13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi (33 page)

Regardless of what occurred the night before, whether revolutionary or routine, murderous or mundane, a new day in Benghazi always began the same way. As daylight drew near on September 12, 2012, the muezzins switched on the loudspeakers in the minaret crowns of the city’s mosques and beckoned the faithful to the
Fajr
prayer. Listening to the amplified chants from atop Building D, Jack grew edgy.

A casual Roman Catholic, Jack considered himself
respectful of all cultures and religions.
Everybody has their own idea of who and what God is
, he thought.
Nobody is right, nobody is wrong. The simple truth is, nobody knows, so you have faith. If you grew up in China, your idea of how things happened and how they are is different than if you grew up in South America or in the Middle East. For someone to say that my religion is the right one and everybody else is wrong or naïve, is completely ignorant.

But it had been a long night. Jack didn’t feel tolerant toward the people who’d been trying to kill him, and he wasn’t in the mood to hear chanting in Arabic. His muscles ached, his eyes stung, his skin and clothes were caked with sweat and dirt. Two good men were dead, and the ordeal wasn’t over. Certain that their attackers were Islamic radicals, Jack blamed all that he and his fellow Americans had endured on terrorists who tried to mask their hunger for power by claiming to be defenders of their religious beliefs.

As the call to prayer continued, Jack’s temper rose.
I wonder what they’re saying right now
, he thought.
I wonder if it’s the normal thing, or are they saying, ‘Kill the Americans!’ Or, are they saying, ‘Hey, stop fighting!’ Either way, I just can’t stand to hear it right now.

Jack wasn’t one to wallow in anger, so his thoughts shifted from Benghazans rising to pray, to his wife and children inside the home he hoped to see again.
Here I am, all the way across the world. I’ve barely survived the night. And my wife is probably at home getting ready to go to bed, completely clueless as to what’s going on right now.
That thought led Jack to reflect on the fortunate lives led by many Americans, particularly in contrast to innocent people in places like Benghazi where armed militias roamed the streets, buildings burned, and foreigners huddled inside
high-walled compounds awaiting rescue or the next attack.
People in America get up and go to their nine-to-five jobs every day and are oblivious to all these battles and wars and people dying every minute all over the world. This is life. This is how other countries live. This is a daily occurrence in some places.

The Team Leader came on the radio with a heads-up: “Tripoli guys are coming in.” He said the operators were spread among a ten-car militia escort, but he had few other details. The T.L. asked Tanto, who remained on Building A near the front gate, to confirm their identities before letting them in. The Annex security leader remained at his post near the front gate, but Tanto would have a better view from above.

Tanto wasn’t sure the Tripoli team or their escorts knew the location of the Annex, so he told the Team Leader he’d use his laser to draw a circle in the sky above the gate as they approached, a military technique he called “lassoing” a target. If one of the Tripoli operators wore night-vision goggles, he’d see the laser as clearly as if Tanto had lit up a neon
VACANT
sign outside a roadside motel. Without goggles, the infrared beam would be invisible.

“Roger that,” the T.L. said.

Within minutes, the Team Leader radioed to say the motorcade was heading west on the Fourth Ring Road and would soon drive down Annex Road. Tanto stood atop Building A and twirled his laser above the gate, though it remained unclear whether the Tripoli team got the message to look for the signal. Just in case, D.B. added to the welcome with several discreet flashes of visible light.

At about 5:00 a.m., a line of ten vehicles turned right
onto Annex Road. They drove past the suspicious house and the empty parking area where the attackers had massed two hours earlier. Tanto was surprised that the cars looked like police sedans, painted red and white, several with strips of red and blue emergency lights on their roofs. Having been told that a militia was en route, Tanto expected fierce-looking Technicals with big mounted guns, pickup trucks filled with armed men in camouflage, and other intimidating displays.
They’re traveling a bit light, considering what we’ve gotten into so far
, Tanto thought. Still, he was glad to see them, although he kept his gun trained in their direction, just in case.

