CHAPTER 14 – SOME ACTION AT LAST
17:15 (Somali Time)
Saturday, November 8, 1997 ‘C’
Assembly area of the quarters of 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company
U.S.S. GUADALCANAL, off the coast of Puntland, Somalia
Horn of Africa region, Indian Ocean
Greta felt excitement as she and the other members of her platoon assembled in the open area of their platoon quarters after being ordered by Staff Sergeant Gambino to do so: she could smell incoming action in the air. Once the whole platoon was assembled, Lieutenant Gomer stepped forward and started to speak in a strong voice.
‘’Marines of the 3rd Platoon, I have good news for you: we will see combat tomorrow morning.’’
The whole platoon cheered at that, with Greta being one of the loudest. Silence then fell back as Gomer continued.
‘’As you know already, our mission on this deployment was to deal decisively with the piracy threat to shipping around the coasts of Somalia. We are now off the coast of Puntland, one of the regions of Somalia situated in the Horn of Africa and along the northeast coast of the country. Tomorrow, our objective will be the town of Harardhere, near the coastline. While Harardhere is little more than a hole in the middle of a semi-desertic area, it has the distinction of being nickname ‘The piracy stock exchange center’. Believe it or not but in that town a number of so-called ‘investors’ buy and sell shares on the expected booty from upcoming pirate attacks on ships passing by the Somali coast. Beware that not all of those ‘investors’ are Somali. If you encounter Caucasian men wearing good quality clothes, carrying large sums in cash or gold and being possibly armed, then treat them as suspects and detain them. Also, there are strong rumors that many people taken hostages during ship boardings are being held there while pirate leaders negotiate ransoms with the families and employers of their hostages. Those hostages to date have been of varied origins, being either crewmembers or passengers from seized ships, owners of private yachts, humanitarian workers from international aid organizations or Kenyan citizens captured during border raids. Our problem is that our intelligence on both the armed thugs present in Harardhere and the locations and numbers of their hostages held in the town is limited and fragmentary. Our job will thus be made more delicate by the need to ensure that we don’t blow up or shoot some of those hostages during our assault on the town. While we will respond with maximum force against the precise points from which we will encounter resistance, like a particular building or compound, we will have to be accurate in our shooting. This will definitely not be the time to simply spray bullets all around. So, I expect all of you to show a high level of marksmanship and control during the fight tomorrow. One other important point: the thugs we will face tomorrow, while unsophisticated, are heavily armed and possess plenty of anti-tank rocket launchers which can hurt badly our armored amphibians. Thus, don’t expect a walk in the park and don’t underestimate our enemy tomorrow. We will have to deploy tactically and use fire and movement to the utmost while fighting smartly. I will be blunt here: I will be quite surprised if we don’t suffer casualties tomorrow. However, the lives of many innocent victims of those pirates and the safety of international shipping in this region will depend on the success of our mission.’’
One marine then raised his hand for a question, making Gomer look at him.
‘’Yes, Herrera?’’
‘’Sir, what do we do if we face pirates using hostages as human shields?’’
‘’A good question! Basically, our battalion’s sniper platoon will follow closely our assault lines and will stand ready to blow the heads off of any pirates hiding behind hostages. However, under no circumstance are any of us to surrender our weapons when facing such a threat. That may sound bad for the hostages those thugs may be using but we are not going to let any of those pirates flee with their hostages. Hopefully, once our snipers will have dealt with the first pirates attempting to use hostages as human shields, then the other pirates will get the message and surrender. If pirates attempt to flee but are still armed, then they are to be shot down, no ifs or buts. While we will refrain from shooting on unarmed people, we will not be there to play nice. If someone is armed and does not immediately drop his weapons or fires at us, then he is to be shot, period! I have pinned a photomap of Harardhere and its surrounding area on our wall display board. If you will look at it now, I will give you a short explanation on how we will proceed tomorrow morning.’’
Lieutenant Gomer then waited a bit to give time to his marines to reform in front of the said display board and photomap before continuing his speech.
