None Left Behind (6 page)

The M1114 held up well against most small arms fire and lateral IED (Improvised Explosive Device) attacks where the blast was distributed in all directions. They offered less protection from a blast directly beneath the truck, such as buried IEDs and land mines. None of the soldiers was eager to test it either way.

Just after sunrise and the beginning of another sweltering day in early October, HMMWVs assigned to Delta Company, 4
^th
Battalion, were lined up in front of the empty fire-gutted building at Yusufiyah, waiting for the anti-IED vehicles “Iron Claw” and “Husky” to link up. Delta Company was moving out in force. Officers and senior NCOs had been briefed and rehearsed over the last several days. As with other 4
^th
Battalion companies, Delta was about to occupy and hold ground in its own AO—the four-mile stretch of treacherous highway known as Malibu Road that twisted in concert with the Euphrates River. Every soldier had already heard the disconcerting rumors about how the 101
^st
Airborne feared to travel that route.

The Polar Bears had made their presence and intent known in a series of preemptive raids and air assaults. Now it was time for the companies to put Colonel Infanti's theories into practice—that only by living among the people and protecting them could the war be won. Delta would eventually occupy a Company FOB and two patrol bases or battle positions on the road. The grand strategy, as Buck Sergeant E-5 Joshua Parrish understood it, was for Delta to tame its AO step by step. Advance, occupy, or construct a “fort,” hold and pacify the area, then move on down the road and do it again.

Parrish's Fourth Platoon, commanded by Lieutenant Joe Tomasello with Platoon Sergeant Louis Garrett had been tapped to occupy the first patrol base in the AO. Company, along with Iron Claw and Husky, would
escort the platoon in, after which the Fourth would be left to hold its own ground. Parrish was a bit apprehensive, not knowing exactly how the local insurgents might react. Surely they wouldn't be foolish enough, or suicidal enough, to attack a heavily armed, heavily armored platoon.

Sergeant Joshua Parrish, Fourth Platoon's First Squad leader, had been working with his dad remodeling a house in Glenfield, New York, when terrorists flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001. That very same day, even before the WTC finally imploded in toxic clouds of dust and smoke, he rushed right down to his local army recruiters and enlisted. It was his duty as an American to do
something
. He was nineteen years old and one year out of high school. Five years later, he was still in the army and still doing
something.

He was a slender young sergeant, an inch over six feet tall, with cropped light brown hair, eyes that looked either gray or hazel according to the light, and a scar on his upper lip that gave him a wise, old-vet look. Conscientious and responsible, he had shaken his squad out of their racks as soon as he received the movement warning order at 0500. In the town outside the walls, muezzin were broadcasting their eerie, warbling calls to first prayers.

Corporal Begin Menahem and a new private named Pitcher were now tarping over a trailer hooked up to Parrish's vehicle. The trailer was full of MREs and water. No one knew exactly how long the platoon might have to survive
out there
on its own before it could occupy Delta's first position. Hopefully, no more than a few days. Intel sorts had tentatively selected a site in the first big curve of the road.

Lieutenant Tomasello came by while Sergeant Parrish was talking quietly with Menahem and several others from his squad. Tomasello was in his late twenties, broad-shouldered and almost Parrish's height, with a ruddy complexion and a friendly, open manner. The Joes liked him and respected his leadership.

“What do you think, Sergeant Parrish?” he greeted, looking down the length of the parked convoy with its turrets bristling in fire power.

“My boys are ready, sir. The sooner we start, the sooner we finish.”

Tomasello clapped him on the back, eliciting a hollow sound from the SAPI plates in his armor.

“Keep them on their toes, Sergeant. We want to take everybody home with us when we leave.”

The advance onto perilous Malibu was painstakingly slow, requiring nearly the entire day to penetrate even the modest distance from Battalion HQ at Yusufiyah to Route Malibu and the first big S-curve that twisted with the river. Malibu was fill road, which meant it had been elevated above the surrounding countryside to prevent its flooding and erosion. Clusters of houses, villages of sorts, thinned out on either side to small goat and sheep spreads and patches of wheat and barley or citrus orchards.

