House to House: A Tale of Modern War (13 page)

I peer out the back door. It opens onto a huge open field carpeted with debris and rubble. Each side of the field is flanked by darkened, skeletal buildings. Dozens of dark windows present vantage points over the field. This is what infantrymen call a danger area. In combat, open spaces like this one can be lethal. There are only three ways to deal with a danger area: avoid it altogether; set up near and far rally points with security before crossing it; or use a box tactic by moving along the outside edges and avoiding the open space.

This is where Fitts and I had decided to begin our leapfrog into the city. It now appears to be a perfect place for insurgents to attack us while we maneuver. The insurgents
want
us to go through that door, and if we want to push on to the south, we will have to do what they want.

“Knapp! Knapp, get up here.”

“Yeah, Sergeant Bell?” Knapp appears next me. He’s sweaty and already dirty, but good to go. I put my infrared light on a building about thirty long meters behind ours.

“Every swinging dick is gonna cover your movement. You got that building across that danger area. Box it.” I want him to work around the edge of the field in order to take the building facing us.

“I can go wide and just hook it into the door,” Knapp says after evaluating the area.

“Alright, that sounds good. Let me set up security. You get far side and strobe us for B Team and Sucholas.” Once he and his men are in that building, they can signal us with a flash of light for the next team to follow them.

“Got it.”

When security is set, Knapp runs through the doorway with Ruiz, Santos, and Doc Abernathy behind him. They sprint along the outline of the danger zone, hugging the buildings, drawing no fire. At the far edge, they turn and keep following the flanks. They reach the far corner across from us and dogleg left until they reach the doorway of our next target house. Knapp enters first, like all combat leaders in our battalion. He stays visible long enough to send an infrared strobe.

“Sucholas, your turn! Let’s go.”

My Bravo Team sprints into the night. This time, instead of using the box tactic, they go straight across the danger zone while Knapp and Fitts cover them from either side. Halfway across, I see Stuckert trip and fall. He rolls on the ground like an overturned turtle. Sucholas doesn’t look back. He keeps running and the rest of his team pull ahead of where Stuckert’s gone down.

“Stuckert! Get up! And get over there!” I scream at him.

I yell, “Sucholas! Look behind you!” He doesn’t hear my hoarse, raspy voice. He doesn’t slow down, and he doesn’t look back. Stuckert’s in trouble.

Knapp sees this and shouts for Santos. He rushes to the doorway, spots Stuckert, and charges out into the danger area, passing the rest of my Bravo Team as he runs. Sucholas hits the door and leads his men inside. They push through into the house to help clear it just as Santos gets to Stuckert.

Stuckert’s been caught after stepping in a tangle of heavy-duty electrical wire. The wires have closed around him like the leaves of a Venus flytrap. The more he struggles, the tighter the wires grip him. Fortunately, Santos has clippers, and he goes to work. But his legs soon get tangled in the stuff, and he’s trapped as well.

This is it. This is my worst case. Helpless. In the open. This is where it is going to happen.

My heart starts to pound into my throat. I can’t feel my legs. I’ve got two men in a danger area, totally exposed. They work frantically to free themselves, but I don’t see much progress.

A block to the west, just on the other side of our field, I hear an AK report. Then another. An M4 replies. A machine gun chatters.

They’re going to kill Stuckert and Santos.

I can’t lose men this way. I can’t.

I leave Fitts’s doorway and run to their aid, pulling my Gerber knife from my pants pocket. As I get to them, I see coil after coil of wire wound around both men. They’re hopelessly snarled. Santos is snapping furiously, but it doesn’t seem to be doing any good.

I curl the knife under one coil and yank. The blade cuts through the rubberized coating, but doesn’t sever the copper cable inside. I start to saw back and forth. It is maddeningly slow work.

A 7.62mm bullet pings into the debris not ten meters to our left.

Oh shit. Not this way. Not like this. Please God….

Another one follows. This time, the bullet whines overhead and smacks the ground hardly a stone’s throw from us. To the west, another rash of gunfire erupts.

If we have to die, let us die in a stand-up fight. Not trapped like this.

