The Last Punisher: A SEAL Team THREE Sniper's True Account of the Battle of Ramadi (15 page)

The mission was nothing new under the sun at this point. This was the muj’s MO. They kidnap people. They torture and terrorize people. They murder people. And sometimes they make the whole thing into a propaganda video. Nobody deserves that fate. I wanted the mission, and if we were lucky, we’d get to shoot all the thugs in the process. One of the important details of our mission was that we were to facilitate the rescue operation with the Jundi’s SMP. Given the high visibility, the head shed wanted to give the appearance of the Jundis having the lead. If successful, it would be a big publicity thing for them. In reality, we were doing the heavy lifting, as always.

The target building was a stand-alone house. There was an abandoned school about two hundred yards west and another building about three hundred yards south of the target. At our vehicle-staging point, our overwatch team rolled out to set up in the southern building. Chris was behind the scope with Biggles, Chucky, V, and a few straphangers (augmentees from outside our platoon) providing security
for our assault team. If any squirters tried to make a run for it during our approach or after the bullets started flying, Chris and our machine gunners would light them up.

I was on the assault team, holding at the vehicles and waiting for the launch. I looked over to the turret on Vehicle 2. Guy stood rigid on the twin 240s. I could tell he wasn’t amused with the fact that he wasn’t on the assault. Teamguys are fiercely competitive in general, and no one wants to be left out of the action. Everyone wants to be first through the door on target, first to pull the trigger, first to deliver the punishment. Guy was no different. I waved at him and then promptly flipped him the bird. The sting resonated through the humidity.

“Moving,” Squirrel passed over inter-squad comms, and the patrol moved out. We started moving toward the target in a dual-column formation, one squad on each side of the street. The assault element was twelve SEALs and about five Jundis. I still believed the Jundis were more of a liability than an asset, but this mission meant a lot to them.
Sweet Christ, it’s hot,
I thought. The temperature had jumped about fifteen degrees a few days before and just stayed there. Dead of night, and I was dripping sweat. My Oakleys were constantly fogging up, and the dense air amplified the smell from the shit creeks and the river. Ramadi in the summer was a perpetual state of full-body swamp ass.

We stacked along the side of the structure, and Bob moved up to place the strip charge on the door. When he hit the breach, it was loud as hell. The sound ripped through the neighborhood. It felt like it should have woken anyone within a few hundred meters, and it jolted my adrenaline as I moved into the house and started clearing. It happened fast. The house was a simple two-story deal with about eight rooms total, including the kitchen. As we cleared, I was in the zone. My senses were wire-tight. Around every corner and in every room, I expected hell and was ready to shoot it in the face. But there wasn’t a single bad guy in the building. It was empty.

Our Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance assets had eyes on the building up to the point of our launch, and their intel said five bad guys minimum. The lack of resistance inside the house meant the bad guys had to be on the roof. They were waiting for us up there, and they were going to hit us with everything they had once we hit the fatal funnel. We moved up the stairs to the rooftop entrance and stacked. I was the lead man, and I was ready for the fight of my life. I fully expected to be the first man through that door and into a hail of gunfire. As a Teamguy, you’re part of a culture that constantly emphasizes the mantra “It pays to be a winner.” There wasn’t a hint of hesitation in my body going onto that roof. I am the hunter; they are the prey. I will win. They will lose.

Bob gave me the signal, and I flung the door open and spilled onto the roof, seeing no threats in the green of my night vision. I continued on, peeling right around the back of the rooftop entrance while Bob peeled left. Bob turned the corner and held there. When I got around, I saw what Bob saw: an entire family sleeping on the roof. There were several women and children, and a few military-age males. One of the men got up, and Bob got to him first. The rest of the platoon flooded onto the rooftop behind us, and we subdued all the suspects.

I launched myself at one of the men. He began to wake and I noticed an AK-47 near him on the rooftop. With my weight on his back, I wrenched his wrists behind him and flex-cuffed them while another Teamguy secured the weapon. Around us, the rest of the military-age males were being flex-cuffed the same way.

