Lest We Forget (16 page)

             
It probably came off as a pretty smartass comment but I had to ask, “Sergeant, you want me to go out there and tell that group of guys that there is a chance that after all they have just been through that they may need to stab themself in the leg to keep from having their insides melt?” 

He understood that I was being sincere, that I didn’t want to see those men be put in harms way again but we both knew that that was our job.  He didn’t say a word, he didn’t have to.  I walked out and started handing out the little handheld injectors as though they were pieces of
Halloween candy.  I get a few confused looks, a lot of shoulder drops and headshakes and one big fat grin.  He knew that I wasn’t handing these fuckers out as a joke and I think that he truly reveled in the idea of getting his hands a little dirtier.

             
The men stand with professionalism as I give the quick tutorial on how to self-administer the drug into the outside part of the thigh.  At the end of the instruction I ask if anyone has any questions, only one man speaks up.

“So Doc, our faces might get melted off tonight?”

“It’s a possibility,” I respond.

“
Cool.”

We once again climb aboard the
Black Hawk helicopters en route to uncertainty.  As we take flight we are informed that the mission is being called off.  Some of the men are disappointed, the ones with families are relieved and the rest are indifferent.  We all know the acts that this man has committed warrant his absolute demise and would love the opportunity to be the hand of vengeance.  None in the group would hesitate to do so but at the same time none of these men carry a death wish.  Be smart in the way that you hunt and you will live to hunt another day, become overzealous and you get replaced by a folded flag handed to your next of kin.  Ironically enough this would not be the platoons last shot at Zarqawi but for now it was time to call it a night.

Inside the foreign fighter safe house.  Snagged myself a war trophy that would later be used to mix drinks with back home
, “Cheer up.”

……

Chapter 11 -
There Will be Justice in Murder

Each 24-hour period begins to look exactly like the one before it.  Wake up at three in the afternoon, go to the gym, check on any missions that could be developing, eat “dinner” and wait. 

By sundown we would be checking the batteries in our radios and ensuring that we have all the necessary supplies to get through another night raid.  An hour or so after the sun sets we get picked up by a group of
Black Hawks and are delivered to the doorstep of another Jihadist. 

             
One of these hundred nights seems to stand out from the rest, however.  We get Intel on an individual that our big brothers have been tracking for some time.  He is a tier 1 target and has been evading capture for some time.  The appropriate plans are made and once again we find ourselves with feet dangling from the open door, the hot summer desert air stinging our faces.  

A split second before the bird touches down I hop from my position in the door of the Black Hawk
.  My feet welcome the embrace of the uneven soft dirt field.  I know that Allen and Josh will be racing me for this one.  Getting to be the guy to pull the trigger on this particular shit head will be huge bragging rights.  The people inside already know that we are here.  There is no way for them not to.  Four UH60 Black Hawks just landed in their front yard.  Tonight speed is security.  The faster we can get to the front door, the less time our enemy will have to prepare for the inevitable assault.  Not that there is much you can do to prepare when thirty Rangers are running at your front door in the middle of the night.  I get to the door a split second ahead of Allen, Josh and SFC Bent.  Somehow I end up as the third man in the stack.

We don't sit on the door, we flow instantly.  We have rehearsed this hundreds if not thousands of times.  Allen breaks left and controls the first corner
; Josh enters the room and heads right.  I follow Allen to the left and SFC Bent follows Josh to the right.  Allen and I have a door directly in front of us.  Without so much as a blink of hesitation we enter the interior door.  A figure in the far corner is holding an AK47 oriented on the door that we just entered with every intention on spraying us with 7.62mm rounds. As if it occurs in slow motion his rifle jams giving Allen the opportunity to acquire his target.  The man fluidly transitions from his AK47 to a frag grenade.  As his finger embraces the pin he receives two perfectly placed rounds to the face, carrying the contents of his skull out the back of his head.  He drops atop the grenade and we brace for impact.  It doesn't explode.  This mule’s seen his end in love and war. 

We hear two more shots from outside of the room.  Someone just engaged a target running toward the room that we were in.  Flash bangs are going off all over the place
. This is the definition of controlled chaos.

Shots are ringing out from outside the target house and I can’t help but think that this must be what war feels like.

             
The following excerpt is the account of the Ranger sniper team on the roof that was with us that night...

