The Last Punisher: A SEAL Team THREE Sniper's True Account of the Battle of Ramadi (14 page)

For a moment, I just stood there, wondering what the hell had just happened and why there was such an excruciating pain in my foot. I looked down and saw the night-vision-green image of the tip of the nail sticking out of the top of my boot. Somehow, I managed to muffle the instinct to scream obscenities at the top of my lungs. Behind me, the rest of the guys were about to come over the wall. I exhaled hard and let out a muffled grunt. I trained my infrared laser on the front door to the first house and then slowly pulled my foot off the nail while the other SEALs made their way over. It took only a second to slide the metal out of the flesh, past the bones and thousands of nerve endings, but it felt like the longest second of my life. It was hard to focus on anything other than the horrible pain, but I did not have the luxury of feeling sorry for myself. I was on target and it was time to move.

BTF it the fuck up, Dauber. You’re a Frogman.

Our raid force was eight SEALs and four Jundis, and the others
came over one by one, each picking up a field of fire until everyone was over. We knelt in the wall’s shadow, ready to traverse the fifty yards to the house’s front door. At the same time, the other half of our platoon and four more Jundis were infiltrating the next compound over, about 150 yards away. The plan was to breach and clear two compounds simultaneously. We moved up and set security, covering all threat points while the breach team moved up. I trained my gun on the door, peeling past the hinge side to cover the side that opens. Chris peeled with me, falling in behind me to cover my back. We called up Squirrel, our breacher, and he moved up to put the strip charge on the door. With the charge in place, Chris and I rolled back to the minimum safe distance, a little past a window on the front of the house. We took knees and waited, scanning our surroundings. He glanced at me and gestured with a hand as if to ask, “What’s up?” I was wiping blood off my mouth. I realized I must have bitten my lip when I pulled my foot off that nail. It wasn’t a little blood, and the shine of it on night vision had caught his attention. I waved him off, back to scanning the scene.
Tell you all about it later,
I thought.

At this point in the op, communication and timing are everything. The plan was to blow the doors to both houses at the exact same time. The element of surprise is crucial on an op like this. Luke called it over the radio: “Breach team one set.” Within a few moments, we got the report from team 2: “Breach team two set.” Luke counted it down over the radio: “Three, two, one, execute.”

When something like this goes down the way it’s supposed to, it’s nothing short of spectacular. Two assault teams, two locations, two explosions, two simultaneous works of art.

When it goes wrong, it can be a shit show.

Chris and I heard the “Three, two, one, execute” call over the radio and braced for the breach. Behind me, Squirrel pressed the firing button on the charge, and nothing happened. At the other compound, team 2’s charge blew as expected. Loudly. Conspicuously. We waited
there, giving each other looks of
what the . . . ?
as precious seconds ticked by. It quickly became apparent that Squirrel’s firing device had been jarred loose, probably on the hop over the wall. Murphy’s law applies to Teamguys, too. He started fumbling with it furiously.

“Come on, Squirrel,” Luke hummed over the radio. “Hurry up, Squirrel. Muj is waiting for us, Squirrel.”

When I was back in SEAL Qualification Training (SQT) in Niland doing a training block, I’d struck up a conversation with a salty old chief in Golf Platoon at the weapons cleaning station one day. He looked like the badass from the movie
The Boondock Saints
with his ragged white hair and evil eyebrows. He had a tattoo of Jesus on his right forearm and “666” on his left.
Conflict makes you stronger
, I thought. As I extracted the bolt to my M4, he quietly asked me, “What is the best type of ambush?”

I thought for a second. “The one that you win?”

He smiled. “Exactly,” he said. “You want to sneak up on those motherfuckers like a sleeping baby. You have the arsenal to smash them into oblivion. Never give them a fucking chance and drop the fucking hammer.”

The muj have their chance here,
I thought, worrying about the failed breach. I could hear Squirrel, digging through his breacher pouch.
Come on, Squirrel,
I thought.
Find the nut.
I could sense him going through his points of performance. He was an experienced breacher and good at his job, but about twenty seconds passed before Squirrel went to a secondary firing device. We were in the most vulnerable part of an assault for much longer than we’d anticipated, and assault team 2 had already executed the breach, giving the enemy time to prepare. There’s a term in the military for the position we were in: hanging out like dog’s balls. After what seemed like an eternity, Squirrel pressed the detonator and finally blew the door.

