Tom Sileo

by Brothers Forever

  Right then Travis got a call over the radio. It was from one of the helicopters watching over them.

  “You’ve got large groups of civilians moving away from your AO [area of operations],” the pilot shouted, with the thundering sound of the rotating helicopter blade nearly drowning out his voice.

  “Roger,” Travis replied.

  Several other Marines also heard the transmission, which sounded strange, but at the same time, the heavily Sunni population in Fallujah was known to avoid Americans, especially after the bloody battles three years earlier. And since most soldiers in the Iraqi Army division being trained by the MiTT team were Shiite, the animosity was even more palpable.

  Although it was possible this was nothing to worry about, Segel was particularly concerned.

  “How much do you want to bet something happens in the next twenty minutes?” Segel asked the Navy corpsman. “This smells bad.”

  “Everything smells bad here,” Albino quipped, with mustard still stuck in his mustache.

  Segel forced a laugh while reaching for his canteen for a drink of water to wet his mouth, which was parched by thirst and nervousness. After taking a few sips, the lance corporal realized he had just drunk the last of his limited supply.

  As Travis and the Iraqis came out of the building empty-handed, Segel approached the officers to make sure they knew about the crowds moving away. It seemed a little weird, they all agreed, but the patrol was leaving this intersection now and heading to another house a few blocks to the northeast. They had additional intelligence indicating that the sniper might be hiding in a safe house near the location of a previous shooting. Despite coming up empty on the mission so far and the potential signs of danger, the Marines weren’t about to stop hunting the sniper.

  Instead of going the most obvious way, the joint patrol circled back up north to Route Elizabeth. They would avoid predictability while also getting a better handle on what the dispersing crowds might be up to.

  When the four Humvees reached Elizabeth, just two blocks east of the Blackwater Bridge, things seemed to be mostly in order. The marketplace was still jammed with people, some of whom glared and once again pounded on the passing Humvees. The Marines’ watches all read 1450 (2:50 p.m.), and their patrol was about ten minutes from losing air cover.

  As the vehicles slowly turned down the narrowest of alleys, far thinner than any road they had encountered so far during the patrol, Kubicki ordered everyone to stop about a quarter mile from what they thought was the safe house zone. While the American vehicles were facing south, in between the two Iraqi vehicles and pointed away from Route Elizabeth, the Iraqi vehicle closest to the marketplace artery was pointing west, and the southernmost Iraqi vehicle, which was parked near a tight intersection, was pointing west as well.

  Not far behind the southernmost Iraqi vehicle, which was leading the patrol, Segel, Marang, and Mohammed dismounted, walking a few steps north to meet Travis, Kubicki, and Albino. The two drivers and turret gunners stayed inside their Humvees, which were packed like sardines in the minuscule alleyway.

  “If anything happens, they’ll tear us up,” Staff Sergeant Petty, the hard-nosed Texan driving Travis’s Humvee, said to Staff Sergeant Wilson, the turret gunner. “There’s no fucking way I can turn around and get us back to Elizabeth.”

  Just after Petty’s remark, the patrol lost its eye in the sky.

  “I see more people moving away from you, so be careful down there,” the pilot said. “Over and out.”

  “Well that’s just fucking great,” Petty said to Wilson.

  In part to make up for the lost air cover, Travis ordered Segel and Albino up to a rooftop to keep an eye out while he and fellow officers questioned neighborhood residents about encountering the sniper or any other insurgents. Travis, Kubicki, and Marang, along with the interpreter, were speaking with a heavyset Sunni local when one of the more competent Iraqi soldiers, Lieutenant Jalal, motioned for his American counterparts to come over. He was standing with a young boy who couldn’t have been more than eight years old.

  “I think he knows something,” Jalal said in broken English.

  Through the interpreter, Travis asked the child if he had seen a bad man shooting at people in this neighborhood. The boy, looking up at the tall, imposing Marine, stepped backward without answering.

  While another Marine standing in a dangerous intersection in searing heat may have grown frustrated, Travis, who had just recently become an uncle, knelt down and smiled before running his gloved hand through the boy’s hair. He had the interpreter ask the question again.

