One Bullet Away

by Nathaniel Fick

  “That’s goddamn triple-A!” The Iraqis were shooting a large-caliber antiaircraft gun at us from somewhere in the far-off palm trees. I aborted my walk to the commanders’ meeting, consumed by the need to get back to the platoon. Because of the way the river curved, it looked as if my guys were the most exposed to the gun. It also looked as if they might be the only ones who could see it and return fire against it. I stood up to run and dropped again as another flaming bowling ball whined past. The berm wasn’t even going to slow one of those things down. I couldn’t believe they hadn’t hit one of our trucks yet. Nearly the whole battalion crouched in the muddy water at the bottom of the ditch. My rifle felt like a popgun. We needed air support. My radio was back with Gunny Wynn. I hoped someone was calling for Cobras.

  I again stood to run, then fell to avoid another burst of fire. I thought of a quote I’d once read, something about war being a thousand private acts of cowardice. Ducking behind the dirt berm, knowing my men were exposed to the fire, I was ashamed. This wasn’t leadership. This wasn’t what I’d been taught at Quantico. Marine training is essentially a psychological battle against the instinct for self-preservation. Every impulse screamed for me to curl up behind the berm and wait for someone else to make the Iraqi gun go away. All the rituals derided as brain-washing, the instant obedience, the infusion of the Corps’s history and traditions, existed for moments like this one.

  I took a breath and began to run. Another burst of fireballs burned past, overshooting again and landing with puffs of dust far out in the field to our west. A Mark-19 roared in response, and I saw a gunner in Colbert’s Humvee pumping rounds toward the source of the AAA fire. As I got closer to the platoon, my confidence returned. I was back in command.

  Trombley crouched near the Humvee, leaning into a huge pair of binoculars. Hasser stood in the turret behind the Mark-19, looking down at Trombley.

  “See where the tree line ends on the right?” Trombley said. “About two fingers left of that, set back in the trees. I think that’s where the gun is.”

  Hasser loosed a burst, walking the exploding grenades in on the spot described by Trombley. It looked like the AAA gun was near the Mark-19’s maximum range, maybe even out of range. They could shoot us, but we couldn’t shoot them.

  In the driver’s seat of Colbert’s Humvee, Person was singing.

  “One, two, three, four, what the fuck are we fighting for?”

  “You have to answer that for yourself,” I said as I crouched against the fender, scanning with my binoculars.

  “Well, sir,” Person said, turning in the seat to face me, oblivious to the fight all around him, “I guess I’m fighting for cheap gas and a world without ragheads blowing up our fucking buildings.”

  “Good to know you’re such an idealist.”

  “That world sounds pretty ideal to me right about now.”

  Two Cobra attack helicopters swooped in low. The lead Cobra jerked sideways to avoid a stream of orange fire reaching up at it from the trees. The Cobras rolled in to attack, firing guns and rockets into the tree line. Dirt and dust hung in the air, and another burst of AAA fire floated up toward the helicopters. The white car we’d seen in the field was driving in tight circles, flashing its headlights. We’d witnessed this act too many times and directed the Cobras in on the car. A burst of cannon fire stopped its circling, and the driver slumped as smoke rose from beneath the hood. The AAA gun continued to fire. It must have been jamming, or maybe its operators were poorly trained, because it would let a few rounds rip before falling silent for seconds or minutes before firing again. Better aim and quicker fire could have torn us up.

  With our attention focused east across the river, I turned in surprise at an explosion behind me. A plume of dust rose from the field beyond the irrigation ditch. As I watched, another rose next to it, followed by a rattling thump. Mortars.

  “Snipers! Start scanning. Find that mortar observer,” I shouted. Mortar fire is ineffective unless it’s controlled by someone who can see the intended target and send corrections to the gun crew, allowing them to walk their rounds in on whatever they’re trying to hit. In this case, we were the intended target, and we began a deadly race to kill the observer before he succeeded in walking the mortar rounds in on our position.

  Gunny Wynn put his eye to the sniper rifle’s scope, bracing himself on the Humvee hood to steady his view.

