The Last Punisher: A SEAL Team THREE Sniper's True Account of the Battle of Ramadi (21 page)

“And five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand; and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.”

—Leviticus 26:8

A
S LONG AS
there have been guns, there have been men trying to make long-range shots. While the term
sniper
was not coined until the early nineteenth century, forms of sniping existed as early as the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, when American rifleman Timothy Murphy shot and killed British general Simon Fraser at a distance of roughly four hundred yards. Sharpshooters became increasingly important as wars waged on over the next centuries, using their skills to take out the enemy’s most important assets.

In the United States, however, Americans were slow to accept this form of killing on the battlefield, and at first grudgingly acknowledged it during wartime only. For its first two hundred years of existence, the United States did not train or develop snipers in peacetime, due to the “ungentlemanly” nature of such tactics. Eventually, by
Vietnam, the necessity for well-trained snipers was clear and this thinking reversed.
^I

There are many rumors and myths about an officer’s inability to attend Sniper School or to be a sniper, supposedly a holdover grudge from the days when snipers shot officers exclusively. I never met a sniper-qualified officer, but I’m sure it has more to do with the other duties an officer has that would keep him out of a sniper hide than with a regulation barring him from Sniper School. What I can tell you without reservation is that for only having started training fifty years ago, it sure didn’t take the American snipers long to catch up.

COP Falcon quickly became “COP Misery.” The place earned the nickname as our leadership gravitated to it as the new front in the never-ending mission to rid the city of the terrorist infestation. After securing the initial compound, the COP grew steadily to almost a quarter of a city block. The Army set up HESCO and Jersey barriers all around the perimeter and carved out a huge parking lot right on top of shit creek. I couldn’t help but appreciate the humor of that decision. What a perfect way to say “Welcome to COP Falcon.”

Securing and building up the COP (aka clearing and holding it) was the initial phase of the push into the Al Hawz and Al Mualemeen districts in southwest Ramadi. Of course, the real strategic prize wasn’t COP Falcon itself. The COP simply provided a base of operations for clearing the surrounding area of insurgents and holding all that ground indefinitely.

Basically, every unit in Ramadi was playing an elaborate game
of Whac-A-Mole, but our task unit had emerged as one of the fiercest hammers in the game. With plenty of moles to crush around the COP, our head shed was eager to keep us on the smash as much as possible. Falcon became the place Charlie Platoon went to find work, like the parking lot where migrant workers gather, hoping to be hired for a day’s labor. The head shed would take us down there to link up with the Army or Marines, and we never had a hard time getting hired. The districts teemed with muj, and asking a ground commander if he wants to employ a SEAL platoon is like asking a gearhead if he wants to drive your new Lamborghini. Our officers were always eager to please and jumped on every mission they could get. The more we worked, the more we killed. And the more we killed, the better it looked. Our op tempo was pretty exhausting before COP Falcon, and it ratcheted up even more as the southern outpost became our primary base of operations: COP Misery.

Just getting from Sharkbase to Falcon and back was a risky operation, which we ran frequently. As a main artery road into the southern districts, Sunset was riddled with IEDs. Running from north to south, Sunset connected Route Michigan with Baseline Road. Route clearance was an endless mission for the Army engineers, whom we knew by the call sign “Dagger.” The muj had mastered the art of the stealthy IED drop, and the sheer volume of the crude bombs and craters to drop them into created for Dagger an endless cycle that could have been aptly named Operation Groundhog Day. If Dagger had recently swept and cleared the route, Sunset’s status was green. If Sunset was black, that meant the IEDs had returned like angry weeds, and the road was to be avoided. We had to plan our ops accordingly, and sometimes the work we found at Falcon was in direct response to IED attacks.

Early in our support of COP Falcon, the Army tasked us to provide sniper overwatch support while they extracted the remains of some tankers who’d been killed in an attack on Sunset. The possibility that the muj would drag the remains of the Americans off target
and parade them around on Al Jazeera was very real. Our mission was to prevent that possibility until the Army could launch a full recovery. The mangled tank’s hatch was still smoldering, and I realized that my war could be worse. We were crushing the enemy, doing a job we wanted to do. At least we had that. We could be shoveling shit in Louisiana.

