Carnivore (31 page)

There were a couple half-moons cut out of the knife blade by the current, but otherwise it was unharmed, and with a sharpening stone I was able to put a proper edge back on it. When I had a chance, I sent a thank-you letter to Mark Schindel at Gerber Legendary Blades, along with a photo of the knife.

Mark and the people at Gerber knew good press when they saw it, and they used my letter and a photo of the knife in some of their print advertising for the LMF II for a couple years. Several months later, after I was out of the Army, they flew me to Vegas for the SHOT (Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade) Show and paid me to work their booths. A few months after that they flew me to Milwaukee to the NRA Annual Convention. Hotel, plane ticket, expense account, the whole nine yards. I have no problems representing a product that actually saved my life—and the damn knife isn't even expensive; they were 69 dollars when they were introduced!

While I was at the NRA convention, I presented an Iraqi flag that I'd captured to Wayne LaPierre, the Executive Vice President of the NRA. I was able to sit down and talk with him about guns and private contracting for about half an hour. It was very cool.

O
ur area of operations was right along the Tigris River in Baghdad, and a lot of my kills were across the river. It was about 600 yards to the far shore, and the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment was in charge of that side of the river. A lot of the rifles that “I” took off guys I killed were actually recovered by the 3rd ACR troops, and they would confirm the kill.

The Iraqis knew we were there, knew there was a curfew, knew we had night vision, and yet they still came out and tried to shoot us and set bombs. There's a technical term for that kind of person, and it rhymes with “dumbass.”

Command had sent the word out that anybody crossing the river at nighttime was to be considered hostile. A large number of munitions, IEDs, and guns were coming across the river, and we were getting tired of being shot at and blown up. Putting bullet holes in boats won't sink them, not unless you're using a lot of full-auto fire, so we targeted the crews, not the boat hulls. I shot a lot of people making runs across the river at night.

Broadhead never got to see any action on his second tour because he was First Sergeant; all he did was bring chow and radios out to the guys and go on patrol every once in a while. He never really got to do anything fun. One night we were sitting up on top of the flour mill and suddenly we got a call on the radio—vehicles were running up the road toward us, big trucks. Tractors and trailers, hauling ass into Baghdad after the curfew. All of us were thinking they were big bomb trucks, because we'd had a lot of those going off in the area.

Broadhead was all jazzed because he was finally going to see some action. He got in his vehicle and started flying toward the trucks. His gunner opened up on one of the tractor trailers, which were just hauling ass, doing about 50 miles an hour.

I had Sergeant Rodriguez, one of the other kids who'd been through mobile training, on a rooftop nearby with the M14 (actually, he was on the roof where Kennedy and I accidentally locked the two guys up for a day). Rodriguez lit the first truck up and put about 20 rounds into the radiator because they were heading right for him. He pounded an entire magazine into the front of that vehicle. When he was done, the radiator was going crazy, the engine was messed up, and the driver was freaking out, because Rodriguez put a couple in the windshield too, just for good measure. So the lead driver stopped, and the other three trucks behind him stopped as well.

Everybody started racing up to their position, and Broadhead's gunner was still lighting up the back of the first truck. He finally stopped shooting when we got there and we all got out. There were four semi trucks, and maybe eight guys, all completely frazzled but unharmed. They had no clue what was going on, they just drove up from Basra. We did a quick check of the trucks and discovered that they were filled with tobacco.

Everybody knew there was a curfew, but some guys were just assholes and acted like they didn't know. Most of the time if you ran the curfew you would just get stopped, but this time, they didn't just get stopped, they got accosted.

The first truck was in the way, blocking the road. It was overheating, and steam was coming out of it. We had a pretty good idea that the truck was going to die. We didn't want the guy to get back in the truck, because he might try to drive off or ram something, so I hopped in the truck to drive it off the road. I can drive just about anything, or at least get it into gear. I stopped the tractor trailer on a steep incline, almost a 45-degree slope, so steep the truck almost tipped over. The ground was so slanted that it was hard for me to push the door open to get out.