  “There,” the boy said in Arabic, pointing at a yellow, two-story house just south of the rooftop Segel and Albino were guarding. “That one.”

  “Thank you,” Travis called as the boy ran away.

  Getting on his walkie-talkie, Travis informed the team that he, Marang, and some Iraqi troops were going to check out the building, which was almost directly to the right of where Travis’s Humvee— the northernmost of the two American Humvees—was still facing south. Clutching their weapons in heat that was well over 100 degrees, the three officers headed toward the building’s entrance.

  Watching from the roof, Segel saw no obvious threats but continued to see people vanishing from the area, including Route Elizabeth just to the north.

  “I still think something weird is going on,” Segel said to Albino.

  The officers and their Iraqi counterparts searched the bottom floor of the building, which was almost completely empty except for an old, burned-out couch. They then headed for a stairway, only to find it blocked off by a large stack of cinderblocks. This was a common enemy tactic to prevent combat teams from entering buildings, but it was another in a series of strange signs.

  “I haven’t seen that in this sector,” Marang said about the cinderblock pile.

  Travis would normally have wanted to kick the cinderblocks down and head up the stairs, but the desolate building’s dark silence left almost no doubt that it was empty. Any further searches would in all likelihood be a waste of time. But it could still be some kind of setup, as al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents had been known to intimidate innocent children into fooling Americans in the past.

  “I don’t know about that kid anymore, Jon,” Travis said to Marang.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Marang said.

  As the officers suddenly appeared from the building, Lieutenant Jalal, his finger circling in the air, signaled that an ambush could be brewing. In an alley that felt like a trash compactor, staying any longer could make the patrol sitting ducks.

  “Ambush,” Jalal shouted in Arabic to the rooftop, motioning to Segel and Albino to come down.

  While the Marines hurried toward their respective vehicles, Travis, clutching his lethal M-4/M-203 combo weapon, waited at the bottom of the stairs for the lance corporal and Navy hospital corpsman to descend from the other building’s roof. While he was sweating from the ungodly heat and his heart still pounded from the suspicion that they could be moments from a firefight, Travis wasn’t comfortable leaving until he knew everyone in the patrol was safe.

  Just across Route Elizabeth, a turbaned, possibly Chechen marksman set his sights squarely on the former wrestling star from Doylestown, Pennsylvania. With his finger on the high-powered rifle’s trigger, the sniper planned on cutting down the most imposing Marine in the group with an armor-piercing bullet. As in previous attacks, he would then slip away while a ragtag group of Iraqi insurgents provided AK-47 cover fire from other buildings.

  With sweat dripping off his chin, the sniper was about to squeeze the trigger when Segel and Albino suddenly stepped in front of Travis. The two Marines and Navy corpsman almost instantly dispersed, with Travis moving quickly toward his Humvee, which was still facing south. The sniper, to his frustration, could no longer see the muscular American he had been only a split-second from shooting.

  With Segel rapidly moving south, his back unknowingly turned to the gunman, the sniper sud
denly had a lousy shot at this Marine as well. It was then that the shooter set his sights squarely on Doc Albino.

  Because of Albino’s slightly different uniform, darker complexion, and large mustache, the trained killer may have wondered if he was an Iraqi soldier. Never mind that he was actually a US Navy hospital corpsman, on patrol with US Marines to provide emergency medical care. To this terrorist, Albino was just another infidel and enemy of Allah.

  “Let’s go,” Travis said upon arriving at the Humvee.

  “This felt like a fucking setup,” Segel said at almost the same moment while approaching the other American vehicle. “Where’s the Doc?”

  The sniper pulled the trigger, blasting what felt like a metal pipe through Albino’s lower left abdomen. The bullet, which ricocheted off the corpsman’s radio, then tore through his left lung. Albino fell to his knees, dropping his weapon and landing flat on his face in the sordid, trash-filled street.

  “Motherfucker,” yelled Petty, who had gotten a thumbs-up from the Doc a split-second before. In an instant Travis and Kubicki started running toward the wounded corpsman.

  “CASUALTY!!!” screamed the turret gunner of the other American Humvee. He was the only one in that vehicle to see Albino go down.

