For Briggs, there was one particularly foul smell that never left him, not even when he was sitting on a dock six thousand miles away on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was the smell of burning flesh and hair, intermingled with sulfur and magnesium. It clung to the back of his throat like bile he could not wash away. It permeated his nose, played with his reality, reminded him of the sounds of screaming—his own as well as others. Screams of war.
After his company commander had claimed the abandoned building for his men, a skinny Iraqi man wearing dirty, baggy pants and an equally disgusting collarless shirt showed up, claiming to own the building, and demanding that he be paid rent. The commander—reluctantly, but for the sake of peace—agreed to pay the paltry sum.
In November, a month after arriving back in country, Briggs met his new staff NCO, Staff Sergeant Martin.
“What are you reading?” Martin asked, peering over Briggs’s shoulder as he lay stretched out on his rack.
“David Baldacci,” Briggs said, holding the book, Last Man Standing, in the air above his head. “There was a stack of care-package stuff in the mess hall. I found this at the bottom. Good thing, because it’s really good. I got lucky, I think.” Briggs smiled.
“Nice. Hey, how’s the arm and everything?”
“Good as ever. See?” Briggs held up his left arm, wiggled his fingers and thumb, then popped himself in the chest with his right arm. “I can still pull a trigger and pick my nose,” he joked.
“Good thing—you’ll probably have to do both tomorrow. We’re going out on roadside checks. Be ready.” Without another word, Martin turned and left the room.
The next day, Briggs was up long before he needed to be; he just couldn’t sleep. His detachment of six Marines would be taking new Iraqi policemen out on their first day of work, four miles outside the Green Zone. It was always hectic and confusing the first time out, especially with language difficulties and dealing with the flow of traffic. Nerves would be spring-loaded all damn day. All it took was an odd look from a local to tighten up your ass enough to split quarters. A good night’s rest was mandatory for the day ahead, but rest just didn’t seem to be in the cards for Briggs.
They loaded into Humvees with heavy up armor just before sunrise to beat the traffic that would soon back up the streets in wheeled chaos. Three miles into the city, along a narrow two-lane street, an IED exploded off to the side of Briggs’s truck, causing the driver to steer the vehicle hard left onto the elevated sidewalk in front of a three-story building. The gun battle that followed scattered the remaining vehicles, as the Marines entered the buildings and streets, fighting from the cover of doorways and flipped civilian vehicles.
Air support arrived quickly but strained to differentiate the enemy, dressed in civilian garb, firing from their positions in the crowd. They were also inhibited by the fleeing civilians trying to avoid the overwhelming barrage of RPGs and small arms fire that seemed to come from every direction. The indiscriminant fire had no prejudice between uniforms or children—it rained down on all.
Briggs struggled to extricate himself from the front seat of the Humvee. As he swung the door open, the butt of his rifle sling got caught on the center console of the vehicle. He leaned back in to untangle the sling when several rounds bounced off the inside of the door. The sling popped loose and he fell to the ground, quickly picking himself up and running for cover.
That was lucky, he thought as he ran around the front of the truck in the direction of the building where other Marines had already found good cover.
Small arms fire riddled the side of the truck and the street. Two RPGs landed underneath the front of the Humvee and exploded, lifting it two feet into the air, then bouncing it back on its tires.
Briggs skidded into the building on his knees and fell in place next to Lance Corporal Jeff Blake, who was quickly setting up protective fire.
Briggs had met Blake two days ago. Blake had a fair amount of combat experience and had been nominated for the Silver Star for bravery, something few Marines received.
“Good company here,” Briggs said as he took up position near Blake in the blown-out window next to the door.
“What’s that you say?” Blake asked. Briggs steadied his weapon and fired at insurgents across the street.
“Nothing!” Briggs shouted. “Are you okay?”
“Peachy, just peachy,” Blake replied. He fired several shots at the upper floors of the building across the street. Without glancing away from the sights of his rifle, he added, “Nice day for a gunfight, don’t you think?”
