House to House: A Tale of Modern War (17 page)

“What the fuck?” somebody hollers.

The Brad stops, but Ellis continues to rotate the turret. Like Paul Bunyan’s ax, the barrel hacks into a nearby telephone pole.
Thwack!
The pole snaps in half, dropping wires like serpents all over the street.

“Dude, what the fuck are you doing?” Fitts shouts.

Ellis finally gets the turret realigned with his line of march. The track jerks forward to the gate. Ellis takes aim and opens fire with his gun. The 25mm barks out a few rounds, which do little more than blow holes in the gate. Then his weapon jams. That’s hardly surprising, given what it has just been through. Ellis switches to the coax machine gun and rips off a short burst into the lock before this gun also jams.

The Brad has only one weapon left, its TOW antitank missiles. Ellis tries to raise the box that serves as the weapon’s base, but it refuses to lift up into the firing position. His track is effectively neutralized. Not a single weapon functions.

At least it can still act as a giant battering ram. Marcoot inches forward and puts his left fender on the gate. He hits the gas, but the Brad stands at an odd angle and he can’t get traction. The gate withstands even this assault.

Jim watches all of this and finally says, “Come over here behind me, and I’ll give it a try.” The Abrams rolls forward and Jim jams his left front fender right into the corner of the mosque’s concrete wall. Then he pivots to the left. The power of the tank’s 1,500-horsepower turbines is simply staggering. The pressure this maneuver creates fractures the wall. From the gate to the corner, it buckles and then collapses inward. I’ve never seen anything like this.

“Wow,” I say over the radio. “Thanks for that, man.”

The platoon enters the compound to find a stockpile of weapons, equipment, and ammunition. As we move through the courtyard, we’re surrounded by heaps of mortar shells, piles of rocket-propelled grenades, crates of ammunition, and other explosives. If we get in a firefight now, this is the only cover we’d have.

We secure the courtyard and find even more stuff, including radio gear and more American supplies. Due to the rules of engagement, we are not allowed to enter the interior of the mosque itself. This would offend Iraqi sensibilities since we are unwashed infidel Christians. We certainly wouldn’t want to do that
and
destroy their fucking city at the same time.

Meanwhile, our enemy uses his holy sites as supply bases.

The Iraqi Intervention Force battalion that followed us through the breach now rolls up and dismounts. This time, the soldiers are committed. They look pretty high-speed to us as they line up at the entrance. They kick in the front door and swing inside, weapons blazing. We stand outside, listening to the shooting and wondering if we’re missing out on a firefight.

A few minutes later, the IIF leader bounds back through the front door. He looks at Meno, smiles, and gives a thumbs-up. “Okay!” he proclaims in broken English, “You’re good!”

Key objective secured. Huge ammo cache discovered. No bad guys in sight. It’s a weird start to the Götterdämmerung of Iraq.

With about a half hour of darkness left, Meno tells us to grab a house, set up security, and get some rest. Fitts leads his squad across the street and takes up position inside an intact house due north of the mosque. Second Squad and I go to the end of the block and clear a two-story house just to the northeast of the mosque and across the street.

I set up security on the rooftop. The rest of the squad flops down to catch a quick nap on the second floor of the house, just inside the entrance to the enormous roof. I linger a few more minutes to give instructions to my soldiers. Lawson agrees to keep an eye on things for the next twenty minutes or so. That done, I head down the stairs to guard the front door.

In the room above me, Michael Ware and Yuri Kozyrev are sprawled out on the floor. Doc Abernathy is next to them. A few of the other guys are smoking or cleaning their weapons. We’ll give these guys an hour to sleep, then rotate some of the men off the roof so they can get some rest.

I sit down, light a cigarette, and take a deep drag. My nerves are taut, but I feel like I could sleep for a week. Yet I know this is only the beginning.

The squad has performed very well so far, and I am proud of my men. We’re working together, and the men clearly trust one another.

It didn’t used to be like that. At the beginning of our rotation months ago, I caught one of my soldiers huffing compressed air, trying to get a high from the whippetlike chemicals inside. I was furious. I lined them up and demanded to know who else was involved.

