Mission Compromised (8 page)

The next twenty-four hours were the worst that Peter Newman had known in all his thirty-seven years. He'd been shot at and hit more than once during his fifteen years in the Marines. Yet, even when things had been critical in combat, he felt like he was always able to do something to alter the outcome, no matter how dire the circumstances. But now he was in an intolerable situation: stuck in a high-tech command center in Washington, but unable to command anything. The room was full of electronic gadgets that allowed him to monitor events as they occurred; yet he was helpless—relegated to playing the role of a long-distance, impotent witness to a personal horror. For only the third time in his life, he thought to himself,
If I knew how to pray, I would.

For the rest of Sunday and on into the predawn hours of Monday, Newman spent nearly every minute in the HQMC
command center, piecing together bits of message traffic, fragments of desperate radio calls, and occasional pictures on the secure video link. By the time General Grisham had returned from his meeting at the Pentagon, it was dark in Mogadishu, and the intermittent signals received on the secure video link were no longer in color. Instead, the infrared, heat-sensitive cameras mounted on the EP-3 surveillance planes sent video pictures that showed up on the monitors as an eerie, green monochrome. Yet, because of its resolution and clarity, thousands of Somali guerrillas and civilians could be seen moving around the tiny perimeter in the heart of a hostile African city where Jim Newman and ninety-eight other Americans were slowly being cut to pieces by Somali machine guns, AK-47s, and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). It vaguely occurred to Newman that William Travis and his 182 Texans hadn't been this outnumbered at the Alamo.

General Grisham called Newman aside and said quietly, “This is a real mess, and it's gonna take a lot of prayer to get those boys outta there. Even though the White House sent the D-boys and Rangers in to get Aidid, they are now saying that the UN needs to find a political solution!” Then he added, “I wish that the guys who think they're running this war knew what end is up. From the beginning, the troops in Mog have had no decent intel, and every time the orders are cut, they get conflicting signals. Now that we've got a bunch of troops on the ground in big trouble, nobody over at the White House seems to know what to do. All they seem to know is what they
don't
want us to do—and that's send in a whole lot more Americans to rescue the Rangers and Delta. When I suggested that we land the MEU sitting offshore, the chairman called over to the White House, and the National Security Advisor told him to let the UN work it out. They're smoking
something other than tobacco at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue if they think the UN can get their act together in time to save these guys in the Black Sea!”

After delivering this appalling assessment, the general turned to Newman and the senior watch officer, Warrant Officer Bill Sturdevan, and said, “I'll be down in my office. Let me know if there are any developments.” Newman went back to his lonely vigil, monitoring the satellite communications and incoming cables, and hoping that his brother would come out of this alive.

Shortly before dawn in Mogadishu, a rescue force of Rangers, Delta Force specialists, Tenth Mountain Division soldiers, Malaysians, and Pakistanis punched through the three miles from the airport to the surrounded Rangers and Delta Force operators dying in the “Black Sea.” But by then, though his brother didn't know it, Captain James Newman, dehydrated, bloody from wounds received during nearly eight hours of battle, hoarse from shouting above the din of nonstop gunfire, was dead. He had been killed instantly by the earsplitting, flesh-searing burst of a rocket-propelled grenade. As the blast of the RPG snuffed out his life, James Bedford Newman was trying to protect one of the grievously wounded crewmen from the first of the two downed Black Hawk helicopters.

At the Marine command center, the watch officers and duty section shifts had changed three times by early Monday. But other than taking time out to refill a large mug with coffee and the inevitable call of nature that it produced, Newman stayed glued to a communications console in the corner of the room. In addition to all the secure communications gear, the center had several standard television sets tuned to normal cable and network broadcasts, which stayed on, muted in the background, throughout the long day and night.

But until early Monday morning there had been no mention of the horrible battle underway in Mogadishu.

And even the first news broadcasts simply said that “several American soldiers” had been killed and others wounded in an “exchange of gunfire” in Somalia. There were no names or units and no footage, only a map on the screen so Americans wouldn't have to consult an atlas while they prepared breakfast.

At the Pentagon and other military command centers in the U.S., casualty reports had been coming in throughout the night—with estimated numbers of killed and wounded but no names. Then, just before Monday's sunrise in Washington, the National Security Agency alerted all U.S. military commands that a European TV crew was sending video to their network in Paris on a United Nations press uplink. The message simply stated, “The video purports to depict U.S. casualties.” No one, certainly not Peter Newman, was prepared for what was on the video.

Less than five minutes after NSA's alert notification, the intercepted signal came up on one of the command center's secure video links. The audio portion was unintelligible, but the video was unmistakable and grotesque: the bodies of two American soldiers were shown being dragged down dusty streets and mutilated by mobs of jeering Somalis. In the two-minute-forty-second-long videotape, the cameras captured the unforgettable images of enraged crowds jabbing the corpses with AK-47s, beating the bloody bodies with sticks, kicking them, all the while chanting and screaming. Some were laughing crazily.

The entire command center duty section gathered in front of the monitor and watched in horrified silence, utterly sickened. Master
Sergeant John Murphy, a tough veteran infantryman who wore a Silver Star and a Purple Heart from Vietnam along with a Bronze Star from combat in the Gulf War, sat at one of the consoles and said, “Oh, dear God—how can this be happening? We were sent there to help those people!” Newman felt bile rising in his throat as his near-empty stomach reacted in revulsion to the images on the screen, his heart racing with adrenaline as he peered at the bodies, telling himself that neither looked like his brother.

When the transmission was over, Staff Sergeant Janet Howard, the only woman on this watch, had tears flowing down her face. Her husband, a gunnery sergeant, was assigned to the MEU aboard the Navy Amphibious Ready Group lying off Mogadishu. “They won't let those pictures be broadcast here, will they?” she asked no one in particular.

