Shock Factor (39 page)

He pulled the trigger. His bullet knocked the RPG man off his feet.

He racked the bolt. Aimed again. Sick at heart, but knowing he had no other choice, he squeezed again. With every rack of the bolt, Boyce realized how much he did not want this life. Trapped by the dire circumstances, he killed, and killed again.

The Dragunov roared. Its bullet creased Bumgardner's helmet, tore off the mount for his night vision goggles and struck Andy Hellman's right knee. It exited sideways, leaving the wound a near-perfect impression of a 7.62mm bullet in profile.

Bumgardner flung himself protectively on top of Hellman until Sergeant Mitts and Sergeant Ash came over to help. Together, they dragged him clear of the firing line at the edge of the building.

“I'm sorry, sir! I'm sorry!” Hellman kept shouting to Boyce, who was watching the scene from the platoon's far left. He was in intense pain, alternating between crying out, swearing, and trying to talk to the guys around him.

The scouts tore open Hellman's pant leg and went to work bandaging the wound. It was well cauterized by the bullet and wasn't bleeding much. “Looks like you'll need a new hinge,” somebody said.

Tyson started dressing the bullet hole. He saw the look on Andy's face and tried to keep him loose. “Fucking hell, Andy, you're always trying to get out of everything, aren't ya?”

Hellman, despite the pain the wound inflicted, wanted this documented. “Grab my camera! Take a picture of this thing!”

Seconds later, he went into shock.

“We gotta get outa here,” he suddenly babbled, “we gotta go. We need to go. We gotta go.” He began shaking violently.

The New York platoon still had not shown up. With Hellman wounded, Boyce knew he had to pull the platoon out. They'd have to do it fast. Without the machine guns and the sniper rifles keeping the insurgents down, they were sure to get hit with a ferocious volume of fire.

He ordered everyone back to the Humvees. Trevor Ward helped Hellman to the stairwell as Mitts, Bumgardner, Paul, and Buchholz covered them. Hellman insisted on tackling the stairs alone, though his friends hovered nearby in case he faltered.

To cover the withdrawal, Tyson ran back to his 240 and sent the last of his ammunition into the enemy below. As he ran out, he began to secure his gear. Ash came up and helped him even as a hail of Mahdi machine gun fire laced the room.

When the last man disappeared down the stairs, Bumgardner stood up, hefting Andy's M4 as Ash slung the machine gun over his shoulder. Then he motioned to Mitts that it was time to leave. Just as they reached the landing, they heard the Barrett roar. The floor quivered. Buchholz was still in the fight.

The two scouts ducked low and went to get him. It turned out he never heard Lieutenant Boyce give the order to displace. He'd opened fire at the start of the engagement without earplugs, and now he was stone deaf, thanks to the Barrett's thunderous report.

Mitts grabbed Buchholz's shoulder and pointed at the stairwell. The sniper looked around in surprise at first, then understood what had happened. He still had work to do though. He'd moved his sector of fire out to a thousand yards by this time. The street no longer teemed with confused enemy. They'd taken cover to return fire, making them significantly more difficult to identify and take out.

An insurgent armed with an AK suddenly bolted across the street. Buck tracked him. A thousand yards away, the man moved laterally from right to left. Buchholz had seconds to calculate how to hit him and what technique to use. For such shots, there are two methods of hitting a running man. The first is the tracking shot and is used when you don't know where the man is going. The key is to know how much lead you'll need at the range you're shooting from, a calculation every sniper practices in training until he learns exactly how many mils he needs to lead the enemy. It is a time consuming process that requires a lot of documentation in the sniper's notebook to perfect. But in combat, that knowledge is the difference between life and death.

The other technique that can be used in this situation is called the ambush. Here the sniper guesses, or knows, where his target is running to and then picks a point somewhere in front of him. He waits until the enemy fighter reaches his mil lead in the scope, then pulls the trigger.

Buchholz didn't have time for the ambush technique. He tracked the running militiaman, drew the scope in front of him until he had the lead just right. He fired as the man made it almost halfway across the street.

The shot was low. It caught the man in the hip and blew him in half. Randy Mitts had been watching and he was astonished at the shot. “Holy crap, Buck!” he shouted.

