Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper (26 page)

I didn’t have to worry about that shit. I was merely a destroyer of men.

I pulled the bolt back and reloaded, oblivious to what was going on around me. That was someone else’s job, and if I needed to know
something, they would tell me. As Casey later explained, “Unless I absolutely had to get into his zone, I left him alone. You don’t want to fuck with a man’s zone, especially when he’s killing people and doing good things.”

My eyes seemed to magnify things even without using the scope, new smells drifted to me over the rooftops, and my hearing gathered all kinds of sounds while my brain filtered out the noise and turned down the volume, distinguishing one type of explosion from another or the whine of a passing bullet. Things seemed to slow down, and the adrenaline helped me move and think five times faster than normal. It is an inexplicable feeling that comes to warriors in the heat of a fight, and it has been described since the dawn of man. It is a cliché, it is mystical, and it makes no sense at all, but, by God, it is true.

Four minutes after taking out the sniper, Daniel Tracy called, “Boss, I got something out to the northwest.” He verbally walked me across the rooftops, like a stranger in town giving directions to another stranger.
See that funny-looking building with the blue flower box? Up above that, the open window with the green curtain? Look left to the doorway.
I found the gunman Daniel had spotted, did a range check, squared up on the target, who was crouched half-seen 411 yards away, fired, and watched my bullet strike home and efficiently do its grim job at the far end of its parabolic flight. Another enemy soldier lay dead. I reloaded.

Casey was a different man. All of the apprehension and curiosity that preceded his first firefight were gone, replaced by the calmer mien of someone who had smelled the smoke, heard the bullets,
and knew what do to. In the warrior’s world, we called dramatic change “seeing the elephant.” Once you saw it, you never forgot it. He listened to the position reports over the radio as India Company’s grunts continued clearing the west part of the city. “Let’s go,” he ordered, stuffing his maps into his pack. “We stay up here any longer, the fight will pass us by.”

We hurried downstairs, hollering, “Friendly coming out!” to prevent some skittish Marine grunt from lighting us up. India’s commander had been so obsessed with training his boys to fight in an urban environment that some people had thought him a bit of a nutcase, but now the training was paying off as they worked efficiently house by house through this dangerous warren of homes, shops, and buildings. It was nice to be within their security bubble, for death could be lurking in the sewers, on the roofs, or in the bushes, and the grunts were constantly yelling to keep track of each other in this urban abyss.

Out in the street, mortar shells were detonating ahead of us, and India’s Amtracs moved up the road, flanked by Marines on foot. At each window, they drew figure-eights with the muzzles of their M-16 rifles, shooting quickly at any suspicious movement from within. Individual fire teams handled different levels of buildings. To go around a corner, two men would set up, with one kneeling in front and the second resting his hand on the shoulder of the first. When the hand squeezed the shoulder, both men would pop around the corner with weapons ready to shoot. India had practiced the techniques for hours on end, and their attack moved inexorably forward with a smooth fluidity despite the continued incoming fire.

We jogged down the road, moving from one squad to another, dashing across open intersections as bullets whizzed and smacked around us. The bad guys were laying a carpet of gunfire.

There are definite things to look for when choosing a building for a sniper overwatch position, but we didn’t have time to run the checklist. We just needed to get up on a roof somewhere, fast, and set up a killing field. A hundred yards down the road, we found a likely spot and dashed upstairs, but by the time we got there, the battle had already moved past. We needed to jump farther and faster, so we pounded back downstairs and rejoined the fast-paced assault.

We were sweating profusely in our MOPP gear and panting with exertion by the time we found a good building 350 yards down the road and had an India rifle squad clear it for us. Up to the roof we went, where we picked up a passenger, Italian photographer Enrico Dagnino, one of the Jackals. They had unfettered access to this battle, and Enrico wanted to follow us. Fine, we told him, take your pictures, but just do what we tell you to do, and you might live long enough to see them published. He did not explain that he had bounced from war to war for years and had seen more combat than any of us.

