Thunder Run

by David Zucchino

  Hommel was forty-one years old and a man of the cloth, but he had not fully forsaken his soldier’s responsibilities. Later, when the interchange came under heavy attack, he decided that he was not going to give up without a fight, and he certainly was not going to surrender. Rounds were hitting all around the aid station, and some of the medics picked up their M-16s and returned fire. Hommel spotted an M-16 that had belonged to a wounded soldier. The chaplain was a noncombatant, but he believed he had the right to defend his own life and the lives of his fellow soldiers. He picked up the rifle and asked one of the medics for some ammunition. He squeezed off several bursts at muzzle flashes in the distance. He didn’t know whether he hit anyone, and he didn’t want to know.

  * * *

  Command Sergeant Major Robert Gallagher had set up his big M88 recovery vehicle directly beneath the overpass, next to the aid station. As the highest-ranking NCO in the entire battalion, Gallagher was helping Captain Hornbuckle direct the fight at Curly. He was caustic and forthright, a leathery-faced forty-year-old with a world-weary air. Some of the men called him Black Hawk Bob. Gallagher was a legendary figure in the battalion, a veteran of the disastrous Ranger raid in Mogadishu ten years earlier. He had been wounded several times during that fight, and his hand, arm, and back were dotted with gray bumps from where bits of shrapnel were still embedded. He sometimes joked about being one of those guys who set off alarms at airport metal detectors.

  Even at the height of the battle at Curly, Gallagher paused during brief lulls to have a cup of coffee. He kept a coffeemaker in his armored vehicle, brewing grounds supplied by his wife. It was a tradition with him, just a little something to provide a sense of normality during times of stress and chaos, and to help everybody stay alert after several days without a decent night’s sleep. He and Hornbuckle and some of the other soldiers around the C2 vehicle—the command and control vehicle—would gulp down hot coffee as they discussed the ongoing battle.

  But now, with enemy fire penetrating the little cocoon formed by Gallagher’s vehicle and the command and medical tracks, Gallagher was getting concerned. He did not believe they were in immediate danger of being overrun, but he did have his doubts about how long they could hold off the enemy with just eighty men and five Bradleys. Casualties were mounting, almost by the minute. The enemy had clearly prepared for a battle at the intersection. Gallagher could see that the trenches extended in all directions, connecting the interchange to the buildings a few hundreds meters away. Fighters were able to hustle back and forth to collect weapons and ammunition—and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of reinforcements from the crowded neighborhoods.

  Gallagher was struck by a chilling thought: Shit, we’re doing it again—another Mogadishu. There were unsettling similarities—a guerrilla force dressed in civilian clothes and attacking from civilian areas, a dense urban neighborhood where civilians blundered into the fight, suicide attacks by Muslim fanatics, and an outnumbered and surrounded American unit. Gallagher’s team at Curly had armored vehicles and mortars and considerably more firepower than the lightly armed American teams Gallagher had fought alongside in Mogadishu, but they faced the same sort of withering attack by undisciplined gunmen fed by stockpiles of RPGs. Gallagher didn’t like the way things were going. He thought they needed reinforcements—not later, but now.

  Hornbuckle was concentrating on four- and five-story buildings to the northeast and the northwest, where RPG teams were able to fire straight down on his men dug into the cloverleaf. They were civilian buildings in a residential neighborhood, but under the rules of engagement they were now legitimate targets because they were being used by the enemy to attack American forces. Hornbuckle had first ordered his Bradley crews to fire high-explosive Twenty-five Mike Mike straight through the windows, where he could see the RPG teams firing and moving. The rounds reduced the rate of fire from the buildings but did not silence it. The captain had his mortar team fire “direct lay” into the buildings; they were close enough to see the target, so they didn’t have to adjust their high-angle fire with the help of spotters. Instead, they lowered the mortar tubes and shot the rounds directly into the buildings, making their own sight adjustments and lateral shifts. The mortars chopped the buildings down, floor by floor.

