The Last Punisher: A SEAL Team THREE Sniper's True Account of the Battle of Ramadi (9 page)

When we got to the Jundis’ barracks, I immediately noticed their lack of urgency. When we’re on an op, SEALs have a general sense of urgency in everything we do because we’re jacked up on a combat mindset. We have our head in the game. Our pucker factor is elevated, and our energy level reflects it. The Jundis did not share our intensity. Getting them all up and onto the back of Big Zev with all their rifles and extra equipment was like corralling third graders for a field trip to a museum. Their general malaise amplified my own nervous energy and excitement. With all of them packed tightly into Big Zev, we rolled out for the objective.

The roar of the engine and warm humid air made me even more aware of how ready I was to do what I’d been training to do for four years. We reached our staging point a couple hundred meters away from the target. We dismounted and started corralling the Jundis into position at the rear of our patrol formation.

Our terp (interpreter), Moose, was a former Jordanian Special Forces guy who carried a pistol and an M4 on all our missions. He was locked on as an interpreter and could hold his own in a firefight. He was a U.S. citizen, contracted by the State Department. Early in the war, the United States had tried using terps who had acquired Arabic
in schools, and saw poor results. Sure, they spoke the same language as the Iraqis, but it didn’t mean they understood it. If you stick someone from Alaska and someone from Georgia in the same room they’ll communicate, but if the guy from Georgia uses a colloquialism like “that dog won’t hunt,” chances are the person from Alaska is going to miss something. U.S. officials quickly recognized they needed native-born terps to catch all the nuances that only a native speaker could pick up on. They made the switch and saw much better results. Moose was from Jordan, so he knew the little idiosyncrasies of the region. He had all the knowledge of Iraqi culture that a U.S.–born terp who learned Arabic as an adult lacked. He knew the area. He knew war. He hunted terrorists. Guys like Moose were invaluable and greatly increased the combat effectiveness of American units.

Moose was always giving us the skinny on the Iraqi troops, and he was great at corralling and directing the Jundis and making them move on target. They were like lemmings, and Moose was their pied piper. Without Moose, the Jundis would have probably just walked into each other or sat down and smoked cigarettes.

One of my favorite Jundis was a big Baby Huey–looking dude named Hassan. He wasn’t fat, just solid, with a head like a bison. He was a meathead, but he was a meathead who was eager to learn. Hassan may not have been a genius, but he was faithful and squared away. He cared about soldiering, and that’s about the most I could hope for from my Jundis. Hassan was always eager to get in on the action, always first to volunteer. He wanted to be there, and I respected him for that. He wasn’t anywhere near our level of proficiency, but he seemed to have genuine motivation, and that was a big step up from a lot of his peers.

“Moving,” Squirrel muttered via intra-squad comms.

We started patrolling on foot with Squirrel as point man to the target building, and the faint sound of our footsteps barely pierced the sleeping stillness of the neighborhood. To our left was an open field,
and to our right the street was crowded with compounds. We didn’t have much cover. Luckily, electricity was scarce in Ramadi at night, and we moved stealthily down the road. I paid attention to my surroundings, scanning everywhere and looking for threats. The target building was in a block of two-story houses, the third one in. When we reached it, my assault team set security on the gate to the compound and called up the team of Jundis whose job it was to place a ladder on the compound’s wall, get up and over quickly, and unlock the gate.

I had not anticipated that even such a seemingly menial task could be asking so much of my Jundis. We had operated like a true bunch of quiet professionals until the Jundis started getting over that wall. The ladder creaked loudly under the weight of their boots on the rungs; their AK-47s slapped on the compound wall. It was the complete opposite of tactical. It was more like a Benny Hill video or the Keystone Cops. We were the best America can offer, and suddenly we were at risk of getting smoked outside our objective because these fifty-dollar soldiers couldn’t get over a wall with a ladder. I rolled my eyes and made a mental note that the list of things to work on with my Jundis had just gotten longer. When they finally got over, I could hear them talking in Arabic on the other side, and after what seemed like two forevers, I heard the latch finally open.

