The Mark 48s thundered to life. All four gunners walked their fire through the vehicles at chest-height. One of the Toyota drivers went down, a fan of blood spraying across his vehicle. The other bolted, but managed only a few steps before the SEALs killed him. He tumbled and lay still, arms and legs sprawled, less than six feet from the lead pickup.
Short, accurate machine-gun bursts ripped into the trucks. The passengers in both Toyotas were torn apart where they sat. The man who had opened the door for Muhammad froze as his comrades died horribly all around him. Then Mark 48s caught him cold. More blood splattered the SUV and streaked down its custom candy apple clear-coat paint job as his lifeless body sank into the powdery dirt.
In seconds, the SEALs killed seven of the eight terrorists. Only Muhammad had survived. When the shooting started, he dove prone on the far side of the Suburban and nobody could see him well enough to get shots off. The Mark 48 gunners laid on their triggers, walking their fire back and forth until each man had burned through an entire two-hundred-round belt.
And then, an eerie silence descended on the scene. From his firing platform atop the table, Kyle scanned the SUV and could not see Muhammad. Taking out his security detail would serve little purpose if they couldn’t kill him, too. The mission would be a failure; Tucker and Menchaca would go unavenged.
The Americans waited for Muhammad to make a move. The minutes ticked by. The snipers quartered off the SUV to ensure somebody would have a shot no matter which way he moved should he spring to his feet and make a break for it. Whatever happened, they could not allow him to go through that gate. He would be able to get inside the safe house unhindered, and the SEALs did not know if there were weapons in there. They would have to assault the house and hunt for him room to room, and that ran a substantial risk of taking casualties.
The SEALs stayed glued to their sights. Could Muhammad have been hit? Is that why he hadn’t moved? The Mark 48s had sent eight hundred rounds downrange. The Suburban looked like bloody Swiss cheese. The Toyotas were riddled with bullet gashes. The convoy was a ghoulish scene. So perhaps their target had been hit. They couldn’t be sure.
An hour passed with no movement. Something had to be done to end the impasse, but sweeping the target area with part of the team was deemed too risky. Intel had warned them that Muhammad’s security detail all wore bomb vests. That information did not appear to be accurate, but the SEALs couldn’t be sure. Perhaps Muhammad himself wore one, just in case he faced capture, so he could take a few Americans with him as he punched his own ticket to Allah.
There had to be an alternative to risking lives in such a move.
Inspiration struck the SEAL commander. Perhaps they could put one over on Muhammad if he was still alive. The team called in the CH-53 and they would stage a false extraction. A few minutes later, the bird arrived and set down behind the hide site. A third of the team rushed from the house and flowed over the helicopter’s ramp to settle down inside. In seconds, the Super Stallion was back in the air, seemingly heading for home.
Kyle and the other snipers remained in the hide, waiting to see if Muhammad would react. It turned into a battle of patience. The SEALs relaxed, this was their sort of game. Kyle lay on the door, covering down on the nearest approach route between the SUV and the safe house’s front gate. As they waited, the men bantered back and forth over who might get the shot. The machine gunners squared off against the snipers and challenged them. It was on now, and the friendly competition kept everyone alert and at their best.
An hour later, Muhammad’s head prairie-dogged over the Suburban’s hood. Just his eyes appeared as he took a quick look around. The SEALs held their fire. He ducked back down. A moment later, he reappeared and studied the hide site. He vanished, thought things over, and concluded that the Americans really had left.
He stood up, right in Kyle’s field of view and sprinted for the gate. Kyle knew the range: three hundred yards, well within the Win Mag’s capabilities. Long ago, his father had taught him to use a slow, steady pull on the trigger. He mirrored that lesson as he laid the crosshairs on his running target. Muhammad was moving laterally across Kyle’s field of view, an almost ninety-degree angle. In novels and movies, this seems like a piece of cake. Pull the trigger and the target drops.
