The Fighters

by C. J. Chivers

  Explosions rocked the valleys and reverberated off the mountain faces.

  The picture began to change. Small terrain features were removed from the map. Where there had been caves, there were rockslides. Boulders became gravel, gravel became grit. Al Qaeda’s fighters became harder to spot. General Ali’s militias still struggled to move forward. It was Ramadan, a month of fasting from sunrise to sunset. They were hungry and tired and the ground worked against them. Each day they would arrive late in the morning and begin moving up the roads, only to get stopped in the same places by fire from above. The fighting would be intermittent and lackluster, and at nightfall the Afghans would withdraw, leaving behind any gains to break the fast and rest. In the morning the process would repeat itself.

  Cobra 72—the ODA team—had been explicitly forbidden from going forward to fight. Their mission allowed only for terminal guidance of aviation ordnance. A small contingent from Delta Force arrived, with more permissive rules. Kryszewski was not sure it would matter. The space in front was too large and the Afghan militias were too unreliable, he thought, for any modestly sized force to succeed. When he watched the first Delta Force soldiers move up the same roads the Afghans had been using, he expected little to change.

  They’ll be turning around soon, he thought.

  He heard shooting and mortar fire.

  The Delta soldiers came back.

  Kryszewski heard a new plan: to find a drop zone for a battalion or more American paratroopers to jump in and fight, as many as a thousand soldiers in all. From his vantage point, he thought a battalion would be too small, but the underlying idea was sound. Bring more forces to bear, block the passes, and mop up. Washington and Tampa denied the request.

  General Ali had a rival, Haji Mohammad Zaman Gamsharik, a former anti-Soviet fighter who had lived in the West. Kryszewski had met him and found him to be polite, refined, and utterly untrustworthy—a criminal with intelligence service contacts. In mid-December General Gamsharik’s forces moved forward and captured high ground beyond where General Ali’s militias had pushed before. He promptly refused to allow anyone else onto the terrain, and announced a cease-fire to negotiate the surrender of al Qaeda’s forces.

  Kryszewski suspected a scam. He’s letting the targets escape, he thought.

  One of the interpreters hushed everyone. “Bin Laden is on the radio,” he said.

  The soldiers froze as he gave a rough translation. Al Qaeda’s leader, he said, was imploring the Afghans working with General Ali not to help the Americans anymore. The transmission did not last long, and the Americans could not understand it. They were within a few miles of the world’s most wanted man, so near they could hear him by handheld radio. And air strikes were idled while an Afghan commander dallied at the most forward position.

  The negotiations ended. By then, Kryszewski thought, bin Laden had escaped, leaving unfinished a primary objective of the war. Soon ODA 572 headed home.

  Kryszewski had not been back at Fort Campbell long when be began hearing rumors of another invasion—into Iraq. In less than a year the team was loaded onto cargo planes in Kuwait and heading into a second new war.

  * * *

  The MC-130 plunged downward to the Iraqi airfield, leveled, slowed, and landed. When its wheels hit ground, Kryszewski was quick to his feet. He disconnected the tie-downs and hurried back to his seat. The aircraft’s tail ramp dropped. Cold desert air rushed in. The plane stopped, and the first vehicle rolled down the ramp, bounced onto the taxiway, and sped away, getting distance from the plane. The second truck followed for a short distance, then they split up to take up security positions in a different spot on the perimeter of the field.

  ODA 572 was in Iraq. There had been no resistance. Kryszewski felt purposeful and alert. With no sign of Iraqi forces, he reacted to the eternal tormentor: weather. The wind was biting and dry. “It’s fricking cold as shit,” he said.

  The MC-130 roared down the strip and took off, flying without light. Its engine noise grew distant. More Special Forces teams were entering Iraq on more darkened MC-130s. The soldiers stayed in place as several more aircraft landed behind them, taxied back down the strip, and took off. Kryszewski’s team was given the order to move.