  I alternated between two radios and the binoculars around my neck. “How many crises can we handle at once?” I asked the question idly, almost rhetorically, expecting a grunt from Wynn.

  Instead, he paused and looked up from the scope, suddenly thoughtful. Mortar rounds continued falling. I wanted to retract the question and tell him to keep scanning.

  “Always one fewer than we have.”

  Shawn Patrick and Rudy Reyes also searched. They climbed onto a berm, lying shoulder to shoulder and interlocking their legs for stability. Reyes peered through the spotting scope as Patrick adjusted his rifle for a long shot. Marine snipers have a mythical reputation, and for good reason. Scout-sniper school at Quantico weeds out seven of every ten Marines who begin the course. The graduates can hit human targets a mile away with their modified Remington hunting rifles.

  “Sir, check out that gray car.” Reyes rose from his belly to point at a vehicle barely visible beyond an irrigation ditch far out in the field. “I range it at one thousand fifty yards. There’s a guy inside looking at us and talking into a radio or a cell phone.”

  I raised binoculars to my eyes and confirmed Reyes’s report. The car sat all alone in the middle of the field. A dark figure inside was clearly looking our way, periodically raising something to his head and moving his mouth as if talking into it. I briefly wondered if this were evidence enough to kill a man. Immediate self-defense is easy; this was something colder and more calculating. Another mortar round crashed into the field, closer this time, with almost no gap between the explosion’s flash and its bang. Slowly, inexorably, they were walking the rounds in on top of us.

  “Take the shot.” Snipers don’t shoot to warn or dissuade. Patrick would try for a lethal first-round hit in the head or torso. I watched him regulate his breathing as Rudy called the wind.

  While the Cobras raced the AAA gun, and Patrick and Reyes raced the mortar observer, I worried about distractions. The military calls this a combined-arms ambush. The Iraqis had us on the horns of a dilemma — get up to move away from the mortars and risk catching a high-explosive antiaircraft round, or hunker down to hide from the AAA and wait for the mortars to rain hot steel down on us. Fortunately, they were doing a bad job of it, shooting from long range and with less-than-overwhelming firepower. My instincts told me that they also would try to hit us from behind. The whole battalion stretched to our north, and we had the protective river to our east. To the west lay an open field, where any threat would be exposed. I was worried about our rear — the dirt road that led south toward the villages we’d just passed through.

  “Jacks! Stinetorf! They may try to hit us from behind. Remember positive ID. Lots of civilians are running around out here.” Jacks and Stine trained their machine guns down the road, flashing me a thumbs-up.

  Sergeant Patrick’s rifle cracked. Rudy, staring through the spotting scope, watched the bullet’s vapor trail as it streaked toward the target. “Low.” He saw the round enter the center of the driver’s door. Patrick racked the rifle and prepared for another shot before the target could move. He fired again. “On target.” Rudy saw the round break the glass of the driver’s window. The man in the car crumpled out of sight.

  “Good shooting, Sergeant Patrick. Nice call, Rudy. Let’s hope the mortars stop,” I said.

  “Vehicle from the rear!” Someone sounded a warning as an orange-and-white taxi raced around the corner from our south. Seeing the barrels of two machine guns, the driver stopped, and three men bailed out of the cab.

  “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” I shouted at Jacks and Stinetorf. An officer’s
job isn’t only to inspire his men to action but also to rein them in when fear and adrenaline threaten to carry them away. Unless the Iraqis were armed or came running at us, we’d try to avoid shooting them. Wisely, they ran back to the south, abandoning their car. Less than a minute later, a second cab sped around the corner, and we repeated the drill. Two more men jumped out and ran back to the south.

  Something wasn’t right. Mortars exploding, helicopters shooting, and these guys were driving right up into our convoy? Not once but twice, and the second cab must have passed right by the first group of men running south. I walked down to the cabs and slashed their tires with my knife. That would prevent them from following us and perhaps attacking us up the road.

