“Thanks very much, sir, but I don’t want to go,” Goodwin responded. “I’d rather stay here with my men.”
“I am not giving you the option to decline, John.”
On the evening of January 29, Goodwin caught a Black Hawk to LZ (landing zone) Washington in the center of the Green Zone and got a ride to Freedom Rest. He could not believe his eyes. Although the perimeters of the Green Zone were well defended, the interior of the heart of Baghdad was not. It was the only place in the country that even approximated normal city life anywhere else in the world. People, even Western civilians, were just walking around, unarmed, as if it were nothing. Goodwin’s Yusufiyah alert system was still firing. “Where is the security?” he wondered. Most of the vehicles were soft-skinned cars and SUVs. He looked around and saw undefended lines of sight, ideal perches for snipers, and innumerable points on the roadside that would be perfect places to hide an IED. “This place is a death trap,” he thought. “Oh my God, I am gonna die here.”
Goodwin checked in and, as was standard, left all of his gear at the front desk. He went to his room and fell asleep immediately, but only fitfully, waking at 3:00 a.m., again at 4:00, again at 5:00. With morning finally arriving, he headed off for breakfast. Every time a helicopter passed overhead, he’d tense up, waiting for it to take fire. Every time he heard a shot, no matter how far off, he’d jolt. But after going for a swim, talking to his wife over IM, and reading a little, he was, by the end of his first full day, starting to unwind, actually starting to relax. By the second day, he was feeling even better. Hanging out, eating good food, not worrying so much for the first time in months. On the third day, February 1, he woke up refreshed and in a good mood, looking forward to the day. “Maybe things are looking up,” he thought.
At 8:45 a.m., 3rd Platoon’s Sergeant Daniel Carrick was leading his fire team on an IED sweep down Sportster when they spotted a suspicious object. They called it in to Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) to do a controlled detonation. EOD said they needed confirmation that it was really an IED before heading out there. Carrick knew what was going to happen. He and another soldier walked up to it to get a better look, and it blew up on them. Carrick broke his finger and the other soldier suffered a herniated left calf.
A 1st Platoon convoy was nearby. Carrick’s finger needed an X-ray at Mahmudiyah, so the 1st Platoon men ferried him over. After Carrick got his knuckle looked at, 1st Platoon was hurrying-up-and-waiting around the motor pool to drive back to Yusufiyah. Kunk walked by.
“How you all doing?” Kunk asked. There were inconclusive, unhappy mutterings.
“Except for getting blown up twenty-four/seven, we’re just fine,” went one response.
“Pretty shitty, sir,” went another.
Kunk was not in the mood for bad attitudes. Surprisingly often, Kunk would discipline lower-ranked soldiers directly, and even more surprisingly, those sessions would frequently turn into profanity-laced arguments with entire squads or platoons that disintegrated into wideranging castigations of all the soldiers’ faults. This was one of those times.
“You are getting blown up because you are not following the proper tactics and procedures,” he declared. He upbraided Bravo Company for not doing their IED clearances as well as Alpha Company. He invoked the deaths of Britt and Lopez, saying they were dead because they hadn’t cleared the route well. The men responded with a furious outpouring of ire, shouting that Britt had wanted to clear the route but he had been denied. Kunk pronounced this claim to be bullshit. He looked at Carrick. “What the fuck happened to you today?” he demanded. “What the fuck were you doing? Probably just walking down the fucking street not paying attention.”
Carrick flushed with anger. “I did everything by the book, sir,” he said. “EOD told me to get closer.”
“Bullshit!” Kunk yelled. “You were not following the proper tactics, the proper methods.”
“Fuck you, sir,” Carrick said, walking off as the men from 1st Platoon continued the row.
Sergeant First Class Blaisdell was at Yusufiyah trying to get a mission under way. A few days earlier, they had caught some suspicious types driving around and found several weapons in their truck, boxes of propaganda, a few artillery shells, and a handheld GPS device. Today, Blaisdell and parts of 3rd Platoon were planning on investigating some of the coordinates they had pulled off that GPS, a couple of spots in and around Rushdi Mullah. But the IED that took out Carrick had left him short-handed a fire team. He spotted Lieutenant Norton.
