Carnivore (32 page)

Amy left work right then, went out and bought a Thermos, and mailed it to me. I was waiting, and waiting, and then I had to wait some more, because she sent it regular mail. It took two weeks to get to Iraq. When it finally did arrive, I opened up the box and saw that she'd sent me a coffee cup with a screw-on lid. It wasn't a Thermos at all.

I picked up the phone without a pause, dialed her number, and when she answered, yelled, “What the hell were you thinking?”

“Excuse me?”

I said, “I tell you to send me a Thermos over here, I'm freezing my ass off, and not only does it take you four weeks to get one over here, you send me a fucking coffee cup?!”

I finally got one in the mail three days before I left the country.

That's the closest we've ever come to getting a divorce, over a stupid Thermos. And it's still a sore point between the two of us. Say “Thermos” to Amy and she gets murder in her eyes. When you're in a combat zone half a world away, having instant telephone or Internet access to your loved ones can be a wonderful thing, but it's a double-edged sword.

W
e hadn't been stationed in Baghdad during our second tour but rather had been moved all over, wherever we were needed. Late in 2005 they were having problems with insurgents planting IEDs outside of Salman Pak, so Kennedy and I headed over there to see if we could help out.

Salman Pak is 15 miles south of Baghdad along the Tigris River, and most Iraqis know it as a historical and recreational area. It's the site of the Arch of Ctesiphon, in the remains of the ancient Persian capital, and is named after Salman the Persian, who was a companion to Muhammad and is buried there. Before the war it was a common day-trip destination for residents of Baghdad and even featured a floating casino. Under Saddam, however, Salman Pak became better known to U.S. forces as a center of chemical weapons production and secret police training.

We did a lot of patrols along the river, usually south of Salman Pak. There was a mosque there with a minaret, and we were pretty sure the insurgents, after planting IEDs, would stand in the mosque so they had a good view up and down the road as they waited for U.S. troops to drive by. Then they'd detonate. Ironically, there was a Pepsi factory right next to the mosque, which is not something you see every day.

One night Sowby, Kennedy, and I were on patrol in that area when an IED blew up between Kennedy's Bradley and mine. The Carnivore II took all the shrapnel, but the blast itself really rattled me—I know I got a concussion, as I had a little bit of fluid coming out of both of my ears.

Kennedy saw movement, hopped down inside the turret of his Bradley, and told his gunner to engage.

“My optics are out!” the gunner said. Kennedy and I had been rolling down the road pretty close together, and the blast had blown out his ISU (integrated sight unit).

Kennedy called me on the radio. “I can't identify, my optics are out.”

I couldn't engage them because Kennedy was between us. “Shoot from the hip, shoot from the hip!” I told him.

Kennedy saw several guys running in front of the Pepsi factory. He grabbed the Commander's override and opened up the 25 mm with HE rounds on high rate, trying to hit the fleeing insurgents. He started off really high, because you never know where the barrel's going to hit—you shoot and you adjust from that—and he worked his way down and across the front of the building, chasing the guys with about 70 rounds of high-explosive. It just destroyed the front of the factory, chunks flying everywhere, and looked like a scene from an action movie.

The insurgents made it to the riverbank, and Sergeant Sowby, who was behind me, finally had the angle and opened up his 25 mm. He pounded the guys in the bushes right before they got to the river.

Our original mission was to head to a small town south of Salman Pak and try to locate a known terrorist. The plan was to head to his house in the middle of the night just to see if we could catch him at home. Even though we'd been a bit rattled, none of our vehicles were damaged, and we continued on our patrol. Since Kennedy's ISU was out I put him in the middle of our small column, with Sowby in front and me in the rear, because I was still really rattled from that IED. We called the Apaches in and one came into the area and covered us as we rolled—our old friend Max 26. When we got to a point in the road where we needed to make a turn, we slowed down, and an IED went off in front of me.

