The Last Punisher: A SEAL Team THREE Sniper's True Account of the Battle of Ramadi (31 page)

Hands. Look at their fucking hands. . . . No guns.

I made the split-second decision not to shoot since they were unarmed. Chris and I pounced. I pushed my M4 to the side and launched all 290 pounds of gear, rage, and Frogman at one of the fleeing muj. As my hands connected with his shoulders, jerking him backward, he clumsily attempted to turn and swing at me. I rewarded him with a neck seal and we went down hard to the ground, his teeth cushioning the impact as we connected with the cement floor. Marc rolled to my left and kept his muzzle pointed on the guy’s face. The muj attempted another swing and I subdued him with a healthy haymaker. On the other side of the room, the Legend had the other muj on the floor, as well.

I rolled off the limp body as Marc applied the flex-cuffs. I looked over at the Legend.

“All clear, Dauber,” he said in a low tone.

He didn’t make eye contact with me, but his body language was all business. Marc tightened the cuffs.

“Solid work, Dauber,” Marc said.

I gave him a wink. “These guys want to fight, bring it.”

I looked down at bloodstains on my gloves. I checked my weapons system, magazine, and optics. I composed myself and made my way back to the main room, where Tony was briefing the next movement. His composure had not changed since we left Falcon.

“The conventionals will come and get these savages. Next building is a two-story structure. Abrams will put a round into the front door. Bradleys provide cover. Luke’s chalk makes entry. We kill all combatants on target. Nothing changes. Any questions?”

The simplicity of the plan left no room for questions. No one spoke besides the occasional “Check.” I looked around at the other Big Tough Frogmen. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else than next to these bad motherfuckers.

“Stand by for breakout,” Tony barked.

We all ran back to our respective tracks and funneled into our original positions in the tracked vehicles.

Slayer was our new soundtrack as the Bradley jolted to life. Still broiling from the courtyard blaze, I burned with rage and adrenaline. Anger had replaced anxiety. We’d crossed the line of departure. The Bradley roared up, guns blazing, to our next target. The driver maneuvered into position and stopped so his gunner could fire its round into the front door. The Abrams’s cannon belched out a loud blast, firing a round toward the building. The tink-tink-tink of enemy fire reverberated all over the Bradley’s armored skin outside. The snaps and tinks increased as the Bradley gunners returned fire with everything they had. Our driver dropped the ramp. A reflexive voice in my head yelled:
Put the ramp back up!
Then a counterreflex answered: I charged forward, pouring out of the track and button-hooking around toward the building.

Smoke and dust from the burning compound swallowed me up. I hustled through it and saw a smoldering car on its side, engulfed in flames. The Abrams had hit the car instead of the entrance. Smoke, flames, and the snaps and cracks from enemy rounds kicked up all around as I bounded toward the building. As I bolted toward the door, I got the eerie feeling that no one was behind me and I was alone. My squad hadn’t caught up. I took a knee behind the car and scanned for muj at the target, waiting for my brothers to catch up. I heard the snap-snap-snap of muj guns, and I contemplated my next move. Suddenly, I sensed someone behind me and felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Marc. He and the rest of the squad were there and he let me know. He gave me the signal. It was time to go.

I sprinted toward the front door and kicked it with everything I had. The metal door flew open, and the kick’s force propelled me into the hallway and past two rooms. Marc and Biff were on my heels and cleared left while Luke and Nick funneled right and cleared the kitchen. “Clear!” both rooms called as Chucky fell in behind me. I covered down a long hallway at our front. Chucky signaled, and I started my glide.

At the far end of the hall there was a white door with a glass window in it, and a stairwell going up just to the right. I stayed right and cleared the small alcove under the stairs before holding at the bottom of the stairs. Chucky gave me the signal, and we moved. “Frogman to the second deck!” I called over comms, letting everyone outside know not to shoot us when we hit the roof. At the top of the stairs, I saw a small hallway with one door left and one right. I went left and Chucky mirrored right as we cleared each room alone. We pushed ahead to the rooftop. “Frogman to the roof,” I passed over comms, in order to make sure I didn’t get lit up by the Bradleys. With a signal, I burst onto
the roof and found nothing. Chucky and I cleared around the roof and hurried back inside. With all the fire we’d taken, we didn’t want to be outside any more than was necessary. We moved so fast, it felt like we cleared the whole house in a blur and we were moving a hundred miles an hour.