  * * *

  For months the team had trained in vehicle tactics. In the weeks before the invasion, in Kuwait, it used its time well, drilling in the desert and on the roads. The team was small and lightly armed, a force designed to search and communicate—not to fight in armored battles. And as the communications and intelligence sergeant, Kryszewski was expected to perform one aspect of his work flawlessly: finding hide sites, places where the ODA could work and rest undetected, able to defend itself if attacked, and elude a larger foe. The desert of the Arabian peninsula was new terrain for the team, so in Kuwait the soldiers had practiced. Kryszewski would study the maps and the satellite imagery of the ground around Ali Al Salem Air Base, and select spots for the four-vehicle team to hole up. The team would then drive out to examine them. The spots Kryszewski chose would typically be many miles apart. The team used each movement to practice moving in different formations and to polish immediate action drills, including reactions to contact and ambushes, near and far, and from right, left, or head-on. At each hide site the team would further drill: tying the vehicles into a perimeter supported by interlocking machine-gun fire, setting up camouflage nets and communications, and taking the steps to prepare for the inevitable next mission. These were the basics of patrol-base life. They refined their routine for weeks, until the team was functioning almost automatically.

  Kryszewski was happy to be in Iraq, at last at the war the ODA had sensed coming for a year. He felt ready. While the United States appeared to deliberate over whether to go to war, the Army assumed war was coming. The Special Forces quietly prepared. Money flowed. New equipment was issued. By the summer of 2002, Kryszewski could feel his unit leaning toward invasion. It started as rumors, whispers: The United States is going to topple Saddam Hussein. Kryszewski at first ignored them. “Yeah, whatever, you know,” he’d say. His team was fresh from Tora Bora. It had visited Ground Zero, the ruins of the World Trade Center, and been honored in a ceremony in New York. The applause was thunderous. And now they were readying for another war? This soon? And someplace else? He played it down. By summer he felt the shift. The team was told to make a list of specific equipment it might need. Kryszewski found himself doing area studies, gathering files on Iraq, and visiting the battalion’s intelligence section each day, reading the classified updates on Iraq.

  He knew the Army was tilting toward war when his team was issued Humvees. They had not had permanent vehicles before. The Army, he figured, did not make investments like this without reason.

  Now we have to learn how to load a Hummer instead of a donkey, he thought.

  Army rules mandated a three-hundred-mile break-in period for the trucks to meet the manufacturer’s warranty. The team was ordered to comply. In the face of bureaucracy, the soldiers found a way. The twelve soldiers donned uniforms, formed their four new trucks into a convoy, and drove off Fort Campbell, heading south down the interstate to the Jack Daniel Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee. The round trip, roughly 265 miles, pushed the odometers past 300 miles. The official box was checked. Through much of 2002 Kryszewski sat through repeated briefings about the chemical-warfare threat. The military seemed certain of the risk.

  Early in 2003 the soldiers were flown to the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait for their last pre-invasion preparations. Kryszewski did not have time to follow news reports or to evaluate the arguments raging around the world about the anticipated American attack. He assumed Iraq retained chemical weapons, a faith rooted in circumstance.

  A few days before the attack, with American troops massed near the border, Iraq launched a long-range missile attack at the base. Kryszewski was in a mess tent eating lunch when the alarms sounded. The sound was unfamiliar, more a curiosity than anything else. Then a Patriot missile batter
y fired, trying to intercept approaching ordnance. Over the whooshing roar of outgoing missiles, the soldiers heard shouts. “Incoming! Incoming! Incoming!” Bedlam broke out. No one in the tent could see out. The alarm spurred action. Soldiers pulled out knives, sliced open the tent’s canvas, pushed into the desert air, and ran for bunkers. Well-rehearsed chaos, Kryszewski thought as he sprinted.

  The missile missed the base.

  In the final nights before the war, some soldiers slept in chemical-protective suits. Kryszewski took a longer view. He did not want to be killed in an indirect fire attack but knew the opening days of the invasion would be exhausting. He examined the bunkers. They were too weak to take a direct hit from a ballistic missile. He remained in bed during night alarms, gas mask ready, and slept while he could.

