Joker One

by Donovan Campbell

  Niles, however, wasn't the only one with incisive questions. Most of my Marines were pretty savvy, and it didn't take them long to figure out that we rarely, if ever, saw any Americans other than Marines and Triple Canopy contractors at the nerve center of Iraq's most volatile province. Up on the roof with them, I learned that to a surprisingly deep degree, my men understood the greater purpose of our mission in Ramadi, and they wondered why, if stability in Anbar augured well for stability in Iraq, we never saw any of the country's civilian U.S. overlords. Being normal nineteen-year-olds (and me being a mostly normal twenty-four-year old), though, we usually didn't dwell on these strategic questions for very long, and the conversations generally wandered to topics closer to our hearts. Ott, for example, was very curious about what types of music I listened to and who my favorite bands were. Henderson wondered if he had a future in NASCAR or as a professional stuntman, and Guzon usually wanted someone to listen to his relationship issues with his now-distant fiancée.

  On that late March day, I spent about an hour up on the Government Center roof, checking on the Marines, fortifying myself with their boundless energy, and amusing myself with their absolutely absurd banter. As Noriel and I were walking back to our makeshift command post inside the Government Center after a few hours of observation, we came upon a tall, red-haired, red-faced, red-mustached Marine major whom we hadn't met before. Immediately, he pulled us both aside and began to lecture us about safety. The nameless major was from one of the Marine Civil Affairs Groups (CAGs), the military units tasked to respond to local concerns and to slowly rebuild the infrastructure and institutions necessary for some semblance of normal life to resume.

  As he held forth, the major moved around nervously, his head swiveling back and forth the entire time. He began his impromptu instructional by telling us how we had to keep our guard up at all times, how every patrol was a combat patrol and how we had to be constantly ready to engage. After a few minutes, I realized that our new major friend wasn't so much lecturing us as he was reassuring himself, so I let him ramble on and then thanked him politely for his advice. As he walked off, Noriel turned to me and grinned, and I grinned back. All of the major's bravado had revealed only one thing—that he hadn't really seen any combat yet; indeed, judging from his nervous lecture, this might well have been his very first mission. Four weeks into our tour and we were already beginning to feel like combat veterans. For the first time, I began to understand why in the Marines there's the infantry, and then there's everybody else.

  An hour later, just after noon, first squad and I completed a local security patrol and headed back to the roof. Walking through the gates of the compound, I saw our helpful Civil Affairs major nervously preparing to mount his Humvee and head out of the Government Center, back to whatever base he had recently come from. Noriel saw him, too.

  “Sir, he looks kind of scared. Maybe I should go over and asks him to give us some useful combat tips? You know, take his minds off the fears …” He was grinning widely at me again.

  “Behave, killer, behave. He's got enough to worry about without you screwing with him. Let's just get out of this damn heat.”

  “Roger that, sir … Maybe just one little questions?”

  Noriel was irrepressible. I couldn't help smiling back. “No, not even one little questions, you Filipino nut. You've got work to do. Get your squad back inside and let me know when they've got all their sensitive gear.”

  Noriel trotted off, smiling. As he went, he glanced over at the major, then back at me. I shook my head and pointed to our building.

  Ten minutes later, the Civil Affairs convoy roared out of the gates, and a few seconds thereafter, a massive explosion shattered the calm afternoon air. I had just taken off my vest and helmet inside our Government Center headquarters, and I immediately threw them back on. As I adjusted the helmet and the PRR headpiece, Bowen called down from the roof.

  “Sir, it looks like that Civil Affairs convoy just got hit pretty bad by an IED. They might need some help, sir.”

  “Roger that, One-Three. On it.”

  I dashed out of the room. Leza and Noriel already had their guys suited up and heading for the compound's side gates. I joined them, found Teague, and assumed my normal position just behind his point fire team. Then I gave the order to head out, and first squad, followed by second, blasted out of the Government Center and set off at a run, heading south into the butchers’ area. It had been less than a minute since the explosion.

  We traveled two blocks and came upon a scene straight out of Dante's Inferno. In the middle of a deserted four-way intersection, four groaning, screaming, badly wounded Marines lay on the concrete, rolling around in swiftly congealing pools of their own blood. Some already had various parts of their uniforms cut off to better expose their injuries, but others were bleeding right through the cloth. A Humvee was burning brightly, and several of the Civil Affairs officers were frantically running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The streets around were nearly deserted.

  Immediately, Docs Smith and Camacho jumped on the wounded, and I ordered Leza and Noriel to position their men to secure the intersection. The IED attack had not, as yet, been followed up by small arms and RPGs, but we needed to be prepared, and the Civil Affairs convoy did not have enough people to defend the intersection properly. When I was satisfied with our positions, I went to find the major to see what else he and his men needed from us.

