Carnivore (30 page)

For those people to whom the term
sniper
has evil connotations, let me explain—the purpose of a sniper is to save lives. Cops don't shoot criminals for sport, they do it to prevent bad things from happening, and the same is true of snipers. Our role as snipers would primarily be to prevent IED emplacement, thus saving American lives. The fact that we hunker down and tend to ambush the bad guys from afar is just good tactics. In war, if you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.

In the military, if you haven't been officially trained as a sniper and don't have the certificate, you are not a sniper, even if you're sitting behind a scoped rifle shooting people at long range. If you're not a sniper, you don't get issued an Army sniper rifle, which is the M24. Only one guy in our unit had actually been to sniper school, a Private named Flint, and he had been issued his own M24. The rest of Crazy Horse had to make do with what we could find in the unit or scrounge.

We mostly used two rifles for sniping, a Barrett M82 and an accurized M14. Both rifles belonged to the unit. Although the M14 was assigned to me, while working as a sniper I mostly used the Barrett M82, which is a man-portable .50-caliber semiauto rifle. The Barrett is a big heavy beast (32 pounds) and fires a big heavy bullet. It fires the same round as the M2 .50-cal machine gun and was originally designed for shooting things (planes, helicopters, vehicles) rather than people. The Barrett isn't as accurate as most specialized sniper rifles, but then again most of the engagements we had would be considered short range for a sniper, since we worked in urban areas.

The second gun was an M14 EBR (enhanced battle rifle), which means they took a Vietnam-era M14 and put it in a new stock—not exactly a custom sniper rifle, but it hits harder than the M4 and is reliable. It chambers the 7.62x51 mm cartridge, the same one used in the M240 machine guns in the Bradley. The rifle wore one of the Elite 4200 mil-dot scopes donated to the unit by Bushnell, and both sniper teams had Bushnell laser range finders. The military does not issue Bushnell scopes, they issue Leupolds; the reason we had a Bushnell on the M14 is that we basically had to put the rifles together ourselves. The M14 was my rifle, and it was with me all the time. It was either in the back of my Humvee, in my Bradley, or somewhere close.

Sergeant John Williams's sniper rifle was a match-grade M16A2, basically the same rifle as my M4 carbine, only with a longer, more accurate barrel and a scope. With that rifle he was officially designated the squad's
marksman
, which is a military term essentially meaning “sniper lite.” Williams was able to get hold of some match ammunition for it, and he and that rifle were a deadly combination.

Don't think we were just a bunch of good 'ol boys heading out to shoot some dudes with our rifles. Even though none of us (except for Flint) had been to sniper school, we'd all gone through mobile training. A lot of units just didn't have the money to send their people to sniper school, but that didn't mean they didn't need the training. As a work-around, the Army sniper school sent out MTTs (mobile training teams), who trained us up at Fort Stewart before we deployed. We were taught how to use laser range finders, dial in elevation, get on a distant target quickly—the basics of long-distance shooting. We weren't taught stalking or low-crawling through the underbrush, which is how many people envision snipers operating. Carlos Hathcock, the famous Marine sniper, did that in Vietnam, but Iraq was a completely different environment. In Afghanistan they were doing traditional sniping, sneaking and peeking and hitting skittish Taliban from way off, but our environment was a lot closer to what police snipers have to deal with.

Captain Burgoyne had all four platoons in zone at the same time. We would be working 14-hour missions outside the wire, putting pressure on the enemy. Our first night out, Williams spotted a would-be IED setter. He had the guy in his sights, but we were a bit new at this and wanted to make sure that we targeted the right people. Williams sat and waited and watched to make sure that the guy was actually out setting up an IED and not just taking a midnight stroll.

Once he was as sure as he could be, Williams called Captain Burgoyne and told him what he had. Burgoyne sent over Staff Sergeant Wyatt, our mortar Platoon Sergeant, who was acting as our light quick reaction force (LQRF) that night. When the guy saw the gun trucks coming at him he ran to his car.

