13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi (17 page)

Desperate to find Stevens and Smith, Ubben and the two Tripoli-based agents scrambled back down. Noxious diesel smoke still filled the safe haven. Visibility remained poor. Two of the agents set up a defensive perimeter to guard the window, while the third went inside, crawling across the floor to search for the ambassador and the communications expert. He could only remain inside briefly before the lack of air drove him back to the window.

Ubben and the two other DS agents rotated between the grim, strenuous search duty and manning the defensive perimeter. Each time one man came out of the villa breathless and empty-handed, a new man went in.

U
PON DRIVING INTO THE
A
NNEX,
O
Z HEADED DIRECTLY
for Building C. There he found Bob the base chief and several other agency staffers standing outside, talking on their cell phones. Oz’s dinner companion rushed from the Toyota and went inside Building C to find out what was happening. Other Annex staffers roamed the walled property, moving at will from building to building. Some grabbed personal belongings from their living quarters. To Oz, several Annex residents seemed caught up in the commotion, unsure where to go or what to do.

This is gonna be like herding cats
, Oz thought.

His body armor and kit were in his room, but there wasn’t yet time for that. Still in the brown pants and long-sleeved collared shirt he’d worn to dinner, Oz strode directly to Bob and swamped him with questions. “What’s the latest? Did the guys take enough weapons? Where, exactly, is everyone who’s still here?”

Bob hurriedly brought Oz up to speed then returned to his phone calls. Oz didn’t object, understanding that Bob needed to help coordinate the response, deal with the 17 February militia, and update Washington and Tripoli on the ongoing attack.

As he looked around the Annex, an uneasy feeling settled in Oz’s stomach. From the way people were milling around, it seemed as though it hadn’t occurred to them that the Compound might not be the only target for violent anti-American extremists. Defenses needed to be organized and hardened immediately at the Annex. That job fell to him as the only GRS operator not en route to the Compound.

Even as Oz swept into action, he tamped down a gnawing sense of frustration and disappointment that had begun during the drive back from dinner. Years earlier, his wife had given him a T-shirt with a question on the front: “Do you know the difference between you and me?” The answer was on the back: “You’re running away from fire and I’m running toward it.” Oz wore the shirt proudly and lived by its message. Now, though, as the only operator not on the Compound rescue squad, he felt sidelined.
I want to be taking the fight to them, instead of sitting here waiting for them to come to us
, he thought.
I don’t want to be blocking and tackling. I want to be running the football to the end zone.

Oz knew he couldn’t dwell on those thoughts, so he occupied his mind and devoted his energy to devising an improvised defensive plan using the limited assets and personnel at hand. Although all the CIA case officers at the Annex had some training and familiarity with weapons, Oz considered most of them ill-equipped for combat. In other words, non-shooters. He took a mental roll call and
concluded that his core team consisted of six fighters with varying degrees of military experience and training, three Americans and three Libyans.

The Americans were himself, the head of Annex security, and a case officer who’d had combat experience in Afghanistan. The three Libyans were the Annex guards, all of them friends or family members of the property’s landlord, who insisted that they be hired when the Americans rented the Annex. Although Oz would rely on the five men, he considered protecting everyone at the Annex to be his responsibility alone.

Oz directed the remaining Americans at the Annex to congregate in Building C. There, the reinforced Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility could serve as their last refuge if the Annex were overrun. He posted an Annex support staffer outside Building C with an assault rifle and told him to make sure no more than one person went to another building at a time, and only if absolutely necessary. That way Oz wouldn’t have to round up more than one straggler in the event of an emergency. Oz knew that cell phone service was spotty inside Building C, so he told the staffer to allow anyone making official calls to loiter outside as long as they stayed close.

When Bob the Annex chief took a brief pause between phone calls, Oz asked him to help enforce the rule about keeping everyone congregated in or around Building C. “My biggest concern is accountability,” Oz told him. “I need to know where everybody’s at, at all times.” Bob agreed, and with the base chief’s blessing the gun-wielding staffer took his place as the door monitor.

Oz hurried across the driveway to Building B, ducking into his bedroom to collect his kit. Without changing
clothes, he pulled on his body armor, his helmet, and his night-vision goggles. Oz grabbed his assault rifle and his go-bag, which contained a dozen extra magazines, two tourniquets, and other medical gear. Determined not to run out of ammo, he swept up a half-dozen spare mags and shoved them in his rear and side pockets as he ran back outside.

Carrying his own assault rifle, the case officer with military experience in Afghanistan spotted Oz and asked how he could help. Oz directed him to a ladder at the northeast corner of Building C. The ladder led to a flat cement roof with a three-and-a-half-foot-high cinder-block parapet that could be used as cover. In the months previous, the operators had designed an Annex defense plan under which they’d use the Building C rooftop as their primary fighting position. On the roof were sealed green metal cans with thousands of rounds of ammunition, including linked rounds for a belt-fed machine gun, magazines for assault rifles, and grenades that resembled oversize salt shakers, to be used with a grenade launcher. The plan called for the weapons to be brought up when the fight began, to keep them from getting gummed up with sand and dust.

Oz climbed to the roof with the military-trained case officer for a look around. To the northwest, in the direction of the Compound, he saw bright flashes from tracer rounds streaking across the night sky. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the immediate vicinity of the Annex. He scanned the surrounding area through his night-vision goggles but couldn’t see anyone trying to sneak up on them from the desolate area to the north and east they called Zombieland. Oz told the case officer to remain atop the roof
on sentry duty and let him know by radio if he heard or saw anything unusual. Oz climbed down and continued his rounds.

