The War I Always Wanted (24 page)

I was wrong. Everybody saw the same thing. Before the blue car had even cleared the intersection, I heard Waseem say in his heavily accented, deep, monotone voice, “Something is not right.”

Gerasimas looked at Gasko and yelled, “Follow 'em! Go! Go! Go!”

At this moment of action, I couldn't help but think of other things. I realized that I needed to get a good night's rest and it was already late. Now we were going to chase some guys around Tal Afar. I knew the end of the story already: We would chase them. They would pull over. We would pull the occupants out of the car. We would kick them around for trying to evade us. We would find a couple of AK-47s in the trunk—if we were lucky. Or maybe the driver would just be drunk. No laws against that here. If there were weapons, we'd confiscate them and throw them in the bed of our humvee. And finally, depending on how suspicious the guys looked, we'd determine whether or not to put bags on their heads and take them in for questioning. All in all, I figured that it would take at least an hour to sort through the whole thing. It was another instance
that reeked of wasted time just like every other raid or traffic control point I'd managed while in Iraq. I didn't say anything, but I hoped that we would either lose them in traffic or Gerasimas would call it off. I didn't think two AK-47s were worth my time.

Gasko hit the gas and swerved onto the main road. Already there were cars between the Passat and us. Gasko accelerated and started to snake his way through the nighttime traffic. The Passat was easy to follow, as it had a broken rear taillight.
This might not be so bad
, I thought.
We'll catch up to him in a second. We'll flag him down. He'll play stupid. He'll pull over. We may be able to wrap this thing up in twenty minutes
.

Half a second after the thought crossed my mind that this could possibly end quickly, I noticed that the Passat was weaving through traffic as well. And not only that, but he was accelerating. It didn't take very long for me to figure out what this implied.
Jeeesus
. He had something in the car worth the risk of dodging cars and people at high speed.

Gasko started laying on the horn, hitting it first in short bursts, and then in five- to ten-second ones. The Iraqis were slow to get out of the way. American soldiers were known throughout the country for muscling their way through traffic at the expense of the Iraqis. Subsequently, the Iraqis had grown weary of it over the months and were now in no mood to hurry. The Passat was having the same problem.

As we sped in and out of traffic, Gerasimas got a call on the radio: The second humvee, the one with Sergeant Collins, was having trouble keeping up the pace. There was something wrong with the engine, the accelerator, or both. I couldn't make out most of the conversation from the bed of the truck,
but I did hear a “Fucking catch up!” from the front seat. The problem was that with the traffic congestion, the other two humvees couldn't get around the second one, and we were thus losing all three. As we blew through traffic, I imagined the earful that Collins' driver was currently withstanding. In an unspoken decision, Gerasimas had decided that we couldn't wait.

The Passat turned off the main road and drove into a neighborhood. Shops lined the street and many were still open. In the blur this chase was quickly becoming, I could see people standing on the side of the road watching. Seeing Americans speed through your neighborhood was nothing new, but this late at night, in hot pursuit of an Iraqi car was something to gawk at.

I began to think we actually might
not
catch the Passat. By then though, my attitude had improved somewhat. If for no other reason, I at least wanted to see what was in the car that was so important that they felt the need to set us on a highspeed chase. I was suddenly a bit disappointed that they might get away.

The road was bumpy and we were driving fast, so I couldn't see much of anything clearly. But within a few seconds I could tell that the Passat was slowing down. Then it turned left at a break in the median, making a U-turn. As we made ground, no one spoke.

The car cleared the turn and started back in our direction just as we reached the cut in the median. As we passed them, I saw the driver, the passenger, and at least one other person in the back seat. Due to its lack of horsepower, the Volkswagen didn't accelerate out of the turn nearly as fast as the humvee and that allowed us to close within fifty feet of it.

At the first side street, he took a hard right, nearly flipping the light car. Again, we gained more ground on the turn, coming to within thirty feet of the little blue car. As the road became bumpier, we started getting jostled around. Trying to balance myself, I found it harder and harder to see clearly with only headlights and intermittent streetlights. The gap was only twenty-five feet between the speeding car and us.

