The Last Punisher: A SEAL Team THREE Sniper's True Account of the Battle of Ramadi (29 page)

Say cheese, buddy.

The guy never knew what hit him. Chris might as well have been a ghost in the alley’s shadows, waiting to send the muj to his virgins. If the guy saw anything, it was a couple of quick muzzle flashes piercing the blackness and then making it permanent.

The Legend’s Texas twang came over comms. “He’s down, one hundred yards.”

Marc and I looked at each other. We were both panting from the run. Even through NVGs, I could see Marc and I were thinking the same thing:
That was fucking awesome.
Chris had led the hunt on the most badass rundown I’d ever seen. There was something exhilarating about the unscripted nature of the engagement and the way we’d reacted so perfectly. We had started off on a glorified FOD walk and ended up hunting down and killing an armed insurgent. We
stayed in the shadows for another ten minutes, waiting for another armed insurgent who never appeared.

It was one of the cooler things we’d ever done. We left the dead muj where he lay, turned around, and patrolled back to Falcon. The conventional forces would pick up the body later. We moved quietly back to the COP, high on victory, anticipating an ambush that didn’t materialize.

At the front gate of COP Falcon, all the guys stood by, waiting for us. They pulled the concertina wire out of the way.

“What the fahk did you get into out theya?” Tony asked.

“We just ran some savage down,” Chris said. “Couldn’t find the KYK. But we did find some dude with an AK. I smoked him.”

I relaxed as Biff pulled the concertina wire back into place behind us.

“Dude, that was fucking cool,” I said to Marc. “Can’t beat working in the dark.”

“Yeah, that was cool,” Marc replied. “That’s the type of shit we’re meant for. We own the night, brother.”

“Fucking Legend,” I said, turning to Chris. “How come you always get to shoot the bad guys?”

“It’s the lucky horseshoes he’s got stuffed up his ass,” Jonny piped in.

“Well, it’s a good thing you remembered to put fresh batteries in your ATPIALs this time, Legend,” I said.

“All the things I do for you, and this is what I get in return, Dauber? Hating on my kill count?”

“Well, I gotta take my shots where I can, Legend. You’re pretty good at killing muj. Let’s just hope we don’t come to a fence where you need to pick the lock.”

“Tell me again how many kills you have, son?” Chris said, pulling out his shit-talking trump card.

Biff’s unlucky incident had kept us off a Marine operation in
north Ramadi that some skeevy Devil Dog had named Operation Rug Muncher. I had been very motivated about the possibility of serving in Operation Rug Muncher, but losing the KYK ended up being fortunate for the platoon as a whole. Going down to Falcon to patrol an IED road was a pretty comical and potentially disastrous mission, but Ramadi coughed up a bit of combat serendipity in the form of an armed muj to hunt down and neutralize. Adding another kill to our tally lessened the sting of losing a KYK, but at the same time, we still lost a KYK. It was never recovered and a new crypto-load had to be done to ensure that if the KYK did fall into enemy hands it couldn’t be used against us.

Of course, nobody expected that Biff’s mistake would lead to some much-needed rest for the platoon, but that’s what happened. The head shed seemed to recognize that Biff’s gaffe might have been related to our op tempo. They could see guys were tired. We needed a break.

With slightly fewer ops for a few days, we had a little more time to indulge in the comforts of camp life. Everyone had his habits, and by July we were well established in our routines. When we had any time off, we liked to blow off some steam.

The tent I shared with Marc, Spaz, and Bob had one of the more reliable AC units, so on a rare true night off, we’d hang a sheet and watch a movie. Contraband liquor, carefully repackaged into mouthwash or Gatorade bottles and shipped via care package by our buddies stateside, was an important ingredient for movie night.
Patton
was a staple at these gatherings. We lit cigars and spoke the opening monologue along with George C. Scott; we all knew it by heart.

Tony could often be found in my tent binge-watching
The Sopranos.
His obsession made me chuckle, because he was like the mob boss of our platoon. Not only did he share the same name as
The Sopranos’
main character, but he had a ruthlessness toward the enemy tempered by a charm and tactical efficiency that made him impossible to dislike. Not unlike the Tony of his show, he really cared for his guys, even when he was being tough. In the military, there are men you have orders to follow, and there are others you follow because you know they will keep you alive. I’d follow Tony into hell.

