On the Chinook, nearing the objective, I looked out the window and spotted the most distinctive landmark of the area. Several spires, forty feet tall, made out of mud and shaped in a kind of staircase pattern, dotted the area. They reminded me of something aliens might have left behind. We landed two kilometers from our objective and we had to walk past one of those structures. I stopped and looked inside. Its outer shell had slits cut into it, which explained the appearance of a staircase, but it was essentially hollow. Dirt and poppy leaves were piled inside; whether that was placed there intentionally or the wind had pushed it inside I wasn’t sure. If they were silos, then they didn’t offer a whole lot of protection to whatever you’d want to store inside them.
Just past that spire, the ground went from firm to squishy and a foul smell wafted up. The squad internal comms got crowded with guys asking what the hell was causing that smell. A few jokes about people’s gas troubles had us cracking up, but then we all settled down when word came down that we’d just walked through a suspected Taliban burial ground. The smell of rotting flesh was disgusting but we were soon past the area and into the heavy vegetation. I took Killian, the weapons squad leader, with me, and we spread farther and farther to the right, with the main element keeping abreast of my pace.
We all adopted a kind of kick step to make our way through that terrain. If your toe came in contact with something that didn’t feel like a rock or hard clump of dirt, something that had some give to it, you had to be prepared to fire. I hated the feeling that I could be walking past an armed fighter and getting blasted in the back. We’d been informed of this tactic, and had encountered it before, so that was why I’d offset myself and Killian a few hundred meters from the main group in order to overwatch. Using my thermals and night vision scope, I could detect bodies lying on the ground. To avoid any confusion between friendlies and bad guys, I had all of our guys keep their lasers on.
“Jimenez, five feet in front of you at three o’clock!”
A single shot rang out.
I repeated that same process three more times with different members of our element. We spent more than an hour going three hundred yards. At that point, I heard Bruno down in the brush with the assault force, starting to whine, getting really amped up and then barking nonstop. The guys were still focusing their lasers ahead of the formation, and just ahead of their light, I was able to make out a large dark shape, what could have been a boulder.
“I think I’ve got something.”
A few seconds later, some of their lights were on it. They kept advancing toward it. I heard one of the newer guys, a kid named Dempsey, say that he’d detected some movement. A moment later he clarified his statement.
“Eyes on an RPK. Belt in place. Ammo boxes.”
All hell broke loose. I could hear the repeated pops of weapons fire as the assault force began laying into the figures on the ground near the machine gun. I cracked off a few shots, but through the thick brush, the 175 grain projectile missed its mark. I was more helpful relaying what I could see from my position. Night vision relied on some ambient light to be present to give you the clearest view possible. Without it, as was the case in that thick vegetation, I could make out indistinct shapes and dark colors moving. Our guys were firing rounds, but I could see that about ten of the fighters had formed into a line. They were crouching, weapons in the hands of some, one hand on the shoulder of the guy in front, and they started moving off, looking like ducklings trailing after their mother. This wouldn’t have seemed odd, except they were all naked. A small element had broken off and set up in order to kill or capture those that were fleeing. As soon as the group of naked, but armed, men exited the tree line, the small assault team met them with lasers right in the center of their chests. Once all of them were in the clear, the team put the men down at a relatively close range—twenty to thirty yards at best.
Our guys all had suppressors on their weapons so when they did discharge them, it sounded like a second grader clapping his hands together in three quick bursts, two in the chest and one in the head.
“One. Two. Three—” I heard over my earpiece as the guys counted the dead.
A moment later, I heard someone scream. I got eyes on one of the Taliban members twisting in the wind at the edge of the tallest clump of grasses and bushes, a dog hanging from his arm just above his elbow, its hind paws working to bring the guy to the ground. The man was in agony but he wasn’t going to get loose from that dog’s grip.
Briefly, the sound of an AK joined the chaos but it was quickly silenced. Intel from one of the air assets reported seeing lots of hot spots, which meant that guys were still bleeding out. Eventually, we confirmed that their entire element was dead.
I’d only fired two rounds, both of them designed to limit the enemy’s movement, let them know that if they got out of that tangle of brush and bodies, I was there to end it for them. After I broke down my gear, I moved a bit closer to our element to better support them and provide better cover.
It was a gruesome scene. The guys had to disentangle the main pile, and document what had happened. To a man we agreed that what we’d seen was completely messed up. We wanted the hell out of there and had already called in for extract, but we had to do the job right.