We hurried back inside and headed for the stairs. When we reached the top of the staircase, a loud burst of enemy machine-gun fire ripped into the first floor below us. It came in strong and heavy and blew out the glass from the window in the downstairs hallway. The shooter couldn’t have been farther than twenty yards from our building. Chucky and I paused reflexively, listening for a beat, looking for threats.

“Man down!” Luke screamed over comms. His voice was desperate and urgent. “We need a fucking corpsman down here now!”

Chucky’s eyes were wide with anticipation. I bolted. I took three bounds down the stairs and saw my best friend, slumped at the bottom, staring vacantly at the ceiling. Marc was down, one leg folded awkwardly under him and his gun off to the side. EOD Nick knelt and returned fire out a window, and as I moved to grab Marc, another burst of intense fire came in. I didn’t wait. I grabbed Marc by his kit and dragged him around the stairwell’s alcove to work on him there. Nick was already laying down some murderous suppressive fire.

Marc was shot through his mouth. His left cheek was covered by purple bruising, and his usually tan face was pale white. I reached around the back of his head and felt the warm blood of an exit wound through my gloves. I flung my med bag off next to me and pulled my medical scissors from my web gear. I started to cut Marc’s gear off for a full assessment: airway, breathing, circulation. There was no sign of hope. He’d taken another round in the shoulder.

“We need a fucking CASEVAC, now!” I yelled to Luke.

I knew Marc was dead before I started working on him. There was nothing I could do to bring him back, but I had to try. An intense gunfight
was playing out around me, and I wanted nothing more than to loose my rage at the enemy. But I had a job to do. I had to take care of Marc. I had to be a medic and work on my brother.

“CASEVAC’s en route!” Luke yelled back. “Will be outside in a minute!”

I finished cutting off Marc’s gear so we could move him. I tried hard to do what I could. I couldn’t do chest compressions or put a tube in him with so much enemy fire coming in over my head. I had to package him to move.

Moments before, I’d felt like everything moved at hyperspeed. Now everything outside of the immediate space that contained Marc and me slowed down and became a blur of nearly indecipherable images. I was aware of more gunfire. An officer came in with several of his squad. “Marc, we’re still with you; don’t fucking leave us!” he said. I looked up at him blankly, frustrated and angry. Registration dawned on his face and he shook his head. “He’s not dead, right, Dauber?” I didn’t answer him. I put my eyes back on Marc.

“Get it together, dude. It’s a fucking firefight,” I said and pushed him mentally out of my space. He melted into the blur of the scene outside my bubble.

“CASEVAC’s outside!” Luke yelled from the other side of the hallway. “Get him up.”

I secured my bag and threw it on. Then I struggled to sling Marc’s hulking body up in an awkward fireman carry. He was crushingly heavy, and his limp frame hung clumsily as I struggled down the hallway. I made it almost to the front door before I fell. Ned and Scotty from Team EIGHT jumped up to help, and we picked Marc up in a graceless buddy carry. I held one side of Marc’s cammies with Ned on the other side and Scotty held both of Marc’s legs. We stumbled outside, barely noticing the snaps and pops and rounds impacting all around. As we got close to the Bradley, one of us slipped and Marc went down hard.

“Motherfucker!”
I yelled. We all cussed ourselves and the situation, picking Marc back up and rushing him into the back of the empty track.

“Jump in, Dauber,” said Ned. We locked eyes for a second and I nodded swiftly.

I turned to Scotty. “I need some help, bro.” He nodded and jumped in.

The ramp closed, and we started resuscitative measures on Marc. The driver held nothing back and tore away toward Falcon. For the four-minute ride to the COP, I tried desperately to breathe life back into my friend. By the time we got to Falcon, I had no doubt Marc was dead.

An Army doctor ran up to meet us as the ramp dropped down.

“You gotta take this,” I said gravely.

The doc moved in, and I stepped aside. He placed his stethoscope on Marc’s heart and listened. He moved it a couple of times. Then he called it.

“He’s gone.”

It was sometime after 1000. I was numb.

The thing I already knew ripped through me. I walked a few steps out of the Bradley and vomited hard as a wave of emotion consumed me. I fell to my knees and puked some more. I screamed, punching and pounding the ground in front of me. If I’d had a muj within reach, I would have ripped his throat out and beat his head into a pulpy stain on the ground. I’ve never felt more angry, nor have I since. It was rage born from a sense of powerlessness. There are no do-overs in war, but a warrior can’t help but indulge the what-if routine. You always end up mapping the events leading to your buddy’s death, trying to locate the point where you could have intervened to prevent it. But it’s for nothing. There’s nothing you can do to bring him back, and that’s a hurt like no other. The doc snapped me back to reality.

