Hunters: U.S. Snipers in the War on Terror (20 page)

The men with the IED were ninety meters away. Peeples chose the man orchestrating the event and put the crosshairs on his chest; at that distance he could have taken his head if he wanted to. The boom of his rifle started the attack, followed by the M240 machine gun and an M203 grenade launcher. The enemy was completely surprised and stood in shock for a second. With his first target down, Peeples transitioned to a guy trying to get the IED, which he had dropped in the street. The machine gunner kept on the few that slipped into buildings, until a minute later when the QRF arrived. As soon as they did, a counterattack was launched by more insurgents.

Gunfire ensued. Insurgents sent bullets through Peeples’s window, causing him and Stout to dive for cover. During a lull, he stood and shot a man on an adjacent rooftop, but another volley flew through the window, hitting a metal windowpane and sending bullet fragments into his face and leg. The guy next to him took fragments to the face and hand. The impact shocked Peeples. It felt like a fist to the head, but when he knew that the injury was not serious, and neither were the injuries to the other soldier, they resumed fighting.

Five minutes later the shooting ceased. Peeples assessed the damage. Dead insurgents lay in the street and in the other building. One even dangled by his leg from a second-story balcony. Miraculously no soldiers were seriously injured, even though the wall behind them held fifteen to twenty bullet holes. When the coast was clear, the sniper team headed for the Bradleys to withdraw.

In the street, the team shuffled into the fighting vehicles. One of the soldiers tripped and was stuck in the concertina wire, sending Peeples to his aid. As he grabbed the wire, Peeples turned and noticed that they were being targeted by an insurgent. Before Peeples could level his rifle to shoot, a Bradley noticed the fighter as well and tore his body to shreds with its 25mm main gun.

At base, Peeples and his team resupplied. After a quick bite, they were ordered back into the fight. This time Peeples’s security would be two squads, and instead of insert by vehicles, they would be trailing the company on foot. That night the soldiers patrolled from their base into their sector. Fighting had already begun in other areas, sending tracers and bullets twenty-five feet overhead while the soldiers moved in.

When they reached their break-off point, Peeples’s team and the squads moved into a building. They held the upper floors of the six-story building with a commanding view of the city. From there, they watched as the rest of the company patrolled on and eventually out of sight. That night, the company took heavy contact while fighting to and from base. The next day Peeples and the others learned that one of their friends had died as a result. It was hard not to be dispirited. Another friend had lost his life, and Peeples thought about it all day.

The next evening, Peeples and his partner took the roof. An infrared beacon marked their friendly position for the air assets above that had made gun runs throughout the day. From the roof, Peeples kept his eyes in one sector while the others watched elsewhere. He and his partner scanned a certain road at the same time, and they noticed a large patrol moving in their direction. They focused in and saw two groups, the closest being 150 yards and moving in two single files, while the larger group patrolled about 500 yards behind them. When the snipers tried to recognize which unit the patrols were, they realized that these men were not friendlies; they were insurgents carrying AKs and dressed in street clothes.

“This has got to be friendly. There’s no way this is enemy,” thought Peeples.

Their size shocked him. He could not believe his eyes and even radioed the company three times to ask if any friendly patrols were in their sector. The answer each time was no.

Peeples immediately informed the company of the situation. He requested air and indirect fire but was denied because of collateral damage. With no help there, he turned to the QRF Bradleys and asked them to move toward his building from east to west, while Peeples and the squads covered the north-south street, locking the insurgents in an L-shaped ambush. He also requested illumination mortars to light up the sky on his mark.

Within minutes the Bradleys were en route. When they fired the first shots, the illumination mortars were sent and lit up the insurgents’ position, causing everyone to open fire. Peeples ranged his first target at eight hundred yards. His custom M4 was capable, and he was glad that it was modified. With the light, he saw perfectly a man dragging a weapons crate. He adjusted his sights and let the first round fly. It hit its mark, dropping the guy, and Peeples swiftly acquired another target. His second shot was also on, and his second target fell, but soon the group dispersed.

