Kaboom (10 page)

Yawning noisily, I strolled out of our room and into the main foyer of the combat outpost. Captain Whiteback and a few of the soldiers from Headquarters platoon were heading out the front door, en route to the IA compound to tactically question the Ghost and his fellow detainees. I bumped
into Lieutenant Virginia Slim, who was coming up the stairs and taking off his helmet; he had just been over with the IAs.

(from left to right) Specialist Big Ern, Corporal Spot, Staff Sergeant Boondock, PFC Van Wilder, and Specialist Prime show off their respective moustaches and sneers. Scout platoons were smaller than most other combat units, and the relationship between
NCOs and soldiers tended to be less rigid and more instruction-oriented as a result.

“Dude,” he said, “you should head over and check these guys out.”

“Why?” I didn't really feel compelled to put on my gear. I was more interested in grabbing a few banana nut muffins and seeing if there were any pieces of bacon left. “Did the CO [commanding officer] say he needed me?”

“Naw, I just thought you'd appreciate the scene. They're just a couple of scared, punk teenagers. We probably could've had them months ago if we had set up a trap with XBoxes, a few porn mags, and some pounds of weed.”

We laughed, and I sauntered toward the pantry. I rubbed the stubble of my face. I should probably shave too, I thought. It had been a few days.

After breakfast and a quick dry shave, curiosity got a hold of me, and I walked across the street to the IA compound. I poked my head around the fence line and spotted a crowd of IA soldiers—commonly referred to by their Arabic name, jundis—interlaced with a group of American soldiers sent over to ensure the detention process stayed peaceful. There was a post-prize fight feeling in the air. The soldiers of both countries were joking with one another incessantly, crowing like young bantams at a cockfight. They crowded
around three grubby, emaciated shapes in handcuffs and wrapped in blankets that were stacked against the building. The three shapes were separated along the wall so they could not communicate; they were crouched in the traditional Arab squat, and only nervous darting glances from downcast heads confirmed them to be human beings and not teenage scarecrows made of dirt.

As I walked closer, I recognized Mohammed Shaba from the mug shots we'd used for countless previous missions: same scar across the right cheek, same long chin, same mop of black hair jetting out. In the photograph, he snarled toward the camera, menacingly challenging the viewer to dare to venture into Saba al-Bor's alleys to hunt him. Here, at the IA compound, though, he did not snarl, or challenge, or dare. He sniffled like a bullied child, trying desperately to hold back tears, cradling his swollen nose, which dripped with blood. It had been broken by the IA when he bit one of them and tried to escape. The teenager handcuffed next to him—who I later learned was another top target of ours known as Ali the Prince—wept far more openly and reeked of feces. Wait a minute. Had he really—

“Yes, sir, he actually shit himself,” one of our Headquarters platoon NCOs said to me, apparently provoked by my sniffing of the air and subsequent grimace. “Gives new meaning to the term
scared shitless
, don't it?”

I nodded, hoping I appeared aloof and knowing to my enemies, who now had faces. Why I cared in the first place, I still don't know. “How'd the IA find them?” I asked.

The Headquarters platoon NCO chuckled. “They got set up by Sheik Banana-Hands,” he said. Sheik Achmed, better known as Banana-Hands to Coalition forces for his obnoxiously long fingers, had JAM connections in Saba al-Bor longer than the Tigris, but he had recently warmed to the concept of reconciliation—and the financial benefits it wrought. “I'll give you the details later. We gotta bring 'em inside now. Captain Whiteback and the IA colonel have some questions to ask before these guys get hauled back to Taji.”

Some of the jundis snatched the Ghost up by his elbows. He began to shake uncontrollably and dragged his feet in an attempt to stall his pending interview. He had no idea what awaited him inside the IA headquarters, and I was certain his imagination had created a far worse and far more graphic fate than was actually going to occur. As they lugged him through the front door, fear of the unknown struck again, this time in liquid form. A trickle of urine quickly swelled into a pool at the base of Mohammed the
Ghost's frayed pants. Both the Iraqi jundis and the American soldiers pointed and laughed.

There were no heroes of battle or delusions of war this day. Mohammed Shaba, a local legend prone to baiting Coalition forces with written taunts and verbal proclamations, a ghost brutal enough to kill people with point-blank AK-47 shots to the skull, a shadow guerilla who blew up American soldiers with crescent bombs (local terminology for EFPs) and then bragged about it, had literally pissed his pants at the prospect of consequences. He did not have my sympathies; nor did he deserve them.

His next stop was Camp Bucca, the national prison that had replaced Abu Ghraib. He would not be there as long as he should be.

When I walked back to the Gravediggers' corner of the combat outpost, SFC Big Country had already torn the Ghost's mug shot off the target wall. It lay crumpled up in the trash can. I thought about pulling it out and saving it for posterity. If nothing else, it was one more thug off the streets, and I knew the locals would be relieved to hear the news of his detainment. I decided to leave the mug shot in the trash though. I already had my lasting snapshot of Mohammed the Ghost, and it certainly wasn't the snarling menace captured in that photograph.

I was literally boots up
in the back of my Stryker when Lieutenant Virginia Slim's breezy accent sizzled over the net.

“X-ray [the radio call sign for the TOC], this is Steel 1! We got contact with enemy rifle fire on Route Swords, to the north, from dismounted personnel. We're developing the situation! Steel 1 out!”

