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  It was all a distraction from the true focus of the mission, and the most important point seemed to have become lost in the drama. We had fought our way to the heavily defended Diyala Bridge, captured it, and crossed it, and that long, curving, bloody road on the far bank would lead us straight into the heart of Baghdad.

  Wasn’t that why we were here?

  22

  The Overpass

  Moments of history are built on seemingly minor points, and it was fortunate for the Marine Corps, and for the United States of America, that Lieutenant Casey Kuhlman was sitting around the Main headquarters, doing nothing, on Tuesday, April 8. Everywhere else in Iraq, the war was blasting ahead with incredible momentum. It seemed to be leaving Casey behind, and he was big-league pissed off.

  Far down south, the British 7th Armored Brigade finally entered Basra. United States Army troops had begun launching heavily armored probes called “thunder runs” out of the Baghdad airport and into the southwest section of the tangled metropolis and were met by intense enemy fire. American Marines were building more and more temporary bridges across the Tigris River and steadily putting more men and vehicles on the other side. The noose was closing on Baghdad, and the Iraqis no longer had any illusions about winning this war.

  Our battalion had crossed the Tigris overnight on a pontoon bridge laid parallel to the blown Diyala span. The darkness was impenetrable; Baghdad was blacked out, and we could not turn on any vehicle lights because they would pinpoint our positions. Casey, wearing night vision glasses, led our headquarters unit over in that pitch blackness, and every other vehicle lined up behind his Humvee, without radio communication. If he had gone over the edge of that narrow bridge, we probably all would have followed. We had drilled this follow-the-leader routine for weeks, and now, when it required a dangerous river crossing, he made the job automatic and quick. By the time dawn broke on April 8, the entire 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, was completely within the Baghdad city limits. The Bull had arrived.

  I had spent the intervening hours pulling myself together, comfortable among my buddies in the Main, where no questions were asked. After cleaning up, getting some chow and some sleep, and gaining the alone time needed to sort out my feelings, my spirits steadily improved. The awful events at the bridgehead faded into memories and shuffled away to their proper places deep within my brain, going into one of those private rooms where I could close the door on them. It was getting crowded in there.

  I knew that I had to get back on track in a hurry, because if I kept acting weird, a spotlight of suspicion would swing toward me. There was still a war on, and I was a shooter and a leader, so feeling sorry for myself or letting a series of terrible events beat me down simply was not an option. If I let on that my confidence was shaken, it would spread like a virus among those around me, and I would not let that happen. Impossible.

  I had stripped down my sniper rifle and cleaned it carefully, becoming lost in the muscle-memory routine of the rag and gun oil, and slowly was able to pull myself back from the abyss, with the promise to never venture so near that edge again. All that the incident at the bridge really proved was that I was human, just like everybody else.

  Once we were across the Tigris, the Main headquarters was set up in the prickly palm grove, which put me almost right back where I had started the previous day. I felt no guilt now, no doubt-nothing but a renewed determination to get on with the job. What was done was done. That other stuff was yesterday.

  I hunted up Colonel McCoy to iron out the situation with Officer Bob.

  “So what’s on your mind?” the colonel asked.

  “I just wanted to find out what’s going to happen next so we don’t have a breakdown in communication like in the last attack when you had to scream into the radio to find me.” I took a deep, frustrated breath. “Bob told me today that from now on I’m strictly staying with the Main. I just want to see if that’s what you want.” By going over the staff officer’s head to talk directly with McCoy, I was close to insubordination, but this issue had to be settled.

  McCoy had bigger things to worry about than this shit, and I knew it, but he growled, “I’ll take care of it. You just get your stuff ready. We’re going to check out what we think is a chemical factory. You follow me, and if we make contact, get to work. Be ready to go in twenty minutes.” The boss gave me a slap on the back, and I walked off to prepare for the patrol.