‘’Harardhere is situated a few miles from the coast proper, with a small fishing village on the coast linked to it by a dirt road. Our battalion will attack the town from three directions in the early morning. Alpha Company and our anti-tank platoon will first land at night to the North and South of the town and will establish barrages on the three main roads coming out of Harardhere, in order to block and annihilate any group of armed thugs trying to flee the town. They will land in PELICANs well away from the town and will then do a night march towards Harardhere, in order to keep surprise intact. As for our company and Charlie Company, we will land on the coast at this fishing village there, using our armored amphibians, and will prevent the occupants of the village from alerting Harardhere by phone. Marines from one platoon of Charlie Company will take care of that and will also destroy any boat or skiff found with weapons aboard them, then will confiscate any weapon found in that village. While they do that, the rest of Charlie Company and our own company will continue on at top speed towards Harardhere. While Charlie Company will assault from the East, along that road, our company will split up before getting to the town and will do a wide left flanking movement, in order to assault the center of the town from the South. That part of Harardhere is where we expect most of the hostages and prisoners to be held, so our part of the assault will be crucial for the success of our mission. I will now let you time to examine that photomap before answering any questions you may have about our rules of engagement. In the meantime, I will brief our squad leaders on the details of our assault plan.’’
Rose Muse, who had been watching from the sidelines with her cameraman, Bryan Makena, then approached Gomer to ask him a question.
‘’Lieutenant, we would like to accompany your marines on this assault tomorrow. My cameraman and I are overdue to produce something for CNN that would justify our trip with you on this ship.’’
‘’You do realize that this will be very dangerous, Miss Muse. Those pirates don’t use peashooters.’’
‘’We knew that this could be dangerous well before boarding this ship, Lieutenant. Me and Bryan are both Kenyan-Americans and we know plenty about the chaos and anarchy in Somalia. I will never prove myself as a worthy field correspondent if I avoid risky assignments.’’
‘’Very well, miss. My battalion commander already told me to let you come if you asked so. Be ready to get up for four in the morning tomorrow, local hour: we will leave while it is still dark.’’
04:33 (Somalia Time)
Vehicle Deck, U.S.S. GUADALCANAL
Twenty kilometers off the Somali coast
Rose Muse couldn’t help be impressed by the size of the tracked armored vehicle she was about to get in by its rear access ramp. The AACV-8A ALLIGATOR was about the size of a bus, but a bus with a boat-shaped hull and two wrap-around tracks. It also sported a turret armed with a 30mm cannon, two heavy machine guns and two missile launcher pods. While the AACV-8A was big on the outside, Rose was still surprised by the space available inside it. Sitting with Bryan in two of the seats near the front of the vehicle, she counted a grand total of 39 marines coming in the vehicle with them and taking place in the seats inside it. She then felt a mix of excitement and anxiety as the powerful engine of the armored amphibian started and the rear ramp closed up. There were only a couple of red lamps to let her see while enclosed inside the vehicle, so she could only rely on her ears and sense of motion to figure out what happened next. Her vehicle advanced a bit, then did a hard pivot before going down a ramp. Forty seconds after that, the vehicle apparently splashed into the sea, bobbing up and down for a moment before the noise of the engine changed to high regime, with the armored amphibian quickly taking speed in the water. Rose looked at Greta Visby, sitting across from her on the other side of the troop compartment.
‘’This thing seems to float surprisingly well for its size after all, Greta.’’
‘’It better! It was specifically designed for this role.’’
‘’And how fast can it go it the water? In the war movies I saw, the marines used tracked vehicles like this one which were rather slow.’’
‘’The marines of World War 2 would have killed to have vehicles like this AACV-8A, Rose. It can actually speed around at up to 25 knots in the water, thanks to its two waterjets and its 1,500-horsepower engine.’’
Bryan Makena, who liked powerful cars, opened wide his mouth at that number.
‘’Fifteen hundred horsepower?! Why such a powerful engine?’’
‘’To go fast in the water, of course! The slower you are while swimming, the better target you make for the enemy. Mind you, the Somalis should be completely taken by surprise by this vehicle: this is officially the first combat use of the AACV-8A in an amphibious operation.’’
‘’Oh!’’
Both Rose and Bryan then fell silent while their vehicle sped in the water like a fast motor boat. It also bobbed up and down and sideways quite a lot, making Rose thank the fact that she was naturally resistant to sea sickness. Some thirty minutes later, Lieutenant Gomer shouted out a warning from his seat besides the turret basket of the vehicle.