Over intra-squad comms came the call, “PID.” During the op brief we’d all studied a picture of the police chief’s son to ensure no one accidentally shot him. He was there, on the rooftop, sleeping among the group. He was lanky with a big head and looked pretty scraggy in his black shirt and gray Adidas pants. He’d been roughed up a little but was otherwise unharmed. He looked nervous, but relieved.

After the mission and our enemy had been hyped so much, I actually
felt a little disappointed that we hadn’t fired a single shot. But our target was there and very much alive. Technically, the mission was a glaring success, despite killing zero muj.

Moose had directed the Jundis in the SSE, and I’d noticed a marked improvement in their performance. The women were screaming as we searched the house and detained the men. No doubt the experience is terrifying for the women, and Moose and the Jundis had gotten very good at corralling the women and completing a thorough search quickly. They found a bunch of bomb-making material, and we detained four military-age males.

Watching our Jundis, I actually felt proud of how far they’d come. Sure, many of them were apathetic and treated their job more like a hobby than a profession, but we’d trained them well and could see them becoming better soldiers. Of course, they still looked like a bunch of desert pirates. They all wore the same chocolate-chip-patterned cammies, but some had black helmets while others had green helmets. Some had night-vision goggles. Others duct-taped flashlights to their guns. One guy carried an absurdly huge Crocodile Dundee knife. We had a guy named Akmed who always wore a Hooters bandana tied around his head. I found this especially ironic, because the odds of Akmed ever finding himself in a Hooters were slim to none.

One thing I could never understand was how the Jundis were always checking out the women, no matter how old or unattractive. I turned to EOD Nick and said, “You see the way the Jundis are always checking out these old ladies? Fucking ugh, man.”

“Yeah, bro,” Nick said. “I get the impression these dudes would fuck a knot in a fence. I don’t think they get laid much.”

“Yo, how the fuck did these Iraqis sleep through us blowing the door off their house and then yelling like maniacs all the way up to the roof?” I asked.

“I have no idea, brother,”
Bob said, laughing. “I guess we just hit the hardest-sleeping muj in Ramadi tonight.”

We saw some shit in Ramadi. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by anything at that point. I just shook my head and laughed at the whole scene. Going back through it in my mind, I couldn’t help but feel a little let down that the entire op had gone off without a shot fired. V had hyped it up so much, and I had mentally prepared myself for an epic gunfight with some very bad dudes. I’m confident the rescue would have been successful even if we had met resistance, but the outcome speaks to the unpredictable nature of combat.

When we got back to the detention center, it became clear what a big deal the rescue was. To us, the op was a mostly uneventful takedown. But the police chief’s son had been missing for about two months, and the head shed put the SMP and their lieutenant front and center for a big photo op and press release. We got a quiet pat on the back, and the Jundis got the credit for a daring raid carried out with surgical efficiency. We didn’t mind staying in the shadows because we could see how much the mission meant to the Jundis and the locals. It felt good. We did a great thing, and I was glad the SMP’s lieutenant had his day in the sun. A product of the Iraqi Military Academy, he was a truly professional soldier who took his job seriously. The aftermath of that operation was a huge morale boost for the Jundis and many local Iraqis in general.

As the Punishers’ legend grew, so did the demand for our services. Delta Platoon worked exclusively with the Army, but we were like freelancers, bouncing all over Ramadi in support of both the Army and Marines, often stopping over at Sharkbase only long enough for our head shed to iron out the next op’s details and for us to refit. I went days at a time without showering or sleeping longer than a few hours’
stretch just because our workload didn’t allow it. When we did have the time to make an appearance at a chow hall at Camp Corregidor or Government Center, we could feel the eyes on us. We’d sit down to eat and pretend not to sense the soldiers and grunts glancing our way, whispering about the death-dealing SEALs in the back.

The work we did had a significant impact on the strategy in Ramadi and Anbar Province in general. Our mastery of sniper overwatches was highly effective in instilling fear in the enemy and deterring their movement and combat effectiveness. Direct-action ops were the surgical strike that we carried out when they least expected it. The combination of the two was a strong one-two punch in effectively hunting and capturing or killing the enemy. The insurgents feared us, and those who wanted peace were increasingly angered by Al Qaeda’s brutality. There was a sense of cautious security among the locals as coalition forces pressed farther into the city. Village elders and sheiks began to support our efforts to rid the city of insurgents. We were increasing security and priming the region for the “surge” of 2007.

