Carnivore (19 page)

Williams didn't need to be told twice. When the bombs from the B-1Bs hit, I was 2,500 meters away and could feel them through the floor of my running Bradley. Williams was only 300 meters away from those bombs, and I could only imagine the fireworks show rocking his world.

Twenty minutes after the last bomb hit, Williams moved back to his last position to call in the BDA. The sandstorm was as strong as ever, but he could see the fires of the burning tanks in the town. The bombers blew their wad on Williams's tanks and didn't have anything left for me, so my hope of air support was a pipe dream. How long it would take to get more bombers overhead with fresh ordnance was anybody's guess.

It's unknown how many of the tanks the airstrike took out, but no more showed up to fight. Meanwhile, Third Platoon was still getting hit by small arms fire and Iraqi soldiers on foot charging their position. Williams stayed busy.

The rest of Crazy Horse didn't exactly have a night off. They had sporadic contact all night, and then I heard Sergeant Christner over the radio net talking to McCoy. “Sir, be advised I have two Iraqi soldiers armed with AK-47s approaching my position . . . riding a donkey.”

“Did he say ‘donkey'?” Soprano asked me.

Christner fired tracers in front of the donkey to see what it—and the soldiers—would do. When they turned the donkey his way and picked up the pace he knew. Christner waited until the very last second, then opened up with his M240 machine gun, hitting both men in the chest but sparing the animal. The donkey was still alive and wandering around the next day.

Just down the road, Sergeant Geary was in a firefight with 10 dismounts who had spent the night working their way close to his position along the wood line. Once they were close enough to see his Bradley, however, Geary had no problem seeing them in his thermal sight. Geary was still pissed from being stuck in a disabled Bradley at As Samawah and being used for target practice for hours. Firing the main gun on semiauto to conserve ammo, he took the first soldier with one round of HE to the chest. The man died instantly and on fire.

Sergeant May was sitting next to Geary. After a lot of cross talk, they worked the other nine dismounts into their crossfire. After a brief burst of full auto fire from both tracks, the nine Iraqis lay dead.

The sandstorm came roaring back bigger and badder than ever. At least Broadhead and one other Bradley were coming back our way—with the tanks taken out in the town across from Williams, I needed him backing me up again. The storm was so bad that Broadhead could not find his way to me. The last thing I wanted to do was draw attention to my position, knowing how many Iraqis were out there on foot (because they kept shooting at my Brad from time to time, the rounds pinging off the hull when they got lucky), but I had to help Broadhead and Sergeant May, his wingman, find us. When I turned on the Carnivore's headlights it looked just like swirling hell, and standing right there next to us were two Iraqi soldiers. The storm was so bad they walked right by me and none of us knew it.

“Fuck!” I grabbed the AK I had close at hand and emptied the magazine at them. The only reason I didn't die was quicker reflexes—that was too damn close.

Broadhead came over the radio. “Red 2, I see your lights. Rolling up now.”

“Roger that,” I told him, panting and shaking from the close call. (Just the latest in a long list.) “I've got a spot I want you to set up in for a good firing position.”

Using the radio I talked him into place as best I could, but the sandstorm was so bad that when he moved to set up in the fighting position, he overshot it and got high-centered on a wall or something—in that orange hell it was hard to even recognize the shape of his tank. Broadhead dismounted his tank to check out what he was hung up on when he tripped and fell facefirst in the dirt, hitting his knee on a big rock.

When he got back up he could barely stand and limped back up to the M1, where he got on the radio and laid into me with a profanity-laced tirade that would have made a porn star blush. His knee swelled up so badly that he could barely walk for the next two weeks. After Tony calmed down and had said everything he wanted to about my mother, I was able to talk his tank into the right position, just in time for the sandstorm to stop and open the night up to us.

Our visibility was now 1,000 meters or more. Mother Nature's timing was great for us, but sucked for the platoon of Iraqis who had been working their way on foot to Geary and Crawford's position just down the road. The pause in the sandstorm caught them out in the open, and they couldn't outrun the 25 mm HE.

We had about 25 troop trucks on fire in front of us, and a lot more assorted vehicles in various states of projectile-assisted disassembly. I got on the radio to Broadhead.

