Shock Factor (18 page)

The team poured through the door, Adam third in line. They sprinted across the courtyard and into the house, weapons at their shoulders as the inhabitants shouted and screamed.

The Americans cleared the entry room then fanned out—to find one of the bomb maker's confederates using a baby as a human shield. A SEAL rushed over and pulled the child from his hands as another tackled the coward and got flex cuffs on him. The SEAL held the child only long enough to give him to his mother, who had been silently watching the scene from across the room.

Adam moved with practiced fluidity.
Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
His M4 at his shoulder, he worked to clear his section of the house. As he came to a stairwell, the bomb maker suddenly bolted from the darkness and came straight at him, yelling something wildly, arms outstretched as if trying to grab him.

Adam lowered his rifle and push-kicked the bomb maker. The blow stopped the man cold, and before he could recover, Adam kneed him hard in the midsection. The insurgent flailed, and Adam rained blows on him until he finally quit resisting.

In minutes, the SEALs had separated the men from the women and children, then positively identified the bomb maker and one other insurgent. A search of the house revealed an H-rack chest rig, good for carrying extra AK-47 magazines, but nothing else. No bombs or explosives, and the men could not find the command wire the aircraft's pilot had reported.

The Jordanian 'terp questioned the males found in the house and reported that they were being evasive. Had the SEALs had more time, they could have conducted a more thorough search. As it was, they had three more targets to hit. The Americans wrapped up the two wanted men and headed off to hit the next target.

Before first light, the team completed their marathon kill or capture tour of the greater Ramadi area. They returned to the Marine outpost as bone weary as they'd ever been. They handed over their detainees, climbed into their trucks, and drove back to Camp Lee, Christmas over, their Santa hats stowed in their assault packs. Hopefully, they wouldn't be wearing them in this city, or anywhere else in Iraq, come this time next year.

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Face of Victory

Another day in Ramadi came to an end. The shadows crept over shattered buildings as smoke uncoiled upward from mortar and rocket impacts to mingle with the haze that made Iraqi sunsets so striking in Anbar Province. Periodic gunfire echoed through the streets as the denizens of this hellish place slowly settled into their nighttime routines.

As darkness fell, the SEALs of Team Five's Blue Element sortied from a forward combat outpost to patrol deep into the city. They passed through entire neighborhoods that were little more than abandoned rubble. A few blocks further, they came across streets and buildings virtually undamaged, scenes of normalcy unfolding around them. People went about errands. Others sat next to shops and quietly smoked. Scooters weaved through the foot traffic as a few cars eased down the avenue.

Another block—more empty ruins. They slipped around overturned cars, burned-out kiosks, and avoided the dead cats and dogs scattered in the street.

The patrol consisted of about twenty men: perhaps a dozen SEALs, an EOD tech, a Navy pilot who served as their JTAC, a couple of interpreters, and a handful of Iraqi Army scouts the Americans called Jundis. They dashed from alleyway to alleyway, bounding down the streets as they kept their weapons at the ready and searched for potential threats in the windows and rooftops above them. A few blocks later, the postapocalyptic ruins gave way to a bustling neighborhood whose buildings had suffered only superficial blast and shrapnel damage. More scooters. More foot traffic. It looked much like any other Arab city in peacetime.

Except for the looks the SEALs received.

The men on the street paused to stare at the patrol. Eyes narrowed, hate radiating from them, the scowls made the SEALs defensive. Sniper Adam Downs, carrying his black SR-25 7.62mm sniper rifle muttered to a buddy, “Mouth-breathing shitheads.”

They'd probably take fire the moment they rounded the corner. That was how things worked in Ramadi. Unarmed males could not be shot. The enemy knew it. They'd stand in the street and watch the Americans go through their own morning rituals, then retrieve a weapon and fire a few shots as soon as an opportunity presented itself. It was a whack-a-mole sort of war, one that sucked the marrow from a warrior's soul. Never knowing who the enemy was, most American veterans in this city came to assume everyone was.

