Shock Factor (19 page)

The old man knew it. The war had dragged on for three years and the political landscape back home was being redrawn by those opposed to it. The Democrats in the House and Senate had declared the war lost two years before, and had been using it as political leverage against the Republicans ever since.

“George Bush is the only one who cares,” the old man said again.

He took a sip of chai tea, then asked, “Why did you let the Democrats take over?”

The 'terp translated and Adam started to laugh, “I'm happy to say I didn't have anything to do with that.”

The old man smiled, and the ice broke. More tea was poured, and the rest of the family gradually came in to meet the Americans. The eldest daughter, perhaps twenty-three, sat with her younger brothers. She was a picture of sculpted beauty. Disney princess eyes, long dark flowing hair, skin the color of caramel. Most women avoided Americans, and the SEALs had been told never to interact with them on the street or in houses, as it would offend Arab sensibilities. A teenaged girl appeared as well. She looked to be a year or two older than her brother. Same big, dark eyes as her sister—it was clear she would be a beautiful woman someday, too.

If she lived long enough.

It hadn't been reported much in the media, but the al-Qaida fighters living in Ramadi had taken a page from their Afghan brethren. To cement local alliances with tribal sheiks and leaders, they would marry into the families of the locals—sometimes by force. In some places, al-Qaida had taken over an area simply for the available pool of women. Some they used as little more than prostitutes—slaves to their urges and whims. The women were horribly abused. Those taken or married for political gain were treated perhaps somewhat better, but not much.

Would that be the fate of these two?

The conversation flowed freely, the 'terp serving as the bridge between cultures. What they found was a common humanity that gave them mutual ground from which to build rapport. That, and George Bush.

The clock ticked on into the night, the rest of Blue Element set up overwatch positions on the rooftop. Soon, Adam and those in the apartment would take a shift upstairs while their brothers caught a little sleep in an empty apartment down the hall. In the meantime, the younger kids teased Adam about the green cravat he'd strapped like a sweatband around his head. It was his homage to Tom Berringer's character in
Platoon
, a movie he'd seen dozens of times as a kid. The SEALs kidded him, too. One finally said, “Dude, they're right. You look like Pat Benatar with sideburns.”

Then the youngest boy reached for Adam's SR-25.

The mother came unglued. The lightness of the conversation vanished. The child only wanted to touch it. Adam knew he wasn't a threat.

“No! No! No!” the mother shrieked. The boy recoiled, but his eyes never left the SR-25. He looked at it with open wonder and reverence.

For an instant, that look took Adam back to his own childhood. Was this the first weapon the boy had seen up close? He remembered his own reaction when his best friend's father gave him a Ruger 10/22 rifle for Christmas one year. He had held it and looked it over with the same expression. His best friend, Justin, had received one as well. Justin's dad taught them how to use them safely. He taught them how to hunt, and the two boys spent hours hunting squirrels and other small animals with them.

Adam made a gesture, letting everyone know it was okay. The boy stepped forward and tentatively put a finger out toward the SR-25's barrel. The old man seemed okay with this, but again the mother went crazy.

“No! No! No!”

Was it fear of the weapon that drove this? Or was it fear that her son would grow to love them? There was no way to tell, and Adam wasn't about to ask. The boy retreated and sat back down.

“What will tomorrow bring us?” the old man asked, suddenly serious.

Adam couldn't answer that. How could he? Instead, he asked, “Do you need anything?”

“Diesel fuel. For the generator,” the old man replied quickly.

One of Blue Element's chiefs called to Adam, “Don't promise anything, man.”

Adam nodded and told the man he'd do his best to help.