‘’WE ARE ABOUT TO HIT THE BEACH, MARINES. HOWEVER, WE WILL STAY INSIDE AFTER IT ROLLS ON THE BEACH: WE ARE CONTINUING STRAIGHT TO HARARDHERE.’’
05: 14 (Somalia Time)
Small fishing village on the coast
Abdi had serious problems staying awake as he stood guard on the beach, next to the two skiffs which were due to leave in the morning in order to try to find a big, juicy target at sea. He had been on guard duty since ten las night and wished that he would have some qhat{23} leaves to chew on to help him keep alert. The skiffs he was guarding had been loaded in advance with spare ammunition, including four RPG-7 rocket-launched grenades, plus some extra fuel cans for their engines. Somalia being Somalia, even would-be pirates had to guard against thieves. Following the crumbling of the central government a decade ago, Somalia had fallen into total anarchy, with a collection of warlords and criminal gang leaders then grabbing what they could to build up their fortunes and power. A couple of years ago, that situation had become even more chaotic with the apparition of groups of Islamic extremists who were even meaner than most Somali warlords, on top of being utterly fanatical in their religious beliefs. While those religious extremists didn’t control this region yet, their influence and power kept increasing, worrying even big warlords like Abdi Hassan, who was presently controlling nearby Harardhere.
The wind suddenly started to bring some kind of engine noise from the sea, something that made Abdi shake himself awake and look at the sea. The night was still dark, with only a half moon to give him some light and he didn’t see anything at first. Then, with the noise of approaching powerful engines becoming quite distinct, he then saw from the corner of one eye the while trail of a bow wave, some 200 meters away at sea. Grabbing his AK-47 assault rifle and arming it, Abdi then approached the waterline, walking with his bare feet on the white sand of the beach. He then spotted another white bow wave and became quite alarmed. Withdrawing to the two skiffs he was guarding, he then mentally tried to decide if he should go wake up his companions, who were sleeping in two of the huts nearby. Unable to take a decision due to his tired mind, he kept watching as more white bow waves approached the beach. Then, a huge dark mass started emerging from the water, rolling on tracks up the beach. By now close to panic, Abdi finally shouted out the alarm.
‘’ALI, THERE ARE BIG THINGS COMING OUT OF THE WATER! ALI! WAKE UP!’’
Abdi, arming himself with courage, then raised his rifle and fired a ten-round burst at the nearest vehicle. However, his bullets apparently simply bounced on the vehicle with pinging noises. Overwhelmed, the young fisherman/pirate emptied his magazine on the steel beast, with no apparent results. However, the response of the big machine was devastating for Abdi: an automatic cannon then barked with a noise that nearly deafened him. However, the cannon shells’ bite proved much worse than their bark, exploding on impact and ripping apart both Abdi and the skiff he was leaning against. When Abdi’s leader finally emerged from his hut, still-drowsy with sleep and holding his own assault rifle, he was instantly cut down by rifle fire from the more than thirty marines now running up the beach, supported by one AACV-8A. Only one of the would-be pirates managed to fire his rifle before being killed by a 30mm shell that exploded his head. The one fisherman who tried to call Harardhere on his cell phone was then killed inside his hut by a marine who caught him as he was about to speak in his phone.
All the while, the amphibians of Bravo Company and most of the vehicles of Charlie Company simply passed through the small fishermen’s settlement and raced down the dirt trail leading to Harardhere. As their tracked vehicle rolled at high speed down the trail, Greta pointed to Rose a kind of small optics block attached to the roof near her seat.
‘’You can use that periscope to look around while we have our heads down in here. Use the knob on the side of it to orient it in direction and elevation.’’
Looking at the said periscope, a fairly small thing only ten centimeters in width and five centimeters in height, Rose saw that it effectively gave her a sort of small window on the outside. She also belatedly noticed that similar periscopes faced about every seat inside the armored amphibian. Grabbing the side knob of the periscope, she turned it and used it to make the whole thing pivot left and right while looking up at its optical lens.
‘’Wow! This is nice! I already feel less claustrophobic.’’
