The 56th Man (34 page)

While the insurgents occasionally heaved a
mortar shell or 122-mm rocket inside the fort, no one expected an
ambush this close to the FOB, where the Americans could call in
fire support and reinforcements within seconds.

But when the men in the
Bradley heard a second
ping,
then a whole string of them, and then someone outside
shouting, "RPG!", they knew this movie was real.

Sometimes the Bradley imparted a sense of
security. At other times it seemed nothing better than a trap in
which every man inside would be roasted. It was ideal while bullets
were flying, but rocket propelled grenades were another matter.

A rattle like a train on broken ties shook
the vehicle. Staff Sergeant Henley was blasting away with the coax.
The firing stopped when he and Captain Rodriguez ducked down in the
turret. A nearby explosion threw the men on one bench forward into
the laps of the men across from them. Ghaith pushed a frightened
soldier back into his seat.

The Bradley halted. The driver was smacking
his headset. He had lost contact with Rodriguez. It was SOP for the
driver to stop when the intercom link was broken. Rodriguez
squeezed around to talk to the driver, probably to order him to
continue forward. Then he saw the Humvee in front of them burning
and swore. He alerted brigade TOC.

"Contact left! AK’s, PKM’s, RPG’s! We are
engaging!”

Whoosh…!

“
Contact right! Staff
Sergeant, get back on that coax!"

The Bradley again shuddered under the
hammering of the M240C. The counterpoint of bullets hitting the
vehicle's armor slackened but did not stop entirely.

The captain leaned down and yelled. The men
on the benches couldn’t hear him, but the driver did. He twisted
around in his seat and shouted, “Gitfo!”

As soon as the ramp dropped the two men at
the back got the fuck out. Taking advantage of the coaxial's
curtain of fire, they ran to the wrecked Humvee behind them to
check for survivors. Ghaith could see that the Bradley was neatly
boxed in, with Humvees on fire forward and back.

There was a pause, then two more men dashed
out, including the private so adverse to rubbing shoulders with
Ghaith, who silently wished him luck. A dat-dat-dat of automatic
gunfire sent the private scurrying out of sight.

As Ghaith took his turn down the ramp he
spotted two dead men near an alley entrance. Although their heads
had been swathed in kuffiah scarves, Ghaith noted a red beret
peaking out of one of them.

Bastards….

There were two more explosions, very close.
Heads appeared on rooftops and it sounded like two dozen
Russian-made automatic rifles going off all at once. The man who
had emerged with Ghaith screamed and fell. Ghaith used the man's
vest as a handhold and hauled him towards an open door, where a
soldier ('Four Fingers of Death’ Ropp, of all people) was beckoning
him. Ghaith stumbled and the wounded man went down. From the look
of his leg wound, he deserved to howl. Then Ropp was next to them.
He slung the man's carbine over his shoulder, and together they
managed to drag-and-carry the man to the building.

Sergeant Mastin came pounding downstairs, two
men behind him. Seeing the wounded man, he came over and gave him a
cursory inspection.

"Put some pressure on that wound, soldier,"
he told Ropp. He gave the wounded man a pat on the shoulder. "You
got some first class buddy aide. Hooa."

"Hooa," the wounded man gasped.

While Mastin keyed his hand mike, another
soldier crouched next to Ropp to fill him in.

"The house is clear. There's no sign of a
bomb."

Ghaith understood this to mean the house had
not been booby-trapped to explode when enough Americans seeking
cover came through the door. A rather neat trick, in his opinion,
although he would not have been so appreciative had the room blown
up under his feet.

Pressing down on the injured soldier's wound,
Ropp said, "The Fedayeen aren’t going to blow the place up if
they're standing on the roof."

"Yeah..."

"What the fuck are they doing, hitting us so
close to the wire?"

"Making a point, I guess."

"What point?"

"That they can hit us this close to the wire,
what d'ya think?"

Ghaith thought there was more to it than
that.

