Thunder Run (9 page)

Schafer was having difficulty breathing. He told Martz he was about to black out.

“No! No!” Martz yelled. “Keep talking!”

Martz was no medical expert, but he knew enough to keep an injured person alert to stave off shock. He told Schafer that he was headed back to cold beer and cute nurses and a hot shower. Schafer said, “Sounds good to me,” and he managed a weak smile.

Sullivan found a pressure dressing for Shipley's head wound, then found something to bandage Schafer. He yanked Schafer to his feet in order to get his combat vest off and cut off his uniform. Schafer bellowed in pain. Sullivan got a bandage on him, tied it with a strip of cloth torn from Schafer's uniform, and set him back down.

Martz squeezed Schafer's hand again, and he squeezed Shipley's, too. He felt fairly useless, and he regretted that he had not taken the time back in the States to enroll in a combat lifesaver's course. All he could do now was to keep squeezing and talking, squeezing and talking, as the carrier lumbered toward the airport.

Behind the PC, in Charlie One One, Gruneisen and his crewmen listened later to First Sergeant Mercado trying desperately to guide the track to the airport and a waiting medevac helicopter. The vehicles in the column were still being pounded by small arms and RPGs, but they managed to swing over to one side to let the first sergeant's track speed past them. But once Mercado reached the airport, no one could tell him over the radio how to reach the tarmac where the helicopters had landed. Mercado described a long wall that was blocking his way. He kept asking how to get around it. Nobody could tell him.

Later, listening to Mercado's pleas over the radio, Gruneisen and his men were frantic. They were overcome by feelings of helplessness and rage. Shipley and Schafer were hurt and bleeding—and nobody could find the medevacs. They rolled on, listening and wondering if their bleeding crewmates would ever reach the helicopters.

In the lead tank, Lieutenant Ball was approaching the airport entrance. He and his gunner were still firing at dismounts in the tree lines and on the overpasses. They were almost home free. Ball was relieved that they had not encountered more obstacles. All the platoon leaders had been warned by the S-2, the intelligence guys, to be prepared for mines or obstructions, but it seemed to Ball that the Iraqis had been caught by surprise and had not been expecting a column of tanks and armor to roll right up the main highway into Baghdad.

So far, all the Iraqis had thrown at them in the way of obstacles were a few RPG rounds wrapped in rags. They tossed them onto the highway, apparently believing that they would somehow explode and disable the American vehicles. The tanks and Bradleys rolled right over them, setting off muffled explosions, like polite little belches. The tracks lumbered on, unscathed.

At the final overpass before the airport, Ball saw something in the highway. As he rolled closer, he realized that the Iraqis had dragged concrete highway dividers across the westbound lanes. They were the kind of dividers he had seen on American interstates—what some people called Jersey dividers, after the New Jersey Turnpike. The dividers were about three and a half feet tall and perhaps a foot thick, with a broad, tapered base. Enemy dismounts and RPG teams were dug into fighting holes on either side of the columns supporting the overpass, and on the bridge were more gunmen. It was an ambush.

Ball slowed and radioed back a description of the barriers to Captain Hilmes, who asked if there was any way to bypass them. Ball looked again. The barriers were arranged in solid rows, blocking access to the shoulders on either side of the highway. It was a fairly effective blockade, a rare indication that someone in the Iraqi military actually had come up with something approaching a defensive strategy. Whether the blockage was designed to keep the Americans from breaking out of the airport to the west, or to block the Rogue battalion's charge from the east, was anybody's guess.

“There's no bypass,” Ball told Hilmes. “I'm going to ram it and try to create a lane.” He thought the tank's seven-ton plow, with its protruding lip and massive steel teeth, might hit the obstacle with such force that it would separate the barriers and allow the tank to crash on through. It seemed to him that the situation dictated brute force and a direct approach. Ball ordered his driver to speed up to forty kilometers per hour and look for “a soft spot.” It was an odd choice of words, but it was the only way Ball could think of to describe any potentially vulnerable section on a hunk of solid concrete. The driver hollered back, “Sir, there's no soft spot. I'm just going to ram it.”