“White 4, we are going to head across the bridge to do BDA while we have a break in the weather. You need to move up with me and set up in overwatch while I recon.”

“Red 2, roger that. Moving now.”

We moved across the bridge, Broadhead rolling shotgun. As we headed into the field of disabled vehicles, we flushed Iraqis like quail. They'd been hiding in ditches, behind vehicles, anywhere there was cover.

Soprano opened up on them with the coax while Broadhead's gunner, Sergeant Bobby Hull, did the same.

We fired and maneuvered, fired and maneuvered up the road, with none of the returning AK fire even coming close. Just as Hull killed the last of the dismounts, Soprano called up to me.

“Sarge, I think I've got a BMP up ahead.”

Shit. Was this the first of the 20 BMPs headed our way? I dropped down inside the turret and looked in the sight. The vehicle didn't have tracks, but it was armored and had rolled into view from the wood line to our southeast.

“White 4, can you ID the armored vehicle out there?”

He was back on the radio. “Negative, Red 2. Can't see it, you're in my line of sight.”

Well, I guess it really didn't matter. It wasn't one of ours. I said to Soprano, “AP, three rounds, fire!” My eyes stayed glued to the sight.

The round in the chamber was HE, and it hit short because Soprano was using the AP (armor-piercing) reticle, but the next two rounds were armor-piercing depleted uranium and hit the front of the vehicle. I could see impact, but there was no other reaction from the vehicle.

“You're on target. Smoke it.” He let out another burst of AP, and this time there was a small fire, then one big explosion.

“Okay, Sperry, I want to know what we just killed. Move us a little closer.”

“Hold on.”

We rolled forward enough for me to see that we'd just destroyed a BRDM. The BRDM is a Soviet-manufactured armored amphibious combat patrol vehicle with a 14.5 mm main gun and a supporting coax. Instead of having tracks like the BMP, they rolled on four tires.

“Chalk up one BRDM,” I announced. I was feeling pretty good about that when out from behind the burning BRDM rolled another damn truck. It was like playing Whac-A-Mole—kill one and another one pops right up.

Before Soprano could get on target, Broadhead nailed the truck with the M1's main gun, and it exploded.

“All right, enough sightseeing, get us back to the bridge,” I told Sperry. “Heading back into position,” I radioed Broadhead.

While we were still rolling, Broadhead set up in his old firing position and started engaging one truck after another as they rolled down the road into view. The Carnivore assumed its position on the bridge, and I stared at the wood line. The 20 BMPs were coming from that direction. How long did we have?

While we went back to killing trucks, Williams and the rest of Third Platoon were up to their ass in dismounts. Sergeant Wasson was still in pain from being hit in the back by the RPG earlier. His gunner, Sergeant Raab, engaged 20 dismounts swarming their vehicle while Wasson fought through the pain.

By that point we had so many vehicles on fire in front of us that the thermal sight was once again useless.

“Okay, I think we've killed every truck in the fucking country, are we done yet?” Soprano grumbled. “Sarge, I can't see shit with everything on fire.”

“Switch to day sight. Everything's all lit up anyway.”

He did. “That's not much better.”

It had been two hours since the bombers had taken out the tanks threatening Williams and the bridge to our rear. The amount of AK fire we were taking from all sides was increasing and pretty much constant, but most of the rounds hit nowhere near us. And the sandstorm was getting thicker, which meant they'd be able to sneak up close again.

McCoy answered my radio call. “Go ahead, Red 2.”

“Sir, do we have any air support yet? It's getting pretty busy up here.”

We were constantly scanning, looking for new threats, trying to see past the fires, and suddenly there they were—BMPs, a lot of them, at least 20, working their way through the trees to the southeast, headed right at us.

I
can't see for shit!” Soprano yelled as he began engaging the BMPs with DU rounds. There were too many fires to use the thermals, but the day sight wasn't much use either. This was going to get real ugly, real quick. The armored tracks moved out of the woods and began advancing down a road toward my position.

My radio crackled. “Red 2, roger that, we have aircraft back on station above you, just call out some targets when you have them.”