I rage at the wires, hacking at them with my Gerber. Santos grunts, cuts, and swears. Stuckert pulls and prods. We’re bathed in sweat now, and as we struggle, concrete dust boils up from the ground to stick to every exposed part of our bodies. Our faces get covered in the stuff. We look like ghosts.

A block away, machine guns echo through the night. AK-47s bark. M4s beat a response. The firefight grows.

CHAPTER SIX

The First Angel

Meanwhile, to the west, total chaos. The troopers from the Iraqi Intervention Force have hit a bottleneck right at their entry point into the city. Their five-ton trucks jam together in one tangled mess as Marine units try to skirt around them and loop farther west.

It starts with a few shots. AK-47s crack. Bullets spring off the five-tons. The IIF guys have little in the way of leadership. Some dismount to mill in the street, unsure what they should do. Others stay put in their trucks. The traffic doesn’t move. The vehicles are vulnerable. The men are vulnerable. A disaster is about to happen.

From the west, a squad-sized element of jihadists strikes. They move into alleyways and rooftops and bring their weapons to bear. They have easy targets. The Coalition traffic jam offers little in the way of cover. The Iraqis, not quite in the city, but not able to pull back, are trapped.

Command Sergeant Major Steven Faulkenburg steps from an armored Humvee. Just before the assault, he volunteered to go with the IIF unit as their American liaison to the rest of our task force. He realized the Iraqis needed a steady, veteran leader, and he elected to fill that role himself.

His relentless personality helped drive the Iraqis through the railroad breach and to the threshold of the city. When they stopped and just dropped into the sand next to their rigs as we entered Fallujah, it was Faulkenburg who got them moving again.

Now bullets fly. The insurgents lace the convoy with long bursts from their AKs. Another force takes up position on the east side of the street. The jihadists have the IIF in a cross fire. Men fall. It is a nightmare.

Faulkenburg realizes he must act swiftly. He shouts up to his gunner, Staff Sergeant Raymond Wray, and gives him a fire command. Wray swings his machine gun out even as Faulkenburg barks orders to the Iraqi soldiers in the street around him. His face, wrinkled and hard, exudes strength and confidence. He moves through the confused and unsteady Iraqis, his very presence electrifying them. A few quick gestures, a few quick words, and the Iraqis form up with him. Though separated by culture and language, the IIF soldiers see not an American, but a combat leader. They’re ready to stand with him and fight. Faulkenburg intuits this; the decisive moment has come.

Faulkenburg levels his rifle. He knows the only way his force can extract itself from this predicament is with a vigorous assault straight down the street. The enemy must be driven from their vantage points and pushed back away from the traffic snarl before they can start using mortars or rockets.

Faulkenburg calls to his Iraqi force, then half-limps, half runs forward. The Iraqis behind him follow without question. Rifles blazing, they pour into the street.

The insurgents catch them cold. Buildings on both sides erupt with muzzle flashes. The battle is joined. It is the first major firefight of the battle.

A bullet strikes Faulkenburg just above his right eyebrow, a millimeter below the rim of his Kevlar helmet. He falls. The fight rages. Inspired by his example, the Iraqis charge on and drive the enemy back. Others risk their lives as they dash to Faulkenburg’s aid. Our sergeant major lies unmoving in the street. The Iraqis lift him from the street and carry him to the rear. He’s placed on a stretcher, where one of our medics, Doc William Smith, sees him. Faulkenburg looks so small and vulnerable, so unlike his indomitable persona. Smith notes that his feet don’t even reach to the edge of the stretcher.

The fighting continues. The IIF takes more casualties, but the insurgents are driven back. The breach is ours.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Battle Madness

Knife in hand, I hack away at the wires trapping Stuckert and Santos as the staccato beat of AK fire fills the night. Santos swabs his face and eyes with his sleeve, then gets back to work with the wire cutters. I’m still frantic, but part of me realizes that the gunfire we hear is not directed at us. Whoever was supposed to watch this ambush point is either dead or has more urgent business elsewhere.

Stuckert finally breaks free from the wires. Santos yanks and rips his feet clear. We’re good to go. Panting, we sprint across the rest of the danger area and careen into the house. To the west crescendos a furious spasm of machine-gun fire. Peering out a window, we can see tracers zipping in all directions through the blackness.

