13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi (24 page)

Around the same time as the second Compound attack began, at approximately 11:10 p.m. Benghazi time, the unarmed US drone arrived over the city. It immediately began sending live video back to Washington and Tripoli, so policymakers could watch grainy overhead images of the battle as it happened.

After the Land Cruiser pulled away, Tanto stepped to the other side of the brick driveway, moving across the firing line, for a better angle to engage the attackers. He took a knee and continued shooting. Whenever he saw a muzzle flash he returned fire. Tanto knew that he was exposed, but he felt enveloped by a blanket of protection he attributed to his faith.

D.B. took cover by the villa when the Land Cruiser sped off. He and the Team Leader weren’t so sanguine. “Tanto! Get over here!” the T.L. shouted over the radio. D.B. echoed him: “Get behind cover!”

Tanto stayed put. He believed that if he hadn’t been shot yet, a spiritual power must be watching over him. Tanto’s other motive was his training on how to respond to an ambush. Tanto intended to aggressively engage their
attackers, to demonstrate superior firepower and prevent the enemy from feeling emboldened.
Throw everything at them. Put them back on their heels
, he told himself.

Tanto heard gunfire originating from his right. He looked over to see a 17 February militiaman, none other than the older man with the civilian clothes and the nickel-plated AK-47, supporting his position from about ten feet away. The younger militiamen were nowhere to be found. But this short, stout, fifty-something man was on one knee, firing alongside Tanto toward the back gate. Tanto couldn’t help but smile.

It was still just the two of them, and despite his trust in angels on his shoulders, Tanto felt outnumbered. He grabbed his radio with his non-shooting hand and pressed the talk button with his thumb: “Hey, I could use some help. It’d be nice if someone could join me over here.”

“Roger that,” D.B. answered, running over to assist the former Ranger and the senior militiaman, as they poured bullets toward the back gate. Knowing that Tanto had been spending rounds freely, D.B. slid him an extra magazine across the driveway.

After the first RPG, Jack heard a sustained volley of gunfire, as rounds snapped past his head. Most of the militiamen and operators who’d been standing around the SUVs ran toward the villa for cover. When Jack reached the villa wall, to his right he saw a line of militiamen, laying fire toward the back gate.

Jack’s training taught him to always establish 360-degree security, with coverage from the front, back, sides,
and all angles. He saw the line of militiamen taking cover against the villa and realized that an attacker with an automatic weapon could run down an alleyway on the left side of the villa and mow them down like ducks in a row. It was a textbook example of soldiers leaving themselves vulnerable to attack from an unprotected flank.

Jack ran to the building’s corner on the left flank, took a knee, and scanned down the alley and to the east to ensure that no one came from either direction. He noticed that Henry the translator was taking cover behind him, against the villa wall. Jack caught Henry’s eye and they exchanged tired smiles. Henry had held up admirably under fire, but now his eyes looked to be the size of baseballs. Jack wanted to place Henry back with the Team Leader, so the translator could talk to the 17 February commander about what was happening.

The T.L. was thinking the same thing. As he struggled to communicate with the militia commander, he asked Tanto and D.B. to find the translator. A minute later, D.B. came around the corner where Jack was keeping watch over Henry.

“Hey, follow me,” D.B. told Henry. “I’m gonna stick you with the Team Lead. Hang on to him. Wherever he goes, you go. He needs you.”

When the first RPG hit, Tig leapt up from the hallway entrance inside the villa and rushed back to the bedroom window. The second rocket-propelled grenade exploded as he stepped through onto the patio. Using the sandbags as cover, Tig threw on his Rhodesian vest and helmet, and
grabbed his rifle. As he jocked up, he heard the zips and snaps of rounds coming in his direction. Tig looked toward the front of the villa and saw a 17 February militiaman in jeans, a T-shirt, and a protective vest similar to his. The lone young militiaman returned fire toward the back gate with an AK-47.