Incredibly enough, where there were no houses or cultivation was
jungle.
Beds of reeds as tall as a man's head insinuated themselves around and through swampy canals and irrigation ditches. Towering date palms grew so thickly that they blotted back the sun and produced premature shadows ominous in their depths. Ancient eucalyptus with their gnarled, lighter-hued boles and up-thrust roots resembled the broken bones of giants and trolls. Who knew how many terrorists might be hiding in there, watching with their dark eyes and plotting?

Pedestrians walked up and down the road, except in the heat of the day when most sought shade. Women in long, flaring burkas glanced shyly at the American invaders. Men in their
shemaghs
looked the other way. Whenever the procession halted for a few moments, usually because Husky had sensed a buried IED that had to be unearthed and disarmed, smaller kids ran directly up to the trucks, laughing and skipping and curious, and had to be warned off.

Everything was new and unfamiliar and therefore suspicious to the Americans. They had all heard the horror stories—of female suicide bombers and of kids as young as eight running up to a humvee and tossing a live grenade through the window. Only a few days earlier, a tank
belonging to the 1
^st
Cavalry had pulled to the side of the road near JSB (Jurf Sukr Bridge) to let one of its crew get out and take a leak. Along came a hajji rolling an old automobile tire. He looked harmless enough. The crew had grown careless.

The tire was full of explosives ready to go off on a remote electronic signal. As soon as the Iraqi was near enough, he hurled the tire against the tank and took off down a weeded canal. The explosion ripped tracks off the tank and busted the turret gunner's eardrums. The Joe taking a leak got up, dusted himself off, and vowed not to take another piss for the rest of his time in Iraq.

Husky led Delta Company's convoy. It resembled a road grader with a very sensitive metal detector up front instead of a blade. Whenever it sensed a metal object buried in the road that could be an IED, the operator marked the spot with paint and summoned Iron Claw to come forward.

Iron Claw—officially designated as “Mine Protected Vehicle—Buffalo”—was layered with armor so thick that it was nearly impervious to blasts short of a bunker buster. It carefully unearthed the suspected IED with its moveable iron arm and claw. Once the bomb was exposed, an EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) team that accompanied Iron Claw moved in to disarm and remove it.

Several IEDs were discovered and neutralized along the short route, providing the men of Delta with their first look at what would become their prime nemesis. Most were salvaged 105 or 155 howitzer casings filled with dynamite or black powder and rigged with pressure-detonating wire. Others were lengths of pipe stuffed with a crude but effective homemade mixtures of diesel oil and ammonia nitrate fertilizer—poultry manure. Before the war began, The Triangle of Death had contained many of Saddam's major arms depots. Anticipating an insurgency, radical Sunnis had immediately raided the depots and appropriated the weapons, everything from 82mm mortars and machine guns to thousands of grenades, RPGs and AK-47s. If anything, the Islamic insurgency was well armed.

The sun hung low in the western sky by the time the slow-moving procession reached the big crook in Malibu Road. Company Commander
Captain Don Jamoles took Lieutenant Joe Tomasello off to one side near a rather nice house—at least by local standards—that sat among palms about fifty meters off the north side of the road, right in the bend. They smoked cigarettes, looked at the big house, and talked.

When Tomasello returned to Fourth Platoon, he said, “We have to hold what we got for tonight. This is where we'll build the first battle position on Malibu.”

On this rock I will build my . . . fort?

Iron Claw and Husky rumbled on up the road, followed by the rest of Delta Company. Soon, they were gone and Tomasello's platoon of about twenty men was alone in The Triangle of Death, on what was considered the most dangerous road in Iraq, and the sun was going down. Corporal Menahem couldn't seem to shake
Manticore
from his mind. Monsters come out at night.

Tomasello circled his wagons, blocking off the road. There wasn't any traffic anyhow; checkpoints all over the AO restricted vehicles to military and emergency transport. Each of the four hummers backed up to a common center on the blacktop, each facing outbound to cover its own quadrant, bristling with .50-cals and M240B machine guns, 5.56mm SAWs, MK-19 40mm grenade launchers, carbines, sidearms and knives. An awesome amount of firepower for so small a unit. Even a conventional infantry company would think twice about attacking it.

