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  For Mark Evnin, one of the first snipers to fall during OIF I, we will never forget you.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Prologue: Guardians

  Chapter One: Messengers of Death

  Part I Special Operations

  Chapter Two: Night Assault

  Chapter Three: Al Shatan

  Chapter Four: The Playground of Snipers

  Chapter Five: The Pigeon Flipper

  Chapter Six: The Bull’s Horns

  Chapter Seven: Sniper with a Rocket Launcher

  Chapter Eight: The Gauntlet

  Chapter Nine: Payback

  Chapter Ten: Under Watchful Eyes

  Chapter Eleven: The Kill or Capture Christmas

  Chapter Twelve: The Face of Victory

  Chapter Thirteen: Al-Qaida’s Graveyard

  Part II Front Lines

  Chapter Fourteen: The Artist

  Chapter Fifteen: Ain’t Dyin’ Tonight

  Chapter Sixteen: The 440

  Chapter Seventeen: The Thousand-Yard Shot

  Part III Observations and Uprisings

  Chapter Eighteen: Origins

  Chapter Nineteen: Yellow Shirt

  Chapter Twenty: Where Shades of Gray Are Found

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Lifesavers

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Off the Chain

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Gushwa’s Thirty

  Chapter Twenty-Four: The Man Who Lost His Shoes

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Red Mist

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Baghdad 911

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  Also by Jack Coughlin and John R. Bruning

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  Guardians

  Shortly after I left the Marine Corps so I could provide a stable home for my two little girls, I flew to the Pacific Northwest to do an interview for Shooter, my first book, which detailed my experiences as a Marine sniper during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I was scheduled to sit down with a local talk-show host of some renown. When I arrived in her studio, she welcomed me to her program, then asked, “So what’s it feel like to be a murderer?”

  Twenty years in the Corps taught me to expect anything and be ready for it, so this question didn’t really surprise me. How I answered it surprised her.

  “You don’t really believe that,” I said.

  “What makes you say that?” she asked.

  “Because if you really believed that I’m a murderer, you would not be sitting alone in this booth with me. And you’d already be dead.”

  The show’s producer leapt to his feet, waving frantically for me to stop. The host’s jaw dropped. She had no response.

  Afterward, I thought about what she had said. I served my country as a Marine Corps sniper for two decades. I am a part of a community and a heritage that stretches back to the foundations of our Republic. We have been in every conflict and battle since Lexington and Concord—and not a few have turned in our country’s favor as a result of our presence.

  For two hundred years, others have called us murderers. To the British officers we sniped off their horses during the American Revolution, we were ungentlemanly butchers. To our own troops in World War II, we were a scary, insulated community that stood apart from the line infantry. They called us “Ten Cent Killers,” which was the cost of the .30 caliber rifle cartridge we used in our scoped Springfield 1903s. During Vietnam, the grunts called us “Murder Inc.” or “Thirteen Cent Killers.” Inflation made us more expensive, I guess.

  Bottom line, being called a murderer comes with the territory. Over the years we have been the most misunderstood and marginalized community in the American military. Only in the past two decades has this really begun to change. And if those who wear the uniform don’t get us, civilians certainly won’t either. Yet the folks back home are the biggest beneficiaries of our work in combat—though they will never know it.

  After that studio appearance in Seattle, I got to thinking about a shot I took in Somalia in 1993 that underscored a lot of the misperceptions about our community and who we snipers are.

  My spotter and I were on the roof of a three-story building that sat astride one of Mogadishu’s main roads, tasked with watching over a Marine reconnaissance platoon, about thirty men strong, that was out on a sweep. Their lieutenant had led them down into a brushy depression in an otherwise vast and open field. There was little cover, just a few tin shanties at the bottom of the draw, and another one at the far end of the open space just over nine hundred yards from our position. My spotter and I glassed (meaning searched through our optics) the area, alert for any of the clan members or bandits who had been taking potshots at our men and the UN’s relief personnel. When my scan reached the shack at the far end of the field, I saw movement.