Enemy armor and guys with guns are easy problems to solve, but an unarmed man running away? Williams was a bit conflicted as to what was the proper course of action. Why was this guy running? Should he kill him or let him go? Did the guy really emplace an IED? In the end, John Williams did the smartest thing he could. He looked through his Bushnell Elite 4200 rifle scope onto which was clamped a universal night sight, and at a range of more than 300 meters took out the passenger-side tires of the guy's car as soon as he started it up. The LQRF rolled up right then and grabbed him. Not only did Williams's quick thinking stop the guy and get him off the street, but we now could ask him questions and possibly gain intelligence about the people planting IEDs.

Our unit mostly worked along the main route near the Tigris River in Baghdad, quite often setting up on top of a flour mill that was 8 or 10 stories tall. From the top of that building you could see all the way up one way and down another, even across the river. We could spot snipers and direct the platoon to them. We always worked at night, and there was always something going on. We traded off on the sniper job, because there were other things that needed doing. The Barrett got passed around. Most of the time when I wasn't using it, Sergeant Anthony (Tony) Mitchell would run the .50 off the roof of the flour mill.

We would almost always set up on rooftops, because they gave a better view of the area. The guys we were looking out for were sniping, setting IEDs, running curfew lines, and trying to smuggle munitions. We didn't do any low-crawling through the weeds to get into our sniper hides, but we did our best to be as sneaky as the situation and environment allowed. For example, we would ride down the road in the back of a Bradley. The vehicle would make several turns and several stops. At the right point they would lower the ramp while making a turn, we would jump out of the back of the Bradley, and they would drive on. That's how we would infiltrate. The rest of the unit would go and set up in security or overwatch positions to support our mission. Most of the time we had an entire platoon in support. Sometimes they were right with us, other times they were positioned around the building we were in or surrounding the area. We always worked at night because the Iraqis didn't have any night vision, which was our biggest advantage.

Most of the Iraqis planting IEDs would walk in or get dropped from cars. We did not automatically engage everybody who had a rifle, because everybody had a rifle. We would have to see what they were up to. That said, we took out a lot of guys with AKs who were up to no good. Some nights we did a lot of shooting. Other times it was just a long-ass night of nothing.

One night we spotted two guys, one of whom had a rifle. They were acting very suspicious, skulking around buildings, and they got very close to the hide where Sergeant Williams and I were.

The two suspicious characters were right off the main route, and when we called them in, the brigade XO got involved and got everybody else involved. While Williams and I were going back and forth as to whether or not we should shoot the two guys, the brigade XO basically called down the entire troop to surround the area. We had a Falcon at our disposal, which is a small UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) with a video camera in it and a Specialist trained to fly it. A Falcon is small—throw it in the air and it flies. It was in the air over our position, providing real-time video of the guys, and I was getting ready to take the shot, because these guys were obviously up to no good. Then we lost sight of the guy with the rifle moving through the underbrush.

Even though we lost sight of one of the guys, there was nowhere for them to go, because we had a whole platoon of Bradleys surrounding the area. I directed the section to the right place. Sergeant Kennedy brought them in and they tackled the one guy, and it turns out he was a chicken thief. Not an insurgent, not a terrorist, not an IED setter—a chicken thief. Sigh.

In July 2005, early on in the sniping phase of my second tour, Kennedy and I went up onto a rooftop in the area. We liked the spot, as it would give us a good view of potential IED sites. There were two guys sleeping up there. We didn't want them telling anybody we were there, so we took their cell phones and locked them up in a metal building on the roof. Kennedy and I stayed up there all night, and when morning rolled around we left. We liked the building and decided to come back there the next night and use it.

The next night, as we started heading up to the roof, Kennedy said, “Hey, it sounds like there's somebody in this building.”

We'd locked the building from the outside. I stopped, looked up in the direction of the faint sounds, then back at Kennedy. “You didn't leave them fuckers in there, did you?”

He said, “I thought you were going to let them out.”

Shit.

We'd locked two guys up in what was basically a metal sweatbox on the top of a roof in Baghdad in July for 24 hours. They were fine and, would you believe, very cooperative when we let them out. We gave them water, set them back in the building until we were done sniping that night, then released them.