I tried to work out when I could. Marc was a good lifting buddy. There was a gym on the veranda of Sharkbase, and we would have had a great view of the Euphrates if they hadn’t erected ballistic sheets to deflect incoming sniper fire. We’d lift when we could, but our op tempo meant we weren’t always consistent. At least once a week we ran a three-mile loop past the guard shack on Sharkbase. We’d run along the river road and past the Ranger compound, cursing the heat and the dust.

In a short lull in late July, guys like Marc and Jonny took full advantage of the Internet and the chance to call their ladies. Most of the rest of us had gotten used to limited contact with loved ones back home and subscribed to the if-it-ain’t-broke school of thought. We were still in Ramadi, after all. What did I have to say? I sent sporadic, heavily edited emails home to my family.

Rarely, a couple of guys would watch a movie on a computer or hang out alone. I watched
Jeremiah Johnson
with Biggles at the end of July, right before starting the ops hard again. He had never seen it and it was one of my favorites.

The trouble with slowing down is that after going at a certain pace for so long, taking a little break feels like just waiting for something to happen. In the desert, life continues one way until it doesn’t. You go and go and go until one day you don’t, and then your hands itch for your rifle and your chest aches for your body armor. You grow so accustomed to the sound of mortars every day that you realize they’re the standard, and when your day starts without an explosion, you don’t feel right until one goes off. When life outside the wire becomes
normal, even life at the camp seems incompatible with the mindset you’re in.

The break didn’t last. A few days later, we were right back at our previous op tempo. To be honest, it was probably ratcheted up a notch to make up for lost time. We hit the city hard, like a firing pin on a .30-cal round. I settled into a cold and composed acceptance of the situation.

I’m not going to die in this desert.

“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.”

—Thucydides

Y
OU KNOW THE
moment when momentum turns against you in a fight. I got in a bar fight once with a professional football player and that moment occurred for me when he bit me solidly in the cheek. As he sank his teeth deep into my flesh, liberally breaking the skin, I dug my thumbs into his eye sockets and pushed. He relaxed his jaw, but he proceeded to kick my ass.

The following Monday, I showed up at the platoon with a black eye and a festering human bite wound on my face. Tony looked at me hard for a moment, his eyes narrow. I waited for his retribution, whatever form it might take. Finally he asked, “Didya get arrested?”

“No, Chief,” I answered.

“Good. Stay outta trouble with the cops, Dauba’. I can’t help you there. Get ya shit. We got work to do.”

Sometimes it’s just a matter of being reminded not to try to go it alone.

August 2 was a bad day.

We’d been going heavy. Really heavy. The list of close calls loomed as we ratcheted up the risk factor of our missions. Instructor Torsen’s words of wisdom rang true. “If you motherfuckers think this is bad,” referring to Hell Week, “wait until you get downrange. War is relentless. There is no stop, no quit, no Bell. Suck it the fuck up.” COP San Quentin, a Johnny Cash reference, had become the newguy name for our miserable southern home. We hated every inch of it. In the heat of that Iraqi August, I felt the words of Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” swell within me. Something was growing.

The brass excelled at keeping us mean, and coalition casualties reminded us why we needed to be. Despite losing a Jundi, we were getting results. We were winning the war of attrition. Muj casualty rates were overwhelming compared to our own. The flood of coalition forces into the heart of the city was breaking the back of the insurgency and laying the groundwork for the Anbar Awakening, brokered during the surge. It was time to break the levee. Our operations north of Baseline left no doubt the muj were massed in the area, and their IED attacks killed and maimed troops regularly. The Army wanted to go for the muj’s throat, and we were the junkyard dog they wanted for the mission.

A cordon-and-search operation is exactly what it sounds like. You cordon off an area, allowing no one in or out while you search every building within the perimeter. Hopefully, you find an enemy weapons cache or other insurgent contraband, or you find a bunch of bad guys
and neutralize them. Fortunately, the area we were headed to was the enemy den. We expected to hit pay dirt. Big Army was ready to roll in force on the area we’d been softening and flush the rats out of hiding. They tasked us to spearhead the push.

