13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi (30 page)

“So you guys had no alert at all?”

“Nope.”

“What did your 17 Feb guys do?”

“Man, they weren’t even around.”

“Where were your Blue Mountain guys?”

“I don’t know where they were, either,” the DS agent said. “We didn’t know, we had no alert. By the time we knew what was going on, they were already on top of us.”

Tanto and D.B. apologized to the DS agent for not getting there sooner.

After the firefight ended, Jack saw cars arriving and people congregating around the north end of Zombieland. Tanto, Tig, and some of the other Annex defenders heard chants coming from the direction of the Fourth Ring Road. Several saw smoke rising over the 17 February barracks building as it continued to burn at the Compound.

Unknown to the Americans at the Annex, looters, curiosity seekers, and perhaps some of the initial attackers roamed unchecked inside the unlit Compound. The burned-out hulk of an armored Land Cruiser sat outside the barracks, its rubber tires melted down to the metal rims. Official papers littered the ransacked TOC and fluttered outside on the trampled grass. One sheet showed Ambassador Stevens’s schedule for the week. Bullet shells dotted
the brick driveway. A beige upholstered chair with gently curved arms floated in the villa pool alongside a broken umbrella and a flock of red cushions. Patio furniture, appliances, and other debris rested on the pool’s blue bottom. Black soot stains and spray-painted Arabic words spread like ivy across the buildings’ yellow outer walls. Young men with guns exulted to the sky as photographers captured the scene, with the flames of burning buildings as the backdrop.

The villa’s blown-open front doors led to a charred ruin that resembled the inside of a huge fireplace. Paint and wallpaper curled from the scorched walls. The marble floor was cracked like an ancient mosaic, and the thick rugs that once covered it were reduced to ash. Interior wooden doors lay smashed and prone. Broken stone planters spilled their contents like earthen puddles. A chandelier hung improbably from the ceiling, coated with ashy grime. Twisted metal, shattered glass, and splintered remnants of blackened furniture completed the apocalyptic murder scene.

The fire in the villa had burned itself out. The building had cooled enough to allow local men to skitter through the rooms and hallways, including the safe-haven area, which they entered through the open bedroom window. At least some came to strip the villa of any remaining value or respect. Several left with garment bags filled with the Americans’ clothing. Somewhere around 1:00 a.m., or ninety minutes after the last Americans left the property, a few local men reached the previously inaccessible back rooms of the villa’s safe haven. There they found an unresponsive, middle-aged white male, his lips black with soot, his white T-shirt smeared with ash.

A young Libyan man who made a cell-phone video
of the man’s motionless form later told CBS News that he heard someone shout in Arabic, “There’s a body, a foreigner!” As the man was carried from the villa through the window, the video captured someone yelling in Arabic, “God is great! He’s alive, he’s alive!” The man who made the video told CBS News that no one knew the man’s identity. He said several people called for a doctor but couldn’t find one in the crowd.

An official US government review said six unknown men believed to have been acting as Good Samaritans brought the unidentified man to the Benghazi Medical Center, less than two miles from the Compound, between the Second and Third Ring Roads. They arrived there around 1:15 a.m. Although the man showed no signs of life, doctors said they attempted to resuscitate him for roughly forty-five minutes before they pronounced him dead from apparent smoke inhalation.

At 2:00 a.m., the US Embassy in Tripoli received a call from Scott Wickland’s cell phone, which he’d given to Chris Stevens when they took refuge in the safe haven. During the call, a man speaking Arabic gave a description fitting the ambassador and said the unidentified man was at a Benghazi hospital. Someone apparently had plucked the phone from the man’s pants pocket, and the Arabic-speaking man had been calling stored numbers. But the caller couldn’t provide a photograph or other proof that would satisfy the Tripoli diplomats that he was actually with Stevens.

Complicating matters further, at first it wasn’t clear which hospital was involved. When embassy officials learned that the man had been taken to Benghazi Medical Center, they feared a trap, according to the official review.
Local sources told them that the medical center was allied with, or possibly controlled by, the Ansar al-Sharia militia. US Embassy officials were suspicious that someone had simply found the phone or had taken it from a dead or kidnapped Stevens. Claiming that the phone’s owner was at a hospital might be a devious ruse to draw Americans into the open for an ambush. The embassy’s political attaché, David McFarland, pressed his Benghazi contacts for answers.

Even if the caller’s claims were true, the possibility existed that any Americans who went to the hospital to find Stevens would cross paths with injured attackers from the Compound and their companions. If American officials were certain that Stevens was there and alive, they would treat it as a hostage rescue situation and send operators loaded for bear. Otherwise, they’d be prudent and wait. To speed the process, embassy officials sent a Libyan they trusted to the hospital, to confirm the man’s identity and his condition. The Libyan was the same man who’d rescued the downed American F-15 pilot in 2011, and who now ran the school where Stevens had planned to establish an American Corner.