“This did not just happen,” Andersen said. He stood there pinching the bridge of his nose and shaking his head.
Some of our guys had taken out their white lights, their flashlights. Now instead of that indistinct out-of-focus scene that we’d been viewing, we saw the stark reality of it.
“I know you don’t shoot a guy when he’s pissing or shitting.”
“Don’t take a guy out in front of his family if you can help it.”
“Let a man get up off a woman.”
“This? What the hell is that?”
Galloway shone his light between the legs of one of the guys they’d had to pull apart from another. What looked like Saran wrap and a shoelace tied in a bow knot was still surrounding one guy’s junk.
“I’m out of here.”
“Not touching none of them.”
We’d had enough. We had our paper and digital documentation and everyone agreed that was sufficient. It took a few hours after we got back, but that’s when the jokes started. None of us had seen anything quite like that before. Every now and then the drones would catch those lone sex acts, a few instances of bestiality, but never anything like what that group was doing. What was hardest to figure out was why the whole thing hadn’t broken up when they first realized we were approaching.
Eventually I came to the conclusion that I shouldn’t question too much the why of people’s behavior, particularly there and particularly under those circumstances.
We went out a few more times, but the operations were uneventful. I spent a lot of my last hours just cleaning up so that the new element coming in would have things neat and clean. That was maybe the only thing about the deployment for which I can use those words.
For the first time out of all my deployments, I arrived back at Fort Benning in time to go to Walmart when other shoppers were going to be in the store. Jessica was there to meet me, and after a long, long embrace we walked toward our car. A bunch of the guys wanted me to join them out at the bars, but I passed on that. I’d done it once; alcohol and being freshly back home is not a good mix. The transition is always going to be tough, and having people wanting to fight you or confront you about things when you’re still in a kill-or-be-killed state can get you in a lot of trouble.
Just before we got to the car, our CQ, our company quartermaster, a really good guy named Lyons, came up to me.
“Just wanted to make sure you have everything squared away,” he said, shaking my hand.
“Yeah. Thanks for your help with all the gear and stuff.” “No problem, Irv.”
Behind him, I could see another Ranger standing there. He was an E4 and I could see that he was a cherry guy, freshly shaved, quiet, standing there at parade rest.
Lyo
ns introduced us. “Sergeant,” he said, “I wanted to meet you. All due respect but I heard you killed a bunch of guys. You set some record. I want to break it. I want my deployment to be just like yours was.”
I couldn’t believe what he was saying. Nobody says that. Nobody says that in front of a man’s wife.
Jessica stood there staring at me, looking like she was trying to figure something out, remember a phone number or something that someone had asked her for, something from her past she wanted to bring back up.
I looked at the cherry new guy, held his gaze until he backed his eyes off me, and said, very quietly but very firmly, “No. You don’t.”
At the store we got some beer and I picked up the latest version of Madden football for my Xbox. I was twenty-three years old. I’d killed thirty-three men in less than four months. I didn’t care if that first night back I was enjoying myself like a thirteen-year-old might have. Thirteen’s a lucky age to be. So was twenty-three. The biggest difference between them was that at twenty-three you counted your blessings, knew that your luck could run out at any time, and didn’t do too much to press it, figuring that ninety-three was a good age to be as well.
Afterword
That first night, I’d been asleep for an hour when Jessica jumped out of bed. I immediately thought someone had broken into the house, so I grabbed my gun. Ever since my first deployment when we were required to sleep with a weapon nearby, I’d kept my pistol on the nightstand or under my pillow.
“What is it?”
Jessica stood there crying quietly, her shoulders quaking, her fists bunched up beneath her eyes.
“I felt you jumping, twitching.” She sat down on a blanket chest across from me. “I thought you were scared. That it was PTSD or something.”
I got up and sat next to her and put my arm around her. I’d left the gun on the nightstand. “I don’t remember dreaming anything. I’m okay.”
We spent the rest of the night talking about a lot of the things you’ve just read. In some ways, I wish that new sniper had kept his damn mouth shut, but in other ways he gave me a reason to open mine up. For the first time, I made a real effort to explain to Jessica what it was like for me and how I felt I had to handle things. She asked the hard questions. How do you do it? Do you miss being over there? Do you miss killing people? She’s not a sniper, but she’s got good focus and aim.