‘’There’s that.’’ replied Greta. ‘’Those periscopes are also very useful for us to get a picture of the terrain and situation outside. If you turn the side knob a full circle, that will reverse the mirror and lens and you will then be able to see what is behind your back outside.’’
‘’Hey, that’s neat! Thanks, Greta!’’
‘’You’re welcome!’’
Both Rose and Bryan then kept using their periscopes to keep track of where they were going. The column of armored amphibians actually rolled for a few kilometers in the dark, following the dirt trail through a desertic landscape of rocks and sand sparsely dotted with small bushes and grass, before the vehicle carrying Rose split up from the column along with five other amphibians, and headed to the left for a few minutes before starting a wide turn to the right. That prompted a question from Rose to Greta.
‘’Uh, where are we going now, Greta?’’
‘’Our company, Bravo Company, is now conducting a wide flanking movement to the left in order to attack Harardhere from the South, while Charlie Company will assault it from the East. Presently, Alpha Company is already in ambush positions down the three roads linking Harardhere with the nearest towns, in case some of the pirates try to flee or if more thugs show up to help the town. Now, when us marines will leave this vehicle to assault the town on foot, you will have the choice of either following us outside or of staying in this vehicle and open one of the roof hatches in order to look and film around. I would strongly counsel that you stay in the vehicle: following our assault line on foot will be very dangerous for you and Bryan, as we expect some strong resistance, at least initially. CNN won’t get your reports if you get killed on the first day.’’
What Greta didn’t say then was that she would be truly pained to see the CNN reporter or her cameraman get wounded or killed here in Somalia. She thus hoped that her argument about sending reports to CNN would convince Rose to stay aboard the AACV-8A. Undecided at first, Rose exchanged a quick look with Bryan, then looked back at Greta.
‘’I want to be able to follow the action from up close while you will enter the town, Greta.’’
That made Greta sigh with clear disapproval. However, only a direct order from Lieutenant Gomer could force the CNN team to stay in the vehicle and she didn’t want to insult Rose by stopping her from doing what was in essence her job as a war correspondent.
‘’Very well, Rose, but you were warned. Stay at least twenty paces behind our assault line during our advance on foot: you will be less tempting as a target for those Somali thugs. Have you ever been shot at before?’’
‘’Uh, no!’’
‘’Then, don’t think of yourself as a coward if you freeze as the first bullets zip by: everybody who comes under fire for the first time will experience sudden, intense fear, even trained soldiers. Those who say they didn’t are either liars or fools, or both.’’
Rose again exchanged a look with Bryan but didn’t reply to Greta and fell silent while looking constantly outside via her periscope. It was now twilight and she was starting to be able to see things around. Then, without warning, her vehicle rapidly slowed down before coming to a full stop. The big rear ramp then started to go down as Lieutenant Gomer shouted an order to his marines.
‘’DEBUS! DEBUS! DEBUS!’’
‘’Debus?’’ said Rose to herself, confused. The marine closest to her, who was already getting up from his seat, grinned to her.
‘’That means ‘get the fuck out’, miss.’’
‘’Oh!’’
Rose, followed by Bryan, who was carrying on one shoulder his big video camera with zoom lens, let all 39 marines run out of the vehicle before following them. Once outside, she found herself in the middle of a flat, semi-desertic landscape, with a small town visible some 400 meters ahead of the line of six armored amphibians. The close to 200 marines who had exited the vehicles were now running and forming a long, extended line while keeping at least a few paces between each soldier. As soon as the line was formed, the order to advance was given by Captain Roberto Santiago, making the marines of Bravo Company advance at a trot, their rifles and machine guns at the ready. Seeing where Greta Visby was in the assault line, Rose then ran towards her and then followed behind her from a distance of some fifteen meters, while Bryan did his best to film while trying not to shake his camera too much. Nobody was shooting at them yet as the Sun started rising over the horizon. That allowed Rose to detail the town of Harardhere as she advanced on it with the marines. It wasn’t much of a town, really, and was mostly composed of houses and storage sheds made from concrete blocks or clay bricks. There were no paved roads, the town roads being made of dirt and sand, and no street lights either. The only lights came from a number of windows in the still mostly dark town. Then, Rose heard the first noises of shots fired from the town. While the marines did not shoot back yet, they accelerated their pace, going from a trot to a run with their weapons raised. Soon, more shooters inside the town started firing at the marines, with a couple of bullets zipping over Rose’s head and making her cringe with fear. While the marines did not fire back yet, probably waiting to be closer and thus to be able to pinpoint the shooters firing at them, the 30mm automatic cannons and .50 caliber heavy machine guns arming the assault amphibians opened fire in order to cover the marines on foot. With the vehicles equipped with sophisticated sights and powerful optics, their fire immediately started to make an effect. Bryan, stopping for a moment to steady his camera, took that occasion to film for a few seconds the surreal scene, with tracer bullets and cannon shells crisscrossing in the rising morning sky, sweeping the houses and compounds from where enemy fire came. Shocked to find how powerful the firepower of their attackers was, the Somali sentries who had first reacted to the sight of the incoming vehicles hunkered down and started firing blind, raising their rifles above their heads and over low walls and window sills. Their accuracy was thus severely affected, with most of their bullets not even getting close to the marines running towards them.
