Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden Read Free Book Online

lock on him. He was
     then to drive north and stop directly in front of the target house where the clan leaders
     had convened. The informant did as instructed, but performed the check under his hood so
     quickly that the helicopters failed to fix on him.
    So he was told to do it again. This time he was to drive directly to the target building,
     get out, and open the car hoed. Garrison and his staff watched this little drama unfold on
     their screens. The helicopter cameras provided a clear color view of the busy scene as the
     informant's car entered the picture driving north on Hawlwadig Road.
    It stopped before a building alongside the hotel. The informant got out and opened the
     hood. There was no mistaking the spot.
    Word passed quietly to the hangar and the Rangers and D-boys started kitting up. The
     Delta team leaders met and planned out their attack, using instant photo maps relayed from
     the observation birds to plan exactly how they would storm the building, and where the
     Ranger blocking positions would be. Copies of the plan were handed out to all the chalk
     leaders, and the helicopters were readied. Just as Garrison was preparing to launch,
     however, everything was placed on hold.
    The spy had stopped his car short. He was on the right street, but he'd chickened out.
     Nervous about moving so close to the target house, he'd stopped down the street a ways and
     opened the hood there. Despite Garrison's finicky precautions, the task force had been
     minutes away from launching an assault on the wrong house.
    The commanders all hustled back into the JOC to regroup. The informant, who wore a small
     two-way radio strapped to his leg, was instructed to go back around the block and this
     time stop in front of the right goddamn house. They watched on the screens as the car came
     back up Hawlwadig Road. This time it went past the Olympic Hotel and stopped one block
     north, on the other side of the street. This was the same building the observation
     choppers had observed Salad entering earlier.
    It was now three o'clock. Garrison's staff informed General Thomas Montgomery, second in
     command of all UN troops in Somalia (and direct commander of the 10th
    Mountain Division's “Quick Reaction Force” [QRF], that they were about to launch. Then
     Garrison sought confirmation that there were no UN or charitable organizations
     (Non-Governmental Organizations, or NGOs) in the vicinity--a safeguard instituted after
     the arrests of the UN employees in the Lig Ligato raid. All aircraft were ordered out of
     the airspace over the target. The commanders of the 10th Mountain Division were told to
     keep one company on standby alert. Intelligence farces began jamming all radios and
     cellular phones--Mog had no regular working phone system.
    The general made a last-minute decision to upload rockets on the Little Birds. Lieutenant
     Jim Lechner, the Ranger Company's fire support officer, had been pushing for it. Lechner
     knew that if things got bad on the ground, he'd love to be able to call in those
     rockets--the two pods on the AH-6s each carried six missiles.
    In the quick planning session, Lechner asked again, “Are we getting rockets today?”
    Garrison told him, “Roger.”
    -4-
    Ali Hassan Mohamed ran to the front door of his father's hamburger and candy shop when the
     choppers came down and the shooting started. He was a student, a tall and slender teenager
     with prominent cheekbones and a sparse goatee. He studied English and business in the
     mornings and afternoons manned the store, which was just up from the Olympic Hotel. The
     front door was across Hawlwadig Road diagonal from the house of Hobdurahman Yusef Galle,
     where the Rangers seemed to be attacking.
    Peering out the doorway, Ali saw American soldiers sliding down on ropes to the alley
     that ran west off Hawlwadig. His shop was on the corner of that street and the gate to his
     family's home was just down