House to House: A Tale of Modern War (22 page)

Ware considers his response. Yuri stares at nothing.

We’ve got 360 security set up, and all is quiet for the moment. I sit down and light another cigarette. I’ve always considered the reporters and journalists to be little more than whores. They’ll whore us out for whatever story they can get out of us. And they never care. Maybe Ware is different.

Ware finally tells Fitts, “Look. These are brazen, calculated, and organized fighters. They’re not the boys who were here in April. These are foreigners, or battle-tested Sunnis from around the country. But they are certainly not the boys you have over in Diyala.”

“Yeah, I hear that,” Knapp replies. Ware’s right. There is a level of professionalism in these guys we have not seen before.

Ware looks into my eyes and says, “They’re here for one reason: to die in jihad. That’s it.”

We’re silent. Ware continues. “They know they can’t win. Look at all the firepower they face. But they’ll take out as many of you as they can before they die. That’s their whole reason for being.”

The more Ware talks, the more surprised I become by his confidence in his assessment. Ware is giving us a lecture. And the more he speaks, the more we all realize he knows what he is talking about.

Ware launches into a story about the insurgents he’s met. Early on, in 2003, he would sit and drink beer with them and smoke. They talked about money, girls, soccer, and Pan-Arabism. A year after the invasion, though, things have changed. Those who have survived have been radicalized. They wear beards down to their chests and quote the Koran. They don’t drink with him anymore. They speak only of God and destiny. They’ve become jihadists.

We’re not fighting nationalists here. We’re fighting extremists infected with a virulent form of Islam. They seek not only to destroy us here in Iraq, but to destroy American power and influence everywhere. They revile our culture and want it swept clean, replaced with Sharia law. The cruelties of Taliban rule in Afghanistan showed us all what that meant.

Ware notices he has his audience’s complete attention. He takes the opportunity to segue into a discourse on the different groups we are fighting in Fallujah. He talks about Hezbollah, and the type of training the Iranian Revolutionary Guard gives to the insurgents. That leads him into a tactical discussion. He compares the insurgents who fought in Samarra to those in Najaf. He speaks of the Iranian influence on Sunni Wahhabis. He goes on to explain how Hezbollah-trained squads sometimes carry nothing but RPGs and move without detection. When they attack, they volley-fire their RPGs, then fan out as they retreat. These are all the things Fitts and I have talked about for months, have heard through the infantry grapevine. But I am impressed to hear the same things from a journalist.

And then there are the insurgents’ ambush tactics. Ware has seen or heard of them all. He explains how they’ll probe an American unit just to get a response. Then the probing element will break contact and withdraw with the hope that the Americans will chase them. If the Americans do give chase, they’ll run smack into a horseshoe-shaped or L-shaped ambush and get blown away.

In Fallujah, we face an insurgent global all-star team. It includes Chechen snipers, Filipino machine gunners, Pakistani mortar men, and Saudi suicide bombers. They’re all waiting for us down the street.

Ware is an authority on the enemy. He knows more about them than our own intelligence officers. I hang on every word and try to remember everything he tells us. It is the best, most comprehensive discussion I’ve heard about the enemy since arriving in Iraq.

And it comes from a fucking reporter.

The conversation continues until it is almost dark. Our lieutenant breaks it up by asking me to take a patrol north to check out the house into which the battery-carrying, M16-wielding insurgent ran at lunchtime. We’ve been tasked by battalion headquarters with doing Battle Damage Assessment (BDA), which I learned to hate in April during the battles in Muqdadiyah.

I gather my squad, and we hit the street. Our plan is to take down another house to the north with a better view of the insurgents’ last known position. Above us, Fitts, Lawson, and the gunners provide cover. A Brad is just down the road behind us. We hustle along the splintered asphalt, dodging craters and debris from the blasts.

Just before we get to the house, a barrage of fire stops us cold.

“That fuck is still alive in there!”

That’s it. Screw the BDA. I call Staff Sergeant Brown on the radio, and his Brad lumbers up the road to our position. We back off as he pounds the house. Gossard takes careful aim and shoots out all the house’s support pillars. The roof collapses and the entire house folds in on itself. Scratch at least one insurgent.