With the AACV-8As still providing heavy covering fire, Greta and the three men of her fire team were able to arrive intact at the first houses of the town. Crouching for a few seconds behind the low wall of a compound containing two houses and a shed, she looked through the optical sight of her rifle and pointed it in succession at the windows she could see, searching for any visible enemy. She smiled to herself when she spotted a man firing a machine gun from an upper floor window, then aimed carefully and gently pressed her rifle trigger. The recoil from her .243 Winchester caliber rifle was mild and she was able to see with satisfaction the enemy machine gunner being projected backward and out of sight. Then, she felt her heart jump in her chest when a Somali gunman who had been hiding on the other side of the low wall she was using as cover popped up, startled by her presence as much as she was by his presence. However, Greta reacted faster than the man, who was holding an RPG-7 rocket-propelled anti-tank grenade launcher, and shot him dead with a single bullet to the head. As the man fell on his back, Greta jumped over the low wall and sprinted towards the nearby house in which had been the machine gunner.
‘’HANLEY, WITH ME! LET’S CLEAR THIS HOUSE! JOSHUA, TAKE A FIRING POSITION UPSTAIRS WITH YOUR MACHINE GUN AS SOON AS THE WAY IS CLEAR.’’
As the other two other fire teams of their rifle squad basically did the same, taking elevated positions in order to cover the advance of the rest of their platoon, the running Greta kicked open the flimsy wooden door of the house, then ran inside with her rifle leveled. Seeing a Somali gunman in the process of running down a staircase, she took a snap shot at him, hitting him in the legs and making him tumble down the stairs. Running towards the staircase, Greta shot in the head the wounded gunman in passing, then climbed the first few steps before stopping and pointing her rifle up. Another Somali then made the mistake of sticking his head in the floor opening, to see where she was. That cost him his life, with him getting a single bullet in the head. That prompted a remark from her junior private, Mike Hanley, who was closely following her.
‘’You don’t seem to believe in automatic fire, Corporal.’’
‘’I do but why waste many bullets when one will do? Remember the moto of the Corps: every marine a sniper. Okay, let’s go up!’’
Both of them ran up the stairs and set foot on the upper floor and in a short hallway. Going to the nearest door, which was open, Greta took a quick look inside, finding a poorly furnished bedroom. She also saw that the machine gunner she had shot lay on the floor, the back of his head split open and his PKM 7.62mm medium machine gun at his side. Greta also saw two full 7.62mm ammunition belts on the floor, close to the window the man had used to fire.
‘’We just shot the three men of a machine gun team. Let’s check out quickly the other rooms of this house.’’
Taking a minute to do so and finding nobody else on the upper floor, Greta then told her light machine gunner, Joshua Stern, to come up and take position at a window in order to cover the advance of her fellow marines. Seeing that there was another window of the upper floor that gave a view of the town in the right direction, Greta had an idea and she ran back to the room where the dead machine gunner lay.
‘’HANLEY, GRAB THOSE AMMO BELT BOXES!’’