The Jundis opened the door and stepped out of the way as our assault team quickly moved in. There was only about ten feet between the outer wall of the compound and the garage, which we skirted and followed to the front door, where we stacked up. I got the signal and passed it forward. Then we went. Violence of action. Smooth and fast. I cleared into the first room, seeing a series of vague details: a dirty marble floor, a kitchen area, some lights on.

Clear. Next room.

We went.

There was a woman with two or three kids screaming in terror at the Terminator-looking dudes with guns. I yelled at the woman
to get down at the same time I wrapped her and the children up and pushed them into a corner so the rest of the train could get through. With three or four SEALs and ten Jundis behind me, I was in the zone, clearing corners and underneath beds.

The next room went quick. I noticed a blur of prayer rolls and mattresses as I cleared my sector, encountering no bad guys. We called clear and stacked for the next room. The signal is given—then go. Onto the next. There was an unarmed man; I threw him down hard and flex-cuffed him. Another unarmed man. We took him down and flex-cuffed him. We were through the entire house. CLEAR! The entire target was secure, and not a single shot was fired. No bomb-maker muj testing my resolve; just two suspected terrorists to take back to base for further questioning. Despite the op’s anticlimax, I felt amped and pretty good about my performance. I had just secured my last room and was headed back out to meet the guys when Moose meandered over and met me in the doorway. He handed me something discreetly.

“You dropped this, Jobber,” he said quietly, in his accented version of “Dauber.” He pressed something hard and metallic into my hand.

I looked at the magazine he handed me and saw the distinct marking of KRL—my initials in my handwriting. I looked at my rifle and the empty magazine well. Before I could look up to say something to Moose, he was gone.

I was incredulous. I had cleared the entire house with nothing but a single round in the chamber of my M4. I had somehow hit the magazine-release button when I entered the house. I was embarrassed, but also grateful I hadn’t needed the mag and that it was Moose who found it. If any Teamguys had made that discovery, I’d be known as No Mag forever, and I would have had my dick thoroughly kicked in. I had been all jacked up on cocky-newguy swagger, thinking I’d had the perfect op, and now I couldn’t shake the thought of how terribly wrong everything could have gone. As the Jundis started ripping
through the place, looking for bomb-making materials, I began mercilessly hazing myself in my mind.

You fucking turd, Dauber. You could have gotten us all killed.

I saw a bunch of propane tanks in the yard and called EOD Nick to check it out. It was nothing. As we started to pack up to leave, Dale approached me.

“Dauber, how do you feel?” he said.

“I feel fucking jacked.”

“Don’t ever forget that feeling,” he said.

Dale seemed to have a knack for creating unforgettable memories in my mind. I thought back to his paddle full of sand in BUD/S. That sadistic blow was nothing compared to what I would have suffered if Dale or anyone else knew about the magazine. I would never again drop my magazine on an op.

We threw the two prisoners up on Big Zev, which was already cramped for room. The Jundis sat on them all the way back to the detention facility. They liked to mess with prisoners. Before we broke out to head home, we got accountability of all our gear and personnel. As we were prepping to leave, Tony said, “Not bad, Dauba’, but not fuckin’ great.”

It was all the criticism I needed to hear. It made me want to work even harder and tighten up my shot group.
You have no idea how not fucking great that was,
I thought. I packed a dip and climbed onto Big Zev for the ride home. I wedged myself in with my Teammates, the men whose combat brotherhood I’d just joined. The baptism might have been ugly, but it had happened. “Not bad, but not fucking great,” I repeated to myself and spat Copenhagen juice. No doubt. The next time I’d be better.

“May God have mercy on my enemies, because I won’t.”

—George S. Patton

Y
OU WOULDN’T BELIEVE
the things people ask when they find out you’re a SEAL.

“Do they really drown you on purpose and bring you back to life in BUD/S?”

“I heard they issue you each a German shepherd puppy, make you raise it through BUD/S and SQT, and then require you to slit its throat before graduation.”

“How many animals did they make you kill with your bare hands to become accustomed to the feeling of taking life?”