  By then, the Cobras had destroyed the AAA gun and were sweeping in front of us, searching for targets. No more mortar rounds fell. We had gotten the right man. The battalion, eager to cover ground before the helicopters needed fuel, called for us to move out.

  29

  WE STAYED AT THE BACK of the formation, passing the turquoise mosque and entering the grove where the AAA gun had been. It was dark and smoky beneath the trees’ canopy. Brushfires burned under palm trees split in two, their fronds black and crackling. We saw empty fighting holes and a pile of discarded RPG rounds. Once again, the Iraqis’ impatience and tactical incompetence had saved us. It chilled me to think that they could have waited to unleash the antiaircraft shells on us at close range. A few shots rang out from the front of the column as Marines reported men moving in the trees. Our speed picked up. We raced down a sunken dirt road between two thick stands of bamboo. I couldn’t see more than five feet into the underbrush. Clicking my rifle safety off, I braced my foot on the doorjamb to steady my aim. I expected a burst of fire to rip into us at any moment.

  We broke out from the trees and turned right onto a masonry bridge across the small river we’d been paralleling. On the other side sprawled the largest town we’d seen since Nasiriyah. Al Hayy stretched as far as I could see to the south. No one walked in the streets, and the windows were closed and shuttered. A dead city. The sky hung dark and dusky over the rooftops, even though sunset was still two hours away. All through Iraq, the weather seemed to move in lockstep with our tactical situation. The sun shone in safe places, while it was dark, misty, and dusty in ominous ones. A Mark-19 roared ahead of us, and Alpha Company reported sporadic incoming fire. Grenades exploded with rhythmic flashes across the face of a concrete building next to the road. I tried to duck inside my Kevlar helmet and braced for the gauntlet we were about to run. Someone up ahead had a hot mike, his radio transmit button stuck open. “Get some, motherfucker! Get some!” Explosions thumped behind the voice.

  We paralleled Al Hayy, continuing north along the river. At the edge of town, we turned east and raced across an empty lot. Trash piles and abandoned cars dotted the ground. Still, no one moved. I waited for a volley of RPGs to streak from behind the walls, but none came. Al Hayy was way too quiet.

  Our objective was Highway 7, along which RCT-1 still advanced to our south. First Recon was the northernmost Marine unit in Iraq, with a city of forty or fifty thousand people between us and the other Americans. To our north lay Al Kut and Baghdad, with their Republican Guard armored divisions of tanks and artillery. Even surrounded by three hundred armed Marines, I had rarely felt so alone. Our mission, as passed over the radio, was to set up a blocking position on the highway. In the morning, RCT-1 would attack into Al Hayy from the south, and we would stop the flood of fedayeen escaping north to fortify the next town along our path to Baghdad. We’d successfully flanked the city and were deep in the fedayeen’s rear. I felt aggressive, almost euphoric, and saw the same feeling on the Marines’ faces. For a week, we had plodded predictably up the same highway, getting ambushed and getting lucky. That afternoon outside Al Hayy, for the first time in the war, we had the initiative. We would do the ambushing. We were the hunters.

  After climbing up an embankment onto the highway, the battalion sped off to the north to find a position for the night. My platoon was left behind to set up a hasty roadblock to protect the battalion while it searched. We stopped at the northern end of a modern bridge that swept up from Al Hayy and spanned the dirt lot we’d driven through. I put three Humvees abreast across the highway, with their guns pointed south. Anyone choosing to attack us would have to cross the bridge and face the massed firepower of our machine guns when they were up on the span with nowhere to hide. We had a good position, exposed atop the elevated roadway but also easily defended and identifiable to pilots overhead in case we needed air support.

  “Espera, put a strand of wire two hundred meters down the highway and tie some red chem lights to it,” I said. I wanted to avoid a close-quarters firefight all alone there on the darkening highway at the city’s edge. Drivers would see the lights on the wire, and I hoped they would turn around.