It’s hard to describe the sound of a strip charge to someone who’s never been close to one when it detonates. The sound is one thing,
but it brings with it a concussion and back-blast that overwhelm your senses. Even at minimum safe distance, the explosion will rattle your teeth. I knew guys who wore ear protection in combat, but I didn’t like the idea of numbing any of my senses when we might encounter the enemy.

When the charge went off, I sprang from my position toward the door like a racehorse through the gates. I barely noticed the shower of glass that rained on me from the blown-out window above. I was first into the building. With a couple steps, I closed the distance between me and the jagged opening where the door had been moments before. My flashlight shone through the dust and hazy smoke as I cleared my sector of the room.

“Clear!” I yelled. Bob followed immediately with “All clear,” and I moved toward the nearest threat—a closed door at the far corner of the room. Behind me, I heard the Jundis streaming into the room at the end of the initial assault team.

Clearing a target is organized chaos. I’ve never been in a house fire, but I imagine it might be a lot like hitting a house after an explosive entry. You’re struggling not to cough or choke on the dust and smoke. You’re sweating and high on adrenaline, moving as quickly as you can while maintaining efficiency. You’re fighting the darkness and any obstacles in the room—bedding, furniture, rugs.

And muj.

The beginning of the op had gone south with the failed breach, but I felt like we were making up for it in the initial room. We moved with urgency, and I was ready to open the door and press the next room. I was about to reach out for the handle when a burst of gunfire exploded just to my right. Bob held me back by my gear. Someone had shot up the doorway I was about to open, about three or four shots. About six feet away, standing right in front of the door, one of our Jundis stood frozen. He’d attempted to roll the doorway when the gunfire erupted.

“CONTACT HALLWAY!” Bob yelled as we stood stalled for a second, thinking the bad guys were holed up on the other side of the door shooting at us. Suddenly, before I could pull out a grenade, the door opened and I saw into the room. An old man stood in the doorway with his hands up in surrender. Without even thinking, I hit the guy with a left hook and laid him out, deferring to my training: get in fast and kill whoever else is in there shooting at us. There’s a reason doorways are known in urban combat as “the fatal funnel.” It’s not the place you want to linger. We pushed into the room to clear. There was a woman on the floor with her hands up. I checked her for explosives, found none, and held on for a Jundi to come over and detain her. The room was clear. There was no resistance. No bad guys. Who the fuck shot at us? Within seconds, the call came that the rest of the compound was clear, as well.

I walked back toward the old man I laid out. He was wearing a man-dress, balding with a big nose and hairy ears. His nose was crooked and bleeding. Seeing this, I felt bad, but I also knew hitting him was the right call. I had just been shot at from inside the room where the man was, or so I thought. I looked up and saw the same Jundi who had been there before we went in—a skinny guy with a mustache. He was still frozen. It took a minute to put it together. The Jundi had stitched up the door right next to me with an accidental discharge, an AD. This kid had nearly killed Bob and me with his itchy trigger finger. His lieutenant walked up, cleared and safed his weapon, and proceeded to chew his ass in Arabic. I walked over to Moose and asked him what the lieutenant was saying.

“The kid’s done. The LT just told him he’s out of Special Missions Platoon.”

The guy looked dejected. I didn’t really care. I was pissed and uncomfortable with the fact that his ineptitude had almost killed me. I’d known Teamguys to be kicked out of units for having ADs. As far as I was concerned, they had deserved to lose their jobs and this Jundi did
too. I stalked outside to get some air. The target was secured, and the Jundis began to search the place for any sensitive items. I went to find my boys. Marc and Ryan had been on external security.

“What the fuck happened, man?” Marc asked.

“Jundi had an AD, man,” I said. “He stitched up the doorway right next to my face. Almost the end of Dauber and Uncle Bob. That’ll pucker you up.”

“Dude,” Ryan said, “you almost got killed by a Jundi. That would have really sucked.”

“Yeah. I’d say,” I replied.