Baloney. Kyle faced a significant challenge by Muhammad’s sudden bolt to freedom. Here’s why:
Hollywood aside, shooting a moving target is no easy feat for a sniper no matter the range. There are two ways to do it: tracking and ambush. The tracking method requires following the target and keeping your crosshairs on him. To do it, you need to know your range to the target, the speed of the target, and the angle at which he is moving to your barrel. Then you set the crosshairs not on him, but in front of him. We call that “mil lead”
Mil lead is one of the quirky things about long-range precision marksmanship that makes it both an art and a science. Every sniper’s mil lead is different. Even if the target is moving at the same speed and angle, no two snipers will need the same amount of lead to hit him.
When we train to hit moving targets, we keep detailed notes in our data books. The more we practice, the more data we develop and the better we can pinpoint the mil lead we need. It is a repetitive, sometimes frustrating task that is complicated by a couple of additional factors.
First, in the field we will never know exactly how fast a target is moving. So, for humans, we have three types of leads we practice based on average speed sets. The first is a “walking lead.” Every human walks at a different pace, but that pace is within a speed range that we can use to guesstimate our lead.
A “jogging lead” is used against men who are walking unusually fast or loping. This requires a little more lead. The last we call the “run lead,” which we employ against men sprinting on the battlefield.
Through training and dedicated data mining, each sniper figures out how much lead he will need for each speed. We know those calculations off the top of our heads, so in combat we don’t need cheat sheets for this type of shot. Though I’ve been out of the game since 2005, I can still remember my run lead is two and three-quarter mils at three hundred yards. These are things we snipers never forget.
Complex enough? We’re only halfway there. Speed is only one part of the equation. The other is the angle of the target’s line of movement to your rifle. Let’s say our target is running across a street within our field of view. He’s moving perpendicular to our sniper team. That’s the most acute angle we have to deal with and because of that it will require the most lead. My run lead is two and three-quarter mils at three hundred yards only if the target is moving ninety degrees from me across my field of view.
If your target is moving diagonally from you, or toward you, that requires smaller mil leads. The less acute the angle, the less mils you’ll need to get on your target. The lead also changes depending on whether the target is moving toward your rifle or away from it.
In combat, there’s no way to tell exactly what the angle of our targets are. This is why training is so crucial. The more we practice, the better we get at guesstimating the angle, and the more accurate we become. We write everything down and memorize it, so that in combat we have instant recall and can calculate our shot placement as accurately as possible.
There’s another complication to this equation. Right-handed snipers use their right eye in the scope. Their leads are different if the target is moving left to right versus right to left. The phenomenon is the opposite for left-handed shooters. I’ve never really figured out why this is the case, but it is a universal truth. Not only does each sniper have to learn the mil lead he needs, but he must to do so for both directions of movement.
Movement speed, angle, and lead all need to be calculated on top of wind, range, weather, and elevation. Once you factor all those elements into the shot, it becomes obvious that tracking and firing at a moving target is one of the most technically demanding types of shots for us snipers. To do it well requires significa
nt investments in training, time, data entry, and memorization. The next time you see a Hollywood film where snipers are smoke-checking running targets left and right, remember all the background math and physics that goes into every trigger pull.
There is one other way to take down a running man; we call it the ambush method. In this scenario, we anticipate the enemy’s movement and figure out a point along his projected path that will give us the clearest possible shot at him. Then we place the crosshairs on that point and wait. When our running enemy reaches our mil lead, we pull the trigger. The target literally runs into the shot. It is a slightly easier technique for taking out a moving target, but it can only be done if you know where the enemy is going. If you don’t know that, tracking is the only way to kill him.
There are some advanced ways to get around the uncertainty of what an enemy will do. If a sniper team has been watching a particular place for an extended period of time, he and his partner will study the terrain and tactical situation. Based on that study, they will assign areas of responsibility to each other. Then, within those areas, they will create their preplanned ambush points based on possible routes of movement the enemy might use. From there, the team can build a decision tree that covers all possible enemy behaviors. This is called Planning the Target Zone.