  “Roger that, sir.” He and two Marines jogged down the road, dragging a coil of concertina wire that Gunny Wynn and I had carried strapped to the hood of our Humvee. They tied three red chem lights to it and turned to run back to the platoon. Over the sound of our idling engines, I heard a vehicle motor droning closer. Two dim headlights popped over the crest of the bridge. Twenty rifles and machine guns zeroed in on them as Espera and his guys slipped back into our lines.

  Wynn took control, saying, “Relax, gents. Wait till he gets to the wire and give him a chance to stop. If he comes through the wire, waste him.” Gunny Wynn was always at his best when our situation was at its worst. He exerted a natural calming influence on the platoon.

  I slid the charging handle of my rifle back to check that I had a round in the chamber, then banged the forward assist to be sure it would fire when I pulled the trigger. One of my secret terrors was that I’d try to shoot in a firefight and hear only the hollow click of a firing pin striking empty air. I joined the rest of the platoon and watched the headlights growing larger.

  Suddenly, it seemed as if the wire wasn’t nearly far enough away, and I chided myself for not putting it three hundred meters down the highway. If a car hit that wire doing sixty miles per hour, we’d have six seconds to react. On the radio, I learned that we had no air support and that the battalion was still searching for a place to set up for the night. Our instructions remained to stop any traffic approaching from the south.

  I exhaled as brakes groaned and the headlights slowed. The beams swung around and were replaced by two red taillights receding back down the bridge. Wire and chem lights had been a good idea. The Iraqi driver had seen them, heeded them, and saved his life. The Marines stood up and stepped out from behind guardrails and armored doors. Smiles, jokes, and backslapping all around. A fight averted is second in exhilaration only to a fight won.

  “Lieutenant, check out all that traffic to the west,” Sergeant Lovell said, pointing back toward the bridge we’d crossed earlier. A stream of headlights bobbed north along the river.

  “Goddammit, they’re flanking us,” I said. I called the battalion and told them what we saw. It seemed as if our presence on the highway was well known and the fedayeen were either escaping to regroup somewhere to the north or were moving along our flank to attack us from another direction. Major Whitmer requested clarification of the vehicles’ exact location and number.

  We peered hard through the dusk. Location was no problem — there was only one road over there, and they were clearly on it. We could see six or eight pairs of headlights at any given time, but they continuously came into view and then disappeared again behind the trees. Clearly, there were dozens of vehicles in all. They looked like open-bed trucks full of men — figures clustered together in the back, standing shoulder to shoulder. This was consistent with what we’d seen the fedayeen doing in other towns. Confident that we had a legitimate target, Major Whitmer called an artillery fire mission to the batteries south of Al Hayy, and we watched as rounds began flashing along the distant road. It would be great to kill some fedayeen, but pinpointing artillery o
nto individual moving trucks was nearly impossible, so we settled for making that escape route less attractive and perhaps keeping some of the bad guys bottled up in town for the next morning’s battle.

  Our attention snapped back from the distant road to another pair of headlights rushing toward us on the bridge. Unlike the previous pair, these were high off the ground — a truck. I heard mashing gears as it accelerated over the crest of the bridge. It was moving fast, with no sign of slowing down. Maybe the driver couldn’t see us.

  “Headlights.” We’d kept our lights off to avoid being easy targets, but if the truck didn’t see the red chem lights, surely he’d see three sets of headlights stretched across the width of the highway facing him. The Marines pulled their knobs, and bright white light illuminated the pavement all the way out past the barbed wire. The truck barreled on, getting louder. It was a yellow tractor-trailer, ten feet high and fifty feet long. Come on, come on, come on, I thought, willing the driver to stop and turn around.

  The truck’s size and speed could carry it into us even after we opened fire. I remembered General Conway’s instruction back in Kuwait: “Your first obligation as an officer is the defense of your men.” This truck could be full of wounded children, but if I allowed it to crash into our position, we’d surely lose at least three vehicles and their heavy machine guns, along with most of our ammunition, food, medical supplies, fuel, and water. We’d also lose Marines. I knew these guys — they’d die shooting rather than jump to safety to save themselves. The truck raced toward the wire, so close that the driver was either in a panic or intent on killing us.