They begin getting their gear ready for another night’s mail run. Each has his own personal ritual. Some, like Mark, go for a run, others jot out a note or two to their family. Still others wake up wondering if being in Iraq was just a bad dream. Eyes closed, lying on their crude cots, for just a moment, some envision themselves back home in the States. No, this isn’t home, this is purgatory. Reality creeps into their brain cells as the waking drivers absorb where they are. This is no time for self-pity, and they just suck it up and get ready to do what has to be done.
It’s time now. The bus is waiting. Drivers board a military bus and head over to the Joint Military Mail Terminal (JMMT), the convoy staging area at Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). For the next several hours, drivers hook up trailers, pull maintenance, and go through the pretrip checks of their Italian Iveco and German Mercedes trucks. Like pilots going through a preflight inspection, attention to detail is paramount. Woe to the driver who doesn’t spot that coolant leak and breaks down in an insurgent-infested neighborhood.
Finally, Kevlar helmets and body armor are checked and placed in each cab. The drivers have a little extra time; some use the KBR computers to check e-mail, others catch up on a little reading, and other drivers write letters home.
It’s about midnight now, and humvee gun trucks, under the command of Staff Sergeant Frey, from the 1544th Army Transportation Unit, begin to arrive in their desert-camouflaged vehicles. Sergeant Frey has brought along Captain Tackett. Tackett is the company commander, but on this night, technically, Tackett is a “strap hanger,” meaning the officer is just along for the ride as an observer. Sergeant Frey is running the show. The soldiers have been doing their pre-mission checks.
Compared to the drivers, most of the soldiers are just kids. Fresh-scrubbed faces and broad smiles. Some are teenage girls barely out of high school. This is an Army National Guard unit. These are part-time soldiers in full-time combat. They come from the small corn-fed town of Paris, Illinois. Most of these young soldiers went to school together. Unlike active-duty military units that have a mix of soldiers from across the country, these kids have been neighbors and friends since they were born.
Mark Taylor looks at them and reflects to himself, “Yeah, they may be kids but they have ‘been there and done that.’ We have run these roads with them before, and they know how to get out of crap when it happens.” No one in this mix of civilians and soldiers thinks of the other in any sort of demeaning manner. This group has an abundance of mutual respect. They are a team: middle-aged men and young soldiers. The team is going outside the wire again. No one knows what will happen. Maybe nothing, but nothing can never be assumed. To the contrary, they assume the enemy will attack. They are as ready as they can be.
The drivers gather around a few homemade picnic tables they have constructed from scrap wood. As they wait for the rest of the 1544th soldiers to arrive, a few personal jabs and lighthearted jokes are exchanged. This helps diffuse and disguise the tension and apprehension that each driver struggles with every evening. Tony Garcia, the KBR night foreman, speaks first. He reviews safety standards such as wearing seatbelts and using battle gear. He verifies that every driver had completed his pretrip checks and that all vehicles are fueled and ready to go. Tony confirms that every truck is loaded with emergency equipment, including a medical bag, a stretcher, a towbar, chains, a case of water, and a functioning Qualcomm unit. Qualcomm will allow headquarters to track, via satellite, the exact location of every truck on the road.
Tony steps back and the briefing takes on a more ominous tone. Like all convoys that mix soldiers and civilians, it has both a military and a civilian convoy commander who work side by side. Each will brief the entire group. Sergeant Frey begins, “Tonight we will be headed to Rasheed, Falcon, and the Green Zone. You will get the latest enemy situation report from Specialist Poss, after Mr. Reed and I complete this briefing. Friendly Situation: We have three gun trucks and seven tractor trailers rolling tonight. Our order of march is . . .” This is the sequence in which vehicles will be lined up. Frey continues, “We’ll have one bobtail driven by Mark Taylor. He will be in the rear of the convoy. Friendly roving patrols can be expected in the vicinity of RP 3, 6, and 8. Our QRF [quick reaction force] is on standby at . . . and can be contacted on the emergency frequency.
