Shooter Read online

  The road out, which had been empty on our way into Al Kut, was now lined with Iraqi civilians, some waving and giving thumbs-ups while others just stared with baleful eyes. They had known a battle was coming, so they had closed their shops and left their homes until the fighting was done, and now they were reappearing to see what was left. Looters were already stripping destroyed vehicles. Kids obviously untroubled by the bloody and torn corpses strewn about their scarred city kicked a soccer ball around a desolate field. To these people, we were only the latest conquering army, and they were already getting on with their lives.

  Fire from our 155 mm howitzers rumbled overhead in kettledrum staccato to light up any area that the enemy might use to counterattack as we regrouped at the edge of the city, with the armored vehicles lining up at a newly liberated gasoline station to fill their big fuel tanks. Let Saddam pay the bill. About thirty kilometers farther up Route 7, we went into a defensive position beside the road. A lone, abandoned Iraqi 20 mm antiaircraft gun pointed its useless barrel at a sky filled with potential targets as Coalition planes roamed freely, heading north on bomb runs. The ground was covered with the gun’s unfired ammunition.

  April 3 had been a very long and dangerous day, and Al Kut had been a dangerous place. Mark Evnin was the only Marine who was killed, but several others were wounded, including a corporal who caught a burst from an enemy machine gun-seven bullets on a diagonal line across his torso from his right hip to his left shoulder. He lived because the ballistic plates in his flak jacked stopped three potentially fatal rounds.

  Another casualty was Captain Bryan Lewis, the commander of our Bravo Company tanks. During the opening moments of the battle for the palm grove, an Iraqi soldier managed to put a bullet through Lewis’s left hand before being killed. Lewis never paused in his relentless attack, waited until after the fight to even tell anyone that he was injured, and refused to leave his command and go to the hospital. I looked straight through the hole in his hand and could see daylight on the other side. After a few days, it began to scab over. Lewis was the Man. I recalled how strange it was that, way back in Basra, I had doubted his abilities. Since then, he had repeatedly proven himself to be the ready and reliable leader of our armored spearhead, and by the time he was wounded, he was one tough Marine.

  Bravo Company had a warrior for a leader, but not all officers are made of such stuff. For instance, Officer Bob had sent out a patrol of only six men to clear a factory complex about 1,400 meters away from the headquarters-six Marines for a job big enough to require a company, and with no backup force and no one in a protective overwatch position.

  Fighting raged nearby when he did it. Just a few minutes earlier, a Harrier fighter jet had dropped a thousand-pound bomb to pulverize some Iraqi troops. Kilo Company infantrymen were on the attack, and a platoon of tanks from Bravo cut down a half dozen silly Iraqi solders who charged the heavily armored Abrams tanks with only AK-47s. RPG rockets trailing smoky tails whooshed around all morning, hand grenades exploded with deadly thumps, and cars, buildings, and buses were on fire.

  To me it was a dumb and dangerous move, and I went out in a hurry to get the team safely back to our lines. The patrol had found a couple of antiaircraft guns inside one of the buildings, and after checking to be sure no rocket-propelled grenades were in the room, I popped thermite grenades on the big guns.

  There had been a shake-up within the beleaguered, slow-moving Task Force Tarawa. Their bravery was never a question to me, but we all knew something was wrong over there, and it came as no surprise when the commander of the 1st Marine Regiment was literally promoted upstairs to fly around the battlefield and coordinate air support. Under its new leaders, the regiment regrouped and got back into the race to Baghdad. So my question was, if they could replace a regimental commander, a full bird colonel, why wouldn’t they fire someone much less important in the grand scheme of things, a screwed-up junior staff officer who I thought was giving stupid people a bad name?

  After helping get the Main squared away at our new location, I had some chow, cleaned my rifle, and brought my gun book up to date. The front page is printed with standard cheat-sheet data that helps snipers remember pertinent things about the so-called average man-that he is seventy-two inches tall, the length of his head is ten inches, he is twenty inches across the shoulder, and neck to belly button is a dozen inches. Those details, part of any sniper’s memorized table of algorithms, help determine how best to kill a target. This evening, I was writing around the margins of the green page.