  A man stepped into the doorway, his body at a forty-five-degree angle to me. He was holding an AK-47 assault rifle. He was only about three hundred yards from the recon platoon, well within the range of an AK-47 with iron sights.

  As I watched him, he raised the AK to his shoulder. The barrel was pointed at my fellow Marines, who were unaware of his presence. All this had happened so quickly that we had not had time to radio a warning to the recon platoon.

  I moved fast. Keeping my eye in the scope so I didn’t lose sight of him, I factored in the wind speed, dialed in two minutes of windage, then took the shot. My M40 bolt-action rifle cracked and the report echoed through the city. Since I’d done the calculations on the fly, I was a little short. The 7.62mm round hit the ground in front of the gunman, skipped off a rock, and struck him in the right knee. He fell and his AK dropped.

  I kept the scope on him, adjusting the crosshairs so they centered on his chin this time. A few seconds passed. The gunman seemed rooted in place, his weapon virtually forgotten. He didn’t look like he was in pain, and he didn’t act like the sudden shot had surprised him. Instead he remained motionless and continued to stare out at the Marines in the depression. I held my fire, waiting to see what he would do next, hoping that the wound I’d already inflicted would be enough to discourage him from doing anything further.

  No such luck. He reached for his weapon. I pulled the trigger again. My second bullet hit his midsection. He flopped over on his back, his left leg twisted under him. I saw his wounded leg kick out, twitch, then go limp. By the time the Marines reached him, he was dead.

  It was miraculous that my first bullet had hit him. Had it not skipped off the ground and knocked him off his feet, he would have been able to open fire on the recon platoon before I had had a chance to reload. He could have killed one of our Marines—one of my brothers. His death would have been traumatic enough, but what most books and movies won’t show you is the effect that death would have had on his family, friends, community, and platoon. That moment would have forever scarred everyone in that Marine’s life. With twenty years in the Corps, I’ve seen that happen many times. I’ve known widows who, decades after losing their Marine, were still adrift in their grief. I’ve met sons and daughters who never had the chance to know their fathers. I’ve seen parents whose grief has wrecked them. I’ve seen Marines blame themselves and never recover from the guilt of that loss.

  I killed that gunman to save not just the Marine in his sights, but to spare everyone in his life the conseque
nces of his death. Ask any military sniper why he does what he does and he will tell you, “To save lives.” There is no way to tell how many Americans back home have had their worlds protected by our work. Since 9/11, I would venture to guess a majority of us have been silently affected in some way by our snipers. It is those shots we take that help keep those worlds intact.

  Since I wrote Shooter, I’ve often been asked if I ever felt remorse for the lives I’ve taken. The answer is no. I know what could have happened to our people if I had failed, and I will never regret doing all I could to protect them. The shots I didn’t take are the ones I regret. They haunt me, because I know that there are evil men alive because of me who have most surely done my fellow Americans harm. The lives and worlds at home they’ve torn apart since my encounter with them … that weighs on my conscience. Other snipers will tell you the same thing.

  A sniper team is one of the most powerful and multidimensional assets on a battlefield. We are the guardians of our brothers-in-arms and can perform that task in many ways, both with the triggers we pull and with the information we develop through stealth and guile. It has been that way since the American Revolution. In the pages to follow, you’ll meet a dozen American snipers. You’ll be immersed in their world and learn who they are and why they chose to join our community. You’ll see them in action in missions both in Afghanistan and Iraq. You’ll learn how they are the keepers of a heritage that began with the founding of our Republic. For all the changes in technology that have transformed our battlefields, the fundamentals of our community, established two centuries ago, remain the same.