Enough was enough. They had to leave. Buchholz's body armor, helmet, and pack lay scattered on the floor nearby. As the enemy fire intensified even more now that the Americans weren't fighting back, he scurried around to gather all his gear. Finally, Kevlar on, IBA strapped tight, and the rest of his stuff jammed hastily into his assault pack, he signaled he was good to go.

He got up and moved with Bumgardner for the stairs.

“Hold up,” Mitts said. He'd glanced over his shoulder and had seen a Mahdi Militiaman break cover. Exactly how far away he was will probably never be known for sure. Buchholz estimated he was eight hundred yards away. Bumgardner later estimated about six hundred. Mitts put the range around four hundred. Whatever the actual distance, it was a long shot for an ACOG-equipped short-barreled M4. Randy shouldered the weapon. All the training, all the muscle memory developed over years of field exercises kicked in with that one snap-shot. Tyson and Buck watched the man crumple to the pavement. It was the most amazing feat of marksmanship they'd ever seen. Randy smiled as they shouted at him, then shrugged it off like it was all in a day's work. The three of them ran downstairs together, the last ones out of the building.

At the base of the stairs, the men loaded Hellman into one of the waiting Humvees. When Mitts, Buchholz, and Bumgardner reached the ground floor, the platoon piled into their rigs while under mortar fire and sped back to Patrol Base Volunteer.

The battalion's medical staff saw right away that Hellman needed surgery. They called for a MEDEVAC, and a few moments later, a Blackhawk swung onto final approach.

As the chopper landed, the scouts ran to their barracks and grabbed an oversized American flag Hellman kept in his room. It was strictly forbidden to fly it in the open, especially now that Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority had turned Iraq over to a temporary Iraqi government. But this one moment, that rule was forgotten.

As Hellman was carried to the Blackhawk, the scouts stood on the roof of their barracks, waving Old Glory furiously in the noontime Iraqi sun.

Back in the shrapnel-scarred scout barracks, where the windows had not yet been replaced, Buchholz ignored the growing pain in his head. He had been so severely concussed by the initial pull of his Barrett's trigger that he was slurring his words and having a difficult time keeping his balance as he walked around. Yet before he went to see the medic, he wanted an answer. Where had Joe Blon been during the fight?

He found his spotter and demanded to know where he'd gone. Blon muttered, “I went to the roof to get a better view.”

That stank, and Blon knew it. A spotter's place is next to his shooter.

“Did you get anyone?” Buchholz asked, his temper flaring.

“I dunno. I think so,” Blon replied.

Buck seized the man's M24 and opened the bolt. It was clean and well oiled. Blon hadn't fired a single round.

Darren looked Blon in the eyes and said, “You are dead to me.”

He turned and walked out of the room. Buchholz could hold his head up. He'd come through in the clutch. There would be no thoughts of redemption in his mind ever again.

Buck went down to the battalion aid station and got checked out. Concussion be damned. In a day or two, he'd be ready to roll again.

It had been a hell of a week. On the western edge of Sadr City, Boyce's men had killed at least twenty-two Mahdi Militiamen and wounded more than thirty. The mortar attacks that had plagued Patrol Base Volunteer diminished after that. It was quite an accomplishment for such a small number of men, one that exemplified what a couple of sniper teams could achieve if properly employed. Thanks to Lieutenant Colonel Hendrickson, they had the opportunity to do what we snipers do best. They located, closed with, and destroyed the enemy with long-range, precision fire that minimized civilian casualties.

When things went wrong and the promised support did not arrive, the platoon didn't panic. Far from it. They maintained the discipline needed to stay in the fight until there was no other choice but to break contact and get away. By the time they left, this handful of Americans had been fighting well over a hundred Mahdi insurgents. That they returned home with only one man wounded was a testament to their professionalism and coolness under fire.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Baghdad 911

Following the August 10, 2004, ambush, the Mahdi Militia continued to launch attacks all over east and northeast Bahgdad. While the main part of the battalion continued to fight it out in the streets of the capital, two platoons joined the 1st Cavalry Division's counterattack in Najaf. The city had been taken over by the Mahdi Militia, and through the first three weeks of August, a combined Iraqi National Guard–U.S. Marine and 1st Cavalry Division assault led to intense building-to-building fighting in that holy city. It would take most of the month to finally subdue the Mahdi Militia and wrest control of the Iman Ali Shrine away from al-Sadr's most fanatical devotees.