Greta herself grabbed the PKM machine gun and ran back to the window she intended to use to fire into the town. Thankfully, her unit’s regular training included familiarization courses on common enemy weapons, so she knew how to operate the Russian-made weapon. Taking a firing position at the window, she checked outside to see where the rest of her platoon was. She quickly spotted her squad leader, Sergeant Jeffrey Brown, crouched next to a building corner with four of his men and exchanging fire with a number of Somali gunmen hiding inside a house and firing their weapons as if they had an endless supply of ammunition at hand. Pointing her captured PKM and aiming it carefully, Greta fired a short burst that killed one of the gunmen as he appeared in a window to fire his rifle. A second short burst killed another gunman a couple of seconds later. That allowed Sergeant Brown and his four marines to run across the street and to storm into the house. Seeing two men, one of them armed with an RPG-7, run away from the house through a back door, Greta took a quick aim and fired a 20-shot burst, making the two Somalis crumble down in the middle of the street. Scanning quickly the houses around through her window and seeing no other visible Somalis, Greta slung her assault rifle in her back and lifted her PKM from the window sill while shouting out loud.
‘’CHANGING POSITION NOW! LET’S RUN ACROSS THE STREET AND JOIN SERGEANT BROWN!’’
‘’GOT IT!’’ replied her light machine gunner. Greta and her three marines then ran down the stairs and out of the house to cross the street, in time to be filmed by Bryan Makena, who had taken temporary cover with Rose behind the low wall of the compound. Rose opened her eyes wide on seeing the big machine gun handled by Great.
‘’Yikes! Look at that big gun she now has. Let’s follow her! How are you doing, Bryan?’’
‘’Me? I am filming some of the most exciting scenes I ever took with my camera. Our report should make a sensation on CNN.’’
The two of them then ran after Greta and crossed the street as an intense firefight continued across this part of Harardhere.
Some 200 meters to the left of Sergeant Brown’s squad, Captain Roberto Santiago was leading a reinforced platoon towards his company’s designated main objective, a large, two-story, ‘U’-shaped building. That building, renamed ‘Objective Uniform’, had attracted the attention of the tactical reconnaissance drones launched yesterday by the U.S.S. GUADALCANAL, thanks to the level of activity around it and by the number of people seen entering and leaving it regularly. Santiago had thus good hopes to find some or all of the local leaders there and was thus pushing his marines towards it. Thankfully, while heavily armed and with apparently plenty of ammunition available to them, the militiamen and thugs defending Harardhere had proved up to now to be mostly fair to poor shots, relying instead on firing lots of bullets in long bursts of automatic fire. Still, Santiago had already seen at least two of his marines killed and half a dozen more wounded. While he was confident that his marines would win this battle, it certainly was no walk in the park. Looking at the building he was pushing towards, he suddenly saw something that he didn’t like: a high-end Range Rover all-terrain car escorted by two pickup trucks mounting heavy machine guns had just stopped in front of the main entrance of the building.
‘’Shit! I bet that the local head cheese and his friends are going to try to flee. No way, José!’’
Keying the microphone of his radio headset, he then gave orders in an urgent tone to his unit.
‘’Bravo Two and Bravo Three, from Six Bravo: a Range Rover and two technicals{24} have just stopped in front of the main entrance of Objective Uniform. Advance swiftly and engage them. They are not to be allowed to escape, over.’’
‘’Bravo Two, copy!’’
‘’Bravo Three, copy!’’
Next, Santiago urged his First Platoon forward, giving the example by leading the charge towards the main objective.
‘’FIRST SQUAD, YOU WILL COVER THE LEFT FLANK OF OUR ADVANCE ON OBJECTIVE UNIFORM. THIRD SQUAD, YOU WILL COVER OUR RIGHT FLANK. SECOND SQUAD, YOU WILL RUSH WITH ME TOWARDS THE OBJECTIVE. SERGEANT BROWN, DETACH ONE FIRE TEAM AND SEND IT TO THE MAIN ROAD TO BLOCK THE EXIT FROM TOWN.’’
Having given his orders to his platoon, Lieutenant Kenneth Gomer sprinted across a street, followed by his Second Squad, attracting a burst of fire from one house some eighty meters away. The machine gunners of his First Squad immediately returned fire towards that house, with one M67 90mm recoilless rifle crew from Bravo Company’s weapons platoon then aiming their weapon at the said house. Fired from well within its maximum effective range of 400 meters, the 90mm, three-kilo anti-tank shaped-charge round struck the house r