TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Howard Humble called me to say they were rolling through the gates.
“Roger that,” I said, then turned to the Black Hawk pilot. “Take us home.”
Once on the ground at Howard, I found Eldon and Gary. We gathered in the hangar for what we call the “hot-wash,” the immediate after-action brief. The first thing I learned was that Suderth and his team encountered only three PDF inside Modelo. The first surrendered and they let him live. The other two didn’t and Suderth killed them.
Then the assaulters blew the door on Moose’s cell, slapped a Kevlar vest on the man, and hustled him up to the prison roof where they met a barrage of PDF fire. Bullets bit away at the concrete and pinged into the Little Birds, piercing their skin. The Precious Cargo team climbed aboard a helo and the bird took off. But just as Dietrich, the pilot, cleared the roofline, the helo plunged wildly toward the prison yard.
Engine malfunction. Catastrophic.
Just before impact, Dietrich was able to get enough lift to clear the prison wall by inches. First he set the wounded bird down in the street about a block from the inferno that had been the Comandancia. Then he tried to take off again, but couldn’t gain altitude and was forced to steer the helo through the street just a foot or two off the deck.
Overhead, the Little Bird guns blasted away at PDF positions, trying to keep the fire away from the Precious Cargo bird. From inside the helo, Suderth, Tom Caldwell, Sam Joseph, and the rest of the team also engaged. Dietrich maneuvered to the end of the Comandancia block and pivoted in the air. With his damaged engine, he needed a long, running start to get some altitude. He commenced his takeoff run and bullets clanged off the Little Bird as PDF soldiers emptied their magazines in a last bid to prevent Muse’s escape.
Dietrich gained speed, then lift. Ten feet, twenty feet in the air. Suderth told me that’s when he thought they were going to make it.
Then a Delta operator took a PDF bullet square in the chest. The round pierced his Kevlar and he fell out of the helo, twenty feet into the street below.
Moments later, a round slammed into the back of Jim’s knee. Then gunfire shattered the cowling over his head and the Little Bird fell out of the sky. The helo bounced once in the street, ejecting several men, including Suderth, who was secured to the helo by a tether. When the helo came down again, it landed on his left foot, crushing it, and trapping him in the open street.
Gunfire raged around him, but the Little Birds kept PDF troops away. Inside the helo, Kurt Muse was okay. Tom Caldwell was with him, and Muse asked Tom for a gun: “I was in the Army! I know how to shoot!”
Skeptical, but knowing they were down in enemy territory, Tom gave Muse a .45. Muse and Caldwell climbed out of the twisted Little Bird and—bam!—Tom’s head lurched sideways. He dropped like a flour sack, taking Muse with him. Lying beside Caldwell in the roaring street, Muse could see blood trickling down the operator’s face, inches away, and thought he was dead, hit by a sniper. Muse braced himself for more incoming.
Suddenly, Caldwell’s eyes snapped open, and he saw Muse, already mourning him.
“Moose! You okay?” Tom said.
Muse was shocked. “What happened to you! I thought you were dead!”
“Rotor blade hit me in the head.”
Little Bird guns roared overhead, but PDF bullets still zinged through the streets. They needed cover. But when Caldwell stood to walk, he couldn’t make his feet work. Muse, a big man, slung Tom’s arm over his shoulder and the two linked up with the pilot and the other operators, who had already established a defensive position, on a sidewalk with a brick wall behind them and some parallel-parked cars in front. They had found the operator who was shot in the chest, and carried him with them. He was alive, but barely hanging on. Minutes later, Suderth came limping in. He had managed to free his mangled foot from under a thousand pounds of helicopter, but his toes were ruined.
Overhead, the Spectres continued to pulverize the Comandancia. While the Little Bird guns held off the PDF, an operator used an infrared strobe to signal their position. Almost immediately, a Black Hawk flew overhead, rocking back and forth to acknowledge their position. And a few minutes after that, Howard Humble and his APCs rolled up to the rescue.
During the hot-wash, I also learned that the Little Bird gun had crashed in the Comandancia—crash-landed, actually. Shot down by PDF fire, the MH-6 slammed down in the compound grounds, skidded across the pavement, crashed through a wall, and into a building. Inside, the fire from their burning helo raged. Outside, the Spectres were chewing the Comandancia into dust. Finally, the Little Bird pilots had to make a choice.
“We decided we could either stay inside and burn up, or go outside and take our chances,” one pilot said at the hot-wash.
They chose the latter. The pilots bolted outside and rushed toward the Comandancia wall. Tangled barbed wire ran along the top of it; a street lay on the other side. If they made it out of the compound, it would still be a long trek through enemy territory to find safety. But both men were armed with .45s, and they had them ready.
One pilot took off his Kevlar vest and flung it upward, where it landed like a drape over the barbed wire.
Behind them, they heard footsteps and a voice: “¡No disparen! Me rindo! No disparen! Me rindo!”
Don’t shoot! I surrender!
The pilots whirled to see a PDF soldier running toward them. They raised their weapons to shoot him, but then held their fire.
The soldier had his hands up.
He was surrendering. To Americans. Who were trapped inside Noriega’s headquarters and trying to escape.
“Me rindo,” the soldier said. “¡Llévame contigo!”
I surrender. Take me with you.
The pilots looked at each other, surprised, then at the PDF soldier.
“Okay,” they said.
The two American pilots and their brand new POW then hoisted themselves over the Comandancia wall and jumped into the street. And just at that moment, one of the 5th Mech APC’s rolled up and scooped them aboard.