“Time to go. Load up, boys. I’m really sorry.”

Scotty and I had to make the final lonely ride with Marc to Camp Ramadi. We picked Marc up off the floor of the track and put him on a stretcher. Then Scotty and I climbed back inside the Bradley. I thanked God Scotty was with me. I couldn’t imagine having to make that trip alone. The soldiers in the Bradley crew were somber and respectful. It was a safe bet Ramadi had taken some of their friends, too. The ramp retracted, and the Bradley took off. Everything was quiet except for the engine’s hum.

I noticed the smell. It’s hard to describe the subtle smell of death that early on, but if permanence had a smell, that was it.

Scotty and I fought back tears as we watched over Marc. His eyes were open, staring up into nothingness. I placed my hand over his eyes and closed them. The driver was hauling ass, trying to make the ride as quick as possible, and when we hit a bump, Marc’s eyes opened. I closed them again and tried to relax. The driver hit another bump, and Marc’s eyes opened again. Then his body suddenly kicked violently. The neural episode scared the shit out of me. I grabbed a T-shirt and covered Marc’s face. Then I buried my head in my hands. I couldn’t look at his eyes anymore. I looked at Scotty and felt fortunate to have another Teamguy with me. Your brothers stick by your side when you do the dirty work. This time was no exception.

At Camp Ramadi, the gate guards were waiting for us. We drove in and headed straight to the morgue. V was waiting there for us. I got out of the track, and we pulled Marc’s body out. It was so heavy—not just the body, but all of it. The physical and mental exhaustion finally swept over me. As we carried him inside, I broke down and started crying, silently at first and then in stifled sobs that racked my body.

“Dauber, there’s nothing you can do,” he said gently.

I knew that was true, but I was crushed nonetheless. It’s the powerlessness. It’s the fact that one minute he gave me the signal to let me know he was there; then he was gone. That thing is so hard to swallow. We carried Marc inside and put him down on a table. I looked at him
one last time and noticed his mustache, the one he’d grown with the rest of us as a running joke.

“If I ever fucking get capped, you gotta shave this fucking ’stache off,” he had told me.

Still choked up with tears, I turned to the Mortuary Affairs soldier and said, “You gotta shave this fucking thing off. He’ll kill me if he has to go back with this mustache on.”

“We’ll take care of it. No problem,” he said.

“Come on, Dauber,” V said. “I’ll take you back to Sharkbase.”

Scotty and I climbed into the Hilux with V, and I looked at myself, realizing I was covered in Marc’s blood. I was numb.

“We’ve got another casualty,” V announced.

I turned to listen, suddenly intensely uncomfortable with being one of the platoon’s only corpsmen and out of the fight. I felt angry at myself.

“Luke caught a ricochet,” V said. “Barely broke the skin. He’s all right. They called for extract a couple minutes after you left.”

We pulled into Sharkbase around 11 a.m. I got out of the truck and walked around to grab my kit, gun, and med bag from the truck bed. V followed and helped me out.

“Just go take a nap, Dauber,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder.

Rest sounded right. Exhaustion had set in fully. I walked to my tent. My hands and feet tingled. I heard my pulse in my temple. I thought of Marc. I couldn’t picture his face before the firefight. All I replayed was his forever look.

Spaz was inside. He’d had to sit the op out while his elbow healed. He looked up as I entered and saw the bloody mess.

“Marc’s dead,” I said solemnly. I stared at Spaz, who had always reveled in my misery just because I was a newguy, and gave him a look that dared him to be a dick about it.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Dauber,” he said. He was obviously shocked. “I’m
really sorry, brother. I really am.” I heard the mix of sincerity and upset in his voice. I nodded. He got up quickly and headed out of the tent toward the TOC, pausing to squeeze my shoulder on his way.

I dropped my gear, grabbed my towel and soap, and walked out. I walked into the shower with my cammies and boots on and turned the water on high. Blood and dirt washed down as I stripped and tried to scrub away the death. I stood under the hot water for a while, gathering myself. Finally, I turned the water off and grabbed my towel. I dried off and put on a fresh set of cammies. I walked back to my tent, dropped my dirty clothes and gear, and grabbed my camera. I went into Marc’s room and took a bunch of pictures. I wanted to record the scene before they packed up all his stuff. Finally, I headed to Charlie Med to check on Luke and the rest of the platoon. Luke’s wound was superficial—a little stinger.