Mace Eight Zero figured this out before I did.
“Mace copies, stand by for coords.”
She spent the next minute outlining what she could do for the Cobras. I listened intently, ready to help if called. Our biggest challenge was Al Qaim’s position on the Syrian border.
Syria was hardly neutral, but we could not fly into their airspace, so that limited the angles we could use. The Syrians placed several SA-6 antiaircraft missile batteries near the border town on the off chance we would stray into their territory.
The terrorists were closer to the center of town. We could fly directly overhead in a tight circle and stay away from the Syrian missile batteries. I listened to Mace brief the helicopter to fire on the coordinates she passed to them. The Hellfire missile had several launch modes. Most of the time, we used a direct strike mode where the missile sped straight to the target. The missile could also dive to the ground and skim the earth on a flat, low trajectory to hit targets under cover. This was ideal for hitting the caves in Tora Bora.
The first two modes were useless in this case because of the buildings. The alleyways were too narrow. We could use only the “high mode” that guided the missile to drop vertically down on a target. Dragon was ready and started passing the Cobras coordinates. I had the video feeds of the other two aircraft piped to my side monitors. My targeting pod was firmly fixed on the last guy in the gaggle. The fighters continued to run in a single-file line.
BR21> ROE and CDE complete. You are cleared hot.
“Klyde Three Six, Rifle.”
I watched Mace’s feed and counted down from thirty seconds. The Cobra’s Hellfire missile left the rail and started to climb. As it nosed over, it locked onto the Predator’s laser spot in the alley. The missile hit dead center. As the dust and smoke cleared, I could make out two twisted bodies in the dirt. The concussive force funneling down the alley stunned the survivors. They stopped running for a moment, shook their heads clear, and then took off again in a line.
Why didn’t they scatter? There were enough doors around to duck into and hole up. But they continued in a line like lemmings.
“Two KIA, squirters on the move again,” Mace said.
“Copy,” Klyde said.
BR21> ROE and CDE remain good. Cleared hot.
A second missile fired from the Cobra. This one hit at the feet of the first runner, killing him instantly. The surviving runners stopped like before to recover their bearings and then continued in a line.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.
Brett shook his head.
“You can’t make this stuff up,” he said.
Bruiser gave us an open clearance to keep engaging the runners until he called us off. He agreed to keep running the CDE—collateral damage estimates—along the route. The Cobras shot six more missiles. The Predators successfully lased each one. After each strike, the survivors shook off the shock of the strike and kept running in single file down the alleys.
“Mace, Klyde.”
“Go,” Mace said.
“We’re Winchester missiles, still have twenty mike mike available.”
The choppers were out of missiles but still had the 20mm Gatling gun available. This could be useful, but stray rounds and ricochets in the alley would create a collateral damage nightmare. The heavy rounds would penetrate the cinder-block construction of the average building in the region far more efficiently than the frag from a Hellfire.
Dragon passed the news to the JTAC.
BR21> Mace, you are up.
“Copy,” Mace said. “We’ll take it from here.”
She transmitted the message so the choppers would hear.
With the Cobras heading back to base, Mace and Dragon rolled in. At our height, we didn’t need to buddy lase for each other. We could line up a shot and lead the runners so they ran right into the frag cloud. Mace and Dragon took turns firing at the line of terrorists. The pair fired their complement of two missiles each, with strike after strike thinning out the number of terrorists in line.
I rolled in last.
“You ready?” I said to Brett.
He nodded. We’d gone over the shot while we watched Dragon and Mace work. The few remaining terrorists continued in line on my monitor. I still couldn’t figure out why they stayed in the open.
I pointed my nose down the alley and started my final run. The targeting pod’s cross hairs overlapped the lead runner as if they were physically attached to his shirt. Once the missile left the rail, there wasn’t anything else to do.
The missile sped straight and true toward that lead runner. He ducked around a bend in the alley, a bend that resembled the zigzag of a lightning bolt. Brett smoothly adjusted his aim to meet the runner as he spilled out the other side. The runner grew large in the picture as we drew close. The clock ticked down.
The explosion happened right on cue, killing the last of the runners. We watched for a few minutes, but no one got up. If there were survivors, they must have finally wised up. I didn’t expect it, though. They were too close to the blast to have survived.
Something deep inside me, perhaps that bit of humanity that hated war, felt sorry for the anonymous men running afraid and very much aware that they were in the final moments of their lives. I figured they came from some foreign nation, most likely Syria, where they were brainwashed that killing Americans was somehow holy.
It was ironic, really.
We had no business being here, either. Iraq kept its oil. Saddam Hussein for all his bluster was really just a regional joke. No one took him seriously, except his own people. Yet all we accomplished was to enable sectarian violence and create a magnet for all the wannabe terrorists in the Middle East to come and get their jihad on.
At least they were here now instead of attacking America. I took comfort in knowing that if we had to fight, it was in someone else’s backyard. But this was a turkey shoot. There was no humanity in it at all. I took no joy in it, nor could I mourn the loss. The whole incident was by its nature mortifyingly absurd, but it did prove that the buddy lase on running targets was effective. The Predator was becoming even more lethal, but I wouldn’t understand the true extent until a few months later in Iraq.
