together — about twenty of them. Also, he says there is a place up the road where the fedayeen are living. There’s a tall tower there. Near a lake.”
The village with the missiles was beyond the border of our zone, so we wouldn’t be able to follow up on the lead. But the place with a tower by the lake sounded like the amusement park.
On our way up to the park, we passed through Qalat Abd al Jasadi, the neighborhood of professionals from the previous afternoon. Again the residents welcomed us warmly. Without making promises to remove any ordnance, we asked to see everything that worried them. At the very least, I figured I could collect grid coordinates and send an EOD team as soon as possible. A small group, headed by a man who introduced himself as Ibrahim, led us around the town for nearly two hours, pointing out everything from a hand grenade sitting in a classroom to a T-72 tank abandoned in an orchard. We dutifully marked the locations of unexploded bombs, tank rounds, RPGs, and out-of-place metal objects we couldn’t identify but were reticent to touch. Finally, when the midday sun had us soaked in sweat, the men said that only one object remained.
Ibrahim pushed through a wooden gate in a high wall, leading us into the isolated yard of a house on the neighborhood’s main street. My paranoia kicked in, and I posted Marines outside the wall, at the gate, and inside the courtyard. If anyone hoped to ambush us, they’d better have a good plan and a lot of firepower. But Ibrahim led us through the yard to an innocuous-looking piece of metal buried nose-first in the dirt. A green and silver fin stuck up six inches above the grass.
“That’s an RPG round, sir. It was fired but didn’t detonate,” Colbert said, as he edged back from the projectile.
“Pretty unstable,” I replied. I felt like whispering, as if a loud noise might engulf us all in a ball of fire.
“Correction, sir: very unstable. We can’t just leave it here for EOD to take care of in a week or a month. Kids live in this house. I can blow it up.” Colbert looked at me coolly.
I knew he could blow it up. I also knew that doing so was, for us, expressly against the rules. We could mark ordnance, count it, and photograph it. We could not blow it up. Too many Marines were losing fingers and eyes to volatile piles of explosives. But then, this was a family’s yard. Half the village had gathered outside the gate to watch the Americans work their magic. Our credibility was on the line. Not personal pride — that sort of immaturity got people killed — but the credibility of the U.S. Marines as a force for good in these people’s lives. One concrete act of goodwill outweighed a thousand promises, meetings, and evaluation teams.
“Get the C-4, Colbert, and do your thing. If you blow your hand off, so help me God, I’ll chop the other one off myself,” I said.
“Roger that, sir.”
We herded the growing crowd outside the courtyard as Sergeant Colbert and his team built a charge to detonate the RPG round. He molded a lump of plastic explosive into a disk the size of a silver dollar and inserted a blasting cap. Colbert took the C-4 in one hand and looped thirty yards of time fuse in the other. He and Sergeant Espera entered the yard and walked carefully toward the offending fin. Their helmet chin straps were snugged and their flak jackets tightly closed. When they approached the round, they dropped to their hands and knees, and then to their stomachs, crawling slowly forward and stringing the fuse behind them. No one in the platoon breathed as Colbert tucked the charge into the hole the RPG had dug in the turf. Because it had been fired, the round was armed and could explode at any time. He nestled the charge close to the body of the grenade and then tamped dirt on top to amplify the effect of the blast. Colbert and Espera reversed their approach — first crawling, then kneeling, and finally walking quickly back to the waiting platoon.
“No need to chop my hand off, sir.” Colbert smiled and lit the fuse. Marines waved the Iraqis down to a crouch.
Colbert waited quietly, looking at his watch, before yelling, “Fire in the hole!” A geyser of dirt shot up over the wall, raining pebbles down into the yard and sending a dust cloud out into the street. The villagers cowered for the briefest instant before breaking into cheers. Sergeant Colbert and I walked into the courtyard, looking for the scattered bits of C-4 that would indicate an incomplete detonation. There were none. A crater marked the former resting place of the RPG round, and only tiny scraps of metal remained from the grenade itself.
