13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi (26 page)

Rone felt confident enough to turn on the headlights as they cruised along darkened streets. He kept an easy pace with the light traffic around them. The idea was to disguise three uncomfortable facts: The Mercedes SUV had a dead body in the back, it was packed with heavily armed American operators, and it was seeking refuge in a covert CIA Annex.

When they were one minute away, Tanto radioed the Annex: “Coming in hot.” Not wanting to give the misimpression that they were being followed, Tanto quickly amended his radio call: “Disregard. We’re coming in lukewarm.”

Rone parked near Building A and the operators got out. Sean Smith’s body remained in the cargo area of the
Mercedes. D.B. made sure someone found a bedsheet to cover him.

While the Team Leader spoke with Bob, Henry the translator got a well-deserved respite among the non-shooters inside Building C. Others inside the building kept busy destroying classified material in anticipation of evacuating. They also filled dozens of magazines with ammunition for the rooftop and tower security teams.

Rone went inside, too, to care for Scott Wickland. The other operators rushed to their assigned battle stations. Before heading to his post on Building B, Tanto told D.B. he wanted an update from inside Building C, to see how much external support and overhead firepower they might expect.

Jack moved toward the ladder leading to the roof of Building D. Looking across the grassy triangle where the turtle family lived, Jack saw the battle-scarred Land Cruiser and considered the DS agents lucky to be alive. At the very least, it was a battered tribute to the engineers who’d designed the SUV’s protective armor.

As they climbed to the flat-topped roofs, none of the operators allowed himself to imagine that they were out of danger. Yet several experienced a brief wave of relief. Although everyone at the Annex felt a pall from the death of Sean Smith and the disappearance of Chris Stevens, Jack detected an uptick in morale now that all the other Americans were together inside the Annex and none had been injured or killed during their escape from the Compound.

As midnight approached and September 11, 2012, neared its end, Annex defenses settled into place. The taller of the two Tripoli DS agents was on the roof of Building A, watching
the south wall and the front gate. The view was obscured, so soon he’d move to join Tanto and D.B. as they readied themselves behind the parapet on the roof of Building B. The CIA case officer with battle experience in Afghanistan remained atop Building C, soon to be joined there by Rone. Atop Building D were Jack, Dave Ubben, and the second DS agent from Tripoli, a stocky African-American Army veteran. The T.L. remained inside Building C, with occasional trips outside to the building’s patio.

The Annex security leader positioned himself near the front gate but moved elsewhere at times. The three Libyan guards were on the steel towers. One remained near the front gate, but the guard who’d been at the northwest tower moved to join his friend at the southeast corner of the property. Oz was on the move, bringing water and ammo where needed, and checking to see that everyone was in position. When that was done, Oz moved to the tower fighting position located to the northeast of Building C. Tig linked up with two of the local guards and spent some time with them on the tower at the Annex’s southeast corner.

As the Annex’s defenders steeled themselves for whatever lay ahead, midnight passed and September 11 ended. Minutes after the start of the new day, the State Department’s Operations Center in Washington sent an e-mail to the White House, Pentagon, FBI, and other government agencies. The e-mail, sent at 12:06 a.m. Benghazi time, September 12, 2012, had the subject line, “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility For Benghazi Attack.” The message said: “Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed
responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.”

When the e-mail was revealed, weeks later, it set off a firestorm about when the Obama administration knew that the Compound attack wasn’t simply a disorganized, spontaneous protest over the anti-Muhammad
Innocence of Muslims
video on YouTube, as several administration officials initially suggested. But the issue became muddied further when an investigation by a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy found no evidence that the radical militia group had made any such statements on social media.

Around the same time the e-mail was sent, the gates of the embassy in Tripoli opened, and out rode the reinforcement security team for a private charter flight to Benghazi. The seven-member force consisted of former Navy SEAL Glen “Bub” Doherty; two Delta Force members; the top GRS Team Leader in Libya; two other GRS operators; and a linguist.

From his position on the southeast tower, Tig asked over the radio for someone to turn on the exterior perimeter floodlights that pointed beyond the Annex walls. The exterior lights soon shone, but someone also turned on spotlights that illuminated inside the Annex property. Those lights made it easier to move around in the dark, but they silhouetted the rooftop and tower-based defenders, exposing their positions. Equally troubling, the interior lights blinded them from looking out beyond the Annex walls to where any attackers might be hiding.

