We were just carrying ammo and water. We'd go in with our standard ammo load, with just a few modifications to fit the circumstances. Since we didn't intend to kill any noncombatants unless they absolutely insisted on it, we'd clear rooms with stun grenades from our non-lethal weapons package. These were always called flash-bangs because they blew with a deafening bang and brilliant flash, but no lethal fragmentation. But we'd still bring regular frag grenades. Captain Z wanted more claymore mines in case we had to defend a landing zone while waiting for the helicopters. He also insisted that everyone carry an intravenous kit in their butt pack. You should have heard the peacetime whining from the medical section when they had to break all those supplies out.
The banter got a little thick, at least among the lieutenants. We were loading magazines and Jimmy Nichols, trying to make a little light of the situation, was saying, "I wouldn't mind a Navy Cross." Which was next in line after the Medal of Honor for heroism in combat.
My Irish mother would have had a few things to say about tempting fate.
"Just make sure you get the bronze one they pin on your chest," O'Brien told him, "and not the white stone one they hammer into the ground six feet over your head."
The pile of empty boxes, cans, bandoliers, and packaging was amazing. The troops went down to the fantail by squads to test-fire weapons and check the zeros on their sights. Everyone else was waiting in the marshaling area in their helo serials. Force Recon and the SEALs in their sand-colored fireproof flight suits and balaclavas, high-speed lightweight helmets, combat vests, and shooting glasses. Their rifles were M-4 carbines—short barrel, sliding stock M-16's—with Aimpoint red-dot sights. Their squad automatic weapons were the new compact, collapsible-stock paratrooper model.
Echo Company was in desert camouflage with pile sweaters underneath against the cold of the desert night, faces camouflaged, carrying our old worn-out weapons. And I do mean worn-out. Our squad automatic weapons, long overdue for replacement, were literally held together with wire and tape.
I didn't give the troops a motivational speech about living up to our heroes, like Dan Dailey on the Peking Wall, Herman Hanneken and William Button at Grande Riviere, or John Ripley at the Dong Ha Bridge. I also did not recite the St. Crispin's Day speech from Shakespeare's Henry V. Instead I used the time to move along the line with a satellite photo, having each Marine tell me every move they were going to make once they got off the helicopter. This caused everyone else to be furiously studying the operation order in the little green notebooks the Staff Sergeant and I made everyone carry.
Staff Sergeant Frederick was walking around tearing strips off a roll of tape to secure everyone's grenade pins. In Desert Storm he'd witnessed a PFC snag the ring of a frag on a truck ramp and blow himself to pieces. "Just a little bit around the outside of the head, there, crazy," he was saying. "No tape around the spoon, or it won't come off."
O'Brien caught my eye and beckoned me over. I turned the job of quiz master over to Sergeant Turner.
I'd left Jack alone since he'd gotten the message. He didn't need any lame questions wondering if he was okay. Of course he wasn't okay. I waited for him to speak first.
"I had to go," he said.
"I know," I replied.
"The woman I love more than anything else in this world needs me, but how can I go home while my platoon goes into combat?"
The answer was self-evident, but unexplainable to anyone who hadn't felt that awesome and total sense of personal responsibility. Jack's tragedy was that he was caught between two of those responsibilities.
And maybe the unspoken thought in the back of his mind, and maybe everyone else's, that by the time he got home the medical crisis was going to be over, one way or the other unfortunately, so going home might just be a reason not to go into combat. Foolishly macho? Maybe. But reputation and self image were a major part of the profession.
"There's a letter in my desk," he said. "But you tell her, too."
Now we were deep into movie cliché. But life runs on clichés, and if it wasn't for movies and books we probably wouldn't know how to act. We all had letters in our desks.
"I'll be glad to," I said. "And how long do you think I should wait, out of respect, before I ask her out?"
His eyes bulged with fury, then as I stood there gazing at him placidly his face cracked into a grin. "You fucker."
"By the way, what's the little guy's name?"
"John Francis O'Brien IV."
"Wow. How the hell did you ever come up with that?"
I returned to quizzing the platoon. Lance Corporal Turpin said, "Sir, how long before we go?"
I checked my watch. "Twenty minutes or so."
He raised his voice. "Hey, Francois? You better hurry up. You don't have much time left to go crazy like Thomas."
Francois flipped him off with a quick little rap: "We go down that rope, you be cryin' and I be stylin'."
The platoon roared their approval, yelling at Turpin: "He punked you down! He punked you down!"
I was so proud of them. America's Hessians. Because that's what they were to the majority of the public who'd never countenance their children joining the military. And that included the civilian officials responsible for sending us into harm's way. Little did they realize how safe they slept in the arms of the poor boys.
Captain Z gave his own little speech, and it wasn't quite George Washington's address to the troops. He finished up by saying, "We're going to go through these motherfuckers like a hot oil enema." The Marines loved it.
The serials were called. "Are we good to go?" I asked the platoon. I didn't bark it out like a football coach trying to jack up everyone's emotions with some empty motivation. I just asked the question with all the seriousness it deserved.
And the "Ooh-rah!" I heard wasn't like any other, either. No empty spirit but hard and low, equal parts pride and determination.