  The colonel was as good as his word, but it was a devil’s bargain. I was going back into the fight, but Casey had to stay behind again, which meant that I was losing my security blanket. As much as I disliked that decision, it was neither illogical nor unexpected, for Casey had proven invaluable. His experience level had soared since the start of the war, and he was always busy, whether searching an Iraqi armory with enough weapons to equip a battalion or using his engineering training to help lay down those important new bridges. Such things win wars, and the battalion honchos expressed confidence in him.

  Casey was blind to that; he just wanted to get back to the fighting. “I’m sick of being pissed off,” he wrote in his journal. “I am just depressed… a monkey could do this job. I’m a glorified taxi driver. I would be the happiest man alive if I had a rifle platoon right now.” Having had a taste of fire, he wanted more, and he considered anything less than a shooting battle to be a bullshit mission.

  By splitting us up, Officer Bob had checkmated the development of my sniper team. We had already proven to other combat leaders how effective we were working together, but it had made no difference to Bob. He wanted both of us left behind but settled for Casey. When I broke the news that he was being quarantined, Casey just shook his head and said nothing at all, but it was easy enough to read the anger and disappointment in his thoughts. I left with the main body for the attack a few minutes later while Casey told his boys to stand down and pulled his truck out of the assault position.

  That same day, with the Main and Tac HQs established and guiding the battle that was developing up the road, a couple of large Iraqi BM-21 rockets came howling into the area and exploded nearby. As usual, Officer Bob went bananas, got on his radio, and started yelling gibberish at the senior officers in the Tac, who were only a few yards away and knew as well as he what had just happened. Bob said that everybody had to pack up and move, although no one had been hurt and our counterbattery radar had already pinpointed the launch site and was guiding planes to attack and shut it down. Bob was ignored, but the incident spurred Casey to get out of the man’s presence and find something useful to do.

  One of the Secret Squirrels, an intelligence officer, told him that an abandoned antiaircraft missile launch site had been found nearby, and he wanted to check it out. Instead of assigning a grunt to provide an armed escort, Casey grabbed his rifle and went along to do the job himself. They came upon a carefully built position containing another of those huge French-built Roland antiair missile launchers, a state-of-the-art piece of defensive equipment, but useless because its operators had abandoned it. While the Squirrel rummaged through the trashed position, Casey found a discarded Iraqi flag: three broad stripes-red, white, and black-with three big green stars in the middle of the white one. It was not a new flag, and the colors had been dulled by time and exposure to the hot sun.

  To most Americans, the Iraqi flag was just a flag, but this one was a relic from another era. Its design had been the banner of Iraq since 1963, but just before the Gulf War in 1991, Saddam Hussein added the takbir of “Allah Akbar” (God is great) in green Arabic script, between the stars, in an effort to portray himself as a leader of all Muslims. Unknowingly, Casey had picked up a flag that was considered a pre-Saddam symbol, a fact that was very important to Iraqis. Without much thought other than having a neat souvenir, he rolled it up, stuffed it into his backpack, and promptly forgot about it. That flag would be unfurled a few days later in a historic moment.

  The morning’s mission began with the Bravo tanks and Kilo infantry heading for a suspected chemical fact
ory while the India grunts set up in a blocking position and cleared neighborhoods to the east. The military side of the operation was relatively routine, because our coordination was flawless and we all knew our jobs.

  The problem was that we were no longer out in the desert or going through smaller towns. We were entering the congested suburbs of Baghdad itself, and Iraqis streamed out of the buildings and into the streets to watch us pass, most of them waving and smiling. Some even danced with joy. This was the kind of welcome that we had been told to expect, but after our previous experiences, it was unnerving. Our armored vehicles ground toward our objective without incident, and we kept studying the cheering crowd for signs of trouble. We wanted to join the celebration of freedom, but we didn’t want to be ambushed or sniped at, or to kill any more civilians.