Brevity in combat was an excellent cloak for those who were composed and scared as hell at the same time.
Briggs smiled and shook his head as he kept his eyes on his rifle sights.
The Marines had all made it to cover and were returning fire, but it seemed as if every window on the top floor of every building had a rifle barrel sticking out of it, blazing away.
Blake fired off a full clip of thirty and turned to start up the stairs of the building without saying a word.
Briggs turned to him. “What are you doing?”
“The war’s upstairs, man,” Blake replied and bolted for the flight of steps. Briggs got up and started behind him. On the way, he grabbed the arm of one of his fire team leaders who had taken cover with them.
“Cover that door, then follow,” Briggs ordered. The Marine nodded and Briggs ran for the steps to catch up with Blake. As he hit the first step, an explosion sounded behind him. The head and right shoulder of the fire team leader flew across the room and landed near his feet. There was nothing to do for the Marine. His body was fractured into pieces, splattered all over the room and ceiling. Briggs clenched his teeth, emotion welling up, which he forced back down. He resumed his ascent behind Blake.
On the second floor, he found Blake standing at a large fractured hole in the wall, facing the street. An incoming round missed Blake and struck the doorjamb by Briggs’s cheek, showering him with wood splinters. He dove to the deck as a second round splintered the concrete near Blake, sending fragments into Briggs’s eyes. He quickly rolled over, blinking furiously. Blake backed away from the window to the far wall after he had dispatched the shooter directly across the street.
“You okay?” Blake asked.
Briggs didn’t respond.
“Well, ya better get up. Bastards are pretty pissed. We’ll be getting incoming any second!” With that, Blake grabbed Briggs with one arm, jerking him to his feet.
Blake was six feet three and nothing but pure power. A fullback at Texas A&M, he was destined for the pros, but he gave it all up in his junior year and joined the Marines as an enlisted man.
Briggs still didn’t respond but moved like a puppet under Blake’s commands. He was still trying to regain his mental footing. He just missed being shot, one of his fellow Marines just blew up in front of him, he was being tossed around like a rag doll by a mammoth of a man who had no regard for his own safety, and now he was pinned to the deck by incoming small arms fire.
“Come on, man! You’re going to get killed if you stay here.”
They cleared the room just as automatic fire entered the window and mortar holes, bouncing around the entire room. At the top of the next flight of stairs, they ran head-on into two teenage boys with AK-47s. A quick burst from Blake’s weapon and both fell dead on the floor. Blake continued his charge down the hallway, checking each room along the way. Briggs provided cover.
While running backward to cover Blake’s advance, Briggs noticed a rope tied to a post and dangling from the window on the backside of the building. It was the way out for the two boys Blake had just shot.
“Hold up, Blake!” Briggs shouted as he looked out the window and saw two more ropes hanging from one floor up. “I think we got at least two more up above us.”
“I got ’em,” Blake said without hesitation as he bolted for the ladder well.
“No! Wait!” Briggs called. They needed a plan, but Blake was on his
way up and could not be stopped.
“Shit,” Briggs spat as he ran back to the window. If he waited, he could shoot whomever started down the ropes. Still, Briggs knew Blake would need cover, and there was no time to think about what needed to be done or to yell out to him. Even though the firefight was raging with noise and explosions, he didn’t want to give away Blake’s assault on the floor above him. So he quietly waited, and prepared, and just as he predicted, it happened.
Briggs could hear Blake begin firing his M4 with no return fire. For the moment, Blake appeared to have the upper hand. Suddenly, Briggs noticed one of the escape ropes had a leg attached to it, swinging out of the third-floor window.
Wait, Briggs thought. Wait for it. Then another body started down the same rope. Just a little more. Then the second rope swayed as a man swung his leg around it. Gunshots followed. A man who was apparently lined up to follow the first man on this second rope fell headfirst through the window, knocking the first man off the rope. At that point, Briggs opened fire on the two shimmying down the first rope, nearest to him. Just two shots and Briggs watched both boys fall to the ground and lie motionless, crumpled on top of one another. Above, Blake stuck his head out of the window and shot the man who had been knocked off the rope as he was reaching for his weapon. Blake motioned for Briggs to join him on the third floor.