We left just before dawn, all of Charlie Platoon and a few shooters from Team EIGHT. We were without Spaz and Bob. Bob had taken some shrapnel to his knee on a patrol and was sent back to San Diego, and Spaz’s elbow was still on the mend from his fall through the shade structure at the market weeks before. We brought ten Jundis to help with the clearances. The neighborhood with the apartment complex—the one that had nearly entombed us a couple of weeks earlier—was our target. We were ready to shake the hornet’s nest, knock it to the ground, spray it with fire, and stomp on any survivors.

The Legend took point in our lead squad, with Marc, Biggles, Jonny, Tony, and Luke. The second squad was Ralphie, Ned, Biff, Squirrel, me, and Scotty from Team EIGHT. The Jundis pulled up the rear. As we left Falcon, we stretched slowly into our dual column and settled into four months of muscle memory. I vividly remember looking to my right and left that morning at the men around me and thinking, in spite of the heat and the danger and the arguable absurdity of operating into the daytime hours,
There’s no other place I’d rather be right now.

Baseline was crystal clear in the morning darkness, and we flowed smoothly through the green-filtered streets, our lasers scanning methodically. Our Jundis—scruffy pirates that they were—had tightened up substantially after four months of intensive training and combat operations. Despite having no night-vision goggles, they moved like professional operators, reading and reacting. No one smoked a cigarette as we left Falcon. They understood the area we were headed into. I looked at Hassan, as much of a meathead as I’d ever seen. He and the rest of our Jundis looked impressive. They had come a long way. Marc,
Bob, Spaz, and I had trained them hard for countless hours, and seeing the results in action made me proud.

The lead squad turned north off Baseline and funneled into a single column on the east side of the street. Our trail squad took the west side with the Jundis. Two blocks up, Chris’s squad split off and cleared through a building, setting up a sniper overwatch on the rooftop to cover our squad and the Jundis as we cleared and searched houses. The Army, with its Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Abrams tanks, set blocking positions all around the city block. Once the Army closed off any escape routes and prevented potential coordinated attacks, we were cleared hot.

As we approached our first building, the pirates, with their sledgehammers and ladders, looked like a gang of hooligans, eager to break into buildings at our command. Surprise was our advantage, so a soft knock was preferred. Moose and our Jundis had really mastered the technique, and we got in fast and cleared through quickly.

Slow is smooth; smooth is fast.

We glided through the houses cautiously, expecting to meet resistance and to find guns and bombs, but the first few houses left us empty-handed.

In the fourth house, I made my way to the roof with Ned and Biff and took a knee.
Maybe this won’t be so bad, after all,
I thought. We’d been out in muj country plenty of times before. We’d been in plenty of shit.

A single shot cracked in the distance, and I jerked my head in the direction of the sound, as if by sheer will I could ensure the safety of my Teammates.

Silence for a beat.

Then a Teamguy’s Mk 48 opening up in an angry spray of aggression. As a sniper, I knew that silence after a shot too well. Over squad comms came the call we told ourselves we would never hear, yet
somehow expected eventually: “Man down,” Luke called. “Biggles is down.” I looked at Biff, my eyes widening.

“What the fuck?” I said to Biff and Ned. Biff just looked at me, mouth open.

“Fucking chill,” said Ned. “We’ll figure it out. We don’t know what’s going on.”

We hurried to the rooftop’s wall on the side facing Biggles’s building. A mess of date palms and scrub brush obscured our view of the opposite rooftop, but I could hear Marc’s gun spraying rage. He burned through the first hundred rounds and reloaded in a blink of an eye. Marc was in machine mode.

With a clear view of the ground around the building, we scanned for flanking muj. Over comms, I heard Luke initiate Biggles’s medevac. The Bradleys and tanks were closer to the regular infantry units that were hitting other buildings in the area, but the medevac came quickly. A Bradley roared up to Biggles’s building, spun into a perfect 180 turn, backed up, and dropped the ramp in front of the door. A moment later, the Legend burst out of the building, gun at the ready, providing cover. Behind him in the doorway, Biggles leaned heavily on Jonny. Biggles’s face was heavily bandaged. His body armor and helmet were gone, and his upper body was covered in blood from the wound to his face, but he stood on his own.
Alive and walking.
My heart settled back into my chest. Biggles and Jonny rushed toward the Bradley while Marc’s Pig blasted in the background, and a few more gunners added to the music.