Rhodes’ mouth was dry, his tongue like a cactus in a bed of sand, as his squad loaded onto the waiting aircraft. Who would have ever thought he’d be flying in a dragonfly? Around him, his platoon mates kept up a running patter to conceal the apprehension they were all experiencing. Apprehension, hell! They were scared to death, and they were scared their buddies would know they were scared. They were also excited.
Dan “Corny” Courneya, a nineteen-year-old PFC from Michigan, crowded onto the canvas seating next to Rhodes. “This ain’t no place for a Polar Bear!” he shouted to be heard above the noise. “Do you see any snow?”
“So this is war, huh?” marveled Christopher Murphy, a short, squat little PFC carrying a SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon). He squeezed in on the other side of Rhodes.
“Not much different so far from an FTX (Field Training Exercise) back at Drum, huh?” Rhodes said, surprised that the cactus in his mouth let him sound so calm.
Platoon Sergeant Burke stood up in the cargo compartment and waved his arms to be noticed. All the lights were off, except for the aircraft instruments, which provided scant illumination.
“All right, people. Keep your eyes open and the noise down when we hit the LZ. We’re in bad guy country. This is what we came for. Hoo-ra!”
War was hell, or so the old vets like to say. Up to this point, Rhodes’ first time out, it wasn’t so much hell as, well, strange. And scary. Glory and a place in history were okay; everybody wanted a piece of it. But mostly what Rhodes wanted was to avoid spilling his guts in Iraq. It was a bit disconcerting to consider that his sleeping bag might also serve as a body bag if he were killed.
SIX
The two choppers descended over the midnight land, coming in fast and steep to a stubbly grain field about 400 meters from the outskirts of Khargouli Village. Few lights shone from the houses this time of night, only a pinprick in a window here and there. Insomniacs perhaps. The field looked vacant through the two-dimensional, grainy-green imagery of the optics soldiers wore for night vision.
Sammy Rhodes leaned forward in his canvas seat to look out the chopper’s open door as the bird flared and hovered a few feet above the ground. The next thing he knew, everything went into overdrive. Guys were slapping each other on the butt, arm, or leg to rush them out the doors. The pilots were in a hurry. Choppers were at their most vulnerable to small arms fire and RPGs during troop airlift operations.
Rhodes leaped into the darkness, stumbled under the weight of his heavy weapon and gear when he hit the ground, and went to his knees. He scrambled to his feet, weapon ready, his heart pounding so hard in his chest he thought everybody in Khargouli could hear it. Immediately, the Black Hawks lifted up in a black wind tunnel and were gone, behind them on the field the awful, ringing silence that followed an air assault after the machines were gone and there was nothing left but men.
Lieutenant Vargo and Sergeant Burke got the patrol into overwatch and it moved out toward the sound of a dog yapping in its sleep and a rooster crowing. In the air hung the stench of animal dung and human feces and garbage, unmistakable indications of a settlement nearby. In their NVs (night-vision devices) and body armor, the guys looked goggle-eyed and bulked up to unbelievable proportions. Soldier noises of breath coming in gasps and gear rattling sounded loud enough to summon every hajji with a homemade bomb and a rifle from here to Baghdad. Rhodes imagined an ambush waiting behind every bush.
Moving in the dark toward the back approach to Khargouli, the patrol negotiated neglected fields and weaved through a maze of levees, ditches, irrigation canals, and reed patches. Dusty country lanes bordered by tall, vertical-thatch fences and crude, mud-walled huts helped point the way. Lieutenant Vargo coordinated the effort through constant radio contact with Second Platoon.
A narrow canal temporarily halted the platoon near the rear of the town. It seemed shallow enough. Through NVs, Rhodes watched Murphy, Joe Anzak, and several others ease into water up to their waists and wade on across, weapons above their heads.
Rhodes didn’t think to follow the footsteps of the others. He searched for footing at his own crossing and waded in, hoisting the heavy two-forty above his head. The water reached his chest. Four or five more steps and he would be across.