Briggs bolted up the stairs to the third floor where Blake was standing at an open window, firing on the building across the street. The sight unnerved Briggs—and pissed him off.
“Why the hell are you so reckless with your life, man?” Briggs asked as he pulled Blake down, out of the line of fire.
“Maybe I don’t have a life worth a crap, and maybe it’s not worth trying to protect,” Blake belted out. He struggled free of Briggs and ran to the other side of the room, passing two windows. As he did, he drew fire from the street below and the adjacent building, glass flying in all directions and chips of brick showering over his head. He then quickly splayed across the floor and slid into the next room, crawling to the ladder well. Briggs quickly followed. The sound of the bullets bouncing and skipping off the walls and floor were deafening. This seemed to be no concern to Blake as he stood up, positioned himself next to open windows and mortar holes, and took deadly aim to hold ’em and squeeze ’em with little regard for proper protective cover that would limit his exposure to incoming fire. His Wild West show was a hit or kill for every round he fired.
“There’s another one who won’t be shooting back!” he yelled as he turned from the window and headed down another set of stairs.
“Where in the hell are we going?” Briggs shouted as he ran wide around the open wall and window in an effort to keep up.
“I know a way out of here. Stay close.”
“And keep my head down, right?” Briggs replied as he struggled to run across the broken concrete and rubble strewn about the floor.
“That’s up to you, dude. It’s your ass,” said Blake, now in a full run for the next ladder well. He rounded a corner at the bottom of the broken ladder well, where several fractured slabs of concrete lay.
“Help me,” Blake said. Briggs helped him move a large section of concrete from the wall, which exposed a hole leading to the basement of the building.
They jumped down into the foundation of the building, which led to a sewage system under the main street. The stench was unbearable and Briggs’s stomach lurched as he held back the urge to vomit. Once inside the six-foot sewer pipe, they slowed to a walk and headed in the direction of the flow of the ankle-deep ooze of sewage.
“Man, this sucks. It would be nice if these people were savvier about good sanitation.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. They just kind of let it all roll into the river.”
“Right. Where are we going, Blake?”
“To the other side of the street and up through the basement of the other building. It’s target rich, dude! Besides, we’ve already killed all the bad guys in this structure.”
Briggs held up his hands. “No, man, that’s not the plan. We need to come out down the street at the end of this row of buildings so we can help cover the guys pinned down.”
Blake sloshed onward. “Can’t do that. This pipe runs in a straight line to the river, just a little over six hundred yards. But I think it connects to the next building.”
“No, we head for the river and come back up at the end of the street. If we come up in that building, we’ll get our asses shot off by the bad guys and our guys. We should—”
“Are you kidding, dude?” Blake interrupted. “We kicked ass together. Let’s go for it!”
“No!” Briggs barked. “This is my show, and I am in charge, got it?”
“Yeah, I got it. We do it your way, Corporal,” Blake replied as he led on through the dark pipe, the only hint of light coming from the opening they’d made behind them and the exit at the river six hundred yards in front of them.
With heavy breaths, Blake said, “Okay, at the end of this main pipe, we’ll come to an opening just outside the edge of the river. That’s where it can get a little dicey.”
“Dicey?”
“You never know who’s at the other end,” Blake said. “If it’s the bad guys, they are probably sleeping or fucking off, so we stand a good chance of getting clear. If it’s good guys, you can bet your ass they’re newbies put out on security watch and they are freaked out and trigger-happy. Announce ourselves to the wrong guys and we’re dead. Announce ourselves to the right guys with no password and they start shooting into the drainpipe before we clear the opening. It’s a shit-luck deal. I personally would rather sneak up on the bad guys at the next basement and shoot their asses.”
“How do you know all this shit?” Briggs asked.
