Then a roar of rifle fire from inside my house. I could feel it under my feet. But my job was to stay on the radio, call for fire, and direct traffic, not be a squad leader. There was so much shooting that I could barely hear the company radio. I didn't worry about the intra-squad radio. Our training in the cinder-block Combat Town at Camp Lejeune had proved that it was worthless inside buildings. You couldn't get reception even between adjacent rooms. So messages were shouted back along the line, just like in the old days.
And a shout did come up the stairs: "Sergeant Harlin's down!"
I tossed the SINCGARS handset to Lance Corporal Vincent, shouting, "Stay here with the Staff Sergeant." Who would need the radio if he had to call in the Cobras.
There was a traffic jam at the bottom of the stairway. Around the corner was a very short hall where everyone was jammed up, then another sharp corner that seemed to open into a longer hall. In the dancing beams of weapon flashlights, I saw Sergeant Harlin being dragged along the floor, his face covered with blood. Marines were hunched over, protected by the sharp corner as automatic fire whipped down the long hallway and slammed into the wall at the end, showering them with sprays of masonry.
"Get him up to the roof!" I shouted to the Marines dragging Sergeant Harlin. From the smear of blood he'd gotten nailed as he went around the corner into the hallway. The stupid son of a bitch! But you never stop for casualties when you're in the assault. Sergeant Harlin was Doc Bob's job now.
Someone yelled, "Don't go around that corner, sir!" Always listen to the troops. I dug a frag grenade out of my pouch, shouting over the deafening roar of the firing, "Flashlights off!" I flipped down my night vision goggle, edged closer to the corner, and pulled the pin. I flicked off the spoon and skipped the frag down the hall along the floor to make it hard to pick up and throw back.
It blew and the firing shut off. I stuck one eye and the goggle around the corner. The smoke made it hard to see, but it looked like the hallway ran the length of the whole floor, and at the end was another stairway leading down to the next one. A rifle barrel poked around the far corner, and I pulled my head back as the firing started up again.
We weren't just stalled, we were screwed. No way were we getting down that hall. If we raced right down to the end someone could jump out of a room and cut us down from behind. And if we stopped to clear the rooms all they had to do was stick an AK around that far corner.
Think. Fucking think. Easy lying in my rack back on the ship, but not here. There was a room on the other side of the wall I was leaning against. We had shotguns to breach doors—that wouldn't do the job. C-4 plastic explosive, like modeling clay, that we'd fabricated into breaching charges to take down any steel or iron doors. Time fuse to set that off, like Clint Eastwood using his cigar to light the cord sticking out from a stick of dynamite. Not the best choice when you needed to set off an explosion with precise timing. And we'd have to re-form the C-4 to make up the right sized charge. More time wasted.
Then my eyes fell on the cloth bag hanging from the back of the Marine next to me. A pound and a half of plastic explosive behind a matrix of ball bearings, already pre-shaped for directional blast. A masonry wall, a foot thick or less. It might work.
I grabbed Lance Corporal Francois, the nearest SAW gunner, and showed him how to hold his light machine-gun with his left hand grasping both bipod legs and his right thumb on the trigger so he could fire it around the corner without exposing his body. "Short bursts," I shouted. "Just keep 'em out of the hall."
Francois was so tentative I had to grab his upper arms and shove him forward to the corner, but after the first couple of bursts he got his confidence back and started yelling abuse down the hall as he fired.
I sent everyone back up to the roof except Francois and Corporal Asuego, who was now the 1st squad leader. I had them send Sergeant Turner and Sergeant Eberhardt down so they could see what I had in mind.
I dug the quarter roll of duct tape out of my butt pack. A grunt platoon commander would sooner go to the field without his weapon than some duct tape.
Corporal Asuego held the hardcover book-sized claymore antipersonnel mine to the wall at belt height, and I taped it in place. Then I screwed the blasting cap into the fuse well. It was too loud for a lot of conversation, but with hand and arm signals everyone got clear on the plan.
Sergeant Turner grabbed Francois. We all dashed up the stairs, with me last unreeling the blasting wire.