Fitts, Staff Sergeant Omar Hardaway, Brown, and I grilled each member of my squad. I turned the clock back to 1965 when NCOs were still allowed to give “wall-to-wall” counseling. Feelings were hurt, ribs were smashed, faces were thwacked, but no tears were shed. More importantly, not one soldier turned on his comrades. Instead, two guys who had nothing to do with the incident took full responsibility.

That was the day my squad came together. They had stayed loyal to one another, and I respected that. They learned they could trust one another. It was also the day I learned how much I truly cared about these men.

Now I take another drag on my cigarette and dump my gear out. I’m busily rearranging my ammo pouches when Lawson appears at the top of the stairs.

“Hey, Sergeant Bell,” he calls, his voice hushed and low.

“Yeah?” Lawson’s as white as a sheet.

“Stuckert thinks he saw something.”

I grab my gear and head for the roof.

CHAPTER TEN

Shadows and Wraiths

“Whaddya got?” I ask Stuckert when I reach the roof.

“Sarge,” he whispers, his SAW pointed at a barred window not five feet away on the roof of the house next door. Our rooftop shares a common wall with the next house. The two are connected west-to-east.

“What are you doing?” I say with a full voice. I can’t know for sure, but I suspect Fitts and his boys are in that building.

“Sarge,” Stuckert whispers, “There’s a guy in there. I saw a hand move the curtain.”

Stuckert’s eyes are saucers, and the hair on the back of his neck is standing at attention. Something has given him a
Nightmare on Elm Street
spooking.

I edge up to the wall and peer over at the window. I see no hand. I see the curtains, torn and filthy, fluttering gently in the breeze.

“Dude.” He’s got me whispering now. “Dude, come on Stuckert, the wind is blowing the curtains. You’re cold. I’m cold. You’re exhausted. I’m exhausted.”

I pause. He looks crushed.

“Stuckert, are you positive you saw this?”

“Sergeant Bell, I’m positive.”

Start trusting these guys.

Stuckert is a Californian who came to the army as a troubled boy from a wealthy family. His uncle is the mayor of his town back home, and his father is very successful. Since he’s been with Second Squad, he’s been on the ball. He’s a good soldier, a good kid who has made great strides toward becoming a
man.
He’s not prone to hysterics, and his bravery cannot be questioned.

Be a leader. Trust your men.

I’ve got to be sure. “Hey, Maxfield, Sergeant Lawson, did you guys see anything?”

“No, Sergeant Bell.”

I don’t know where Fitts is right now. He’s somewhere to the west of me on the same side of the street. Could he have moved next door without us knowing? Before we start hosing the window, I’ve got to make sure we won’t kill our own.

Stuckert’s still behind his SAW. Even if Fitts isn’t in the house next door, we run the risk of hitting him incidentally if we pour machine-gun fire in his direction.

“Okay, Lawson, get your nine out. Stuckert, get one, too.” Lawson unholsters his pistol and grips it, never taking his eyes off the window. Stuckert grabs one from the 240 Bravo machine gunners. He slides back into his spot along the wall and points the stubby barrel at the window.

“Okay, pull security with the nine mils. If you see something, don’t fucking hesitate. Use your judgment. Use your judgment, Stuck. I trust you.”

“Roger, Sarge,” says Stuckert.

I grab my radio and key the mike, “Hey, Fittsy, where are you at? My guys see a dude in a building and I wanna make sure I’m not shooting you.”

“I’m two houses down. I don’t see shit out here.”

Doc Abernathy appears in the doorway to the pillbox room. He moves over to us, bent low to keep his body below the level of the wall.

He lines up next to Lawson and gets his eyes on the window.

Could we really have bad guys right next door to us? Why didn’t they shoot us when we were in the street trying to get the mosque gate open?

Lawson jerks back. The sudden movement makes me jump and I look over at my guys. Doc Abernathy ducks and turns to me, “Sergeant Bell, Sergeant Lawson sees something.”

Lawson’s eyes are riveted on the window.

“What the fuck is going on here?”

“Hey man, a fucking hand just moved the goddamned curtain.” Lawson glances at me, and he’s got the same chamber-of-horrors look Stuckert had.

“Stuckert, put your fucking nine mil on the edge of that hole. You’re gonna shoot at a forty-five to the left, got it?”

