound might see them coming from a long way off. Rone’s route would take a minute or two longer, but the operators felt certain it was worth it, if they hoped to maintain any surprise for their counterattack. Rone had used the same back route, in reverse, when he and Tig drove past the then-quiet Compound after checking the location of the ambassador’s scheduled meeting the next morning. The whole world had changed in the two hours since then.