“The weather is clear, no moon, and the temperature will be about 85 degrees. In the event of enemy contact, our TSOP [tactical standard operating procedure] is in effect. Our route tonight will take us north on . . . The primary radio frequency is . . . Alternate is . . . The medical evacuation frequency is . . . Emergency frequency is . . . Every vehicle should have a case of MREs, a MOPP suit, and all your ‘battle rattle’ [body armor, helmet, load-bearing equipment, etc.]. Ammunition is per SOP.” Paul Reed steps up and begins KBR’s total safety task instructions [TSTI] brief: “Drivers will maintain tactical night driving distance. Radio traffic for mission critical information only. Let’s go back over the route checkpoints. . . . Everyone needs to watch the turnoff at RP 12. It’s easy to miss, and we don’t need half the convoy touring Baghdad at 2:30 in the morning. If you think a driver has missed an exit or made a wrong turn, don’t wait to report it. Get on the horn immediately. No one gets lost out there tonight! Do not permit any vehicle to penetrate the convoy. If this happens, take evasive action immediately. At this time of night, we shouldn’t be seeing any civilian vehicles on the road. If you do, report it. Do not allow any vehicle to accelerate up the ramp. If one tries, the gun trucks will take it out. Just be aware that there have been several ramp attacks by VBIEDs [vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices] this week. Drive around, not through, potholes. Avoid coming close to any debris and watch the overpasses carefully.” He concludes with, “Look out for wires stretched across the road, and again, stay away from any and all debris!”
Specialist “Kitty” Poss, an intelligence specialist from the New York National Guard and assigned to the 56th Personnel Service Battalion steps up: “Howdy y’all. In the last twenty-four to thirty-six hours the following enemy activity has occurred in your area of operation. IED found at 22A, 25, and 26A, extreme risk. ‘Handcuff’ (QRF)16A, call 5957, inform Thunder battle space (air support call sign) is 16A–20A. Beware of Racks off overpasses. VBIED on Irish near CP 5. IEDs in potholes, IEDs connected to gators. Watch the overpasses.” Kitty’s briefing may seem Greek to most people, but to the soldiers and drivers, every word and number helps put together the complex puzzle of information on recent enemy activity.
Specialist Poss ends her briefing with tonight’s flare codes. These are the color of flares shot into the air that reveal to friendly forces in the area what to expect ahead. Red might mean an engagement with enemy forces and green could mean all clear. They could also mean just the opposite. The codes are routinely changed so that if the enemy were to learn the codes, they could not use them to their advantage. Everyone takes mental notes and hopes that the flares tonight are good omens.
The briefing ends. The three briefers stand there for a moment. Sergeant Frey asks, “Does anyone have any questions?” Someone asks, “Where did you say the VBIED was and what kind of vehicle was it?” A few other questions bounce around. Each briefer answers those questions relevant to his or her area of responsibility. The group falls quiet. There are no more questions. Sergeant Frey asks, “Sergeant Wetherell, will you lead us in a prayer?” All heads bow. Wetherell, in a solemn voice, begins Psalm 91. He ends with, “God protect us and keep us safe.” Mark thinks to himself, I wonder if somewhere out there tonight is a group of insurgents asking Allah to help them kill Americans. I hope God’s on our side.
Final checks are under way. The convoy lines up. The humvee gun trucks slide in between the huge tractor trailers. Everyone puts on their body armor and tightens down the chinstraps on their helmets. The last couple cases of water are tossed into the waiting vehicles. Engines are running. Final radio checks are conducted. Tonight, Paul Reed, the KBR convoy commander, has desi
gnated all trucks begin their call sign with the word Romeo. The drivers begin their radio checks: “Romeo six, this is Romeo three, radio check, over.” “Romeo three, got you five by” [loud and clear]. The soldiers are completing their radio checks too: “Gun one this is gun two, how do you copy?” “You’re squealing gun two, turn down your power.” Everyone finishes fine-tuning their radios.
Tony Garcia, his crew, Specialist Poss, and a handful of support soldiers who will be staying behind watch as the Iron Pony mounts up. It’s their job to maintain the vigil and monitor the radios until Iron Pony is back safely inside the wire. Some smile and give a thumbs-up. Others shout out a few words of encouragement. A couple of drivers toss chemlights at the farewell party. Some others just nod as you hear over and over again, “Keep your head down.” Someone else yells out, “Hey, Ugly Puppy, don’t be stopping for any trinkets at the Haji shops.” They exchange grins, each quietly wondering if they will see one another again.