He knew he was taking a risk when he took up
the wounded man's M-4. The soldiers were fully aware that more than
one Iraqi working for the invaders had suddenly turned a gun on his
American employers. Seeing him pick up a loose carbine in the
middle of a firefight might prompt Mastin to shoot him on the spot,
no questions asked. So Ghaith went for his only refuge: the
street.

He paused at the door. He noted an odd,
orange splash of color on the reactive armor of the Bradley he had
left only the minute before. New and bright, it was no military
emblem. More like the kind of splatter left behind when someone
threw a balloon filled with paint.

The Bradley had been marked out.

Captain Rodriguez had never seen a stand-up
fight like this outside of maneuvers at Fort Hood. He had heard of
soldiers going toe-to-toe with the enemy in 2003, but since then
the foe had switched to less costly tactics. Rodriguez had dealt
mainly with IED’s and the occasional sniper. Chasing down a hot Q36
radar hit might result in a brief firefight with a carful of
insurgents, but otherwise he spent his days trying to bond with the
natives and cleaning up after car bombs. This was a whole new
level. This was just…great. The enemy had come out into the open,
in spades. He had spotted at least two dozen men shooting down at
them from the rooftops, and from the intensity of the fire he
suspected a lot more. But he could not be cheerful. The Humvees
blocking his path had reported half a dozen wounded.

Staff Sergeant Henley behaved as though he
did not have a care in the world. In between bursts from the coax,
he bellowed, “I love being attached to III Corps, sir!”

Rodriguez gave him a skeptical look and tried
not to laugh. Then he pressed his hand beneath his CVC helmet and
swore. “We’ve got friendlies coming up the road from the fort.”

During the next few minutes he was totally
preoccupied with the net, contacting his platoon leaders and the
S-3, as well has calling up the 9 Line for a medevac. It took him a
while to realize that, while the enemy fire had intensified, none
of it was directed at the Bradley.

Henley noticed this, too. “Something screwy’s
going on, sir. Oh shit—“

An Iraqi policeman had dashed across the
street and up the ramp of the Bradley.

“
Suicide bomber!”

Rodriguez swore at the Bradley driver, who
couldn’t hear him because of the broken comm link. Ducking inside,
he confronted the wide-eyed policeman and breathed a sigh of relief
when he saw he was not strapped with explosives. The policeman
began talking rapidly to the captain, who nodded and tried to
recall his social protocol. Should he kiss the Iraqi for not being
a terrorist? He turned to the driver.

“
Why is that ramp
open?”

“
I thought we should provide
cover—“

“
Forget it,” Rodriguez said.
The Iraqi cop was giving him a headache with all his frantic
gesturing. “Where’s Haji?”

“
The interpreter, sir?” The
driver grunted as he turned around in his seat and peered at the
empty benches. “I guess he’s gone Elvis, sir.”

“
Captain Rodriguez!” Henley
called down from the turret. “I think you should come see this,
sir!”

Rodriguez told the driver to keep an eye on
the Iraqi cop, then squeezed back into the turret.

“
Take a look over there.”
Henley pointed to the right of the Humvee burning behind them. “I
think we’ve got a red-on-red situation.”

Red-on-red was the tactical version of divide
and conquer. Whenever Coalition troops encountered opposing
factions of Iraqis engaged in a firefight between themselves, they
tried to turn it to their advantage. Often this meant just sitting
back and watching Iraqis kill each other. If it was Sunnis against
Shias, they would join in on whichever side Washington favored that
month. And the Americans would jump in on the side of anybody who
was beating up on al-Qaeda.

But what Rodriguez saw now looked more like a
grand-scale assassination attempt than a typical red-on-red fracas.
Their Iraqi translator was skittering back and forth on the street,
using every crumb of cover while the entire weight of the ambush
exploded around him. He would fire a round at a window or rooftop,
duck for a moment as he timed his next move, then pop behind a
cement mixer or half-filled HESCO cell left over from construction
of the fort. Rodriguez fumed at the way soldiers scrambled to get
out of his path whenever they saw him coming their way. They had
quickly comprehended that they were not the main target. Not this
time, at least. He was only mildly relieved when he heard a scream
and turned to see an enemy combatant being blown out a window. Blue
Platoon was working its way through the buildings from behind and
forcing a mass eviction. Henley had seen this, too, and
laughed.