Honestly, we were lucky that the IEDs we were dealing with were just rewired bombs. Insurgents would plant them in the ground and blow them up when the Americans drove by. If we weren't right on top of them, usually all we got was blast. Other troops were having to deal with insurgents planting EFP (explosively formed penetrator) bombs—these were charges that would rip through just about any armor we had.

The second IED of the night rattled me as well. Max 26 was on station but radioed us that he couldn't see anything or find anyone for us to kill. We were too far south to call all the way to base, so I called Sergeant Wyatt of the mortar platoon at Salman Pak. “Hey, please relay back to the Commander that this is a wash. We've already been hit with two IEDs. No real damage to the vehicles, no injuries. We're coming back up to Salman Pak.”

“Roger that.”

Max 26 was low on fuel and handed off to Gunslinger 24, which was on station overhead as we started rolling back. The Apaches we used were aviation assets with the 101st Airborne, and they were great. They saved our asses more times than I can count.

Our column was almost all the way back to Salman Pak in a little village when we got hit with another IED. This time it caught the rear of Kennedy's vehicle and the front of Sowby's vehicle. That's when I'd had about enough. We stopped. I left the gunners and drivers in the vehicles, but the Commanders and our dismounts got out and went kicking in every door in that village looking for somebody, anybody, whose ass we could kick. Finally we found the sheik in the town. I grabbed my interpreter and had a very intense conversation with that sheik in the front yard of his house.

“Make this very clear to him,” I told my interpreter. “If we or any of our forces get hit by another IED on this road, I'm going to come back here and drive my Bradley through his house. Crush his house. Make sure he understands me.” I stuck a thumb over my shoulder at the Carnivore, which had rolled up.

The interpreter relayed my message. The sheik, through the interpreter, told me, “There's nothing I can do, I am very sorry.”

“There better be something you can do,” I told him, motioning my driver to pull forward.

He kept saying, “There's nothing I can do,” and I kept motioning for my driver to pull forward. My driver kept pulling forward until the Carnivore hit and ran over the wall around the guy's yard and was creeping toward his house. The Bradley was in his front yard, inches away from his front door, before the sheik told me in English, “Okay, I understand, I understand.”

“You understand?”

“Yes,” he said. “But I have people coming here. I can't keep the people who are doing this out, they're coming from the river. They're coming from the other side, I can't stop them.”

Okay, now we were having a conversation. “What do you need to stop them?” I asked. “Do you need the police here?”

“No, the police are worse than the people crossing the river.”

“So what do you need?”

“I need guns and ammo.”

“How much guns and ammo?” I asked him.

“A lot.”

I smiled. “Okay. We'll give you AK-47s and ammo.” We always had AKs and mags in our Bradleys, taken off the insurgents that we'd killed. I gave him four AKs and magazines, then told the interpreter, “You tell this guy to handle his shit or I'm going to come back and raze his village. Do you understand me?”

The interpreter passed it along. The sheik looked at me for clarification. “What?”

“I'm going to burn it to the ground and crush every fucking thing in here. If anybody gets shot at while we're driving down this road or if another IED goes off.”

We never had another problem on that road again.

That sheik took care of his business, and he gained a lot of respect from the people in that area because he handled it himself. Because of that, he got his village back, and we actually developed a good relationship with him and his people. It wasn't uncommon for us to be driving through that area on patrol and have somebody run out and flag us down. Through our interpreter we'd hear that the sheik wanted to honor us with chai (tea). So we'd stop and have chai and talk with him.

F
or several nights Kennedy and I had been in the same location, a building that Alexander the Great built—or at least, had someone build. That's how old it was. Our sniper position was on the roof, and there weren't stairs to get up there. We had to climb piles of rocks and collapsed columns to make the ascent. Hollywood could have filmed
David and Goliath
in that place.

During the day there were sheepherders all over, and they weren't traveling far at night. Not only did Kennedy and I have to infil and exfil very covertly, to keep our position secret, we had to stay low on the roof all night to avoid being spotted. I was on the Barrett .50 and Kennedy was working as my spotter behind the M14. There was a lot of enemy activity in the area, plus we had a convoy scheduled to roll through, so we knew we'd probably see some action there. It was only a matter of time.