As the violence escalated, Lieutenant Colonel Hendrickson let the scout platoon try ever more daring operations. The snipers had proven themselves to be reliant, proactive, and intelligent, and Hendrickson trusted them to use their talents in ways some battalion commanders would never have dreamed of allowing.

The sniper section began inserting into hide sites around northeast Baghdad in hopes of picking off bomb-laying militiamen. This led to one of those unexpected combat moments for Darren Buchholz when, after taking over a civilian's house, they discovered the youngest daughter in the family was very, very pregnant. The Volunteers treated her deferentially and made sure she was well taken care of, but her presence worried them from the outset. The family was sequestered into one room on the first floor, then the men went about setting up overwatch positions inside the house.

Sniper Specialist Jim Schmorde booby-trapped the yard with claymore mines in case they were detected and the enemy assaulted their position. The doors were barricaded, the windows covered. They set up three-hundred-sixty-degree security and took shifts behind their optics.

They settled in for a long week overwatching Route Pluto, the main north-south highway in their section of the capital. Once emplaced in a hide site, the scouts would provide a quick reaction force, but otherwise no American unit would come close to it, lest they give the location away. Should they be attacked, the five snipers in the house would have to hold out for at least fifteen minutes before the scouts could ride to their rescue.

A few days into the mission, the pregnant girl began to show signs of distress. The family wanted to get her to the doctor. Buchholz, afraid that letting them leave would blow their hide site, refused. They tried to make her as comfortable as possible, but the situation deteriorated. The girl began to sob. The family begged Darren to let them leave. He refused.

A day dragged by. The girl showed real signs of distress. Buchholz began to worry that they might end up having to deliver a baby prematurely. One afternoon, the family's doctor came to the house to check on the girl. The father pleaded with Darren to let him in as he knocked on the front door.

Here was a moment Darren never expected to encounter. He had to balance the military needs of the mission with the realities inside the house. They were there to help make the lives of everyday Iraqis better. Denying a pregnant woman medical care was not the way to achieve that. Yet every day Americans, Iraqi troops, and civilians were dying on Route Pluto. Stopping the bomb layers was sure to save countless lives.

Buchholz refused to let the doctor in. The pregnant girl broke down again. The family despaired. Her condition worsened until Buchholz could not in good conscience let her suffer any longer. He let the family take her to their doc. As they left, the Volunteers hastily packed their gear and called the rest of the scout platoon for extraction. The mission was a wash, and the snipers would never be able to use that hide again.

Other missions proved highly successful. One day the battalion received a tip identifying the hiding place of an enemy financier whose cell was responsible for the deaths of forty Iraqi National Guardsmen. Earlier in the deployment, such intel would come in and it would take the battalion considerable time to get approval up the chain of command to lay on a raid. Ninety percent of the time, the raids came up empty.

This time Lieutenant Boyce wanted to do things differently. His men were already locked and cocked, and he knew the financier could bug out to another safe house at any time. He approached Hendrickson and told him the urgency of the situation. Hendrickson gave him the green light to go hit the hideout.

First, he arranged to have a UAV deployed to scope the financier's lair, which was a used car lot. Using the real-time feed, the scout platoon was briefed and they planned the raid on the fly based on the UAV's imagery. It took another ten minutes to brief Hendrickson on how they planned to take the car lot down. He approved. The men loaded up and rolled out.

It took forty minutes from the time they received the intel to get the Humvees on the road. The platoon encircled the lot and sent in an entry team. Being short on bodies, several of the snipers filled positions in the stack that went through the door. Nate Gushwa, back in action despite continued issues with his August 6 wound, later recalled, “I spent almost as much time with the entry team as the number two man in the stack as I did in hide sites.” It was a testament to the section's versatility that the snipers could step into an assault role so seamlessly.