None Left Behind (31 page)

The truck inched a bit closer. A cooked-off bullet ricocheted off the hood. Rhodes ducked.

“Look out!”
he shouted.

From the turret, he spotted a 155mm howitzer shell casing illuminated by the fires. It lay on top of the asphalt directly in the middle of the road. Crush wire running off either end toward the ditches identified it as an IED. To the right of it lay another homemade IED constructed from a length of pipe. Tomasello guessed they were either timer explosives or pressure-activated rather than command-detonated. Either way, venturing any nearer from this direction was not only foolhardy, it could be suicidal.

At a safe distance from the cook off and the IEDs, soldiers piled out of the vehicle to set up a hasty perimeter, using the hummer as cover. Lieutenant Springlace kept in constant running radio contact with Battalion, Company HQ, and other platoons. Sergeant Ronnie Montgomery reported that Second Platoon coming north from 152 had reached the south truck, only to be stopped by another pair of IEDs lying on the road. There appeared to be other bodies burning inside this truck, but he couldn't tell how many.

The attack on the crater watch had obviously been well planned and executed, the IEDs laid out well to isolate the targets in the kill zone and prevent reinforcements from reaching them.

“L.T., we can't just stand here with our thumbs up our asses,” Springlace's soldiers raged. “They're burning alive!”

“Calm down. It's too late. There's nothing we can do for them.”

“Some of them might have got away and are hiding.”

No one sounded too hopeful.

“Our orders are to get to them,” Springlace said. “That's what we're going to do.”

Soldiers were direct action types, like cops and firefighters and others of the breed who ran toward danger while others ran away. They were also riled up, some near to tears from shock, grief, and frustration.
Patience, hell! Let's go kill something.

Firelight reflected from the front of a house a short distance off the road. Otherwise, it lay in darkness. If one or more of the crater watch, God willing, had survived, the most logical place they would seek to fort
up was at the house. With the road blocked, the only way to reach it was to take to the bush on foot. That entailed a huge risk from other IEDs, snipers, or possibly an ambush.

PFC Rhodes had already discerned the option. “Sir, point me in the direction and I'll go.”

Springlace and his men were interested in only one thing—finding their platoon mates if any were still alive and rescuing them from the bad guys. The Joes were in a killing mood, and in a hurry. Rhodes took point as the patrol abandoned its truck and skirted off the road toward the north and east through the shape-shifting woodlands and reeds. He almost hoped somebody,
anybody,
popped up and offered resistance. There wouldn't be enough left of the son-of-a-bitch to bury.

The patrol's goal, the house nearest the site, appeared deserted. It was a typical one-story, flat-roofed, adobe-type structure, small and compact and square. Rhodes glanced back through his NVs and received a signal from Springlace to go ahead. Soldiers warily approached, crossing the front yard to the door in practiced overwatch, half of the patrol kneeling with weapons ready, the other half rushing.

Rhodes and Brandon Gray flattened themselves against the walls to either side of the closed door. Sergeant Alan Ecle, Shaun Gopaul, and several others crouched behind the L.T., waiting for the word to stack and go. Springlace called out a warning to any civilian residents, which also served to identify themselves as GIs in the event Americans
were
hiding inside.

There was no response. The lieutenant nodded at Gray, who sprang back and stiff-legged the door, banging it open. That was the critical moment when entering the houses of suspected Jihadists. First guys in were the most vulnerable.

GIs in a stack cleared the house room by room, laser sights dancing erratic dots all over the blacked-out interior. Dinner dishes were washed and on a counter. Beds had been slept in and were unmade, as though the occupants had been jolted awake in the middle of the night and fled as fast as they could. People all seemed to have a way of knowing when something was about to come down so they could haul ass out of the AO.

“Hey, L.T.?” Specialist Timothy Grom removed his NVs and flicked a light on a stain next to the front door. The smear of fresh blood gave soldiers hope that at least one of their buddies from the crater watch may have been through here alive.

As Springlace's soldiers finished securing the house to use as a CP for a wider search, Lieutenant Tomasello's Fourth Platoon jogging down from Inchon reached First Platoon's truck, left in the road with its engine running and the radio chattering up a storm from all the activity on the net. Corporal Mayhem called out a warning, thinking the occupants may have been overrun and the truck booby-trapped.