  * * *

  After the last MC-130 dropped off the last Special Forces and CIA team, the order came to move. ODA 572 set out toward the Karbala gap, the strategic approach to Baghdad. The team was about twenty miles east of Najaf, and further from Karbala. The main invasion forces were heading north from the border, and Iraqi units were waiting for them in a defense-in-depth. Much of the area was barren desert, but near the cities and along agricultural canals the terrain was vegetated and green and interspersed with date palm groves. Kryszewski’s team was to search around Najaf and Karbala and pass intelligence to American units driving toward the capital.

  Kryszewski led the team toward the first hide site. They arrived before sunrise. The wind was kicking up. Grit moved through the air, forcing the soldiers to wear scarves and goggles. They took turns having a short rest. When Kryszewski woke just after dawn, the wind was rushing. The air seemed to hold a dull orange glow. A massive sandstorm had moved over the invading force. For two days the team was lashed by sand and dust. The team moved slowly, picking its way over the desert, wary of driving headlong into an Iraqi force and worried of being mistaken as an Iraqi patrol by an American pilot. They found nothing.

  We’re ineffective, Kryszewski thought.

  By the third night, March 26, the weather lifted. The team was driving on the outskirts of Karbala when the horizon erupted in light. Distant flashes achieved such brightness that for a few minutes the ground around them was dimly lit. Karbala was aglow in antiaircraft fire. Short of Tora Bora, it was the largest expenditure of ammunition Kryszewski had ever seen. Its implications were obvious. Iraqi forces must be concentrated there, inside the city, where a small American patrol could not go.

  The invading force’s plans changed. The American strategy was reordered. The 3rd Infantry Division was ordered to continue north to Baghdad, leaving the 101st Airborne Division to clear Najaf, Karbala, and other areas, and destroy Iraqi units the lead American column had driven around.

  For ODA 572 this meant a pause. Its company command element had landed outside Wadi al Khirr ahead of the invasion, secured the airfield, and returned to Kuwait. Kryszewski’s team and the company command group were ordered to link up outside Karbala and Najaf and then move north to Baghdad behind the 3rd Infantry Division for a new mission: working with local antigovernment fighters to support American forces as the Iraqi government fell.

  The team waited at a temporary prisoner-of-war camp as the invasion force reorganized. Kryszewski got an update on the fighting, hearing of ferocious Iraqi resistance against Marines near a bridge in Nasiriyah, and learning that the antiaircraft light show he had seen outside Karbala on March 26 had been an ambush by the Iraqis against an American helicopter attack. The barrages had shot down an Apache gunship. Two American pilots were missing. He set about interviewing prisoners, trying to get a picture of the distribution of Iraq’s forces on the roads between Karbala and the capital, a route he knew ODA 572 would soon take. The Medina Division was still out there somewhere. He wanted to know where.

  The company commander arrived on March 30. His element had been flown from Kuwait by helicopter, which carried its Toyota pickup trucks—the means by which the major and his team would move. When a heavy column from the 3rd Infantry Division attacked northward three days later, capturing the al-Kaed Bridge over the Euphrates River, the Special Forces, with their lightweight vehicles, were held back. The next day they heard the division’s leading forces had advanced to Baghdad. American soldiers were at the international airport. They were ordered north to catch up.

  Kryszewski reviewed his maps. He was concerned. Their light vehicles would form a convoy on the highway toward Musayyib, cross the long span of the al-Kaed Bridge, and proceed north through the very territory where his previous study of the Medina Division led him to believe the Republican Guard division was operating. He knew the 3rd Infantry Division had passed through the area. They were heavily equipped, but they still met Iraqi resistance. Kryszewski suspected that few Iraqi units had been destroyed and many had been bypassed. Somewhere out there, his gut told him, much of the Medina Division was lurking—at fighting strength. And after nearly two weeks of performing a reconnaissance mission methodically and with stealth, staying off most roads, the Special Forces teams were going to make a daylight run in plain view up dozens of miles of highway? They would be twenty-five soldiers in nine light trucks, with no weapons heavier than .50-caliber machine guns and a sole 40-millimeter automatic grenade launcher. All tactics involve gambles. This gamble seemed large. He didn’t like it.

