on the Al Nida Division of the Republican Guard, still another supposedly elite unit of the Iraqi army. The Al Nida soldiers swaggered around in red boots to show that they were special. Of course, the United States Marines have a reputation, too, so we looked forward to meeting them. Nobody was afraid of these characters.
While Casey was at the headquarters track to pick up maps and double-check his information, Colonel Steve Hummer, the regimental commander, came by and told McCoy to start planning a strike into Baghdad itself. If conditions were right, we would leapfrog to the front and make a nighttime plunge into the capital city.
Casey hurried back with the news, our first clue that there had been a major change in strategy. The original game plan simply wanted the Marines to be a blocking cordon south of the city while the Army secured the place. Now it looked as if we were going to get a piece of that action. “Told you so, asshole,” I said to Casey, recalling my prediction back in Kuwait that we would get a bite of the Baghdad apple.
Casey and I and our boys were soon on the road again as the advance quartering party, and after traveling only about three kilometers, we got a taste of what the 5th Marines were facing. The battalion headquarters unit we were looking for was near the burning remnants of an M1A1 Abrams battle tank that had been ripped apart, and the crew inside killed, when a suicide bomber drove a pickup truck loaded with explosives into it. Our only job was to pick out a safe place for our own battalion to stay that night, and we weren’t there to get involved with someone else’s fight. That changed in a hurry.
Their busy command tracks were parked in a scrubby area where black smoke blossomed from a nearby burning oil pipe. I left my sniper rifle in the Humvee and was carrying only an M-16 as we walked over to the headquarters. There was a crisp burst of loud popping noises, but the officers were not bothered by it, explaining that the sound was only the creaking expansion of that burning pipe.
They told us that Iraqi paramilitaries, the fedayeen, were running around out there in the fields, wearing black pajamas and causing trouble. Black pajamas? Were they were trying to look like the Viet Cong and scare us with the shadow of Vietnam? That was a long time ago; we weren’t Vietnam vets, and some of our boys probably didn’t even know what a Viet Cong was, so old spooks could not haunt us. Did they really think they could freak us out with some Halloween getup?
There was more popping, and I asked again if someone was shooting at us. No, that was just the pipe. Then, closer, it happened again.
“No,” protested their executive officer, a major, as Casey and I moved behind an armored Amtrac. “That’s been going off all day. It’s just the pipe burning.”
“Sir. Trust me on this one,” I told the XO. “I’ve been shot at many times, and that definitely is incoming fire.” I wasn’t supposed to get involved, but people were trying to kill us!
First, I needed my sniper rifle. Someone would have to grab the big gun from the truck, cross fifty yards of open ground over which bullets were flying, and bring it to me so I could start hunting. Luckily, I had just the guy. “Daniel! Bring my rifle! Now!”
Since we still had not reached Baghdad, Daniel Tracy was immovable in his faith that he was immune to enemy gunfire. I saw him gently pick up my rifle with both hands and jog toward us. He wasn’t moving in much of a hurry.
“Keep your head down,” Casey shouted. Bullets showered around us, kicking up the dirt and plinking off the armored vehicles as Daniel loped across the open area, then came through a gully. He arrived unharmed and not even breathing hard, holding out my gun with a grin. “Here y’are, boss.”
“About fuckin’ time,” I said, and we traded weapons.
I started to climb atop an Amtrac, but Casey grabbed my shirt and hauled me back. “Hold on, jackass. Let me go up first,” he barked. This sudden transformation into John Wayne startled me, but I realized that he was getting the hang of that leadership thing and was addressing me not as a friend but as an asset to be deployed. Casey went up first to see if there were any immediate threats, and I followed, feeling as if I were going to war with my mother telling me how to behave.
“Hey! What are you guys doing?” the XO snapped. “There are friendlies out there. Make sure you don’t shoot any of them. We don’t want any friendly fire incidents.”
I almost laughed. “Sir, I’ve got a fucking scoped rifle here. When I shoot, it will be at the enemy.”
Now the commander of the Amtrac woke up long enough to notice that he had company atop his vehicle. “Hey! You can’t shoot from here!”
“Why not?” asked Casey. “It doesn’t look like you’re shooting at anybody.”
I chose the gun turret platform as my firing platform, and the gunner stood there looking at me curiously, holding the trigger to his.50 caliber machine gun. I told him not to even fucking move, because if that turret shifted, it could crush me.
“Well, we might have to shoot,” the Amtrac commander protested, trying to get back in the game. Pouting little shit.
“By the time you find something to fire at, it’ll be too late,” Casey yelled. “Now get out of the way.” It was nice to have an officer around to holler at other officers.
I put the rifle to my shoulder and my eye to the scope as Casey ignored the incoming fire and scanned the field with his binos. He pointed to the west of the road. “About a half mile away, six guys in black,” he said. We painted them with a laser at 922 yards, and I dialed in the dope, thinking,
I chose a target on the far left, a guy whose RPK light machine gun was merrily chattering away, and clicked two minutes right to my scope to shift the crosshairs to the middle of his body mass. Then I caressed the trigger, and the bullet hit two inches from the center of his chest, flipping him violently backward as his automatic weapon hit the dirt. I exhaled and worked the bolt to put in a new round.
Daniel had gone back to the trucks at Casey’s direction. Our armored Humvees were wheeling into position to fire as Castillo and Marsh got ready to open up on the bushes.
A few seconds later, I found another guy about fifty yards to the right of my first target and adjusted the scope to nine plus four, tacking on some more right windage, aimed at his center mass. Squeeeeze,
Other Marines had joined the fight by now. As they moved forward to clear the area, I had to stop. The bad guys scattered or died.
Our own battalion pulled up a few minutes later, and we parked our nine hundred Marines and 112 vehicles in the median strip of the broad highway, leaving room for other vehicles to continue moving on both sides of the road.
I waited for things to settle down and then had another private little off-the-record talk with McCoy as we walked the perimeter. Despite just having come out of a major battle in Al Kut, he was up to speed on everything that had happened within his battalion, including the casualties and my problems with Officer Bob. Plenty of senior staff members had watched Bob’s actions with growing concern.
I knew the Boss would never say anything critical of any officer in front of me, but I told him that I was being kept on the wrong side of the door in this freakin’ war and was only getting into action almost by accident.
The colonel was as tired as the rest of us but told me to calm down. “You got how many, now?”
“Fourteen confirmed, boss. Should have been more, but I either get there late or get yanked out early.”
McCoy nodded and said the time had come for that to change. He wanted my rifle where it would do the most good. I would roam the battlefield, he said, with Casey and the boys going along to cover my ass.
Finally, the green light of freedom that would get me out from under Bob’s thumb, a deal blessed by Darkside Six himself! McCoy’s aggressive philosophy was to get his killers in position to kill, and I knew there was going to be a lot of killing going on in the next few days.