Rocket-propelled grenades were swooshing all over the place, exploding overhead and raining shrapnel; the rattle of enemy small arms and machine gun fire was increasing, and the return fire from the Marines was deafening. The boys took security positions in the corners of the roof, and Casey contacted the battalion headquarters to let them know we were moving across jurisdictional lines.

Once again, I settled behind one of those low walls that ran the circumference of the roof, got the rifle in place, checked that I had a full load of ammunition, and took a look around. Three minutes later, I spotted a guy atop a two-story building who was firing an AK-47 and had an RPG strapped across his back. This dude definitely had to go. According to the laser, he was 550 yards away, and in this cluttered urban environment, somehow there remained a clear
shooting lane between us, an open visual channel that yawned between the buildings from me to him. I hit him three inches below his throat and watched him sink onto the roof like a deflated balloon. The jackass had gone up there alone, with no security, and allowed his attention to be diverted elsewhere, away from the direct threat to himself.

I jacked in a new round, without removing my eye from the scope, and quickly found another target in the open. The soldier was standing atop a chicken coop on the tin roof of a garage only 230 yards away, so close that his form almost filled my scope. He had his rifle in his shoulder and was popping away at Marines, so I blew him away. It was as easy as shooting a paper target in a carnival midway. A bright red flash washed over his face when the round hit him in the mouth, and his head snapped back as if he had been tagged with a heavyweight boxer’s left hook. The backward momentum snatched the rifle from his hands and knocked him not only off his perch but also clear off the tin roof. The body was limp when it hit the ground.

I reloaded, took a deep breath, and swept the area again, finding nobody else to shoot. I was still in my zone, emotion suppressed, brain engaged, my actions virtually robotic. My concept of a Mobile Sniper Strike Team—wheels to get to the area of action, then roaming at the front of the advancing forces, guarded by an experienced security team—was getting a thorough workout. My reach was hundreds of yards in front of the advancing troops, and I was sowing disarray and confusion. The idea worked!

Seven minutes after we bagged the guy on the garage, as we were getting ready to leave this building and move forward again to leapfrog the battle, an enemy soldier wearing the snazzy tan uniform and red beret of the Republican Guard walked into the middle of a street, almost as if he were on parade. From only 324 yards away,
I spent thirty seconds examining him in detail and waiting to see if anyone else would join him in the open. He was calmly walking around as if he, instead of me, were the king of the world, and in his right hand he carried an AK-47 that looked almost new. Then he turned around, and that was his death notice, for it appeared that he might be leaving. I had the crosshairs precisely between his shoulder blades, and my bullet sent him slumping to the ground like Jell-O falling out of a mold.

Three kills from one any area is enough, because you don’t want to draw special attention from the enemy. So we took off again, only now with an Italian photographer running in the middle of our line. The last thing we needed was one of the Jackals getting whacked while tagging along with us. I went into the lead spot because I had been in urban warfare before, but Casey kept yelling at the boys to get in front of me and finally just grabbed my shirt to stop me. “Stay the fuck behind me! I’m not messing around. You don’t have anything to defend yourself with,” he barked.

“Yes, Mommy,” I replied.

“Fuck you,” he said. “Stay behind me.” He took point instead.

The battle was still ferocious, with a continuous din of explosions and gunfire, as we made our way forward. We had to get to that bridge. A Marine Amtrac parked in an intersection opened up with a heavy machine gun when we dashed across one street and almost nailed Daniel. But he missed, because Daniel was still not in Baghdad and therefore was not allowed to die yet. We decided to go into a tall house that was surrounded by an eight-foot wall and a locked pair of huge metal gates. With no India Marines around to clear it, we did it ourselves. We formed a stack along the wall; then I tossed a
grenade inside, and Casey went over at the sound of the explosion, spider-dropping into the courtyard, one of his boots landing in a bucket of water and fuel. He opened the gate, and we went inside through the front door, but when we got to the roof, we discovered that tall buildings nearby shut down my sight line. We had just wasted a lot of time. The battle was rolling and booming, and we dashed back down and headed for the sound of the guns.