  What I found was the embodiment of all I had hoped to avoid becoming, a frantic and nonsensical officer, clearly in shock though not wounded, repeating over and over that he had taken wounded as he dashed randomly about to check on the various reports coming in over his PRR. After trying unsuccessfully to penetrate his shell shock, I walked off and immediately ran into the Marine artillery lieutenant who was the convoy's security commander. He, too, was agitated, but he was in much better shape than the major, and he told me that though the casualties were stable for now, we needed to get them out soon. They were urgent medevacs, bleeding badly from severed arteries.

  Five minutes later, we had helped load the wounded, and a subsection of the CAG convoy roared off to Junction City, the massive U.S. base just west of Ramadi, right on the other side of the Euphrates. The remaining Civil Affairs folks were preparing to load up, and I radioed Noriel and Leza, instructing them to head back to the Government Center as soon as all the vehicles had left. By this time, the stricken Humvee had burned so fiercely that very little remained—just a five-foot-by-five-foot black, smoldering cube. There was nothing our enemies could do with it, so we decided to leave it in place for the time being. However, just as the CAG convoy was mounting its men to leave, I heard the now-distinctive double boom of an armed RPG ring out, very close to our positions.

  I whipped my head left. A fully armored Civil Affairs Humvee guarding an intersection two blocks to our east had just been struck by an attack from its south, and Marines were piling out of it, taking cover behind its heavy doors. Small-arms fire erupted from their assailants, and the Marines started firing back. Unaffected just yet, I yelled over the PRR for Noriel and Leza to collect their squads and meet me in our intersection. Then I ran over to the frantic major to see if I could get a better idea of where the attack was coming from. If the attackers were close enough, we stood a good chance of flanking the insurgents with our two squads if we could move quickly.

  Pulling up at the major, I asked him for any information he could give us, but he just stared back, wide-eyed and stunned; then he turned away and began shouting into his PRR headset. I glanced back at my squads. Teague was ready and waiting, and he motioned furiously at me to get on with it and move out south. I held up my hand. Wait. I turned back to the major and tried again to elicit information, but his response hadn't changed. Blank stare. More yelling into the PRR. Getting information from the man was a lost cause, so I turned around and furiously motioned for Teague to go.

  It was like watching a greyhound released from the racing gate—
Teague streaked smoothly south, vaulted a wall into a small cemetery, and continued running without any hesitation at all. The rest of first squad, me included, trailed him by about fifteen meters, with Leza and his men running behind us. Up ahead, Teague leaped onto a four-foot-high crypt, and, without breaking stride, used the grave's height to launch himself over yet another wall. I thought for a second that I was watching an action movie, but it was just twenty-one-year-old Corporal Brian Teague from Tennessee doing what he did best while wearing fifty pounds of gear.

  Ten seconds later, the rest of us caught up with him, but I had been too slow giving the order to pursue. Teague had seen only one of the attackers—the rest had escaped by car—and he had raised his weapon to fire, but the man had dropped his AK and merged into the surrounding crowd before Teague could take a clean shot. He took off after the insurgent, but trying to find a particular Iraqi dressed in everyday civilian clothes among several thousand Iraqis also dressed in everyday civilian clothes was like trying to find a needle in a stack of needles. We searched a few houses in the vicinity, but the opportunity to cut off our attackers was long gone. Dejectedly, I ordered us back to the Government Center. We patrolled north, the carbon-black cube that used to be an American Humvee smoking bleakly as we passed.

  I cursed my slow decision making.

  SEVENTEEN

  The next morning found me back at the Outpost, disappointed and frustrated with myself. Thrice now we had been attacked, and thrice now we had failed to shoot back. For several hours, I intermittently second-guessed my decisions of the previous day, wondering what would have happened if I had just listened to Teague and set off south across the cemetery immediately instead of waiting for nonforthcoming information from a nonsensical major. Instead of four badly wounded Marines and an enemy who escaped scot-free, we might have had four badly wounded Marines and a dozen dead insurgent attackers. I spent the early part of that morning moping, until it was time to saddle up and relieve the evening guardians at the Government Center. As usual, we had begun squad-sized security patrols immediately upon arrival, and when noon rolled around I had just returned from a walk through the teeming marketplace with Bowen and his men. As we stood inside the QRF room at the Government Center, on the roof above us stood Noriel and first squad, and second squad and Leza were strapping on their gear in preparation for the next patrol. As I watched the men ready themselves, I unstrapped my gear, dropped the body armor and helmet to the floor, and rubbed my hands up and down my thoroughly sweat-soaked blouse (the official Marine Corps term for our camouflage shirt) and trousers. I glanced around at third squad; everyone else looked as if they had just taken a shower with their clothes on. It was definitely starting to heat up. That's when I heard the two explosions, in rapid succession.

  Today the enemy had chosen to attack us directly at the Center. An RPG slammed into the wall next to the gates leading into our building, gouging a dinner-plate-sized chunk out of it. Another rocket immediately followed. As the warheads detonated, I was standing in the large, open Quick Reaction Force room on the first floor of the Government Center. Outside the compound, I could hear AKs chattering on full automatic and the rapid pop-pop-pop of my Marines on the roof returning fire in three-shot bursts. A tense Noriel called me over the PRR as I struggled hastily back into my armor:

  “Sir, we've been hit from the east. I think there's at least five or ten of them on two different roofs. Tig's got eyes-on and he and Feldmeir is returning fire. No further info, sir.”