Up the street we see another insurgent sprint across the craggy road surface. We shoot at him and miss. This is one determined son of a bitch. He breaks cover again and slips into a building, where he takes potshots at us from a window.

We withdraw back to our foothold in the three-story house. When we get back, Fitts is still trying to suppress another insurgent to the northeast from the roof.

“Santos!” I shout.

“Yeah, Sarge?”

“Prep a Javelin.”

The Javelin is the largest antitank missile we have at our disposal. If we do this right, we may be able to collapse the whole building on the bastard. The Javelin has two different firing settings: one for shooting the missile straight into a target on a flat trajectory, and another that arcs the missile high, to plummet down from above. We settle on the latter. We’ve never fired one like this before.

Santos preps the Javelin. He moves to the parapet and takes aim.

“I’m ready when you are!”

The Javelin spears the growing darkness with a tail of orange-white flame as it races down the street. Suddenly, it swerves straight up and then plunges down through the roof of the target house. It penetrates deep into the structure before it explodes. Black smoke spools out over the impact site as things inside the house get blasted through the windows.

A torn rag slaps into the street. More pieces crash around it. Debris rains down all over the block. Did we kill him?

His return fire stops, but that doesn’t mean anything.

We’ve gotta go over there for BDA. It isn’t worth risking the men.

A dog appears in the street near the heaps of rags that were blown from the house. His lips are curled back, his ears pinned. He’s one of hundreds of feral dogs roving Fallujah. We’ve seen them all around us, but normally, they keep their distance and watch us in silence. He takes a few more steps toward the rags, sniffing the air warily as he moves. His temerity encourages others. Soon, three or four dogs are in the street with the original. I watch them, curious to see what they’re doing.

They’re feeding.

The rags are the shredded remains of the insurgent. The dogs gnaw and tear at his flesh. One comes up, his snout smeared in gore. They’re ravenous. My stomach flutters.

“The dogs are fucking eating that dude,” I hear somebody say.

The dogs fill their bellies.

“Well,” I manage, holding tight to my stomach, “there’s our BDA now.”

We stare in horror. Suddenly, a wave of gunfire breaks over us from the south. Private McDaniel’s machine gun chatters a reply. We’re taking fire from the industrial area again.

We forget the dogs and swing to the southern end of the roof. Across Highway 10, we can see muzzle-flashes winking at us from a run-down warehouse. At least a dozen insurgents are holed up there.

This is actually really foolish of them. They’ve chosen to get into a fire exchange with a mechanized infantry platoon, using nothing but small-arms fire. Two platoons, actually: First Platoon sees these guys as well, and they’ve opened up on them.

I walk up to McDaniel, “See that warehouse? I want you to shoot! Shoot! Shoot!”

McDaniel’s 240 stutters and bucks. Swanson shows up with his 240 and gets into the fight as well. The warehouse is 450 meters away, really too far for our SAWs and M4s. The machine guns will do the work this time.

I get between them and act as their spotter.
“Z!”
I shout.

The gunners swing their barrels back and forth, making intersecting
Z
patterns across the warehouse. They hold their triggers down. The machine guns spew rounds. I help them adjust fire by smacking their shoulders. A smack on the left means ease more to the left. A smack on the head means shoot higher. It is the only way to communicate when the guns are rocking. It is almost impossible to shout over them.

Fewer muzzle flashes wink at us now. Every time McDaniel and Swanson sweep their guns across the windows, the counterfire grows weaker and weaker. It is just like a giant, real-life video game.

The Brads roll up and their Bushmasters go to work. The insurgents in the warehouse are about to get a tutorial on the effects of American firepower. It is awe-inspiring. The 240s tear chunks out of the warehouse. The 25 mike-mike rounds blast holes and send shrapnel spinning deep into the building’s interior. We lace the evening sky with streaming red tracers. The streaks lace across and through each other, forming what looks like an intricate laser light show.

Sergeant Juhasz gets into the act. He seizes his radio and calls in a fire mission. Eighty-one millimeter mortar fire soon falls on the insurgents. Juhasz adjusts, then orders fire for effect. The mortar rounds plunge into the buildings around the warehouse. In seconds, an entire city block is ablaze. Juhasz adjusts fire again. A decrepit building collapses under the barrage.

