Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper (30 page)

To most Americans, the Iraqi flag was just a flag, but this one was a relic from another era. Its design had been the banner of Iraq since 1963, but just before the Gulf War in 1991, Saddam Hussein added the
takbir
of “Allah Akbar” (God is great) in green Arabic script, between the stars, in an effort to portray himself as a leader of all Muslims. Unknowingly, Casey had picked up a flag that was considered a pre-Saddam symbol, a fact that was very important to Iraqis. Without much thought other than having a neat souvenir, he rolled it up, stuffed it into his backpack, and promptly forgot about it. That flag would be unfurled a few days later in a historic moment.

The morning’s mission began with the Bravo tanks and Kilo infantry heading for a suspected chemical factory while the India grunts set
up in a blocking position and cleared neighborhoods to the east. The military side of the operation was relatively routine, because our coordination was flawless and we all knew our jobs.

The problem was that we were no longer out in the desert or going through smaller towns. We were entering the congested suburbs of Baghdad itself, and Iraqis streamed out of the buildings and into the streets to watch us pass, most of them waving and smiling. Some even danced with joy. This was the kind of welcome that we had been told to expect, but after our previous experiences, it was unnerving. Our armored vehicles ground toward our objective without incident, and we kept studying the cheering crowd for signs of trouble. We wanted to join the celebration of freedom, but we didn’t want to be ambushed or sniped at, or to kill any more civilians.

There was some talk later that the mission had been assigned mainly to give McCoy’s battalion something to do, and there was no doubt that the Boss was impatient. He was drawn to danger spots as if by magnetism, and when he popped out of his Humvee to enter a large building that was taller than most of those surrounding it, Sergeant Major Dave Howell put his big arm around my shoulders and told me quietly, “If he keeps this up, he is going to get himself killed. Go watch out for him.”

We followed McCoy inside what had obviously once been some sort of government building and found that looters had beaten us to the place and had stripped it bare, from the high ceilings to the floor, leaving behind only piles of junk and a musty emptiness. We ran up to the roof, and Baghdad spread out before us like a dusty checkerboard. Buildings lay out from our position at every angle, like spokes in a wheel, and parks and open spaces broke up the grids of streets. Automobiles were driving about, and people were outdoors in vast numbers. Were we going to have to fight through this?

I found a good vantage point in a rooftop corner, behind the ever-present tiara wall that every building in Iraq seemed to wear, and settled in. Other Marines spread out as I glassed the area and watched waves of civilians but saw no discernible soldier types. Maybe, I thought, we had broken their will to fight after all. I told the boys to stay sharp despite the whooping and hollering out there in the streets. As if to emphasize the danger, only a few minutes passed before we got into one of the strangest firefights of the war.

The colonel had gone back down into the building and called up to tell me it was time to drive over and check India Company, two miles away. I hurried down and linked up with him at the Humvees parked just outside the compound, and as we were saddling up, the sharp sounds of a short, vicious battle erupted inside the courtyard through which we had just passed. I had my rifle ready, but the high wall prevented me from supporting the Marines doing the firing, and by the time I popped around the corner, three Iraqi fighters lay sprawled dead about fifty meters away. Two had loaded rocket-propelled grenade launchers on their shoulders, and the third man carried a short AKM automatic rifle, the preferred weapon of Saddam’s Special Forces.

Where the hell had they come from? This area was supposed to be secure.

An Amtrac sergeant needing to answer a call of nature had gone to the corner of the compound, which was covered by a layer of smelly garbage and sludge that indicated the Iraqis had also used it as a latrine. Luckily, with the combat rule of never letting anyone go anywhere unprotected, his gunner on the Amtrac was keeping an eye on him. When the Marine had his pants down, these three jokers crawled out of the slime and mire only four feet away, apparently thinking everyone had left the compound. Surprise was total, and the
Marine took off, yelling for his Amtrac mate to open fire, which he did with a 7.62 mm machine gun, and other Marine grunts quickly came up and joined the shooting. The Iraqis were killed before they could get off a shot. Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good, because those fedayeen nuts could definitely have done some damage.