Almost simultaneously, word spread through the Annex radios that the seven-man team from Tripoli had reached the Benghazi airport. But it didn’t look as though they’d be joining the Annex defenses anytime soon. Bob the Annex chief and the diplomats in Tripoli were struggling to get the Libyan government to send transportation and security to the airport to escort the response team to their destination. None of the new arrivals had ever worked in Benghazi, so
they didn’t know their way around. Commandeering vehicles wouldn’t be an option, especially on a night when it seemed to be open season on Americans.

Sometime after the firefight, D.B. heard the Team Leader say they also might get help from a Special Operations team coming from Italy. D.B. sensed morale rise with news about the Tripoli team and a possible second unit of reinforcements. D.B.’s combat experience had taught him a basic equation of military math:
Anytime you’re in a fight, you always want as many of your friends to show up with as many guns as they can.

Meanwhile, officials in Tripoli and Washington debated whether the Tripoli response team should go to the hospital on a rescue mission, or to the Annex to bolster defenses before all the Americans there evacuated. That decision depended primarily on whether an American man was in fact at the hospital, and if so, whether he was Chris Stevens. The biggest question of all was whether he was still alive.

A
FTER THE FIREFIGHT,
O
Z AND
T
IG STOOD ON THEIR
steel tower trying to decompress. Tig pulled up his vest and lifted his shirt so Oz could look at his side. Angry red welts rose on Tig’s skin where the shrapnel hit, but no wounds needed Rone’s care. They talked and rested, even as they remained on guard. Both knew they couldn’t relax while they still heard voices of men moving in the bushes, some apparently wounded. The operators’ muscles ached from standing for so long and crouching behind a sandbag-filled bin at the edge of the tower.

Tig retrieved the water that he’d dropped near the workout area when the bomb hit. Oz drank first while Tig watched beyond the wall, then they switched.

Meanwhile, Rone called Dave Ubben and asked him to come to Building C’s roof, so Rone could check the dressing on Ubben’s injured forearm. After Rone patched him up,
Ubben remained atop Building C with Rone and the Annex staffer who’d had combat experience in Afghanistan.

The Annex had been quiet for some time after the firefight, and during that time several case officers returned to their rooms to gather their belongings. Tig decided to leave the northeast tower to find the Team Leader, to urge that all the shooters also be allowed to rotate off the roofs and towers to their rooms.

As Tig climbed down the tower ladder, he found himself highlighted by Dave Ubben’s flashlight, shining on him from the roof of Building C. Tig threw up his hands in annoyance and Ubben switched off the light.
What the fuck, man?
Tig thought.
We were just in a firefight. Trying to get me killed?

The T.L. agreed with Tig’s suggestion, so Tig went inside the room he shared with Jack and tossed his computer and iPad into a backpack, then he returned to Building C and asked the Team Leader if anyone had seen his helmet. While the T.L. went to find it, Tig ducked inside and saw a maintenance man and the Annex cook, holding a shotgun, sitting silently on a couch with thousand-mile stares.

Tig felt sympathetic toward the non-shooters, but not toward several weapons-qualified men he saw among them. The operators needed as many defenders as they could find on roofs and towers, not on couches.
You’re fucking shooters
, Tig thought.
We’re fighting for our lives. And you’re sitting here on your asses.

Atop Building B, Tanto and D.B. continued talking with the DS agent from Tripoli about security gaps at the
Compound. In light of what had happened, especially how easily the attackers had entered the property, the operators couldn’t understand how requests for added personnel and security measures were denied or delayed. They never received a satisfying answer.

Around 2:30 a.m., the men on Building B noticed cars arriving at the same parking area where the attackers had assembled earlier. Tanto called the Team Leader: “Are we expecting friendlies now in that parking lot? I’m seeing more cars coming.”

“I don’t expect any,” the T.L. replied.

“Has 17 Feb set up any blocking areas, to not let bad guys near here?”

“I’m not aware of any,” the Team Leader said.

“All right,” Tanto said. “Just be advised, we got more people starting to mass in that parking lot.”

Over a fifteen-minute period, Tanto counted eight to ten cars arriving in ones and twos. Several more pulled in, bringing the total to as many as fifteen. Tanto watched as men streamed into the house at the edge of the parking area.

Tanto radioed Oz at the tower: “We got more people coming up in that building. Get your eyes open, man. I think we’re going to get hit again.” Oz acknowledged the warning and told Tanto that he saw the cars and men.

Tanto and D.B. exchanged wary looks. Tanto rose from the lawn chair to deliver a frustrated monologue to no one in particular: “Are they serious? Are they going to do this fucking stuff again? You got to be shitting me. Are they really that dumb?”