“
They got the fobbits in
action!”

The translator stood and aimed the carbine at
another bobbing head. There was no puff of smoke. He was out of
ammo. But a moment later he jumped up and pretended to squeeze off
another round.

“
Man, is that whistling in
the dark or what?” said Henley.

“
Staff Sergeant, why aren’t
you firing your weapon?”

“
The Apaches are coming,
sir. I can hear them.”

“
So?”

“
Yes, sir!” And Henley
resumed firing the coax.

Rodriguez would have run out himself to help
the translator, but Henley was right. The Apaches were coming, and
he wanted Blue out of the upper stories so that it would not get
hit by any 30-mm rounds that might pierce the roofs. But as he
concentrated on the net, he spotted a private—was it Ropp?—making a
mad dash across the road towards the translator’s latest position.
He seemed to be carrying spare ammunition clips.

Silence fell over the block when the attack
helicopters were finished. Rodriguez started taking the Green 2 and
found that as bad as things had seemed, they could have been a lot
worse. He had twelve men wounded, one seriously, and two dead
Humvees, but that was it. Even the interpreter had survived.

When he had a moment to spare he walked over
to Ghaith, who was seated next to Ropp. They were sharing laughs
and unheated all-beef franks. Ropp stood and saluted.

“
At ease.” He smiled at the
soldier and the civilian. “That was a helluva show you two put
on.”

“
We aim to please, sir,”
Ropp beamed.

“
Yes…” The captain turned to
Ghaith. “And you, Haji, are one helluva lucky man. If I didn’t know
better, I would’ve thought this attack was staged just for your
benefit. But there must be over a dozen dead Fedayeen lying around
here. No man is worth that kind of price.”

Ghaith smiled politely.

“
You mind telling me who you
really are?” Rodriguez asked. “You’re under no obligation to tell
me, of course. I can only assume you’ve already been vetted, since
battalion sent you down to me. But to be quite honest, once you
were out in the open, every gun was trained on you.”

“
Perhaps that was because I
was out in the open,” Ghaith reasoned.

“
Captain Rodriguez!” Staff
Sergeant Henley had clambered down the Bradley and was frowning at
the orange splotch on the side of the vehicle. “We got some
bodacious bird shit here, sir!”

The captain stared at the mark. “Son of a
bitch.”

“
Captain!” a soldier on a
nearby rooftop called down. “These camelwonks are wearing red
berets under their head blankets, sir! I think—“

“
Roger that!” the captain
shouted, growing angrier by the second. With wrathful amazement he
turned on Ghaith. “Do you know who those men are?”

“
Why…” Ghaith smiled at the
captain, then at Ropp, who had backed away from the captain to
finish off his last hot dog. Ropp looked surprised, and
shrugged.

“
Insurgents,
right?”

“
I think Haji here knows
better,” said Rodriguez.

“
I believe this is a cadre
from the Wolf Brigade, Captain Rodriguez,” Ghaith
sighed.

“
That doesn’t surprise
you?”

“
It’s not surprising that
men under the command of Abu Walid, a good Shiite general, would be
shooting at an alleged Sunni collaborating with the Americans. No,
not at all.”

“
So, you’re
Sunni.”

“
I was a clerk under a Sunni
administrator,” Ghaith responded. “That’s all.”

“
Never seen a clerk with
balls like that!” Ropp barked. He winced, and added,
“Sir.”

“
Neither have I, private.”
The captain’s eyes narrowed. “The Wolf Brigade. That’s the Iraqi
unit that fought alongside us at Mosul. These are our allies. Yet
they marked my Bradley just to get at you. Don’t deny it—it’s plain
as the nose on your face.”

“
I wouldn’t worry about
them,” said Ghaith. “You can always find more
assassins.”

“
What?”

“
The Wolf Brigade. You use
them to assassinate undesirables. They allow the Americans to keep
their hands clean.”

“
What the fuck…I mean, sir,
is that true?”