He stood at the bottom of a long sloping hill with the other recruits, many of whom were squeezed in between two other recruits so they wouldn’t fall from exhaustion. To do so was to fail the course and they had all come too far and paid too high a price to wash out now The recruits, who were about to be pinned with the Marine Corps insignia, were all in varying stages of fatigue. Stryker glanced around and saw nothing but exhaustion, drawn faces, heavy breathing, and slumped shoulders. It had been brutal for everyone.
They lined up in two formations in front of the half-sized replica of the Iwo Jima Memorial. The chaplain led them in prayer, after the color guard raised the flag, and each new recruit accepted the insignia. Then the first sergeant addressed the formation, and the drill instructors passed through the ranks, shaking hands and addressing each of them as “Marine” before they moved on to the next man. Several men leaked tears down dirty faces.
Stryker was the last to receive his pin. He shook hands with his drill instructor, a small wiry cracker from Georgia who had singled Stryker out for additional scorn and abuse. He grew to hate the sergeant with a ferocity he had never known and the entire thing had been hell on earth because of the small man who stood in front of him. During the training, Stryker wanted to twist the man’s skinny neck off his body almost daily, and he still felt a smoldering resentment toward the drill instructor.
As the men broke ranks, family members and other loved ones crowded around the new Marines, backslapping, shaking hands, embracing, and otherwise expressing their happiness for the young men. Stryker stood next to his DI. Sergeant Keynes said to him, “get cleaned up and I’ll meet you after breakfast at the front gate. We’re going to get a beer.” Keynes turned and stalked off with that menacing stride Stryker knew so well.
Two hours later, the men were sitting in a booth in one of the many bars that surrounds military installations. They were all pretty much the same, with cheap beer, flimsy furnishings, and servers who couldn’t make the cut at the more expensive places. Keynes, true to his word, had picked up Stryker at the front gate, and they drove to the bar in a brand new F-150 that had every option. Stryker was uneasy with the silence, and unsure what the entire thing was about but decided to match silence with silence. As they stared at each other over two beer mugs, Keynes sighed and said, “You like my truck?”
“Yes,” Stryker answered, still wondering what this was all about.
“That’s my retirement present to myself. I’m putting in my papers after twenty years of service. Do you want to know why?”
“I don’t really care.” He was growing tired of whatever game the sergeant was playing.
“I get that you’re angry with me because I treated you harshly,” he said, holding one hand up when Stryker was forming a reply. “Just hear me out. I’ve only known two men who didn’t break down in some way or another over the course of basic. I’m looking at one of them right now.”
“Who was the other one?”
“You’re looking at him right now.”
“Is this supposed to be a compliment?”
“It’s a statement of fact. You’re the first recruit I wasn’t able to break and remake, and I’ve seen a lot of recruits. To tell you the truth, I love making Marines. It’s a noble thing to do; but it takes a lot of energy and I guess meeting you convinced me that it’s time to go. I’m close to mandatory anyway, so I’m leaving.”
“Look at me,” Stryker said. “Do I look breakable to you? I’ve not met three people in my life that I might be afraid of. I’m not breakable.”
“That’s why we’re here. I want to talk to you about your future in the Corps. I want you to consider applying for Force Recon. Just look at me. It has nothing to do with strength or size. It’s that you have the two qualities a Recon Marine has to have. You don’t have an ounce of quit in you, and you’re smart.”
Stryker looked away for a moment but felt a surge of excitement at the idea of joining the most elite fighting force in the world. He had long wanted to be Recon, but thought he had to complete a tour in the Corps before he could apply.
“I’m not sure that’s possible.”
“It is.” Keynes pulled an envelope from his back pocket and laid it on the table between them. Stryker opened it and unfolded the document. After reading carefully, he looked up and said, “These are orders for assignment to Recon.”
“They are.”
“How did you get them?”
“I made some calls. As former Force Recon, I still have many friends over there; so I called in some favors. If you want in, you’re in. If not, tear up the orders. You’ve got some leave now so use the time to study up on Recon and don’t let yourself get out of shape. Right now, you’re a pretty well-honed knife. If you join, you’ll become a razor blade. The problem is, even though you got through basic, it didn’t do what it should have done for you. You should have been challenged by it and you weren’t. You breezed through it without even straining yourself and you’ll never know what kind of man you can be if you don’t find something that pressures you to your limits. But think it over and let me know next week.” He raised his mug in a toast, and they both emptied their mugs and ordered another.
“Okay, and thanks for doing what you did.” Stryker felt odd; he suddenly liked a man he gladly would have beaten to death a few minutes earlier.
“I didn’t decide to give you the orders until this morning.”
“Why? This must have taken weeks to get through.”
“I saw you stop and pick up two recruits that had given up at the end of the Crucible. You held them up as you ran until they found the will to finish.”
“Other guys did that too.”
“They did. But they did it because the guy who was struggling was their friend. They were people they enlisted with, or guys they hung out with. You didn’t hang out with anybody.”