Let’s say our sniper team is covering a street with a couple of doorways and alleys in their areas of responsibility. Each man will select ambush points between the alleys and doorways to ensure that any enemy entering the area can be taken out with this method.
The downside to this, of course, is the enemy can either do something unexpected or the snipers don’t have time to work through all the possible scenarios. In that case, they have to switch to tracking their targets.
When Muhammad made his run for it, Chris Kyle had been covering his area of responsibility to the right of the vehicle. In a split second, Kyle had to judge how fast his target was running, the angle he was to the SEAL’s rifle, and his probable path. It was clear Muhammad was trying to get to the front door. Kyle had planned his target zone carefully. He shifted his reticle to one of his preplanned ambush points. Muhammad moved into his scope, sprinting flat out now. Running lead, left to right, adjusting for low wind (0–3 mph). He’d already fed proper DOPE (data on previous engagement) into his scope, so he didn’t need to factor in temperature and drop. He had a good zero.
When Muhammad reached the mil lead threshold, Kyle pulled the trigger. The Win Mag’s heavy bullet punched through Muhammad’s rib cage, knocking him off his feet.
It was a remarkable shot. Kyle had hit a moving target’s profile exactly center mass. The target area on Muhammad’s body was probably less than eight by eight inches. It was a wound that no man could survive, the sort of shot Chris had learned to make with his father while out hunting deer on the family spread back in Texas. Shot placement was everything.
The bullet did its work. Muhammad died in seconds, his body splayed on the ground only a few steps short of the front gate.
Justice served, SEAL style. The team called for extraction. The Marine Super Stallion reappeared and touched down near the hide site. Kyle and the rest of the team rushed aboard. As they choppered their way back to base, the SEALs broke out celebratory cigars. Mission accomplished. And this one felt good.
There were at least four al-Qaida operatives involved in the executions of our soldiers. Other special operations teams killed two of them. Seal Team Three took care of the other two. It was a clean sweep. In September 2001 President George Bush had told the American people, “Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes visible on TV and covert operations secret even in success.” Kyle’s bullet scored one of those secret successes. The country did not learn that the men responsible for murdering Menchaca and Tucker had been hunted down and killed. There was no closure for the families back in Oregon and Texas as a result. But behind the scenes, the SEALs made sure the executioners faced a reckoning—a far more permanent one than the driver of the truck that carried the bodies received in 2008.
* * *
Chris Kyle retired from the U.S. Navy in 2009 with two hundred fifty-five confirmed kills to his credit, more than any other sniper in American history. His service during eight years of combat in some of the heaviest fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan earned him two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars for Valor. He was wounded in action repeatedly, but never received a single Purple Heart. Just before one firefight he had been talking to his wife on a sat phone. When the bullets started flying, he dropped it and picked up his rifle. Moments later, he and several members of his team were wounded, and his wife heard him shout “I’m hit!” before the sat phone cut out. For three days she waited for word, terrified that she’d heard her husband’s final words.
When Kyle came home from his final deployment, he saw what eight years of combat had done to his wife. He made the decision to retire from the Navy to devote himself to his family. He returned to his beloved state of Texas, where he now ran a company that trains law enforcement and military snipers. But for Kyle the future wasn’t in the corporate rat race. He dreamed of a day he could throw his cell phone away, put on a pair of boots, and ride among his own herd of cattle on a north Texas prairie he could call his own.
In 2010, his best-selling book, American Sniper, was released. Chris gave most of the book’s proceeds to the families of fallen SEALs he had served with during his time in combat. He spent his days running his consulting business and reaching out to veterans with disabilities.
After serving as guardian angel for countless Marines around Ramadi in 2006, Chris and his business partner were murdered on February 2, 2013, by a Marine veteran suffering from an acute case of post-traumatic stress disorder. After a furious law enforcement chase, the Marine drove Chris’s pickup into a police car and was captured. His motives for the murder were unclear.