It was also after Operation Steel Curtain that interrogators started hearing the term “White Devils.” The insurgency and al Qaeda both agreed that their greatest fear was not soldiers. They feared the Predator, the silent enemy whose presence was known to them only after their buddies blew up.
CHAPTER 12
Keeping Up with the Joneses
Colonel Michael McKinney sat at the head of the long conference table, his squadron commanders arrayed on each side. A “Commander’s Comments” slide was displayed on the screen across the room.
As commander of the 57th Operations Group at Nellis Air Force Base, he held weekly staff meetings for all his commanders and senior officers. As the group’s chief of standards and evaluation, or chief pilot, I was invited to the briefing to consult on training or certification issues. For the most part, the meetings were boring. Commanders complained about manning levels as their squadrons expanded missions. I complained about eroding flight standards in the face of such an aggressive expansion. McKinney did his best to balance the needs of the Air Force with the needs of his men. It really was no more interesting than a staff meeting at any corporation in America.
I was seated along the wall taking notes when McKinney brought up the “Commander’s Comments” slide, usually the last slide in the brief. It was his time to talk about any issues he had or to give us guidance. It was part pep talk and part issuing his instructions.
“The Marine Corps gave me a call yesterday,” he said.
My heart stopped. I knew where this was going.
“Seems they need a Predator crew,” McKinney said. “Apparently, they want them for an operation they are plan
ning.”
“When do they deploy?” asked Chainsaw, the 3rd Special Operations Squadron commander. His squadron was now separate from the 15th and operating in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Right away,” McKinney said. “The Marines understand we will have some pre-deployment training requirements. Poll your people for volunteers.”
Then McKinney turned and looked right at me, an inquisitive eyebrow raised. There was no doubt what he meant. He said nothing. He didn’t have to.
A few days earlier, I’d approached McKinney about the Air Force’s changes to the promotion system. Increasing combat requirements on the ground in Iraq meant longer tours for the Army. By the end of the war, Army units were spending fifteen months overseas. They needed more troops to lower their deployment rates.
In response, the Air Force and Navy started downsizing to free space for the Army to grow. Officers from both services could transfer to the Army, but few did, leaving the services no choice but to start letting officers go. The easiest way to do that was through promotions. Either move up or move out. They changed the rules to make it harder to move up. In order to make rank, everyone needed a combat deployment since 2001.
The change caught a lot of officers by surprise. Most fighter units had never rotated overseas, leaving hundreds of pilots vulnerable. Likewise, those in the training command had no opportunities to deploy. It also affected nearly every officer in Predator. We had only a small cadre of pilots and sensor operators deploying to theater to launch and land the aircraft. Predator pilots never took off or landed the aircraft from the United States. We took over control in midflight. There was no need to deploy us to theater or to expose us to the typical dangers of combat. It was cheaper to keep us at our home base.
I was due later that year to meet my lieutenant colonel’s promotion board. I had met all the other standards for promotions. I didn’t want a technicality to be the reason I didn’t make rank. One thing was always drilled into me—my record met the board, not me. If my personnel record didn’t exceed all the requirements, then I would not be selected to make rank. I needed a combat deployment.
I had two goals leaving the Air Force Academy. I wanted to make lieutenant colonel and command a flying squadron in combat. My best chance was command of one of the detachments sent to launch and recover the aircraft. But first I needed to make rank, so I had gone to see McKinney.
When I explained my desire to deploy, he nodded and said he would see what he could do. It was a professional brush-off. He normally didn’t get involved in the deployment manning, even for the commands. So when he told us about the Marine Corps request, I had no choice. I volunteered immediately because I had asked for a deployment.
If I went, not only would I get combat credit, but also a line pilot in the squadrons wouldn’t be forced to go. I wasn’t on the regular flying schedule, since I worked bigger operations issues at the group. My job entailed qualifying and evaluating the new instructors and pilots in every squadron. When I was not flying, my role was to establish a standard from which the squadrons operated. In aviation, flight standards worked hand in hand with the safety office to enhance the skills of the crews and limit the potential for crew-caused accidents. The job tended to limit my flying significantly, a drawback of senior leadership. Since I didn’t fly much, my departure would not adversely affect the schedule.
A month later, I was on a plane to Iraq. During a layover at Ramstein in Germany, the Marines informed us we were no longer going to augment an operation as Colonel McKinney had led me to believe. I was still headed to Al Anbar in western Iraq, though, to assess the theater’s unmanned aerial vehicle capabilities, especially the video we shot through our targeting pods. The feeds had left a significant impression with national and military leadership. Prior to late 2005, Predators were assigned to support Army units. Most lines flew over Baghdad, Mosul, Basra, and Nassiriya. It took an Act of Congress to get chopped, or released to support the Marines. We passed the test during Operation Steel Curtain and they asked for us in the Second Battle of Fallujah.