  There was some talk later that the mission had been assigned mainly to give McCoy’s battalion something to do, and there was no doubt that the Boss was impatient. He was drawn to danger spots as if by magnetism, and when he popped out of his Humvee to enter a large building that was taller than most of those surrounding it, Sergeant Major Dave Howell put his big arm around my shoulders and told me quietly, “If he keeps this up, he is going to get himself killed. Go watch out for him.”

  We followed McCoy inside what had obviously once been some sort of government building and found that looters had beaten us to the place and had stripped it bare, from the high ceilings to the floor, leaving behind only piles of junk and a musty emptiness. We ran up to the roof, and Baghdad spread out before us like a dusty checkerboard. Buildings lay out from our position at every angle, like spokes in a wheel, and parks and open spaces broke up the grids of streets. Automobiles were driving about, and people were outdoors in vast numbers. Were we going to have to fight through this?

  I found a good vantage point in a rooftop corner, behind the ever-present tiara wall that every building in Iraq seemed to wear, and settled in. Other Marines spread out as I glassed the area and watched waves of civilians but saw no discernible soldier types. Maybe, I thought, we had broken their will to fight after all. I told the boys to stay sharp despite the whooping and hollering out there in the streets. As if to emphasize the danger, only a few minutes passed before we got into one of the strangest firefights of the war.

  The colonel had gone back down into the building and called up to tell me it was time to drive over and check India Company, two miles away. I hurried down and linked up with him at the Humvees parked just outside the compound, and as we were saddling up, the sharp sounds of a short, vicious battle erupted inside the courtyard through which we had just passed. I had my rifle ready, but the high wall prevented me from supporting the Marines doing the firing, and by the time I popped around the corner, three Iraqi fighters lay sprawled dead about fifty meters away. Two had loaded rocket-propelled grenade launchers on their shoulders, and the third man carried a short AKM automatic rifle, the preferred weapon of Saddam’s Special Forces.

  Where the hell had they come from? This area was supposed to be secure.

  An Amtrac sergeant needing to answer a call of nature had gone to the corner of the compound, which was covered by a layer of smelly garbage and sludge that indicated the Iraqis had also used it as a latrine. Luckily, with the combat rule of never letting anyone go anywhere unprotected, his gunner on the Amtrac was keeping an eye on him. When the Marine had his pants down, these three jokers crawled out of the slime and mire only four feet away, apparently thinking everyone had left the compound. Surprise was total, and the Marine took off, yelling for his Amtrac mate to open fire, which he did with a 7.62 mm machine gun, and other Marine grunts quickly came up and joined the shooting. The Iraqis were killed before they could get off a shot. Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good, because those fedayeen nuts could definitely have done some damage.

  McCoy came into the courtyard in a fury. To Darkside Six, the otherwise laughable incident meant that his battalion was getting sloppy, and he ordered Kilo to search the entire compound thoroughly again; then he dispatched the Bravo tankers to scour the surrounding area. The laughing, waving civilians parted quickly at the sound of gunfire and the sight of suddenly grim Marines who once again were wearing their war faces.

  Sure enough, only ten minutes later, the tanks kicked over a hornets’ nest, and the blasts of their big guns shook the streets as a duel opened with Iraqi troops protected in a strong bunker complex. An ambush point had been built right in the middle of an urban area. They obviously were not as concerned as we were about civilian casualties.

  With Panda driving like mad, we were rushing toward the battle area in our Humvee until I once again realized the lack of wisdom in getting caught between Abrams tanks and whatever it was they were trying to kill. Instead, I spotted some Marines on a highway overpass and yelled for the Bear to get us the hell over there. He bounced the curb, churned into lower gear, regained speed, and power-slid the truck right up against the walkway to the overpass, as if he didn’t want me to have to walk far. We ran to the crest of the bridge.

  A Marine was shooting at distant targets in the same bunker complex the Bravo tanks were attacking. “Staff Sergeant,” he said, “boy, am I glad you’re here. I’ve killed three of them already, but they’re too far out for me to hit with this piece of shit.”

  “How far?” I put my rifle against the metal railing and braced hard into it.

