Shock Factor (17 page)

Trenchfoot. Most of the rest of the team had early signs of it, too.

Adam pulled off his other boot and laid both socks out to dry. As he rummaged around for another pair in his pack, Vic, his spotter on this mission, entered the room. He took one sniff and froze. Nose scrunched, he stared down at Adam, momentarily speechless.

“What?” Adam asked.

“You gotta fucking be kidding me!”

Adam shrugged and returned to digging in his assault pack.

Vic took a step back, “Nope. Nope.”

“What is your fucking problem?” Adam asked.

Vic shook his head, “I can't be around you right now.”

He vanished through the door, chortling as he went.

Adam found his spare socks and returned his attention to his feet. What a mess. He dried them as best he could, then gave them a coat of powder before covering them with his fresh pair of socks. They'd have at least one more day here, and these would have to last.

Christmas Eve in Ramadi. Back home families were trimming trees and hanging stockings. Closest thing to a stocking here were his shit-coated, standard-issue wool socks.

Adam stretched out under a poncho liner and drifted off to sleep. He needed a few hours of downtime, then he'd be back upstairs on the rifle again.

When he awoke, Vic was waiting for him. “Hey man, how about I get the first watch on the gun?”

“Sure,” Adam said.

He grabbed his gear, laced his boots up, and headed with Vic up to the roof to stand the next watch. Then he remembered something and turned back for his pack. Adam's mom had sent the team a few trappings of holiday cheer. Christmas Eve afternoon seemed like a good time to break his out.

“Here,” he said to Vic, handing him a Santa hat.

“Fucking awesome!” Vic put it on with a wide grin.

Adam did the same. Most of the other guys had brought theirs along as well, and the men off watch wore them, basking in the sense of irony. Christmas in Ramadi was like Yom Kippur in Tehran.

They climbed the stairs to the roof and low crawled to their hide. The building they occupied was oriented north-south. Adam and Vic took the north end of the roof, their hide situated to cover a street and an intersection to the west. Their view from the roof was a narrow one, offering eyes on part of the street below and only a few compounds on the far block. The nearest intersection was about a hundred ten yards away.

Vic settled down behind the rifle and stuck his eye in the scope. Adam lay next to him, both men still wearing their Santa hats. Vic glassed the street, studied the compounds, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. The two men settled into a long wait. December had been a lot quieter than the first two months of the deployment. The tide had definitely turned against al-Qaida, but that had made the die-hards even more desperate. Still, the hangers-on, the ones in it for the paycheck, and the uncommitted had started to abandon the cause. More and more Iraqi cops were being trained and deployed around the city, and order was gradually emerging from the chaos. Hard fighting still lay ahead. Everyone knew that. But at least they were seeing progress after months of bloody stalemate and attrition.

“Got something,” Vic called out.

Through their loophole, the two SEALs could see a solitary figure, slinking around the corner of one of the compounds across the street.

“Hundred ten yards,” Adam called.

The insurgent thought he was being sneaky. Not so much. He'd edged to the corner to peer out at the SEALs' position, but he apparently was at lunch when his terrorist training camp covered barrel discipline. Now, here he was in a combat environment oblivious to the fact that his AK-47's barrel was sticking out beyond the corner as he held it at low port.

“Dude has an AK,” Vic said.

“I see it. That's what you want,” Adam replied.

“Yep.”

This was as clear-cut as they came in Ramadi. The shooter's statement didn't even enter into either American's head. Vic waited. The insurgent kept looking up the street toward their hide, still using the corner for concealment. Only the barrel of his AK, a sliver of his shoulder, and head were visible.

Vic held his fire and waited patiently for the Muj to give him a better target. The patience paid off a minute later when the insurgent concluded the coast was clear. He swung around the corner and hugged the wall as he moved up the street straight toward the snipers.

The move gave Vic a full frontal shot, and he capitalized immediately. He pulled the SR-25's trigger and drilled him center mass. The insurgent recoiled and fell backwards. He landed on the ground, with just his AK and feet visible to Vic and Adam. He wasn't moving.