General David Petraeus’s now-famous counterinsurgency strategy was summed up as “clear, hold, build.” As Punishers, our job was to support the clear phase. We were the stick in the carrot-stick dynamic upon which Petraeus’s strategy relied, and more and more battle-space commanders wanted our support in their efforts to change the dynamic in their areas of operation.

About a week after the rescue of the police chief’s son, the Marines requested our support for an operation in the heart of Ramadi. Muj attacks had been frequent and bold in the area, and the Marines wanted us to try to disrupt the enemy’s operations with sniper overwatches.

After our officers did their deconfliction dance with the Marine leadership, we headed out in Humvees for our first overwatch operation around Observation Post Firecracker, where the Marines were operating. Firecracker sits at a four-way intersection about a half mile north of Government Center in the heart of downtown Ramadi.
When we arrived in country, the muj completely controlled the area around the OP. By June, American forces were clearing them out and had established a foothold.

Our team was Luke, our sister platoon chief Dale, Bob, Marc, Rex, me, and a couple of Jundis. Dale and I were the snipers, Bob and Marc were machine gunners, and Rex was our comms guy. We had a mutually supporting overwatch two hundred meters away and we were both tasked to get visibility on a particular intersection and negotiate targets accordingly.

We launched on foot from Firecracker and patrolled a mile to our target building. If I had to design a movie set for Dante’s Seventh Level of Hell, I’d base it off that patrol into muj country. The sweltering heat registered as green haze in my night vision as I scanned the streets. Mongrel dogs barking in our direction seemed to reflect the malice of the city’s heart. The smell of rot emanated from the piles of trash and refuse that reinforced the constant threat of IEDs. The angry heat coated my skin like the moondust our boots kicked up, and by the time we reached our building, sweat soaked every inch of my uniform.

Our target was a corner house on a big intersection about two hundred meters away. We expected a lot of activity coming in that direction in the morning. By this time, we had nearly perfected our soft-knock technique. The moments before we enter and secure a building are critical. Being outside with no cover leaves us exposed. The quieter and faster we can be on entry and set up, the longer we can go undetected in our hide. Our Jundis had gotten good at decreasing our wait time outside by getting us in quickly to search and set up. We were in fast, despite the angry protests of the women. There was no doubt we were occupying a muj house. It was full of women and children, and the women yelled endlessly. They did not want us to occupy their house, but business is business.

“Target secure,” came across comms. The house was a large two-story with an open foyer and a spiral staircase up to the second deck.
Bob and Dale set up in a room with a window, looking north over the front of the house with a partial view of the intersection. I was in a room facing west, looking straight down the road at the big intersection. A table made for a nice stable platform, which I pulled a chair up to away from the window. I’d collected plenty of cushions from all over the house to make it as comfortable as possible, and I set up linens to hide my silhouette.

Most of the time, I was more careful, but the window had steel bars, which narrowed my line of sight on the target area below. The last thing I wanted was to see a muj through my scope and accidentally shoot the bars. I was willing to risk a little in order to have a better view. I guess you get greedy, maybe a little reckless when you start feeling invincible. Still, the hostile environment had my adrenaline up and pupils dilated. In those situations, you feel like a giant sense organ. You’re just waiting for the hammer to drop, and you’re ready to pounce.

“This is a good spot,” Moose said as I prepped the hide.

“Clear view, just need some bad guys,” I responded, soaking in the still of the night.

“Jobber, I’m jealous. You guys sit up here and do the killing, and I watch over the women and children.”

“Well, Moose, just make sure none of them clack off a suicide vest while we’re dealing some business,” I replied.

Moose was solid on the job. He kept the Jundis and the locals quelled while we worked. We couldn’t do our job effectively if the noncombatants were throwing a Dance Dance Revolution party during an overwatch. Because Moose was a former Jordanian Special Forces guy, I knew he missed the action. He felt this was his war just as much as it was ours. After all, he was a U.S. citizen.