  Then Hornbuckle called in the Paladins, the 155mm artillery batteries set up south of the brigade command center. Their ninety-five-pound shells tore into two of the buildings, leveling both structures. But one round fell short, detonating on top of the overpass with a thunderous concussion that rocked the men in the armored vehicles parked directly below. No one was hurt, but Hornbuckle had to bring some of his infantrymen in under the overpass, constricting his perimeter. Then another short round exploded near the overpass, slightly wounding two soldiers. The artillery was shut off.

  Hornbuckle climbed out of his Bradley from time to time to check on his men, to encourage them and tell them they were doing just fine. At one point, as he hustled between positions, an enemy gunman rose up from a trench and aimed his rifle at Hornbuckle. The captain raised his own rifle and fired. The man went down.

  Under the overpass, Gallagher shared his concerns with Hornbuckle. He told the captain that he thought their position was tenuous. If they were going to hold the interchange, and thus the highway, they might not be able do it with the men and firepower now at hand. They needed reinforcements. Hornbuckle didn’t like the situation, either, but he thought they were getting on top of it.

  From Objective Larry, three and a half kilometers to the north, Lieutenant Colonel Twitty radioed Hornbuckle for a situation report. Twitty was in the middle of his own fierce firefight, and he had just received an urgent request for more ammunition from his company commander at Objective Moe, who was trying to repulse a ferocious attack by Iraqi armored vehicles and RPG teams. Now Twitty wanted to know whether things were just as bad at Curly.

  Hornbuckle described the situation, trying to be as specific as possible but also trying to project an air of confidence. He told Twitty he thought he had the situation under control. Twitty could hear the rattle of the firefight over the radio. He thought the captain was trying too hard to be the good soldier, to put a positive spin on things. He told him, “Zan, if you’re having problems, let me know.” Hornbuckle tried again to describe his predicament, but Twitty wasn’t satisfied.

  “Put Command Sergeant Major Gallagher on,” he told the captain.

  Twitty respected Gallagher’s combat experience and savvy. He knew, too, that Gallagher would be blunt. He had survived Mogadishu. If the sergeant major thought he needed help, Twitty thought, he would not hesitate to ask for it.

  “All right, Sergeant Major, I want to know the truth,” Twitty told Gallagher. “Do you need reinforcements?”

  Gallagher did not hesitate. “Sir, we need reinforcements.”

  It was at this point that Twitty radioed Perkins downtown, mindful of their discussion the night before, when Perkins had assured him that his shorthanded company at Curly would get help if it needed it. Now Perkins told Twitty he would get his reinforcements. He passed the request on to the reconstituted tactical operations center, where Eric Wesley offered Twitty both platoons.

  Twitty radioed Captain Ronny Johnson, the company commander in charge of the two platoons protecting the area around Wesley’s TOC. He wanted both platoons, even though taking them would leave the TOC undefended and also mean that the vulnerable fuel and ammunition convoy would lose the protection of Johnson’s Bradleys.

  “Captain Johnson,” he said, “how fast can you get here?”

  Johnson was in the hatch of his command Bradley, parked in the northbound lanes of Highway 8 less than a kilometer north of the TOC. With him on the highway was one of the two reserve platoons, which was providing security for the long line of fuel and ammunition vehicles awaiting the order to push north. It was this fuel and ammunition that the company at Objective Moe so desperately needed. Johnson knew he could lead his platoon the short distance to Curly in a
matter of minutes. But it would probably take him fifteen to twenty minutes to round up his other platoon, which was more than a kilometer south, posted around the new TOC.

  “Sir, I can be there in fifteen, twenty minutes,” Johnson told Twitty.

  “That’s not fast enough,” Twitty said. “You get here now.”

  “I can only get a platoon right now.”

  “I don’t care,” Twitty said. “Just get me some combat power up here right now.”

  It sounded dire. Johnson had been monitoring the increasingly desperate situation at Curly on the net, but his brief discussion with Twitty persuaded him that it was worse than he had envisioned. He ordered his platoon to move out.