There’s not much talk now. Sergeant Frey barks out, in a commanding voice indicative of military verbal orders, “Lock and load.” The order can be likened to an umpire at a baseball game shouting “Play ball.” Only here the game has much higher stakes. Throughout the length of the convoy, the unmistakable metallic sound of bullets being jammed into M16 rifle chambers echoes through the night air. Gunners on the humvees ratchet back the charging handles on their .50-caliber machine guns and slam the bolts forward loading in the huge rounds. You can cut the tension in the air with a knife. This is a no-shit moment. It’s 0115 hours and the first truck begins to roll out of the gate.
The “twelve volt” convoy creeps out of BIAP and into the dark, deserted Iraqi streets like a fox leaving its den on a night hunt, only the fox is the hunted. Mark describes the night: “I was the bobtail recovery vehicle toward the back of the convoy. As we left BIAP, all nonessential radio clutter stopped, all weapons were loaded and ready. Everyone was tense. We were headed to our first stop, Rasheed. We were checking off the rally points (RP) as we passed them. Around RP3 and RP4 we encountered some friendly patrols. Everything continued smoothly. We had now been on the road about forty-five minutes. We were nearing RP12, and exiting off of MSR [main supply route, or how the military refers to major highways] Irish on a cloverleaf and entering onto MSR Senator.” MSR Irish is the highway between downtown Baghdad and the airport.
Mark continues: “Coming down off the ramp and onto the next highway, I spotted a deserted humvee off to the side of the road and what appeared to be an Iraqi local in a blue jumpsuit or coveralls. He was wearing an interceptor flak vest. I grab my radio and report the sighting to Sergeant Frey. Frey acknowledges with the comeback, “Good Copy,” and not a second later an IED detonated in front of Phil McCall’s rig.
Jeff Dye (Diehard), a six–foot-six-inch, 280-pound trucker from O’Fallon, Missouri, often called “Gentle Giant,” also remembers the night well: “We were coming off a highway exit ramp. So far, this had been an uneventful mail run. Ugly Puppy called in that he spotted someone in body armor. A few seconds later, there was a thunderous explosion and a blinding flash. Pete’s trailer in front of me was lifted and moved over a lane. Phil’s truck in front of Pete’s suddenly jolted to the left and headed for the median. In front of me and to the right, there were two more explosions in rapid succession. Shrapnel rained down on the front of my truck. I heard the pinging of metal and saw sparks flying off the protective window cage.
“Now, directly in front of me, Phil’s truck blasted through the guardrail sideways, his left side tires four feet off the ground. I knew he was going to flip over. I hit my brakes, anticipating I needed to stop and pull him from the wreckage. Suddenly, I couldn’t see anyone or anything. We were in a complete whiteout of dust. I yelled into the radio, ‘McCall is down!’
“My truck was still moving, and as I emerged from the dust bowl, to my shock, Phil was right side up and plowing down the highway on the opposite side of the road in the oncoming traffic lanes. Phil popped up on his radio correcting my statement, ‘I’m not down but I am hit.’ Mark, our bobtail, started calmly reassuring Phil that we were watching him and we weren’t going to leave him. We stick by our motto, ‘No one gets left behind.’”
Mark recalls: “The entire team responded just like we had trained to do. Phil relayed his status and that of his vehicle: ‘Windshield is blown in, dash warning lights all coming on, I’m losing coolant, I’m hit in the shoulder but have no idea how badly and still moving.’ The other drivers began their accountability reports. Everyone was still alive; everyone was together. Several trucks were damaged but could still roll. I stayed alongside Phil’s crippled truck, and the rest of the convoy slowed down for us to catch up.
“We stopped briefly. Paul Reed, our KBR boss, took over driving Phil’s truck. During the transfer of drivers, I inspected Phil’s wounds. Thanks to his body armor, he did not appear to have a serious wound. Later, the medics would pluck out some shrapnel from his shoulder that he now uses as a key-chain decoration. We continued on. Paul eventually drove Phil’s truck back over the median and the vehicle was placed in the front of the convoy. The explosions had knocked out the street lights, but evidently backup generators were now getting the lights back on and we headed toward Rasheed.”