I don’t know if anybody who hasn’t done what we’ve done can understand this, but in my mind, there’s a me and there’s a him. He did those things when deployed, and it’s therefore easier for me to not think about it or talk about it. That doesn’t mean that once you flip that switch or whatever, everything is okay. Everybody is going to handle things differently. I’m glad that one of the only real bad effects I felt immediately was that I became an almost-shoplifter. After that long night of talking with Jessica, I went out the next morning to get a Gatorade. I went back to the Walmart, picked up a couple of bottles, and walked out the door. The siren went off and then it hit me. I have to pay for this stuff. Over there, you just grabbed what you wanted and took it back to your room. It didn’t work like that here.
I apologized and explained and paid. Good thing the people around the base understood. Other little things bothered me. I wanted to come back home and have things be exactly as they were before. Just pick up where I’d left off, as if it was going to go like this: Good-bye, honey. Kiss. Work. Hello, honey, I’m home. How was your day? Nothing in between.
Reality is different. I got home and the bed was now up against a different wall. The TV was not in the same spot. I was about to lose it and start screaming, but I had to check myself. That kind of aggression, as if someone in the platoon had messed with my weapon and not put things back where they were, would be okay over there. Not here. Things can’t be exactly as I left them or as I want them to be.
He’s not welcome in this house, but you are.
It didn’t take me long to realize that I no longer wanted to be welcome in the army. Going out intact and on top was as good a way as any to end things. Still, the competitive fires were smoldering. I got a call from sniper section and was asked to represent the Rangers in the International Sniper Competition. I was honored to do it. I finished fourth out of sixty-three and had a great time. That got me thinking that this army life wasn’t so bad. I should just re-up for four more. Jessica said that I should do whatever made me happy and she’d support me.
I thought more about it. I thought back to that kid who had told his recruiter to sign him up for thirty years. He was naïve, obviously, and really gung ho. That’s a potent combination. I had no real frame of reference. What did thirty years really mean when you’ve only been on the planet for seventeen? That concept just doesn’t even fit in your still developing brain.
Ultimately, despite all the things the army was willing to do to keep me around, I left. March 10, 2010, was a very fun and very scary day. I didn’t have anything planned for my future. For so long, all I knew and thought about was a career in the military. As a sniper, I was used to planning and executing and taking in intel and making choices. I didn’t want to be subject to a rigid schedule anymore. I needed some time and space to figure out what was going to come next. Right then, I was tired of looking through a scope and targeting things. I wanted to take in the bigger picture—find out who else and what else I could be on my own.
We had just got word we were working with RECCE. Pemberton and I working on spotter/sniper drills with my SR-25. 2009
Me with an SPR (5.56 77gr.) in Jalalabad Afghanistan as the platoon’s designated marksman. 2007
Jalalabad Afghanistan squad-designated marksman. 2007
Practicing long-range shooting, standing with the .300 Win Mag. 2008
We had just got word we were working with RECCE. Pemberton and I working on spotter/sniper drills with my SR-25. 2009
Pemberton and me overwatching the Marines as they began entry into the village. 2009
Watching a Taliban target more than 700 yards away and prepping to take the shot. 2009
Pemberton on the roof with me overwatching the Marines. We had been without sleep for days at this point. 2009
After taking out the Taliban target and making sure the Marines exfil was successful, Pemberton (REECE) and me. It was a worthy picture moment. 2009
Me with the RECCE communications member after the long-shot and all-night sniper hide. 2009
The terrain we were pinned down in against the Chechen sniper. 2009
Pemberton and me soaked in blood and water coming through the door with Cpl. Benjamin Kopp being carried out behind us. We had already been fighting for more than four hours continuously. 2009
Cpl. Benjamin Kopp being carried, by his machine gun that saved us from the Chechen just minutes before. 2009
On the roof providing sniper fire on targets as we call in a MEDEVAC for the wounded. 2009
The large blue doors of the compound leading out to the Marines, preparing to run through hostile open terrain. 2009
Cpl. Benjamin Kopp.
After a successful all-night firefight and special operations raid on an HVT in Helmand. 2009
Me with the Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle in Afghanistan. 2009
Our last photo as a platoon on the airfield in Kandahar. 2009
Sgt. Anibal Santiago. The father figure of the sniper section.
The quote on my sniper section plaque.
Contracting near the southern Texas border. 2011
Two weeks after my deployment, I immediately entered the International Sniper Competition at Ft. Benning, Georgia, placing top five.
Observing an Afghan village with Pemberton during our five-day recon.
My buttstock from Afghanistan, 2009. 33 ticks marking EKTA.
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The Reaper Page 23