We began the walk up to the flight deck. Waiting outside the hatch for the final call to board the helos, the IMC made the traditional announcement that every generation of Marines had heard. "Land the landing force."
It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The flight deck was all blacked out, nothing but infrared lighting visible only through night vision equipment. Before I buckled myself into the CH-53 I unsnapped my gas mask belt, got out of my flak jacket so I was only leaning back against it, and put on my life jacket. Making myself ready in case we happened to crash into the water.
The pilot got his takeoff signal and pulled back on the collective. We went straight up, hovered for a moment, then slowly drifted to the left to clear the flight deck and avoid the island. I hated that part, looking down and seeing first deck then water.
When we crossed the beach and went feet dry I snapped up the gas mask belt and put my flak jacket back on.
The only thing worse than skimming way too low over North Carolina pines in a blacked-out helicopter flying on night vision goggles was skimming way too low over rocky desert, then foothills, and finally up jagged mountains in a blacked-out helicopter flying on night vision goggles. My PVS-14 monocular made it possible to choose my view. If I didn't want to see how the flying was going I just closed my right eye and there was nothing but darkness out the starboard gunner's window. Open revealed all kinds of alarming green images.
It was like looking through a toilet paper tube at a flat image with very little depth perception. The other CH-53's in the formation looked dangerously close. The escorting Cobras were dancing around us farther out.
I was going over each step of the mission in my mind. We'd be fast roping right onto the roofs of the buildings we were hitting. The only thing that had changed in this part of the world throughout human history were the weapons. Someone was always fighting over something.
Because of this villages were built for defense. On the high ground, surrounded either by purpose-built walls or the flat stone sides of the buildings,
the few windows high up out of reach. Only a few easily-defended gated entrances, usually accessible only along narrow winding paths. No way were we going to land outside and either infiltrate or assault our way in. A handful of defenders could hold us off all night.
Inside the village the houses were tower style, like individual forts. Stone, brick, mud. Always at least two floors, the biggest five or six. The ground floors almost always used for shops, storage, or stabling animals, so anyone breaking in had to fight their way up stairs.
We'd fast rope right onto the flat roof of our target house and fight our way down. Of course those big fat hovering helos would be totally exposed while we were sliding down, but there was no other way. At least it was better to start high and fight down than start at the ground floor and fight your way up.
I'd memorized the layout of the village, and not just from our planned direction of approach. The company was hitting three houses simultaneously. The three biggest and best in town, owned by the most influential men, who would accommodate the most important guests. But not mansions, not in a village that small. What Americans would consider regular sized houses.
Force Recon and the SEALs were the close quarters battle experts. They'd better be. A 22-man Force Recon platoon and a 16-man SEAL platoon each received more annual training ammunition than our entire battalion. Force Recon backed by O'Brien and 1st platoon had the most likely target. The SEALs and Milburn's 3rd platoon the next. Second platoon and I were batting third, hitting what intelligence considered to be the least likely house all by ourselves.
Each group also had a couple of explosive ordnance disposal experts, and an intelligence collection team to take photographs and fingerprints, and root around for documents.
There was no place for the helos to land inside the village and pick us up, and only one good landing zone outside. This would be secured by the 60mm mortar section and Lee Harvey Oberdorff's platoon from Fox Company. Paul Federico was securing the FARP site, a secluded and hopefully uninhabited spot miles away, where the Cobras would refuel and rearm.
It was going to be a complicated operation—everyone needed to have their shit together. I hoped I did. At least it had started well. We had a bump plan to redistribute personnel if a '53 went down with mechanical problems, but they'd all gotten off the deck all right.
I didn't have a communications headset. Of course the MEU, battalion, and squadron commanders were coming along on the operation. They were in the '53's with us, because the command and control Huey didn't have the range. And because they all had to listen in, I couldn't communicate with the pilot if he accidentally flew to the wrong building. I had to take my signals from the crew chief. From behind his .50 caliber machine-gun he signaled "five minutes."
I took out a loaded magazine, always 28 rounds instead of 30 so the flimsy magazine spring wouldn't jam, slid it into the well of my M-16, and tapped upward to make sure it was seated. I pressed the bolt catch and felt the metallic snap as the bolt flew forward, stripping off and chambering the first round. You could tell by the feel that a round had gone in, but I hit the forward assist to make sure the bolt was locked, just to complete the ritual. It was familiar and instinctive, and in a strange way comforting. The platoon followed suit.
I glanced at my watch: 0208. During planning Captain Z had gotten excited because the senior officers, in typical regimented military fashion, wanted to hit the objective on the hour. Which would only make it easier on the enemy if they were waiting for us. He'd won. It was that golden time for raiding when the human brain, programmed for sleep, was at its worst.
I was going off the ramp first. Putting the platoon commander in position to get killed first was not the schoolbook solution. But I had two reasons. The first was that, except for Staff Sergeant Frederick, this was everyone's first time in combat. It was a hairy and exposed fast rope, with no assurance of surprise, and we couldn't afford to get hung up or stalled. And in training the platoon never had to do anything I hadn't done first, so now it was real we weren't going to change from "follow me" to "after you, boys."