My mind was totally on the job now, and when I get that way, I am fucking invulnerable. Everything else faded from my thoughts; life slowed down and became a black-and-white movie. The mechanics of the craft had taken over my body and the rifle was now part of me, as my mind whirred with permutations, calculations, and scraps of knowledge picked up doing this job in many places over the years. Things automatically fell into their proper places without my even realizing that I was thinking about them.

We joined some of the India guys atop a good building, and I settled in and spent five minutes glassing the new surroundings. The scope jarred to a sudden stop, as if it had a mind of its own. Four hundred and seventy-five yards away, a middle-aged man wearing a red beret and shoulder boards on his clean uniform stood at ease between a couple of buildings.
Officer! Primary target!

In the American military structure, we are trained to react even at the lowest levels, so if an officer goes down, someone else immediately takes over. The Iraqi army was structured so that no one automatically assumed the responsibilities of a fallen leader.

He was ready to fight, with a pistol on his hip and an AKM, the cut-down version of an AK-47, in his hands, but the only thing he was going to be doing now was dying. Without hesitation, I popped a round through his chest. It flew out of his back, and the bloodstained officer fell face first into the roadway. He would never issue
another order, and if you cut off the head of a snake, the whole reptile dies. More confusion.

Two minutes later, I saw an Iraqi soldier jogging down a street and estimated the distance at slightly more than three football fields. A moving target requires new math for speed and distance; such shots have a minimum 90 percent success rate, so I decided to take it. I aimed at a point on a wall ahead of the guy and when he jogged across a specific dot engraved on the lens of my scope, I squeezed the trigger smoothly. The conscious mind can focus only on one thing at a time, and I was watching the runner, but my body was simultaneously making sure that I did not lose trigger control in my rush to take this target. The trigger must be pulled back exactly straight, because any side pressure can affect the flight of the shot ever so slightly, enough to cause a miss. A sniper learns to pull the trigger straight back, every time, so he can hold the necessary sight alignment.

My bullet hit the running soldier at kidney level. He tumbled down, his death fall tracked by a dark crescent of his blood on the wall. Kidney shots should be taken only as a last resort, since both of the organs have to be destroyed for a quick kill. There were a lot of variables, but this guy didn’t have a hope in hell from the second I first saw him. I couldn’t miss today, and I had to rein in the confidence that grew with every successful shot.

The hunting had been good so far, but the bridge was the decisive point of this battlefield, not individual soldiers, and we were still a good distance away. We were exhausted by the running and gunning and were sweating like pigs in the heavy MOPP suits as the sun beat down without mercy. Casey decided to get us over to Kilo Company, which was closing on the bridge under vicious enemy fire.

That meant we had to move across about five hundred yards of uncleared territory, where the chances of getting shot by Iraqis and Americans were about equal. But my rifle could help take that bridge, which was what this day was all about. “Pack up and let’s go,” Casey ordered, and we all took a quick drink of water and staggered to our feet, much like Boston Marathon runners who are all out of gas with Heartbreak Hill looming just ahead. This was where our intense physical conditioning paid off, because we could reach deep and find the extra energy we needed.

Casey set off at a slow trot; I came next, then the photographer, with Newbern and Tracy in the rear. Everyone knew that getting separated was probably certain death, but putting one foot in front of another was huffing-and-puffing work. Tracy was humping along, cursing, at the back of the line and warning the panting photographer not to quit. “You stop and that fucking old man’ll leave you here,” he said. I heard somebody puke, but we didn’t stop running. I grinned and kept pushing as hard as I could. We were doing the Baghdad Two-Mile at a full gallop.

We linked up with Kilo, steadily made our way forward, and finally got our first look at the double bridge that was causing so much trouble. It was a mess.

The Iraqis had blown the supports of the fifty-foot center section of the big bridge and dropped it into the river some ninety feet below. That meant our heavy armor was stuck on this side. The narrow pedestrian bridge was left as the only option, and the Iraqis had blown a hole about ten feet long in the middle of that one, too.