Vic pulled his eye out of the scope and looked over at Adam. “Dude, thanks for letting me take first shift behind the gun. Best Christmas present ever.”

The other sniper team on the roof suddenly stirred. Another insurgent carrying an IED wandered into their field of vision. Either they were facing the second string, or they'd finally emplaced without being detected and the insurgents had no idea the SEALs were in their neighborhood.

The other team took the shot and dropped the IED carrier. He tumbled into the street and lay motionless.

If they didn't know the SEALs were in the area before, the enemy knew now. It could have been they were reconning by true believer with these first two guys. The Muj had done that in the past. If they suspected American troops were close by but didn't know exactly where, they would send martyrs into the street to draw fire. Others would watch and look for the muzzle flashes in order to pinpoint the American positions. Then the Muj would launch an assault.

An eerie calm settled over the neighborhood. The snipers stayed extra vigilant, searching for any movement around them. Something was going to happen. Exactly what it was kept their senses on a razor's edge.

Adam was glassing the intersection when movement by Vic's target caught his attention. He focused his spotter scope on the man. He was still lying there, his feet and AK visible and nothing else. It didn't look like he had moved. But what had?

Just then, the tip of a pole came into Adam's field of view.

“What the fuck?”

Adam reported it to Vic. He quickly got eyes on it, too.

Whoever was on the other side of the pole stood inside the courtyard of the nearest compound. He was out of sight, staying low as he fed the pole through the courtyard gate and out toward the corpse.

They watched as the pole poked the dead man's feet. It seemed surreal.

“Did that just happen?”

“Yeah. Yeah it did.”

The pole poked the corpse again.

Man that is morbid.

The two Americans watched as the pole-wielder tried to hook the corpse and drag it toward the courtyard gate. He didn't have the leverage to move it far. Finally, the pole withdrew, and the corpse was left alone.

Nothing happened for several long minutes. Then the courtyard gate swung open and six armed men burst through it at a dead run. Each one carried an assault rifle and extra magazines. They hooked left as they hit the street and charged the SEALs' position. One dropped to his knee and brought his AK to his shoulder as he covered his comrades' movement. Another dashed across the street and did the same thing.

The other four kept running in pairs for a few dozen yards before skidding to a stop and dropping to one knee as well. Rifles up, they scanned the way ahead and searched for any sign of the American snipers.

The two Muj behind the main group stood up and rushed forward. They streamed past their fellow Jihadists, sprinting as fast as they could.

They were bounding by buddy teams. These guys had military training. Good military training. It was the same tactic every single American infantryman learns before ever joining his unit.

In a few seconds, they had advanced almost forty yards. Adam and Vic had waited to engage, but now it seemed like the moment had come to ambush them in the street. As the team prepared to open fire, one of the other SEALs on the roof crawled over to the parapet near them. He pulled a grenade off his chest rig, tore the tape off and shouted,
“FRAG OUT!”

With a single fluid motion, the SEAL stood up and hurled the grenade with all his strength. Adam watched in complete surprise. He'd flung the hell out of that thing.

It was a world-class throw, just as good as the ones the SEALs had endured in this hood so many times before. Now they at last got a chance to dish it out. The grenade struck the street right in front of the main force of insurgents, now perhaps fifty yards away. Before they could scatter, the weapon detonated in a whirl of smoke and steel splinters.

Two of the insurgents went down with shrapnel and blast wounds. As the smoke boiled through the street, the other four ran to their assistance and dragged them out of the fight. By the time Vic and Adam had an unobstructed view of the street, it was empty.

As usual, the SEALs had an F/A-18 on station overhead. The pilot reported that the insurgent force had withdrawn to get their wounded to medical help—so much for their assault. Yet, Adam couldn't help feeling they'd missed an opportunity. If they'd opened fire on them a few seconds later, none of them would have escaped such a point-blank fusillade. Still, there was something deeply satisfying about paying the Muj back with their own weapon of choice.

