They were lighting up the rooftops and windows of any building where the gunners saw people with weapons. The big .50-caliber rounds went right through the walls, and Luu hoped that any families in the neighborhoods had had the good sense to flee.
With just two radios, there was no way for Luu to control the .50-caliber gunners. He had to trust them to maintain their assigned orientations and to avoid friendly fire. He was worried, too, about how he would handle a casualty or a debilitating hit on one of the vehicles. He had given very specific orders: keep the convoy moving. That was paramount. They would not stop to try to save a stricken vehicle. The rear vehicles would evacuate the crews and the wounded and leave the vehicle to burn. “Remember the cargo,” Luu had told the drivers. “People in the city need that fuel and ammo.”
The enemy fire was steady, but not as heavy as Luu had anticipated. And each time they sped into one of the interchanges held by the American combat teams, a strange thing happened. The firing stopped, like it had been turned off with a switch. It seemed to Luu that the combat teams were finally beginning to seize control of the interchanges.
At Objective Curly, the firefight had raged for more than eight hours straight, but there was a lull when the resupply convoy rolled through. The engineers had cleared the northbound lanes of wrecked suicide vehicles and other detritus. Luu could see that the fighting had been intense. There were dead Iraqis everywhere, their weapons flung to the side. He got a good look at China’s five burning fuel and ammo trucks. They were still smoking. Luu thought, Good God, this is worse than anything we’ve seen. This is serious.
Just north of Curly, the convoy came under heavy fire. An RPG streaked in from the left side of the highway. Another one bounced off the asphalt between Luu’s Humvee and the ammunition truck directly behind him. Luu kept thinking about the fuel trucks, and how a single RPG would create a raging bonfire—like the burning vehicles he had just passed at Curly.
Luu was up in the turret, manning the .50-caliber. To his left, he caught a glimpse of a man lying on his stomach next to a low building about 150 meters away. He saw a puff of white smoke, and then the glowing red nose of an RPG sailing past the Humvee. Luu pressed the butterfly triggers. As the officer in charge of putting together the ammunition for the support platoon, he had made sure that his guys got armor-piercing incendiary rounds, just like the tankers used. But instead of a tracer every fourth or fifth round, Luu made sure every single round was a tracer. That made it easier to walk the rounds to the target. These were bright red tracers, and Luu guided them straight into the man who had fired the RPG. It was like a straight line connecting him to the target.
“Hey, LT, you hit the guy!” his driver yelled.
“No shit,” Luu said, and everybody inside the Humvee laughed. It wasn’t funny, really, but they laughed, stoked up on adrenaline and fear. Luu had no particular feeling about killing the man. The Iraqi had tried to kill them. He was the enemy—a mortal threat, and Luu had eliminated him. It wasn’t something that bothered him, even later, after he had time to reflect.
They kept firing until they reached the big spaghetti intersection where, again, the enemy fire ceased. And here, too, Luu saw evidence of a fierce firefight—enemy corpses, weapons, thousands of expended brass casings. It was a confusing interchange, and at one point the lead Bradley commander got lost. Luu got him on the radio, and the commander asked Luu to stand by for a minute while he checked his grid. The elevated ramp put the convoy at rooftop level, and Luu sat for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for someone to fire at them from the rooftops.
He was trying to get a reading on a commercial GPS device he carried—he preferred it to the military GPS Pluggers—when the Bradley commander radioed to say he was backing up. All the truck and Humvee drivers had to get into reverse and go back down the ramp. Luu got on the radio to his section sergeant in the last vehicle and told him to back up. The entire convoy inched back down the ramp. After a brief delay, the Bradley commander found the right ramp, and everybody rolled forward and down onto the Kindi Highway.
Suddenly Luu saw the silver arc of the twin sabers at the military reviewing stand, and he realized they were home free. They were pulling into the government complex, where the main roadways had been secured by tanks and Bradleys from Rogue and Tusker. Luu was surprised by how quickly they had made the trip. He had expected it to take forever.
When the convoy turned onto the parade field, just beyond the tomb of the unknown soldier, the Rogue tank crews rushed over to greet the support platoon. They were desperate for fuel and ammunition. Some of them were surprised to see the soft-skin Humvees and trucks. They had been told that no soft-skin vehicles were coming into the city. “You guys are crazy,” one of the tankers told Luu.