  “About eight hundred yards.” He was almost at the maximum range of his M16A4 rifle, a newer version of the standard infantry weapon. It had a low-power scope that increases accuracy but not distance.

  “I’d say that piece of shit is doing you pretty good.” The kid had done well. “Walk me onto where they are.”

  He pointed, then fired some rounds to kick up dirt in the target area. Through my scope, that was as good as a flashing neon sign. I glassed onto the bunkers made of concrete, logs, and sandbags and through a shifting haze of dust and debris saw a lot of enemy soldiers bobbing up and down, firing and dodging around. The Bravo tanks and the grunts were already putting the fear of Allah into them, and the poor souls had no idea that a sniper was joining the hunt. With no time to use the laser, I estimated the range, dialed in the dope, seven plus four and three minutes right, and settled down to work.

  I centered up on the first target, about a half mile away, and squeezed the trigger, starting the familiar pattern of firing and reloading with machinelike quickness, coming down on another target as soon as I fired a shot. Bang, hit. Bang, hit. Bang, miss. Bang, hit. Bang, miss. Bang, miss. Fuck. Bang, hit. Four hits, three misses, one obscenity, and it was over.

  Seven shots for four targets is a terrible ratio for a sniper, but of all the shooting I did in this war, I considered this the best. The fluid battlefield was cluttered, visibility was terrible, it was hard to read firing lines, the targets were moving quickly and at crazy angles, and I had no trained observer to call the shots or targets. It was slapstick sniping at its best, and I loved it. I had literally shot away the lingering shadow of guilt from the bridge.

  When the bunker complex was cleared, we set up a defensive perimeter a block and a half behind it, brought up the Main and the combat trains, and settled in for the evening.

  Casey and I shared some MREs and tried to guess what might still be ahead. After the ambush today, we knew there were plenty of bad guys left out there who did not intend to let us go strolling through downtown Baghdad. Tomorrow morning, the entire city could be rising up against us, and we all again had visions of Black Hawk Down and of the dead Army Rangers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. We all knew the story and understood its significance.

  But I had been in Somalia and knew there were huge differences between the two places. This was not Mogadishu, and we could handle this town. We had a veteran battalion supported by other aggressive Marine and Army units and all the air power we might need. “Not this time,” I told Casey. “Not us. They fuck with the Bull and they get the horns.” I slept well t
hat night, with no visits from any acquaintances at all.

  23

  Sniper Team

  The battalion staff had a dawn meeting in a real conference room inside a captured headquarters of the Republican Guard, and Colonel McCoy and his planners spread out maps of the built-up area we were about to enter. The entire 1st Marine Division was now across the Tigris, piling ever more stress upon the reeling Iraqi defenders.

  Desertion was decimating the enemy forces, and there was little command and control over whatever remained of the Iraqi army. While the regulars might have packed it in and made a quick return to civilian life, the fedayeen and remnants of the Ba’ath Party militia were still around, and we anticipated that today’s fighting could be as hard as anything we had yet faced.

  Red circles on the staff’s plastic map overlays marked important buildings in our zone, but reaching them would be a slow and deliberate process. We might have to clear every building, one by one, to get to our prime objectives, and while such a leapfrog tactic would be effective, it could take forever.

  On top of that, disturbing news had come from the Jackals, who told us that they were concerned that their colleagues lodged in the hotels of downtown Baghdad might have been taken hostage by the collapsing Iraqi military. They worried that some journalists might be executed.

  While the staff laid out the attack plan, those of us in the Main decided that the bright new morning would be a fine time to wash up and do our laundry. This time we had an opportunity to do a really good scrub instead of the hasty canteen showers and baby-wipe baths that we had endured over the past weeks, and we got busy cleaning our bodies, clothes, and weapons. We stuffed big plastic trash bags into cardboard boxes, then poured laundry powder and water into one and clear water into another and proceeded to scrub. Cans of water were set aside for dousing ourselves in open showers.