TOM MATTHEWS AND I were standing in the JOC when CNN broadcast the infamous footage of Somalis dragging two of our guys through the streets. They had ropes tied around the bodies. I could see on the TV screen, one man was nearly naked; the other still had most of a flight suit on. We thought maybe that was Ray Frank. The sight wrenched my gut and seemed to suck the air out of the room. Tom’s eyes burned with pain. His features barely moved, but beneath them I could see the muscles of his face tensed with rage.
CNN played and replayed the images, and I thought of our guys’ families watching the bodies being desecrated over and over again: Somalis poking them with rifles, hooting, and raising their arms in victory as though they were dragging a safari kill through the streets. That an American news company would glorify the desecration of Americans enraged me.
Please, God. Don’t let their families see.
My crisis of faith had passed. At the moment I sat on my bunk and denied God, I heard the Holy Spirit speak to my heart, saying, If there is no God, there is no hope. I didn’t like what had happened. I hated what had happened. But I could not justify praising Him for miracles then denying Him in tragedy. I had seen Him at work in the world, and in my own life, too many times for that.
As I sat on my bunk that night and prayed for understanding, I decided to simply open my Bible. Not really looking for anything in particular, I opened it to the book of Proverbs and gazed at a verse I had marked somewhere along the way: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”
Okay, Lord, I prayed. But this is tough.
While we watched the CNN broadcast in the JOC, the rest of Task Force Ranger watched it in the hangar. We all wanted to go back in and exact revenge, but it wasn’t the right thing to do, and Garrison and I said no to a retaliatory strike: Too many civilian casualties. But we did arrange for Mace to go out into the city undercover. This would be his fourth trip into Mogadishu—his third since hell broke loose. A local NGO (nongovernmental organization) had agreed to discreetly help us look for our men. Mace was going in with them.
The next day, Tom and I were in the JOC again when CNN broadcast new footage. It was a grainy interview with a single man, an American. My heart soared—at least one of our guys was alive!
This man’s face was swollen, misshapen, and streaked with what looked like blood.
“No, I am not a Ranger,” he said to an interviewer off-camera.
“You kill people innocent,” the interviewer said.
“Innocent people being killed is not good,” said the American.
I looked at Tom. “Who is that?”
Peering closely at the screen, he said, “That’s Mike Durant.”
But looking at his face on the television screen, I didn’t even recognize him. I would later find out that in addition to the wounds he received in the crash—including a broken leg—the Somalis had struck him in the face with the severed arm of one of his crew chiefs, breaking his cheek and jawbone. They also shot him in the shoulder as he lay in a tiny, dark room tethered by a dog chain.
Watching the interview with Mike, conflicting emotions surged through me. Outrage at the pilot’s condition. Hope that Shughart, Gordon, and the others were alive. And dread that my hope was more like wishful thinking. If the Somalis had more than one prisoner, I was pretty sure they would have put them on camera to gloat.
Our passion became finding Durant. CNN broadcast and rebroadcast his interview footage, and our intel people scoured the scant tape for clues to his location. Durant’s brothers in the 160th desperately wanted Mike to know that we were still out here, that we were turning the city upside down looking for him, that America hadn’t abandoned him. They knew Mike was tough, trained not to break in captivity. Still, seeing his condition on television, they wanted to give him the most important psychological advantage of all: hope.
Tom Matthews came to see me in the JOC. “Let’s get a loudspeaker on one of the helos and let Mike know we’re still trying to find him.”
“Great idea,” I said, and we immediately rounded up the Black Hawk techs, who rigged up the necessary equipment. For the next week, the 160th flew regularly over Mogadishu, broadcasting calls that echoed off the city facades.
“Mike Durant, we will not leave you.”
“Mike Durant, we are with you always.”