I looked back to make sure everyone was out of line of the stairwell, plugged the wire into the hand-sized electrical generator we called a clacker, yelled, "Fire in the hole," and squeezed the lever.
The house rocked. Even in the open air and wearing earplugs, the blast overpressure was like getting hit with a brick.
I ran back down the stairwell through the choking acrid high explosive smoke. There was a jagged hole in the wall big enough to get through. Good thing it was a solid stone house or we might have ridden the roof right down to the street.
Corporal Crockett's clearing team went by me and ducked in. Francois went back to firing down the hallway.
I'd just wiped my ass with the rules of engagement. I didn't know how many unarmed civilians or babies in cribs had been inside the room I just blasted my way into. And frankly I didn't give a shit as long as no more of my Marines got hurt.
Crockett's fire team worked their way down through the rooms, staying out of the hall. If there were doors connecting each successive room, they used them. Otherwise a claymore blew a hole in the wall. Once the first room was clear a second fire team used it to sprint across the hall under the cover of another frag grenade and began clearing the rooms on the other side. The third team covered the hallway in case anyone tried to escape a room or come up the stairs, ready to reinforce the other two teams if necessary.
I wasn't anxious to send anyone down the angled stairway to the next floor. So once 1st squad had cleared through I placed a claymore on the floor of the first room we'd entered, piling on furniture to tamp the blast downward. Sergeant Turner quickly rehearsed his squad.
We moved up the stairway again and blew the mine. Rushing back in through the smoke, two Marines, each holding the carrying strap on the back of the flak jacket of a third, lowered him down through the hole in the floor while Sergeant Turner kept chucking in flash-bangs. Then another Marine right after him, followed by the rest of the squad. By being lowered rather than jumping the first pair landed ready to use their weapons.
There was firing down below me, and then firing up on the roof. The word passed down to me slowly from Staff Sergeant Frederick. "Three males ran out. Three down." Passing messages was another little thing we'd practiced over and over again. Otherwise even a simple message, reinterpreted through ten different mouths, bore no resemblance to the original.
Sergeant Turner was going to be fine. I moved forward through the rooms to join back up with Corporal Asuego. Doing so I bumped into the intelligence team, moving through the cleared rooms in 1st squad's wake.
One was rummaging around, while the other was on his hands and knees puking on the floor. Inside the room were pieces of one body and another that only existed from the chest up—and the AK-47 he'd been carrying was embedded in that. I knew there were two of them only after counting the arms and legs. The one corpse's face was glaring at us, full of fury. I haven't been able to get that out of my head yet.
The sight was hardly worse than the smell. It was a slaughterhouse stench of blood, shit, bile, and urine, cut by burned gunpowder and high explosives. And now vomit. Even though the Claymore had blown out all the windows, I wasn't that far from puking myself.
The intel specialist checking the carpet was a corporal. "Find anything?" I asked the other, a Gunny.
"A briefcase full of papers," he said. "Bunch of passports. Two laptops. Claymore didn't do them any good, like that guy over there, but we might be able to recreate the hard drives."
Good news. It was looking as though we had hit something m
ore than a local Kiwanis Club meeting.
Lance Corporal Vincent entered the room through the hole, and the Gunny and I nearly shot him.
"Goddammit Vincent," I shouted. "Sound off before you enter a room."
"Sorry, sir," he said, puffing a bit under the radio and handing me the handset. "The Six wants to talk to you."
Captain Z was notorious for always wanting to talk directly to his platoon commanders. He figured that if he was on the radio you ought to be too. "Put on the actual," was his usual gruff reply to the radio operators.
We had to stick the antenna out a window to get decent comm. The stone was swallowing up radio waves. "Six, this is Two Actual, over," I said into the handset.
"We're ready to Diane," Captain Z said. "What's your status, over?"
All the code words for the operation were the senior officer's wives first names. I couldn't believe everyone else was done clearing their buildings and ready to leave. "Only halfway, over."
"What's the problem, over?"
