Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death

by Jim Frederick

  On June 14, 2006, nearly 50,000 Iraqi and American troops launched Operation Forward Together, an initiative designed to bolster security in the capital by increasing street patrols, beefing up checkpoints, and enforcing curfews. It was a failure. Two of the promised Iraqi brigades never showed up. After a day or two of calm, violence erupted in the capital again on June 17, when seven separate attacks—a suicide bombing, a mortar attack, three car bombings, a bus bombing, and a pushcart bombing—occurred in Baghdad, resulting in at least 36 dead and 75 wounded. And the attacks kept coming. Fifty gunmen wearing police uniforms kidnapped scores of factory workers on June 21. By July, Baghdad was averaging 34 attacks a day, compared with 24 a day in June. Despite the spike in violence, the war’s planners insisted that the answer was fewer rather than more troops. On June 21, General George Casey briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff and recommended reducing the 15 combat brigades currently stationed in Iraq to 10 brigades within six months. Six months after that, he proposed whittling that number down to 7 or 8. By December 2007, according to his timeline, only 5 or 6 brigades would remain. He similarly proposed cutting the number of bases from 69 to 11. With the violence still escalating, U.S. and Iraqi forces initiated Operation Forward Together II in August, using more troops shipped in from Anbar. One government report described this as “giving up ground to one enemy to fight another.” That operation also failed.

  * On September 25, 2007, Tim Hanley shot himself to death one year after returning from deployment. His was one of an epidemic of suicides to plague the Army and the 101st Airborne—including eighteen suicides at Fort Campbell through the middle of November 2009. One of those was Juan Hernandez, the soldier who had performed so valorously during Charlie Company’s friendly fire incident on November 4, 2005. He shot himself to death in Coffee County, Tennessee, on October 5, 2009.

  23

  The Alamo

  ON JUNE I6, Bravo’s 1st Platoon was back at the JSB, 2nd Platoon was manning the TCPs, and 3rd Platoon was patrolling Yusufiyah. Rick Skidis was on emergency family leave, so Fenlason was Bravo Company’s acting first sergeant. A bunch of Freedom Rest passes had been approved simultaneously, so several more soldiers than anybody had anticipated were going to be gone from duty.

  Fenlason was concerned about how shorthanded the company was, and he told Major Salome about it. “When you took out the people that were on leave, the people that were going on leave, and then you factored the passes into it, the company was going to be short the equivalent of a platoon for three weeks,” Fenlason said. With attrition, scheduled leaves, and soldiers up at Striker for medical or other reasons, 1st Platoon had twenty-two of its assigned thirty-four men on the ground. In addition to security at the base itself, the AVLB, and TCP4, their missions included morning IED sweeps, at least two patrols a day to sensitive nearby facilities, resupply runs back to Yusufiyah, daytime neighborhood patrols in Quarguli Village, nighttime overwatches in that same village, and cordon and knock searches for bad guys as the case came up.

  Heading into the evening of the 16th, Private First Class Thomas Tucker, Specialist David Babineau, and Private First Class Kristian Menchaca were guarding the AVLB. Menchaca hadn’t even been on the regular duty roster for that shift, but he had volunteered so another soldier who was celebrating his birthday could enjoy it in the relative comfort of the JSB. The threesome had been on duty, in a single Humvee, for almost twenty-four hours. Their team leader, Sergeant Daniel Carrick, was on one of those four-day Freedom Rest passes and Staff Sergeant Chaz Allen, their squad leader, had told them to be extra alert, because when Cortez and two others were out there the night before, they had taken some small-arms fire and RPG fire.

  Allen had nine men to cover the two positions and they had been doing it for days. It was a ridiculous staffing situation, but it was standard practice for this deployment. So at any given time, Allen had three men on the AVLB, three men on TCP4, and three in reserve.

  Just before 8:00 p.m., he and two soldiers at TCP4 were about to relieve the soldiers on guard at TCP4. He asked somebody to do a radio check with the Alamo. A minute or so went by.

  “Any luck?” he inquired. Negative, the soldier said. “Gimme the mic,” he said. Just then, a torrent of gunfire opened up. Allen tried to raise them on the radio. Cortez climbed on the roof of the TCP with an M14. With that gun’s scope, it was possible to see the position. He yelled down that he didn’t see anyone.