Flying into the target area, we could see the house. We came in low and fast as we landed on the X.  When we flared and came in to land near the red/black corner, I put my laser with the flood on to help illuminate the darker areas and windows of the building in hopes of putting down potential threats to the UH-60 Blackhawks we rode in. We landed a mere 50 meters from the house to serve as the containment and isolation element. There's an unspoken competitiveness among us Rangers concerning where you sit in the bird. We don't really talk too much about it, but the ones who have enough rides in a 60 know their chances of getting a kill drastically increase when you sit in the door. They're even better when your door is facing the target building. The isolation element was a two helo package. We had two sniper teams on this mission, my partner Myles was with me, and Isaiah and Jake were on the other Isolation helicopter. The pilots were precise and efficient with our infill. Before the dust settled and the beat of the helo's rotors were gone we heard shots fired inside of the house.  We hadn’t even had a chance to get in position and the fight had already begun. As the first shots rang out, I witnessed a shadowy figure clumsily leap out of a window on the red side of the target and begin to trot in our direction. In true Ranger fashion, I witnessed ten lasers converge on this man. He obviously had no idea we were out there because he was running directly at us while toting an AK by the receiver with one hand. Out of fear and cowardice, he took the path of least resistance and fled the ensuing controlled, chaotic, and methodical violence that was overwhelming his fellow terrorists inside the house. Either way he was met with a wall of lead and his body function was turned off like a light switch. The other bird landed slightly closer than ours and I had the pleasure of watching my best friend Isaiah, sprint up to the mangled body of this squirter and put two more M118LR in him, just to make sure he wouldn't have any life left to squeeze the trigger. Myles ran right beside me as we headed for the house to gain access to the roof. I remember jumping over his lifeless body as we headed for the roof and getting a good long look at him. He was tall and fat. A terrified look of fear was permanently frozen on his face. It was him. Hamadi Tahki. I recognized him from the pictures in our pre-mission brief.

As quickly as it began it was over.  One man lay dead in the kitchen and another in the room that Allen and I entered just moments before.  We begin searching the men, both living and dead.  I kneel down over the man's body and find another weapon system.  It was a police issue Glock 19.  We had been finding these on objectives with greater frequency these days.  The pistol was covered in human brains and little pieces of the man's skull that Allen had just moments prior fragmented.  I put the pistol in a Ziploc bag and placed it in my pocket. The spoon was still in the grenade so we carefully replaced the pin and added it to a pile of weapons that were collected throughout the house.

              Only once before have I seen a human head look this way.  There was no actual structure to the man’s skull.  The face was still in tact for the most part but it more closely resembled a flaccid mask than a human head. When I was 19 and working as a firefighter in central Arizona I was dispatched to a call where a gentlemen had been struck by a large pickup truck while walking down the freeway at night.  It was the first time I ever saw a body mangled to such an extent and it stuck with me. Here in this tiny dust filled bedroom in Iraq I am transported back to that cold, rainy highway outside of Mayer, Arizona.  It is a sight that I am much more capable of coping with this time around, however.

The evening becomes quite routine at this point.  We go through the home looking for any material that can potentially lead us to the next objective.  We question some of the young men and women that were in the house, take pictures and package what we think can be valuable.  By this point I was thinking that if we hurry up we
could get back to post in time for midrats.  I know I’ve mentioned midnight rations before but honestly it really is the best meal of the day.  You can get spaghetti and cereal in the same sitting, waffles and steak with a side of eggs and mashed potatoes. Glorious.  Years later an ad genius at Taco Bell coined it “Fourth Meal.” He must have been a Ranger!

It was common for there to be a shit hole outside of these little mud houses and this one was no exception.  As we began to make our short foot movement to our
exfil point where the Black Hawks are set to pick us up we notice a large hole in the ground several feet deep filled with human excrement.  Now if you've never walked around in the dark on uneven terrain wearing night vision goggles (NVGs) it isn't easy.  The one's that we were using at the time did not provide depth perception so rolling your ankle in a hole was somewhat common.  The headquarters element including the company commander and my good friend Nathan were the last to make the movement to the exfil point.  By the time that they were leaving the house our chalk had already set a perimeter around where the helos would be picking us up.  I could see the writing on the wall as the Company commander walked out of the target house. 

He was easy to identify due to the two large antennas towering over his shoulders from the multiple radios that he carried.  I watched in anticipation as he approached that deep hole full of human shit.  Elbowing my Ranger buddy to my right and pointing toward the house, he looked just in time to see the Captain disappear into the cavernous shit abyss.  There was a collective attempt at controlling laughter from the entire squad as it would appear that we were not the only two privileged enough to see the boss take the plunge.  With all the strut that a Ranger Sergeant possesses, my buddy Nathan calmly side steps the pit fall and continues to the extraction point.  The joke would eventually be on us, however, as rather than throwing away the soiled uniform the CO
decided to wash it communally with the rest of the platoon.  For weeks our entire element smelled like human waste.  Still owe you one for that move, sir.

By the time that we get back and download all of what we seized and conduct our after action review, the sun is cresting over the desert landscape and the chow hall is just opening for breakfast. A half dozen of us decide to forego showering immediately for the lure of a hot meal.  Outside of the chow hall on most forward operating bases are giant barrels, half buried in the sand with a baseball sized hole cut in the top of them.  They are referred to as clearing barrels and are intended to be used to safely unload your weapon before entering the chow hall.  The thing is, most people on a forward operating base never actually have a round in the chamber because they act in a support capacity and seldom, if ever, leave the front gate.

Being a medic I carry an M9 pistol as well as an M4 assault rifle.  This is in the event that I have to engage an enemy target while simultaneously working on a wounded individual.  It is also highly convenient when traveling around base because it means I don't have to carry that bulky ass rifle.