The cars parked in a row, one behind another, stretched out along a wall on the south side of Annex Road. The Libyan police or militiamen remained inside the vehicles, while seven well-armed, jocked-up, unmistakably American men stepped onto the gravel road and approached the gate on foot. Tanto lowered his weapon and told the Annex security leader it was OK to let them in.

Tanto had worked with most of the new arrivals when he’d been in Tripoli, so as they walked through the gate he called down from the rooftop and greeted several by their radio call signs. “Hey,” he said, “it’s good to see you. Welcome to the party. We’re having a blast over here.”

Atop Building D, Jack lowered the barrel of his assault rifle and watched the operators enter the Annex. Four were GRS operators, including the Libya country Team Leader; two were active-duty Delta Force members; and the seventh was an older man serving as their translator. Jack briefly lost track of them as they walked past the olive tree toward Building C, so he moved to the east side of the roof for a better view.

Even in the dim light inside the Annex, Jack immediately recognized one team member: Glen “Bub” Doherty. Jack wouldn’t drop his guard and call out to his friend, but he allowed himself a moment of good cheer. The two former SEALs hadn’t seen each other in nearly three years, since they’d gone through the GRS training session with Rone. But Jack knew that when the danger passed, they’d catch up and tell stories. Jack would have preferred to have run into Glen at a bar, drinking his favorite IPA craft beer, but this would have to suffice.

The seven Tripoli team members went inside Building C, to work out details of the evacuation with the Annex chief and his deputy. Their main concern was getting assurances that the roads and the airport were clear of enemies, to minimize the chance that they’d be heading into an ambush en route.

Sunrise was still about an hour away, but inside the Annex walls it began to feel as though the worst of the night and the battle might be over. Although the Benghazi operators remained at their rooftop posts along with Dave Ubben and the two DS agents from Tripoli, several said the arrival of reinforcements and a militia escort made them feel as though they’d soon be safely away from Benghazi.

Yet as the minutes continued to tick by, the operators again grew tense. They couldn’t afford any more delays. As students of military history, Rone and Oz could rattle off examples through the ages of attacks at first light. Standing together near the northwest corner of Building C’s roof, they suspected that as the sun neared the horizon, the attackers would use the dim light to test the mettle of fatigued Americans who’d spent all night defending the Compound and the Annex. Rone and Oz knew that if their
enemies timed it right, the operators would lose the advantage of night-vision goggles, and their fighting positions would become visible.

“We need to get the heck out of here,” Oz said. “It’s getting light.”

After the Tripoli team spent about ten minutes inside Building C, the door opened and one of the new arrivals strode around to the backyard, to find the ladder leading to the roof. Glen Doherty wanted to say hello to Rone.

As Glen approached the ladder, a call came over the radio telling all Annex residents that they had one last chance to visit their rooms to gather essential belongings before assembling at Building C for departure.

The evacuation plan called for members of the Tripoli team to lead a tightly controlled withdrawal of the five survivors from the Compound and most of the Annex staff. The Americans would be sprinkled among the motorcade of militia police cars that remained parked outside the front gate. They’d retrace their route to the airport, then fly to Tripoli on the small jet that the response team had chartered for the flight to Benghazi.

One complication was that the commercial jet was too small to carry all of the roughly thirty Americans, including the Tripoli team, inside the Annex. As a result, the initial evacuation wouldn’t include the Benghazi operators, several other shooters, or the remains of Sean Smith.

Under the plan, rather than wait in the open at the airport, the men left behind would stay in the relative safety of the Annex with Smith’s body until they got word that another plane had arrived for them. When the second plane
landed, the militia motorcade would return to the Annex to escort the remaining men and Smith’s body to the airport.

Attempts also were under way to coordinate with trusted local contacts to retrieve Ambassador Stevens’s body from the Benghazi Medical Center, so his remains could fly with the operators and Smith’s body to Tripoli. From there, the plan called for the operators to arrange flights home or to Washington, and the two fallen Americans to be received with honors at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

When Tanto learned that he wouldn’t be part of the first evacuation, he asked D.B. to cover the south side of the Annex from Building B. Tanto climbed down from Building A for a bathroom break. When he returned up top, he noticed that the militia motorcade had remained stationary since its arrival outside the Annex. Tanto called the Team Leader to ask why the militia hadn’t set up blocking positions on surrounding streets, to prevent anyone from attempting a third attack on the Annex.