  Soldiers stationed at the JSB heard the barrage too. Lauzier figured it must be the IAs shooting at something from their location on the JSB itself. The birthday soldier had been planning on bringing steaks to the men at the AVLB for dinner as a thank-you, and he had taken their order over the radio a couple of minutes ago. He tried hailing them now, but there was no response. Norton ordered Lauzier, Barker, Hernandez, Sharpness, and couple of others to rush a convoy out there.

  At TCP4, the same thing was happening. Cortez and a couple others jumped into a Humvee. It wouldn’t start. The battery was dead. They piled back out and into the M113 armored personnel carrier and took off.

  Just over halfway through the three-quarter-mile journey to the AVLB, the QRF from the JSB patrol base hit the brakes. There were two objects—they sort of looked like oil drums, which could be IEDs—blocking their path. Some of the men got out to investigate them. Though the drums turned out to be decoys, they would hold up the vehicles for an hour and a half. Lauzier, Barker, Hernandez, and Sharpness got out right away and decided to make it there on foot. They started out walking, but, increasingly worried, they began to run and finally sprinted the rest of the way.

  Cortez and his men arrived first, around 8:15 p.m. There was no one there. Hundreds of brass shell casings were strewn about the ground. There were several large pools of blood. The men cordoned off the area and searched the vicinity. Cortez found Babineau about thirty yards away, facedown in the weeds and water on the banks of the canal. He had been shot multiple times up and down his back. Bullets had split his head open. There were two M4s on top of the hood and both right-hand Humvee doors were open. All three of the men’s helmets were inside the Humvee. One had a packet of Skittles inside it. The soldiers had not been able to get a Mayday signal off over the radio, nor did they fire a shot. The Humvee’s turret was locked and its M240B machine gun was on safe.

  “They had their Kevlars off and no weapons,” said Allen. “So nobody had situational awareness. Nobody was pulling guard. Sometimes people will say to me, ‘It’s a direct reflection of your leadership.’ The first time somebody told me that, I almost fucking killed somebody. I wanted to just slit the motherfucker’s throat. Mainly because you’re basically stating that I allow things of this nature to take place, that I don’t care.”

  The insurgents on the scene apparently had had enough time to sift through the truck and the men’s personal effects looking for valuables, taking what they wanted. In addition to everything on the ground, and the guns on the hood, there was a PlayStation Portable on the floor of the Humvee, but two pairs of night-vision goggles and a bulletproof vest were gone.

  Lauzier’s fire team arrived a few minutes after Cortez’s. They could hear yelling. “Menchaca! Menchaca! Tucker! Tucker!” Cortez was at the banks of the canal. He was trying to pull Babineau out of the water.

  “Where are Tucker and Chaca?” Lauzier asked.

  “I don’t know,” Cortez said, crying. “They’re not here. They are not here.”

  Lauzier’s team began to search the area. They headed out to the nearest houses to question, and kick the shit out of, anyone they saw. The Iraqi soldiers stationed on the JS Bridge itself said that they hadn’t heard or seen anything, which, to the Americans, was a stone-cold lie. Either they were in on it, or they had decided to stay out of it, but there is no way they could have failed to hear the bullets. Sharpness put Babineau in a body bag, and the rage he felt was nearly uncontrollable.

  “I pulled my fucking weapon up, I put it on fucking semi, and I was ready to just s
tart spraying,” he said. Much of 1st Platoon wound up staying out all night looking for their comrades. “We spent the whole night questioning people,” recalled one soldier. “You’re not supposed to tactically question people in combat unless you’re an interrogator. We were straight-up interrogating people. Beating people’s asses with weapons, threatening to kill them if they didn’t talk. It was thug style, like a gang war, because we wanted our guys back alive and the chances of that were dwindling every second that went by.”

  While the rest of 1st Platoon was responding to the crisis, Private First Class Justin Watt and Sergeant Tony Yribe were up at FOB Mahmudiyah at the same time. Both were heading up to Striker: Watt, to get some dental work done, while Yribe was having his back looked at; the blast that had killed Britt and Lopez had caused a nagging injury. They had scored a semiprivate hooch in a tent occupied by some Psychological Operations soldiers they had befriended. It was early evening and Yribe was talking to some friends out in front of the tent when a bunch of Alpha guys started running past, heading for the helicopter landing zones and motor-pool staging areas, strapping on helmets and Velcroing vests as they went.