A few days after the recovery mission, I found myself in a position to get some retribution for the soldiers killed in the tank. I was behind the gun on an overwatch in the southwest corner of the city when a man walked into the middle of the road about two hundred yards out and started digging. When someone has a bunch of equipment and is digging a hole in the road in Ramadi in the middle of the day, it’s pretty obvious why they’re doing it. I was fairly certain shooting him would be well within the rules of engagement, but I made the mistake of asking an officer to confirm the man’s status as a bona fide bad guy. Our assistant OIC, Ralphie, was in the room when I saw the guy. Ralphie was a likable guy we used to razz for being a baby-faced beanpole.

“Hey, Ralphie, see what he’s doing? Legit?”

“Let me see,” he responded before getting on the gun. I watched him adjust the scope, thinking he was just getting a better look. I tried to calm the itch in my trigger finger and be patient when the loud crack of a shot rang next to my ear. I looked up and saw the muj, unscathed and sprinting away in a blur of assholes and elbows. Not only had Ralphie taken the shot himself, but he’d missed badly from just two hundred yards.

“What the fuck, dude?” I said.

“He was a bad guy.”

“Well, why didn’t you fucking hit him?” I said, incredulously. “Gimme my gun.”

Looking through the scope, I scanned the area and saw a bullet hole in a telephone pole off to the right of where the muj had been.
Ralphie had jerked the trigger and missed badly.
Keep it to the PowerPoints,
I thought. Our retribution would have to wait.

In mid-July, the Marines cleared an area around a college campus about a half mile north of Falcon and a few blocks west of Sunset. There was a lot of IED activity on the roads around the campus, and we were tasked to provide overwatch support in the area and help the Marines hold the ground they’d taken. We left Falcon on foot around midnight and patrolled up Sunset. The fact that the route was green for our convoy from Sharkbase a few hours earlier brought me little comfort as we patrolled up the scarred and malignant avenue. During the day, the area was a bustling commercial district, and the wide street accommodated overhangs from markets that hummed with activity. At night, the markets slept, locked away behind wrought-iron gates that collected ominous shadows.

Chris slid to the side of the concertina wire that blocked the vehicle entrance of COP Falcon on Sunset Road. The patrol began its movement northward in silence with head count passed visually from the rear. I pointed the neon green of my infrared laser into the blackness behind the gates, ready for any ambush that might materialize. We had trained our eyes to pick up the slightest movement. We pressed up Sunset to the target building like a leopard stalking an antelope, moving from cover to cover, not a sound audible.

As we neared our target building, the markets tapered off, giving way to an appropriate battlefield landmark. On the right side of the road, a massive cemetery sprawled out toward the east. The mausoleums, tombs, and gravestones offered numerous places to hide and cast dark shadows across Sunset. The fact that graveyards at night carry a certain psychological connotation goes without saying. Knowing that Charlie Platoon personally added to the tally of inhabitants of that graveyard was pure satisfaction.

What a lot of people don’t know is that a very bloody battle was fought in an Iraqi cemetery during the Battle of Najaf in August 2004. I had read a detailed account of the battle between Marines from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and Shia insurgents from Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in the Wadi al-Salam Cemetery—one of the largest and oldest cemeteries in the world. The Marines ultimately killed hundreds of insurgents when they assaulted through a tight maze of catacombs and tombs filled with Mahdi Army fighters. Four Marines were killed, and dozens were wounded in the assault. While it’s fair to say the Marines handed the Mahdi Army their asses in that cemetery, a graveyard is still not my ideal setting for a firefight. There are far too many places for the enemy to hide and catch you by surprise, and cemeteries are often deemed “exclusion zones” for artillery or other indirect fires. Muj rarely did everything I wanted them to do, though. When you hunt the enemy, you go where he goes.

