The Werewolf of Marines Trilogy

by Jonathan P. Brazee

He needn’t have worried. The Marine knew Aiden and said he had a message, something about Aiden owing him money and that he was at Ramadi. He thanked the Marine, then went straight to his supervisor. With no real purpose at Camp Fallujah, he asked for a transfer to Hurricane Point where the Marines were based, not the larger Camp Ramadi. He had a story he’d concocted in case he was asked why he wanted the transfer, but the supervisor never asked. Ramadi was a dangerous city, and the contractors were having difficulty hiring locals, which meant they had to bring in foreigners, paying them more for the same work as they would the Iraqis. Any Iraqi wanting to work in Ramadi was eagerly snapped up.

  He puttered about, moving trash from one spot to another, not bothering to look up, knowing he would sense Aiden. It was getting late in the dinner service, and he thought Aiden must still be out on a mission, when he felt a slight tingle. He looked up, and there was Aiden walking towards the DFAC with another Marine. They were hurrying, undoubtedly wanting to get fed before the line closed down.

  “Good evening, sir,” he said as the two came up.

  Aiden’s eyes widened as he saw him, a smile creeping over his face.

  “Good evening to you, too,” he said. “Hey, Gonzo, I forgot my hot sauce. I’ll catch you in a minute,” he told the other Marine.

  “They got hot sauce in there. What the fuck?”

  “Not my brand.”

  “Well, you better get your ass in gear if you want to eat. Midrats ain’t for a long time if you miss this.”

  “I know. You go ahead.”

  Hozan and Aiden stared at each other for a few seconds before they gave each other a back-pounding hug. They quickly broke the contact, suddenly conscious of others in the area.

  “Hozan, it’s good to see you!”

  Aiden looked good to him. He walked with a more assurance, as if he belonged in his skin. But there was also something else, a slight wariness about him. Hozan probed deeper. There was none of the tingle that would indicate that he had shifted, at least for a long time. There was a slight hint, but not strong enough to mean anything. That had to be a reflection of a shift a long time back, or it could even be “leakage,” as Hozan thought of it, of just being a member of the Tribe. Hozan was one of the few who could feel the indications so readily, but it was still somewhat fuzzy, not like an exact written log of when people shifted.

  “You look well, Aiden. I trust everything is OK?”

  “Uh, well, I had a problem in Nevada, and I need to talk to you. I need to know what’s going on about me and the Council. And I’ve got another problem. There’s this girl, and she says we are a ‘we,’ but what, I mean, wasn’t your wife a human? I don’t know . . .”

  “Not here,” Hozan told him, sweeping his eyes around the area, taking in a number of Marines going about their business. “Later. Go in and get fed. You know you shouldn’t be missing meals. Let’s meet up at the USO, if you can, at 2130, OK?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure. I can make it. Man, it’s good to see you!”

  With that, Aiden turned, cleared his weapon in the sand barrel, and disappeared inside the DFAC. Hozan watched him for a moment before finishing up the trash. He felt surprising fulfilled seeing his young protégé, as he suddenly felt him to be. More fulfilling was the fact that Aiden said he needed him, needed his advice.

  He was whistling as he went back inside to help clean after of the evening meal.

  Chapter 36

  The platoon had given up their four trained snipers to the RCT,[48] and while they were gone, the rest of the platoon had supported another battalion north of its normal AO, even doing a bridge recon, one of the basic skills taught to every recon Marine at BRC. Once the snipers were returned, though, it was back to reestablish a presence in their original AO, and mounted patrols were back. While most of the platoon bitched about getting back in the vehicles, it didn’t really make any difference to Aiden. A mission was a mission, and he rather thought the chances of seeing action would be greater if they were driving around in Humvees rather than sneaking in and out on foot in a “normal” recon mission of observing what was going on.

  They called the patrols “mounted reconnaissance,” but that was only window dressing. They were on combat ops, riding around, hoping to engage the enemy.