“Roger, Sergeant Bell.”

“Lawson, you’re gonna shoot forty-five to the fucking right. When you run low on ammo, I’ll stick a shotgun in there.”

“Roger,” they say in tandem.

Lawson draws a bead. Stuckert does the same. They squeeze their triggers, the nine mils crack.

“BAAAAAAAAAAGGGH!”

Somebody is screaming behind the curtain. It is so sudden and so loud it scares the shit out of us. I’m so surprised that for a moment, I’m rooted in place. Reflexively, the boys pour more fire into the window.

“Aaaaaaaaagh!”

Lawson drains his clip and slams another home. Back in a shooter’s stance, he peppers the window. Blood spatters across the curtain. Between shots we hear a thump, as if somebody has fallen off a chair or tabletop onto the floor.

“Yaaaaaaaaaaeeeeeee,”
the voice behind the window is pain-wracked and terrified. We’ve caught him completely by surprise, and he’s severely wounded.

We try to finish him off with a grenade through the window, but the bars are so close together we can’t get a frag through it. Instead, Stuckert and Lawson keep firing.

Above the din, the screams continue. The man cries and bellows and babbles in Arabic. We can’t see him, and this makes it eerie. Some of the other men add their weapons into the mix. We’re filling the room behind the window with a hornet’s nest of bullets.

How is this guy still alive?

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” I call. The men ease up on their triggers. I lean out over the wall and stick my head against the window bars. It is too dark to see inside the room, but I hear him moving around. His footsteps are slow and shuffling, and it sounds like he’s staggering downstairs.

“Ooooooooohhh.”

That sounded like it came from outside.

“Aaaaagh.”

“He’s in the courtyard!”

I swing over and look down to the north. The two houses share a common courtyard, complete with ornate pillars. I notice that most of the northern compound wall has been totally destroyed by artillery fire, making our house a much less defensible position than I had originally thought.

“There! There he is!”

The Screamer half runs, half staggers to one of the decorative pillars. He slips behind it and disappears before we can get weapons on him.

Fitts comes over the radio, “What the fuck is that?”

“Hey,” I reply, “we just shot a guy. I think he’s on your level now.”

“He’s really close to me, but I’m not sending my boys out until I know exactly where he is.”

“Okay. We’re gonna fucking move him with 40mm grenade fire. We’ll shake him outta there. If he moves, you guys get the shot. If not, we’ll take it.”

“Sounds good.”

I turn and shout, “Santos! Give me a fucking 40mm. Lay some 203 down on that pillar!”

Santos slides along the wall until he has a clear shot of the courtyard. He pumps off two rounds. Shrapnel tears through the insurgent, who keens like a car-struck cat.

“Knapp!”

Knapp comes up and lays fire down on the pillar. We fire a few more 40mm rounds. Lawson preps a grenade and pitches it into the courtyard. To our surprise, it doesn’t explode. Santos takes aim with his 203 launcher and lets fly. The 40mm grenade explodes and knocks Lawson’s frag into the street. Another shot causes it to detonate.

All the while, the Screamer wails. It sounds like all the pain and misery of this place wrapped into one dying voice.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” I shout. We’ve done enough damage. Now let’s see if he’ll come out in the open so we can finish him off.

No luck. He stays put and continues to fray our nerves with his agony.

By now, the sun has just started to crest the horizon to our east. The sky has morphed from black to golden orange, and long shadows crease the street around us. Fog and smoke hang low over the city, limiting our view and adding to the creepiness of the moment.

The Screamer goes quiet. Off to the west, we hear distant gunfire. First Platoon must be engaged around their first objective, a school.

We look at one another, wondering if the Screamer has bled out. We hold fire, but wait, fingers tense on triggers.

The Screamer bellows something in Arabic at the top of his lungs. I don’t understand what he says, but others do. To the north, somebody answers him. Seconds later, another yells a response. Three, four more sound off. To the south, behind us, a fifth call comes up from the ruined city.

All around us, voices haunt the fog and smoke. Stark terror has me in its grip.

What have we just unleashed?

Fitts calls over the radio, “Bell? Bro? Do year hear this shit?”

“Dude, what do you think? Fifteen to twenty?”

“I’m thinking forty to fifty.”