This was where the first serious firefight between the Marines and the Black Berets broke out.
Several OMON soldiers had grabbed machine guns, automatic rifles, and shotguns and were hiding behind the counter, ready to take on the invaders. They began firing as soon as the Marines’ grenades punched holes in the door and walls. One Marine was hit in the stomach by heavy AKMS rifle fire as soon as he jumped through the hole they blasted in the wall, the high-velocity round easily piercing his Kevlar vest, and he was dragged back into the stairwell by another Marine while the others provided covering fire.
The Marines could not afford to waste time in a prolonged gun battle with these soldiers. Speed and shock were their only allies, and if they lost those two important elements the entire battle was lost. With these heavily armed soldiers on this level and over fifty more soldiers on the ground floor, the greatly outnumbered Marines could lose the entire building very quickly if they allowed the situation to get out of hand. The two Marines on the ground floor had already begun their assault, but there was return fire already. The Marines had to wrap up this assault quickly.
The decision on how to handle the arsenal floor was made several days earlier. If Luger was being held on this floor, he was going to die. There was nothing the Marines could do about it, because the arsenal and everyone inside had to be neutralized, swiftly and completely, at all costs.
The Marines first shot several CN tear-gas grenades into the room, followed by a volley of six fragmentation grenades, and then two Marines entered the room. A few shots rang out, but none were aimed at them — they heard nothing but coughing and screams of pain from the wounded. The three front offices were searched and sealed, and slowly the Marines approached the counter behind a cloud of slowly dissipating tear gas …
Suddenly an OMON soldier popped up from behind the counter.
It was obvious he’d been close to one of the exploding grenades, because he was covered with blood, and the right side of his face and neck looked like the remnants of a fresh road kill. The Soviet soldier screamed and opened fire, spraying the entire room with full-automatic fire. With his unprotected eyes closed and burning from the gas, he still did not miss. Two Marines were riddled before the others finally silenced the last survivor.
The rest of the bodies behind the counter were searched and then the vault door to the arsenal was checked. It was thankfully unlocked — they were not carrying enough explosives to blow a thick steel door and destroy the arsenal. Two Marines quickly checked for booby traps, then cleared the rest to proceed.
“Command, Assault. Great arsenal they got here, sir,” one of the Marines radioed to his commander on the roof. At the same time two Marines carried the bodies of their dead comrades upstairs to the rooftop.
“Follow the plan, Murphy,” Snyder, the overall task-force commander, radioed back. “Set the charges, block the doors, bring your casualties up, and do the rest of the building. We’ll blow the arsenal if things get hairy.”
“Roger. Three casualties coming your way. Target not yet found. Proceeding to ground floor and subfloors. Out.” After the explosives were set, the remaining eleven Marines rushed downstairs to continue their assault.
The stiffest resistance for the Marines was on the ground floor, but by that time — only four minutes since they first blew the stairwell-roof door off — the lights were out all over the building and the explosions in the upper floors had created a panic. Half of the men on the ground floor were trying to get a clean shot off at their attackers in the darkness, and the other half were trying to surrender. Most of the Black Beret soldiers were armed with rifles or handguns and taking cover in the doorways of offices along the long central hallway on the ground floor.
The Marines first shot in tear-gas canisters to make the soldiers pull back out of the hallway, then used their rifles to shoot out the emergency lights that illuminated the hallway. But it was still too dangerous to go into the hallway to start clearing out the offices, so the Marines did the next-best thing — they re-entered the stairwell, used their grenade launchers to blow holes in the walls, then rushed into the adjacent offices. One by one they cleared a room and then, instead of going down the hallway and through the office’s front door, simply blew holes through the connecting walls into the next office.
Watching a man through night-vision goggles as he tried to do something in total darkness was a painful, horrifying experience — it was akin to watching a young blind child in an unfamiliar room and not lifting a hand to help. Every sound was an enemy to him, and many of them took shots at every creak and groan in the place, often hitting one of their comrades, and the screams of those accidentally shot only served to increase the fear and confusion. Once-familiar surroundings were unseen enemies, ready to trip you up. One Black Beret stuck his hand in a flower pot, turned, and fired four shots from a pistol into his own hand — his screams of terror and pain continued until a Marine was close enough to the man to finish him off. The Marines could see the whites of the men’s eyes, see the terror in their faces, watch their hands trembling, their eyes darting frantically back and forth at every sound, or watch them weep or urinate uncontrollably. When a Marine raised his weapon and fired, he was often just a few inches away from his victim, and the enemy had no sense of his killer’s nearness when he died. The expression of sheer surprise the Marines saw through those night-vision goggles when the Black Beret felt the bullet hit was something none of them would ever forget.
The resistance got stiffer the farther down the hallway they went, but the darkness and the tear gas took their toll quickly on the confused OMON soldiers. In two minutes the three Marines had swept through the entire floor, killing or incapacitating the entire Black Beret contingent.
Snyder and his executive officer were busy dressing one of the Marines wounds — the other two were dead when they were brought up to the roof — when the NCO in charge of the Building Clearing Team radioed up to Snyder: “Command, this is BCT. Upper floors secure and charges set.”
“Copy, BCT,” Snyder replied. He switched channels on his tactical radio, then keyed the mike. “Security, this is Command,” Snyder radioed to the other MV-22. “Upper floors secure. Move in.
On the rear cargo deck, on either side of the MV-22 SEA HAMMER crew chief manning the Minigun, were Hal Briggs and Gunnery Sergeant Wohl. They were holding tight onto one-inch-thick “Marine green” ropes, ready to fastrope to the roof once the MV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft was in position. Two more Marines, one on each door on the port and starboard sides, were ready to go as well. Right behind Briggs was McLanahan, with another Marine corporal ready to fastrope behind Wohl, and right behind McLanahan was Ormack. Lieutenant Marx was standing beside the jumpmaster, ready to fastrope down with Ormack. The jumpmaster would lower Marx’s radio to the roof after everyone else had departed.
Through his night-vision goggles, McLanahan could see other Marines already on the roof of the design center, using axes and wire cutters to chop down radio antennae that might be tall enough to hit the tilt-rotor aircraft. Three-man SAW security teams manning heavy M249 machine guns and M203 grenade launchers were on each corner of the roof. Most of the Security Team members from Hammer Four had already fastroped to the roof, jumping down as soon as word was received from the Building Clearing Team that it was safe to occupy the upper floors.