En route to Rasheed, Mark attempted to report events to the operations center and prepare them to receive the convoy. Despite continuous attempts to raise someone at KBR operations, all he could get on his cell phone was “Your call cannot be completed at this time.” At Rasheed, Mark scrambled to transfer Phil’s trailer to his own bobtail. The mail still had to be delivered. This mission was not over. The trailer had no handle to crank the landing gear down, and Mark had previously been a frequent, outspoken critic of both the landing gear problem and the communications problems. Now his frustration was brimming over.
“KBR may be pretty good at a lot of stuff,” Mark says, “but when it comes to trucking operations, they would do well to read and adhere to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration [FMCSA] regulations. Not being a licensed U.S. trucking company, KBR is not required to comply with those regulations. They should be.” When Mark complains, it is because he cares about the mission, and the lives of the men and women, young and old, soldiers and civilians. “We are all Americans,” he says, believing they should never lose sight of that common denominator.
Mark’s after-action report reveals that from the time they rolled out of BIAP and into Rasheed, the Iron Pony Express had been outside the wire just fifty-one minutes. Like survivors of a bad car accident, in retrospect everything plays out in slow motion, but in actuality, the attack itself unfolded over the course of mere seconds. There were hours of preparation and fifty-one minutes of tension, terror, fear, concern, pride, camaraderie, and—most of all—professionalism. The young horseback riders from their namesake organization, the original Pony Express, would have been proud. Nearly 150 years later, Americans still risk their lives to deliver the U.S. mail.
It’s not a perfect world nor a perfect war. Frustrations aside, Jeff sums up the evening: “Miraculously, we made it through the gates at Rasheed where Phil’s truck promptly coughed, sputtered, and gave up the ghost. The trailer was transferred, and we went on to finish the mission the next night. And the night after that, and the night after that. . . . We will never give in to terror. Because, in my opinion, this is what it really is—a war on terror and evil.”
III. Flaming Wheels
The Iron Pony Express was grounded. All mail runs for the 1544th were suspended. Sergeant Jessica Cawvey was just killed by an IED a day earlier. She was the fifth soldier from the 1544th to die, and more than thirty had been wounded in recent months. A senator from Illinois was demanding answers as to why this unit had experienced such a disproportionate number of casualties. A memorial ceremony was planned for 11 a.m. at BIAP’s military welfare and recreation center (MWR). The KBR drivers, who normally operated at night and slept during the day, would not miss the memoria
l service. Every person rolled out of their cots and caught the bus to the MWR center.
Soldiers and drivers paid their last respects to Jessica, and the drivers boarded the bus back to the billeting area. The bus, which is normally noisy with banter, was silent. Each person was alone in his or her thoughts about the loss of Jessica and what would happen next. Ken McDonald recalls: “We had heard rumor that the 1544th was not going to be our escort unit any longer. Ironically, we were told that the army’s solution to reduce enemy exposure for the 1544th was to put them on fuel convoy escort.” Ken asks: “You call that a solution!” He continues, “Rumors were flying and we had heard conflicting reports as to whether we would be going back out on the mail run on this evening. As we got back to the billeting area, word came down from KBR operations to catch whatever sleep we could, because in a few hours we would be on the road headed for the Marine Corps base Taqaddum. ‘TQ,’ as we called it, is about forty miles west of Baghdad. They said that a Reserve Marine Corps unit from Alabama would provide security escort for the trip.”
The run from BIAP to TQ was usually a quick forty-mile trip on a fairly direct route. In the last several months, convoys had been hit by insurgents over and over again on this run. Now, in an attempt to avoid insurgent activity, the trip is a circuitous 130 miles each way. The outgoing mail is stacked up, loaded into trailers, and waiting. Ken recalls: “We were all a bit nervous about making a trip with a new unit that didn’t know how we operated. We were used to the 1544th. With the 1544th, we all knew we could count on each other when shit hit the fan. This deal with the marines would be a new experience that we weren’t much excited about.” The KBR drivers did what they could to get some badly needed sleep, most just tossed and turned. Around 6 p.m., they finished chow at the dining facility and boarded the JMMT bus to the staging area to begin their pretrip rituals.
A Bloody Business Page 9