Shock Factor

by Jack Coughlin

  Inside the house, Bill Barnum issued a steady stream of orders to his brothers. He was the element’s corpsman, and now as he lay immobile on the floor, he directed his fellow SEALs through treating John Francis and the wounded Jundis. The Bradleys were closer now; their engines’ roar could be heard over the cacophony of the gunfight. They just needed to hang on a little bit longer.

  With Phil Glade’s element outside suppressing the Muj, Higgins’s men focused on getting the wounded the care they needed. Bill was in intense pain, and both he and John were bleeding badly. The other SEALs applied tourniquets to their legs and pressure dressing to their wounds. These measures didn’t stop the bleeding, but it did slow the loss enough to give both men pain meds.

  In the meantime, Higgins was still very dazed from the concussion he’d suffered during the blast. His communicator took over handling all the myriad of command-level responsibilities. He kept in contact with the Bradley platoon, explained the situation, and directed how the CASEVAC would go down once the tracks arrived. Each Bradley could hold six men. Now, with Phil Glade’s element, they had more SEALs than space inside the vehicles. They’d have to shoehorn everyone in, plus send the Brads back for a return trip into the fight just to get everyone back to COP Eagle’s Nest.

  Outside in the street, the Muj seemed to recover from the surprise arrival of Phil Glade’s element. The volume of fire they’d been able to deliver had diminished at first. Now, the al-Qaida adherents displaced to new positions in their buildings and opened fire with full fury once again. The gun battle raged with ruthless intensity, both sides seeking to gain the upper hand. He who has fire superiority can dictate what happens on the battlefield. Both sides knew it, and the lead flew as they sought to dominate.

  Numbers began to tell against Glade’s men. One by one, the incoming fire pinned them down. Soon things were almost as desperate in the street as they had been inside the house a few minutes before.

  Down the street, the first Brad turned a corner and came into view, its tracks churning through the dust and debris riddling the roadbed. In the past, the sight of an M2 with its 25mm Bushmaster cannon was often enough to prompt the insurgents to break contact and end a fight. Not this time. Though they had no antiarmor weapons like an RPG, the enemy refused to be intimidated. If anything, the amount of incoming intensified.

  The lead Bradley lurched to a stop in front of Higgins’s doorway. The SEALs told the crew to work the second and third floors of the houses up the block. The gunner went to work, the big cannon belching shells that blew through walls to explode inside with deadly effect. The gunner raked the enemy positions, blowing insurgents apart.

  The Brad crew dropped their ramp, and the first group of SEALs rushed into the street. They piled the wounded inside as others stood in the entrance, firing their M4s over the ramp as it closed. Behind the lead track, the remaining SEALs dove into the safety of the other Bradleys’ armored hides.

  The Army crews pulled out and raced through the shattered streets to get the SEALs and Jundis back to COP Eagle’s Nest. The SEALs dismounted and carried their wounded men and the fallen Jundi to the aid station, where they would be stabilized for evacuation to better facilities, and ultimately back to the States for Bill and John Francis. Though their mission was over, for the Brad crews it had really just started. They’d have to brave the streets one more time to pull everyone out of the third overwatch position the Camp Corregidor platoon had established. Given the speed at which the insurgents placed the IED by the doorway to Higgins’s house, the Brad crews expected to run into bombs, rockets, and anything else the insurgents could throw at them. Given their refusal to retreat, the mech infantry guys knew they were in for another hard fight.

  They never flinched. The tracks lined up at the front gate and headed out back into the storm.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Payback

  Adam’s rocket streaked into the target building, punched through the outer wall, and exploded with a dull thud deep within. Fizbo watched his Rover to see how the insurgents would react to this onslaught. At first, there was no movement around the building, but as the minutes passed, a figure emerged from a doorway on the backside of the dwelling. The SEALs could not see him from their position, but he could not escape the F/A-18’s eye in the sky. Fizbo called out to Adam and the others on the rooftop as perhaps twenty others followed the first insurgent out into the street.

  At least there were fewer of them.