As Tig looked around, he saw the ladder that led to the roof. He climbed to the top, leapt over the concrete parapet, and scanned the roof to make sure he was alone. Although the fire raged below, the poured-concrete roof seemed in no immediate danger of collapse. The more imminent threat came from bullets flying in Tig’s direction. He radioed the Team Leader to report his location.
If I get shot
, Tig thought,
I want somebody to know that I’m up here.

Tig looked for flashes of gunfire coming from the northeast corner of the Compound, but didn’t see any. Staying low, Tig moved across the roof to the corner facing the rear gate, which led out to the Fourth Ring Road. Gunfire kept coming from that direction, and he wanted to suppress it.

Tig popped up with his assault rifle ready. Framed by the open back gate was the silhouette of a man. He stood in the road, about five yards back from the gate, with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on his shoulder. His head was tilted a few degrees off center, in the firing position. The RPG pointed directly toward the villa.

As quickly as Tig could, he squeezed the trigger on the semi-automatic assault rifle and let loose with ten to fifteen rounds.

The man with the RPG dropped backward onto the street. His arms flopped down and the launcher skittered off to the side. One of Tig’s rounds apparently struck the grenade as it launched, sending it spinning harmlessly off
to one side. The moment was captured on film by a security camera inside the Compound.

The steady gunfire that had been coming from the back gate stopped almost immediately, as though the sight of the fallen grenade shooter stunned the other attackers into silence.

When the shooting by the attackers stopped, a radio call went out telling the operators to join Tig on the villa roof. Rone had already begun providing medical care to several injured militiamen. He finished quickly and rose up the ladder.

Before Tanto went to the roof, a 17 February militiaman approached him outside the front of the villa.

“Sir,” he said. “I found this.”

The militiaman handed Tanto a BlackBerry smartphone covered in soot. Tanto wiped the screen with his thumb and saw what looked like a US phone number. He thanked the militiaman and put the device in his pocket. He climbed the ladder, as did D.B.

Jack felt spent as he moved to join his teammates up the ladder, his body armor weighing him down like a man trying to climb from the bottom of an empty well. He’d known that feeling before, and it reminded him of his SEAL training days. Even more, it reminded Jack how he’d felt when he first tried to pass the screening test to win admission to the SEAL training program. As Jack climbed the ladder to the villa roof, the SEAL screener’s question remained seared in his memory: “If I light a fire under your ass, can you get over the bar?” Now fire literally was under his ass.

Jack gathered his strength, pulled himself to the roof,
and spread out with his fellow operators. All took fighting positions, establishing a defensive perimeter from their elevated vantage point.

Before heading to the villa roof, D.B. had told the Team Leader that time was their enemy. Not only were they in danger at the Compound, but the Annex grew more insecure the longer it remained without the full complement of operators. “We need to round up all the Americans we can and evacuate,” D.B. told the T.L.

Within minutes of the operators assembling on the roof, their radios rang out again with a call from the Team Leader: “Consolidate now. We’re getting the hell out of here.” They climbed back down, with Tig covering the others as the last man down.

Rone got behind the wheel of the Mercedes. Jack rode shotgun. Tanto got in the backseat. D.B. and Tig climbed into the rear cargo area with Sean Smith’s body. They positioned themselves to watch through the rear window to make sure no one was following them. The Team Leader and Henry remained outside talking with a 17 February militia leader.

Jack opened the Mercedes door.

“Get the fuck in the car,” he told the T.L. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

The Team Leader looked over to him. Without a word, he and Henry got in the backseat, alongside Tanto. The barrels of their guns still hot, seven men and the body of an eighth were crammed together in the armored Mercedes SUV.

Tanto gazed through the side window at the faces of several stunned-looking militiamen who he felt certain had
just experienced their first firefight. Beyond them, Tanto saw the villa and the barracks still on fire. The light cast by the flames across the thick lawn made Tanto think of a flawless soccer field, ready for a night game.

It was about 11:30 p.m., or roughly two hours since the attack began. As they sat in the Mercedes, none of the operators knew how many of the attackers their bullets had hit in the dark. The Compound wasn’t littered with bodies, as some armchair warriors would later suggest, but the operators knew that in their defense of their countrymen and themselves, they had inflicted damage on at least some of their enemies.