  “Roger that,” I shouted into the PRR as I ran out of the building toward the compound gates. “Let the COC know.” Then I pushed headquarters out of my mind entirely and focused on the situation at hand. Ahead of me, Staff Sergeant was already at the compound entrance, leaning on the sheet steel gates as he braced his rifle up against one of the doors and fired at a building just across the little alleyway to our east. As I ran up to him, Staff Sergeant stopped shooting and turned to me.

  “Sir, there are at least three of them on that roof right there, sir,” he said, pointing out of the slit in the gates. “I've returned fire, but I'm not sure whether I got any of them.” He leaned back in over his weapon.

  Irritated, I briefly wondered what good all of that Rifle Team shooting had been if Staff Sergeant couldn't even hit a man-sized target less than one hundred meters away, but I pushed it aside, edged my way around him, and stuck my head out of the gates. Immediately, something heavier than an AK opened up to our north. It had been set up so that it fired perfectly down the length of the street that we now had to cross, and the rounds were cracking nearby again. Damn it.

  I recoiled back through the gates and glanced behind me. Leza had second squad stacked up against the compound wall, ready to go. I met his eyes. He nodded coolly back—he and his men were ready. Bowen's squad was behind them, waiting for the order to proceed. I hesitated. I knew we had to attack, but we had to get across a fire-swept, two-lane street first. I radioed up to Noriel to see if he had any idea where the suspected machine gun position was so that he could lay down suppressing fire while we dashed across. “Negative” came the reply.

  As Leza's squad stacked up behind me, I froze at the metal compound gates for a few seconds. Then, somehow, I found myself outside the open doors, running for my life across the street while waving frantically at second squad to follow. The machine gun kicked up again, and the rounds started snapping by.

  My clever plan had been to dash across the street and then leap over the double-stranded concertina wire that lined its eastern sidewalk, but I clearly wasn't thinking straight—my vertical leap is in the single digits on a good day, and weighed down by my gear and tired out from the patrols, what little athletic ability remained wasn't nearly enough to get me over the obstacle. Running up to the barbs, I jumped anyway. Predictably, both legs landed squarely in the middle of the tangled coils of wire. Flailing frantically, I managed to free my left one immediately, but my right was caught firmly by the little razors. The machine gunner had aimed in on me now, and a detached part of my mind noticed that the concrete sidewalk in front of me was erupting in little puffs of dirt. That same part of my mind absently recorded Sergeant Leza screaming behind me, “Someone get in front of the lieutenant, goddamn it. Someone get up there.”

  I have no idea how long I was trapped in the wire. It was probably only a few seconds, but that was one of those moments when the flow of time froze solid and the whole world was reduced to a single moment, to a life-and-death struggle between me and the inanimate razors. Intently, I focused in on my own private battle until a sudden movement to my left caught my eye. It was Raymond. I turned my head, and it seemed like I watched in slow motion as somehow he catapulted himself over both strands of concertina wire, putting his body between me and the machine gun. Then the world opened up, and I watched as the rest of his team followed his lead, vaulting the solid concertina wire one after the other. A solid wall of four of my Marines interposed themselves between their lieutenant and his attackers, and my Marines stared firing back.

  All of a sudden, time started up again and I ripped my leg out of the razors, shredding both my trouser legs and my lower right thigh in the process. Raymond and his men had silenced the gun, and Teague's insistent voice in my right ear finally registered through the confusion around me. Hearing it, I responded.

  “Send it, Teague,” I yelled over the PRR as I hustled to the cover of a building's entrance.

  “Sir, I missed a guy on a roof as he ran away, but I know what building they're attacking from. Can you see the building with the orange soap sign on it?”

  I looked at all the buildings within my line of sight. “No, Teague, I can't.”

  “Well, just keep moving east and I'll guide you on.”

  “Roger that. Moving.”

  I motioned to Raymond to move his team off the sidewalk and into the cluster of buildings next to us, and I glanced back at Leza to see if he had followed the conversation. He had, and he gave me another silent
thumbs-up. Second and third squads moved deeper into the buildings, hunting for the one with the orange soap sign.

  Within about five minutes, we found it, and I ordered Bowen to cordon off the building's rear while Leza and I hit it with his squad. Swiftly, second squad ran to the building's entrance as third snaked around its rear, and, arriving at the building's sheet steel door, Raymond battered it with his body until the locking mechanism broke. We poured inside, only to discover that the orange soap sign building was a student dormitory. After a thorough search, we had found nothing other than frightened male college students hiding behind locked doors. Frustrated, I made my way out to the building's balcony to call across the city to the Golf Company COC. That morning, I had been given a smaller version of our long-range radios, a version that we had never seen before, and I just happened to be carrying it on my vest as we hit the building. Time to test it out, I thought.

  “Joker COC, this is Joker One-Actual. Be advised, we have the situation at the center well in hand. Break …”