That incident went down in our mental notebook of lessons learned. In addition to worrying that some of the Jundis might be muj, now we were a lot more worried about the possibility of being accidentally shot by them. SEALs pride themselves on being professionals, and weapons safety is vital. A minor mistake could turn into a catastrophe. There’s just no room in the Teams for anything less than the utmost respect for protocol when it comes to safety. The idea that I was going to be forced to go on target with guys who didn’t share the same commitment was unnerving. Since our orders prohibited us from running unilateral ops, we were required to bring Jundis on every patrol, DA, or sniper overwatch. We always had to bring at least a few with us. Before the Jundi’s AD, I always thought we were good as long as they stayed behind us. Now even that seemed questionable. From that point forward, we became a lot more selective about which Jundis we brought with us, and tried to be constantly aware of their position.

“The lemmings are going in front of me from now on,” I told Marc and Ryan. I climbed into Big Zev, noticing the pain in my left foot for the first time since the assault began an hour earlier. I made a mental note to find a round of antibiotics in the medical tent and order a tetanus shot. I smiled to myself, grimly. I guess a hole in the foot is better than a hole in the head.

“The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.”

—Theodore Roosevelt

S
OME DAYS IN
the desert blend in my memory, and I try to sort them out the best I can. I remember some ops clearly, while the details of others become blurry as the years pass.

Some things remain crisp and clean in my mind’s eye—things I could have lived without but carry with me as lessons I will teach my children.

We searched so many compounds for contraband, weapons, bomb-making materials. I couldn’t tell you how many. In a compound in Tway Village we found a garbage bag full of videotapes. There were dozens. We played one of the videos to determine whether it held sensitive information and found it contained footage of beheadings. Al Qaeda in Iraq was beheading Iraqis, military and civilian alike, who collaborated with the coalition forces. They filmed the beheadings for distribution.

It was the most savage thing I’ve ever seen.

By mid-June, our op tempo was in overdrive. We had started off slow with the Army and Corregidor, but once we got back to Sharkbase, we really started establishing ourselves in the battle space. The head shed kept us wound pretty tight, like a dog fighter who beats his dog to make it mean. We were working 24/7, save the occasional meal and few hours of sleep. Coming off a twenty-four- or forty-eight-hour sniper overwatch, we’d have a little time to refit before going straight into a DA mission, often for high-value targets. Any days without an op were filled training Jundis or on the range, keeping ourselves sharp.

There’s something about momentum. A unit’s performance in combat can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more you win, the more the higher-ups want to send you out to kill bodies. We had developed a reputation for efficiency, and our skills were in high demand from commanders all over Ramadi.

After successive sniper overwatch missions with the Appalachian boys from the Guard, I was ready for a breather. Jonny was ready to call his woman. As our trucks pulled into Sharkbase, I looked forward to some chow and sleep after seven days of continuous ops. After breaking down the vehicle’s heavy guns and putting away all the platoon gear and my own equipment, I had enough time to wash the stink off me, change into some PT gear, and grab some chow. I thought I’d be getting a well-deserved night’s sleep.

The war had other plans.

Back in our tent, Marc, Spaz, and Bob were already racked out. I was about to do the same when Tony popped into our tent.

“We’ve got an op. HVT. Op order in ten mikes. This is a big one,” he said in his clam-chowder accent.

“Roger that,” I said. Sleep is a crutch.

In the mission planning space, V briefed the op. V was our task unit’s senior enlisted advisor and a salty, tatted-up Frogman with chest and back hair like a sweater. He’d been in the Teams for almost twenty years and was amped to get after this mission. His op order was a quick PowerPoint. Our mission planning and prep had become like reflex, and the mission was a hostage rescue, one of our specialties as Teamguys. As V briefed the details, I fed off his energy. I was amped, too.

“This is a high-value individual being detained by AQI,” V said. “There are at least five well-armed military-aged males in the target building. Expect a fight. Get in there and hit ’em hard and fast. Leave no room for error. Get the target and get out. Your target is the son of Ramadi’s chief of police. Everyone in our AOR will be watching this one, and if we do this right, we will win some serious points with the locals—all that hearts-and-minds shit. Time to earn your paycheck, gents.”