The drivers got out and whooped and high-fived and punched one another’s arms. They ran from truck to truck, inspecting the vehicles for battle damage. Every fuel and ammunition truck had arrived intact. Luu joked around with his driver, Private First Class Lundquist. The private was an antitobacco zealot. He delivered an antismoking lecture every time somebody lit up inside the Humvee. Now Luu offered him a pack of cigarettes. Lundquist took two and lit up.
As Ed Ballanco’s convoy sped up Highway 8, trying to keep the column moving as fast as possible, he suddenly had to slow down. They had gone so fast that the lead scout Humvee had caught up with the tail end of Philip Luu’s resupply convoy. Ballanco could hear the scouts cursing and bitching over the radio net. He didn’t blame Rogue—he had good friends in the unit—but Rogue’s tracked escort vehicles were slowing down Ballanco’s wheeled vehicles.
Ballanco had to keep slowing down his convoy to let Luu’s vehicles get ahead of them. He didn’t want both convoys pulling into the friendly interchanges at the same time. But slowing down defeated the whole purpose of using only wheeled vehicles, and Ballanco kept wishing he had brought along the tank.
Ballanco was in the front passenger seat of his Humvee, talking over the radio to the scout captain and keeping the barrel of his M-16 aimed out the window. Shortly after passing through the interchange at Curly, RPG teams opened fire on the rear of the convoy. Several RPGs sailed past the last vehicle, one of the scouts’ armored Humvees, and several small-arms rounds pinged off the Humvee frame. Farther up the column, one of the ammunition-truck drivers spotted an Iraqi gunman on the right side of the road. The driver couldn’t fire on the man from the driver’s window, so he pulled his automatic rifle inside and pointed it at the windshield. He fired a burst at the gunman, peppering the windshield with bullet holes.
Toward the front of the column, an Iraqi soldier ran up behind Ballanco’s Humvee from the left flank and opened fire with an AK-47. Ballanco didn’t realize he was being shot at until he heard the driver of the truck behind him open fire with an M-4 carbine. The Iraqi went down in a spray of dust and dirt.
A few minutes later, Ballanco spotted a machine-gun nest on the left side. A machine gun opened fire on one of the fuelers ahead of his Humvee. Ballanco’s gunner, Private Morey, saw it, too. Morey was in the turret, firing the .50-caliber at bunkers on the right side of the highway, thrilled to be in a firefight. The turret was broken. It couldn’t be traversed, and the .50-caliber was locked into position over the right side. Morey was determined to fire at the machine-gun nest to the left, so he crawled up on the Humvee’s roof. He grabbed the .50-caliber and twisted the gun mount so that the weapon swung over to the left side. Even with the gun now aimed properly, it was still a difficult shot because Morey had to fire between the fueler and a concrete support pillar, with the Humvee rolling at a fast clip. But he shot straight through the narrow gap and laced the machine-gun nest with several bursts of tracer fire. The enemy machine gun fell silent.
“Hee-yah!” Morey screamed. “I shot that motherfucker!”
Ballanco had to admit it: it was an impressive piece of shooting.
The convoy was now approaching Objective Larry, where Ballanco’s buddy, Lieutenant Mik
e Martin, was posted. Martin was the executive officer for Captain Hubbard’s Bravo Company. There was no enemy gunfire as Ballanco’s Humvee and the rest of the convoy made its way through the interchange, but some of the gunners behind Ballanco were still shooting. Later, Martin told Ballanco that one of the convoy gunners had accidentally fired at one of the tanks posted at Larry. The tank wasn’t hit, but Martin took the opportunity to chide the Tusker crews. For a long time afterward, Martin would joke with the guys from Tusker every time he saw them, performing a mock radio report: “Here comes a LOGPAC. Holy shit! It’s Four–Sixty-four ! Everybody get down!”