He walked around it at a safe distance, keeping low from the cook-off in the burning trucks, exploring the interior with a flashlight beam. The turret gun was missing. Other than that, everything looked okay. First Platoon would likely have taken the machine gun on a dismount.

Lieutenant Tomasello raised First Platoon on his radio. “Delta One-Six, this is Four-Six. You copy?”

“Affirmative, Four-Six. Can you see the house? We've taken it.”

“Roger, One. Stand by ten mikes [minutes].”

Tomasello left James Cook and Michael Smith behind to guard the truck. The rest of the platoon located the cut gaps in the concertina and in less than ten minutes linked up at the house with First. After a discussion between the two leaders, they left a couple of Joes at the house to keep it secure while the reinforced patrol set out once more with Rhodes on point to look for survivors. Hope was rapidly dwindling. Wind whipped smoke and the stench of burning flesh through the trees and across the fields.

The patrol took a side road through a little cluster of houses, all of which were abandoned with no sign of the soldiers from crater watch. Rhodes came to the T of another dirt road that headed west to intersect with Malibu. A broken thermal scope from a GI's rifle lay in the dust next to fresh truck tracks, more evidence that all the watch may not have perished at the scene of the attack. Someone could have escaped.

The other possibility was too awful to contemplate—that GIs had been seized by insurgents to be used later in ritual beheadings for Arab Al Jazeera TV.

The twin flames on Malibu were starting to burn down. Only an isolated shot rang out from the cook-off, most of the ammo having already been consumed. At Lieutenant Springlace's direction, Rhodes selected the dirt road back toward the light. Platoon members from First and Fourth followed in tactical formation, feeling safe enough now to loudly call out the names of the missing, in fading anticipation of a response.

About forty minutes had passed since First Platoon dismounted and took over the abandoned house as a search CP. The patrol led by Lieutenants Springlace and Tomasello followed the dirt road back to Malibu where drag marks, blood trails, footprints, and tire marks signaled two things: First, that this had been the escape route; second, that prisoners had been taken; but who and how many could not be ascertained without further investigation.

Dawn was rapidly approaching, brightening the flatlands and chasing shadows out of the palms. The upper rim of the red sun slipped into view to take a look at the still-smoldering trucks, the worst devastation and loss of life experienced by 4
^th
Battalion since it pushed into The Triangle of Death over nine months ago. The fires burned down and most of the ordnance cooked off, leaving only the hissing of errant blazes as they gutted the blackened truck hulls and worked on the charred stumps of corpses now clearly visible inside the hummers. Most of the guys were too shocked to speak. They stared numbly until a sergeant from another company finally spoke for all of them.

“Nobody should ever have to see something like this.”

Daylight revealed a scene buzzing with activity. Company elements and QRFs dispatched by 2
^nd
BCT and 3
^rd
ID, by 1
^st
Cav and the 6
^th
IA, were perimetering off the road to search for evidence and organize a sweep in force across the nearby countryside. EOD arrived on the scene, quickly defused and dismantled IEDs left in the road, and began a mine check of the rest of the area. Tracking dogs were on the way. Black Hawk helicopters and Apache gunships buzzed low overhead now that the wind was laying, circling, looking, their rockets and guns armed and ready.

Sammy Rhodes and Specialist Chris York volunteered to go up to the
trucks to count bodies and see if enough remained to make a visual identification. Two corpses in the front seat of the south truck were seared beyond recognition. They were still steaming. One of the bodies was upside down with what was left of its head stuck in the sizzling springs of the seat, its feet and arms having been mostly consumed by the blaze. The stench of charred flesh stuck to the inside of Rhodes' nostrils; he was afraid it would be with him for the rest of his life. He figured he had attended his last backyard barbecue.

Two more sets of remains, likewise unrecognizable, occupied the front seat of the other blackened truck. An unexploded enemy grenade lay in the road at the front of the vehicle. Blood and footprints around the hummer and in the ditch indicated what must have been a brief but fierce hand-to-hand combat.

“They wouldn't have taken Anzak unless they killed him first,” York said.

That accounted for four of the eight soldiers on the crater watch. The morning light soon disclosed a fifth caught in concertina wire at the side of the road about fifty meters away. PFC Chris Murphy lay face down on the ground, his IBA and helmet cast aside as though he had shed them to lighten his load in his desperation to get away. Bullet holes stitched his back from the knees all the way up to the base of his neck.