“I’m sort of a loner. And I guess I’m honored by the idea that you went to this much trouble to get me in.” Stryker shrugged, then added, “thank you.”
“You helped men because they were trying to become fellow Marines. They helped their friends. We have a word for that around here: leadership. I’ve never had this conversation with any other Marine and I’ve never recommended anyone for Force Recon.”
Two weeks later, Stryker reported for training and began the Ascension Pipeline, the individual training part of the larger program. There were five phases to the training, and he spent the next year and a half drinking water from a fire hose and traveling all over the country attending different sessions that led to achieving qualifications as Reconnaissance Man/Parachutist/Combatant Diver Qualified. He had never been happier. The training pushed him to the limits of his abilities. The instructors were more interested in passing along knowledge than bending him to their will, and insisted that he become perfect at one skill before they moved him to the next assignment.
Three weeks after completing training, he deployed to Iraq as a member of the First Recon Battalion, serving in a Direct Action Platoon. He arrived shortly after the killing of the Blackwater contractors, and spent the first month in the area around Fallujah, calling in artillery and air strikes on groups of insurgence that surrounded the outskirts of the city. After several stalled attempts to launch an offensive, the heat was on to take the city back. Stryker became a member of a platoon of Recon Marines that were to infiltrate the city and occupy a building close to the center of town. From there, they would direct the fire missions and air strikes that would ultimately level the city. Operation Vigilant Resolve was launched.
They entered the city on November 7, 2004, at 4:00 a.m. They crept past dark buildings, many reduced to rubble, hugging the walls of whatever they passed. Stryker was in the middle of the column of Marines that moved silently through the city, peering in all directions with their NVGs. It was ghostly quiet and dark. The stench of rotting corpses, burning buildings, and garbage was overwhelming.
Stryker wondered where the insurgents were.
Their mission briefers told them there were still more than 1,000 fighters in the city and they should expect stiff resistance. This was a direct action mission and little attempt would be made to avoid detection. The platoon members carried double loads of ammo and hand grenades, as well as four SAWs. They passed stairwells that had been bricked up to deny the invaders cover and force them into ambushes.
When they arrived at the building they were to occupy, the captain wordlessly pointed to the four corners of the five-story building and then pointed up. Stryker and three others moved to the four corners and stood watch at the windows; four other men with laser designators climbed up the stairway to the top floor. The rest of the men took positions by shattered windows and holes in the brick walls. They stacked mags and grenades next to their positions.
They waited.
When the sun rose and targets became visible, the men on the roof would begin selecting targets and rain hell on the enemy. The enemy would eventually find them, and they would hold until the tanks entered the city.
At least that was the plan.
The sun rose, Stryker heard the distinctive wail of the call to prayer, then silence for a half-hour. At 7:30, the spotters on the roof started calling for fire missions, and explosions filled the air around them. Later, AC-130s arrived and added the distinctive boom of the 105mm cannon. The Warthogs joined the fight and it became impossible to distinguish the explosions. By the end of the day, still undiscovered, they had directed so much fire on the city that they had flattened much of the downtown area.
Their luck ran out the following morning. After the call to prayer, a group of insurgents spotted the men on the roof from a nearby rooftop. Stryker stood at his window when his earbud crackled. “Fifty diaper heads approaching from the west.”
“Anyone else approaching from other directions?” the captain asked.
“Negative.”
Captain Elgin pointed at two SAW gunners. “West side.” The men moved to two ground-floor windows, grabbed two chairs, and using them as crude bipods, sighted through the windows from about five feet into the room. Stryker stood at the third widow scanning for the enemy with his M-4. Elgin ordered two M203 grenade launchers to the roof to join the spotters.
A group of the insurgents rounded the corner and began firing at their position. Stryker saw they were being supported by two snipers, one on each side of the street. He moved to the other side of the window to get cover from the first sniper, aimed at the window where he saw the second one, and waited for the man to reappear. After a few seconds, he saw the man bring his rifle up and fired a burst into his chest. The sniper fell forward and lay draped over the windowsill. Stryker again changed sides, moving back to his original position, and waited for the first sniper to appear. The SAWs opened up and cut down a wide swath of the attackers. When the first sniper again appeared, Stryker fired, but his burst went wide and puffs of dust erupted from the building wall. He heard the whooshing sound of grenades leaving their launchers, and four more insurgents went down. The firing was coming from all sides now and every Marine was fully engaged in the fight.
Wave after wave of insurgents attempted to storm the building, snipers were everywhere, and they were taking multiple RPG hits every minute. The snipers focused on the spotters on the rooftop to keep them from calling in strikes. It worked. After two were wounded, Elgin pulled them off the rooftop and relocated them to the fourth floor, where they would have cover from above.