  Johnson was not a newcomer to combat. He had parachuted into Panama in 1989 and he had fought as an army Ranger in the first Gulf War. At age thirty-eight, he had a richer military background than most officers, having served half his seventeen-year career as an enlisted man before graduating from Officers Candidate School in 1995. He had seen combat from two perspectives—from the grunt on the ground who did as he was told, to the company commander who led younger men into the fight. A tall, powerfully built man, he inspired confidence in his men with his sure, quiet demeanor.

  Several of Johnson’s soldiers had complained to him the night before about the mission the company had been assigned. It sounded to them like a routine security detail. They were anxious to get into the fight, especially because three of their buddies had been wounded in a mortar attack that night at their base near the TOC. Now they feared they had been relegated to guarding fuel trucks and ambulances at the rear while the Tusker and Rogue battalions were being dispatched to the center of Baghdad, into the heart of the fight. Johnson had felt his company’s morale sag that night. The men seemed to almost literally deflate, the wind going right out of them in little puffs of resignation and disappointment. Johnson tried to convince them that they might still get into a good fight, for Highway 8 was not likely to be secured—even after the thunder run by Tusker and Rogue. He also warned his men. “You may think you want to get into a big fight but, believe me, you really don’t.”

  Now, on Highway 8, Johnson’s platoon came under fire less than a minute after pulling out and heading north. RPGs whistled in from bunkers and rooftops, and small-arms fire rattled off the Bradleys. Johnson spotted two men with RPGs poking their heads up from a roadside bunker. He shouted at his gunner, Sergeant Joseph Conley, who killed both men with a quick burst of coax. But the rate of enemy fire actually intensified—a steady, metallic thump against the hull of the Bradley.

  Conley got on the intercom to the captain and asked, “Hey, sir, are we getting hit?” He was new to combat.

  “Yeah, we’re getting hit,” Johnson told him. “We’re getting hit a lot.”

  THIRTEEN

  BIG TIME

  Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Twitty is right-handed, but on the morning of April 7 he found himself drawing diagrams with his left hand. He was crouched in the commander’s hatch of his Bradley, clutching a radio with his right hand and awkwardly drawing with his left on a scrap of paper. He was trying to diagram an emergency battle plan. The fight was not playing out the way Twitty had anticipated. He had expected to seize the advantage, push out from all three interchanges, and take control of not only Highway 8 but also the access roads and the streets at the edge of the outlying commercial and residential districts. But now the enemy was taking the fight to his men, who were surrounded and under withering fire at all three interchanges.

  Twitty had fought in the first Gulf War, but he had never seen anything like this. In the first war, he had watched Iraqi soldiers surrender by the thousands. If you put the slightest pressure on them, they folded. But here, along Highway 8, the Iraqi and Syrian fighters, and even some of the Republican Guards, were fanatic. The tanks and Bradleys were killing them by the dozens, but they kept coming. Twitty suspected they were high on drugs. Nothing else, he thought, could account for their fanaticism. They seemed determined to die. And they were reckless—absolutely reckless, with no sense of planning or tactics.

  All sorts of civilian vehicles—taxis, police cars, buses, clumsy old Chevy Caprices—were dropping off gunmen at all four corners of the cloverleaf at Larry. But instead of dropping them off out of view of the tanks and Bradleys, the drivers pulled right up into the kill zone. Twitty got on the radio and shouted at his tank crews, “Don’t mess with letting them get out. Just kill them right where they are.” Many of the fighters died inside the vehicles, incinerated by HEAT rounds from the tanks. Twitty watched one bus burst into a fireball, burning alive two dozen fighters inside. He could see their RPGs poking out the windows. A second bus appeared, and it was clear to Twitty that the driver had just seen the bus in front of him go up in flames. Yet he sped forward, into the kill zone, and a HEAT round lit up his bus, too. In just two hours, the combat team at Larry had destroyed more than twenty vehicles.