He positioned the Annex security leader at the front gate, giving him leeway to move back and forth between there and Building C, some sixty yards away. Oz felt confident in the man’s judgment and knew that he’d make the right decisions about where to be. The priority, they both knew, was to protect the people in Building C. If attackers breached the Annex walls and came gunning for them, they needed shooters inside the building, a position of relative strength if invaders tried to enter through doors, one or two at a time.

With the case officer and the security leader in place, Oz went to work arranging his outer line of defense: the three Libyan guards. Months earlier, the operators had built several steel platforms close to the Annex walls to use as fighting positions if they came under attack. The floors of the rusty, orange-brown platforms were high enough to enable the operators or other Annex defenders to shoot over the walls. The platforms, which the operators called “towers,” were large enough for two fighters to move and crouch comfortably without knocking each other off.

Oz positioned one of the Libyan guards on a tower near the front gate. He put one on a tower to the rear left of Building C. Oz placed the third on the tower at the southeast corner of the property. Oz moved from one to the next, to be sure the guards had enough ammo and were prepared to fight. At the very least, he hoped they’d hold their positions and warn him about an attack.

As Oz walked around inside the Annex, he heard the radio traffic between his operator teammates and the DS
agents inside the Compound. He was too busy to focus on everything they said, but he could tell that it didn’t sound good. After positioning the men on the towers, Oz returned to Building C, still hoping that the local Libyan guards were brave and loyal enough not to flee at the first sign of trouble. He had the same thought about the 17 February militiamen who were supposed to support his friends at the Compound.

As Oz organized the Annex defenses, a supervisor of the three Libyan guards came to the front gate asking to speak with Bob. Annex staff members were familiar with the man, so Oz allowed him inside carrying his pistol. The guard supervisor told Oz that he’d come to the Annex to urge the CIA base chief to evacuate immediately.

“You guys got to go,” the supervisor told Oz. “It’s not safe for you here.”

Oz took him to Building C to see Bob. Oz returned to his duties while the guard supervisor and the base chief spoke outside, but Oz already knew the outcome. Six operators and a translator from the Annex were en route to a burning, overrun US diplomatic Compound where an ambassador and six other Americans were in mortal danger. If some or all of those fourteen Americans made it out alive, they’d need a place to take refuge. The men and women at the Annex weren’t going anywhere.

Near the southeast corner of the intersection of Gunfighter Road and the gravel street leading to the Compound, Tanto, D.B., and the two young 17 February militiamen approached the wall they intended to climb. With any luck, it would lead them to a tall building they could use
as a sniper roost and reconnaissance tower. Tanto remained apprehensive about the 17 February fighters, but he sensed that these two were trustworthy.

As the sniper/observation team moved out, Rone, Jack, and Tig left the BMW and headed toward the intersection. Cement-block walls surrounded most of the homes and other properties in the area, so the operators used the walls as cover. They moved cautiously north up Gunfighter in the “low ready” position, rifle butts at their shoulders, barrels pointed safely downward. Index fingers stayed close to the triggers but not on them. Thumbs caressed the safety switches, ready to make the weapons live.

Rone approached the driver’s side of the Technical truck with the mounted gun, taking cover behind the engine block. Jack stationed himself on the southeast corner of the intersection. Ambient light from homes and the occasional flickering streetlight made his night-vision goggles unnecessary for the moment. Jack poked his head around the corner to peer toward the front gate of the Compound, four hundred yards down the gravel street. He got his first look at some of the attackers who’d stormed the Compound and now were shooting in his direction. He saw eight or nine Arab men, at least some with weapons visible.

Sometimes the attackers fired at the operators and the 17 February militiamen from behind the concrete Jersey barriers outside the Compound gate. Other times they milled around in the open. They were too far away for Jack to identify them. All he could see were shadowy figures moving near the gate.

Suddenly Jack heard loud gunfire coming from close by. One of the militiamen fired several large-caliber rounds from the Technical in the direction of the Compound. The
operators could feel the shock waves of the shots reverberating in their chests.

Rone moved around the truck and Jack leaned around the corner to join in the shooting. After firing several rounds, they ducked back behind cover. Three 17 February militiamen who occupied the northeast corner of Gunfighter Road and the gravel street returned the attackers’ fire, as well. The attackers answered with pops of sporadic gunfire.

As Tig moved to join in, a 17 February militiaman on the west side of Gunfighter Road fired two rocket-propelled grenades toward the men outside the Compound gate. The grenade-firing militiaman was positioned about twenty yards behind Tig, who heard the alarming sound of shells whizzing over his head. The grenades didn’t faze the attackers, who kept firing.

Tig answered with added firepower. He’d brought a grenade launcher of his own, and he fired three high-explosive, dual-purpose cartridges, capable of killing anyone within a five-yard radius and wounding anyone within fifteen yards. Each round launched with a resounding
fwump
, followed by a momentary silence punctuated by a powerful
coccoom
explosion. The launcher had a range of about 350 yards, but Tig purposely lobbed the grenades short, to put the explosives well in front of the attackers and to avoid hitting the Compound gate. He worried that a direct hit on the gate would slow the operators, exposing them to fire, when it came time for them to move through it to reach the Compound.