House to House: A Tale of Modern War (19 page)

“Fitts, how far can you shoot those shotgun slugs?”

“I don’t know.”

He stands back up and pumps out six shots with his Mossberg 500, tearing up a wall 150 meters away.

“Did you see that shit?” he asks proudly. He sits back in a chair right behind his men and returns to directing the fight. Then he’s up and moving around, shooting his Mossberg.

“Hey, we got a guy behind that wall!” shouts Hugh Hall as he points to a courtyard to the northwest.

Ohle and Metcalf rake the wall with their SAWs. As soon as they pause, the insurgent rushes through a gate, sending a long burst of fire our way.

Sergeant Hall preps an antitank rocket launcher.

“Fire in the hole!”

Everyone moves clear of the back blast.

Phooooossh!
The rocket lances the gate. Ohle and Metcalf come up firing and catch the insurgent in the open. He dies, screaming epithets in Arabic.

Lieutenant Meno is on the radio, coordinating with Captain Sims at the command post and passing along information. But things are getting too hot. We run a very real risk of losing fire superiority. If that happens the insurgents can either swarm around us or break contact and fight another day. Either way, we lose.

Meno calls for a Brad. The only one available is Staff Sergeant Brown’s. He’s been in the intersection to the south covering Sergeant Ellis, whose track has no working weapons.

Brown rumbles up the street. Gossard, his gunner, unleashes the Bushmaster. The 25mm rounds blast chunks out of buildings on both sides of the street. Gossard swings his turret left and right, annihilating any insurgent foolish enough to expose himself.

Meanwhile, an insurgent force to the south starts bounding toward Ellis’s Brad. He’s sitting in an intersection behind the main fight, unable to defend himself. Ellis has been trying to fix his coax machine gun but is seized by stomach cramps. He searches for an MRE bag to use as a toilet, pulling his pants down while RPGs start skipping off the road around him. One explodes against the Brad’s reactive armor just as his bowels unleash. He blows diarrhea all over Meno’s console. Another spasm sends more all over the inside of the Brad. It reeks like a Baghdad sewage trench, and Ellis is coated in his own filth.

He continues to fight. Three insurgents appear on a nearby rooftop. Ellis swings open his hatch, draws a bead with an M16 rifle, and starts suppressing them. That rifle is now his track’s main weapon.

Accurate machine-gun fire laces our wall. For a moment, we’re pinned down as everyone takes cover. Then Ruiz exposes himself and screams, “Fire in the hole!” We get out of his way just as he sends an AT4 down-range. Flannery fires another one. We’re using everything we’ve got, but the enemy is slowly gaining the upper hand.

Fitts hammers away with his shotgun. Lawson pops targets with his Vietnam-era M14 rifle and scope. We start taking more fire from the east, and as I look over there, I see several buildings taller than ours. My stomach drops. If this latest push allows the enemy to reach those platforms, they’ll be able to pour fire down on us.

“Knapp!”

“Yeah, Sergeant Bell?”

I point to the nearest building to the east that is taller than ours. “Can you make that throw?”

“Sure.”

I gather every frag grenade I can find and tell Knapp to go to work. Meno sees the danger and tells Brown in his Brad to pound the building Knapp is grenading. Together, they light it up and keep anyone from getting above us.

Hall spots a vehicle. “Hey! I got a white truck tucked in this dude’s garage.”

Misa shouts, “Can you hit it with an AT4?”

“Yeah, I got it,” responds Ruiz. “Fire in the hole!”

“Get ready, go!” Misa shouts.

“Shoot that bitch!” I yell.

He shoulders an AT4. Once again, we get out of the way. The rocket sizzles down and scores a hit but doesn’t explode. Brown moves up the street to allow Gossard to rip into it with his Bushmaster.

An RPG slams into our wall. The entire roof shakes from the concussion. More enemy machine guns and AKs join the fight. I can just feel it: we’re right on the edge of losing fire superiority. We’ve got to do something quick.

“Fitts?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think Brown would do a strafing run?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Drive all the way down to the middle of that danger area to the west, shooting everything that moves, then back up really slow. They might think he’s all fucked up? Then as he passes us, we come over the rim and shoot ’em up. Do you think they’d fall for that?”

“I don’t know, but it’ll take a fucking stud to go down there and draw all that fire.”