  The teams spent the night at an abandoned Iraqi tank maintenance base. The Air Force controller working with them plotted the route and began informing his operations center that their convoy would be running the gauntlet and American aircraft should be alerted to prevent their trucks from being mistaken as targets.

  The soldiers woke at first light and organized into their convoy. They snaked out of the old Iraqi base with Kryszewski’s Humvee in the lead. After a short drive they came upon two Bradley fighting vehicles watching over the road. The Bradleys were in a blocking position, and on the last piece of ground the 3rd Infantry Division held between Karbala and Baghdad.

  Kryszewski asked for an update on the highway.

  “Is there anything up there?” he said. The soldiers told him the road was clear.

  * * *

  Foot soldiers know that uncertainty and misinformation stalk their ranks, from generals on down. Some soldiers fail, often spectacularly. The soldiers in the Bradleys were sharing incomplete and dated information, and it was wrong.

  Units from the 3rd Infantry Division had fought across the bridge on April 2 and April 3, but the Americans drove on, leaving no forces behind to patrol the roads, much less secure them. The Iraqi Republican Guard division around Karbala, an underdog in a lopsided fight against modern Western armor protected by airpower, had been bloodied and was weakening. But it had fought cannily and remained a viable force. Confusion had since gripped the Iraqi central command. The general leading the forces between Baghdad and Najaf sought reinforcements. But Iraq’s minister of defense and the chief of staff of the Republican Guard Corps, tracking the war from the capital, considered the American attacks from the south feints and predicted another prong of invaders would strike from the north. The general, Ra’ad al-Hamdani, was under orders to shift forces from Karbala to Baghdad’s northern side. In spite of these orders and the dangers on the ground, he reorganized his remaining troops for the fight from the south, and dispatched troops to Musayyib to defend the bridge.

  The Special Forces convoy would be driving headlong into a new Republican Guard blocking position. ODA 572 would lead, with Kryszewski in the first vehicle.

  The bridge, a man-made chokepoint, was arguably the most important piece of terrain between Najaf and Musayyib.

  The lead Humvee drove on. The area was heavily farmed, with high grass, palm plantations, and tilled fields. Musayyib seemed quiet ahead of them. To Kryszewski the stillness felt unnatural. Something is not right, he thought.

  The soldiers approached Musayyib from the west. A white pickup truck appeared ahead. Its driver spotted them, performed a U-turn, and acc
elerated away. Holy shit, Kryszewski thought.

  He had reviewed intelligence that said many irregular fighters loyal to Hussein were using white pickup trucks. He called it out on the radio, alerting those behind him that something might be awry.

  The convoy continued on.

  It reached the main intersection. A road sign showed the way for Baghdad, pointing left onto the Karbala–Baghdad highway. The vehicle swung left, toward the last stretch of road before the bridge.

  In front of them were scores of Iraqi soldiers. The small American convoy had been driven directly into the Iraqi Army’s midst.

  Time seemed to freeze. For an instant the Iraqis and the Americans seemed equally surprised.

  Someone called out in the truck. “Hey, Leo, what uniform does the Republican Guard wear?”

  “Green fatigues with red triangle patch!” Kryszewski shouted back. Some of the Iraqis around them were dressed that way.

  The sergeant at the turret opened up with the .50-caliber machine gun.

  Kryszewski spoke into the handset. “Contact!” he said. “Contact left!”

  The Iraqis were firing back.

  “Game on!” the driver shouted. A bullet struck the hood. Another thunked inside the truck.

  Infantry troops are trained for immediate actions, including what to do in ambushes, near and far. One principle is not to hesitate. When in a kill zone—an area of concentrated enemy fire—the best chance of survival is to fight through it fast. Turning around posed extreme risks. Hesitation often meant death.