The CIA Annex was bulldozed. The bodies of Rone Woods and Glen Doherty were returned to their families. And the surviving GRS—Silva, Geist, Tiegen—went back to quiet lives, their hands never quite clean of the smell of cordite and smoke.
At dusk, the GRS team wound down their day. Some worked out in the makeshift gym. Others cleaned their rifles—HK416s, suppressed MP5s, and M4s loaded with 77-grain Open Tip Match rounds. Rone Woods was on the phone with his wife, promising to be home soon for his daughter’s birthday. "I love you," he said. "I’ll call you tomorrow."
They searched the perimeter. They fought room-to-room in the burning annex building. But the fire was too intense. The roof began to collapse. Sean Smith was later found dead from smoke inhalation. Ambassador Stevens, separated in the chaos, had been dragged by Libyan "rescuers" to a hospital, where he was found dead of asphyxiation.
At 9:40 PM local time, the first explosion didn’t sound like a mortar. It sounded like the world tearing in half. HD13 Hours- The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
The drive to the SMC was a gauntlet of hell. Streets that were quiet an hour ago were now alive with armed men in pickup trucks, waving black flags. The GRS drove with no lights, using night vision goggles to navigate the debris-strewn roads. Rone, in the lead vehicle, spotted a technical (a truck with a mounted machine gun) blocking the main road. "Hold on," he growled, and swerved through an alley, shattering a fruit cart.
From the SMC, a frantic radio call crackled through the Annex’s comms: “We’re taking fire! The compound is breached! They’re burning the building!”
The GRS piled into two unarmored vehicles—the "War Wagon" (a battered Toyota pickup with a DShK heavy machine gun welded to the bed) and a Chevrolet Suburban. As they tore out of the Annex gates, the night erupted. Gunfire ricocheted off the asphalt. The smell of cordite and burning trash filled the cabin. The CIA Annex was bulldozed
They knew Benghazi was a powder keg. Every night, they heard the rattle of AK-47s and the thump of RPGs in the distance. But on the evening of September 11, 2012—the eleventh anniversary of 9/11—the air felt different. Heavier.
The team disembarked into chaos. Oz Geist took cover behind a concrete planter, his M4 spitting fire at muzzle flashes in the darkness. Tig Tiegen laid down suppressing fire while Rone Woods, moving with the fluid grace of a predator, sprinted toward the burning building. He kicked in a side door and dragged out a badly wounded DS agent, Scott Wickland, who had been hit in the arm and leg.
Prologue: The Ghosts of War
They returned to the Annex at 11:30 PM. The CIA compound was a small fortress—sandbagged fighting positions, a central villa, and a tactical operations center. But it was not designed for a coordinated assault. And the attackers knew it.
"GRS is on the ground!" Silva yelled into the radio.
"We can’t get to him!" Wickland coughed, blood on his lips. "The smoke… the fire…" At dusk, the GRS team wound down their day
As a Libyan militia convoy finally arrived to secure the area, the GRS loaded the wounded and the dead onto a C-130 evacuation plane. Jack Silva sat next to Rone’s body bag, staring at the floor. He didn’t cry. Not yet. That would come later, alone, in a hotel room in Germany.
At 12:05 AM, September 12, the second wave began.