We get on the horn and talk to Third Platoon’s beast, Staff Sergeant Cory Brown. He fights with all the tenacity of a grizzly bear. He listens to the plan and likes it. “Grizzly” needs no coaxing to get knee-deep into a brawl. The Bradley rolls forward down the street and straight into the insurgents. At first, they’re astonished the Brad is counterattacking by itself. But they quickly swarm the Brad with tracers. RPGs strike the road around it. In return, Gossard uses his Bushmaster like a deadeye shot. His chattering 25mm gun swings back and forth, spewing fire. He pounds buildings, strafes rooftops, sweeps the street ahead. At times the targets are so close that he can’t lower the barrel enough to get a shot at them.

Brown reaches the edge of the danger area, a big open field to our northwest. Suddenly, the track disappears in a swirling brown-gray cloud of dust and smoke. Something big just exploded.

Gonzales, Brown’s driver, shifts into reverse. Slowly, the track reappears out of the dirt and smoke. He backs up toward us just as Meno gets on the radio and tells Brown to go help Ellis out. Ellis is in danger at the intersection behind us. If he gets taken out, our whole southern flank will be in trouble.

The Brad creeps in reverse, still taking fire. From out of the dust at the edge of the danger area, Fitts and I see insurgents running through the street. They think they’ve got a crippled Brad, and they’re pushing their luck trying to bag it.

Fitts tells everyone: “Hold fire! Don’t fucking shoot! Forty millimeter, then everyone else, got it?”

Santos nods. He’s our best grenadier.

As Brown’s Bradley continues its reverse crawl toward us, Fitts shouts, “Now!”

Santos launches a grenade. It arcs dangerously close over Brown’s track and lands harmlessly over a group of seven insurgents. Slinking up the street, they spread out in an effort to surround Brown’s Bradley. As the dust settles, the rest of the platoon rips into them with everything we’ve got. They die in the street or flee for cover.

As Brown pulls back, we see an insurgent team break cover on a roof down the street. They set up an RPG launcher beside a gigantic metal cistern and pull the trigger. The rocket streaks into the street and explodes near the Brad. They’ve made a terrible mistake. Not only did they miss, but Gossard and Brown have seen them.

Brown raises his TOW missile box. If there’s one weapon the insurgents don’t want to face in this fight, it is this antitank missile launcher. Accurate, powerful, and deadly, it is the biggest weapon in our platoon’s arsenal. Some say the big wire-guided missiles went out of fashion after we stopped confronting enemies equipped with heavy mechanized armor. I say otherwise: when it comes to urban fighting, a TOW is a gift from the Pentagon gods.

The missile rushes out of the launcher like a flaming comet. The insurgents have a couple of seconds to appreciate its monstrous size hurtling down the street. A few break cover and try to get away, but it’s too late. The missile explodes, blowing the cistern to fragments.

Seconds later, the few survivors make a run for it. Our guns cut down seven of them. I see Ruiz drop another with his M4. The insurgent runs out of his sandals before Ruiz shoots him in the belly. Our men cheer wildly and shout taunts.

Yet even as we celebrate, a new danger arises behind us.

From out of the industrial district on the other side of Highway 10, insurgent reinforcements rush north. Sensing they’ve got a cripple, they race for Ellis’s Bradley. At four hundred meters, they hunker down behind some reinforced concrete barriers and start lobbing RPGs at Ellis. The rockets run to the end of their range and burst in the air around the track. Other insurgents start moving up the street in buddy teams, under the cover of the RPG barrage.

We’ve got to help Ellis out. Our north is quieting down. The two massacres we just accomplished seem to have driven most of our attackers off. We can afford to pull guys off the wall and move them to the other side of the roof. But we don’t have a very good field of fire on the insurgents to the south. The taller house next to us to the east does, however. We need to grab that rooftop, but it isn’t connected to our house. There’s a body-length gap between the two buildings with a fifteen-foot drop to the concrete walk.

We’ve gotta get to Ellis.

I shout to Fitts, “If you have a scoped weapon, I need you on this other rooftop now. Give me a 240 and a SAW. We gotta get those dicks shooting at Ellis.”

Fitts guffaws, “Whoaaaa, Bell. That is a dangerous jump—it’s over five feet across, dude. Get some furniture to get across that first.”

There isn’t anything that will work. Then I remember the breach ladder strapped to Brown’s Bradley. Before we left for Fallujah, I insisted that we bring it along. The damn thing is built out of titanium alloy and weighs sixty-five pounds. The rest of the platoon thought I was nuts for bringing it, but now we’ve actually got a use for it.

“Sucholas…Ruiz…go down and get the breach ladder!”