  We are a close-knit, tight-lipped community. Here, for the first, time, is a glimpse into our world and how we exist within it. We are proud of our profession and proud of the meaning our work has given us. We are life-takers when we have to be—usually as a last resort. But where we derive our value is not in the pull of the trigger, but in the lives we have saved and the families that have remained intact as a result of our precision, professionalism, and skill. That will always be our greatest contribution whenever our nation finds itself at war.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Messengers of Death

  JANUARY 9, 1815

  THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS

  The Shooter stood tall on the earthen rampart, his rifle at his side. His right hand held its barrel while his right foot backstopped the weapon’s hand-carved stock. He wore buckskin leggings, a shirt and pants of woven linsey-woolsey, which gave him a tramplike appearance. A broad-brimmed felt hat shadowed his predator’s eyes.

  He stood alone, immune to the battle raging around him. The din had no parallel in his life—the crash of gunfire, the roar of cannon juxtaposed against distant bagpipes, and a New Orleans band belting out “Yankee Doodle.” Around him, men died by the hundreds.

  Across the battlefield, a group of British officers rode together. One, Lieutenant L. Walcott, sighted the Shooter and marveled at his poise. Suddenly, the Shooter moved. He shouldered his rifle and its barrel swung toward Walcott’s party. The officers began to laugh. The American was over three hundred yards away, no way he could hit any of them. The gesture seemed ridiculous.

  The Shooter pulled the trigger and shot one of the British officers right out of his saddle. His lifeless body flopped to the ground. The others in Walcott’s group gaped at their dead comrade, shocked that one of their own could be killed so effortlessly at a distance that rendered their own weapons ineffective. Several long seconds later, they wrenched their attention back to the rampart. The Shooter had returned to his statuesque stance, rifle in hand, stock at his toes again. Beneath the brim of his hat, he tracked them and selected another target. The rifle came up and belched black smoke. The officer next to Lieutenant Walcott jerked back and fell off his horse.

  Two shots, two kills. Walcott later recalled, “The cannon and the thousands of musket balls playing upon our ranks we cared not for; for there was a chance of escaping them … but to know that every time that rifle was leveled toward us … one must surely fall … that the messenger of death drove unerringly to its goal, to know this and still march on was awful.”

  The Shooter reloaded and resighted his weapon. Walcott and his surviving comrades exchanged terror-filled glances and wondered who would be the next of them to die.

  Death on the battlefield is a random act. In the middle of a fight, a man can endure flying bullets and falling artillery because of their indiscriminate nature. The soldier in the heat of combat has built in psychological defenses to such incoming. It can’t hit me. The odds are with me. They aren’t aiming at me.

  The Shooter stripped away those defenses, leaving Walcott naked to the primal fear aimed fire instills. For Walcott’s group, there was no escape, and they realized it after the Shooter’s second kill. Such a realization causes entire units to seize up in the midst of battle. Men who moments before were filled with courage or resolve will forget everything as their self-preservation instincts kick in. They will go to ground. They will cease advancing. They will lose control and run. Such elemental fear breeds panic, and in a test of arms, the ability to create panic wins battles. We call this the Shock Factor. It is a sniper’s greatest weapon.

  The Shooter’s finger curled around the trigger, his rifle’s front sight pinned on the officer riding beside Lieutenant Walcott. The Shooter had no scope, just his remarkable eyesight and a knack for gauging the wind and his bullet’s drop. He took a breath, released half of it, and gently squeezed the trigger. Another of Walcott’s friends was shot out of the saddle, probably dead before he even hit the ground.

  Unlike his targets, the Shooter was not a professional officer. He was a frontiersman, born and raised in Tennessee or Kentucky, where a man’s marksmanship determined the margin between life and death. His rifle was his most valued possession, precision-made by hand with loving care, its stock inlaid with ornate silver designs. It had probably been a family heirloom, handed down from one male member of the family to the next as part of his culture’s rite of passage. Like his fellow “Dirty Shirt” frontiersmen, he joined this battle carrying his personal weapon. There were no government-issued guns waiting for him at the end of his passage south to face the British.