Suddenly, the bottom of the canal fell out from underneath his boots. Weighted down with Kevlar, the machine gun, extra ammo and grenades, he sank instantly in ten feet of water. There was no way he could stay afloat, much less attempt to swim. As he went under, the first thought that came to mind was that, on his first day at war, he was going to drown in a canal filled with Third World shit and filth.
But he was determined not to drown without a struggle. As the warm water closed over his head, he kicked off the grassy bottom and lunged, reaching with one hand and holding onto the machine gun with the other. The lieutenant would have his ass if he lost it.
He reached as far as he could, desperately grasping with his hand, the only part of him above water. He caught a fistful of grass and reeds. He pulled and, to his dismay, felt the grass break free in his hand.
The next thing he knew, arms were dragging him out of the canal. A couple of men had thrown themselves belly-down in the reeds and grabbed his arm at the last possible moment. He lay on his back looking up at the black sky while he spluttered and gasped for breath.
“You are one lucky Joe that we saw your hand before you went under for good,” Murphy said, kneeling over him.
Rhodes didn’t feel so lucky. He coughed up water. “I swallowed some of that stuff. What kind of bugs and shit you reckon I’ll get?”
Murphy chuckled. “Your dick’ll probably fall off.”
Sergeant Burke hurried back. “Keep the chatter down, for God’s sake. What do you think this is, a Girl Scout outing? Rhodes, next time you want to go for a swim, take off your clothes. Let’s move out. We got a job to do.”
Rhodes was peeved. Hell, he was pissed off. He almost drowned and what did he get? Nothing but more shit from the sergeant.
Movement the rest of the way was slow and dangerous as the patrol approached the rear of the village. Lieutenant Vargo set up his blocking force on an extended line across a cleared field next to a road that presented the most likely avenue of escape for anybody the boys of Second Platoon might flush out.
By this time, Rhodes was shivering from his unscheduled submersion. Air in the desert could be surprisingly chill at night. Under instructions from the lieutenant, he set up his machine gun to cover a foot path leading out of the darkened village and settled down to watch and wait, dripping water and hugging himself against the cold.
From over to his right flank, he overheard a whispered exchange as Sergeant Burke repositioned Murphy and PFC Timothy Grom. By this time, Rhodes was so fucking miserable he could give a fuck about anything. It was a long time until the sun came up again, and everything was so quiet he doubted anything was going to happen. This was probably a dry hole, and that was fine by him.
Sergeant Burke went on down the line. Grom and Murphy were still shuffling about in the dark, finding a place of cover and concealment to continue their vigil, when a rifle shot almost caused Rhodes to jump out from under his nitch. He heard the unmistakable crack of a bullet zipping past his two buddies.
For an instant, he thought it might be an AD, accidental discharge. Except it came from somewhere in the village. Although he had never heard an AK-47 discharged, he knew the sound of a 5.56 M-4—and that wasn’t it.
Murphy and Grom hit the ground as though poled with an ax, Murphy swearing and excited and crawling fast on his belly toward the nearest tree, like a crippled insect. Grom lay where he fell with his face buried in the dirt. This was the first time either of them had been shot at, the first time the platoon had drawn fire.
“Grom! Grom, you hit?” someone called out.
“Naw, man.”
“Just lay there, buddy. He can’t see you in the weeds.”
“I think I pissed my pants.”
Sergeant B
urke raced along the front. “Hold your fire. Don’t anybody shoot. We got people in the town.”
That wasn’t the only reason to hold fire. Hajji knew the rules of engagement under which the Americans operated better than the new kids on the block did. That was how he reduced his chances of being caught and punished. Shoot and scoot. That was his MO. Use a residential neighborhood, a mosque, or some other public place into which no American GI would dare return fire. Pop off a round or two and then haul ass.
This was fucked-up, Rhodes thought, when they could shoot at you but you couldn’t shoot back.
“Break! Break! Break!” The L.T. (lieutenant) was on the radio with Delta HQ and Second Platoon. “Contact! We have contact. One sniper. Stand by.”