I also couldn't believe Staff Sergeant Frederick hadn't told him. Maybe the Skipper couldn't believe it. "Six, we're in the middle of a major firefight here. Sitrep line Juliet: six confirmed so far, over." I'd just told him that we'd killed six enemy.
"Roger, you still have only one line Hotel, over?"
One friendly wounded. "That's affirmative, over." If Sergeant Harlin was still alive.
"You need help, over?"
I thought about it, but they'd have to fight their way down an open street to get to us, and then break into the ground floor. "Negative, Six. Just time. My Five will keep you informed, over." Five was the Staff Sergeant.
"Roger. You're on the spot—you make it happen. Call me if you need anything. Six out."
I gave Vincent the handset. "Go back up to the roof. Tell the Staff Sergeant to keep the Captain informed. And give a heads up before you go jumping out at them."
"Yes, sir."
That ever-reliable indicator of my level of anxiety, my bladder, was about to pop. I would have gone right there—nothing was going to make that room any worse—but I had a disturbing vision of getting shot with my dick out.
Another figure appeared in the hole. I thought it was Vincent again. I was just opening my mouth to chew his ass when I realized there was no lit flashlight on his rifle, and that the rifle wasn't an M-16.
My hand had never left the pistol grip of mine, but I was still slow. The full auto muzzle flash in front of me looked like a flame-thrower. I thought I was dead.
I dropped to my knees—which I can only think was my body's reaction to try and get out of the way of the bullets—centered the flashlight beam, and squeezed the trigger so fast it felt like automatic even though I was firing semi. At the same time bullets passed so close I could feel the wind. Then he was on the deck and I wasn't—though I had no idea why. "Cease fire!" I yelled. I didn't know if the Gunny and Corporal were firing or not, but I didn't want to get shot as I moved.
I walked up to the figure on the ground and squeezed my trigger again. Just a click; the magazine was empty. But two rounds in the head from the Beretta made sure he wasn't getting up.
I picked up his rifle, just to give my hands something to do until they stopped shaking. Then I ran my flashlight over the wall I'd been standing in front of. The rifle and the bullet holes told the story. The rifle was a German G-3, that fired the big 7.62 NATO round we used in our machine-guns. That powerful a round in a light rifle on full automatic was a bitch to control. The first couple of rounds had gone right between the Gunny and I, and the rest over my head as the recoil pushed the muzzle up. If he'd been carrying an AK-47 we'd have all been dead. Oh, and I didn't have to go anymore. He'd taken care of that by scaring the piss out of me. At least it was dark. I disabled the G-3 by bending the barrel, and inserted a new magazine into my rifle.
In urban combat a bad guy popping out at you could happen even if you'd been thorough in clearing rooms—there were plenty of places to hide in a house. The Corporal was still on the deck. The Gunny was as shaken as I, and he reacted like a Gunny. "Get the fuck off the floor and provide some goddamned security!" he bellowed at the Corporal.
"Let's get this done as fast as you can," I said to them. "As soon as we clear the ground floor we're out of here."
We were moving much slower and more deliberately than we'd planned. But that probably always happened when the bullets were real. At least we were compensating by making unexpected moves.
Corporal Asuego had finished clearing the floor. Corporal Crockett inched his fire team down the stairwell until they had a clear shot at anyone trying to escape from Sergeant Turner on the next floor. A good ambush position, flashlights off and night vision goggles on. Two bodies were already sprawled on the stairs.
The house rocked each time Sergeant Turner touched off a claymore.
Farther down the stairs someone started screaming, "Surrender! Surrender!" in English. A figure appeared in the stairway. A young guy in his twenties, wearing only trousers. He had his hands behind his head, and was feeling his way up one step at a time in the darkness. Laser aiming dots that he couldn't see settled on his chest.
Corporal Crockett shouted the phonetic Arabic phrases we'd all memorized. "'aqif" Then "Stop!" in English.
Before he could say "hands up," the man kept moving. I could sense the hesitation, as if the Marines weren't quite sure what to do. "Shoot him!" I yelled.