We searched the other trucks, tearing through the boxes, and all we found was tobacco and more tobacco. After about an hour we gave up on it and realized that these guys weren't insurgents, they were just stupid. So we gave up on it and left them there to load the tobacco back into the trucks. Well, about 20 minutes later we were up on the rooftop, watching, and I saw the driver get back into the first truck. He put it into gear to drive off, and the truck turned over as soon as it started to move, landing with a big thump. Oops. Well, he did it, I didn't.

Apart from the incident at the car plant, Kennedy and I never got attacked while we were set up in a sniping position. After we shot, they were either trying to get away or confused as to exactly where we were. Williams, on the other hand, had an exciting night when somebody tossed a grenade into his position. He was fine, but there's nothing like a live grenade to get your heart beating fast. He was the Section Sergeant, but I was the Platoon Sergeant and Platoon Leader, so I had other missions and responsibilities. Williams did nothing but go out on sniper missions every night. He was by far a better shot than me and took out more guys than I did.

Private Flint, the only member of our unit who had attended sniper school, got his first kill with a sniper rifle one night when I was with him. I wasn't spotting for him, I was up there with my M14 working in tandem, but I verified and confirmed the kill for him through my scope. The shot was about 600 yards. I actually just ran into Flint a few months ago, at the SHOT Show in Vegas. He was still in the Army and in fact had joined the Special Forces.

I
n late October 2005, my platoon was set up in two overwatch positions on the Tigris. Staff Sergeants Sowby and Craig were to the south of my location on top of an old pool house, and we were on the roof of a big old house that allowed me to see the other side of the river. Gilbert, my new Iraqi interpreter, had told me about the spot, and it was perfect.

After setting up on the roof, a new guy, Private First Class Patty Turnbull, told me he had movement on the other side of the river. It was a long way away, and other than movement he couldn't pick out any detail. Then we heard a mortar being fired from the other side of the river, at the 3rd POB headquarters. They were firing from behind a wall in some trees; we knew exactly where they were but couldn't actually see them. I called my Commander for air support—Apaches—and was told it would be a little bit before they could get there.

The Bushnell laser range finder told me it was over 500 meters to the mortar position. I didn't want to wait for air support; those bastards were mortaring my guys. But what to do? Then I had an idea.

I pulled out four 40 mm HEDP rounds and told Turnbull to do the same, then called to two other nearby soldiers who also had M4/203s. One of them was Specialist Gillespie, whom we called Gummy Bear. Gummy Bear got his nickname at Fort Irwin NTC when he ate an entire 10-pound bag of gummy bears by himself.

“Follow my lead, aim like I do, and shoot after me in one-second intervals,” I told them.

I'd put a lot of 40 mm grenade rounds downrange that tour and was getting pretty good with the thing. While the under-barrel launcher could throw the grenade round a lot farther than anyone could throw a hand grenade, the 40 mm grenades still had a pronounced rainbow trajectory. I fired the first round, Turnbull fired the second round, and we did a round robin. In total we fired 12 HEDP rounds. Gummy Bear shot the last one.

The M203 and its 40 mm round isn't the most accurate weapon in the world, but the HEDP round is damn effective and has a good blast radius. We were able to curve them over the top of the wall. I watched the first round hit almost on top of the mortar team and 11 more hit that same area in just as many seconds. By the time the Apaches got there the mortar was silent. The chopper pilot could see hot spots on the ground but couldn't tell if they were bodies. It would be almost a week before we found out that we had taken out an enemy 81 mm mortar team with our improvised mortar barrage, killing three insurgents.

I
was minding my own business one day when one of the Iraqi cops with the 3rd POB came up to me and said, “I've found an IED.”

“Cool,” I told him. “Let's go.” Cochran and I grabbed our rifles.

We jumped into a Humvee and drove down the road a while until he told me to stop. We got out and walked a short distance, Cochran watching our backs. I was expecting the Iraqi cop to stop, point down the road a good distance, and say, “There it is, over there.”

