Black Hawk Down Read Online Free PDF Page A

time.
    He knew the D-boys worked fast. He kept checking behind him to see if the ground convoy
     had moved up. It was too early for that, but he looked anyway, wishing, because that would
     be a sign that things were wrapping up, He must have looked a dozen times before he saw
     the first Humvee round the corner about three blocks down. What a relief! Maybe the D-boys
     have finished and we can roll out of here.
    Schmid, the Delta medic, had examined Blackburn more closely, and was alarmed. The kid
     had a severe head injury at a minimum, and there was a big lump on the back of his neck.
     It might be a break. He looked up at Eversmann. “He's litter urgent. Sergeant. We need to
     extract him right now or he's gonna die.”
    Eversmann called Perino again.
    “Listen, we really need to move this guy or he's gonna die. Can't you send somebody up
     the street?”
    No, the Humvees could not move up. Eversmann relayed this news to the Delta medic.
    “Listen, Sergeant, we've got to get him out,” said Schmid.
    So Eversmann summoned two of the sergeants in his chalk, Casey Joyce and Jeff McLaughlin,
     who came running. He addressed the more senior of the two, McLaughlin, shouting over the
     escalating noise of the fight.
    “You need to move Blackburn down to those Humvees, toward the target.”
    They unfolded a compact litter and placed Blackburn on it. Five men took off with him,
     Joyce and McLaughlin in front, Bullock and Schmid in back, with Good running alongside
     holding up the IV bag connected to the kid's arm. They ran stooped. McLaughlin didn't
     think Blackburn was going to make it. On the litter he was deadweight, still bleeding from
     nose and mouth. They were all yelling at him, “Hang on! Hang on!” but, by the look of him,
     -he had already let go.
    They had to keep setting down the litter to return fire. They would run a few steps, set
     Blackburn down, shoot, then pick him up and carry him a few more steps, then put him down
     again
    “We've got to get those Humvees to come to us,” said Schmid. “We keep picking him up and
     putting him down like this and we're going to kill him.”
    Joyce volunteered to fetch a Humvee. He took off running on his own.
    -3-
    On the screens and from the speakers in the JOC, everything appeared to be going smoothly.
     The command center was a whitewashed two-story structure adjacent to the hangar at Task
     Force Ranger's airport hasp. A mortar round had fallen on it at some point, and the roof
     was caved in on one side. It bristled with so antennae and wires that the men called it
     the Porcupine. On the first floor, off a long corridor, there were three rooms where
     senior officers sat wearing headphones and watching TV screens. General Garrison sat in
     the back of the operations room, chewing his cigar and taking it all in. Color images of
     the fight were coming from cameras in the Orion spy plane and the observation helicopters,
     and there were five or six radio frequencies buzzing. Garrison and his staff probably had
     more instant information about this battle than any commanders in history, but there
     wasn't much they could do but watch and listen. So long as things stayed on course, any
     decisions would be made by the men in the fight. The general's job was to stay on top of
     the situation and try to think one or two steps ahead. In the event things went wrong he
     could call across the city to the UN compound, where troops from the 10th Mountain
     Division waited, three regular army companies in varying degrees of readiness. So far
     there was no need. Other than the one injured Ranger, the mission was clean. At about the
     same time they learned of Blackburn's fall, the D-boys inside the target building radioed
     that they'd found the men they were looking for. This was going to be a success.
    It had been risky, going into Aidid's Black Sea neighborhood in daylight. The nearby
     Bakers Market was the center of the Habr Gidr