  I had smoke-checked two more men that day. I logged the details of those shootings as I normally would, then added them to a special table of results that I had created on the front page. Starting back in Basra, I had written down the numerical sequence of my kills and crossed each number out with a big X. Tonight, I wrote “11” and “12” and crossed them out. The table was not being kept out of grim braggadocio but simply as a practical tool. If I needed to prove in a hurry that I could help an officer whom I did not know, to get permission to intrude into a fight on his dirt, I could just flash that page of the gun book, like a police officer showing a badge, and save a lot of arguing.

  Being in double digits meant that I now carried the best number in the sniper platoon, which was just as it should have been. How could I lead the boys if I wasn’t the best among them? Although I didn’t know it at the time, I had hardly begun.

  When I finished with the gun book, I settled in to get a few hours of sleep, but the death of Mark Evnin still ate at me. I thought I had stabilized my dangerous emotional seesaw, but when one of my own Marines was killed, it tilted again, and I knew I had to get it back in balance in a hurry.

  I was the tough guy, the stone-cold killer who was never bothered by something as absurd as personal feelings. While I freely bitched about many things to anyone, anytime, I had to remain true to my badass character of designated gunslinger. But day after day, I also had to listen to other people’s problems and never really speak of my own. Doing so would be misinterpreted as a sign of weakness, and I had to stay invincible. I had to be there for everyone else, but no one was there for me-certainly not here on the field of battle, and most likely not at home either. As I went to sleep, I again slammed those mental doors shut hard and coiled into my solitary, emotionless, fuck-you-all, don’t-need-anybody mode. The lone gunman felt very damned alone.

  The war gave us the morning off the next day, Friday, April 4. Few things are as sweet as a couple of hours of downtime during a combat situation that allow you to put aside the psychological and physical stress for a little while. Most of the regiment’s six thousand men took a break, knowing we would be back in the shit soon enough.

  We had our own embedded reporters but also had inherited a gypsy group of newsies along the road, and cool jazz blared from the laptop computers they propped up on the hoods of their SUVs. They were a good group; we called them “the Jackals.” Marine began caging satellite minutes on the Jackals’ phones to make calls back home.

  Even doing the mundane rearm and refit jobs felt almost like being on vacation, and we sank comfortably into boring routine. We hauled everything off the trucks and used a broom to sweep out the small dunes of dirt that had accumulated inside the vehicles, so much sand that we could pick it up by the handful. It was everywhere, even in the tightly closed boxes of ammunition. We field-stripped all the weapons to clean off the sand, grime, and carbon, cleaned the belts of machine gun bullets, and polished the optics systems, and we found humor in almost every situation. The lightheartedness masked the fundamental truth of this strange moment-we were all glad we were still alive.

  Last, we cleaned our bodies and personal gear and washed our hair beneath warm water spilling from a buddy’s canteen. Two weeks into the war, and we all stank. Casey, who had gotten new boots just before the war began, peeled them off for the first time in days, and his feet smelled like dead rats. Staying clean during a fast-paced war is always a problem, particularly when you’r
e in a desert that makes you breathe and eat dirt. Once in a while, you might have a quick bucket of water dumped over your head, but you can never have a leisurely soaking, never anything resembling a real bath or shower. In a combat zone, just being able just to take off your boots and socks and air out your feet is a luxury. Everyone had stocked up on baby wipes and used them on faces and feet alike; at least applying moisture and taking away some of the caked-on grit gave you the illusion of being clean. Of course, you paid particular attention to the crotch after taking a dump-a relief not only because it emptied your bowels but because it was a chance to peel away the thick MOPP overalls and let some air into your sweat-soaked bottom.

  The break was short. Ahead of us, Route 7 was blocked; the 5th Marines were in a hard fight to get through the city of Al Aziziyah, located at a horseshoe curve of the Tigris River. Our orders were to join them for an attack on the Al Nida Division of the Republican Guard, still another supposedly elite unit of the Iraqi army. The Al Nida soldiers swaggered around in red boots to show that they were special. Of course, the United States Marines have a reputation, too, so we looked forward to meeting them. Nobody was afraid of these characters.