The two men scamper down the stairs. A second later, they appear in the street behind Brown’s track. Just as they reach it, insurgents hiding in the compound that houses the white truck suddenly hose the street with automatic weapons. Bullets ricochet off the Bradley. Tracers zip past both my men. Ellis forgotten, Brown reacts to the fire by charging forward into it. The Brad speeds north as Gossard’s Bushmaster spouts flame.

Ruiz and Sucholas are left behind, standing in the open in the middle of the street. Their cover has abandoned them.

We lay down suppressing fire. Gossard’s gun tears up the truck again. He flays the compound and buildings around it. Ruiz and Sucholas start running after the Brad. It is a morbid Keystone Kops moment. The white truck finally explodes, and a greasy coil of smoke rises up from its garage. Gonzales eases off the gas and the track crawls to a halt.

Sucholas and Ruiz reach the Brad. Ruiz takes a knee and puts down fire as Sucholas jumps onto the Brad’s back deck. He quickly cuts the ladder free. Together, they haul ass back to us, carrying the ladder as AK rounds snap around them and gouge the asphalt at their feet. They reach our house and throw themselves inside. A moment later, they come through the pillbox door and deliver the ladder to me.

“This is the wrong ladder, assholes. I wanted the BREACH ladder!” Pause. I start laughing at the absurdity of my own joke. They glare up at me, panting for air. To make them feel better, I toss them a couple of cigarettes. Ruiz and Sucholas deserve a short smoke break after what they just did.

We throw the breach ladder across the gulf between rooftops. It serves as a bridge to our new fighting position. McDaniel, Santos, Ruiz, Lawson, and Knapp move over to the new roof while somebody fires an RPG from a window a few doors down from the mosque. It sails past and explodes on the other side of the house. Some of the other guys reposition to the south of our first rooftop. Soon, we’ve got Hall, Pulley, Pratt, Meno, and me covering from our old building. Michael Ware looks on and films the action.

The insurgents continue their rocket barrage on Ellis. They’re at least four hundred meters away from us, a stretch for our M4s with laser-dot sights. Our scoped weapons should handle the range better. The SAWs go to work. Ruiz sets up next to Knapp. He’s got his M68 laser sight and he does an aggressive scan of the road in front of Ellis’s Brad. An insurgent breaks cover next to a Texas barrier. He charges laterally across the street and fires an RPG. Ruiz bangs away at him. The insurgent ducks back behind the barrier, reloads, and comes back for more. It’s a tough deflection shot, but Ruiz almost gets him this time, putting rounds on either side of his hip. The insurgent stumbles, but keeps going. He launches another RPG, then dives behind the Texas barrier again.

RPG on his shoulder, the insurgent breaks cover again. This guy has brass balls, I’ll give him that. The M4 snaps, rounds crease the air inches from the guy. It looks like Ruiz has him cold now.

Clank!
He runs out of ammunition.

“Goddamnit! I had that asshole!”

Just to see what would happen, Santos tries to launch a 40mm grenade to the Texas barrier. It doesn’t cover the distance. Lawson and our M240 guns are our only hope of hitting these guys.

Meanwhile, to the east, an insurgent sharpshooter steps into the street. He takes aim at Private Brett Pulley, who is standing on the first rooftop, seemingly oblivious to everything going on around him. The sharpshooter’s AK cracks. The bullet whines past Pulley, who doesn’t react. He fires again and just misses. Pulley is a statue.

Lieutenant Meno happens to be nearby. He hears the incoming rounds, looks over to the east, and sees Pulley still unresponsive. Meno reaches over and pulls him down to the rooftop just as bullets skip off the rim of the wall right where Pulley had been standing.

Hugh Hall sees the sharpshooter, “He’s right behind there!”

Before anyone else can shoot, the big sergeant drills the shooter in the sternum. The sharpshooter dies, but his buddies open fire from nearby windows and doorways. More bullets sing overhead.

Meno swings back up and unloads his rifle to the east. He hammers every window, doorway, and corner he can see. More rounds strike around him, all coming from this new direction. Our lieutenant is giving them hell. He drops his mag out, reloads, and goes back to work.

“Pulley! Launch a grenade at ’em,” Meno orders.

Pulley stands back up, braces his left elbow on the wall, and lets fly with a pair of 40mm rounds. The grenades explode in quick succession. There is no more incoming from the east. Pulley’s lucky to be alive. Now he’s pulled his A game out of his ass.