Through the thermal sight I watched a donkey come strolling down the road into view, with two guys riding it. They rode up close to us, dismounted, and proceed to place an IED. There was no doubt about what they were doing, and I called Sergeant Wyatt on the radio, talking as quietly as I could.

“I've got two of them, and they're definitely emplacing an IED. I want to take them out.”

“Crazy Blue 4, wait,” he told me. “Watch and see where they go, we want to get their cache.”

I wasn't necessarily happy about that. “Okay, but get EOD on standby. I'm going to need them to come down here and get that IED before the convoy comes through.”

“Roger that, Crazy Blue 4.”

The two insurgents finished planting the IED and moved out, walking beside the donkey. They moved down the road and kept going and going. I got back on the radio with Wyatt. “Hey, they're still going, and I'm going to lose them on the curve.” There were no other troops in the area, and Kennedy and I weren't about to try sneaking after them on foot.

“Okay, take the shot.”

I was back on the radio in a second. “Wait, they're coming back.” The two of them walked partway back to the IED location and stopped on the side of the road in some long grass. I don't know if they were talking or sightseeing or waiting for someone, but they were out there forever, just standing there next to the donkey.

“What the fuck are they doing?” Kennedy finally said. “They on a date?” He was getting as impatient as I was.

I got back on the radio with Wyatt, and by extension Burgoyne. “They've been out there forever, they're not going anywhere. I'm going to take the shot.”

“Roger that, go ahead.”

“Okay, I'm going to shoot the guy in front,” I told Kennedy, “and when I do, you shoot the guy in back.”

“Gotcha.”

I centered the scope on the center of the man's chest, took a breath, held it, and squeezed the trigger. The Barrett jumped with the earth-shattering KABOOM like it always did, so I lost the view through the scope. When I got back on target, I couldn't see anything. I looked at Kennedy.

“You fucker, why didn't you shoot?”

“'Cause they were gone,” he told me.

“What do you mean they were gone?”

“They disappeared when you shot,” he told me.

“My ass. There's no way I missed him, I was right on the guy, it's only a hundred yards!”

My spotter was insistent. “I'm telling you, they were gone, that donkey hauled ass.” Yep, that's what he said.

What the fuck?
I called the troop on the radio again. “Call in EOD, the site's clear.”

“Crazy Blue 4, what about the insurgents?” they asked me.

“Um, I think I hit one,” I told them, sounding like an idiot. “I can see a hot spot on the ground, but I can't really tell because of the grass.”

“All right, we'll have EOD check it out.”

EOD didn't arrive until the next morning. They rolled up in their Humvee and went to the shooting site. I could see one of them looking at something, then he walked back to the vehicle and got on the radio.

“Crazy Blue 4, Engineer 4, I don't know what kind of sick games y'all are playing, but we don't have an EOD incident out here, and we don't appreciate coming out here to look at the livestock you've killed.”

He was broadcasting across the whole squadron net. I jumped on the radio right quick.

“Engineer 4, Crazy Blue 4, negative, negative. EOD site is another fifty meters. You've stopped short.”

“Oh, roger.”

They proceeded to the IED location and spent a couple minutes looking it over. “This is Engineer 4,” they called over the radio. “Be advised we have identified the object as a threat, and we're going to have to detonate it in place.” While they were setting up to do that, I got back on the radio with Wyatt, as the EOD guy had just called me out in front of everyone.

“I don't know what they were talking about at the first site, so I'm going to go down and talk to him.”

“Copy that. Don't take too long, that convoy is on its way.”

Kennedy and I climbed down the rickety, 2,000-year-old structure and got out of the building without killing ourselves, then walked over to the EOD team. The guy in charge was the operator of the late bomb robot, Johnny 5. When he saw me he started shaking his head.