"He says he is happy you are here and he is grateful to be liberated." I expected Mish's stock answer and kept staring at him, waiting for more. "He also says the Iraqis had a gun here to shoot down American airplanes. They abandoned it about a week ago. He is angry at Saddam for hurting the people but also angry at the army for having no pride. He is embarrassed that they gave up without a fight."
"Tell him there's no honor in getting slaughtered. And ask about weapons and fedayeen in the area." Mish relayed my request, and the man began speaking intently while pointing at a distant tree line. Behind him, the Marines began to get into the Humvees.
"He says there is a house with many missiles in that village in the trees. Large missiles and small missiles together—about twenty of them. Also, he says there is a place up the road where the fedayeen are living. There's a tall tower there. Near a lake."
The village with the missiles was beyond the border of our zone, so we wouldn't be able to follow up on the lead. But the place with a tower by the lake sounded like the amusement park.
On our way up to the park, we passed through Qalat Abd al Jasadi, the neighborhood of professionals from the previous afternoon. Again the residents welcomed us warmly. Without making promises to remove any ordnance, we asked to see everything that worried them. At the very least, I figured I could collect grid coordinates and send an EOD team as soon as possible. A small group, headed by a man who introduced himself as Ibrahim, led us around the town for nearly two hours, pointing out everything from a hand grenade sitting in a classroom to a T-72 tank abandoned in an orchard. we'dutifully marked the locations of unexploded bombs, tank rounds, RPGs, and out-of-place metal objects we couldn't identify but were reticent to touch. Finally, when the midday sun had us soaked in sweat, the men said that only one object remained.
Ibrahim pushed through a wooden gate in a high wall, leading us into the isolated yard of a house on the neighborhood's main street. My paranoia kicked in, and I posted Marines outside the wall, at the gate, and inside the courtyard. If anyone hoped to ambush us, they'd better have a good plan and a lot of firepower. But Ibrahim led us through the yard to an innocuous-looking piece of metal buried nose-first in the dirt. A green and silver fin stuck up six inches above the grass.
"That's an RPG round, sir. It was fired but didn't detonate," Colbert said, as he edged back from the projectile.
"Pretty unstable," I replied. I felt like whispering, as if a loud noise might engulf us all in a ball of fire.
"Correction, sir: very unstable. We can't just leave it here for EOD to take care of in a week or a month. Kids live in this house. I can blow it up."Colbert looked at me coolly.
I knew he could blow it up. I also knew that doing so was, for us, expressly against the rules. We could mark ordnance, count it, and photograph it. We could not blow it up. Too many Marines were losing fingers and eyes to volatile piles of explosives. But then, this was a family's yard. Half the village had gathered outside the gate to watch the Americans work their magic. Our credibility was on the line. Not personal pride—that sort of immaturity got people killed—but the credibility of the U.S. Marines as a force for good in these people's lives. One concrete act of goodwill outweighed a thousand promises, meetings, and evaluation teams.
"Get the C-4, Colbert, and do your thing. If you blow your hand off, so help me God, I'll chop the other one off myself," I said.
"Roger that, sir."
We herded the growing crowd outside the courtyard as Sergeant Colbert and his team built a charge to detonate the RPG round. He molded a lump of plastic explosive into a disk the size of a silver dollar and inserted a blasting cap. Colbert took the C-4 in one hand and looped thirty yards of time fuse in the other. He and Sergeant Espera entered the yard and walked carefully toward the offending fin. Their helmet chin straps were snugged and their flak jackets tightly closed. When they approached the round, they dropped to their hands and knees, and then to their stomachs, crawling slowly forward and stringing the fuse behind them. No one in the platoon breathed as Colbert tucked the charge into the hole the RPG had dug in the turf. Because it had been fired, the round was armed and could explode at any time. He nestled the charge close to the body of the grenade and then tamped dirt on top to amplify the effect of the blast. Colbert and Espera reversed their approach—first crawling, then kneeling, and finally walking quickly back to the waiting platoon.
"No need to chop my hand off, sir." Colbert smiled and lit the fuse. Marines waved the Iraqis down to a crouch.