  “What the hell is going on?” Yribe called out after some of them.

  “Dead and wounded down by the JSB,” they yelled as they ran past. The JSB? That’s 1st Platoon, Yribe realized. He ran to the TOC to get the fuller story. Watt was sleeping when Yribe came back to wake him up.

  “Watt, Watt! Hey, Watt!” he said. “Hadj just attacked Tucker, Babs, and Chaca down at the Alamo and they don’t know where Tucker and Chaca are. Babineau’s dead.” Getting captured was every soldier’s worst fear, worse than dying in a firefight or even getting blown to pieces by an IED. Insurgents were known to be lusty, committed torturers without mercy. Soldiers frequently commented that they would kill themselves before they’d allow themselves to be captured. So the news that Tucker and Menchaca were missing was, perversely, worse than hearing that they were already dead.

  The two whipped outside and tried to find a ride or a flight down to the JSB to help with the search. Alpha was spinning up a massive Quick Reaction Force. Yribe and Watt asked everybody they saw if they could get a ride. No one had any seats. Finally, an officer told them that they weren’t going anywhere anyway. Hundreds of soldiers were already flooding the area and no one thought bringing two more who were close friends with the kidnapped was going to help anything. So throughout that night, they had little to do but scrounge for updates and talk in their bunks.

  “It just drives me crazy that all the good men die and the shitbag murderers like Green are home eating hamburgers,” said Yribe.

  “Murderers?” Watt asked.

  Yribe told Watt about the day at the checkpoint, how he had found the shotgun shell, how Green had confessed to him, how Yribe had followed up the next day, and how, once he was convinced that Green really did it, he told Green that he needed to get out of the Army or he would get him out himself.

  Watt couldn’t believe what he was hearing. On the one hand, it sounded like something Green was capable of. On the other hand, it was unbelievable because it didn’t add up.

  “How in the fuck is Green going to single-handedly escape the wire without an NCO knowing, murder four fucking people by himself, without other people knowing, and then infiltrate that same wire?” he asked.

  Green swore that he acted alone, Yribe said, and that Cortez and Barker had nothing to do with it. But they must have, Watt asserted—it doesn’t make any sense otherwise. No, Yribe insisted, they wouldn’t do that. And anyway, Yribe said, the less I know about it—and the less you know about it—the better. Just forget I said anything.

  But Watt couldn’t forget it. That night, he lay on his cot thinking about Tucker and Menchaca, who he, and everybody else, suspected were being tortured at that moment. And he thought about Green doing much the same thing to a whole family of Iraqis. Tucker and Menchaca were some of the best guys Watt had ever known. Tucker always talked about fishing and the pickup trucks he liked to work on. And Menchaca was quiet but respected, a friend to everyone. He was from Texas, but he still had a heavy Mexican accent that he turned up even heavier when he was goofing around. He had gotten married just a month before deployment. Babineau, though, had been married for years and was a father of three and shouldn’t have even been there. He had been “stop-lossed,” the policy that allowed the Army to forcibly retain soldiers scheduled to be discharged if their unit was deploying within a certain window of time. Watt couldn’t stop thinking about that: Babineau was here on stolen time. Babs had done his eight years already, and now he was dead.

  Goodwin showed up at the JSB with 3rd Platoon around 9:00 p.m. He had been in constant radio contact since the first call, but almost immediately, commanders several levels above him had taken control. When a “MisCap-DuStWUn” (“Missing, Captured-Duty Status, Whereabouts Unknown”) happens, the Army moves fast. An Apache Longbow arrived within minutes. A Predator unmanned drone started hovering overhead within half an hour, tracking any suspicious activities. Relief units from the 2-502nd started arriving at each TCP location and halted all motor traffic throughout the area. An Iron Claw team and other, larger relief units were heading to Yusufiyah as their staging base. An Iraqi special operations forces unit went into action, and dive teams and division-level QRFs at Striker began gearing up.