Jack got on the radio and asked that the interior lights be switched off. Tig seconded the request. When nothing happened, Jack considered shooting them out, just as he’d done as a Navy SEAL on nighttime assaults of ships at sea. On one mission, Jack’s SEAL team received intelligence that one of Osama bin Laden’s sons was hiding on a vessel off the coast of Pakistan. They brought a fast boat alongside the ship, hooked on ladders, and climbed aboard. Their search turned up no trace of any bin Laden. The only shots they fired that night were to kill the lights.

Atop Building D, Jack stewed about the lights but he hesitated to shoot, not wanting to draw attention to the Annex with gunfire. As minutes passed that seemed like hours, Jack began to reconsider. Just then, Tig’s southwestern twang came raging over the airwaves: “Someone turn off the fucking lights!”

Sheepishly, an Annex security staffer called back: “I’m on it. I’m on it.” By the time Jack stopped laughing, the interior lights had been switched off.

The operators on Building B got a kick out of Tig’s outburst, too. From their perch on the east side of the Annex, Tanto and D.B. heard a voice somewhere in the distance, chanting and speaking in animated tones in Arabic over a megaphone. Tanto wondered if someone was riling up students at a nearby medical college to march on the Annex, as a cover for Ansar al-Sharia militiamen or other enemies of the United States who might sneak in among the students to attack. Other scenarios rocketed through Tanto’s mind, all of them climaxing with gunfire. Waiting patiently wasn’t Tanto’s strong suit.
God dang those sons of bitches
, he thought.
If you’re gonna attack us, attack us now.

Tanto got on the radio and asked the Team Leader, “What’s the status on that Spectre gunship? We really could use that now.” He also asked about an unmanned drone, not knowing that one had already begun transmitting images from somewhere overhead. The T.L. told Tanto that he’d try to find out.

When they first took to the roofs, Tanto asked whether someone inside Building C would bring them food, drinks, and chairs while they waited. The female case officer who’d gone to dinner with Oz hustled over with Gatorade, water, and candy bars. She tripped as she stepped over the parapet and landed hard, face-first on the roof. Tanto thought she must have hurt herself badly, but she popped to her feet, said she was fine, and continued making deliveries. A male support officer followed with white plastic lawn chairs.

Soon after, with no sign of movement from beyond the walls, Tanto decided he could use a grenade launcher to bolster their defenses. He climbed down and searched the vehicles, with no luck. When he asked over the radio if anyone knew where he might locate one, no one replied. Tanto went to Building C to ask around, but again he struck out. As staffers shredded documents, destroyed sensitive materials, and performed other prescribed tasks to prepare to abandon the Annex, Tanto stuffed extra mags of ammo in his pocket and headed for the door.

On his way out, Tanto came across base chief Bob sitting on the floor in a main hallway, his back against the wall, his head in his hands. Tanto thought Bob looked as though he’d given up. Even if Bob was talking on the phone, Tanto thought, his body language sent a message of defeat. Tanto shook his head with disdain but kept quiet. A
withering monologue spooled in his mind:
As a leader you sure as hell do not show that. Don’t show that to the fricking people that you’re in charge of. Maybe you’re sitting there talking on the phone, but it doesn’t look it. Find a way to look positive and look proactive. Find a way that everybody’s morale stays up.
He suppressed a desire to punch the base chief in the face.

Standing over Bob, Tanto remembered the BlackBerry the militiaman gave him outside the villa. None of the DS agents had reported losing one, so Tanto thought that it might belong to Chris Stevens.

“Hey sir,” Tanto said, holding it out to Bob. “Here’s a phone we found over at the consulate. You might want to check it out.” The base chief silently took the BlackBerry, and Tanto returned to Building B. Tanto never learned its owner.

Atop the roofs, the men talked, snacked on candy, and replenished their fluids. Most suffered from varying degrees of smoke inhalation. Tig felt as though he might cough up a lung. A few went inside buildings for quick bathroom breaks. They checked their gunsights and weapons. They determined their fields of fire, so each man knew which area to be watching for attackers.

As they waited, the Team Leader came on the radio to let the operators know that the surveillance drone was overhead. He had no word on a gunship. The T.L. asked the men on each building and tower to remove a strobe light from the ammunition cans, to help the drone identify their locations.

Tanto hoped that the strobes also would guide a
gunship, so he flipped one on and placed it in the middle of the roof. But soon after, he abandoned his hope for armed air support. “I don’t think we’re getting a gunship,” Tanto told D.B.