As the Marines pushed through the tight alleys and dead-end streets a second time, a sniper hit a unit passing through the intersection. The platoon ended up pinned down and called for air support. At first, Marine F-18s responded. But the sniper was in a third-floor window, so the fighters begged off because their weapons would cause extensive collateral damage. Rules of engagement were changing and we couldn’t just drop bombs in the city anymore. A Predator flying nearby took the call. The crew, whose names I never got, threaded a Hellfire right through the window. Fire from the sniper stopped instantly. It was an impossible shot, and from that point on, the Predators were legend among the Marines.
Being able to keep a constant, high-definition eye on a target helped when fighting from house to house. The Marines wanted to make sure it was a capability for all its units now.
We landed in Baghdad and then rode in Army Black Hawks to Al Anbar. We flew low over the city, skimming the rooftops. The blockhouses flashed past in a brown blur. Occasionally, a vacant lot where a house had once stood would slide into view.
I was based in a palace at Camp Fallujah just south of Fallujah City and adjacent to the Abu Ghraib prison. Though attached to the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force staff, I mostly traveled throughout Al Anbar working with RPA units in the province. I needed to see what kind of capabilities they had before I could offer ways to improve things.
One of my first trips took me to Al Taqaddum Air Base. TQ, as the air base was known, sat on the shores of Lake Habbaniyah, southwest of the Fallujah-Ramadi area. It was a minor air hub used to resupply the Marine units in the area. C-17s and C-130s stopped through at regular intervals ferrying men and equipment.
The airfield was an Iraqi bomber base prior to the war. Old IL-28 Beagle medium bombers littered the end of the runway like ghosts of the Cold War. Their World War II designs upgraded with jet engines hadn’t greatly improved their performance. They were ancient even by Cold War standards. The lake itself was beautifully blue, so much so that Saddam Hussein built a resort for the Baath Party a couple of miles down the road from the base.
When I arrived, the Marines put me up in an abandoned Roland SAM battery. There was no sign of the tracked missile system or its parts. It had probably been destroyed years before. The Alamo, as the Marines dubbed it, was a two-story compound that wrapped around a courtyard where the SAM vehicle would be parked.
My room was an abandoned toolshed. Someone had ripped the shelves out long ago, leaving only jagged holes where the bolts had been. A dirty mattress sat on an upended metal-frame bed. The mattress rested on the head and footboards, leaving it much higher than normal. Maybe that was because of the rats. Marines had hung a plywood panel to serve as a door. It didn’t latch but swung freely in the winter wind, banging irregularly as eddies flowed through the Alamo. I propped my bag against the door to keep the night air out.
This was my first trip to Iraq. For most of the war, I watched from a GCS thousands of miles away. But now, I was actually in harm’s way. I was on the ground and vulnerable to attack. It thrilled me.
But this world was a different place from the string of hotels I’d visited on prior deployments. I realized how easy I’d had it before coming to Iraq. But I also had a greater appreciation for what the guys on the ground were experiencing. We saw them only on missions, but after a few days on the ground I understood nothing was easy in theater.
Basic necessities were different here. At night, all exterior lights were turned off and the area became impenetrable black. The stars overhead offered no illumination as you struggled, eyes wide, to navigate through the blacker-than-black maze of Conex dormitories. My only light was a small clip-on LED flashlight that offered a small red glow.
I spent the majority of my time with the Marine squadron flying the RQ-2 Pioneer unmanned aerial vehicle. The Pioneer was about the length of an office des
k. Its small two-stroke engine, better used on a lawn mower, was mounted in the rear between two tail fins. A small targeting pod not much larger than a grapefruit was stuck under the aircraft’s chin.
The Marines either launched it from a catapult like on an aircraft carrier, or it took off with the assistance of rockets that dropped off once it was airborne. The Marines required the flexibility since they didn’t know if they would have roads or runways long enough to operate it while on the move.
With each launch, the Pioneer’s engines would scream in protest as it labored into the sky, circled over the airfield a couple of times, and then headed off to its targets. The pilots controlled it with a GCS at the base.
The Marines wanted to use the Pioneer like the Predator but faced a challenge. Commanders always wanted to see and observe a target before a raid. The information was critical to minimizing casualties. To do so, the Pioneer had to fly so low the engine noise gave it away. To the enemy, nothing said run and hide like a flying lawn mower circling their house for an hour.
So the squadron came up with a better option.
The Pioneer flew convoy support and IED searches along the two main convoy roads through Fallujah and Ramadi, named Route Washington and Route Michigan. The roads were the most dangerous routes in theater.
The mission required no stealth. The small planes flew ahead of a convoy and watched for any danger on the road.
One morning, I went over to watch a mission. I stood in the operations office watching a crew fly a convoy security mission. A crew sat at a HMMWV-mounted control station, flying the aircraft. The truck containing the control station was backed up into a hole in the wall cut to fit its shape. On the monitors, Route Washington slipped by as a Pioneer searched for roadside bombs. Like most of our missions, it was boring and took monk-like patience and dedication to stay focused.
As I watched the feed, I talked to a young lieutenant who soon started digging around in a desk for something. Lean and tall, with the stereotypical high-and-tight haircut, he finally fished out a DVD with “Greatest Hits” scrawled on it in black Sharpie.
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