Colbert waited quietly, looking at his watch, before yelling, "Fire in the hole!" A geyser of dirt shot up over the wall, raining pebbles down into the yard and sending a dust cloud out into the street. The villagers cowered for the briefest instant before breaking into cheers. Sergeant Colbert and I walked into the courtyard, looking for the scattered bits of C-4 that would indicate an incomplete detonation. There were none. A crater marked the former resting place of the RPG round, and only tiny scraps of metal remained from the grenade itself.
Ibrahim and the owner of the house approached us. "Thank you. Thank you. Please come inside and drink tea with us. You are our guests today."
Colbert smiled wanly and deferred to me. "Sir, I have a team to take care of. You're our diplomat." He walked back to his men, who were now trading high-fives with Iraqi boys wearing wraparound sunglasses borrowed from the Marines.
I explained that we had other towns to visit and other jobs to do. Ibrahim understood and welcomed us back to Qalat Abd al Jasadi anytime. Driving out of town, I felt that we had accomplished something greater than blowing up one leftover grenade.
36
IT WAS TIME for the patrol's main event. I had been curious about the "amusement park" label on the map since first noticing it days before. Most Americans thought of deserts and torture chambers in Iraq, not merry-go-rounds and roller coasters. Reports that the fedayeen were operating from the grounds of the park and that the same spot might include one of Saddam's palaces only fueled my interest. Six hours of daylight remained, enough time for us to answer the battalion's initial questions and plan aggressive foot patrols for that night. But, of course, the plan changed. After we left Qalat Abd al Jasadi, the battalion ordered us back to the power plant no later than EENT, or the end of evening nautical twilight—the true darkness that arrives an hour or so after sunset. I slammed my fist on the dashboard but radioed back a calm acknowledgment. Accounting for driving time back to the power plant left less than five hours to recon the amusement park.
Rushing was not an option. To rush is to risk being sloppy and making potentially deadly mistakes. We would approach the mission as methodically as we could. Given the daylight and crowded area, I decided it would be pointless to try to sneak up on the park. Better to drive right to it, pick a safe spot, and observe it for a while before deciding on our next move.
A man-made lake nearly a mile long separated the park from the road. To enter, visitors crossed a concrete bridge near the midpoint of the lake. Since marshland bordered the amusement park to the north and south and the Tigris flowed to the west, the park was an island of sorts, separated geographically and psychologically from Baghdad. A tower dominated the park's skyline. It looked like a smaller and poorer Seattle Space Needle, a wonder of the early 1970s slowly falling into disrepair. Promenades and amphitheaters surrounded the base of the tower. The wooden frame of a roller coaster stood above the once-manicured shrubs and palms. Everything was dusty brown, colored with peeling paint and fading murals of pirated Disney characters. Through binoculars, I imagined crowds of people and colorful balloons. I couldn't decide whether it was the most hopeful place I'd seen in Iraq or the saddest. Eventually, I settled on the latter.
The platoon spread out along the lakeshore, glassing the park with spotting scopes, binoculars, and rifle sights. I planned to watch for an hour. Gunny Wynn and I were discussing the wisdom of entering the huge park with only twenty-two Marines when a battered red Volkswagen chugged up and sto
pped near our position. Ten rifles trained on it immediately. I turned to watch, but we continued our conversation.
"It's a deserted island. They can cut us off. We need to plan for that," Wynn said. He wasn't against going into the park; he just wanted to make sure we thought it through in advance.
"What about putting a sniper team up in the tower?" I asked. "They could overwatch us everywhere and coordinate air."
"Bad idea, sir. They'd be vulnerable up there, and we'd have to drop a team just to secure the base of the tower. Then we'd be down to fifteen guys. Better to stay together."
I wasn't about to contradict Wynn on sniper tactics. Before every mission, I'd float a dozen ideas, and he'd shoot down eleven of them. Then he'd suggest a dozen refinements, and I'd turn away eleven. The winnowing process helped us come up with the best plan.
"Sir, Gunny, better get over here," Doc Bryan called from his position next to the car.
A middle-aged woman sat in the driver's seat, waving both hands helplessly through the window. Behind her, I saw a man sitting impassively in the back. I walked toward the car and smelled the infection.