  This was a one-day “mounted reconnaissance in force,” which merely meant the entire platoon was on the patrol, not just one of the four six-man recon teams or even the two elements as they’d been often organized. Actually, this was a platoon (minus) patrol. Fourth Team was out on a separate mission, so this was First, Second, and Third, along with the platoon headquarters. Lieutenant Miller was breaking protocol by being in the first hummer, but he dismissed Gunny Despirito’s suggestion that he ride in one of the following hummers, saying that sometimes you had to lead from the front. Sgt Johns, Aiden’s assistant team leader was up there with him, along with Cpl Therwait.

  That put the rest of Aiden’s team in the second hummer. Cam was driving, SSgt Hong was in the front passenger seat, and Sgt Vasquez and HM2 Redmond, the platoon corpsman, were in the two rear seats. Aiden was in the gun turret, a position he loved. He had yet to engage anyone directly, and while it may not be a traditional recon mission, he ached to put some of the big gun’s rounds downrange.

  The rest of the platoon followed in trace in four more Humvees. Gunny Despirito was in the second-to-last hummer.

  Night was supposed to be a recon Marine’s friend, just as rain was “recon sunshine.” This wasn’t the time of year for rain in Iraq, and leaving in the early afternoon, it certainly wasn’t dark. This was a calculated move.

  Do you have balls? Care to meet us?

  One of the Army battalions in Ramadi had tried using loudspeakers, deriding the mujahideen’s courage, calling them women, and inviting them out to fight. Surprisingly, they had some decent results, goading the insurgents into attacking, then wiping them out. The Marines weren’t going to let the Army outdo them especially when the Army brigade was actually under the command of the Marine general back at Fallujah, so the Marines started to be more aggressive, daring the insurgents to try and do something about it.

  This was the platoon’s third such mission, a brazenly-open patrol, but during the first two, no one had wanted to come out to play. Most, if not all, of the Marines in the platoon hoped that this one would have a different outcome. They all joined recon for the action. They came to Iraq expecting action. So far, in almost a month, in “the most dangerous city in the world,” other than the daily rockets or mortars that hit the camp and stopping that one guy at the VCP, they’d had no action at all. The rifle platoons from the infantry battalion had action. The Weapons Company platoons had action. MPs had had action. A truck section had action. But not recon.

  Ramadi was split up as far as tactical areas of operation. The Army brigade had most of the city while the Marines had from Hurricane Point to down past the government center. The platoon’s recon slice of the pie extended quite a bit further north and to the east of the Marine rifle battalion’s AO that was limited to within the city of Ramadi itself. On the northern side of the city, where the river came in, were two bridges, the High Water and Low Water Bridge, so named because the newer one was elevated while the older one was barely eight feet above the water level. A Marine COP[49] manned the western entry to the High Water Bridge, but further to the north and east, dense vegetation, scattered buildings, and farms made the area a center for the firing of mortars and rockets into the coalition camps. Mujahideen would drive in pickups, set up their tubes in the beds or set up primitive rocket launchers in the fields, fire, then scatter before counter-battery fire could land. This patrol was going into this no-man’s land to see if they could either surprise some of the rocket and mortar teams or entice the insurgents to try and drive the coalition forces out. The thinking was that the insurgents needed these areas and could not just cede them to the Americans.

  As they started to roll out the gate, Aiden, from his vantage point in the gu
n turret, saw one of the rifle platoons boarding the boats from which they patrolled up and down the river. It did seem odd that after all their training in the Combat Rubber Reconnaissance Craft, an infantry platoon was in boats while recon was mounted in hummers. Aiden knew that infantry platoon had spent weeks out at the Stumps specifically training in vehicles.

  They moved out into the city, heading north along Route Michigan and over the bridge into the sparsely-populated agricultural region. Maps were not that accurate in depicting all the small dirt roads that crisscrossed the area, so they relied heavily on aerial photos. It wasn’t as if they could get lost. They had their coordinates at all times. But getting from Point A to Point B could be problematic.

  Several of the fields had workers in them. Some ignored the patrol as it drove by. Some stood and watched. Some even waved. How many of them immediately called in what they had seen to the mujahideen was something the Marines didn’t know but certainly expected it to be a fair number.