Ballanco didn’t mind. He was glad to be alive. After passing Larry, the convoy came under fire only once more, from the right side. One of the Bradleys stationed on the roadway returned fire with its 25mm main gun, and the enemy guns stopped firing. The convoy threaded its way through the maze of ramps at Objective Moe and swung over a ramp and down into the city center, to their final destination at the four-head palace to resupply Tusker. Ballanco saw two Abrams tanks guarding the roadway and let out a sigh of relief. We’re good, he thought. We finally made it. For the first time that day, he let himself relax, and he felt the adrenaline drain from him.
There were cheers from the Cyclone Company crews at the Fourteen of July circle when the convoy rolled through at dusk. And when they finally pulled up in front of the Republican Palace, Ballanco was struck by the sheer size of the structure and the deep green of the grass and the brilliance of the blooming red roses. He had seen nothing but dust and desert for weeks. The tank crews came over to greet them, and Captain Phil Wolford, the Assassin Company commander, sought out Ballanco and shook his hand. The drivers and gunners climbed down from the trucks, whooping and cheering. They gave one another bear hugs and high fives. Ballanco thought it looked like an end-zone celebration at the Super Bowl. It was the support platoon’s own little Super Bowl, and they all felt that they had achieved something special. They had delivered the goods, and every last man was still alive.
Wolford showed Ballanco the Iraqi machine-gun nests that had been blasted by Assassin’s tanks that morning. The stiff corpses of Iraqi soldiers were still inside, caked with dark dried blood. Wolford gave Ballanco a quick tour of the palace, where a couple of soldiers had stumbled across crates of bottled Pepsis. Ballanco hauled the drinks over to his guys, and they sucked them down. These were their first sodas since leaving Kuwait. They went down like champagne.
By the time the Rogue and Tusker resupply convoys reached the palace complex, the remnants of China’s resupply convoy had already been escorted to its destination along the Kindi Highway. The trucks set up a fuel and ammunition supply point in front of the Baath Party headquarters, which had been seized that morning by the Attack Company attached to Tusker. The headquarters was across the highway from the Sujud Palace, where Colonel Perkins had set up his tactical command post.
Captain Polsgrove worked on getting the fuel and ammunition ready for Captain Wright at Objective Moe. He felt badly that the supplies had not been delivered at Moe during the chaos of the firefight, and he made sure someone radioed the GPS grid for their position to First Sergeant Moser at Moe. The guys at Moe would have to figure out a way to come pick up their fuel and ammo. They had missed out on the “tailgate resupply,” where the trucks came to them. Now they would have to pull off a “service station resupply” and go to the trucks and fuelers.
At the interchange, Moser still wasn’t sure exactly what was left of his original resupply package because some of the trucks that had burned at Objective Curly had been designated for his combat team. He discussed it with Captain Wright. It was dusk now, and the fighting had eased considerably. The Iraqis didn’t like to fight at night. They seemed to realize that the Americans held a distinct advantage with their night-vision goggles and thermal imaging systems. The Iraqis usually stopped shooting at nightfall to eat and rest and drink tea.
Just before dark, two suicide vehicles tried to breach the perimeter, but the bombs inside both cars exploded prematurely when hit with tank fire. After that, the Iraqis fired several RPGs straight into the air, dropping them down inside the perimeter like mortars. Then it was quiet.
Wright decided to send two tanks to the Baath Party headquarters to grab all the ammunition they could carry, and also to get a better understanding of how much fuel and ammunition was available. Sergeant First Class Ford was red on ammunition; he had fired almost nine hundred rounds from the .50-caliber machine gun. Ford’s tank and a second tank from his platoon were dispatched for the two-and-a-half-kilometer ride down the highway. They drove through small-arms fire most of the way down.
At the resupply point, Ford discovered that there was enough fuel and ammunition for the entire combat team. He radioed Moser and asked him what he wanted. It was like calling home on a supply run to the hardware store.
“Yeah, Twenty-five Mike Mike ammo!” Moser told him. The Bradleys were low on main gun ammunition. “Grab as many cases of Twenty-five Mike Mike as you can carry.”
Ford and his wingman filled up on fuel and stacked their turrets and bustle racks with ammunition boxes. There was no way to take back more fuel. The other two tanks would have to make their own trip.
