Light inthe Darkness

Based on Christian Craighead's new book, One Man In, and also his recent appearance on the Shawn Ryan Show, we now know much more about the DusitD2 complex terrorist attack in Kenya. Here's how it went down: January 15, 2019. Nairobi. Christian Craighead had just finished a morning of firearms training and was settling into his house when the phone rang. A friend, a former British soldier, was on the line. In the background Craighead could hear gunfire. The address was 14 Riverside Drive: the DusitD2 hotel and office complex in Westlands. Al-Shabaab had just begun a massacre. He threw his weapons case into the pickup and drove. He had never been to the complex, and he did not know how many shooters there were. He went anyway. The attack started around 2:30pm. A suicide bomber, Mahir Khalid Riziki, walked into the Secret Garden cafe and detonated, killing diners and staff. Around the same time, four gunmen with AKs, grenades, and suicide vests dumped a car at the gate, blew up vehicles, and split through the offices, hotel, and car park hunting civilians. 21 people would die that day and overnight. Craighead arrived about 30 minutes later to chaos and carnage: the aftermath of the blast, body parts everywhere, screams, sporadic fire, and no organized security line at the front. He saw the media was there, so he wore a balaclava to hide his face. In the new Shawn Ryan episode he described the moment he decided to go in: a woman screaming, then automatic fire cutting the scream off. He understood she had just been murdered. He asked Kenyan forces if they were going in, and they replied "no boss." He went in alone. He started at the restaurant, finding wounded people too terrified to move and shuttling them, sometimes dragging them, toward safety. Then he ran alone across open ground with rounds hitting around him, cleared rooms, and pulled together about 150 survivors. He picked up an ad-hoc team: a Slovenian diplomatic protection officer, Dan Prastalo, and two Kenyan police. Together they cleared a 13-story car park, calling out hostages with “Eagle Eagle Security Forces.” Live cameras caught a man in a mask and plate carrier running people out and then running back in. He thought his part was done and went to brief the Kenyan commander. The commander asked, “can you lead my men?” Craighead said yes. From the front he cleared a five-story office block and got roughly 50 more people out. By then the remaining gunmen had gone into the eight-story hotel. He linked up with a Kenyan police assault team on the seventh floor and stayed with them for the next 13 hours, enduring gunfire, grenades bouncing down stairs, black smoke, marble corridors, and no helmet because he’d left it in the truck. In One Man In he writes about the grenades detonating in the hallway, the blasts forcing the air out of his lungs, and the AK bursts ringing through the confined hotel. He kept telling himself: press on, push on. They still did not know how many people were being killed elsewhere in the complex. Near morning the last pair of terrorists on that floor tried to break out with grenades. Craighead had already warned the team, and when the terrorists left cover, they were killed. The hotel looked clear, but it wasn’t. In the lobby more Kenyan police said the basement still had two men, and after a night of fighting, a lot of officers did not want to go. Craighead volunteered first. They pushed into a smoke-filled area of storerooms, offices, and flooded service corridors, then spent about an hour in a standoff behind a barricade until the last two attackers were dead. 19 to 22 hours after the first blast, the siege was over. President Kenyatta announced the complex secure. All five militants were dead. Nearly 700 people were rescued. For his actions, Craighead was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross.