SEAL Team Six: Hunt the Wolf

Before entering Post One, Sergeant Nancy Cisneros looked up to see the sun burning its way through the morning haze. Inside the six-sided reinforced-concrete structure, two Moroccan security agents and another marine stood watching the front gates through a Plexiglas window. A State Department security officer named Havlichek sat before a console of six monitors that broadcast pictures of the traffic on nearby Avenue Mohamed El Fassi and the access street to the main gate.

“All clear?” Sergeant Cisneros asked the American at the console.

“Except for that white pickup,” Havlichek answered. “It’s been parked there about ten minutes doing jack shit.”

Sergeant Cisneros noticed that the Toyota truck appeared to be carrying a heavy load in its back cargo bay, which was covered with a canvas tarp.

“Driver probably stopped to drink some na’na,” she offered, referring to the popular local mint tea.

“Or smoke some kif, more likely.”

“I’ll send one of the gendarmes to check it out.”

Sergeant Cisneros exited Post One and took two steps toward the front gate with the intention of giving orders to one of the four Moroccan security officers stationed there, when she heard a vehicle honk behind her. Turning, she saw the big white water truck that had arrived to deliver fifteen hundred gallons of potable water to the embassy backing toward the gate.

“What the hell’s he backing up for?” Cisneros asked into the helmet headset that connected her to Post One.

“Because he’s a typical Moroccan driver,” answered Havlichek.

“Open the inner gate,” Sergeant Cisneros barked.

Then she held up her arms to stop the driver of the water truck and yelled, “Arrêtez!”

But the driver, who had his radio blaring, didn’t hear her. Cisneros had to jump on the truck’s running board and shout through the side window before the driver applied the brakes and stopped.

Sergeant Cisneros was trying to figure out how to tell the driver in French that he should reverse course, proceed farther down the driveway, and turn around, when she heard one of the Moroccan guards shout. She turned to her right to see a white pickup speeding toward the open gate. It looked to be the same one she had viewed on the monitor only half a minute earlier.

She jumped off the running board and ran toward the gate yelling, “Halt! Halt! Tell that son of a bitch to stop!”

The Toyota screeched to a halt in front of the Delta barrier, a steel structure that came up from the ground with a flap that faced the driver. As smoke rose from the pickup’s tires, a young scrawny man got out of the passenger side, pointed to the barrier, and started screaming in Arabic.

“What’s he saying? What the hell does he want?” Sergeant Cisneros shouted to Jalil, who had joined her at the gate. Both of them held their weapons ready.

“He wants you to lower the barrier,” Jalil replied in English.

The young man on the other side of the barrier was dressed head to toe in white. His dark eyes were popping out of his head, and he was gesturing wildly.

“Tell him to get back in the truck and back it the fuck out of here before I blow him and his friend away!”

As Jalil started shouting instructions in Arabic, Sergeant Cisneros remembered that Arab men who were preparing for martyrdom often wore white. Feeling an enormous surge of fear and adrenaline, she screamed, “Jalil, take cover!” Then, “Tell the driver to get out of the vehicle and hug the ground!”

The man in white turned suddenly and started running away from the pickup toward Avenue Mohamed El Fassi. Sergeant Cisneros lowered one knee to the pavement and opened fire on the Toyota driver.

Seeing a flash from the barrel of the American’s M4, the driver of the pickup pushed a button that detonated the seven hundred pounds of explosives in the truck. The last thing Sergeant Nancy Cisneros saw was an enormous white flash. The power of the blast completely pulverized her body and threw her head a hundred yards.

Jalil, Havlichek, the driver of the water truck, the other marines, and all the Moroccan guards were killed immediately. The visa applicants standing in line were either killed outright or horribly wounded. All that remained of the water truck was a shredded chassis. What had been the pickup became a twelve-foot wide, six-foot-deep crater.

The blast destroyed the front of the embassy building, killing thirty-three Americans and twenty-four local employees. Flying metal, glass, and debris seriously injured another seventy people inside the building, including the U.S. ambassador, who suffered facial lacerations and a concussion. Windows were blown out in neighboring buildings, including the Belgian embassy and a preschool, injuring hundreds of others.

Less than an hour after the attack, as rescuers fought through smoke and the nauseating smell of burnt human flesh to search for victims, the president of the United States and the king of Morocco issued a joint statement calling it a “heinous and cowardly crime” against both of their countries and promising to cooperate fully to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice.

The Washington Post called it the worst terrorist attack against Americans since 9/11/2001.