  Instead of withdrawing back toward the Saddam Canal, the gaggle assembled into a semblance of a fighting formation and dashed through the streets and alleys toward the SEALs. Fizbo related their movements and tracked them as they ran into another building.

  Adam and Dave took turns popping over the parapet to identify their new location. They could see the building, but they couldn’t see any of the enemy within its walls. In the meantime, a smattering of gunfire broke out around the Americans. AK rounds pinged off the parapet and tore more chips from the concrete. It wasn’t the sustained firepower onslaught the Corregidor SEALs were facing, but the harassing fire reminded them that there were other insurgents out there—including their own sniper.

  The equation could change in a heartbeat if the twenty insurgents got their guns into the fight. Armed with AKs and light machine guns, they could pin down the SEALs and make the roof untenable. Then—who knows? Perhaps they’d try to assault the position, or close to grenade-throwing range.

  As Dave and Adam lay prone on the roof, their Carl Gustavs on their shoulders, two other operators crawled to them with extra rockets. They pushed the reloads into the rear of the launchers and locked them home. A slap on their helmets told Adam and Dave that they were good to go. Dave stood up, and brought his Carl Gustav on target. “Fire Gustav!” he shouted to warn the rest of the team. A second later, the rocket left the tube with a hollow-sounding kathunk.

  The 84mm projectile roared toward the target building like receding thunder. A second later, the rocket exploded into the first floor. This time, instead of a muffled detonation, the neighborhood shook violently as the warhead’s shock wave rolled through it.

  The enemy was getting close.

  Adam’s turn. He rose to his feet, the nineteen-pound launcher resting on his right shoulder. Right hand on the handle, his index finger on the trigger guard, he brought his left hand to the foregrip. This is opposite of the Russian RPG, which is fired with the left hand. Exposed now, the seconds ticked as he studied the neighborhood until he locked his eyes on the target house. Smoke was boiling from the first rocket’s impact point.

  Adam settled his right eye behind the weapon’s telescopic sight. A small, upward-facing arrow served as the point of aim. Below the arrow were a series of pluses and minuses that denoted the compensation needed for every hundred yards of range. On either side of those stretched the windage indicators—long horizontal lines that looked like whiskers sprouting from the elevation ticks. At the bottom of the sight, the weapon’s integrated range finder provided a digital readout of the distance to the target house.

  Adam made a quick series of mental calculations. He was shooting down from the top of a three-story building, which complicated the shot. He wanted to hit the first floor, just as Dave had, so he had to adjust and aim low. There weren’t any cross or tick marks to compensate for firing from an elevated position, so Adam made his best guess.

  He took a breath, released half of it, and pulled the trigger. Kathunk. The rocket shot out of the Carl Gustav’s barrel and lanced straight into the building. The ground shook, and a cloud of smoke and debris spewed from the impact point.

  There was something almost euphoric about hammering the enemy with such awe-inspiring firepower. There is nothing low key about a Carl Gustav launch; it is loud, dramatic, and powerful. The SEALs on the roof relished the punishment they were dishing out with every rocket.

  Six rockets left. Were the insurgents done? The operators reloaded and waited to hear what Fizbo could see on his Rove
r.

  Sure enough, a minute or two later, the Muj bolted from the building. This time, it looked like some of them were wounded. Fizbo reported that the force was down to little more than a squad-sized element—perhaps fifteen men.

  To the American’s surprise, they refused to disengage. They had the chance. There were plenty of avenues of escape back to the canal the SEALs on the rooftop could not see. But these Jihadists were determined. They stayed in the street and maneuvered forward, toward the Americans.

  One of the operators on the roof with Adam carried an M203 grenade launcher under the barrel of his M4. He began to use it as a poor man’s indirect-fire weapon—a rifle-mounted light mortar. He lobbed the grenades in a high arc, hoping to drop one down over the buildings that masked their view of the advancing force and hit the Muj while they were out in the open.

  The insurgents found another multistory building and poured into it. The SEALs retaliated with another rocket volley. The building shuddered from the impacts, and this time only a few emerged from its shattered interior.