Tanto had barely released his thumb from the radio’s talk button when he heard a strange whooshing sound. He squeezed the button again.

“Incoming?”

A
S THE EVACUATION PLANS TOOK SHAPE INSIDE
Building C, Glen Doherty knew that he’d soon be leaving the Annex and that his friends on the Benghazi security team would remain behind for the second plane. They might connect when they all reached Tripoli, but Glen wasn’t the sort of man who passed up an opportunity to see a pal. Rone was directly above his head on the building’s roof. Maybe they’d have enough time for a brief visit.

Up on the roof, Rone stood in a half crouch, partially shielded by the parapet at the far northwest corner, his helmet and body armor securely in place, a twenty-pound, belt-fed machine gun in his hands. Oz was a foot to Rone’s right, similarly jocked up, armed with an assault rifle. At their feet were several thousand rounds of linked
ammunition. Their eyes darted left and right as they looked out over Zombieland.

In the event of an attack, the two operators had choreographed a reloading strategy under which one would signal the other before ducking down behind the parapet. While one reloaded, the other would increase his rate of fire, to keep rounds flying and their enemies back on their heels.

The third man on the Building C roof was Dave Ubben, who stood watch with his assault rifle at the far northeast corner, near the top of the ladder. Building C was built on an angle to the Annex’s rear wall, so from his post Ubben was less than ten yards from the wall, while Rone and Oz were about twice as far.

Ubben’s post was about forty-five feet to the right of Oz. At that distance, Oz and Ubben could barely see each other in the early-morning darkness. But with each passing minute, visibility faintly improved. As 5:00 a.m. passed, more than seven hours into the battle, the twilight before sunrise silhouetted the big DS agent with a faint orange glow when Oz looked in his direction.

Oz heard someone coming up the ladder and looked over to see the outline of a man climbing over the parapet next to Ubben. The man exchanged a few words with the DS agent, and Ubben pointed toward Oz and Rone. Glen walked across the rooftop to the northwest corner, flashing his smile at Rone. The two former SEALs shook hands then pulled each other close for a chest-bumping, arm-around-the-back man hug.

Rone introduced Glen to Oz. “Glen’s a sniper, too,” Rone said. “We need another good shooter up here.”

“Well, hopefully we don’t need you,” Oz told Glen as they shook hands.

After some small talk, Glen turned to walk south across the roof, to look out over the building’s front door. Rone and Oz shifted their attention back north toward Zombieland.

Then everything changed.

A rocket-propelled grenade or a mortar slammed outside the Annex’s north wall, exploding in almost a direct line from where Rone and Oz stood. Immediately shots flew at the men on Building C from unseen gunmen hiding in Zombieland. Rone never hesitated. He opened up full bore with the machine gun, swiveling his powerful upper body left and right, flooding bullets and tracers into the attackers’ positions. He lay down a withering base of fire, in repeated bursts of five to seven rounds, methodically and lethally shooting across the open area beyond the north wall. If the attackers had thought they’d catch the Americans sleeping at dawn, Rone let them know he was wide awake and ready to fight.

The relentless automatic fire of Rone’s gun echoed in Oz’s gauze-filled ears,
da-da-da-da-da
,
da-da-da-da-da
. Oz had responded as quickly as Rone, blasting their enemies with steady fire from his assault rifle. He couldn’t see the attackers, so he aimed wherever he saw muzzle flashes. Pinpoints of light soon shone from bullet holes in a metal Quonset hut in their line of fire. Rone and Oz kept firing.

Then came a second explosion. A mortar landed almost directly atop the north wall, perhaps thirty feet in front of Dave Ubben’s post.

“I’m hit!” Ubben yelled. “I’m hit!”