McCoy came into the courtyard in a fury. To Darkside Six, the otherwise laughable incident meant that his battalion was getting sloppy, and he ordered Kilo to search the entire compound thoroughly again; then he dispatched the Bravo tankers to scour the surrounding area. The laughing, waving civilians parted quickly at the sound of gunfire and the sight of suddenly grim Marines who once again were wearing their war faces.

Sure enough, only ten minutes later, the tanks kicked over a hornets’ nest, and the blasts of their big guns shook the streets as a duel opened with Iraqi troops protected in a strong bunker complex. An ambush point had been built right in the middle of an urban area. They obviously were not as concerned as we were about civilian casualties.

With Panda driving like mad, we were rushing toward the battle area in our Humvee until I once again realized the lack of wisdom in getting caught between Abrams tanks and whatever it was they were trying to kill. Instead, I spotted some Marines on a highway overpass and yelled for the Bear to get us the hell over there. He bounced the curb, churned into lower gear, regained speed, and power-slid the truck right up against the walkway to the overpass, as if he didn’t want me to have to walk far. We ran to the crest of the bridge.

A Marine was shooting at distant targets in the same bunker complex the Bravo tanks were attacking. “Staff Sergeant,” he said, “boy, am I glad you’re here. I’ve killed three of them already, but they’re too far out for me to hit with this piece of shit.”

“How far?” I put my rifle against the metal railing and braced hard into it.

“About eight hundred yards.” He was almost at the maximum range of his M16A4 rifle, a newer version of the standard infantry weapon. It had a low-power scope that increases accuracy but not distance.

“I’d say that piece of shit is doing you pretty good.” The kid had done well. “Walk me onto where they are.”

He pointed, then fired some rounds to kick up dirt in the target area. Through my scope, that was as good as a flashing neon sign. I glassed onto the bunkers made of concrete, logs, and sandbags and through a shifting haze of dust and debris saw a lot of enemy soldiers bobbing up and down, firing and dodging around. The Bravo tanks and the grunts were already putting the fear of Allah into them, and the poor souls had no idea that a sniper was joining the hunt. With no time to use the laser, I estimated the range, dialed in the dope, seven plus four and three minutes right, and settled down to work.

I centered up on the first target, about a half mile away, and squeezed the trigger, starting the familiar pattern of firing and reloading with machinelike quickness, coming down on another target as soon as I fired a shot.
Bang, hit. Bang, hit. Bang, miss. Bang, hit. Bang, miss. Bang, miss. Fuck. Bang, hit.
Four hits, three misses, one obscenity, and it was over.

Seven shots for four targets is a terrible ratio for a sniper, but of all the shooting I did in this war, I considered this the best. The fluid battlefield was cluttered, visibility was terrible, it was hard to read firing lines, the targets were moving quickly and at crazy angles, and I had no trained observer to call the shots or targets. It was slapstick sniping at its best, and I loved it. I had literally shot away the lingering shadow of guilt from the bridge.

When the bunker complex was cleared, we set up a defensive perimeter a block and a half behind it, brought up the Main and the combat trains, and settled in for the evening.

Casey and I shared some MREs and tried to guess what might still be ahead. After the ambush today, we knew there were plenty of bad guys left out there who did not intend to let us go strolling through downtown Baghdad. Tomorrow morning, the entire city could be rising up against us, and we all again had visions of
Black Hawk Down
and of the dead Army Rangers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. We all knew the story and understood its significance.

But I had been in Somalia and knew there were huge differences between the two places. This was not Mogadishu, and we could handle this town. We had a veteran battalion supported by other aggressive Marine and Army units and all the air power we might need. “Not this time,” I told Casey. “Not us. They fuck with the Bull and they get the horns.” I slept well that night, with no visits from any acquaintances at all.

The battalion staff had a dawn meeting in a real conference room inside a captured headquarters of the Republican Guard, and Colonel McCoy and his planners spread out maps of the built-up area we were about to enter. The entire 1st Marine Division was now across the Tigris, piling ever more stress upon the reeling Iraqi defenders.