The glares continued until the patrol rounded the block and were confronted with another ruined section of the city. When first in the city, Americans found it odd and even disorienting to see these patches of everyday life juxtaposed amid so much carnage and devastation. It was sort of like seeing the aftermath of a Midwest tornado. In some places nothing was left as the twister cut a swath of devastation through a town. But standing beside that path would be houses and dwellings completely untouched, while their neighbor's home a few yards away was nothing but splinters. The storm of war did the same thing to Ramadi.

Blue Element reached a six-story apartment complex. Aside from shrapnel marks and a few bullet holes on the walls, the place seemed in remarkably good condition. This was an upscale neighborhood, once full of Saddam's cronies and Ba'athists who had gained a piece of the dictator's pie. Now, even the rich here in the city had been reduced to bare survival levels. Though their building was largely unharmed, there was no water in the district. Or power. Or sewer service. Mail service was a distant memory, and every trip out for food and supplies meant risking a family member's life.

The SEALs flowed inside the building and began to clear it. As one of the element's snipers, Adam carried both his SR-25 and an M4 Carbine. Going room to room, making sure there were no bad guys, made no sense with the long-barreled SR. With the suppressor attached to it, the weapon was almost three and a half feet long—far too cumbersome for close-range, room-to-room work. So Adam hefted his M4 when he stacked up on a door with the rest of the team.

Many of the apartments were empty, their residents having had the means and will to flee the chaos for safer areas—like Syria. Then Adam rapped his knuckles on a door up on the sixth floor. An old man opened it and gazed at the American sniper. His eyes fell to his weapon, then back to Adam's face.

For a second, Adam thought he'd be treated to the same sullen expression and menacing glances he'd seen countless times since getting to Ramadi in October 2006 with the rest of SEAL Team Five. Instead, the old man smiled, stepped aside, and gestured for Adam and the others with him to enter.

“Welcome. Please come in, have chai tea with us,” the old man said. Adam saw he wasn't that old—perhaps mid-forties or early fifties. But the hard life here, and the place he called home, aged these people well beyond their years.

He led Adam and some of the others from Blue Element into the main room, where he offered his guests a seat. Adam sat down across from a middle-aged woman, her face wrinkled and lined from life in this place. She stared at his black SR-25, which Adam had unslung and now held beside him.

The old man disappeared into the kitchen to brew tea. A young boy appeared, perhaps twelve years old. He came in and sat beside his mother, dark eyes wide as he stared at Adam's sniper rifle.

Adam had seen boys work as the eyes of al-Qaida in the street. He'd heard stories of suicide bombers of all ages. As the boy looked his weapon over, the southern Illinois native stared back, his senses on a hair trigger.

If that kid pulls a pistol, I'll shoot him dead.

A moment later, the boy's brother ambled into the room. Adam judged him to be maybe five or six. He smiled as he took station next to his mother. With a start, the SEAL sniper realized the child was mentally retarded.

Earlier that year, in Samarra, al-Qaida had strapped a suicide vest to a mentally retarded and wheelchair-bound teenager who'd been unofficially adopted by the local Iraqi Police. They wheeled him into the city's main station, where he went to greet the chief of police, as was his routine.

Al-Qaida detonated him and assassinated the police chief.

Adam regarded the child.

What kind of a fucked-up place is this where I have to worry about kids pulling guns and trying to kill me?

When he was the boy's age, he lived in the shadow of a coal mine, the only real industry in Elko, Illinois. Everyone he knew had a parent who worked in the mine, and for decades it had been almost a family tradition for sons to follow in their father's footsteps. Graduate from high school, go to work for the mine, and join the local union. It was a good life, a good wage, and the men would knock off on Friday nights in the fall and disappear into the woods to hunt and fish for the weekends.

What future did these boys have?

For that matter, how did this family even support itself? The head of the house looked too old to work. Besides, with the economy virtually nonfunctional, what work was there?

Aside from laying IEDs and killing Americans, anyway.