When Ford and his wingman returned to Moe, Moser unloaded the Bradley ammunition onto his armored personnel carrier and delivered it to the Bradley platoons. Then he sent the remaining pair of tanks down the highway to the Baath Party headquarters to refuel and load up on ammunition.
Later that night, after the enemy fire had virtually ended, Moser rode his personnel carrier down to the resupply point, escorted by a Bradley and another M113. Their little convoy rounded up the remaining fuel and ammunition trucks and escorted them back to Objective Moe, where the Bradleys were refueled and the rest of the ammunition was unloaded.
Wright now believed his position was the strongest it had been since he pulled into the interchange that morning. His perimeter had held, and now he would be able to expand it. He had enough fuel and ammunition to last at least another day. He had mortars if he needed them, plus artillery. He owned Objective Moe now, and he knew the Iraqis would never get it back.
For Colonel Perkins, the delivery of the fuel and ammunition to Wright’s combat team secured his hold on the city center and Highway 8. He had run a race against the night, and he had finally won it. All three combat teams on the highway were now resupplied and in control of their interchanges, where the firefights had eased for the night. Inside the city, the tank battalions were dug in with a fresh supply of fuel and ammunition. Perkins had been deeply worried all day, fearful that he would be trapped inside the city. Now the battle was playing out the way he had envisioned it over the past several months. His men were in for the night, and Perkins wasn’t planning on ever sending them back out. If the Iraqis wanted their city back, they would have to come and fight for it.
SEVENTEEN
COUNTERATTACK
Outside the Republican Palace, Major Kent Rideout helped set up the Tusker battalion command post in the main driveway, just off the building’s towering northeast portico and beneath one of the bronze Saddam busts. Rideout had fought his way up Highway 8 inside a Bradley, and now its rear ramp had been lowered to serve as his makeshift communications center. As the executive officer, Rideout was responsible for coordinating what the military calls combat multipliers—artillery and mortars, fighter planes and helicopter gunships. He ran the command post.
Although it was surprisingly quiet around the palace on the afternoon of the seventh, Rideout was worried about the exposed seam between the Tusker and Rogue battalions. He feared the Iraqi soldiers and militiamen who had fled Assassin’s charge into the palace compound would infiltrate back through the seam. Tusker now held the expanse of palace and government buildings from the Republican Palace west, past the bend in the Tigris, to the Sujud Palace and Baath Party headquarters—a stretch about four kilometers long. Rogue was securing the military parade grounds a
nd reviewing stand, the tomb of the unknown soldier, the Rashid Hotel, the information ministry, Zawra Park, the Baghdad zoo, and the amusement park. But in between was a gap that ran east to the river, where a series of five bridges over the Tigris were not yet secured. Rogue’s easternmost blocking positions were at least a couple of blocks from the bridges, and those units couldn’t see whether enemy fighters were stealing across the river.
Rideout and Flip deCamp, the Tusker commander, thought Rogue should push all the way to the bridges to seal them. They feared the Iraqis would pour across to mount a counterattack. Both men relayed their concerns over the brigade net to Major Rick Nussio, Rogue’s executive officer. Nussio understood their dilemma, but he couldn’t spare any units to push to the bridges. Rogue was in a hell of a fight near the zoo—a bigger fight than anyone had anticipated. They were fighting off dismounts and suicide vehicles. If Nussio shifted units to the east, it would open a new, bigger seam to the west, where Rogue was now linked near the Baath Party headquarters with the China battalion. So he told deCamp and Rideout he was sorry, but he couldn’t help with the bridges.
In addition to the bridges, Rideout was also worried about occasional enemy fire from the east bank of the Tigris. He had no idea what was over there. He had satellite imagery maps of only the west bank—the palace and government complex. The east bank had been designated as the area of operations for the U.S. Marines, who were still fighting their way north through the southeast corner of the city. Behind the palace, Tusker’s scouts used their thermal sights to identify gunmen popping up out of fighting holes to fire across the river. Rideout had the scouts fire grenade launchers at the opposite bank. He wanted to suppress the enemy fire, but he didn’t want to fire .50-caliber machine guns because the muzzle flashes and tracers would clearly identify the battalion’s positions. The grenades managed to keep enemy fire to a minimum.
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