The element remained in their overwatch through the night and into Christmas Day. The stench grew insufferable inside the building, and exhaustion overtook the men despite their best efforts to stay warm and maintain a sleep cycle. Finally, on the evening of the twenty-fifth, the team exfiltrated back to a Marine outpost.

As they smoked and waited for transport back to Camp Lee, the outpost began to bustle with activity. The men didn't care; they just wanted hot chow, a shower, and some real sleep in the bunks. The trucks arrived, and the men climbed into the rigs. As they did, a Marine colonel walked over to the platoon's OIC and started talking to him.

Adam and the others watched them converse and felt a sinking feeling. They'd been out for days, their feet were disasters. They were fatigued and cold.

But there would be no break. The team's OIC told the SEALs to dismount and huddle up. They did so in silence, gathering around their leader and the Marine.

“We've got time sensitive, actionable intelligence,” the colonel explained. “We have four targets, and we have to hit them tonight. We need your help.”

At first, some of the SEALs thought this was a joke. Four kill or capture missions in one night? Then it sunk in. This was real, and they would be going back out in a matter of minutes. The men they were going after were bomb makers. Each one they grabbed would save American and Iraqi lives. They understood the importance, but that didn't stop them from grumbling about it.

Vic looked over at Adam, and said, “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Together, they walked back to their truck and began to gear up for an assault role. The SR-25 would remain behind. Both men would carry M4 carbines. Adam gathered his medical gear. He would be the assault element's breacher, so he grabbed his C2 charges as well.

Then, in the dead of Christmas night, they slipped beyond the outpost's walls and into the shattered streets. The temperature had dropped to below forty-five degrees, so cold the men could see their breath as they moved.

As they approached their first target house, the operator on point and the team's EOD tech spotted an IED. Everyone stopped as the bomb expert inched forward to examine what they'd encountered.

It didn't take long for the EOD tech to discover a second IED. Both had two Russian-made 155mm heavy artillery shells daisy-chained together. One of these shells would have been more than enough to inflict catastrophic casualties.

The team still had a JTAC and an aircraft on station overhead. Through the plan's thermal imaging system, the pilot detected the command wire. It ran from one of the bombs directly to the target house.

The bomb maker had booby-trapped his own neighborhood.

The team worked its way around the bombs to stack up on the target house's front gate. The decision was made not to use an explosive charge to gain entry, but the gate was not one that could be picked. The only other option was a small battering ram their Jordanian interpreter carried.

Adam moved forward to the gate, adrenaline coursing through him. The place could be rigged to blow, and surprise would be the only thing that could protect them. Get inside, collar the bomb maker, and get him flex-cuffed before he could hook that command wire up to a battery and blow the IEDs. Or blow something he'd planted in his house.

A stab of fear struck Adam. He'd gone through this entire deployment in total control of fear. Now, as he thought through this situation, dread swept over him. What if the bomb maker had a trip wire across the gate? Or an infrared trigger?

How many Americans had died in such traps already?

Adam motioned for the 'terp to come up with the ram. The Jordanian was huge, muscled, and fiercely loyal to the SEALs with whom he had worked for years. He hefted the ram and slammed it into the door as hard as he could.

It didn't break.

The sound of the impact echoed through the neighborhood. Certainly, those inside the house had been awakened by it. The team would have only a few more seconds before the inhabitants were up and moving to defend themselves.

The Jordanian backed up, then swung the ram again. It crashed into the gate, but it still did not give way.

They were so exposed in the street. No cover, no protection. What if there were more IEDs nearby that the team had not detected? The longer they remained in place, the greater the risk.

Inside the house, people stirred. The bomb maker and his cohorts would not be surprised now. With that element lost, their only hope was to get in before they could put up an effective defense.

The Jordanian 'terp took another swing. This time, the gate gave way, revealing a small courtyard and the house beyond.