  Everyone in the Humvee froze.

  “Iraqi?” a stunned Marang yelled in response.

  Despite the sudden jolt of adrenaline, their hearts sank when they heard the gunner’s response.

  “It’s the Doc!” he yelled, opening fire. “Ambush!”

  Travis had reacted as soon as the first shot rang out. He took off running toward his wounded comrade as the thunderous sound of American turret gunfire rang out in the once-quiet alleyway. Even with the enemy shooting from above, Travis didn’t care about his own safety. He knew this could be his only chance to save the Doc.

  At the other American Humvee, Marang and Segel also took off in Albino’s direction. Though they were trained to never run toward a sniper’s victim, the warrior ethos of never leaving a fallen comrade behind had overridden their sensibilities.

  Travis, who reached the Doc first, grabbed him by the left shoulder, and Kubicki, who was running close behind, clutched Albino’s right arm a few seconds later.

  “Come on, Doc!” Travis yelled as he and the major pulled Albino closer to the Humvee.

  Bullets were now raining down from multiple rooftops, which meant that more insurgents had been waiting with the sniper to ambush the American and Iraqi troops. The MiTT team was encircled by insurgents, and without a fierce counterattack, the entire patrol was almost certainly doomed.

  As bedlam ensued, the Marines realized that both Iraqi vehicles in their patrol were gone. After the Iraqi soldiers heard the gunfire, the front vehicle subsequently hit an IED while trying to loop around toward a better fighting position. The Iraqis were stranded, which meant nine Americans and their interpreter were left outnumbered in a confined, chaotic space.

  Travis and Kubicki dragged Albino out of the kill zone and closer to the vehicle’s front side, where the sniper couldn’t deliver a fatal blow to their bleeding, gasping corpsman. As they tended Albino’s wounds, Travis saw Marang and Segel running toward him at full speed.

  Another piercing crack of gunfire abruptly echoed through the alley. In an instant Segel was somersaulting in midair, feeling like Mike Tyson had just punched him in the stomach, and landing in the middle of the bullet-riddled street. All around Segel, who broke his rifle while collapsing to the ground, a hectic battle was unfolding in an eerie, slow-motion silence.

  Segel’s wrist convulsed with tremendous pain. The sniper was firing at the wounded Marine as he lay in the street, and the young lance corporal, who had just been shot in the wrist—and still unbeknownst to him, in the stomach—would soon be dead if he didn’t get in front of that Humvee.

  As Segel lay powerless, unable to do anything but wait for the crushing blow of another sniper bullet, Travis pulled him out of the sniper’s crosshairs. Moments later Segel lay next to Albino, who was still being worked on by Kubicki.

  By the time the confused lance corporal looked up into the dust, Travis was gone. He had already run back into a cloud of bullets.

  Travis dashed into the street, not far from where Segel had been hit twice and Marang had barely escaped death. Without blinking, he blasted a grenade onto one of the buildings’ rooftops, sending chunks of concrete tumbling to the ground. When Travis switched to M-4 rounds, his suppressing fire was equally relentless, which gave Kubicki and Marang enough time to help the wounded.

  With one rooftop silent after stunned insurgents had experienced the crushing power of Travis’s grenades and countless M-4 rounds, the battle’s tide began to turn. Segel and Albino couldn’t see Travis firing, but they could hear the welcome sounds of the American counterattack, which only paused when Travis needed to reload.

  “Go!” Travis screamed to his fellow officers, who moved into new positions so they could join him in firing at the enemy. Travis, moving east in the alleyway from the Humvee’s passenger side to the driver’s side as he blasted away at another rooftop, was now causing the same kind of pandemonium among the enemy that the sniper had initially wrought among the Americans.

  Just in front of Segel, the corpsman initially pulled to safety by Travis and Kubicki had dragged himself almost completely under the vehicle, with only his legs sticking out. Trying desperately to breathe while tasting a mixture of sand and his own blood, Albino was almost certain he was going to die.

  Amid dizziness, extreme thirst, and the crashing sounds of concrete, the wounded corpsman pictured his mother, whom he didn’t want to suffer in the wake of his death. But at the same time, Albino could see Travis’s boots firmly planted in the sand while he fired on enemy positions. The situation was bleak, but maybe there was still a chance to survive.