My second reason was that I couldn't get the grenade range accident out of my head. If my legs froze again I wanted the whole platoon behind me pushing me out.
I might be going out first, but Staff Sergeant Frederick, Lance Corporal Vincent, and our precious platoon radio were coming out last.
It was a unique feeling to have before you were about to do your job, that if you screwed up someone was going to die. But from the time I issued the order it was like being under a spotlight. I had to be cool because the Marines kept looking at me to see if I was cool. They were still looking at me through their night vision goggles. It didn't make me nervous, it gave me strength. Even though my stomach felt as if it had shrunk down to the size of a walnut. And yes, I had to pee.
We came in fast. First the village like a jewel box image in the distance, then I was able to pick up individual buildings. That we were hitting the biggest and most prominent ones in town made the identification easier.
The helo nose pitched up, and we shuddered to a stop over the right house. Gripping the fast rope, I leaned out over the ramp into screaming rotors and a shroud of hot burned kerosene exhaust. We couldn't move so quickly we came down in the street instead of onto the roof.
Then I was out. I hit the roof, pushing the rope away with my right hand and bringing up my rifle with my left. There was a little peaked projection on a corner of the roof, covering a stairway down into the house. A man was silhouetted in the opening, with the light behind him. He was clutching an AK-47 across his chest. The silhouette was unmistakable. It was pitch dark, and his attention was fixed on that huge beating helicopter overhead.
I flicked on the PAC-4 laser aiming sight and thumbed off the safety as the M-16 came up. The laser dot settled on his chest. My magazine was full of tracers to mark targets; it was as if the stabs of light were absorbed into his body. I kept squeezing the trigger until he went down.
I was blinking hard to fight the tunnel vision from the quart of adrenaline pumping through me. It slowed everything down except my heart pounding through my chest the way it had the day of the grenade range accident.
I felt Marines all around me but stayed focused and advanced on the doorway, left foot forward and dragging the right so I wouldn't trip, rifle stock against my cheek. A short stairway down and a sharp right corner into the house. The lights were on so I was looking through my left eye, the one without the night vision.
Corporal Asuego's fire team passed by me, and I stepped back and changed magazines. A diesel generator was grinding away in one corner of the roof. I wanted the lights out, but was afraid my tracers would set it on fire. Then I remembered that I'd followed the rest of the officers and staff in signing out a Beretta just for this mission.
I drew the pistol and fired, hoping a ricochet wouldn't come bouncing back at me. That generator died hard. It took ten rounds before it screamed. Electricity snapped and popped, and the house lights went out. Contrary to Marine stereotype, I had looked for the on/off switch first.
I put in a fresh magazine, and as I holstered the pistol someone opened up on full auto from the window of a nearby building. Supersonic bullets passing nearby made a sound like a bullwhip cracking. It made you want to drop and curl up into a tight little ball.
We hadn't gone in under any preparatory fires from the Cobras. Under the rules of engagement the townsfolk had the first shot. Now they were going to have to live with their choice.
The helo doorgunner cut loose with his machine-gun. The window and surrounding wall were sawn apart by the stream of half inch diameter slugs. Hopefully that would make everyone else in the neighborhood think twice.
A flash-bang went off as Corporal Asuego's lead fire team started down the stairs into the house. I could see their flashlights click on. Fighting in enclosed areas like rooms peripheral vision was vital, and you had none with night vision goggles. So our SOP was to flip them up off our eyes and g
o in with the white lens flashlights attached to our M-16's. The lights were a special purchase by the MEU, as were our knee and elbow pads.
When Sergeant Harlin was done clearing this floor Sergeant Turner's squad would take the next one down. Sergeant Eberhardt's squad and the machine-guns were arrayed all around the roof, ready to shoot anyone who fired on us, and anyone who tried to run out of the house.
This had touched off a heated exchange between Captain Z and the MEU Judge Advocate when the lawyer was briefing the rules of engagement. We weren't supposed to shoot anyone who wasn't armed—no surprise there—but Captain Z made the point that all anyone had to do in that case was throw down their weapon and run away. So why even make the raid? This went around the table way too long, and was never satisfactorily resolved. Mainly because no one wanted to go on record with a decision. So Captain Z just told us later to shoot any adult male answering the terrorists' descriptions—which was basically all adult males—who ran out.
I hoped that the U.S. intelligence community was operating above their usual level of competence on this one, because otherwise I'd just killed some poor bastard defending his home. And probably more to come.
Now emptied out, the '53 increased pitch and pulled away. At least I could stop worrying about a flaming helo dropping into our laps.
More firing now from the other houses. And massive return fire from the Marine-held roofs, along with arcs of 20mm cannon tracer from the Cobras.
I saw the brighter beam of a laser pointer held by the Forward Air Controller flick out toward the heaviest source of fire. A few seconds later a brilliant flash and explosion as a Hellfire anti-tank missile from a Cobra went right through the window and took out the whole floor of the house. Like magic the volume of firing tapered off all around the village.
William Christie 03 - The Blood We Shed Page 17