  While Casey was at the headquarters track to pick up maps and double-check his information, Colonel Steve Hummer, the regimental commander, came by and told McCoy to start planning a strike into Baghdad itself. If conditions were right, we would leapfrog to the front and make a nighttime plunge into the capital city.

  Casey hurried back with the news, our first clue that there had been a major change in strategy. The original game plan simply wanted the Marines to be a blocking cordon south of the city while the Army secured the place. Now it looked as if we were going to get a piece of that action. “Told you so, asshole,” I said to Casey, recalling my prediction back in Kuwait that we would get a bite of the Baghdad apple.

  Casey and I and our boys were soon on the road again as the advance quartering party, and after traveling only about three kilometers, we got a taste of what the 5th Marines were facing. The battalion headquarters unit we were looking for was near the burning remnants of an M1A1 Abrams battle tank that had been ripped apart, and the crew inside killed, when a suicide bomber drove a pickup truck loaded with explosives into it. Our only job was to pick out a safe place for our own battalion to stay that night, and we weren’t there to get involved with someone else’s fight. That changed in a hurry.

  Their busy command tracks were parked in a scrubby area where black smoke blossomed from a nearby burning oil pipe. I left my sniper rifle in the Humvee and was carrying only an M-16 as we walked over to the headquarters. There was a crisp burst of loud popping noises, but the officers were not bothered by it, explaining that the sound was only the creaking expansion of that burning pipe.

  They told us that Iraqi paramilitaries, the fedayeen, were running around out there in the fields, wearing black pajamas and causing trouble. Black pajamas? Were they were trying to look like the Viet Cong and scare us with the shadow of Vietnam? That was a long time ago; we weren’t Vietnam vets, and some of our boys probably didn’t even know what a Viet Cong was, so old spooks could not haunt us. Did they really think they could freak us out with some Halloween getup?

  There was more popping, and I asked again if someone was shooting at us. No, that was just the pipe. Then, closer, it happened again. Pop-pow! Pop-pow! Casey and I ducked at the familiar crack of 7.62 mm bullets passing overhead, and I shouted, “That’s no fucking burning pipe! That’s incoming!”

  “No,” protested their executive officer, a major, as Casey and I moved behind an armored Amtrac. “That’s been going off all day. It’s just the pipe burning.”

  “Sir. Trust me on this one,” I told the XO. “I’ve been shot at many times, and that definitely is incoming fire.” I wasn’t supposed to get involved, but people were trying to kill us!

  First, I needed my sniper rifle. Someone would have to grab the big gun from the truck, cross fifty yards of open ground over which bullets were flying, and bring it to me so I could start hunting. Luckily, I had just the guy. “Daniel! Bring my rifle! Now!”

  Since we still had not reached Baghdad, Daniel Tracy was immovable in his faith that he was immune to enemy gunfire. I saw him gently pick up my rifle with both hands and jog toward us. He wasn’t moving in much of a hurry.

  “Keep your head down,” Casey shouted. Bullets showered around us, kicking up the dirt and plinking off the armored vehicles as Daniel loped across the open area, then came through a gully. He arrived unharmed and not even breathing hard, holding out my gun with a grin. “Here y’are, boss.”

  “About fuckin’ time,” I said, and we traded weapons.

  I started to climb atop an Amtrac, but Casey grabbed my shirt and hauled me back. “Hold on, jackass. Let me go up first,” he barked. This sudden transformation into John Wayne startled me, but I realized that he was getting the hang of that leadership thing and was addressing me not as a friend but as an asset to be deployed. Casey went up first to see if there were any immediate threats, and I followed, feeling as if I were going to war with my mother telling me how to behave.

  “Hey! What are you guys doing?” the XO snapped. “There are friendlies out there. Make sure you don’t shoot any of them. We don’t want any friendly fire incidents.”

  I almost laughed. “Sir, I’ve got a fucking scoped rifle here. When I shoot, it will be at the enemy.”