Ibrahim and the owner of the house approached us. “Thank you. Thank you. Please come inside and drink tea with us. You are our guests today.”
Colbert smiled wanly and deferred to me. “Sir, I have a team to take care of. You’re our diplomat.” He walked back to his men, who were now trading high-fives with Iraqi boys wearing wraparound sunglasses borrowed from the Marines.
I explained that we had other towns to visit and other jobs to do. Ibrahim understood and welcomed us back to Qalat Abd al Jasadi anytime. Driving out of town, I felt that we had accomplished something greater than blowing up one leftover grenade.
36
IT WAS TIME for the patrol’s main event. I had been curious about the “amusement park” label on the map since first noticing it days before. Most Americans thought of deserts and torture chambers in Iraq, not merry-go-rounds and roller coasters. Reports that the fedayeen were operating from the grounds of the park and that the same spot might include one of Saddam’s palaces only fueled my interest. Six hours of daylight remained, enough time for us to answer the battalion’s initial questions and plan aggressive foot patrols for that night. But, of course, the plan changed. After we left Qalat Abd al Jasadi, the battalion ordered us back to the power plant no later than EENT, or the end of evening nautical twilight — the true darkness that arrives an hour or so after sunset. I slammed my fist on the dashboard but radioed back a calm acknowledgment. Accounting for driving time back to the power plant left less than five hours to recon the amusement park.
Rushing was not an option. To rush is to risk being sloppy and making potentially deadly mistakes. We would approach the mission as methodically as we could. Given the daylight and crowded area, I decided it would be pointless to try to sneak up on the park. Better to drive right to it, pick a safe spot, and observe it for a while before deciding on our next move.
A man-made lake nearly a mile long separated the park from the road. To enter, visitors crossed a concrete bridge near the midpoint of the lake. Since marshland bordered the amusement park to the north and south and the Tigris flowed to the west, the park was an island of sorts, separated geographically and psychologically from Baghdad. A tower dominated the park’s skyline. It looked like a smaller and poorer Seattle Space Needle, a wonder of the early 1970s slowly falling into disrepair. Promenades and amphitheaters surrounded the base of the tower. The wooden frame of a roller coaster stood above the once-manicured shrubs and palms. Everything was dusty brown, colored with peeling paint and fading murals of pirated Disney characters. Through binoculars, I imagined crowds of people and colorful balloons. I couldn’t decide whether it was the most hopeful place I’d seen in Iraq or the saddest. Eventually, I settled on the latter.
The platoon spread out along the lakeshore, glassing the park with spotting scopes, binoculars, and rifle sights. I planned to watch for an hour. Gunny Wynn and I were discussing the wisdom of entering the huge park with only twenty-two Marines when a battered red Volkswagen chugged up and stopped near our position. Ten rifles trained on it immediately. I turned to watch, but we continued our conversation.
“It’s a deserted island. They can cut us off. We need to plan for that,” Wynn said. He wasn’t against going into the park; he just wanted to make sure we thought it through in advance.
“What about putting a sniper team up in the tower?” I asked. “They could overwatch us everywhere and coordinate air.”
“Bad idea, sir. They’d be vulnerable up there, and we’d have to drop a team just to secure the base of the tower. Then we’d be down to fifteen guys. Better to stay together.”
I wasn’t about to contradict Wynn on sniper tactics. Before every mission, I’d float a dozen ideas, and he’d shoot down eleven of them. Then he’d suggest a dozen refinements, and I’d turn away eleven. The winnowing process helped us come up with the best plan.
“Sir, Gunny, better get over here,” Doc Bryan called from his position next to the car.
A middle-aged woman sat in the driver’s seat, waving both hands helplessly through the window. Behind her, I saw a man sitting impassively in the back. I walked toward the car and smelled the infection.