Located on the complete opposite side of town from Lieutenant Virginia Slim and his platoon, the Gravediggers had spent a quiet day in OP overwatch. Half of my platoon was on duty with the Iraqi police; the other half were racked out in the vehicles, trying not to drool on one another. After Steel platoon's radio call, though, I loaded everyone up in anticipation of the radio call I knew would follow, as we were the only other maneuver element in sector: “White 1”—it was Captain Whiteback using our platoon's official color designation for radio traffic purposes—“move to far end of Route Swords to support Steel. Cordon off the northern section of the route.”

I responded just as rapidly. “This is White 1. Will comply.” I switched over to the platoon net and, trying not to sound too anxious, gave the order to move out. “Gravediggers, let's roll. Route Swords. Time now.” Three minutes after the contact call had stirred me from my day-dozing, my platoon screamed through the streets of Saba al-Bor, riding toward the sound of the guns.

Planning while on the move was not something recommended in any army leadership manual or officers' guidebook I had ever read, but it was something we all learned to do early and often in Iraq. SFC Big Country and I identified cordon locations for each of our Strykers, and I told the platoon to kick out all of the dismounts we had to provide local security.

“Make sure you dismount to your right and take cover behind our vehicles,” I said. “The contact Steel is reporting will be to our south. Let them flush the shooters out to our positions, and do not engage unless you positively identify your target.” I didn't necessarily need to repeat the rules of engagement (ROE) that had been hammered into us in the previous weeks, usually by fobbit brass, but it felt like the sort of thing a lieutenant was supposed to say in these kinds of situations.

I double-checked to ensure my rifle was locked and loaded, told Suge Knight to follow me onto the ground, and prepared to dismount with my platoon. Then I felt my vehicle come to a screeching halt, heard Sergeant Spade give the order from his gunner's cupola to drop ramp over the humming engine, and began to move out of the back. As my first boot hit the Stryker's ramp though, while Suge pushed up behind me, I heard SFC Big Country's voice roar over the radio speakers: “Contact to the north! I repeat, to the north!”

To the north? What the fuck? I knew that I had heard Steel's radio transmissions correctly, so how was the contact coming from the north? I didn't have much time to analyze the situation though, as directly in front of me an Iraqi army T-72 rolled by—heading north—machine gun blazing away, while rounds steadily ricocheted off of it. I couldn't help but gawk at how empty the streets were. I still stood on the Stryker's back ramp when SFC Big Country's vehicle launched a smoke grenade directly to my front, masking the movement of our dismounts team with a wispy grey cloud. It hissed like a snake.

Whistle. Whistle. Crack.

Close. Close. Very close.

Only now, when the rounds fired from the north began to ricochet off of my Stryker, did some fusion of training and survival instinct kick in. I grabbed Suge, who was more disoriented than I was, and we ran to our right, stacking up on a building behind Staff Sergeant Boondock's dismount team.

I took a deep breath, bit down on my lip, and tried to assess the situation. Staff Sergeant Boondock and his team—consisting of Sergeant Cheech, Private Van Wilder, and Private Das Boot—were directly in front of me, trying to communicate through hand-and-arm signals with dismounted IA personnel across the way, stacked up on another building. Sergeant Axel's dismount team—consisting of Corporal Spot, Specialist Haitian Sensation, and Private Smitty—was across from that building, also stacked up. There were IA tanks operating to our front and to our rear, both rattling with automatic fire. I grabbed my radio and asked SFC Big Country, who was now in charge of our mounted personnel, if any of our gunners could positively identify what the IA's were shooting at.

“That's a negative, White 1! Cannot positively identify!”

Just as my platoon sergeant finished his radio transmission, two bullets whistled by the dismounted IA soldiers across from us, thudding into the building some seven feet from our position. The IAs responded by spraying
their AK-47s wildly over their shoulders, not bothering to look where they were shooting.

Shit had hit the proverbial fan. I desperately tried to recall the book answer to this situation, but all I could come up with was using our Stryker as a shield while we actioned on the objective, like I had seen paratroopers do with tanks in an episode of
Band of Brothers
. I looked back up to see Staff Sergeant Boondock already directing my vehicle to do just that.

“You read my mind,” I yelled, relieved that I'd thought of a tactically sound maneuver, albeit about five seconds late.

“I got you, sir,” he responded, giving me the Aloha shaka'. I could have sworn he had winked at me from behind his black sunglasses too. This was his third deployment, and having experienced more than one man's fair share of combat, he adopted a relaxed posture in an attempt to settle down his young lieutenant and the three soldiers he had stacked up with him, most of whom were experiencing two-way live rounds for the first time.

I radioed back to SFC Big Country to relay to Captain Whiteback that we were maneuvering half the platoon north and keeping the other half in cordon because, if arbitrary gunfire was any clue, it sounded like Steel was still in contact to the south, too. While the IA dismounts refused to budge from the safety and cover of the building, Sergeant Axel and his team bounded over to our position without incident. That brought our dismounted total on the ground to ten, including Suge. Behind my Stryker, driven by Specialist Flashback and gunned by Sergeant Spade, we gradually plunged north into the unknown, like a needle in search of a vein. The T-72s to our left and right continued to exchange machine gun and rifle fire with
something
that was about three hundred meters directly to our front, rounds pinging off of the tanks' armor and the surrounding buildings. Corporal Spot and Sergeant Axel assumed the wings of our impromptu staggered column, scanning every window and peering down every corner. The area we moved into offered little concealment and even less cover; we had trampled straight into hell's garden, where fountains flowed with raw sewage and a soil-bed of refuse and broken glass gnawed on itself below our feet.