After a short walk, he stopped, pointed at his feet, and said, “Here it is, right there.” Next to his foot was a hole, and visible inside the hole was the top of what I recognized to be an IED.

“Motherfucker, are you kidding me?” I yelled at him. Actually, I didn't yell, because you never know what might set those things off, but I cursed him up one side and down the other as we beat feet away from the bomb.

I backed the Humvee up until we were a safe distance away and called in EOD. EOD—Explosive Ordnance Disposal—handled most of the IEDs we encountered. They were usually able to defuse them, but from time to time they had to blow them in place. Talk about a job I would not want to have—bomb disposal was number one on that list. The EOD tech showed up with his little remote-controlled bomb robot, Johnny 5. He drove Johnny 5 over to where the hole was.

“I can't see any IED,” the EOD tech told me, looking at his video monitor.

I looked at the screen. “Some of the dirt's fallen into the hole and covered it,” I told him. “It's there.”

“I don't see it,” he insisted.

“Dude, there's an IED in the hole, just put the C4 on it and blow it up,” I told him.

“I can't do that without confirming that there's an IED there,” he told me obstinately.

“I'm confirming it,” I growled, starting to get a little pissed.

He shook his head. “I need to see it or something.”

“So take Johnny 5's little robot arm and dig out some of the dirt or something,” I told him. “Seriously, what the hell's the problem?”

“Fine,” he said. Very carefully manipulating the controls, he started working the robot's arm. As soon as he touched the dirt over the top of it, the IED went off with a huge blast. Dirt and little robot pieces rained down all over the road.

I laughed hard and long. “Looks like you need another Johnny 5,” I told him.

He turned to me, rage in his eyes, and grabbed me by the front of my vest. He almost lifted me off the ground. I said quickly, “Dude, dude, relax, I was just making a joke.” I held up my hands. Nobody had been hurt by the blast, and nothing had been destroyed, so I wasn't sure why me being a smartass had made him so upset.

“You don't understand,” he told me, angry and sad all at the same time. He sagged and let me go. “That was my last robot. Now I've got to go look at the IEDs myself.”

W
ith the year winding down, the weather wasn't getting any warmer. I'd been cold in September lying on a roof all night, and October wasn't any better. November and December were just as brutal. I called Amy, my wife, and told her to go to Walmart and buy a Thermos to send to me, because I was freezing my ass off at night. Every night it was bone-chillingly cold. I described to her what I needed, how it was insulated and would keep soup or coffee hot for hours.

Package delivery, depending on how it was mailed, isn't as slow as you might think to Iraq, but after a week and no Thermos I called Amy again. “Hey, babe, when you sent that Thermos, how did you send it? Because it's still not here.”

“Oh. Well, I didn't get it yet,” she told me. I understood, she was busy, she had the kids to deal with, and her job, but I was in the business of killing people before they killed me.

“Okay,” I told her. “You need to go get that Thermos and send it to me, because it's cold.”

I waited for almost another week, and still no Thermos, so I called her again. “Did you get that Thermos?”

“No, I'm sorry, I've just been so busy . . .”

I don't have the best patience when I'm in a good mood, but at that point it had been close to three weeks. It was just me and Kennedy up on the roofs and I was practically freezing to death. At night it only got down to 31 or 32 degrees, but if you're sitting and not moving for hours and hours, that is really damn cold. It was 80 degrees in the daytime, and we had to dress for that, too. When you're in a sniper position, you might have to E&E (escape and evade) in a hurry, so you don't want to be weighted down with anything more than you need.

I'd see an insurgent 100 yards out, which is practically point-blank range for a sniper rifle, and I'd shoot at the center of his chest and hit him in the shoulder, or his hip. I was shaking so bad I couldn't hold on to the damn gun. We'd gotten so cold, Kennedy and I, that we were hugging on the roof and shaking, just a poncho liner wrapped around the two of us. When the sun finally came up, we didn't care about insurgents or targets, we were just trying to get into direct sunlight, get warm, like a snake on a rock.

“You need to go get that damn Thermos!” I yelled at my wife, and hung up the phone. Not my best moment, I admit.