Strike Force Alpha Read Free Page B

then opened up on the fleet of American choppers. Two of the Blackhawks went down almost immediately; many others were driven away. The majority of U.S. troops that had already rappelled to the ground found themselves trapped. It took them a day and a half to fight their way out of the hostile city. Eighteen Americans never made it. One was butchered by an armed mob and dragged through the streets.
    These days, the Olympic Hotel was a shrine of sorts. Because of what happened here, the Muslim Somalis got what they wanted: the embarrassing withdrawal of U.S. troops from their country. A mission that had begun as one of mercy, to feed the millions of starving in Somalia, had ended in a humiliating failure. The hotel still served as the not-so-secret headquarters of al-Itihaad al-Islamic, the people responsible for the killing and desecration of American servicemen that day. At any given time, several dozen Al Qaeda–trained soldiers could be found inside, too. It was here that tax money collected from the city’s miserably poor was kept and counted. It was here that the terrorists sold qat, the narcotic leaf chewed by Somali men. It was here that top-level Al Qaeda operatives transiting through Africa could lay low and know they would be protected and safe.
    Until this night.
     
    It was 10:00 P.M. and the electricity in downtown Mogadishu had gone out for the night. Candles and cooking fires were lit in most of the rooms at the Olympic, as well as the building next door. The noise from battery-operated radios blared through the open windows. Drunken laughter, too, along with muffled praying and the sounds of sour music.
    This was all broken by the growl of helicopters, approaching in the dark. There was no advance warning this time. No tip from the Italian peacekeepers to Aideed’s men. This was unexpected. A complete surprise.
    Fittingly, it was two Blackhawk helicopters that showed up first. No soldiers would be lowered by fast ropes this time. This was not an insertion operation or a high-level smash and grab.
    This was simply payback.
     
    The pair of Blackhawks dived for the hotel, miniguns firing, rockets flying off their underbellies.
    One aircraft stayed in the lead; it was the gunship of the two. The second copter was packed with soldiers. Held in with safety belts, many had their weapons thrust out of openings on the right side of the aircraft. This second Blackhawk slowed almost to a hover, allowing the soldiers to fire their weapons directly into the windows of the hotel’s upper stories. The first Blackhawk meanwhile launched two rockets and a TOW missile into the bottom floor. There was a trio of explosions and suddenly half the building was on fire. Many within instantly perished. Others died leaping from the rooftop and windows. Cluttered and rancid, the building next door caught fire, too.
    The attack went on for 10 minutes. Crowds gathered in the streets surrounding the hotel; some were armed fighters who’d rushed to the scene but were not sure what to do. A few RPGs, the weapons that had proved so fatal to the attack back in October of 1993, were fired at the helicopters. But they all missed the Blackhawks because this time they were fired from the streets and not from the rooftops, as in the previous action.
    The Blackhawks finally did depart, only to be followed by a jet fighter suddenly streaking low over the neighborhood. Its noisy arrival jolted many thousands from their sleep. The fighter—a Harrier jump jet—did not drop any bombs. Instead, it swooped down on the mob of gunmen and dusted them with a light green powder. This was barium sulfate and pepper acid—superitching powder. Once on the skin, it was near impossible to get off. It would plague the victim with incessant itching and bloody rashes for up to a year. The jet made two passes; then it, too, disappeared over the horizon.
    Only then did the ancient air-raid sirens begin to wail across the city, but they were too late on this good