The snipers were firing down on them from a higher building. They were effectively blind with regard to the enemy’s movements. The building was completely surrounded now and was too close to use artillery or air strikes, even if they had spotters. They were holding their own, but burning through ammo at an alarming rate. Captain Elgin went down first, killed by a sniper, as he was requesting assistance on the radio. By the end of the day, they had two dead and four wounded. When the sun went down the call to prayer sounded again, and the day’s battle was over. Not even the insurgents would risk a night fight with men equipped with NVGs.
The men lay with their backs to the walls drinking from canteens. The fight had been so intense that few of them had had the luxury of reaching for a canteen.
“Stryker,” Banner called out.
“Yes sir,” Stryker replied after he moved to where Banner sat.
“Get the watch organized. I gotta talk to the colonel.”
“On it.”
Banner looked away and began speaking into the radio. Stryker sent one man to each corner of the roof and one to each corner of the ground floor. “Four-hour shifts,” he said, before returning to his corner.
The following day was much the same. The call to prayer ended and the fighting began a half hour later. “Jesus, are these guys unionized?” Stryker muttered as he brought his M-4 up and waited for the group to round the corner. This time they advanced slowly, moving from one heap of rubble to the next, always under the cover of sniper fire. One group managed to get within fifty feet of the building when Banner yelled, “grenades!” The spotters and grenade launchers rained death on the fighters from the fourth floor; they hastily retreated to the cover of a building on the south side of the street, dragging their dead and wounded with them.
There was a lull in the fighting and then a hail of RPGs hit the building, forcing the defenders to seek cover. Stryker was at a window that was not close to the RPG impacts and saw the enemy again try to maneuver on the building. He glanced over and saw that one of the SAW gunners lay dead with his weapon still intact. The other was bent over cringing under his windowsill, his weapon lying by his side. Stryker ran over and grabbed the man by the collar, pulled him upright, and handed him his weapon. “Fight, or we’re all dead,” he whispered. He rolled the dead Marine to the side, picked up his weapon, and they began laying down suppressing fire, regaining fire superiority, and forcing the insurgents to retreat.
When the last call to prayer sounded, the fighting again ended, and Stryker looked around. They now had four dead and eleven wounded, including Banner with a severe chest wound. He was unconscious. Stryker was now in command. The men looked at him, waiting for orders.
Stryker said, “watch starts now: one man on each corner. Four-hour shifts. Get food and rehydrate while we can. Everybody do an ammo check and report to me. Anybody not on watch, get some sleep.” He walked to the wall where the dead and wounded formed two separate lines and asked the corpsman if he needed anything.
“Running low on everything,” he replied, turning to start an IV.
Stryker walked up the stairs to the fourth floor, grabbed a pair of binoculars from a tabletop, and focused on the retreating insurgents. They disappeared behind a low building and then reappeared as they entered the mosque. He handed the binoculars to Edwards and said, “See if they come back out or not. Keep eyes on them.”
“Got it.”
He went downstairs and sat in a corner, thinking. One by one, the men gave him the ammo- and grenades-remaining report. When he added it up, he knew they would be overrun in the next battle. “I have to find a way to get these men out of here alive. Assess and evaluate,” he thought. That’s what they trained us to do. Later, Reynolds, one of the spotters, reported that the insurgents had not left the mosque by nightfall.
“Thanks,” Stryker replied, and then he formed a plan. When the colonel called, he would be ready to recommend a course of action that would be turned down, and then offer the only viable option. He sat by the radio and answered it when it came to life.
“Yes sir.”
“Who am I speaking to?”
“Corporal Stryker. ”
“Banner?”
“Badly wounded and out of commission.”
“You’re in command?”
“Yes sir.”
“Sit rep, please.”
Stryker took a deep breath, then replied, “Four KIA, eleven wounded. Three wounded are able to fight. We’re out of water and don’t have enough ammo to get through the next a
ssault, which will begin at 0800 tomorrow. They’ll come at us a half hour after the call to prayer.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry to say this, but I can’t promise that the tanks can get there in time. We’re having to clear rubble as we go and it’s slowing things down.”
“We know the insurgents are staying in the mosque that is a klick north of our position.”
“You know I can’t bomb that.”
Stryker took another deep breath, and then said, “I need a broken arrow at 0800 tomorrow, sir.”
“Repeat please,” he replied after a pause.
“I need two five-hundred pounders on my position at 0800.”
“I hope there’s more to this plan.”
“There is. I want to move to the building that is 100 meters to our west. It’s relatively intact and would provide some blast protection.”
“You will still be way too close.”
“It’s the only option we have, sir.”
After a long pause, the colonel replied, “I’ll have it dialed up for you.”
“Thank you.”
“Good luck, son.” Stryker signed off and assembled the men on the first floor.
“We’ve fought well and bravely,” Stryker said. “I’m proud of us. You should be, too.” He paused before speaking again. “I want all your input after I tell you what the colonel said and what I think we should do. I want to ask you to not react to it, but think about it before speaking. Remember what they taught us: assess and evaluate.” He looked at each face. They were exhausted, dirty, and thirsty. Some wore expressions of concern; others gazed back with a look of grim determination.
Stryker: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale Page 3