“You don’t do three tours in this shithole without learning a few tricks, Corporal. Besides, I’ve been in firefights on this street before. We found a group of bad guys using this pipe for their snipers. We couldn’t figure out how many snipers were shooting at us until we found this pipe connecting the two buildings and then on to the river. So we blew shut the two openings under the buildings. It figures that they would reopen them, or at least that’s what I was betting on.” Blake bent over just enough to clear the top of the pipe.
They stopped at the break in the pipe that led to the basement of the building across the street. It was covered with heavy rock and dirt.
“Too bad. Looks like we’ll have to take the long way around after all,” Blake said as he squinted to see down the pipe. They walked in silence. At the end of the drain they found the opening.
After exiting the pipe, Blake turned around and stood there. He stared at a set of footprints frozen in the mud, frozen in time, frozen in the maddening heat of this place.
“What are you looking at?” Briggs asked.
“I’m taking a piss. I would hate to get into another gunfight and piss my pants because I didn’t take the time when I had a chance. I don’t think the bad guys would stop shooting at me if I asked for a piss break. Do you?”
Briggs shook his head and moved toward the higher ground without responding.
CHAPTER EIGHT
October 2005
Blake had lied about having to relieve himself. It was just an excuse so he could collect his thoughts. The tracks on the ground brought back a powerful ghost, one that haunted him relentlessly. The footprints led into and out of the six-foot sewer pipe. The prints were deep and long—the tracks of a big man carrying a heavy burden in and out. They were his own tracks from almost a year ago, still waiting for the rainy season to mercifully release them from the mud that had turned them into concrete, baked by the blazing summer sun. Not even the edges had broken down and tumbled inward. They were sharp and jagged, like tall prison walls, holding in the memories of the day Blake had been here—the day he had carried his friend’s limp body into the pipe after drawing machine-gun fire from across the river. Blake had run with his friend slung over his shoulder, hoping h
e would be okay. “Stay cool, bro. I got you.” Blake had said, out of breath.
PFC Kyle Dunn was from Iowa. He was tall and skinny, countless freckles dotting his face and arms. His fair Irish skin turned as red as his hair almost immediately the day he stepped off the transport plane at Al Asad Air Base. The firefight started at the top of the hill above the sewer pipe. When Dunn had taken cover along with the rest of his fire team by the riverbank, someone started shooting from across the river, more than six hundred yards away. Spotting the pipe, Dunn and the others had quickly run for it—knowing it might be booby-trapped or the enemy might already be inside. It was better than getting cut to pieces on the open banks of the Tigris River. PFC Dunn had slipped and slid almost the entire way down the reed-covered bank into the water. A steady rain fell—just enough to turn the gray and tan soil into a flowing slur as slippery as grease.
Several rounds had whizzed past Blake’s head and splashed with a muddy thump in front of him. Then another thump shook him to his core—the sound of a round impacting flesh followed by a scream of pain. Ahead of him, Dunn collapsed, blood pouring from his right thigh. Blake quickly jerked Dunn to his feet. He knew Kyle would not make it back up the hill on his own.
“Hold on!” Blake had shouted as he lifted Kyle effortlessly up and onto his shoulder. He turned to run up the bank, getting good traction as he dug into the slippery ground. His fire team had made it into the pipe and started returning fire in order to cover Blake’s ascent up the bank. He ran with long, powerful strides, like a football player crossing over the field with the goalpost in sight.
Thump! Thump, thump! Several rounds splashed at his feet and on the bank in front of him. And then once more . . . thump. In a split second, Blake felt Dunn’s weapon fall to the ground, then saw it sink into the three-inch mud, the bloody sling floating on top of the sludge. Then Blake felt an intense pain in his left armpit. “Damn it!” he’d screamed. The pain was so intense, his knees started to buckle and his stomach wrenched in response. One of the bullets had passed through Dunn’s body into Blake’s. He kept moving, reaching the safety of the pipe, and placed Dunn’s limp body on the ground.
Shadows at War Page 6