Tanto drank some water and strapped on his helmet. Several minutes later, the Team Leader called over the
radio: “Be advised, ISR is letting us know that ten cars have amassed in a parking lot to our southeast.”

Tanto radioed the T.L.: “Roger that. I already put that out, buddy. Hey, tell those ISR guys they’re pretty much worthless. They ain’t telling us anything we don’t already know.” However, Tanto added, it would be useful if the surveillance drone took a wider look to see whether more potential enemies were moving toward the Annex from farther away. The Team Leader agreed to ask.

Around 3:15 a.m., the men on Building B watched a stream of armed men file out of the house near the parking area. The operators resolved to hold their fire, to let the twenty or more approaching men think that the Annex defenders had let down their guard.
Let them come close to us
, Tanto thought.
We’ve got an ambush set up, and we’re just going to wait and get them as close as they need to get. And then we’re just going to fucking crush them.

Several of the exterior lights on the east side of the Annex had been shot out during the first firefight, so the attackers might have imagined that they remained unseen as they approached through the trees in the dark. If so, they didn’t appreciate the power of night-vision goggles. As the men crept forward, D.B. and Tanto marveled that their foes hadn’t varied tactics from the first firefight. Again they moved from tree to tree, bush to bush, from the same point of origin. The DS agent kept watch to the south, and again he saw no one approaching from that direction. The other operators saw no movement from Zombieland to the north or from Smuggler’s Alley to the west.

The attackers came within one hundred yards of the east wall of the Annex, then fifty, then forty, and still the operators held their fire.

From his post atop the tower, ready to engage, Oz noticed a car parked on the far side of the Jersey barriers near the Annex’s back gate, located near the northern corner of the east wall. Oz didn’t know when the car had arrived, but he knew that it didn’t belong there.

First Oz saw only a shadow, but then he made out the full figure of a man coming around the rear of the car. As the man cocked his arm to throw something toward the back gate, Oz drew a bead on the man and squeezed his trigger. The man crumpled to the dirt. A bright white light flashed and an explosion sounded, but the bomb the man had tried to hurl at the back gate fell harmlessly about six feet short. The operators believed that the man had intended to create an opening for himself and others to rush through.

After that, Oz, D.B., and Tanto held nothing back. They concentrated rounds at the gun-wielding men in the trees and shrubs, hoping to overwhelm the attackers with superior force. The attackers shot back, more than during the first firefight.

As soon as Tig collected his helmet from the Team Leader, he heard an explosion and a burst of gunfire from beyond the east wall. He ran to the tower and rejoined Oz, who’d already taken out the bomber.

In the midst of the second firefight, the Team Leader hailed Oz and Tig on the radio to say he’d received a strange call from a 17 February militia leader. The operators had no idea any friendly militia members were in the
vicinity. But now the Team Leader said a commander had called with a complaint.

“The 17 Feb guys say you’re shooting at them,” the T.L. said.

“Fuck that,” Tig replied. “Somebody started shooting at us first, and they’re still shooting at us. If that’s them, tell them to stop shooting.”

After a pause, the Team Leader agreed: “If they’re shooting at you, shoot at them.”

“Roger that,” Tig said. He and Oz had never stopped shooting in the first place.

Tig, Oz, Tanto, and D.B. shot at every hostile target they could identify. Tanto even targeted cars in the distant parking area. D.B. and Tanto kept low behind the Building B parapet as they moved left and right, spotting their enemies through their night-vision goggles and opening fire. Tanto took aim at a line of attackers. He watched as his rounds hit one in the head, dropping the man in his tracks.

Oz and Tig switched positions on the tower like dance partners and shot repeatedly into the brush. They didn’t know how many attackers they hit, but the diminishing fire from beyond the east wall suggested that their aim was true.

For a second time, the men on Buildings C and D couldn’t join in. They had no clear view beyond the wall to where the attackers were hiding. Even if they could see the enemy, they would have endangered the men on the east side of the Annex by firing between them or over their heads.

After a five-minute steady exchange from both sides, with even more lead flying than during the first firefight,
the attackers began to fall back. After five more minutes, all shooting from beyond the Annex stopped. Tanto saw several of their enemies drop to the dirt, and he witnessed one man he’d shot being helped into the house at the edge of the parking area. Others ran to their cars and sped away. Although some of the attackers used the house as a refuge, the operators say they never fired at the building because they didn’t know whether women and children were inside.

For a second time, the attackers had retreated without reaching the Americans inside the Annex. In two approximately ten-minute firefights, separated by roughly two hours, they’d caused only minor injuries to Tig’s ribcage and Oz’s nose during the first firefight, and no injuries during the second. The operators had exacted a high price in return, but how many attackers were killed or injured remained unknown.