Excitement surged through the platoon, but it didn’t last long. In fact, the contact, such as it was, was almost a disappointment after all the buildup prior to the start of the mission. Just the single shot and after that, aside from the barking of dogs inside the town, nothing else. Second Platoon on its way through Khargouli rousted a couple of teenagers sneaking around with a jug of hooch.
It wasn’t much of a war so far.
That is, it wasn’t much of a war unless you were the one getting shot at. Then it was war whether it was one shot or a barrage. Murphy seemed surprised and indignant that someone had actually tried to kill him.
“The son-of-a-bitch shot at me! Did you see that? The bastard tried to waste me.”
“We need to get the motherfucker,” Grom said, furious and scared at the same time.
“Relax,” Corporal Jimenez counseled. “This is just the beginning. You’ll get your chance for payback.”
By now, all PFC Rhodes wanted was to get this shit over with and go home. The first night in battle hadn’t been kind to him. First, he damned near drowned. Then the hajjis started taking potshots. He had a feeling things were going to get much worse before they got better.
SEVEN
By the time of Operation Desert Storm, the first Iraqi war in 1991, the four-wheel-drive, wide-bodied High-Mobility Multipurpose Vehicle M998 or updated M1114 (HMMWV, “hummer,” “humvee”) had largely supplanted most light trucks within the U.S. military, including the old workhorse quarter-ton Jeep used since World War II and the Vietnam-era APC (Armored Personnel Carrier). At least seventeen configurations of the heavy-duty vehicle were now in service, ranging from cargo/troop carriers and ambulances to automatic weapons platforms and TOW missile carriers.
The army had drafted final specifications for the HMMWV in 1979 after concluding that militarized civilian trucks no longer satisfied tactical requirements. The hummer first saw combat in Operation Just Cause, the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. Over 10,000 were employed by Coalition forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom beginning in 2003.
Like the quarter-ton Jeep, the original hummer was designed for operations behind friendly lines and therefore was not armored against intense small arms fire, much less against machine guns and RPGs. It was not until after the Somalia disaster that the army recognized the need for a more protected vehicle to be used in urban combat.
AM General, a subsidiary of American Motors Corporation, began limited production of a fully armored humvee in 1996, the M1114. Only a few of those were available prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. “Up-armor” kits were installed instead on the original prototypes. These kits included armored doors with bullet-resistant glass, side and rear armor plates, and a ballistic windshield.
Where up-armor kits were unavailable, inventive soldiers improvised “hillbilly armor” out of scrap metal. In December 2004, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld came under harsh political criticism for failing to provide better-equipped trucks. As a result, most hummers in the war zones were either immediately up-armored or replaced. By the time the 10th Mountain Division deployed its 2nd BCT, nearly all hummers in Iraq were the new, improved version.
The M1114 held up well against most small arms fire and lateral IED (Improvised Explosive Device) attacks where the blast was distributed in all directions. They offered less protection from a blast directly beneath the truck, such as buried IEDs and land mines. None of the soldiers was eager to test it either way.
Just after sunrise and the beginning of another sweltering day in early October, HMMWVs assigned to Delta Company, 4th Battalion, were lined up in front of the empty fire-gutted building at Yusufiyah, waiting for the anti-IED vehicles “Iron Claw” and “Husky” to link up. Delta Company was moving out in force. Officers and senior NCOs had been briefed and rehearsed over the last several days. As with other 4th Battalion companies, Delta was about to occupy and hold ground in its own AO—the four-mile stretch of treacherous highway known as Malibu Road that twisted in concert with the Euphrates River. Every soldier had already heard the disconcerting rumors about how the 101st Airborne feared to travel that route.
The Polar Bears had made their presence and intent known in a series of preemptive raids and air assaults. Now it was time for the companies to put Colonel Infanti’s theories into practice—that only by living among the people and protecting them could the war be won. Delta would eventually occupy a Company FOB and two patrol bases or battle positions on the road. The grand strategy, as Buck Sergeant E-5 Joshua Parrish understood it, was for Delta to tame its AO step by step. Advance, occupy, or construct a “fort,” hold and pacify the area, then move on down the road and do it again.