“Oh, hey, sir, how you doing?” he said.
“Hey, Blaisdell, what’s up? I heard what happened. Your guys okay?”
“Just a few scrapes. Everybody will be fine. Hey, you ever been to Rushdi?”
“Never been.”
“You wanna come?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Dude, I need a favor. Can you get like five guys? Because we’re strapped with all those guys back at Mahmudiyah getting checked out.”
“Yeah, I think I can work it.” Norton found his platoon. “Hey, I need a fire team to do this joint mission with 3rd Platoon.”
“Why?” some of them muttered. “They never help us. Fuck them.” Jesus, Norton thought, typical.
“Look, I am not playing this game,” Norton said. “We’re not rolling like that anymore. Bravo is Bravo, period, and we help each other out. So, who’s with me?”
Sergeant Roman Diaz volunteered, along with Specialist David Babineau, Specialist Thomas Doss, and Specialist James Gregory. They talked to Bravo and battalion commands and wrote up the order. Everybody headed to TCP1 to stage. They prepped their gear and checked the maps and Blaisdell briefed the men.
“You like it?” he asked Norton about the plan.
“Love it,” Norton said. Norton held the superior rank, but this mission was Blaisdell’s show. Norton would be overseeing Diaz’s fire team, but Blaisdell was calling the shots.
Leaving at around 3:00 p.m., they started walking the three miles toward town. Norton’s five-man fire team split off and veered to the west to investigate one set of coordinates, toward what the map suggested was a farmhouse. They would inspect the scene, a suspected cache site, and also lie in wait and support two 3rd Platoon fire teams, led by Staff Sergeant Chris Arnold and Staff Sergeant Joe Whelchel, who all continued toward the other grid closer to town. Rounding out Blaisdell’s crew were a handful of IAs and an interpreter. In a decision that would be second-guessed later, Blaisdell did not bring a medic.
Norton arrived at the farmhouse quickly. As his team approached, two men jumped into a blue hatchback, peeled out of the driveway, and sped off. Diaz asked if they should shoot.
Norton told him to hold fire, “but let’s get to that house, call Blais, and tell him that car might be coming his way.” They half knocked on, half barged in the door and, typically, the only person there was an older woman. She was flustered and upset. Norton had studied Arabic in college, and after spending four months in country, he knew how to say most of the important questions. And while he couldn’t follow the paragraph-long answers he frequently received, he could usually get the gist.
“Who just left in that car?” he asked.
The woman started talking and did not stop: “Car? …What car?… I don’t know what you’re talking about….”
“The car we just saw leave. Where’s the man of the house?”
“He’s not here…gone…long time….” Her favorite phrase was “maku,” which means “there’s isn’t any.” She repeated it often. Norton told the men to search the house. They found a CD hidden in some blankets, but they had no idea what was on it, and an AK-47, which was not incriminating because U.S. policy allowed every family to have one rifle. Then they uncovered some propaganda leaflets, a laminating machine, and other ID-making equipment. All of which was more suspicious, but not worth arresting a fifty-year-old woman over.
Norton ordered Gregory and Diaz to dismantle the weapon, take the ammo, and start searching the field out
back while he continued to talk to the woman. Don’t go far, he told them, no more than seventy-five meters out. They went outside and less than a minute later—dit, dit, dit—rounds from what sounded like a machine gun started hitting around the house.
“Jesus Christ!” Norton exclaimed. “Babineau,” he said, “get Blaisdell on the radio and see what is going on,” and he headed out the back door to find Gregory and Diaz.
As Babineau was trying to call Blaisdell, Blaisdell and the men of 3rd Platoon were diving for cover. Insurgents had set up at least two firing positions with multiple men each. They had pinpointed both U.S. elements and had opened fire on them simultaneously. This was a sophisticated group. Minutes ago, 3rd Platoon had reached their target house and taken it down flawlessly. Whelchel and his fire team kicked in the door and secured the family inside, some women and an old man, quickly and with no violence, while Arnold and his fire team secured the perimeter. As Arnold set up a hasty traffic control point on the road about a hundred and fifty yards from the house, he noticed a woman walking with a couple of her cows. A few moments later, he watched her split off from her cattle, leaving them in the road as she ducked into a house’s courtyard. Uh-oh, Arnold thought.