  During one temporary halt while they tried to figure out the best route, Aiden reached into his cargo pocket, pulling out an apple he’d taken from the DFAC. Even if he wasn’t actively shifting, he still had a pretty voracious appetite. The others called him a bottomless pit, amazed at how much food he could put down. He reached into another pocket and pulled out his silver knife from San Antonio. It wasn’t good for much else, and the others made fun of it (he had to keep insisting that it was a good luck gift from his girlfriend, not a combat knife), but it could cut an apple. He had wrapped the handle with 480 cord and kept the knife in a leather sheath, careful never to actually touch the blade, but still, there was something about it, almost an aura, that set his nerves a’twitching. He wasn’t sure why his fascination, but he felt he had to keep it with him. He cut the apple and ate the entire thing, core and all, not wanting to toss any part of it. Even if their presence was hardly a secret, BRC training engrained on him not to leave any evidence of his passing.

  Aiden kept his eyes scanning the area. Whatever decision was made, it didn’t need Aiden’s input. His job was to make sure no one came up on them. Eventually, the lieutenant and the gunny picked a route back. The gunny hurried past Aiden’s hummer back to where he was riding, and the patrol started off again. Aiden glanced down at his watch, which he strapped over the nomex gloves he wore to ward off the effects of fire. He tried to calculate if they would get back in time for chow. If not, it was MREs[50] for dinner, and he would have to wait for midrats to get some real food. It would be close, but Aiden thought they could make it. That was one advantage of these mounted patrols. Normally, they would be out for a week or 10 days at a time, and it would be MREs for the entire op. Now, as with the other three times they’d been out like this, it was back to the base by evening, and that meant hot chow. MREs just didn’t cut it for Aiden’s voracious appetite.

  They were coming back along the same way they had gone out, on the main dirt road that led out to a larger road, which in turn led to Route Michigan. When they had come through earlier, there were a number of men working the fields. Now, there was nobody. It could be that they had quit to go home, but it didn’t feel right to Aiden. Not just to him, though. The radio crackled with the admonition for each of them to be on his toes. Aiden swung his .50 cal around, looking for a target. If an RPG gunner popped up, he’d only have a few precious seconds to take him out before the gunner could let loose one of the rockets at them.

  Out in the desert, visibility was pretty good. Insurgents could hide in small wadis or behind rocks or rises in the terrain, but for the most part, a .50 cal gunner could see as far as his gun could reach. In this triangle where the two rivers met, palm trees, dense vegetation, and planted fields gave the area a more tropical feel. For a turret gunner, it also cut down on the visibility. While he could see well across the fields, up to the orchards and wild vegetation, an insurgent could be 20 meters away and be completely hidden from sight.

  Up ahead, he could see the roofs of the taller buildings that lined the larger road. They would be there in about five minutes, he figured. It looked like the insurgents were too chicken-shit to take them on again, just like before. Despite himself, Aiden relaxed just a trifle.

  The blast took him by surprise, tilting the hummer up on end where it teetered for a moment, giving Aiden a chance to duck his head before it rolled over. More than a few turret gunners had been killed when crushed by overturning vehicles, and Aiden didn’t know if he could survive that degree of trauma. Though dazed, he was aware of several more blasts, then the chatter of automatic fire.

  There was shouting inside the overturned hummer as the Marines scrambled to get out. Doc Redmond kicked open the armored door that offered protection from small arms fire, then pushing Aiden’s legs out of the way, grabbed Vasquez by the ILBE and pulled him out. Aiden followed, falling onto the dirt road, the zip of rounds sounding like angry hornets. He helped Doc as they dragged the unresponsive sergeant over the edge of the road and into the irrigation ditch there. Doc immediately started to work on Vasquez, assessing the damage.

  Aiden popped his head up to see what was happening. He and Doc had rushed to the near side of the road, closer to their attackers. There was heavy vegetation and a few what looked to be abandoned buildings. From the vegetation and buildings, a heavy outpouring of fire emanated, sweeping the road.

  To his left, the lead hummer was upright, but it had been hit hard. Someone was struggling out of it on the far side.