Crockett and the SAW gunner both fired.
Hit by about ten rounds simultaneously, he was dead before he finished falling back. And the grenade he'd been holding behind his head came free and bounced down the stairs. There was a shrill scream right after it exploded.
I yanked a frag grenade out of my pouch, rushing to get the pin out. The spoon off, I darted out into the open and threw the frag down the stairwell.
"Eat that, motherfuckers!" one of the Marines shouted.
It blew amid more screams. Probably the wounded and whoever was trying to drag them away.
"Floor clear," came the word from Sergeant Turner.
I sent Corporal Asuego's squad up to the roof a fire team at a time. Sergeant Eberhardt's came down.
More shooting below us. Whenever that happened the one thing I didn't do was start issuing a lot of demands to know what was going on. There's a special place in hell for officers who pull that shit, as if a leader in the middle of a firefight had a spare moment to answer questions.
A couple of minutes later Sergeant Turner reported that rounds were coming up through the floor at him. One of his Marines was hit, and he'd moved the rest out of the way.
The bad guys were getting wise to our pattern—it was time to change it. I sent down a couple of Sergeant Eberhardt's claymores.
And how Sergeant Turner used them was pure genius. He placed one on the floor of a room at the opposite end of the house from the stairwell we were on.
He blew the claymore, and from out in the hall tossed a flash-bang through the hole in the floor. This was answered by a torrent of fire from below, probably aimed from the room next door.
It would have caught them, except all Sergeant Turner's Marines were still out in the hall. And as soon as the bad guys started shooting Corporal Reilly blew the other claymore right over their heads and tossed a couple of frag grenades into the hole.
What this did to the shooters caused the rest of the enemy on the floor to bolt for the stairway. They ran right into Sergeant Eberhardt's squad coming down.
The firefight took place at a range of ten feet. The first two Marines had just led around the corner with their weapons. Up the stairs I heard another roar of gunfire.
A fragment or a ricochet split a Marine's cheek, but three more bad guys were down.
It was a roll of the dice that Sergeant Eberhardt's squad ended up clearing the rooms on that floor in the traditional manner, breaching doors and tossing in flash-bangs. Because one room was full of women and children, huddled in the corners and screaming in terr
or.
You disapprove of shooting women and children? Join the club. But try charging into a pitch dark room filled with them, not knowing if a guy with an AK-47 was hiding behind them, and not shooting everyone. That Sergeant Eberhardt and his Marines didn't amazed me. I'm still not sure whether it was a gutsy and heroic call or a moment of hesitation and indecision that could have been fatal, but it turned out to be the right thing. And sometimes that kind of dumb luck was the difference between success and failure. When I got there all the noncombatants were lying on the floor, searched and cuffed. Scared but alive.
So were two more terrorists. They'd caught some grenade frags and used it as an excuse to give up. We searched them, stripping them naked; handcuffed and gagged with duct tape, bandaged, and strapped into stretchers.
One look at the ground floor told me how incredibly lucky we'd been when everyone decided to make their last stand on the floor above. It was a warren of spaces that would have been a nightmare to clear. A combination garage/workshop, filled with Rover and Land Cruiser vehicles, drums of gasoline, about 50,000 rounds of ammunition, cases of AK-47's, and about twenty pounds of mixed civilian gelignite and Czech Semtex plastic explosives. A few stray rounds or a grenade and the whole house and all of us in it would have gone up in smoke. The intel team went nuts snapping pictures and taking down serial numbers. Besides the two laptops we ended up with four packs full of documents.
There were twenty-two adult male bodies with weapons in the house and on the street outside. Close to the number of Marines in my platoon. If we hadn't had those claymores—almost by accident—we would have been in very serious trouble.
I called Captain Z, gave him the rough inventory, and asked him what he wanted me to do. "I've got to go higher for permission," he said. "But get ready to blow it, over."
"Roger that," I said. "Be advised that there's not going to be much standing around here after it goes off, over."
"Understood. Wait, out."
William Christie 03 - The Blood We Shed Page 18
