Shock Factor (33 page)

After going to ground toward the end of the Shia Uprising in the spring, Moqtada al-Sadr gave a rambling, hate-filled speech on July 23, 2004. In it, he attacked both the United States and the current Shia-dominated Iraqi interim government.

A week later, a joint Iraqi-American operation in Karbala captured al-Sadr's senior commander in that city. The Shia cleric demanded his release to no avail. The situation escalated until August 3 when American troops surrounded al-Sadr's house and tried to kill or capture him. Somehow he managed to escape. Once clear of the American trap, he contacted all his senior leaders and told them to send the Mahdi Militia into the streets. Kill Americans. Resist to the death.

Two days later, the Second Shia Uprising broke out. For the next week, the Oregon snipers found themselves in the fight of their lives.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Gushwa's Thirty

The best snipers are men who make the most out of whatever circumstance they find themselves in. They are versatile, skilled, and intelligent. The best of us are fleet of foot and fast to react to the chaos of combat. Once in a fight, they dominate the enemy.

Sometime this happens from behind their scopes. Sometimes it happens with whatever weapon is at hand. When a fight comes to them, it is the enemy who suffers. In a fluid environment like Baghdad—or any other urban area—a sniper's got to be ready to fight at a moment's notice in any situation, mounted or dismounted. Countless times during the war in Iraq, our snipers were ambushed while either infilling or exfilling an area. Those sorts of situations become run-and-gun-type firefights that resemble some of the scenes in
Blackhawk Down
.

I had this happen to me while in Somalia in January 1993 after our sniper section wrapped up a patrol to the UN food distribution site in downtown Mogadishu. We climbed into our three Humvees and drove back through the city toward our base of operations at the soccer stadium. That day, I rode in a soft-top Humvee that had no turret or heavy weapon. Our other two rigs carried a Ma Deuce (a Browning .50 caliber M2 machine gun) and a Mark 19 grenade launcher. Those two Humvees were armored, our soft top was not.

We'd been traveling down Route 31 October, the capital's main drag, when we came to an intersection about a kilometer and a half from home. So far, it had been a milk run.

But at the intersection, Aidid's fighters were waiting for us with a “technical”—a Toyota pickup with a machine gun mounted in the back bed. They'd emplaced the rig on a side street that ran parallel to our road and used the intersection that connected the two as their kill zone. When we drove by, they poured fire at all three of our vehicles. The surprise attack riddled our lead truck with bullets. Our trail one got hit, too. Somehow my truck lucked out.

In these sorts of situations, the best thing to do is just blow through the kill zone. Aidid's men had figured that out and had deployed technical at every intersection for five blocks. Every time we crossed a side street, they hammered us. We put the pedals to the floor as our gunners opened fire. The technical crews would blast away at us, then speed down the parallel road to another intersection, leapfrogging the other Toyotas already waiting for us. This way, they rolled the ambush down closer and close to the soccer stadium and gave us no respite.

I had a kid named Lassiter on the Mark 19 that day. He was a great Marine, very reliable, and extremely trustworthy, which is why we took him out on missions with us. At the third or fourth intersection, he was ready for the ambush and sent a 40mm grenade right into the waiting technical. Granted, Toyotas are excellent, reliable vehicles, but they just can't take a grenade strike. This one exploded and burned quite nicely.

We reached the stadium and the surviving technical pulled off and raced into the city's dark heart. After we rolled through the gate, we discovered the enemy had shot out all four tires in our lead rig.

Our gunners and our speed made all the difference that day. It also taught us that part of a sniper's job is to be prepared for any kind of combat, be it a stalk in a ruined cityscape or a road warrior–esque running gun battle. That was a lesson I took to heart, and in the years to come I always tried to train my sniper teams to be as versatile and flexible as possible.

There's no other way to fight an asymmetrical war.

Fortunately for the 2–162 Scouts, Kevin Maries recognized that need for versatility long before the Volunteers deployed to Iraq. He made sure his snipers cross-trained on every weapon available to the scout platoon. His section drilled with machine guns, M4 carbines, M16 rifles, pistols, and even grenade launchers. They learned to clear jams, load, break down, and clear each weapon.