The gunmen at the barricade opened up with small arms and RPGs. Ball's driver revved the engine and the tank chugged forward. Ball and the rest of the crew were buttoned up inside the turret, hatches locked. Everybody reached for something solid to brace against. The tank's front plow smacked into the barrier at forty kilometers per hour and pitched up. The tank rode up the obstacle, plunged forward, and went airborne. It sailed across the barrier and slammed down with a tremendous jolt. The crewmen rattled around inside the turret. In the driver's hole, the driver's helmet flew off. The plow was bent backward and the end connector on one of the tracks was hanging by two bolts, but the tank survived. Ball was astonished; he had never entirely believed the direct approach would work so well. The driver retrieved his helmet and kept the tank moving forward.

The Iraqis stopped firing, transfixed by the sight of a seventy-ton tank sailing through the air. Then they opened fire again, trying in vain to stop the column. But Ball's tank was pulling away and rolling toward the airport, bullets pinging off its hull. The impact of Ball's tank had sheared off the top of one of the barriers. That provided a lower obstacle for Gibbons. He was now commanding Sergeant Booker's tank equipped with its own mounted plow. Alpha One Three reached ramming speed and collided with the barrier, pitching up and over and slamming back down. The huge machine righted itself, the tracks biting into the pavement, and the tank chugged on toward the airport.

In the third tank, Specialist Joseph Kalinowski had watched from his driver's hole as both tanks in front of him sailed into and over the obstacle. He had been certain that the tanks' tracks were going to snap. He was amazed that they had held together. The barrier was being ground down, and it was by now only a couple of feet high, but Kalinowski was still worried about popping a track, even with a plow up front to absorb most of the impact. It would be just his luck, he thought, for his track to pop, leaving the tank disabled and surrounded by enemy gunmen.

In the commander's hatch, Sergeant First Class Gaines briefly considered flattening the rest of the barrier with a main gun round, but he knew there wasn't time. The entire column was starting to bunch up behind him. He ordered Kalinowski to hit the barrier. Kalinowski sped up to about sixteen kilometers per hour and slammed into the concrete. He hit the brakes and the tank rolled up and over. It landed with a heavy thud, driving Kalinowski's helmet into the driver's hatch and popping it open. The helmet flew off. Kalinowski was dizzy and disoriented, and it took him a few seconds to get his bearings. Then he threw his helmet back on, slammed the hatch shut, gunned the engines, and pulled away.

The barrier was slowly being ground to dust. Each subsequent tank pulverized what remained of the obstacle, and soon the Bradleys and the M113s were grinding and crunching over the mess, harassed by small-arms fire. They were now less than a kilometer from the airport entrance.

Lieutenant Ball was in the stretch run now, clanking toward the airport entrance, still under fire, when his gunner screamed, “Identify tanks!” He had spotted the outlines of tanks through his thermals, the hot engines lighting up in a bright green glow.
Now what?
Intelligence officers had warned tank commanders that some Iraqi units still had functioning tanks under their commands. Ball knew he was within the kill range of a Soviet-made T-72. He ordered his gunner to prepare to fire, then radioed Captain Hilmes: “Contact! Tanks—direct front!”

Hilmes was starting to wonder if this thunder run was ever going to end. “Can you identify if they're enemy or friendly?” he asked. He told Ball to take his time and make a positive identification.

Over the net, Schwartz asked the same question. Schwartz's first thought had been,
So
that's
where they've been hiding their tanks.
But now he was more concerned about friendly fire than a few outdated relics of Soviet armor. With Ball so close to the airport, Schwartz was terrified that he might accidentally blow away one of the First Brigade's Abrams tanks. “Don't pull a trigger until you confirm!” he ordered.

As Ball rolled closer, he could see through his sights that the tanks were low, sleek, and painted desert tan. They were Abrams tanks—the lead element of the First Brigade, manning the airport entrance. Ball took a deep breath. He ordered the gunner to lift the main gun tube to alert the First Brigade tankers to friendly tanks approaching.

Farther back in the column, the battalion operations officer, Major Donovan, had just made radio contact with the First Brigade battalion at the airport entrance to warn that the column was heading in. Donovan was relieved to hear the familiar voice of the operations officer from one of the First Brigade battalions, Major Rod Coffey, an old buddy from a previous assignment.

Ball's tank rumbled on, its gun tube raised. From the tree lines, and from more bunkers along the highway, enemy gunfire intensified. As the tank passed through the airport entrance, past the First Brigade tanks, the gunfire stopped abruptly. Each passing tank and Bradley had the same experience—a final, furious burst of automatic rifle fire and RPGs, then silence. It was like turning off a faucet. They were home free.