I was aiming my M4 over the top of the cab of the humvee, resting my elbows on the roof for support, when I saw movement in the back seat of the Passat. Due to the bobbing and the speed, I couldn't really tell what they were doing, but I had an idea that they were up to no good. I held my aim as steadily as possible, no longer concerned about my cot at the airfield.

And then they made their decision.

From behind Waseem, Krogh screamed, “He's gotta gun! He's gotta gun!”

I could see movement, but no gun. My mind was racing and I thought maybe Krogh had made a mistake. Then he spoke again. He started belting out, “He's gonna shoot! He's shooting! He's shooting!” I could still see movement, but no weapon yet. If they were shooting, I couldn't hear it in the commotion and I felt no rounds zinging past me either. But Krogh seemed
very
concerned that some
very
serious shit was coming down the pipe. I held my finger on the trigger, bracing for the worst.

Soon the left rear door of the Passat cracked open, shut, and then swung open fully. Immediately I thought of the TV shows like
Cops
, or really, any high-speed chase footage for that matter. At the end of the car chase the car either slows down or crashes, the door or doors swing open, and anywhere from one to four guys take off running in different directions. I assumed
that was now happening. Like many Americans, I still believed that real life was much like TV.

Though the car was still traveling fast, I yelled, “They're gonna jump! They're gonna jump!” Suddenly, something came out of the open door. It was an
object
, but I couldn't tell what kind of . . .

The dive horn began blaring inside my head. Failure was suddenly not just an option. It was likely. For the first time in my life, someone was leveling an RPG at me, preparing to fire.

Mother. Fucker
. TV had rotted my brain. The guys in the car had no intention of making a break for freedom. They wanted to scrap.

Why the RPG round did not fly off the launcher at that moment, slamming into the windshield of my humvee, killing all seven of us, I wouldn't find out until later that night. For the moment, though, I was using the extra microseconds to think. Suddenly the passenger—now officially a combatant—withdrew the RPG and the door swung shut—for a second. Then, to my surprise, it opened again.

We were now coming up quickly on a T-shaped intersection. As the car took a right turn, nearly flipping, the RPG was dropped out of the door, onto the road. We flew right past it. As we came around the corner behind the Passat, we were within fifteen feet of it. I could see people on the sidewalk scattering. It was as if they could sense the impending danger. The corner turned, I saw something else being raised in the back seat and pointed at me—either another RPG or an AK-47. This time I was not going to wait around to find out what it w—

Neither was Lawrence on the SAW. He squeezed the trigger on the machine gun and held it there. The sound of this
weapon, not twelve inches from my head, was indescribable. It was
so fucking loud
that all I wanted was for it to be over. I wasn't just hearing it in my ears. It was penetrating into my head, making my brain tingle. I didn't know things could
be
that loud. Not to be outdone by Lawrence, and still aiming at the Volkswagen's back windshield, I started shooting . . . and shooting . . . and shooting. All I could think of was that we had no cover. If the gunmen packed inside the still-moving car were able to launch a single rocket-propelled grenade, we would be dead. The fear washed over me instantaneously with tsunamilike force. I suddenly became
desperate
to kill them before they got off a shot, and the only cover I could think of was to keep shooting. It wasn't a complete thought, though. I didn't have time for that. It was more like an instinct. I knew that a wall of lead was all we had.

My vision quickly became telescopic as the adrenaline forced me to focus on nothing but the back windshield of the car in front of us. All I could see was smoke, flying glass, and red tracers coming from my M4 and Lawrence's machine gun. Time and space no longer existed as it had only moments before. As I continued to fire into the back of the car, I felt like it would never end. At that moment, with death swirling around me, I felt like I couldn't be killed—like I was never going to die. Each time I pulled the trigger of the weapon I'd slept with for nearly two years, it felt like it had become an extension of my body—as if I were
willing
those in the Passat to die. And I couldn't pull the trigger fast enough.

Detachedly, I noticed Corn trying squirm between Lawrence and me. I could feel him trying to get in on the action. He managed to fire three or four rounds before he got
squeezed out. Lawrence, on the other hand, continued to hammer away at the car by coldly and steadily using up his ammunition. The sounds and vibrations of our barrage began to swallow me up and my vision became tunneled. Because of that, I didn't see two gunmen roll out of the left door of the back seat. Lawrence did however, and he drew a bead on both of them, knocking them down with his second long burst from the SAW.