When the battalion moved to Fort Hood for its predeployment workup, the snipers even manned Humvee turrets and practiced hitting targets while on the move. Anytime the snipers could pick up an additional skill set, Lieutenant Boyce and Staff Sergeant Maries were all for it. They pressed ahead and made the most of every training opportunity.

Specialist Nate Gushwa missed that part of the battalion's time when Maries gave him the one available (and coveted) slot to the sniper school at Camp Robinson in Little Rock. Maries had seen in this young soldier something unique. He had a fire, a grit that impressed everyone. He kept himself in superb physical shape as well. Since being pulled into the scout platoon, he earned a reputation as a workout fanatic. His tattooed arms were roped with muscles.

Some men are born shots. They have that instinct coded into their DNA. Some men have a phenomenal knack for math and can do the ballistics and environmental calculations in their head on the fly while in the middle of high-stress situations. Others, like Nate, just seemed to know where to lay the crosshairs. It didn't matter the weapon either. Nate could shoot the hell out of anything from a Crossman pump to an M240 Bravo machine gun.

Born and raised on the Oregon coast, Nate's dad was the pastor for the local Baptist church. His maternal grandfather taught him to shoot when he was old enough to carry a rifle, and he would hunt raccoons at night with his grandfather, armed with Ruger 10–22 rifles. He was twelve when his grandfather gifted him with his first firearm, a Winchester 94 30/30. Later on in high school, he purchased a Remington 700, the civilian version of the M24 bolt-action rifle he later used in Baghdad. No matter the weapon, one elemental lesson from his grandfather stuck with him. Time and again, he told Nate to take a few easy breaths before taking each shot as a way to calm his system and steady his aim, a lesson he took to heart so well it became an ingrained part of his shooting style.

He grew obsessed with precision accuracy. He practiced his marksmanship nearly every day on a mini-range he'd set up for his BB gun in his backyard. As he got better, he made his targets smaller and smaller. Whenever he could, he went off into the woods to shoot targets or hunt black-tailed deer. He grew into a confident sharpshooter, and before he left high school he could take out a milk jug at six hundred yards with a scoped, customized rifle.

Being a trained shooter, not a natural one, I have nothing but respect for men like Nate Gushwa. Before I joined the Marines, I'd never fired a weapon. I learned everything in the Corps, and while I excelled with an M40 and the Barrett .50 cal, I never developed that touch with our pistols. That's actually not unusual. Most of us shooters are better on one weapon than others.

Nate Gushwa was the exception to that rule. On a lead-filled day in Baghdad, that unusual ability played a key role in the largest battle fought by 2–162 Infantry since the end of World War II.

AUGUST 6, 2004
NORTHEAST BAGHDAD

The frantic call reached 2–162's operations center just after lunchtime. An Iraqi police station north of Sadr City reported it was being blitzed by an all-out Mahdi Militia attack. Without assistance, they were sure to be overrun and killed to the last man. Minutes later, the Iraqi Police called in to say another station was under attack as well. Mahdi Militiamen were boiling out of the Sadr City slums and pouring en masse into the area, which on American maps was labeled Zone 22. They were battling the cops (supposedly), laying roadside bombs, and setting up fighting positions and barricades in the streets.

Lieutenant Colonel Dan Hendrickson launched the scout platoon to go investigate. Lieutenant Ross Boyce had five Humvees that day. Four were armored M1114s that could withstand direct hits from most types of RPGs. The fifth, which Boyce put in the middle of his column, was the platoon's “Rat Rig.” This was a soft-topped, unarmored Humvee commanded by Sergeant Andy Hellman. Andy was a low-key, unassuming scout of average build and stature whose dark eyes hinted at the cagey intellect he possessed. He'd driven around Baghdad all spring in the Rat Rig, taking pride in the ridiculous level of risk such excursions entailed.

Boyce was running lean that day, as many of his men were home on leave. Maries and several sniper teams were still deployed to the MOI and Sheraton, leaving only fourteen men to crew five rigs. Out of necessity, sniper Nate Gushwa manned the turret-mounted M240 Bravo machine gun in the lead Humvee. Darren Buchholz was supposed to go along, too, but he injured his back shortly before the platoon departed and could hardly move. Nate saw him suddenly crumple to the ground next to his Humvee as he was loading his gear aboard. The men carried him to the battalion aid station, where the medics shot him full of painkillers and corticosteroids. He dragged himself back to his room and passed out, feeling utterly awful that he could not roll with his brothers.