That was little consolation, however, to the Joes in the trucks about to spend their first night surrounded by the enemy, deeper into the AO than any platoon had ventured before, gone where no man had gone before. For all they knew, they had been left with their asses hanging out ready to be chewed off. This was frontier in every sense of the word.

Private Michael Smith, who was always joking around, suggested they should have hooked up two or three more trailers filled with mortars and tanks instead of MREs and water. Lieutenant Tomasello ordered everyone to eat and get out and take a piss before nightfall. Nobody would be allowed to get out of his truck and take a chance on getting picked off by a sniper until after daybreak.

“Either do it now or pee in your pocket,” he said.

“I'll pee in Smith's pocket,” Pitcher said.

Although a hummer looked square and solid and roomy, like a souped-up Jeep on steroids, five or six soldiers and all their gear and weapons crammed into one left little room for stretching out to get any rest. Not that they were likely to sleep anyhow, even off-watch. They were too hyped.

The distant echo of a muezzin summoning the Muslim faithful to prayer reminded the Americans of how very far away they were from home. A half-baked moon rose through the date palms and eucalyptus that lined the road. It was October and nights were becoming cooler, especially along the river. Sergeant Joshua Parrish, manning the turret in his vehicle, commanded a view of the Euphrates River sheened by the moonlight. Fog rose in ghostly tendrils from the water. He could almost feel hostile forms creeping up on him.

Also in his vehicle were Michael Smith, Pitcher, PFC Justin Fletcher, and Corporal Menahem. Parrish constantly swiveled the .50-caliber machine gun, searching, watching. The others stared out into the gathering darkness, even those who had removed their NVs, ostensibly to get some sleep.

“Mayhem?” Smith whispered.

“Yeah, man?” Menahem said. Delta's First Sergeant Aldo Galliano had dubbed him “Mayhem” for no particular reason other than the similarity to his actual name. It stuck. From Florida, Mayhem, twenty-two, was of average size with an olive Mediterranean complexion and quick, dark eyes.

“This ain't no place for a good Southern boy,” Smith said.

Smith was asking him if he was scared without actually coming out and saying it. It was so dark in the vehicle by this time that faces even close up were blurs against a darker curtain.

“I'm scared spitless,” Mayhem admitted, interpreting the code. One thing about Mayhem, he never hid behind any phony macho.

“Naw, man,” Fletcher said. “Know why? Yea, though we walk through The Triangle of The Valley of Death, we shall fear no evil—'cause we the baddest motherfuckers in
this
valley.”

“You got that right.”

They gripped their weapons and peered out the windows into the forest
of shadows creeping closer all around them. Mayhem remained silent.
He
was scared; he had been in Baghdad during the 10
^th
Mountain Division's last deployment in 2004–2005. Only a fool or a greenhorn wasn't scared.

The moon shone weak and pale, stars cold and distant. A cow lowed somewhere, answered by sheep bleating from somewhere else.

“You know,” said Smith, “one of these days we're all gonna be back at Fort Drum having some beers and we're gonna look back on this shit and just laaaugh.”

“Maybe so,” Pitcher agreed. “But right now all this shit does is suck.”

“You gotta love this job,” Sergeant Parrish joked half-hearted from the turret. “Guys—”

He froze.

“Hold everything. I thought I heard something.”

Tension shot right out the top of the hummer. Parrish scanned through his NVs. After a few minutes, he relaxed.

“It's okay. It's a fucking goat.”

“Light him up. Barbecue the bastard,” Pitcher proposed.

“Now look what you've done,” Smith said plaintively. “I've gotta piss.”

“Quit being a pussy. Suck it up. You know, the way I look at things, I'd kill every bitch and her son from here to Baghdad if it'd get me home a day earlier.”

Looking through NVs made everything liquid and surreal. There wasn't much to see anyhow, what with the foliage and shadows. This land along the Euphrates was nothing like the desert most of the soldiers imagined Iraq to be. It was a very scary place where you couldn't afford to let down security. Ghosts of night fog creeping through the trees became, in the imagination, terrorists and bombers plotting, scheming, waiting for the right time to attack. The brush of a breeze through palm fronds, the snap of a falling twig, the sleepy chirrup of a night bird was enough to make soldiers flinch and look nervously about.