  “At that point,” Goodwin said. “I didn’t know what to do. Honest. I was talking to so many people on the radio, I was having a hard time keeping straight who I was talking to. It was insane.” Within another hour, Colonel Kunk and Sergeant Major Edwards showed up too. “They took over the show and began to abuse 1st Platoon,” Goodwin recalled. “Anytime they had a free moment, they were yelling at Norton, about how much 1st Platoon sucked and how worthless they all were. Anything that they were told by 1st Platoon, they considered lies or they just chose not to listen to them.”

  In less than five hours, approximately 400 soldiers had searched three objective areas in the vicinity of the attack site. Throughout the night, elements of the 101st Airborne and the 4th Infantry conducted searches, set up blocking positions, or prepared for mobilization at dawn.

  As had become the norm during critical times for the 1-502nd, Alpha Company got the call to take the lead. They moved up fast as part of a multiunit clearing effort of Malibu. Bravo’s 3rd Platoon walked up Malibu as well, following the guidance of helicopters and drones. Blaisdell remembered searching the house of a Quarguli sheikh on Malibu with whom they were on relatively friendly terms. Because he forgot to strap up his helmet, it popped off just as he was flinging himself over the courtyard wall. He and his helmet landed at the feet of the sheikh, who was waiting for them. Blaisdell had never seen a sheikh in his underwear before. “I knew he knew a lot of what was going on, but he wasn’t going to tell us anything,” he said. “That would have been a death sentence for him and his family.”

  After a brief operational pause in the earliest hours of the morning, Alpha and several other units moved northwest (more than 8,000 coalition troops would ultimately aid in the search), discovering bloody drag marks on the road leading to the power plant. As they searched throughout the morning, they found pieces of a U.S. body armor vest, a white Bongo truck with a thick pool of blood in the flatbed near an office building on the plant’s grounds, and blood on the handrail of a bridge over a canal at the plant’s front entrance.

  With temperatures soaring past 110 degrees, Alpha took small-arms fire and mortar fire throughout the day. While Alpha inspected a village on the north side of the power plant and other nearby environs, massive air assaults cleared wide swaths of countryside almost continuously. Colonel Ebel, Lieutenant Colonel Kunk, and Major General James Thurman, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, flew up to the Russian power plant looking for a status update from Alpha commander Jared Bordwell. “I had an Army Dive Team and a PJ [Air Force Para Jumper] Dive Team with me, diving in that canal up by Caveman,” said Bordwell. “And we ha
d just been in a firefight with some guys earlier in that morning. And they wanted to know what was going on and what we thought. And I started to brief General Thurman, and he just cut me off and started briefing me. He started briefing me on what had been reported—from me, up to him—and based on what had gotten changed along the way, he was telling me that I was wrong. And Colonel Kunk and Colonel Ebel just sat there. It was frustrating to see my two senior leaders not say anything. They just let the general tell me what I thought, which wasn’t accurate by any means.”

  After searching well into the next day, most of the men of 1st Platoon returned to the JSB to try to get some food and rest for an hour or two before heading back out. But Kunk and Edwards were unhappy with the state of the base. “The first thing that sergeant major does is yell at us about the JSB being dirty. The very first thing,” said 2nd Squad’s Chris Payne. “He doesn’t pull the guys together and say, ‘Hold your heads up, we’ll do what we can do to find these guys.’ Neither did the battalion commander. Something to unify the platoon. It didn’t happen. All that happened was that the men got yelled at.” Under orders from Sergeant Major Edwards, Payne went down to the Bat Cave and hauled all the rest of the men out of their racks and they started picking up cigarette butts.

  Since he was acting first sergeant, Fenlason did not get out to the JSB until the next day. “Kunk had moved his TOC down there,” he said. “So now you got Edwards, Kunk, Salome, and all their little wizards down there. All I did was go in and take my ass beatings. They didn’t want us around them. All they wanted us to do was cook their fucking food. I remember Kunk screaming at me one night because we didn’t make enough food for his people, giving me the ‘Here we are looking for your goddamn soldiers’ routine while I am trying to explain that he’s never told me how many people he’s actually got down here. And Edwards is screaming at me every which way.”