And then, just as the last shreds of daylight are pulled over the horizon, Team Tank rolls down Highway 10. Each Abrams cruises arrogantly. They are the baddest motherfuckers in this valley, and they fear no evil. They’re on their way west on a mission of their own and just happened to drive into our firefight. Obligingly, they pause to help us out. The tanks train their turrets to the south. Their 120mm tubes spew flames. The warehouse is smothered by smoke and fire. One by one, the four tanks take their shots before driving on into the city.

When the last one departs, the enemy is silent. Those who survived break contact. Juhasz stops the mortar barrage. First Platoon ceases fire. Once again, we’re bathed in the beauty of a silent battlefield. Our ears ring, but the quiet is more than welcome. All of us are hard of hearing now, thanks to all the heavy weapons we’ve been around these past twenty-four hours.

I look over at Ware. He’s filmed much of the firefight from a position between our machine gunners and the wall. He hasn’t hesitated to expose himself. Yuri is the same way. They’ll do almost anything to capture the action.

We stay alert and keep security up at every corner of our rooftops. Yet as the evening grows long, the enemy stays clear of our position. Just before midnight, we get word that Lieutenant Colonel Newell has hot chow waiting for us at the cloverleaf. Cantrell sends two soldiers from each squad and a pair of Bradleys to go pick up the food.

While we wait for them to return, I take a few minutes to try to clean myself up. We’ve got precious little water, so tonight I make do with a whore’s bath.

Later, I return to the second-floor roof to listen to Michael Ware regale the men with more stories of the insurgents he’s met. The Brads return, and the soldiers get their food. Lieutenant Meno, Fitts, Lawson, and I wait. A good leader never eats before his men, no matter what the situation.

Ware and Yuri dig in. Stuckert comes by and hands me a meal, then moves on down the roof.

“Hey, did you hear that the sergeant major got killed?”

I freeze. Food forgotten, I turn to see Stuckert talking to a couple of the other Joes.

“…Killed by a sniper, man.”

What?

I explode with fury. “STUCKERT!” I scream. He cringes, but turns to me.

“Yeah, Sergeant Bell?”

“Listen, you fat piece of fucking shit: What the fuck are you talking about? You don’t know dick about what is going on outside this rooftop. You don’t know that he’s fucking dead, got it?”

“Sarge, I heard some support guys talking about Sergeant Major Faulkenburg dying while I was at the cloverleaf,” he says weakly.

I lose it. All self-control out the window, I lay into Stuckert. As I scream and shout at him, my mouth froths, and I spray him with spit. Yuri and Ware stare at me with shocked expressions on their faces. If they weren’t so hungry, I’m sure they’d beat a retreat off the roof.

“I hear you mention his name again, Stuckert, so help me fucking God, I will take your soul. You hear me? You’re spreading rumors and fucking gossip. You don’t know shit!”

I’ve never been this angry in my life. I want to throttle the kid. I want to beat him raw. I want to inflict the kind of pain on him that his words have just inflicted on me. It’s because I know they’re true. And right now, I can’t handle that.

“Sorry, Sergeant Bell. That’s just what I heard.” Stuckert’s face is beat red. He looks terrorized. I’m still warming up.

“You don’t get paid to inform the masses. You get paid to shoot a fucking SAW. Is that clear? You do your job and stay outta my lane, you understand me, you piece of fucking shit? You don’t know shit about Sergeant Major. And you certainly don’t go telling Joe about dead Ramrods, you ignorant fuck.”

I know I’ve gone too far, but I can’t hold anything back. I’m reeling. I’m praying against the evidence the news isn’t true. By the time I’m done, I’ve pushed every one of Stuckert’s buttons, and he looks utterly broken. I know I will regret that later. Right now, I just don’t care.

Downstairs, Cantrell has heard my rant from the commander’s hatch of his Bradley. He keys his radio and calls for me. I leave Stuckert and storm downstairs. When I get to the street, Cantrell drops his ramp. I see Fitts inside.

Oh fuck no. Fuck no.

Cantrell slides into the back of the Brad with Fitts. He motions me inside and raises the ramp. When we have leaders’ meetings like this, I always feel like a part of a secret club, and the back of the Brad becomes our own portable Bat Cave.