“Top.” Murphy looked up and with burning cynicism born of too many years in uniform replied, “That videotape will be on every network by tonight's evening news.” But he was wrong. Every network had the tape by noon and repeated it
ad nauseum
for days.

Just before noon the first confirmed names of the casualties came in on a classified message from the Joint Special Operations Command. When the message popped up on the screens in the center, there was a sudden hush as though all the air had escaped from the room. Everyone knew why Major Peter Newman had been there day and night for almost thirty hours.

The message was preceded by the ominous admonition:

 

CONFIDENTIAL
CASUALTY REPORT - NOT FOR RELEASE TO PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

And immediately below:

WARNING: UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES MAY SPECIAL
MISSION PERSONNEL BE IDENTIFIED BY UNIT.
ALL PERSONNEL SHALL BE DESIGNATED AS
“RANGERS” IN NOK NOTIFICATIONS AND ANY
SUBSEQUENT PAO RELEASES.

Finally, just above the list of names:

THIS CAS REP IS ACCURATE BUT INCOMPLETE.

 

His heart racing, Newman scanned down the alphabetical list to be used for notifying next of kin of those who were killed in action. His emotions were both hopeful and fearful. And then his eyes stopped, and he read the horrible words: NEWMAN, JAMES B., CAPT. U.S. ARMY, KIA. NOTIFY NOK.

Peter Newman had been in the Marines too long to hope that this was some kind of error. He stared in shock at the screen for a moment and then, without a word to the others in the command center, got up from the communications console, and with his jaws clenched, bolted for the men's head down the hall. He held himself in check until the door swung closed behind him. First his stomach ejected what little it had in it. Then came the tears.

When he regained his composure, he went down the hallway to his office, ran an electric razor over his face, and walked down the corridor to General Grisham's office. He was ushered in without fanfare. That kind of word spread quickly in the Corps, the “Band of Brothers.”

“Pete, I'm sorry about Jim. He was a good soldier,” said the general. His face was a mask of sorrow and sadness.

“Yes sir, he was, and a great brother too. I think I'd better take a day or two of leave and go up to New York and see my folks. I'd like to be
there when the casualty assistance officer makes his call. My mom is going to take this awfully hard.” Newman's voice, despite his efforts to control it, cracked as he spoke those last words.

“Go ahead, son. Have Staff Sergeant Winsat take care of the paperwork. Please give your parents my sincere regrets.”

Newman went back to his office. While he waited for Winsat, who was the Ops & Plans administration chief, to bring down the leave papers, he called TWA Operations, Rachel's employer, at National Airport to see if they could help him make reservations for the next available flight to Albany, New York. He had no trouble getting a seat on such short notice. One of the advantages of marrying an airline crewmember was the courtesy extended to employees—even of a different airline—when there was a legitimate emergency. The death of a brother certainly qualified as such a priority.

After reserving his seat, Newman drove home, shaved and showered, and packed an overnight bag. Before heading to the airport, he wrote a note to Rachel, informing her what he was doing. They had talked on the phone briefly when she had returned the night before from London. Now she was at a special crew training session out at Dulles Airport. Newman decided that he wanted to deal with his brother's death alone, and instead of asking her to go with him, he merely wrote:

 

Rachel
,

Thanks for calling last night when you returned from your flight. I just learned that Jim was killed in Somalia. I'm headed to Albany to break the news to Mom and Dad. Hope to be back on Wed. morning. I'll try and call you tonight. Love, P. J.

 

He contemplated calling his parents to tell them he was coming but decided that such an unexpected call would forewarn them that something was wrong. They knew that their youngest son was in Somalia. They watched the news. They also knew Jim had been doing dangerous things. Though Newman dreaded the task, he knew that he should be the one to deliver this terrible message.

 

 

Pete and Jim Newman had been inseparable as kids. Though three and a half years is not a small gap between siblings, the brothers had hiked, hunted, fished, and canoed together from the time the younger one was old enough to keep up. There was hardly a spot in the Hudson River Valley, the Adirondacks to the north, the Berkshires to the east, or the Catskills to the west that the boys hadn't explored.

The Newman boys grew up outdoors. They were both Boy Scouts; Jim had gone all the way to Eagle. Their career military father taught them how to bait a hook with a worm or a minnow, how to tie flies, and how to cast them into the riffle of a quick, cold stream so that the wild trout would invite themselves to dinner. He taught them how to lead a fast-flying pheasant with a shotgun, how to stalk a deer in the cold autumn air, and how to dress out the game they bagged.

When they weren't in the woods, the brothers engaged in various entrepreneurial ventures: they shared a paper route, mowed lawns together in the summers, raked leaves in the fall, and had a thriving walk-shoveling business every winter. They pooled the money they earned and bought a third-hand, wooden-strake Olde Towne canoe and more hiking, camping, hunting, and fishing gear than a small sporting goods store could hold. When they were older, they acquired
an old 1951 Ford from a junkyard. To their mother's great anxiety, they abandoned their bicycles to become amateur automotive engineers and vacant lot stock-car racers.

The boys were indivisible until Peter went off to the Naval Academy in 1974. When Jim graduated from high school three years later, he enlisted in the Army, qualified for Jump School, and earned an appointment to West Point from his father's World War II outfit, the Eighty-second. And even then, whenever they managed to get home together on leave, Pete and Jim put on their backpacks and took off for days to hike the Appalachian Trail. On each of those treks, they renewed their pact to someday hike the whole 2,043 miles of the trail, from Maine to Georgia. They just couldn't figure out when. Now it would never happen.