For one straight week Kennedy and I did nothing but work as a sniper/spotter team and had absolutely nothing to show for it. It felt like we had been on every rooftop in town but hadn't seen one damn bad guy. Most of the time we went out at night, and when you hear people say that the desert gets cold at night because there's nothing to hold in the heat, they're not lying. We froze our asses off.

One night, finally, we spotted an insurgent. It was an easy shot, less than 100 meters, but just as I fired I realized there was movement all around us. I hit the target, but we were in a bit of a spot. The Iraqis weren't quite sure where we were, so we quietly slipped out of our position and moved into a compound. There was a big building with a parking lot around it. We figured out it used to be a car manufacturing facility. As soon as we got into the building we saw all sorts of movement around the perimeter, but they weren't moving toward us.

I got on the radio and contacted Lieutenant Dejesus.

“Sir, I took out a target, but we have unfriendlies all around our location. We're going to need an early pickup tonight.” I gave him our coordinates and the proximity of the car plant to where we'd set up.

“Crazy Blue 4, roger that, but be advised we are fifteen minutes away.” Crazy Blue 4 was my new call sign.

“Yes sir, that shouldn't be a problem.”

The delay didn't worry me, because we were in a pretty good position—the building was dark, and they couldn't see us and didn't know for sure where we were. I eyeballed the front of the property and the gate, and Kennedy watched my back.

We owned the night, and it was dark as hell out there, so the situation was no big deal. With my night sight I had no problems counting the Iraqis out to my front, but they couldn't have seen me if I was standing up and doing jumping jacks. Then I heard the engine start on a generator and the compound lit up like a Walmart parking lot.

The night sight flared out on me and Kennedy and I hugged the inside wall even closer.

“You've gotta be fucking kidding me.”

“Can you see the generator?” Kennedy asked me in a whisper. He was thinking we might be able to shoot it.

“No, I don't know where it is,” I told Kennedy.

Emboldened by the lights, the Iraqis started actively hunting us. They moved around, spreading out, and shot into any shadow, any spot we could be hiding—rooftops, windows, you name it. We were screwed, because it was only a matter of time before they ran into us. I looked at Kennedy for ideas, and he was looking at me and pointing at the wall. I turned and saw the high-voltage power line running down the wall out into the compound, to the generator.

I nodded and pulled out the Gerber LMF II I'd received from from Mark Schindel. I held it out to Kennedy. “You need to cut the line,” I told him.

He looked at the knife, at the power line, and back to me. “Fuck you. You cut that line. That thing'll shock the piss out of me.”

I vaguely remembered Mark telling me the handle of the knife was insulated against electric shock, or something like that. “Mark said it wouldn't, you can cut it safely.”

“Fuck you, he told
you
that, he didn't tell me. You cut it.”

We could tell from the sound of the engine that this was a serious generator, and we weren't looking at some thin electrical cord. The power lines were about two inches thick, including insulation, and had a lot of juice running through them. The LMF II had proven itself to everyone in the troop time and time again, because ever since we'd been in-country we'd been abusing the piss out of them. I actually used mine to get into and out of rooftop sniper hide positions; I would stab it into the cement walls that were everywhere and use it for a step. But nobody had used one to cut a hot wire.

I looked at the wire, at the knife in my hand, and at Kennedy. It was either cut the wire or engage a much larger force under stadium lighting conditions. “Well, fuck it,” I said. “If this thing gets me fried, go kick Mark's ass for me.”

The power line was high on the wall. After I scurried over to the wall I reached the knife above my head and stuck it in between the power line and the wall. Using my body weight I jumped and pulled down on the Gerber. There was a bright flash, and I felt heat in my hands, then it was dark again—or did I die? Nope. Holy shit, it actually worked!

With the lights off the Iraqis lost a lot of their courage, because they knew how good our night vision was, and they hauled ass out of the area. We were able to get out of the building without being spotted. A few minutes later Lieutenant Dejesus showed up in our Bradleys and we took the long ride back to our forward operating base (FOB).