Boyce's platoon reached Zone 22 and checked in at the first police station. This time, the cops looked legitimately terrified. They reported that they'd been under fire all morning, and that the enemy was moving in large numbers throughout the area. Right about then, the platoon heard gunfire, and Lieutenant Boyce mounted up his scouts and headed off in search of the fight.

Moments later, the platoon rolled northward up to a three-way T-intersection. Just as they slowed down to figure out which way to turn, a column of Humvees came barreling through the intersection, running flat out east to west. The last rig screeched to a stop directly in front of the Oregon platoon, and one of the dismounts popped open his door and spun out into the street. The 240 gunner went cyclic on his weapon, spraying bullets down the street. The soldier in the street took a knee and fired his M203 grenade launcher in the same direction.

In the lead Oregon Humvee, Trimble and Gushwa watched this unfold only a few yards from their hood. The dismount in the street blew through his entire chest rack of 40mm grenades in a matter of seconds, then turned to the scouts and shouted in a thick Arkansas accent, “Do not go down there! RPGs. RPGs.”

Their truck began rolling. The dismount fired a last M203 round as a parting “fuck you” to the Mahdi army, then pivoted and dove into his Humvee, which sped away with the 240 gunner shouting one final warning, “Do not go down there!”

Sergeant Dustin Paul, Trimble's truck commander, asked, “Hey, Lieutenant, what do you want to do?”

Boyce radioed his rigs, “This is our job, guys. Let's go check it out.”

Gushwa heard the order and was startled by it. “What? Right? Isn't that the way they just told us not to go?”

Paul relayed that to Boyce, but the platoon leader insisted, “We're recon, we gotta check this shit out.”

Dreading what would happen next, Trimble turned right and gave it some gas. The rest of the platoon followed. They drove into a ramshackle slum full of ugly, low-slung buildings built one atop the other. They passed a broken rocket-propelled grenade lying in the street. UXO—unexploded ordnance—is never a good sign. Heads on swivels, the platoon inched deeper into the neighborhood.

Gushwa scanned the road ahead, swinging his turret left and right in a forty-five-degree arc. The scouts had attached a .50 caliber ammo can to this 240 Bravo and linked four belts together to give Gushwa eight hundred rounds of ready lead. The machine gun sported a Trijicon TA648MGO 6x48 green dot scope—perfect for knocking down targets at long range, but awkward in a close-quarters fight. The street was so narrow that if they did roll into an ambush, the scope would not be an asset. Nate handled the 240 with confidence, though he had not fired a live round through a machine gun since basic training some two years before.

They'd only gone a short distance when Kyle Trimble spotted a crowd of black-clad figures in the street ahead. They wore the green armbands of the Mahdi Militia, but did not appear to be armed. Some of them turned in surprise as the Oregon Humvees approached. Others bolted for nearby alleyways and buildings.

The rain of shit began right there, and it was on like Donkey Kong. Gunfire erupted along the left side of the street sending bullets spanging off the lead Humvee.

Gushwa shifted the turret to the left and saw three men with weapons. A quick six-to-ten round burst dropped all three. He spotted another man shooting from the corner of an alley. He shifted fire and killed him with another controlled burst.

Suddenly, a figure stepped out of an alley to the right of Gushwa's rig. Trimble glimpsed him just as he raised an RPG launcher. He could not have been more than fifteen yards away. A puff of smoke, a flash, and the rocket shot from the launcher's barrel. It skipped across the hood of Trimble's Humvee and detonated beside his left window. The blast rocked their truck just as Gushwa dropped him with a snap-shot from his 240.

The rest of the platoon drove forward into a sea of muzzle flashes. Dozens of Mahdi Militiamen appeared on rooftops, in the street, in alleys, and atop compound walls. They fired from windows and gardens and from the road itself, standing fearlessly and fully exposed. The Oregonians poured lead downrange, cutting them down one after another. Undeterred, more Mahdi rushed to join the fight until it seemed like the platoon was fighting its way upstream. The level of enemy incoming never slackened despite the carnage the scouts inflicted.