  To his right, two hummers had been hit. One looked to have only a tire blown off, and the driver was trying to maneuver it. The other was down hard, blown off the road and into the irrigation ditch that lined the open fields on the other side. Two hummers were intact, maneuvering forward. Gunny Despirito jumped out of one, leaving whatever protection its armor provided to rush up, under fire, to act as a guide, arms waving to get the driver to put his hummer between the enemy and the hummer in the ditch.

  The turret gunners on the two intact hummers and the one on the tire-damaged hummer had opened up, sending a steady stream of fire into the trees. As Aiden took it all in, trying to clear his head, an RPG rocket, going almost impossibly slow, reached out, its path leading it into the chest of Jerome Lane, one of the turret gunners, killing him instantly.

  Aiden had never heard of an IED attack that took out four vehicles at the same time. Their taunting the mujahideen had gotten them to fight, but the insurgents were fighting with a detailed plan and execution. The platoon was in reaction mode, trying to get its bearings so it could go into the offense. Aiden looked back at the lead vehicle for the lieutenant. He could see who he thought was Sgt Johns struggling to reach the irrigation ditch on the far side of the road, but there was no sign of the lieutenant coming out to take charge.

  “Shit!” Doc shouted, drawing Aiden’s attention back.

  Doc had a hand clasped to his shoulder, removing it momentarily to reveal the bloody sleeve before putting it back down. He’d gotten up too high and had taken a round in the meaty part of the shoulder, below the edge of his body armor. He pulled out a bandage and started to wrap it with one hand before Aiden scooted over and wrapped the wound.

  “Pull it tighter,” Doc told him without any indication of the pain he had to be feeling.

  “Doc!” a voice weakly called out.

  Both Doc and Aiden looked up. Cam was out of the Humvee, on his back in the road. His face was bloody, and he was calling out for help. Rounds kicked up around him, but as of yet, neither of the two automatic weapons being fired had targeted him. It was only a matter of time, though, until one of the machine gunners saw him and took him under fire.

  “Watch Whip,” he told Aiden, calling Sgt Vasquez by his nickname, as he started to climb out of the ditch.

  Aiden had to grab his ILBE and pull him back down. Marines tended to idolize their corpsmen, especially the ones who got down and dirty in combat with them. Doc Redmond, though, was not only a corpsman, but a Special Amphibious Reconnaissance Co
rpsman, a SARC, having made it through all the recon schools, just as had each Marine in the platoon. This was his third pump, and he had his own Silver Star, earned in offensive combat when he charged a group of Taliban, wiping them out before tending to his wounded Marines. No one doubted Doc, and it didn’t surprise Aiden that he was about to charge out there, already wounded, to get to Cam. Aiden didn’t know how many of the platoon was down, however, and if he let Doc get himself killed, he would be to blame for some of those wounded dying without Doc’s treatment.

  “No, you watch Whip. I’ll get Cam,” he told him.

  He didn’t give Doc a chance to argue. He was out of the ditch and rushing the short distance to Cam. As he bent down to grab him, something clanged off his helmet—whether a round or shrapnel, he didn’t know nor care.

  All Marines knew that when possible, wounded men needed to be immobilized before moving them. Classroom first aid, though, rarely lasted in the field. With rounds coming in, the most pressing issue was to get Cam out of the line of fire. Aiden grabbed him, flipping him up to his shoulder in one motion, then turning and dashing the few steps it took to dive back into the ditch. Just as the two of them hit the ground, a stream of fire went over them, impacting on the dirt road. One of the machine gunners had seen them, but too late.

  Doc shifted over to assess Cam while Aiden tried to see what was going on. None of their big guns were returning fire. Two of them looked OK from a distance, but neither was manned. He could hear the gunny shouting out orders, only 20 or 30 meters away from the four of them, but it might as well have been miles. Rounds were impacting all over the road, and RPGs were being fired. Luckily, with the Marines in the ditch, the rounds were high, impacting out in the field. One did hit the road while Aiden was watching, but it skipped high without detonating.

  There were at least two automatic weapons, PKs,[51] from the sound of them. The gunners sounded disciplined, something not always the case with the mujahideen. If they were disciplined, it would make rushing back over the road to engage them almost certainly suicidal.