  But they still weren’t done. About a half dozen ducked and bounded to within fifty yards of the SEALs, until they took cover behind a wall. The Americans rained 40mm grenades down on them. The explosions wounded several Muj, and that broke their morale. They dragged their wounded back out of the line of fire and vanished into the labyrinth to the south.

  The fighting died down after the SEALs repulsed the assault. By now, the Americans had been up for thirty-six hours straight. They were low on ammunition and exhausted. When the Army pulled its patrols in from the Al Iskan and Al Andols Districts, the Camp Lee SEALs knew it was time to depart.

  As Adam and the others began to collect their gear, another group of Muj seized a building about three hundred yards away. Concealed inside, they opened up with rifles and light machine guns, stitching the parapet and southern wall of the house with 7.62mm fire.

  The last rocket volley had consumed final reloads for the Carl Gustavs. With the amount of incoming they were taking now, the SEALs couldn’t pull out without a significant risk of taking casualties when they got into the street.

  Fizbo had the answer. The F/A-18 overhead carried bombs as well as AGM-65 Maverick missiles. The AGM-65 carried a three-hundred-pound shaped-charge in its warhead and could be laser guided onto its target. Originally built in the 1970s as an electro-optically guided weapon, it had evolved with the technological times. By 2006 hundreds of them had already been used in Iraq and were well known for their accuracy and remarkable ability to localize damage. With a warhead smaller than a five-hundred-pound JDAM (or joint direct attack munition) satellite-guided bomb, the Maverick could tear the guts out of a building without doing significant damage to the neighborhood.

  The Army and Marine patrols had been engaged all day by the enemy. The Camp Corregidor SEALs were still under attack a half mile away, and both Camp Lee positions were taking small-arms fire. As a result, when Fizbo requested an air strike, the chain of command gave the green light. Kindler, gentler, worked only up to a point.

  Fizbo coached the F/A-18 pilot onto the target, gave him the nine-line information brief needed to direct his attack, and the Marine aviator made his run. Fizbo warned everyone on the roof to get down—the target house stood only three hundred yards from their position. Even with the directed blast of a Maverick, that was still dangerously close.

  Adam and the other operators on the roof hunkered down as the missile left the F/A-18’s hard point and flew toward the enemy at seven hundred miles per hour. It dropped out of the sky, punched into the building’s outer wall, penetrated deep inside and exploded. The force of the blast was nothing like a JDAM bomb, and the structure didn’t even collapse. Still, the havoc it wrought on the insurgents inside was deadly. The firing from within it stopped, and another lull fell across the embattled neighborhood.

  The respite from the incoming small-arms fire gave the Americans the opportunity to break contact and get back to COP Iron. They made hasty plans to depart. The Army squad holding security on the first floor would go first. As they headed into the street, Adam, Dave, and the other SEAL sniper team would cover them. If they evoked no reaction from the Muj, the SEALs would leave next, and the two groups would leapfrog back to COP Iron, covering each other as they went.

  The squad from the 1st Armored left the house and rushed into the street. The SEALs stayed on their guns, waiting to see what the enemy would do. A block over, in the other overwatch position, the SEALs there began to exfil as well. It didn’t take long for the Muj to notice. These al-Qaida Jihadists had been around long enough to know that the Americans were at their most vulnerable during infils and exfils. They realized they had a final, narrow window of opportunity to hit the Americans one more time.

  Like the SEALs, they had been fighting all day in the merciless heat, and had to have been exhausted. They’d taken heavy casualties trying to assault the Camp Lee SEALs, which had to have affected their morale. Nevertheless, the Muj leader rounded up enough men for a final assault.

  They began to maneuver forward, hoping to cut off the Americans in the street before they could get back to COP Iron. This time, Fizbo didn’t need to give the rest of the team a running commentary on their movements. Assuming all the Americans had pulled out, they flowed into the fields of fire established by the SEAL sniper teams. The Americans opened up on them and caught them completely by surprise. One Muj went down, shot dead in the street a few hundred yards from the hide site.