The conversation continued until, somewhere long after midnight, it was Adam's turn to take a shift on the roof. He said his good-byes and slipped upstairs, his SR-25 in his hands now. In the morning, the Army and Marines would establish another outpost in the city. This time, it would be an Iraqi police station. The 1st Armored Division had become quite adept at these operations. A leapfrog forward from one COP to another suitable site in a lawless neighborhood, and the ground pounders would seize a building or part of a block that would make a suitable base. As soon as it was secured, a stream of combat engineers would arrive with everything from Texas and Alaska barriers to Porta-John's, sandbags, concrete, and communications gear. As the SEALs looked out for their fellow Americans from these sorts of overwatch positions, the engineers would turn the buildings into a secured compound. From the new base, the Coalition troops stationed there would live with the locals and patrol the neighborhood until al-Qaida's presence receded further into the city like a sanguine tide.

One block at a time, one neighborhood converted and secured. Al-Qaida fought for every inch of the city—they'd declared Ramadi the capital of the Islamic Caliphate of Iraq in October 2006. This would be where they made their stand, and they would stop at nothing to secure victory.

And men like Adam? Every time they pulled the trigger, they had to write a report justifying why.

As he settled down for his first watch that morning, Adam reflected on his encounter with the Iraqi family. He was a two-tour veteran of Iraq. He'd been in firefights large and small. In each, he fought to protect his brother SEALs, or his fellow Americans. For him, that was what the war here was about—keeping Americans alive so they could return to their families.

Now it was something more. Everyone said we could not kill our way to victory in Ramadi. Al-Qaida always found more bodies to throw into the fight, and sooner or later we were going to leave this forsaken place.

The only answer was families like the one downstairs. They needed protection. Their spirit and their belief that this nightmare would end only with America's help had to be preserved until the Iraqis themselves could face al-Qaida on more than even terms.

The Americans went into the Iraqi police station without incident. The engineers came out with all their equipment and gear—their COP in a Can—and set up the force protection. Another neighborhood saved from al-Qaida's clutch. At least for now. The inevitable counterattack had yet to materialize.

Days later, when Blue Element left the apartment and returned to Camp Lee, Adam sat down at his computer. He hated computers. He'd rather be stacking seabags than writing e-mails and had never gotten into games or video consoles. He'd spent his youth out in the woods with his pal Justin, hunting with their Rugers at first, later with bows. That's the life he wanted again.

But what will tomorrow bring?

Adam brought up his e-mail account and pecked out a note to his mother back home in small-town Illinois. He thought of home, the church he'd attended until he left for the Navy and how his mom still attended it regularly. He wrote about the family he'd met and asked her to put the old man, his wife and children into the church prayer list that Sunday.

Their salvation would be our victory.

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Al-Qaida's Graveyard

The Iraqis worked under the summer sun, seemingly oblivious to the stench. They'd dug out the remains of the soccer field's turf to find the bodies piled, one atop the other. Most had been tortured before being dumped at the stadium. Some had their genitals cut off and shoved into their mouths, others were found beheaded or beaten so badly their arms, legs, and skulls were broken.

Guarded by Iraqi Police and American troops, “Operation Graveyard” disinterred dozens of corpses and laid them to rest elsewhere in the city. This stadium, used as an al-Qaida dumping ground for years, had long since become a place of death and despair, a symbol of Ramadi's fall from one of the urban jewels in Iraq to a modern-day Stalingrad.

This gruesome excavation was a symbolic, pivotal step toward normalization after four bitter years of warfare. In January 2007, attacks on American forces in Ramadi averaged about thirty-five per day. The snipers on both sides continued to play their shadowy roles, and both sides inflicted casualties on each other nearly every day.

Yet after the Christmas Eve firefight, Adam and his fellow SEALs rarely saw the enemy again during overwatch missions and patrols. The population had turned its support to the Coalition so staunchly that if their tips didn't result in immediate action, the people sometimes took matters into their own hands.

In one neighborhood, an al-Qaida sniper opened fire on an American patrol. The local civilians figured out where he was before the Americans did. They stormed his hide, dragged him into the street, and beat him senseless until the U.S. patrol arrived and detained him.