Suddenly the lights went out for a few seconds. When the next mortar triggered, the illumination exposed an insurgent crawling. Peeples shot but was off target. He adjusted at once, but this time his bullet hit a power line. After he adjusted again, his bullet found its mark, stopping the man in place. Peeples finished him off with three more shots. Seconds later, he spotted another man resting behind a dirt mound. His upper torso was exposed and he looked to be taking cover.

“You see that guy behind the mound?” Peeples said, directing Stout onto the target.

“Got ’im,” replied Stout.

Peeples’s next shot may have been his luckiest ever. He aimed at the man’s head and took a deep breath; he wasn’t going to miss with the other soldiers watching. Relaxed and on target, Peeples gently squeezed the trigger. Stout and a few others watched Peeples’s round hit the man’s head, dropping him instantly. The sound of bullet hitting skull echoed through the street. It was a sound Peeples would never forget. Later the team pulled out and refitted back at base.

At base, everyone cleaned weapons and tried sleeping. They waited all day until night to insert into the city once more. This time Peeples and Stout were with a squad and were directed to hold a position in support of the soldiers erecting a concrete barrier. As luck would have it, Peeples and the squad were to be trapped in the Malaab District side while everyone else was on the other side.

The ride into the city was different this time. Insurgents in the Malaab felt the pressure and attacked the Bradleys the entire drive in. Once they were close to their objective, Peeples monitored the radio for the attached squad leader to signal that their building was clear. When it was, the Bradleys dropped their back ramps.

With his feet on the ground, Peeples knew right away it was going to be a tough mission. It sounded like the Fourth of July with the amount of explosions outside. All of the Bradleys were on the defensive as insurgents rained RPGs and bullets on them. Tracers zipped past Peeples and pinged off the armored vehicles. In the midst of this, Peeples and Stout ran for their lives and made it to the safety of the building.

The squad leader met them at the door. A situation report was quickly discussed, and Peeples took Stout straight onto the roof. Another soldier followed the two up, and once there, Peeples moved to the ledge facing the enemy and readied his weapon. His night vision covered his eye and he glanced over the ledge toward the street. To his surprise, below him were two insurgents with AKs, whispering to each other. Peeples’s PEQ-2 infrared laser could only be seen with night vision, and he put the laser on their heads and dumped a half a mag, killing them. At the same time, another soldier fired on a few insurgents farther down the street. It was the start of the most violent firefight that Peeples had ever experienced.

Insurgents had staged in the same area that the soldiers had moved into. Hundreds of enemy fighters opened fire very close to the soldiers. There was no room for mistakes now as the insurgents gave all they had. Peeples felt their bullets and RPGs exploding against his building, and even worse, he and his team were near the largest group, and the insurgents knew that.

The intensity of it all was nerve-wracking. It took all he had for Peeples to shoot, reload, duck, and shoot while trying to direct others on targets. His strategy amid the turmoil was to shoot muzzle flashes, but the enemy did the same and fired on him. Next to Peeples, the M203 gunner let grenades fly like a champion. He aimed for dead space where insurgents took cover and once landed a grenade behind a courtyard wall hitting several men. Their painful screams let him know that his shot was on.

It was a deadly stalemate for some time until the soldiers received air support. A Guided Missile and Large Rocket, or GLMR, momentarily silenced the fighting when one destroyed a house. Peeples gathered his thoughts in the mess of it all and hoped to make it out alive. As he regained focus, he saw an insurgent below him moving through an alley twenty yards away, and he killed the enemy fighter.

“These guys are close,” he thought and threw a grenade into the alley. More insurgents appeared below them, and the soldiers tried pushing them back with more grenades.

“Allah Akbar!” yelled insurgents from a building across the street. They also threw grenades back at the soldiers and peppered them with AKs. They began calling reinforcements, hoping to close with the soldiers.

The soldiers yelled back, unintimidated. They pinpointed the main building from which the insurgents regrouped. It was 75 meters (250 feet) away. With air on station, they dropped a five-hundred-pound bomb onto the building. The concussion rocked the neighborhood. Peeples went deaf for a second as debris rained down on his rooftop. When the dust cleared, a few insurgents crawled from the rubble still yelling, but they were easy targets.