The rest of Blaisdell’s men had searched the house and were digging around the yard and scanning it with a metal detector, but they weren’t finding anything. “We were getting ready to go,” said Blaisdell, “when the world just fucking erupted with machine gun fire.” Some soldiers ran up to the roof to see where the shots were coming from. The shooters were northwest a couple of hundred yards. “I think we stumbled upon some kind of meeting, and they got scared thinking we were there to raid them,” Blaisdell said. “We weren’t even planning to go anywhere past those two objectives. My guys by the road said a bunch of cars started taking off when the firing started. I think they left a fire team back just to deal with us, pretty much to die in place if we decided to fight them.” There were several gunmen, perhaps many gunmen, on the move and shooting straight down the street.
Whelchel, Specialist Kirk Reilly, Specialist Anthony “Chad” Owens, and Specialist Jay Strobino started to maneuver to the shooters, who seemed to be consolidating at a house farther up the road. Whelchel’s fire team headed out of the house and met up with Arnold and his men, who were behind a berm. From that position, Arnold had been able to set up a base of return fire. As they were talking about next moves, they saw a heavily armed fighter run across the street toward the house. Several of them opened fire, but the man successfully scampered to his destination.
With Arnold’s guys laying down more covering fire, Whelchel, Strobino, and Reilly crossed the street and headed toward the new target house. Blaisdell and the rest of his men joined Arnold’s support position. Sneaking down a back alley, Whelchel’s team stumbled upon an old man cowering behind the external staircase of his house. Trembling, he gestured one house over. They approached that house, which had a large hedgerow too thick to bowl through, so Strobino flung himself over the top. Landing in the corner of the yard, he could see two insurgents milling around a Toyota pickup, no more than fifty yards away. They were walking arsenals, wearing suicide vests and carrying AKs. There was another insurgent in the pickup bed loading it with mortars, RPGs, and packs of explosives. Past them was the side of the house. Reilly and Whelchel were trying to make it over the hedge, while Strobino’s mind went into overdrive. “My guys are making too much noise,” he thought. “But I can’t tell them to shut up, ’cause these Hadjis will hear me. But it’ll take too many shots to get them all before one of them gets me.” All he could do, he decided, was to try to catch one of his buddies’ eyes, while also hoping one of them got over the hedge quickly and quietly.
Outside the farmhouse, Norton found Diaz and Gregory, prone and returning fire toward multiple muzzle flashes a few hundred yards away. Norton wanted to flank them to the west. He told Diaz and Gregory to keep occupying the shooters.
“We don’t know where Blais is,” Norton yelled, “so watch where you’re shooting! Only shoot at targets you can hit!” He grabbed Doss, planning to head west to the back of the field and then hook hard north and open another position of fire on them. Doss and Norton started running through the farm, which was like an open manger. Within a few strides, they were covered in manure from a variety of species. Rounds started zinging around their heads, too. “Shit,” thought Norton, “more gunmen than I thought!” Norton changed course and doubled back to where Diaz and Gregory were. Just as he approached them—fwomp, kaboom—a rifle-mounted grenade shell exploded right behind them, knocking Norton and Doss off their feet. Norton didn’t like this at all. The four of them were exposed in an open field and they had accurate fire bearing down on them.
“Get back, get back to the house!” he yelled. “Break contact, break contact!” They withdrew in twos, with Diaz and Gregory laying fire while Norton and Doss headed back to the house, and then Norton and Doss firing as Diaz and Gregory backed up. “Babineau! You got Blaisdell yet?” Norton asked. They could hear multiple explosions, more than several distinct rifles and machine guns firing in the distance.
“I ain’t got shit,” said Babineau.
The two insurgents outside the pickup turned to talk to each other, and something Strobino’s way caught their attention. Just as they turned, Strobino opened fire on them both. Both men went down, just as Whelchel dropped down beside Strobino and opened fire on the man in the truck’s flatbed. One of the downed men was still going, reaching for his weapon. Whelchel shot him several more times. As Reilly heaved over the hedge, Whelchel and Strobino saw an AK muzzle and two hands poke around the corner of the house and spray them with fire. They all hit the ground.