  And yet . . . they kept coming. Twitty was the battalion commander, responsible for commanding and controlling the battles at all three intersections, but now he was drawn into the fight. His Bradley was parked on Highway 8, just south of the overpass, where sniper fire from buildings to the southwest was tearing up chunks of asphalt from the roadway. Twitty squinted through his periscope and spotted a sniper firing from a window in a three-story building. He told his gunner to launch a TOW missile into the building. The TOW was a remarkably accurate weapon—designed to penetrate tank armor at distances of up to four kilometers. An optical sight in the launcher is connected to a computer inside the missile by a fine wire that unspools as the missile is launched. By tracking the target through his sight, the gunner can guide the warhead by keeping the sight’s crosshairs trained on the target. Twitty’s gunner guided the missile right through the window, pulverizing the whole side of the building. The sniper fire ceased.

  Twitty was still drawing on the paper, scratching out a new battle plan, when he happened to look up and notice an orange-and-white taxi speeding north on Highway 8. The taxi had somehow penetrated his southern perimeter and was bearing down on the Bradleys and tanks arrayed across the highway. It was weaving through the burning wrecks of shot-up vehicles, and around the barriers the engineers had built from crushed guardrails and highway light towers. A man in the backseat was firing an AK-47 out the window.

  Twitty heard himself yell, “Shit!” Then he shouted into the radio: “Taxi! Taxi coming!” Instantly, he realized how absurd he sounded, yelling about a taxi in the middle of a firefight. He screamed at his gunner, “Slew the turret and fire! No matter what you do, you’d better hit this fucker!” The gunner swung the main cannon around and unleashed a torrent of high-explosive 25mm rounds. Twitty saw the taxi erupt in flames. The smoking hulk of the vehicle remained there for the rest of the day, and every time Twitty looked at it he thought, This guy would’ve killed us all.

  The fight was in full swing now. Uniformed Iraqi soldiers were firing from a dense thicket of date palms to the west of the highway. On the east side, RPG teams were launching grenades from the roofs and upper-story windows of an apartment complex. To the southeast, Republican Guards were advancing from a tree line, down a railroad track that ran parallel to Highway 8. And from the south came more technicals and more suicide vehicles and, from time to time, the preposterous sight of gunmen on motorcycles, swerving madly down the highway, sidecars swaying. The Iraqi and Syrian fighters and Fedayeen had regrouped after Tusker and Rogue had punched through, Twitty realized, and now they had mounted counterattacks—not only at Larry, but north at Moe and south at Curly. It was the first time he sensed that the enemy had devised an actual tactical plan, despite the haphazard and self-destructive way it was being carried out. The combat teams were fighting back hard. One of Twitty’s company commanders had radioed a couple of times seeking permission to fire mortars into neighborhoods. Finally Twitty told him, “Don’t ask me—just do it! Just level it. Take it down. Call artillery. Put mortars right
on those buildings.”

  Over the brigade net came descriptions of the tank crews in the city. They were celebrating, relaying accounts of the crass opulence of the two palaces seized by Tusker. Twitty realized that while Colonel Perkins and the rest of the brigade command certainly were aware of his predicament, the tank battalions had only a limited understanding of what he was up against. Twitty found it difficult to comprehend that American troops were celebrating just a few miles away while he was in the fight of his life, and he felt a twinge of annoyance and even resentment.

  Now there were more radio reports, these from the nearby crews at Larry. They had expended so much ammunition that they had reloaded several times and were now starting to run low. Twitty himself had reloaded once, and now his Bradley was at the amber level. If the battalion commander was going amber, he thought, things were getting serious. He could hear the crewmen around him screaming to their loaders, “More ammo! More ammo!” At the same time, Twitty heard over the net that one of his battalion’s Bradleys was on fire nearby. But even with the radio chatter in his ear and the steady rumble of the battle, he tried to concentrate on his revised battle plan.

  From Objective Curly to the south, Twitty heard reports of ongoing enemy counterattacks. The arrival of Captain Johnson’s platoon, followed within a half hour by the platoon that had been guarding the TOC, had helped stabilize the perimeter. The reinforcements added at least eighty soldiers and ten Bradleys to Captain Hornbuckle’s depleted company-minus. But wounded men were continuing to come into Captain Schobitz’s aid station, and all medevacs had been put on hold because of the precarious situation on the open highway.