  That was fine with him. His rifle was an extension of himself. In all likelihood, he’d been shooting it since he was a boy as he learned to hunt with his father or uncles. Bullets and powder did not come easily, so every shot counted in his world. In time, he developed such precision with his weapon that he could kill a squirrel by shooting the branch it was sitting on and sending wood shrapnel into the creature. That left the animal intact and edible. On the battlefield, such skill translated into deadly precision—and lots of headshots. He was an American rifleman; marksmanship was coded into his DNA. At New Orleans, future president Andrew Jackson had assembled the only sharpshooting army in United States history—and being on the receiving end of it must have been horrific.

  Lieutenant Walcott was one of the lucky few British officers to survive the Battle of New Orleans. American rifleman killed or wounded virtually the entire British chain of command in less than twenty-five minutes of battle. The 93rd Highlanders, who marched toward our Shooter on the rampart with bagpipes blasting, went into the fight a thousand strong. Just short of the American lines, their regimental commander ordered his men to halt. Seconds later, an American rifleman killed him with a headshot. The rest of the regimental leadership went down before anyone could give an order. The 93rd stood there, shoulder to shoulder, its veteran soldiers completely at a loss for what to do next. They had never faced this sort of accurate fire before, and it paralyzed them. Not a man even returned fire.

  The American dirty shirts poured it on. Six hundred Highlanders went down before the unit finally broke and ran. All across the battlefield, other British units did the same thing. Men who had never taken cover during a fight now sought any fold in the landscape that might offer respite from the deadly American bullets.

  General Adai
r, commander of the Kentucky Riflemen, walked his line, pointing out targets to his men. He tapped one dirty shirt from behind and said, “See that officer on the gray horse?” The marksman nodded at the distant, moving target. Adair ordered, “Snuff his candle.” The Kentuckian took aim and shot him right off his horse.

  On the opposite side of the battle, a British colonel named Rennie led an assault on an isolated American redoubt emplaced ahead of the main rampart. He struck an impressive figure at the head of his men, coaxing them forward. The Americans in the redoubt abandoned their posts and scampered back to the main line. Rennie pressed forward and scaled the rear wall of the redoubt with two of his officers by his side. As he turned to urge his troops onward, several shooters from the New Orleans Rifles, a militia unit from the Big Easy, opened fire. All three officers went down. The leaderless British soldiers froze, then fell back pell-mell, their ranks savaged by the American fire.

  Afterward an argument broke out among the New Orleans sharpshooters over who killed the British colonel. The best marksman in town, a merchant named Mr. Withers, flatly said, “If he isn’t hit above the eyebrows, it wasn’t my shot.” After the battle, the New Orleans Rifles retrieved the colonel’s body from a ditch—and found he’d been struck in the forehead. That settled the debate.

  A half hour into the Battle of New Orleans and the British army had been reduced to panicked survivors cowering amongst heaps of their dead and dying comrades. Some sought to escape from the American shooters by low crawling. It didn’t work. The Shooter on the rampart was joined by hundreds more who waited patiently until their quarries exposed legs, arms, or parts of their heads. The dirty shirts were used to bagging quail, squirrels, and hares on the run at seemingly impossible ranges; the British soldier who gave up even the tiniest part of his body paid the price. A flash, a report, and the target went down.

  Others tried to flee the kill zone in quick rushes. The shooters were too adept for this to work. Those British soldiers died almost as soon as they stood up, except for one who proved particularly fleet-footed. He rose several hundred yards from the American ramparts and dashed like a rabbit toward the rear. Several shooters fired and missed him, which emboldened the Brit. He flopped to the ground, waited a few seconds, then stood up and mooned the Americans. Shouting obscenities, he sprinted rearward and took cover before anyone could kill him. Finally, the Americans brought forth one of their best sharpshooters. He eased into his stance, sighted his rifle, and waited. After a long pause, the Brit stood up, mooned the Americans again, and started to run. The American pulled the trigger and killed him with a shot to the spine, right between his shoulder blades. Mercy was absent that day.