EOD checked the body for wires or anything else suspicious. Corpses were often booby-trapped to kill other soldiers who came to remove them. One of the most common methods was to plant a live grenade underneath the dead soldier, the pin removed, so that it exploded as soon as someone disturbed the body.

Specialist Brandon Gray, the big, strong farm boy from Oklahoma, lay on top of Murphy, hugging his friend close, tears in his eyes, and rolled with the body to one side, using it as a shield in case something detonated. That was the only safe way to do it other than attaching a line to a foot or arm and dragging the soldier from a distance away. To Murphy's friends, that seemed too callous and disrespectful.

Someone checked for a pulse, a futile gesture fueled only by hope. Christopher Murphy from Lynchburg, Virginia, was dead. Sammy Rhodes and
Sergeant Alan Ecle stood and looked down on the young GI. He lay with his hands folded across his chest the way Gray had arranged them. His unmarred baby face looked serene and peaceful in the sunrise. Rhodes felt the urge to reach down and shake him out of sleep.

“Hey, Murphy, wake up. We gotta go, man.”

Specialist James Cook, now in Fourth Platoon but formerly a member of First, had been Murphy's best friend. He broke down and wept.

The attack on Malibu Road was the bloodiest single incident in the AO since the 101
^st
Airborne lost its soldiers near the JSB nearly a year ago. It was also the second largest capture of American GIs so far during the Iraq War, the worst since the seizure of Jessica Lynch and five other soldiers when their convoy took a wrong turn into An Nasiriyah on 23 March 2003. Insurgents had pulled off one of the most successful and sophisticated operations the 4/31
^st
had encountered so far. Brigade and Battalion S-2 (Intelligence) sections came down, measured and examined the site, and estimated that twenty or more fighters were responsible for the ambush, not counting support personnel and organizers.

The U.S. Army and all its components lived and fought by the creed, the promise, that no soldiers would be left behind. If you were wounded, killed, or captured in action, the army would do everything in its power to get you to a hospital, recover your body, or liberate you. Within an hour after the occurrence, virtually every unit in Iraq was mobilized to locate the missing Americans. That included the American embassy, Special Operations, and the CIA.

Inchon and the other two battle positions along Malibu teemed with the frenzied activity of a major military operation. Most of 4
^th
Battalion that was available, as well as assets from Brigade, the 3
^rd
ID, the 1
^st
Cavalry, and other outfits in the region, blitzed into The Triangle of Death. An IA armored battalion and an American battalion of 19-ton Stryker battle wagons rumbled down Malibu to assist in the hunt. Outposts normally equipped to handle platoons overflowed with companies and even battalions.

Helicopters and jets filled the skies. Soldiers on checkpoints and roving patrols cordoned off the full swath of the 2
^nd
BCT's 330-square-mile
sector while handlers with dogs trained to find bodies or bombs picked through cattails from one end of the road to the other. Choppers dropped leaflets asking for help. Trucks with loudspeakers roamed the area urging people to come forward. Dismounted patrols of very pissed-off troops swept the roads, kicking in doors and herding anxious Iraqis to holding areas.

None of the locals dared protest. The gloves were off. Bare knuckles were showing. GIs were in no mood for more bullshit. It would not be a good day for an insurgent. Even Crazy Legs had gone underground and couldn't be found.

“I don't want a hole in the perimeter big enough for a gnat to get through,” Colonel Infanti directed. “If they still have our soldiers, I don't want them to be able to move out of the AO.”

Soldiers cleared entire villages, searching houses, bringing in even some women and children as well as males of military age as possible witnesses or potential accomplices, creating long files of dark, staring eyes. Anyone who hadn't already fled in fear of arrest found himself at Inchon or one of the other battle positions. They weren't exactly prisoners, not being flexcuffed, but they still weren't going anywhere. Hard-eyed young American soldiers surrounded them and segregated them into two separate groups—women and children in one, men and older boys in another. A dozen IA police interrogators, the most trusted of them, along with U.S. Army Special Forces Green Berets wearing beards and ragged clothing in order to blend with the population, isolated the captives for questioning. Nobody asked about their methods. Time was crucial. After 48 hours at the latest, whatever information prisoners might possess would be useless. The bad guys would have gone into hiding or changed their routines.