The bomb gave the soldiers time to regroup. They were almost out of ammo, nobody had grenades, the SAW had no bullets, everyone was down to his last magazine of 5.56mm, and the machine gun had only a hundred rounds left. Fortunately for them, the soldiers in the rear assembled resupply pallets with ready loaded magazines, grenades, AT-4s (a light, anti-tank rocket), and machine gun ammo. Bradleys carried the crates to their building and arrived just before the fighting resumed.

The insurgents also regrouped. They pushed toward the soldiers in all directions, which transformed the machine gunner into a savage. He fired so much that his gun barrel turned red. The insurgents took a nearby building and positioned their machine guns from it, giving other fighters covering fire. The squad leader, realizing the situation, tore into the building with an AT-4, but though it was hit, gunfire still came from the house. Peeples grabbed another AT-4 and was so excited that he forgot to put the shoulder strap on correctly. When he fired, the launcher hit him in the face. Thankfully, in the darkness nobody had seen it. Unbelievably, the shooting did not cease, but a third and final rocket from the squad leader did the trick.

Soon, the soldiers noticed something peculiar. Every so often a loud shot, undeniably a sniper rifle, fired on them. The enemy sniper caught the attention of Peeples, and he made it his personal mission to find him. Peeples took his sniper rifle, used his PEQ-2 infrared laser, and flooded the windows he suspected the sniper was firing from. He had not heard the shot in some time, when out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a muzzle flash.

He scanned that area. Less than a hundred meters away, Peeples lit up an empty building with his beam. He saw a small circular glimmer of light, which was a reflection off the enemy sniper’s scope. Peeples focused in and found the sniper sitting behind a table with his rifle resting uon it. The enemy sniper was clueless that he had been compromised. Peeples quickly aimed at his face and instantly killed the other sniper. It was the kind of shot that every sniper dreams of.

Soon the fighting spiked once more. The insurgents would not quit, but neither did the soldiers. Though he could not see him, Peeples heard Stout directing the machine gunner onto targets, followed by the sound of bullets penetrating flesh. He was glad to be next to these soldiers. They all held under fire with no sign of letting up. The fight started at 1900 and trailed off around 0300 the next morning. By sunrise half of the barrier wall had been erected and Peeples and Stout were taken back to base to debrief.

“You and Stout have been out for seventy-two hours. I know you want to go, but I’m keeping you here,” said the company commander. He was proud of the snipers’ actions, but he knew that they needed the rest.

Peeples and Stout looked like hell. They had not slept a wink the entire time and eaten only a small bit, and they had blood, sweat, and dirt caked all over. That night, after a hot shower and chow, Peeples fell fast asleep. The next day the wall was fully erected and Operation Murfreesboro was considered a success. Peeples was glad to have helped, but he was even more happy that the mission was over. He could not believe that with all the fighting, he had made it through intact.

Two weeks later, Peeples took R&R. He flew out of country and out of the war zone. It was just what he needed after all the action that he had seen. At first, he had to adjust to not having a weapon or being on guard the whole time. Though it was a break, he could not shake the thought of going back. He still had six more months to go, and if they were anything like the first six, he would have a lot more killing to do.

After a month, Peeples flew back. Instead of the war zone that he had left with death at every turn, he arrived to the Anbar Awakening. In the time he had been gone, the tribes of the Al-Anbar Province had finally become fed up with al-Qaeda in Iraq and their devious tactics. Al-Qaeda’s horrendous disregard for innocent lives pushed tribal leaders to side with the Coalition and defend their territory, and the result was staggering.

In his next six months the fighting was minimal. Peeples heard of only a few IEDs and no sorts of attacks of any kind. As a result, his team did not run any more sniper missions. It had gone from hell to heaven in one month.

In the end, Peeples learned much about sniping from his two combat tours. The biggest lesson was tactical patience. By using their heads, along with patience and good training, Peeples’s team had been tremendously successful.