It is Fitts’s turn to leapfrog. We cover the danger area, and I call him over. He takes his squad and breaks through a wall, which gives him a much shorter area to traverse to get to us. It’s a creative solution to our tactical dilemma. A few seconds pass, and he runs into our new foothold and joins up with me. Knapp and Sucholas have already cleared the house—what parts of it they could, anyway. They discover that the stairwells are again barricaded with fresh walls.

Fitts and I open the back door. It faces south and opens into a small courtyard. Flannery, one of Fitts’s SAW gunners, is already out here standing next to three or four fifty-five-gallon drums.

“There’s hardly any lume”—light—“for the NODs” I say to Fitts as we study the courtyard. Aside from the tracers tearing up the night a block over to our right, this is among the darkest places I’ve ever seen. Our night vision requires a little bit of light in order to function, sort of like a cat’s eye. In zero light, it is useless.

Flannery leans against one of the barrels. It tips, and a wave of fluid pours out. “Oh shit!” he exclaims, “I’m sorry, Sergeant.”

The smell of gasoline assails my nose. I walk over to the barrels. “Hey Fitts, check this out.”

In one of our pre-assault briefs, we’d been told the enemy would try to counter our thermals (infrared optics) and night vision by setting fires. Gasoline, for instance, would do the job just fine. All four drums in the courtyard are almost full—that’s nearly two hundred gallons of gas. Inside, the rest of the men find more drums. They’re tied together by wax-covered rope. Fuses. The entire house is one big incendiary device.

Next door to our house is another one with four stories and a walled roof. This one looks more promising. The platoon climbs over a cinder-block wall in the courtyard to gain access to it. From an outside stairwell, we climb onto the rooftop. It looks purpose-built for combat. The wall running along the edge of the roof is thick and high. It will definitely stop an AK round. Cut into the wall at intervals are decorative openings that can double as firing slits. Best of all, the view is spectacular. We can see the whole neighborhood from here. We have our first position.

I stand on the rooftop and watch the firefight to our west. I can’t see much between the buildings in that direction, just flashes of light and an occasional tracer. The fighting seems to be dying down.

I look back behind us toward our entry point into the city. There are some five-tons back there with Iraqi allies moving around on the ground. I see a body in the street. Then another, and another. All three are being attended to by the Iraqis, who have put blankets over two of them. Other soldiers work to put the third one in a body bag.

Despite the intensity of combat just a short distance away, all is quiet for us. Urban warfare is not like fighting out in the countryside where each platoon or company can support one another. In a city, the close confines fragment the battlefield. Each platoon must fight in isolation, supported only by the assets attached to it.

We need to stir something up. The entire time I’m on the roof, the skin on the back of my neck crawls with that feeling of being watched. The enemy is out there someplace. I know it. And I know they’re studying us and waiting for the right moment to strike. We got lucky in the danger area. We may not get lucky again.

I climb down off the roof and return to the courtyard with the gas. Just as I reach it, the firefight to the northwest suddenly picks up. Furious bursts of automatic fire echo through the empty streets. A second later, not a shot rings out. The silence is unearthly. Seconds ago we’d been yelling at each other just to be heard; now we start to whisper, unwilling to break the sudden stillness.

Lieutenant Meno appears. “Captain Sims is coming in.”

Fitts is not pleased. He hisses, “Goddamnit, this is not a dog and pony show!”

Meno shakes his head, “No,” he whispers. “You’ve got a good house. We’re going to overwatch the neighborhood with it.”

Fitts looks pissed, but I’m okay with it. Sims learned from Muqdadiyah. He’s not going to stay in his track. Nevertheless, Fitts and Meno continue to argue the merits of captains on the frontline while I walk over to the back gate at the far end of the courtyard. Opening it up, I discover our access to Fallujah proper. The street behind us runs south through a residential neighborhood. The houses are so close together, we could probably move from rooftop to rooftop for at least the rest of our block. About a hundred meters away sits a municipal building of some sort, perhaps a school. A propane tank the size of a tractor-trailer is attached to the left side of that building.