On the airport tarmac, the crew of Charlie One One popped the hatch and came out for air. Their faces were smeared with black grime from the fire. Their eyes were red and burning, and the backs of their throats were coated with the fumes of seared chemicals. There was a foul, bitter taste in their mouths—a taste they would remember for months afterward. But as miserable as they felt, they felt worse about Booker, and about Shipley and Schafer. Lieutenant Gruneisen pulled everybody together and ordered the crew to account for all sensitive items, especially those they had tossed on the first sergeant's vehicle or had been retrieved from Highway 8 by the first sergeant's crew. In addition to their personal gear, they had lost their sponson box, the big metal box that held all the tools needed to maintain and repair the tank. They felt defeated and bereft.

The lieutenant, Diaz, and Hernandez went to find out about Shipley and Schafer; they had heard over the radio that the first sergeant had finally located the medevac Black Hawk helicopters after Lieutenant Ball had the other lead vehicles clear the barricades. The three men jogged across the tarmac to the ambulance exchange point. Tanks and Bradleys were still pouring in from the highway. Diaz was shocked at the sight of them. It was the first time he realized just how fierce the fight had been. Every vehicle was shot up with dents and holes and jagged scrapes that peeled the tan paint back. They were leaking oil and hydraulic fluid and trailing smoke from burning bustle racks. A couple of tracks were streaked with blood. There was shattered glass from the windshields of cars that had rammed the tanks and thousands of expended brass ammunition casings that sparkled in the morning sunlight. Diaz ran past the bullet-pocked medic tracks and saw Sergeant Booker's body bag, still and lonesome in the deep shade of the open hatch.

They found the Black Hawk medevacs. One chopper had just taken off with Schafer aboard. The medics had Shipley on a stretcher, strapping him down for the Black Hawk ride to the mobile surgical hospital tent at the brigade operations center eighteen kilometers south of Baghdad. Gruneisen ran up and tried to talk to Shipley. The private's arm was still bleeding and his eye was covered with a bulky bandage. He was conscious but groggy. Gruneisen asked how he was doing, and Shipley mumbled something. Gruneisen grabbed Shawn Sullivan, the young medic, and looked him in the eye. He asked about the condition of his two soldiers. He wanted an honest answer. Sullivan said, “They're both stable. They're gonna be all right.” The three tankers walked back to their tank and collapsed in the shade of the turret. Gruneisen waited for a wave of emotion, something like relief or despair or sorrow. But he didn't feel a thing.

The rest of the column was rumbling in and lining up, motor pool–style, on the tarmac. The crews piled out, their Nomex jumpsuits dark with sweat. Some of them searched the scorched bustle racks for undamaged boxes of water. Caught up in the battle, they had forgotten to drink, and now they were severely dehydrated. They had lost all track of time. Some of the crewmen thought they had been fighting for most of the day; they thought it was mid-afternoon. Actually, it was mid-morning. The battle had lasted just over two hours and twenty minutes.

On the third tank in, Joe Bell was drained and exhausted, but he got out and searched the bustle rack for the toy dog his wife had sent him. He found it, slightly scorched but still upright. He squeezed the toy, and out came the silly, sweet strains of the pop tune “Puppy Love.”

On Alpha One Three, Gibbons and Gilliam and Hofer were badly shaken. The stress of reconfiguring the tank after Booker had gone down, of trying to fight through relentless enemy attacks with a three-man crew, had kept them focused on the mission. They had been compelled to focus, to function, in order to stay alive. They had not had the luxury of thinking about Sergeant Booker and what it meant not to have him beside them anymore. Now, in the relative calm and quiet of the tarmac, the terrible reality of what had happened crushed them. Gilliam was in the worst shape. For a long time, he couldn't get out of the tank. He sat inside the turret, head down, staring, crouched in the dark with Sergeant Booker's blood splattered everywhere. After a while he climbed out and sat on the tarmac and smoked one cigarette after another. He would not feel whole again until much later, after he had talked to the battalion chaplain and then, much later, after he had relived every sight, sound, and smell during therapy sessions with the army shrinks. He decided right there on the tarmac that he was not going to reenlist, and he wasn't going back into Baghdad.