God bless McCoy, talk about nick of fucking time! If he'd been in the Brad with me I would have kissed him.

“Sir, I have twenty BMPs in the woods approaching my position, and have grid coordinates for you RIGHT NOW.” I gave him the coordinates, and we waited. We didn't have long to wait.

A B-1B dropped four 2,000-pound bombs in a line right down the row of BMPs. The bomber's aim was perfect. The explosions were huge skyrockets of dirt in a swirling maelstrom. When it cleared, there were a lot of things on fire where the column of BMPs had been, and nothing was moving. We couldn't tell how many BMPs had actually been destroyed, but any crews left alive were either combat ineffective or pretending they were dead.

The BMPs handled for the moment, we turned our attention back to the road in front of us. Truck after truck kept rolling down the road, and while I'd been on the radio with Captain McCoy, Broadhead had been burning through 120 mm HEAT rounds like they were on sale, but the Iraqis kept coming. The trucks at first would drive around the burning hulks to get closer to us, but that just resulted in yet another truck on fire. That seemed to be a lesson each new wave of trucks had to relearn. They finally wised up, stopping at the far edge of visibility to let their troops out. The Iraqi soldiers began moving toward us in the ditches en masse. The amount of incoming fire was insane—forget “target-rich environment,” we had more guys in front of us than we had ammo left in the Bradley. I got back on the radio and requested another air strike on the trucks, on the soldiers, on every square inch of dirt in front of the bridge.

McCoy was back on the radio seconds later. “Roger that. Aircraft are inbound, and you are danger close. Get your ass out of there.”

I didn't need to be told twice. “JDAMs are inbound,” I told Sperry and the whole crew. “Let's get the fuck back from this bridge.” JDAM stands for “joint direct attack munition,” which you might know as a smart bomb.

“Shit yeah.” Scared as hell, he cranked the steering so we would straighten out and then hit the accelerator, thinking we were in reverse. We were still in drive, however, so we jerked forward off the steep bank at the end of the bridge and began to roll over. Somehow, we didn't, and the Carnivore teetered there, ready to roll at any second.

“Nobody fucking move!” I yelled. “Don't do anything,” I told Sperry, “don't even try to back up or we'll roll.” Very carefully I climbed out of the turret to look at the Bradley. We were so close to going over I was amazed we hadn't rolled.

“White 4, I need you at my location immediately with a tow cable,” I called Broadhead.

“Red 2, we've got incoming!”

“I know we've got fucking incoming! Pull us the fuck out of here!” I stayed hunkered down behind the rear of the Bradley, protected from the incoming AK rounds.

“Sarge, I've got a lot of dismounts a hundred meters out,” Soprano called to me, scared out of his mind. I don't know if he was more worried about the soldiers or the B-1Bs and their 2,000-pound bombs en route. “I think I can get them if I traverse the turret—”

“Don't touch anything!” I yelled at him. I was worried any shift in weight would cause the Bradley to roll over. Just then Broadhead roared up right on our ass in his M1 and climbed out as fast as his wounded knee allowed.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he roared. “You're endangering the lives of my crew because your driver can't fucking drive.”

“Fuck you and bring me that goddamn tow cable, you limping prick!” I screamed at him.

We were both terrified and angry and kept yelling and screaming at each other as we got out the tow cable. We couldn't see a damn thing, as it was still the middle of the night and we were between the two vehicles. The only light came from burning vehicles several hundred yards away. Broadhead got the cable and then we had to step out from our sheltered position to hook the cable up.

Even though it was dark, as soon as we stepped out in the open, the volume of fire we were receiving picked up tenfold. The rounds bouncing off the Bradley and the M1 sounded like rain hitting a tin roof,
clinkclinkclinkclinkclinkclinkclinkclink
, and rounds were snapping through the air all around us. Broadhead could barely walk and had to hold on to something to help him stand up—his knee was so swollen it barely fit inside his BDU pants.

“Come on, goddammit, come on!”

We looked like a couple of guys repossessing a car, crawling around half underneath my Bradley. It was so dark we had to work by feel, but finally we got the cable hooked up.