The point is not whether any of these questions and statements are fantastically false or contain kernels of truth, or whether the person asking presumes too much by carrying on with such an invasive interrogation. In the Teams, we have a half-sarcastic term for letting these beliefs persist, even the false ones: perpetuate the myth.

It took me a while to understand, but now I see these people don’t want to know the truth about me, anyways. They need the myth because they need to believe I was turned into this thing that I am. It’s easier to believe this was created through harsh training and torment than to accept that a few of us just are.

The questions are not about me. They’re about them.

I don’t know where I get my mean from. I don’t know if
mean
is even the right word, but I know I have something in me that’s always been there when I needed it, from the rugby pitch to the Ma’Laab. The first time I broke another guy’s nose in a match, I said I was sorry, but I didn’t mean it. He was in my way, and I was doing my job for my Teammates. I can be violent when I need to. It’s just the way I’m wired. I never gave it much thought before joining the Teams, the fact that not all men carry in them this potential for ferocity. I never had a word for it before, or a label. And then I became a Punisher.

It started out small, a Teamguy’s simple graphic tagged on the sides of his helmet during our deployment work-up in 2005. I can’t even remember who it was. The image of a human skull is traditionally associated with death or mortality, but the Punisher skull reimagines the meaning. The angular, scowling eye sockets and monsterlike teeth express the malice burning in the heart of Frank Castle, the macabre hero of Marvel Comics’
The Punisher.
In the comics, Castle is a SEAL-trained former Marine captain who served in Vietnam. His violent-vigilante persona takes root after his wife and child are killed by the mafia and the police are too corrupt to bring the killers to justice. Something about the Punisher skull immediately resonated with us. It reflected what most SEALs wanted to be downrange: death-dealing arbiters of justice, punishers of an evil enemy. We didn’t really
talk about this interpretation in Charlie Platoon. It was just one of those things that caught on and spread without effort—a potent meme finding its perfect audience. It was just cool. And we all wanted to look cool.

During work-up, the image quickly spread from one helmet in our platoon to all of them. Eventually, someone made a bigger stencil, and we all tagged the image on our body armor, wearing the Punisher icon on our chests and backs. Guys started tagging the skull on notebooks, assault packs, all over. In Iraq, we added the Punisher tag to our Humvees, blast shields, and just about anywhere we could fit it. It was the perfect icon for a bunch of Big Tough Frogmen, and our platoon was full of those. The phrase “Big Tough Frogmen” became an acronym, which became a noun, a verb, an adjective. We’d say things like “We’re just gonna get outside the wire and BTF around” or “Just BTF that gear over here” or “Time to BTF and show these muj what’s up.” A couple of the guys hated its overuse, which of course led to more overuse. The average SEAL in Charlie, also known as Cadillac Platoon, was at least six feet tall and two hundred pounds—a bunch of steely-eyed killers.

After two weeks on the ground in Ramadi, I was ready to start earning our Punisher moniker. The monotony of unpacking gear, getting situated, and training Jundis was getting old. There is only so long you can keep a hound caged before you have to let him run.

We were tasked to move from Sharkbase to Camp Corregidor, a big Army base in the southeast corner of Ramadi—the area known as the Ma’Laab district. The Army was prepping for a major offensive there, and they requested our support. We were more than happy to oblige by getting in the fight.

The roughly seven-mile drive to Corregidor under the cover of darkness tempered my youthful aggression. Route Michigan, the main artery of transportation along the western front, was an easy target for terrorists and a magnet for IEDs. Michigan meandered lazily through
some of the bigger towns and cities in the west. Ramadi was not spared. The terrorists swarmed on Michigan like ants on a syrup strip.

I climbed into Vehicle 1’s turret, where I’d have a clear view of the scenery. I preferred the turret to sitting in the truck because of the fresher air and my two hands on a .50-cal to light up any threat that presented itself. I’ve always been a little claustrophobic, though I never admitted it to the guys back then. I hated being boxed into a Humvee on a blacked-out (no headlights) convoy, especially when the IED threat was high. I preferred to be on the offensive, head on a swivel, above the moondust that obstructs your view and sticks to your gums like the stink of the city.