Those incidents, unheard of a few months ago, became increasingly common through the first months of 2007. In neighborhoods all over Ramadi, the local imams and sheiks banded together in what became known as the Anbar Awakening movement, a grassroots tribal revolt against al-Qaida led by a pro-American sheik. They sent tribesmen to join the police forces, despite the heavy casualties the Iraqi cops incurred from suicide bombers and vehicle-borne IEDs as they manned checkpoints in their districts or on the city's outskirts. The police, once considered little more than a corrupt armed mob, helped turn the tide in the city. Their resolve stiffened even as they suffered terrible blows from al-Qaida attacks.

The SEALs carried out kill or capture missions throughout the next three months, bagging bomb makers and financiers. The locals became so helpful that they sometimes led the SEAL team directly to the door of known bad guys. In one case, an informant knew the exact apartment where an al-Qaida sniper was living. He directed the kill or capture element to the complex, which was less than a quarter of a mile from a Coalition COP. The SEALs gained entry into his home so quickly that the gunman was caught completely by surprise. When the Americans reached his bedroom, they found the sniper having sex. He was so intent on his lady friend that he never heard the SEALs until they dragged him off the bed. Inside the apartment, the entry team found weapons, bomb-making material, and ammunition.

Another enemy sharpshooter removed from the equation.

Success piled on success. After that al-Qaida gunman was pulled from under his sheets, the SEALs never again took fire around COP Eagle's Nest. Since October, the team had played a key role in degrading al-Qaida's midlevel leadership network. Other teams went after the senior leaders with equal effect. Combined with the mood on the street turning against the Jihadists, and the rise of the Iraqi Police force, al-Qaida's resistance in Ramadi crumbled by late spring 2007. By then, Adam and the rest of SEAL Team Five had packed up and headed for home.

At the end of June, a force of some sixty insurgents tried to infiltrate into the city to reignite the fighting. Locals saw them coming and tipped off the Iraqi Police. They in turn warned the Americans in the area, who set up an ambush and wiped the force out. After that engagement, al-Qaida virtually gave up on Ramadi. What had once been named the capital of their murderous caliphate now became the safest city in Iraq. That summer U.S. forces did not sustain a single attack for eighty straight days.

Almost every tribe had joined the Awakening by that summer. The population's decisive turn made all the difference, and despite al-Qaida's attempts to stop the movement by assassinating its leadership, they had lost their grip on the Iraqi people. By the fall of 2007, to be a Jihadist in Ramadi was a death sentence. The locals sought them out, and falling into civilian Iraqi hands was a far worse fate than capture by the Americans. Revenge killings finished off the stragglers.

The caliphate had failed. By making their stand in Ramadi, al-Qaida shot its bolt. Though there remained pockets of fierce resistance throughout Anbar Province and elsewhere in Iraq, the Battle of Ramadi crippled the enemy. Never again would the Jihadists threaten Iraq or the American effort in the country. But like so many other crucial campaigns in military history, it had been a near run thing.

The Marine, Army, and special operation snipers played a key role in ensuring ultimate victory. Month after month, they proved the effectiveness of precision marksmanship in a city battle. Urban warfare is the most intense and casualty-producing form of conventional warfare, and Ramadi illustrated that. Yet the snipers showed that they could affect the battlefield in significant ways. When the Rules of Engagement changed, curtailing the full use of the firepower available to the Coalition, snipers became even more important. Their precision fire saved countless civilian lives, and that was where the real battle in Ramadi was won. Once the civilian population came over to the Coalition's side, al-Qaida's days in the city were numbered.

Snipers also saved the lives of countless American and Iraqi soldiers as well. In the worst days of 2005 and 2006, almost every patrol that sortied into the city took fire. It was often impossible to determine who was shooting at the patrols and from where. In the ruins of the city, there were just too many hiding places, and al-Qaida fighters were masters of camouflage and concealment.

Those losses were mitigated by the presence of friendly overwatching snipers. From their perches atop buildings or in their upper stories, they could scan ahead of the patrols and help keep them safe by taking out threats as they developed. Other times their eyes on the battlefield provided vital intelligence, kept patrols from walking into ambushes, and stopped many an IED-laying team from completing their missions.