I kept firing into the back of the car. The cacophony of gunfire continued for an eternity—or five or ten seconds. Hot brass shell casings were pinging every which way—bouncing off the railings of the humvee, off of each other, onto the sandbagged floor, onto the concrete below. Finally something in the trunk of this car, not twenty feet in front of us, made a popping noise and caught on fire.

The blue Volkswagen Passat rolled to a stop.

I'm in the bottom of a well. Someone is yelling, “Cease fire! Cease fire!” I know that I'm not shooting my gun anymore, but this is all I know
.

I was still staring at the Volkswagen in the light of the streetlamps. I could feel people moving around me.

People are jumping out of the humvee. I'm not sure what to do. The barrel of my weapon is hot. It feels just like it does after we shoot at the range or in live fires. I have just finished firing it. I think I'm out of ammo. Is this real? Was I just in a shootout?

Then I snapped back.
I
should
jump out of the humvee
. I moved.

The first thing I noticed was that we had clearly won the fight. There were bodies and shards of glass everywhere. There was
blood starting to pool. The next thing I saw was a soldier from one of the other humvees open the front passenger door of the Passat and pull one of the men out. Apparently he was still alive.
Where did he come from . . .?
Then I realized the other trucks had arrived without my noticing. The soldier threw him on the ground and kicked him in the face. Two other soldiers pounced on him and zip-tied his hands behind his back.

I turned around, looked back at the intersection, and started to move in that direction when I noticed the first RPG lying in the road. “Hey, I need some help over here,” I called back in the direction of the Passat. No response. “Hey!” Nothing. Everyone was busy crawling all over the carnage.
Fuck it
. I ran out into the intersection and grabbed the RPG launcher. When I picked it up, the round started to fall out. Quickly, I moved to catch it before it hit the ground.
If it's been fired . . .
All I needed was for the round to detonate on contact. In the process of fumbling, I nearly dropped my weapon. Now I was juggling an M4, an RPG, and an RPG round. I couldn't fire my weapon.
Goddammit
. I hurried awkwardly back to scene of the action with my armload of weaponry and carefully deposited the launcher and round on the sidewalk next to . . .

Suddenly I saw what had been pulled from the car. Lying on the sidewalk beside the Passat were two RPG launchers, three RPG rounds, two AK-47s, seven magazines, and four hand grenades. All three RPG rounds were armed and the one I had picked up had been fired. Its fuse had been ignited, but for some reason it hadn't gone off.

I'm back in the Shah-e-Kot Valley, where Takhur Gar looms above me. I've just been told that the thing that fell out of the sky on my platoon's position mere moments ago was a two-thousand-pound
satellite guided bomb dropped by an air force F-16. No one knows yet why it didn't go off. It would have killed all of us. I would never get a satisfactory explanation
.

Now, nineteen months later, it's happened again. As of that moment, I should have been dead twice. Not in the “that sure was close” way you experience in busy interstate traffic, but in the “This is no shit—I'm really not supposed to be here anymore” way.

Stepping off the sidewalk, I looked around. I noticed that the driver was still in the front seat, slumped over the steering wheel. I walked over to the two men who had rolled out of the still moving car. They were alive.

The first one out of the car, the RPG gunner, was sitting cross-legged in the street behind the Passat. He was wearing khakis and a white button-down, short sleeve shirt, and he was pudgy. Hands zip-tied behind his back, he had taken two rounds in the gut. He was bleeding, but I'd seen worse. For having been shot through the abdomen twice, he seemed in relatively good shape. As for his health in general, the picture wasn't as rosy. He was drenched in sweat and his breathing was labored. I could see his chest heaving up and down. Waseem was standing there with me. I turned to him and said, “Waseem, ask this dude, ‘What the fuck?' Ask him why they did this.” Waseem leaned down and said something in Arabic. Through labored breathing, Mr. RPG said something softly to Waseem. Waseem stood back up.