Whelchel said, “I’m going to throw a grenade.”
Strobino said, “I’ll follow.” Whelchel untaped it, pulled the pin, and lobbed it over to the front of the house. The moment after it exploded, Strobino sprinted to the wall of the house flush with them, while Whelchel and Reilly ran as far as the truck. His back against the wall, Strobino could see Whelchel and Reilly in front of him, behind the truck. Peeking around the corner to the front of the house, he could see a small piece of the insurgent’s muzzle poking out the front door. He thought for a second that he could sneak along the front wall and grab the muzzle while shooting the guy by holding his own rifle like a pistol. But there was a large front window between the corner and the door that the insurgent could see him through. He snapped back around the corner to think.
Whelchel yelled, “Is he there?”
Strobino gave him a shut-the-fuck-up face and whisper-yelled, “Yeah, he’s right fucking there!” Strobino’s split-second plan: Speed. He’d jump around the corner as fast as he could, never mind the window, and maybe he’d have time to slap the barrel out of the way long enough to get a shot off. He put his M4 on its three-round-burst setting and flung himself around the corner. He almost bumped into the insurgent, who had also decided on a bold frontal attack. Strobino got his shots off first, and the three rounds knocked the man backward. As the man fell away, he pulled his own trigger, spraying Strobino with bullets. Strobino caught one bullet in the forearm and his hand involuntarily flung his weapon away. He took another bullet to his leg that snapped his femur, so the very next step he took backwards, his momentum carried him around the corner, but he fell to the ground, landing on top of one of the insurgents they had killed a minute earlier.
From behind the truck, Whelchel yelled, “What happened?”
“I hit him but he’s still going,” said Strobino.
“Are you hit?”
“Yeah, I’m hit. I can’t move my arm or my leg.”
“Give me your grenade,” Whelchel said as Reilly started moving forward to “pie the corner” as Strobino had just done. While trying to open his grenade pouch with his one good arm, Strobino saw a grenade come flying from the front of the house over the top of the truck. Whelchel dropped down behind the truck, where fuel was pouring out of a punctured
gas tank. Whelchel caught sight of the fighter’s foot stepping out from the corner and popped a three-round burst from underneath the pickup, hitting just above a pair of black tennis shoes.
Strobino heard the grenade go off and Reilly scream. And he heard nothing from Whelchel. “They’re both dead,” he thought. Then the insurgent came flying around the corner. “This is it, I’m dead too,” Strobino thought. The emotions that washed over him were more anger and depression than fear. “How come I have to die in this horrible country?” he thought. But either the man was surprised to see Strobino lying there, or he was recoiling in pain from Whelchel’s shots, because he jumped back around the corner, pointed his weapon down, and started pouring more bullets into Strobino. Strobino rolled into the dead man he was lying on top of, taking four bullets in the front of his vest, two in his side, two to the back of his vest, two more in the leg, and a tracer round to the neck. Having been shot a total of seven times in the flesh and six times in the vest, he did not feel much pain. His bigger worry was whether the insurgent was coming back. He was more afraid of getting captured alive and being tortured than dying, so he pretended to be dead. After a few seconds, it became clear the insurgent must have retreated again. Whelchel started calling him again.
“Bino! Bino! Are you alive?” Strobino felt a wave of euphoria wash over him. “Not only am I alive, but Whelchel is alive too!” he thought, suddenly in a deliriously good mood.
“Yeah, I’m here,” he replied.
“Do you still have that grenade?” It had fallen out of Strobino’s pouch when he got shot, so he rolled over, picked it up with his left arm, and tried to throw it to Whelchel. But being a natural righty and severely injured, he could only flip it halfway. The look of disappointment on Whelchel’s face as it plopped between them was heartbreaking and comical to Strobino all at once. Reilly, who had taken shrapnel in his legs and groin from the grenade, ran up to Strobino, grabbed him by the loop of his vest, and started pulling him toward the back of the house. “Oh, wow,” Strobino thought, “Reilly’s still alive too. This is great! We’re all alive!” As he got dragged, however, the pain came on hard. Every inch he was dragged, his leg, gushing blood and oozing flesh, hurt worse than anything he’d ever experienced.
Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death Page 23