Between shots, Oz glanced to the right and saw the wounded DS agent sitting on the wooden box they used as
a step from the roof over the parapet to the ladder. Ubben had his back to Zombieland, his hands pressed to his head. He didn’t look critically wounded, so Oz resolved to help him as soon as the shooting stopped.

After a radio call ordered all State Department staffers to assemble for evacuation, Jack walked the DS agent to the ladder on Building D, intending to bid him goodbye. The DS agent had stripped off some of his heavy gear, so Jack helped by carrying it to the ladder. The DS agent swung himself over from the roof onto the highest rungs, and Jack reached out with his gear.

At that moment, the first explosion and shock wave rocked the Annex. Jack was about fifty yards away, and he felt and heard the blast almost as strongly as the men on Building C. A black plume of smoke rose from where the explosion hit. The DS agent scrambled down the ladder at the northeastern corner of Building D, while Jack tried to figure out what was happening.
It could have been an RPG
, he thought.
Or maybe somebody put an explosive next to the northern wall, to breach it and get in here from Zombieland.

Jack looked to his right, to the roof of Building C. He saw Rone and Oz rocking and rolling, shooting hard into the dirt alleyway that cut north through Zombieland. Jack couldn’t see the enemy, but he raised his assault rifle and fired in the same direction, adding his gun to the fight. Jack directed his fire by following Rone’s tracer rounds, but soon stopped when he didn’t see a clear target.

The second explosion came less than thirty seconds after the first, different and more powerful. Jack recognized
that this was unlike the previous two firefights at the Annex. After two thwarted assaults on the Annex from the east with gelatina bombs and AK-47s, the attackers had changed tactics, improved their planning, and increased their firepower. The second bomb’s detonation, so close to the first explosion and accompanied by waves of rifle fire from the north part of Zombieland, also suggested a spike in military sophistication and an unsettling level of precision and coordination.

Jack saw and heard the second explosion when it hit atop the Annex wall, followed by a shock wave and black smoke. He saw Rone and Oz still firing into Zombieland. But Jack wanted a better view before he resumed shooting, so he held his fire. The cause of the second explosion didn’t immediately register with Jack.

Then his radio crackled and an explanation became clear. One of his fellow operators yelled: “Mortars!”

When Tanto first called out “Incoming?” he did so as a question, because he wasn’t sure what he’d heard. Although he’d picked up a disturbing sound in the distance, Tanto thought it might have been caused by something as innocent as one of his fellow operators stepping on a sealed bag of Fritos.

In Iraq, Tanto had grown used to the
shush
or
whoosh
sounds of rockets being fired, and to the
clunk
of mortars being dropped into tubes for launching. Although Tanto had heard something like a
whoosh
, with his compromised hearing it didn’t sound like anything he’d heard before in combat.

Still, the sound made him flinch and take a knee on the Building A rooftop. When the shell hit, perhaps twenty
seconds after he first heard the
whoosh
, Tanto turned toward Building C and saw the men on the roof engaging the enemy. Their guns sounded like buzz saws cutting through cordwood. He moved to the northern edge of the Building A roof, found a clear line of sight into Zombieland, and added another gun to the battle. But after only a few bursts he stopped.

Wait a second
, Tanto thought.
If that was us, we would fire mortars to set up an assault. And if they’re going to assault, it’s going to come from the field to the south that I’m supposed to be watching.

He spun around and positioned himself to look out over the south wall. Tanto saw the ten-car militia motorcade speed away from the Annex to points unknown. He hoped that some were trying to locate the source of the mortars, but he considered it just as likely that most or all were fleeing.
Like cockroaches when you turn on the light
, Tanto thought.

Then came another
whoosh
. Even with his damaged ears, before the second explosion Tanto knew what was happening. Someone came over the radio and asked if they were under attack by RPGs. “No, it was a mortar!” Tanto said. When the questioner repeated the inquiry, Tanto came across the radio again, loud and clear:

“Mortars! MORTARS!
MORTARS!!
”