13 Hours: The Inside Accout of what really happened in Benghazi by Michael Zuckoff

2014 / 329 (293 Story) pgs. ( ~ 82,000words) Non-fiction/History

I read with movie soundtracks playing, and every now and then the music lines up perfectly with what’s happening on the page. Partway through 13 Hours, as mortars began falling on the CIA annex in Benghazi, “Forgotten” from the 13 Hours soundtrack started to play. It made an already hard scene hit even harder. It was almost as if I could feel it happening live.

13 Hours by Mitchell Zuckoff, written with members of the Annex Security Team, is the account of the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens had traveled from the embassy in Tripoli to build relations in Benghazi, a city still unsettled a year after Muammar Qaddafi was killed during the Libyan uprising in 2011.

The book centers on the Global Response Staff, CIA security contractors who were former Navy SEALs, Marines, and Army Rangers assigned to protect State Department and CIA personnel. When the compound is attacked and overrun, they gear up to respond but are told to wait. According to their account, that delay may have cost the lives of Ambassador Stevens and information officer Sean Smith. The rest of the night is a desperate fight: searching for the Ambassador, saving everyone they can, and eventually falling back to the annex to hold out until reinforcements arrive from Tripoli.

The hardest part to read comes near the end, when mortars strike the roof of Building C, killing Tyrone “Rone” Woods and Glen Doherty and severely wounding Mark “Oz” Geist. The description of what Oz went through stuck with me more than anything else in the book.

One key note, the book does talk about the investigation and the fallout from this attack. It doesn’t place blame. It allows the dear reader to investigate and draw their own conclusion.

Would I recommend this book? Yes. Overall, 13 Hours is a good, gripping read and worth your time if you’re interested in the event or in military nonfiction. It didn’t quite reach the can’t-put-it-down level for me, but the mortar scene is one I won’t forget anytime soon.

NOTE: One line hit close to home for me. “You can’t shoot back towards it. It’s basically a lottery. If it’s your time, it’s your time, and death can come right out of the sky and kill you in an instant” – 13 Hours This is Jacks thought about Mortars. This was mine…years prior.