A teenage girl, about thirteen, reclined in the front passenger seat. A cast covered her leg. She smiled stoically, almost coyly, but her lips trembled, and pain shone in her eyes. Mish said her name was Suhar. She had been wounded by a bomb more than a week earlier. Iraqi doctors had slapped a cast on her leg, but she hadn't received any follow-up care. Her parents hoped to run the gauntlet of American checkpoints to find a hospital, but they saw us on the side of the road and decided to stop.
I looked at my watch. Four hours till we had to return to the power plant. "Doc, you've got fifteen minutes," I said.
Retrieving his med bag, Bryan sliced open the cast and peeled it back from her leg. Suhar screamed. Flesh peeled off her leg in strips, and the bones beneath were clearly broken. Green and yellow pus oozed from the holes in her skin. The smell nearly knocked me over. With the cast off, Suhar settled into choking sobs that racked her body.
I knelt in the dust next to her mother. "Mish, please ask her name."
She looked at me and said, "Mariane."
"Mariane, we will do everything we can to help Suhar."
The parents watched Doc as he worked, and I watched them. I couldn't fathom their emotional cauldron. Their child was grievously wounded, probably by Americans, but her life depended on the charity of other Americans. They had to hate us. If the tables were turned, if I were that father watching my daughter suffer, I'd be plotting the deaths of the people who'd harmed her.
I swore under my breath. Our mission was to recon the amusement park. My commanders wouldn't think kindly of us getting sidetracked to help this girl. The night before, I had rejected the personal pleas of the villagers to protect them from thieves. When the shooting orgy had erupted all around us, that decision had been confirmed as the right one. With Suhar, I faced a similar choice: stick to the mission and hope we'd be serving the greater good, or be distracted by a personal sideshow. The very concept of "greater good" was fading into fantasy. All we knew was what we saw. In training, this would have been a slam-dunk scenario—turn the girl away and focus on the mission. But the past month hadn't been training.
Suhar's parents watched with great dignity as Doc Bryan scrubbed and prodded at their little girl. When he glanced at me, I asked for an update.
"This infection will kill her. She's a heartbeat away from septic shock. Sir, we have to get her to a hospital." Doc had turned away from the car and spoke quietly. "I understand the choice you have to make, but you should know that without care, she doesn't have a chance."
Calling the battalion, I asked to speak to Dr. Aubin. Bryan took the handset from me and relayed information on Suhar's wounds. We waited while Aubin checked to see what resources were available in Baghdad.
I fought not to sound bitter. "Resources in Baghdad? How about the whole fucking U.S. military? They better give us something."
Finally, Aubin called back. "Hitman Two, there are no American aid stations set up yet for Iraqi civilians. We have locations on a few Iraqi hospitals, but none of them have any supplies. Do your best to buy her time so her parents can locate another source of care."
I was livid. Aubin was a good man. He had proven his guts and dedication ten times over at Qalat Sukkar, and I knew the situation angered him as much as it did us. He had done all he could. I thanked him and turned back to Doc Bryan, asking for options.
"I can clean and irrigate her wound, then pump her up with antibiotics and check the infection ... for now. I can wrap her with a clean dressing. We'll give her parents a supply of dressings and antibiotics and instructions on how to use them. But without proper care, the infection will become systemic. She'll die."
"Do your best, Doc. Give them all the supplies you can spare without compromising the safety of the platoon. Let me know when you're finished."
I walked away to sit in the dust with Gunny Wynn. "Can you believe this? We're supposed to be the power here. We can't even get a doctor for a teenage girl," I said.
Wynn suggested that we give the parents directions to RCT-1's headquarters. We knew its exact location, and they had to be better equipped than we were. I agreed and bent over the hood to write out a note in clear block letters:
THIS GIRL, SUHAR, HAS BEEN WOUNDED BY AN AMERICAN BOMB. WE PROVIDED BEST MEDICAL CARE AVAILABLE AND SENT HER FAMILY TO SEEK FURTHER TREATMENT AT HQ INCHON. PLEASE RENDER ALL POSSIBLE AID. SEMPER FI. BRAVO TWO, 1ST RECON BATTALION, MC 3937 0063, 14APR1130Z2004, 1 STLT N. C. FICK, USMC.