Al-Qaida was the economy.

The mother made eye contact with Adam. She said something and pointed at his SR-25.

Adam looked down at it. Before this deployment, he'd gone to sniper school carrying a camouflaged SR-25 through all its rigors. Naval Special Warfare had intended that each sniper would carry the same rifle through training and into combat so that he would know the weapon intimately.

That didn't happen with Adam's class. There was a shortage of weapons, and he had to hand his over to the class behind his. He'd been issued this black one just before they left Virginia Beach for Iraq, and he hadn't had the time to paint it. Or name it for that matter.

The woman said something to him, and Adam shifted his gaze back to her.

“She wants to know if you are a sniper,” the element's 'terp explained. He was standing behind Adam.

“Yeah, I am.”

The old man returned, carrying a platter of teacups. Adam took one, as did the others in the room. When everyone was served, the old man sat down and offered a cigarette to Adam. He took it, and soon they both were enjoying a smoke together.

The mother said something else. The 'terp translated.

“If I'm walking home from the market and I drop something in the road, will I be shot by a sniper if I pick it up?”

Adam tried to conceal his shock, but the question rocked him on his heels. How the hell was he supposed to answer that?

Do you think we'd shoot an old woman?

Not in normal circumstances, that's for sure. But in Ramadi, where nothing is as it seems, Adam had to concede that the question had merit. He began to think it through.

If he'd been watching through his scope, and the woman dropped something in the street and ran, or left it and moved away, he would consider that suspicious. All American snipers in the city had seen that routine before as al-Qaida's IED planters would use tactics such as that to emplace their deadly weapons and detonation systems.

If she dropped something and ran, she could get shot.

Adam turned to the 'terp and said, “Tell her that if she drops something, pick it up right away and put it back in her bag.”

The 'terp translated and the woman nodded. They stared at each other for a moment until Adam added, “Just try to pretend we aren't there. Nobody's going to be mad at you.”

They sat in silence and drank chai tea together. For Adam, and most of his fellow SEALs, this was the closest encounter he'd had with Iraqi civilians. Usually, the only interaction he had was through his scope, trying to determine who had hostile intent and who was just trying to survive amid the ruins.

Ruins. Most of the city had no power, but this apartment had electricity. The lights were on, and a nearby television was on with the sound muted. It was set to Channel Two, which played American movies.

Adam's eyes wandered around the room. Typical Iraqi upper-class home. Nicer furniture, nicer cups. Rugs of some value on the floor. It seemed to Adam that Iraq was a classic case of binary economics. The wealthy lived in splendor, but the vast majority of the people eeked out subsistence-level livings in cinderblock and concrete dwellings largely devoid of such luxuries as furniture or electronics. From what he'd seen, there was no middle class. Just haves and have-nots.

His eyes came to rest on a portrait hanging on the wall behind where the old man sat. President George Bush smiled out from the frame. For a second, the recognition of the American president left him astonished. Usually, inside people's homes, the SEALs found photos of Iraqi politicians or clerics. In Shia homes, there was usually a portrait of Moqtada al-Sadr hanging somewhere.

But never President Bush.

The old man saw Adam's fixated gaze and realized at once what had attracted such attention. Solemnly, he said, “George Bush is the only one who cares about us.”

After the 'terp translated, Adam nodded. He felt the same way. Back home, most people lived in the myopia of their daily ruts, never looking up beyond their narrow horizons to see that the sons and daughters of the nation were locked in a brutal and pivotal war. The soldiers and SEALs here were the forgotten legions, pushed from the mind's eye by a people seemingly more intent on shopping than service in time of conflict.

But President Bush felt the burden of sending troops into harm's way every day. You could see it with the sincerity of his words at every visit to bases and forts around the country and world. He loved being with the troops. And he tried to set the example for the rest of the nation with his actions and support.

Now here, thousands of miles from the White House, an Iraqi just shared the same sentiments with Adam.

We walk away from this mess now, and a lot more people will die.