Chris Kyle’s memorial service was held at the Dallas Cowboys football stadium. Thousands of mourners lined the streets and filled the stands to pay their final respects to an American icon whose life had been devoted to protecting his fellow Americans. That he was slain by one of those very men in a fit of senseless violence after he had done so much for his country remains one of the most painful ironies of the War on Terror.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Playground of Snipers
SUMMER 2006
RAMADI, IRAQ
Ramadi in the late summer of 2006 was a city in its death throes. Unlike Fallujah, this battle was drawn out, a slow-motion car wreck that consumed Ramadi in a way not seen in military history since the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942–1943. While the U.S. forces showed restraint and only used such firepower as aerial bombs, rockets, or the main gun on an M1 Abrams tank as an absolute last resort, the insurgents were under no such limitations.
Enemy car bomb factories hidden in warehouses in or around the city churned out dump trucks filled with thousands of pounds of ammonium nitrate. Foreign volunteers, whom al-Qaida cell leaders leg-cuffed in place should they have any second thoughts about martyrdom, drove the trucks into Iraqi Police checkpoints or Coalition combat outposts. The massive blasts from these deadly weapons took down buildings and left the streets heaped with burned debris and human remains. Through some freak of physics, the drivers were usually blown straight up into the air. Their bodies would come apart, but the head was almost always found intact. During the cleanup after these attacks, it fell to American and Iraqi troops to locate the driver’s head, photograph it, and conduct a retinal scan to identify the terrorist if his eyes remained in their sockets.
Each bomb factory had specific tells picked up by U.S. military forensics experts. Some set up fail-safes, or “chicken switches,” so that if the driver tried to opt out at the last minute, the vehicle could be detonated remotely by observers watching from a safe distance. Others tore down vehicles to their bare frames, welded modifications and explosives i
n place, then rebuilt the rig so it looked like any other on the streets. Some of these were so cunningly constructed that even a detailed search by Iraqi security forces missed the threat concealed within them. Al-Qaida’s factories grew so sophisticated that they were able to produce tractor-trailer rigs loaded with six to eight thousand pounds of explosives. Such infernal devices took down entire city blocks when they went off.
Sometimes the bomb makers improvised even deadlier ways to attack the Coalition. On August 21, 2006, al-Qaida operatives drove a dump truck filled with fuel up to a Coalition outpost on the edge of town and successfully detonated it. The blast drenched the base in flaming fuel, killing three Iraqi police officers and horribly burning eight American soldiers.
The truck and car bomb menace grew so severe that summer that three or four bombs a week were blowing up in and around the city. Finding the factories became a key priority, as these attacks almost always inflicted military and civilian casualties. But finding them required venturing into the heart of the city, where al-Qaida’s legions had seeded the streets and alleys with thousands of IEDs. In some places, so many had been emplaced that they resembled urban minefields, and some of the bombs were so powerful they could (and did) destroy M1 Abrams tanks and M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles.
When the troops tried to move off the streets and into businesses and homes, they faced another threat—building contained IEDs. Al-Qaida would wire a dwelling with propane tanks, explosives, or artillery rounds left over from the Saddam era. Once a door was opened and a wire or infrared beam was broken, the entire building would explode and come down around the patrol. Dozens of these BCIEDs detonated around the city that summer, leaving entire blocks in ruins.
Piles of concrete and rebar heaped on either side of garbage-strewn roads littered with the burned-out carcasses of cars and tireless, bullet-riddled trucks became the indelible image of Ramadi for countless American soldiers who struggled to defeat al-Qaida. Water mains were ruptured by IEDs and flooded the streets. Sewage lines, never Iraq’s strong point, clogged up or broke and added a foul stench to the ruins. Severed power lines hung limply across sidewalks, festooned trees and walls, and lay in tangles in the streets. Animals caught in cross fires lay rotting in the rubble, as nobody was willing to risk removing them since al-Qaida had been known to plant bombs around or inside their corpses. On one wall deep in the city, the enemy had spray-painted in Arabic “This is the graveyard of Americans.”
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