Targeted: Beirut: The 1983 Marine Barracks Bombing and the Untold Origin Story of the War on Terror (Targeted, 1) - Hardcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Jack Carr is a former Navy SEAL who led special operations teams as a team leader, platoon commander, troop commander, and task unit commander. Over his twenty years in Naval Special Warfare, he transitioned from an enlisted SEAL sniper to a junior officer leading assault and sniper teams in Iraq and Afghanistan, to a platoon commander practicing counterinsurgency in the southern Philippines, to commanding a special operations task unit in the most Iranian influenced section of southern Iraq throughout the tumultuous drawdown of US Forces. Jack retired from active duty in 2016 and lives with his wife and three children in Park City, Utah. He is the author of The Terminal List, True Believer, Savage Son, The Devil’s Hand, In the Blood, Only the Dead, Red Sky Mourning, and Targeted: Beirut. His debut novel, The Terminal List, was adapted into the #1 Prime Video series starring Chris Pratt. He is also the host of the top-rated Danger Close podcast. Visit him at OfficialJackCarr.com and follow Jack on Instagram, X, Facebook, and YouTube @JackCarrUSA.

A Pulitzer Prize finalist and former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, James M. Scott is the author of Target Tokyo, Black Snow, Rampage, The War Below, and The Attack on the Liberty. In addition, Scott is a sought-after public speaker, who leads battlefield tours and lectures at institutions around the world. He lives with his wife and two children in Charleston, South Carolina, where he is the Scholar in Residence at The Citadel. Visit him at JamesMScott.com.

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Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

Beirut has become synonymous with death and destruction.

—PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE EDITORIAL

April 20, 1983

The black GMC pickup truck idled alongside the curb of Beirut’s seashore drive at 12:43 p.m. on April 18, 1983. Secured in the truck bed and hidden under a canvas tarp sat enough pentaerythritol tetranitrate—a high-powered explosive favored by militaries, quarry blasters, and, of course, terrorists—to rival two thousand pounds of TNT. The hefty payload, as one witness would later tell investigators, forced the rear of the late-model pickup to sag.

The driver scanned the midday traffic that crawled through the Lebanese capital, spotting a dated green Mercedes in the oncoming lane. The German car’s headlights flashed three times, signaling the truck driver to shift into gear and ease back into traffic.

The mission was a go.

A mile away, towering over the corniche with a view of the Mediterranean’s cool blue waters, loomed the American Embassy, a rose-colored monolith that had dominated the Beirut skyline since it originally opened its doors as a hotel three decades earlier. The crescent-shaped embassy that fronted the palm-lined Avenue de Paris employed 341 people who helped overseas Americans, processed visas, and advanced diplomatic relations.

It had been a quiet Monday in Beirut, a welcome reprieve in a city battered by eight years of civil war, foreign invaders, and sectarian violence that had torched businesses, leveled apartment blocks, and claimed the lives of 100,000 men, women, and children. The arrival of American Marines six months earlier—based at the airport as part of a multinational peacekeeping force—had helped restore a semblance of calm that reminded war-weary residents of the halcyon days when the city was known as the Paris of the Middle East. Shoppers browsed stores along Hamra Street—dubbed the Fifth Avenue of Lebanon—that once again offered everything from designer jeans and caviar to the latest electronic games. Others queued up outside cinemas where Bill Murray’s comedy Stripes had proven a popular hit. “People,” as New York Times reporter Thomas Friedman observed, “were just starting to relax in Beirut, daring to believe that the presence of American troops meant the war was finally over.”

But America’s flatlining efforts to pressure Israeli and Syrian forces to withdraw from Lebanon had sparked an uptick in violence, one that reminded residents of the potential savagery that lurked beneath the veneer of peace. In the previous month, gunmen had attacked patrols of the Italian, French, and American peacekeepers, wounding fourteen, including five Marines. Only four days earlier on April 14, an assailant fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the American Embassy, which hit an empty office. The time for peace was running out.

A dusting of snow still capped Mount Lebanon, climbing nearly two miles above the capital, even as the last of the season’s cool weather threatened to give way to the oppressive heat of summer. The morning drizzle had subsided, replaced by the midday sun, which burned off the haze. Locals in search of visas lined up outside the first-floor consular offices, which assisted an average of 150 people per day. Others strolled down the scenic seaside promenade. Up on the embassy’s sixth floor, workers rolled out and installed new carpets.

The day before, many of the embassy staff had participated in the Beirut marathon, including general services officer Robert Essington, who had charged across the finish line in four hours and two minutes. The race coupled with the after-party had exhausted many, prompting Ambassador Robert Dillon to offer participants a day off to recover.

But few took him up on the deal.

Lance Corporal Robert “Bobby” McMaugh wished he could have stayed in bed rather than man Guard Post One at the embassy’s main entrance. The twenty-one-year-old Marine, who nursed a hangover, had been a star running back and kicker at Osbourn High School in Manassas, Virginia. Off the field, he proved equally as popular, a humble and warm personality who had insisted on taking his younger sister to her first high school dance because no one else was good enough. That same kindness motivated Bobby on the mornings he stood guard to present female employees with a flower. Much to his father’s frustration, Bobby had postponed college to enlist in the Marines, where he volunteered for duty in Beirut, hoping that a posting to one of the world’s hot spots might catapult his career. During his recent downtime, however, he had survived a car bombing on the streets of the capital, which, he later confided in a call to his mother, marked the first time in his life he had ever been scared.

Bobby had pushed those fears out of his mind the night before when he and a few fellow Marines feasted on spaghetti and champagne at the home of Letitia “Tish” Butler, a staffer with the U.S. Agency of International Development. He had returned to the embassy at 1 a.m. for a final beer before collapsing atop his bunk fully clothed. “I’ll give you three hundred Lebanese lira,” he pleaded with one fellow Marine, “if you stand my duty today.”

But no one would accept his offer.

Despite his hangover, Bobby stood armed with a rose when embassy secretary Dorothy Pech appeared in front of his bulletproof-glass booth Monday morning.

“How are you doing, Bob?” she asked.

“I don’t feel too good,” he confessed.

“You guys are going out too much,” she chided him.

The young Marine would have no doubt agreed.

“Well,” Pech added, “maybe today will be a short day.”

The pickup truck closed the distance.

Elsewhere in the embassy, Robert Ames of the Central Intelligence Agency huddled on the fifth floor with the embassy’s spooks. The bespectacled father of six served as the clandestine agency’s top Middle East expert, often tasked to personally brief President Ronald Reagan. At first glance, Ames appeared an unlikely intelligence officer. The forty-nine-year-old Philadelphian, who stood six feet three inches tall, had grown up the son of a Pennsylvania steelworker. A basketball scholarship had earned him an education at La Salle University, while a stint in the Army had introduced him to the world of signals intelligence. Over the years, as he pinballed between Yemen and Iran, Kuwait and Lebanon, he not only mastered Arabic but developed an unrivaled insight into the volatile region. Ames accomplished this while balancing time with his family in the Washington suburb of Reston, Virginia. He imitated Donald Duck’s voice for his children, coached youth basketball, and liked to relax in his favorite rocking chair to the tunes of the Beach Boys. “He was,” as his wife Yvonne later said, “the cornerstone of the family.”

Frustration in Washington over the president’s apparent stillborn peace initiative for the region had landed Ames back in Beirut, where he had touched down the day before. The veteran operative had attended a dinner that night with his colleagues where the intractable reality cast a shadow over the evening. Those tensions had turned contentious Monday morning as Ames met with the agency’s entire team. Station Chief Ken Haas, whose wife, Alison, brought him lunch most days, emerged from the session upset....