Our target building was inside a small compound directly across from the graveyard. It was very compact. The platoon quickly locked down the intersections as we sent the assault element to gain entry. Moose and the Jundis did a soft knock and got us inside quickly. In a matter of forty-five seconds, the “target secure” call came across comms. As we corralled up the family, we discovered they were pleasantly “un-muj-like” compared to some of the other families we’d interacted with. In fact, they were fairly accommodating. They quickly welcomed us into their house and turned on the AC. Instantly, a cool blast of climate-controlled air hit me.

Air-conditioning. God is great.

The only man in the house was in his fifties or sixties, and his haggard, sun-beaten face reflected the harsh nature of life in Ramadi.

We cleared through the house and unscrewed a few fluorescent lights along the way. Operating in darkness was always to our advantage. The family seemed to be among those in Ramadi who believed we were there doing good things. The woman of the house brewed us
some chai, probably the result of some coaxing by Moose. We set up in the house’s superstructure to do some work.

I sucked up as much AC as I could before heading to the roof to set up our sniper hide. The rooftop was wide open with a lot of clear space and a three-foot-high brick wall around the perimeter—not much cover, but it offered a superb vantage point to the north up Sunset and the west over the cemetery and University Road.

“What do you think, Dauber?” Chris asked as he looked up Sunset.

“Well, the muj won’t have to drag the carcasses far to the cemetery when we’re done here,” I said.

The Legend stifled a cackle in the stillness of the night. “Fucking A, Dauber. Fucking A.”

The Legend picked a spot on the northwest corner of the wall for the breachers to blow a loophole through. When we blew holes on the rooftops of inhabited houses, we normally left the family some cash to have it fixed when we patrolled out. Chucky rigged a standard loophole charge, and when it blew, an entire section of the wall crumbled.

“Chucky, why you blowing down the fucking roof, man?” Chris said. “They’re gonna know we’re here now.”

“Man, fuck you guys,” Chucky said. “Don’t blame me; blame that piece-of-shit wall.”

“Well, fuck,” Chris said. “We can’t stay up on the roof now. I guess we’re gonna have to go downstairs in the AC.”

“Oh, don’t throw me in the briar patch, boss,” I said.

Chris and I headed down to the second floor and sniffed out the luxury penthouse suite of sniper hides. The room had a plush queen-size bed whose height aligned perfectly with a curtained window facing east. The window provided a clear view down a busy street for at least a mile, and I could look down on the cemetery to the right. We pushed the bed away from the front of the window and moved some furniture around to help break up our silhouette. We set a bedroll
toward the edge of the bed and gloved it up to rest the guns on. Lying prone, we could position our guns at optimal height. There were no bars on the window. We had a clear shooting lane, and the curtains cut down on our silhouette. The AC was blowing strong, and we were ready to deal all day long and then some.

Chris packed a Copenhagen, sent some my way, and took the first shift on the gun. Then I took the two-to-six block. With the exception of the time that Luke lit up Horse Teeth on the assault COP Falcon, the nighttime hours were usually uneventful. At those times, Copenhagen chewing became incessant. I wiped my dip-stained fingers in my eyes to chase the sleep away. I strained into the darkness, hoping some muj made their way across my view. Unfortunately, a few cur dogs and feral cats were the only ones who patrolled the garbage-riddled streets that night.

I gave the gun back to Chris at six and tried to get some sleep. The call to prayer droned in the distance as I struggled to fall asleep. I sat up next to Chris and watched the sun rising in the distance. I picked up my Leupold binoculars and watched as the morning sun breathed life into the streets again.

“Eight hundred meters,” Chris said.

“What?”

“That’s where I’m watching—eight hundred meters. That’s where you see the most activity right now, isn’t it?”

I brought the binos back up. There was no doubt. The busiest part of the street was eight hundred meters out.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said.

“No shit. This ain’t my first rodeo, you know.”

I stayed on the binos, hoping to suck up all the trade secrets the Legend was willing to give out.

“Two guys on a moped. You see ’em?” he said. “Looks like they’re carrying something.”

I found them in my binos. Two military-age males in standard
tracksuit-and-sandals muj attire, riding a moped. Just a second after I located them, I saw the passenger drop something in a hole in the road and then drive on without missing a beat.