  Now the commander of the Amtrac woke up long enough to notice that he had company atop his vehicle. “Hey! You can’t shoot from here!”

  “Why not?” asked Casey. “It doesn’t look like you’re shooting at anybody.”

  I chose the gun turret platform as my firing platform, and the gunner stood there looking at me curiously, holding the trigger to his.50 caliber machine gun. I told him not to even fucking move, because if that turret shifted, it could crush me.

  “Well, we might have to shoot,” the Amtrac commander protested, trying to get back in the game. Pouting little shit.

  “By the time you find something to fire at, it’ll be too late,” Casey yelled. “Now get out of the way.” It was nice to have an officer around to holler at other officers.

  I put the rifle to my shoulder and my eye to the scope as Casey ignored the incoming fire and scanned the field with his binos. He pointed to the west of the road. “About a half mile away, six guys in black,” he said. We painted them with a laser at 922 yards, and I dialed in the dope, thinking, Oh, Ym gonna VC your asses, dudes. This aint Vietnam, and I aint afraid of no ghosts.

  I chose a target on the far left, a guy whose RPK light machine gun was merrily chattering away, and clicked two minutes right to my scope to shift the crosshairs to the middle of his body mass. Then I caressed the trigger, and the bullet hit two inches from the center of his chest, flipping him violently backward as his automatic weapon hit the dirt. I exhaled and worked the bolt to put in a new round. That’s one. Who’s next?

  Daniel had gone back to the trucks at Casey’s direction. Our armored Humvees were wheeling into position to fire as Castillo and Marsh got ready to open up on the bushes.

  A few seconds later, I found another guy about fifty yards to the right of my first target and adjusted the scope to nine plus four, tacking on some more right windage, aimed at his center mass. Squeeeeze, bang, recoil, eye still in the scope, and this AK-toting asshole took it right through the chin, the bullet drilling a hole the size of a silver dollar in his head and sending teeth and jawbone fragments flying out of the skull and onto the desert floor. Damn. How could I have hit so high when I was aiming at his chest? He must have moved.

  Other Marines had joined the fight by now. As they moved forward to clear the area, I had to stop. The bad guys scattered or died.

  Our own battalion pulled up a few minutes later, and we parked our nine hundred Marines and 112 vehicles in the median strip of the broad highway, leaving room for other vehicles to continue moving on both sides of the road.


  I waited for things to settle down and then had another private little off-the-record talk with McCoy as we walked the perimeter. Despite just having come out of a major battle in Al Kut, he was up to speed on everything that had happened within his battalion, including the casualties and my problems with Officer Bob. Plenty of senior staff members had watched Bob’s actions with growing concern.

  I knew the Boss would never say anything critical of any officer in front of me, but I told him that I was being kept on the wrong side of the door in this freakin’ war and was only getting into action almost by accident.

  The colonel was as tired as the rest of us but told me to calm down. “You got how many, now?”

  “Fourteen confirmed, boss. Should have been more, but I either get there late or get yanked out early.”

  McCoy nodded and said the time had come for that to change. He wanted my rifle where it would do the most good. I would roam the battlefield, he said, with Casey and the boys going along to cover my ass.

  Finally, the green light of freedom that would get me out from under Bob’s thumb, a deal blessed by Darkside Six himself! McCoy’s aggressive philosophy was to get his killers in position to kill, and I knew there was going to be a lot of killing going on in the next few days.

  18

  Push, Push, Push

  The 3rd Infantry Division had captured the Baghdad International Airport, other Army units were crunching the key town of Karbala southwest of the capital, and we were closing in from the southeast. Everyone was coming to roost at the same time, and while the Iraqis might delay us here and there, as the first week of April came to a close, they couldn’t stop us. The regime’s spokesman, a little fruitcake known to every television audience in the world as “Baghdad Bob,” was undeterred by reality and busily peddled the official line that we had all been rolled up like a dirty rug and were on the run. Baghdad Bob was broadcasting from a swank hotel, not on the front lines, where things were dirty and bloody. Looks like each side had its own Bob.