  That broke the enemy’s morale. The rest of the assault force scattered and retreated. They’d finally had enough for the day. The SEALs grabbed their gear, slapped home new magazines—they were perilously low on ammo by now—and pulled out. Fizbo kept in touch with the F/A-18, whose pilot scanned the way home with his electronic eyes. No sign of any other Muj elements.

  Despite their fatigue, the SEALs were in good spirits. Nothing is better for morale than repeatedly hammering the enemy and stopping their every gambit. A month into their deployment now and this was the first time they’d experienced an insurgent assault. The enemy’s tenacity, willingness to take casualties, and determination to close on the overwatch sites impressed the Americans, and reminded them that they faced a far tougher foe than their countrymen back home in the States truly realized. That made kicking their teeth in that much sweeter.

  Adam reached the street, the Carl Gustav strapped over his back and his M4 at the ready. Right then, the ground shook violently, and a mushroom cloud of smoke and flame rose above the rooftops to the east.

  The Camp Corregidor SEALs had just been hit by the IED placed at the entrance to their overwatch position. The radio filled with reports of casualties and the need for immediate evacuation. The Bradleys reported they were on their way.

  In a heartbeat, the light mood the day’s victory had inspired was wiped away by a sense of complete helplessness. Two of their own had gone down, and the Camp Lee SEALs were in no position to come to the aid of their stricken brothers. Nearly out of ammo, without vehicles or heavy weapons, all they could do was continue their exfil.

  Adam felt sick. He and Dave had been cracking jokes all afternoon, feeling that they’d had the situation well in hand. Their Carl Gustavs had done considerable damage to the enemy, and most of the insurgents who had escaped those weapons had succumbed to 40mm grenades and precision gunfire. Now, as he heard the news about the Jundis, John Francis, and Bill Barnum, a wave of guilt struck him. How could he be so glib with his comrades taking such a hit? Those feelings would linger long after the last rifle report echoed through Ramadi’s battle-scarred streets.

  The Bradleys from COP Eagle’s Nest returned to the fight to extract the last of the Camp Corregidor SEALs. Fortunately, they encountered no roadside bombs and the exfil on that flank of the operation went off without further incident.

  Adam’s element bounded back for COP Iron and made it halfway until they were met by a platoon of Bradleys. Thirsty, hungry, covered with smoke,
dirt, and grime, the SEALs and Joes piled aboard for the short ride back to the outpost. They made the last leg of the trip in near total silence, everyone’s thoughts on John and Bill.

  In the aftermath of the day, the SEALs took stock of everything that had happened. They studied how the insurgents had attacked them and discussed ways to counter their new tactics. These after-action discussions sparked a new battlefield evolution. Hopefully, the next time they went out into the city, they’d be able to catch the enemy by surprise with their fresh ideas.

  In the meantime, the thought of that single sniper shot stuck with Adam. He replayed the sound of the 7.62 round smacking off the concrete a few inches from his head. The guy on the other side of that scope had been good. He’d given him only a brief opportunity to take the shot, and he’d very nearly put a bullet in the Illinois native’s head.

  What had happened to him? In the after-action discussions, it became clear that the enemy sniper had not fired again. Had he been killed? Probably not. The bulk of the SEALs firepower had been focused on stopping the Muj assault element. Nobody even knew from where the insurgent sniper had fired. His hide had been somewhere off to Adam’s right, that’s as specific as the Americans could get.

  He had not taken another shot. The discipline that displayed was remarkable. Had he pulled out after nearly killing Adam? Or had he just gone to ground and provided eyes for the assault element?

  There was no way to be sure. But one thing was almost certain: he was still out there, hunting Americans.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Under Watchful Eyes

  RAMADI

  In the wake of the November 19, 2006, engagement, SEAL Team Five’s two platoons continued operating at a frenetic pace. Between covering Marine and Army patrols, the frogmen went after more IED makers in direct-action raids. With more Iraqi cops on the street, the flow of information from the citizens of Ramadi increased. This gave the Special Forces teams plenty of targets to go after, and very few resisted when the SEALs came knocking at their door.