Mish gave the note to Suhar's parents, along with directions to Inchon, the call sign for RCT-1. When Doc finished cleaning and re-wrapping the wound, we watched the Volkswagen speed off down the road toward Baghdad.
"If they don't get killed at a checkpoint, they'll probably just get laughed at by Inchon," Bryan said, spitting in the dust with all the disgust I felt.
It was late afternoon by the time we crept slowly across the bridge into the amusement park. Tending Suhar had cost us two hours. On the hundred-meter span across the lake, the platoon made the mental shift back to combat mode. Tenderness gave way to aggression. We turned right at the end of the bridge and made a slow counterclockwise sweep through the abandoned walkways and parking lots. As in the rest of Baghdad, looters had been a step ahead of us. Broken glass lay everywhere, along with random pieces of furniture discarded by thieves in midnight. The incongruity was surreal: Humvees passing a carousel, and Marines poking rifles into the Tilt-A-Whirl's teacups to make sure they were empty. Everything was empty. The park was not only deserted but assertively so. Doors swung on their hinges, and paper trash tumbled by in the wind. It was Hollywood movie set empty. The part of me still untouched by the war wanted to sit down at one of the picnic tables and read in the sunlight.
The platoon leapfrogged through the park, with teams alternating security and kicking down doors to search buildings. We found a movie theater, a snack bar, and administrative offices, but no signs of fedayeen. With the sun quickly sinking, I urged the Marines forward. I wanted to reach the northern tip of the park, where my map showed the large building identified to us as a "suspected regime palace." We approached it more warily than we had the other buildings but repeated the same drill of posting two teams on the perimeter and sending two teams inside. The building was a single story, sprawling along the lakefront.
I followed Sergeant Espera through the door and into a large room. The Marines moved in stacks, rushing along the walls with rifles at eye level. My weapon was a digital camera. A piano stood in the corner next to a long wooden bar. The glass cabinets had been emptied of alcohol, and broken glassware crunched under our feet. We moved through a ballroom with an inlaid floor and shattered chandeliers. Decorative ceiling panels hid recessed lighting, and unbroken windows opened onto a pool in the courtyard outside. Flashlights mounted on rifles cut beams of light through the shadows. Following a hallway, we opened a door. A king-size bed and a l
arge bathtub filled the room. The next door revealed the same layout.
The "palace" was a hotel. It was opulent, more opulent than anything we had seen in Iraq, but certainly not one of Saddam's residences. The amusement park had been a weekend getaway spot for midlevel Ba'ath Party officials. That conclusion made a fedayeen presence seem even more likely. I snapped a dozen photographs to pass on to the battalion's intelligence officer before continuing our sweep through the park.
We moved south along the Tigris. There were fewer buildings there, only a shady field filled with picnic tables and a scenic walkway overlooking the river. We rumbled down the sidewalk, scraping past benches and an ornate railing. I looked to the right and felt a cold shot of adrenaline in my chest. Bunkers and trenches honeycombed the mud flats at the river's edge. Armored personnel carriers, large generators, and antiaircraft guns sat along the banks. Four machine guns simultaneously swiveled and depressed to aim down at the fortifications below us. Through my binoculars, nothing moved.
Since the positions all looked deserted, I split the platoon in half to save time. Wynn took two teams down the slope to investigate the bunkers along the river, while Sergeant Lovell's team and I remained behind to check inside another building. It was a trailer, like a mobile home, and it sat separate from the rest of the park. It looked out of place. Lovell shouldered the door open, and we entered the single room. Papers cluttered the floor, but I hardly noticed at first. I stared at the maps hanging on every wall. They were Iraqi street maps of Baghdad, with the eagle crest of the regime on each sheet, and I recognized them immediately. They looked like the maps I'd been studying in the ROC. Most of the American positions in Baghdad were drawn on the sheets in red pencil. They were out of date, but only by a few days.
"Holy shit, Lovell, check this out. They know all our positions."
"Yeah, and these filing cabinets are filled with more." He kicked open a drawer, and reams of maps and papers spilled out. "Looks like we found the fedayeen headquarters."
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