Desertion was decimating the enemy forces, and there was little command and control over whatever remained of the Iraqi army. While the regulars might have packed it in and made a quick return to civilian life, the fedayeen and remnants of the Ba’ath Party militia were still around, and we anticipated that today’s fighting could be as hard as anything we had yet faced.

Red circles on the staff’s plastic map overlays marked important buildings in our zone, but reaching them would be a slow and deliberate process. We might have to clear every building, one by one, to get to our prime objectives, and while such a leapfrog tactic would be effective, it could take forever.

On top of that, disturbing news had come from the Jackals, who told us that they were concerned that their colleagues lodged in the hotels of downtown Baghdad might have been taken hostage by
the collapsing Iraqi military. They worried that some journalists might be executed.

While the staff laid out the attack plan, those of us in the Main decided that the bright new morning would be a fine time to wash up and do our laundry. This time we had an opportunity to do a really good scrub instead of the hasty canteen showers and baby-wipe baths that we had endured over the past weeks, and we got busy cleaning our bodies, clothes, and weapons. We stuffed big plastic trash bags into cardboard boxes, then poured laundry powder and water into one and clear water into another and proceeded to scrub. Cans of water were set aside for dousing ourselves in open showers.

That’s how McCoy found us, and since he was as filthy as everyone else, he also deemed washing to be a good idea. We parted to give the colonel some space, and Darkside Six stripped down without hesitation, sloshed water over his head, and wrung out his clothes in the buckets. Marines in the field don’t stand much on ceremony. He was standing buck naked in the middle of a parking lot, dripping wet, when he gave me my next orders.

“From here on out it is going to be pure MOUT,” he told me, referring to the specialized Mobile Operations in Urban Terrain for which we had trained so hard during ProMet. We were going to be knocking on, or down, a lot of Baghdad doors, and he said, “I want you to integrate a Battalion Sniper Operation to support it. You can use all the snipers that you need, but leave some at the company level.” Music to my ears. Sniper teams! I had been waiting the whole war for this.

I expected some pretty nasty fighting downtown, and being able to do some prior planning instead of having to react to the changing
battle could put my killers out where we could do the most good. I put on my wet and clammy uniform, which would dry in ten minutes, and took off for the conference room to find out exactly where we were going, how we wanted to get there, and what sort of resistance was expected.

There was nothing in established sniper doctrine to cover such an attack, so I had to wing it as the operations officer showed me the overall plan. Two major roads, separated by a distance that ranged from five hundred to a thousand meters, forked off from the starting point, then came back together, almost in a diamond shape. India and Kilo infantry companies would penetrate the area in their armored Amtracs and Humvees; then their grunts would start clearing the buildings while the Bravo tanks went up a middle road.

I leaned over the maps, calling on the hard-earned lessons of every combat situation I had ever been in, particularly the urban fights, such as in Somalia. I knew how to fight in cities. We could do this.

I first set up a picket fence of observation zones, using three sniper teams, and put other snipers with specific units for close-in support. Using their scout training, the teams would sneak into the planned zone of combat, get to some rooftops, and radio real-time intelligence to the company commander below, call in artillery fire on any strong resistance, and take down any targets of opportunity. Then the infantry companies would plunge through, and when the grunts passed the snipers, my boys would jump back into the lead position.

The goal was to keep at least one team in front of the advancing infantry and provide interlocking fire between the teams. With any luck, this could be a shooting gallery.

The problem was that my sniper teams would have to penetrate uncleared terrain during daylight hours. To overcome this, I would create a stronghold at the initial point of the attack, manned by all three teams, plus a borrowed team and two extra armored Humvees given to us just for this fight. Once the battle was under way, the teams would disperse and start jumping along the front.

As a final detail, I gave myself a bonus by making absolutely certain, through McCoy’s direct orders to me, that Casey would be freed from the confines of the headquarters and at my side during the attack. Bob could not trump us this time. It was not just a gesture of friendship but an added margin of safety for me. Casey was totally familiar with the sniper drill by now, he didn’t panic when under fire, and with his rank and command skills he could deal with other troops on the ground and other unit commanders by radio during a fight. Few people held all of those qualifications.