Parrish’s Fourth Platoon, commanded by Lieutenant Joe Tomasello with Platoon Sergeant Louis Garrett had been tapped to occupy the first patrol base in the AO. Company, along with Iron Claw and Husky, would escort the platoon in, after which the Fourth would be left to hold its own ground. Parrish was a bit apprehensive, not knowing exactly how the local insurgents might react. Surely they wouldn’t be foolish enough, or suicidal enough, to attack a heavily armed, heavily armored platoon.
Sergeant Joshua Parrish, Fourth Platoon’s First Squad leader, had been working with his dad remodeling a house in Glenfield, New York, when terrorists flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001. That very same day, even before the WTC finally imploded in toxic clouds of dust and smoke, he rushed right down to his local army recruiters and enlisted. It was his duty as an American to do something. He was nineteen years old and one year out of high school. Five years later, he was still in the army and still doing something.
He was a slender young sergeant, an inch over six feet tall, with cropped light brown hair, eyes that looked either gray or hazel according to the light, and a scar on his upper lip that gave him a wise, old-vet look. Conscientious and responsible, he had shaken his squad out of their racks as soon as he received the movement warning order at 0500. In the town outside the walls, muezzin were broadcasting their eerie, warbling calls to first prayers.
Corporal Begin Menahem and a new private named Pitcher were now tarping over a trailer hooked up to Parrish’s vehicle. The trailer was full of MREs and water. No one knew exactly how long the platoon might have to survive out there on its own before it could occupy Delta’s first position. Hopefully, no more than a few days. Intel sorts had tentatively selected a site in the first big curve of the road.
Lieutenant Tomasello came by while Sergeant Parrish was talking quietly with Menahem and several others from his squad. Tomasello was in his late twenties, broad-shouldered and almost Parrish’s height, with a ruddy complexion and a friendly, open manner. The Joes liked him and respected his leadership.
“What do you think, Sergeant Parrish?” he greeted, looking down the length of the parked convoy with its turrets bristling in fire power.
“My boys are ready, sir. The sooner we start, the sooner we finish.”
Tomasello clapped him on the back, eliciting a hollow sound from the SAPI plates in his armor.
“Keep them on their toes, Sergeant. We want to take everybody home with us when we leave.”
EIGHT
The advance onto perilous Malibu was painstakin
gly slow, requiring nearly the entire day to penetrate even the modest distance from Battalion HQ at Yusufiyah to Route Malibu and the first big S-curve that twisted with the river. Malibu was fill road, which meant it had been elevated above the surrounding countryside to prevent its flooding and erosion. Clusters of houses, villages of sorts, thinned out on either side to small goat and sheep spreads and patches of wheat and barley or citrus orchards.
Incredibly enough, where there were no houses or cultivation was jungle. Beds of reeds as tall as a man’s head insinuated themselves around and through swampy canals and irrigation ditches. Towering date palms grew so thickly that they blotted back the sun and produced premature shadows ominous in their depths. Ancient eucalyptus with their gnarled, lighter-hued boles and up-thrust roots resembled the broken bones of giants and trolls. Who knew how many terrorists might be hiding in there, watching with their dark eyes and plotting?
Pedestrians walked up and down the road, except in the heat of the day when most sought shade. Women in long, flaring burkas glanced shyly at the American invaders. Men in their shemaghs looked the other way. Whenever the procession halted for a few moments, usually because Husky had sensed a buried IED that had to be unearthed and disarmed, smaller kids ran directly up to the trucks, laughing and skipping and curious, and had to be warned off.
Everything was new and unfamiliar and therefore suspicious to the Americans. They had all heard the horror stories—of female suicide bombers and of kids as young as eight running up to a humvee and tossing a live grenade through the window. Only a few days earlier, a tank belonging to the 1st Cavalry had pulled to the side of the road near JSB (Jurf Sukr Bridge) to let one of its crew get out and take a leak. Along came a hajji rolling an old automobile tire. He looked harmless enough. The crew had grown careless.
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