  Although the sniper would usually have been long gone by now, the AK-47 fire from the other buildings caused so much initial confusion that the MiTT team still wasn’t sure which building he had fired from. Like a vulture circling its prey, the enemy marksman continued scanning the alley before again spotting Travis, who was firing away at the other rooftop.

  The sniper had wanted to kill Travis from the moment he first saw him. Given that the muscular twenty-six-year-old Marine had jumped into the line of fire to wreak havoc on insurgents, Travis—now fully exposed to the sniper’s position—was the gunman’s prime target.

  With Kubicki and Marang firing from the west and both turret gunners blasting away at the rooftops, Travis started to smell victory as he led the counterattack from the east and drew fire away from his teammates. With his watch reading 1525 and the clock ticking down toward the end of the bloody bout, the heart and soul of 3-2-1 MiTT once again reached down for more ammunition.

  Across the city, First Lieutenant Kim was handing crayons to smiling Iraqi kids with Second Lieutenant Alexander. Though Kim wondered how Travis and the guys were faring inside the Pizza Slice, they had been through so many battles in the last five months without a casualty that the MiTT team seemed indestructible.

  As Kim knelt with a happy child, he suddenly heard unintelligible screaming from the radio inside his vehicle.

  “Contact,” yelled a voice, possibly Staff Sergeant Petty, the driver of the Humvee Kim was originally supposed to be in.

  Kim looked straight at Alexander, who had heard the same frantic sounds, and both men motioned to their Iraqi counterparts to sit with the kids while they checked things out.

  The transmissions were broken, but now the sound of Petty’s voice screaming “contact” came through crystal clear. Without saying a single word about what to do next, Kim and Alexander jumped into separate vehicles with their respective drivers, told the Iraqis to handle the rest of the school supply drop, and sped toward the Pizza Slice’s unknown turmoil.

  As they listened to broken radio transmissions and tried to communicate with Petty, who was frantically trying to contact Camp Fallujah and request
a quick reaction force (QRF), the Marines silently navigated through the Pizza Slice’s narrow, confusing streets, not completely sure where their MiTT team brothers were pinned down. They knew a battle was raging, but neither Marine had any idea how serious it was, nor did they realize Albino and Segel had been hit.

  After looping around the Pizza Slice, the two vehicles turned right onto Route Elizabeth near the Blackwater Bridge, heading east, and the seriousness of the situation slapped Kim and Alexander in the face. The normally bustling, packed marketplace artery was completely empty. If tumbleweeds had blown across the street, this section of Fallujah would have looked exactly like a deserted town in an old spaghetti western.

  “Jesus Christ,” Alexander said.

  “Where the fuck are they?” Kim yelled in frustration.

  Suddenly they heard gunfire.

  “There!!!” Alexander said, pointing at the besieged alleyway where two American Humvees were still being riddled by bullets.

  As both vehicles stopped on Route Elizabeth facing east, the Marines jumped out and ran as quickly as they could—ducking as rifles continued to crack—toward their comrades. Kim then confronted an image that would stay with him for the rest of his life.

  Travis was lying near the back driver’s side tire of the Humvee he had been riding in, his eyes wide open but glazed over with emptiness. Kim saw no blood, but it was obvious that something horrible had occurred in that wretched, violent alley.

  For the first time in the entire deployment, sheer panic seized Kim as he ran with Alexander up to Kubicki, who was kneeling by Travis while firing a 9mm handgun at one of the buildings after running out of rifle ammunition.

  “What the hell happened?” Kim asked, firing his own rifle. “Where do you need us to go?”

  “Get the wounded,” Kubicki said. “Get them out of here!”

  “Who else is hit?” Alexander said.

  “Segel and the Doc,” Kubicki said before moving to another position to continue firing.

  Swinging open the passenger’s side back door for cover as he fired, Kim saw Segel, who had avoided being shot again but was still in great pain, lying in the backseat. Despite being on his back, he was reaching down to the floor trying to find more ammunition for the turret gunner. His left wrist was bleeding profusely.