Shock Factor (3 page)

Marine snipers had better equipment and better training, but even after they more than proved their worth on the island battlefields of the Pacific, the entire program was dismantled after Japan's surrender. When Korea kicked off five years later, the cycle repeated itself, and both services had to scramble to rebuild sniper programs from scratch.

When Korea ended in 1953, it happened again. The courses were abandoned and the snipers sent to other duties. It took Vietnam to break this pattern at last. Both the Army and the Corps established schools in country. The 2nd Marine Division kick-started the effort, closely followed by the 3rd. Both units built ranges around Da Nang and culled through the records to find expert marksmen or aging competitive shooters who had once been part of sniper units. They found shooters in unlikely places, like supply offices and desk jobs. Carlos Hathcock, one of our most successful snipers, had been an MP before he was pulled into the new program. It took time to rebuild and relearn the field craft and skills the Shooter of New Orleans possessed a century before. But when it all came together, our snipers set a fresh standard for effectiveness. Men like Carlos Hathcock and Chuck Mawhinney established the new legacy and became our role models in the years ahead.

Vietnam ended in 1975, and fortunately this time the community was not disbanded. Since Grenada, we have rolled into every battle with an increasing level of professional acumen and expertise. Gone are the days where our raw recruits were born on the frontier and raised with a rifle in hand. While more snipers hail from urban backgrounds, our classes and schools have expanded in scope and depth to hone their skills to a razor's edge. Today's American sniper has no peer in training, skill, and support. Despite this, we still face friction within our own chain of command over how we should be used on the battlefield.

This is an old problem that dates back to the Revolution. The best officers grasp the Shock Factor and find ways to apply it, but most have no understanding of the psychological power we possess. Those men historically have reverted to their default knowledge base. We've ended up being used like regular line infantry too many times to count, and it only serves to increase friendly casualties.

Part of the problem we face is that the Shock Factor cannot be replicated in a clean, analytical training environment. It is a phenomenon reserved only for combat, and the reaction to it cannot be quantified. Nor can it be fully understood unless experienced or witnessed. As a result, our capacity to influence a battle has almost always been underestimated. Until the War on Terror, New Orleans was the exception, not the rule.

During my career, I only glimpsed the Shock Factor once in training during a 2000 multinational field exercise. One phase of the training included an assault in urban terrain. As we planned how this would look, I suggested we deploy a few of my sniper teams to hold the objective town against a battalion-level infantry assault. I had no doubt we could keep the enemy at bay for as long as necessary, provided we were allowed to use all our skills in stealth and concealment. The leaders running the exercise refused to believe this, and my commander did not want to put two of his men out on an island without support. Even in training, our officers are often casualty-averse. Of course, this is usually a good thing, but when it comes to snipers, this level of caution stems from a failure to understand our capabilities.

After an intense discussion, I finally convinced them to let us give it a try. We were using simunitions—short-ranged projectiles that sting like paintballs when they hit a man—so I knew we would have to rely on stealth and concealment instead of stand-off distance. The result? Our two-man sniper team held up seven hundred Marines for an entire morning. We used surprise and precision to stop every assault, and our red force never even located us.

To our delight, the surprise and mild pain the simunitions inflicted actually created a mild form of the Shock Factor. It was the closest we ever came to replicating it in a peacetime setting. Unfortunately, our leadership did not appreciate our success. They pulled us out of the action so the assault battalion could finish its mission and complete its training objectives. We were seen as hindering the training process, not enhancing it. For the rest of the exercise, we sat on the sidelines feeling like the Corps' bastard redheaded stepchildren. The psychological power we had demonstrated was all but ignored.

Fortunately, since 9/11 this attitude has started to change. Our officers now undergo sniper employment courses, taught by snipers, before they take over battalion-level commands. Since most of the Corps has seen extensive combat over the past decade, our officers are more familiar with the Shock Factor than ever before. They've seen it in the field during firefights with an enemy who wears no uniform and often fights us amongst innocent civilians. They've seen how threats come at our soldiers and Marines from every compass point, and they've learned the value of having a sniper team on their shoulder, watching over them for just such surprise attacks.

In this perilous environment, we snipers are in our element. As the war has dragged on, our role on the battlefield has expanded. Our leaders have recognized the value of our psychological power and surgical accuracy in a fight that is as much for the hearts and minds of the locals as it is to destroy the enemy. Without a sniper's precision, we would have to rely on firepower to take out our enemies. Laser-guided bombs and artillery destroys neighborhoods and kills civilians—side effects that generate bad press, complicate our efforts politically, and spawns fresh recruits to the insurgent cause. A post-Vietnam study found that it required ten thousand bullets for a conventional unit to kill a single Viet Cong. It took a sniper three and a half. We shooters can find, fix, and eliminate the enemy without endangering local populations, all while leaving property undamaged. Our psychological power can crush an attack before the enemy has a chance to launch it.

This is our kind of fight. As Lieutenant Walcott wrote, we are messengers of death. If a sniper is stalking you, his bullet is not
To Whom It May Concern
, but a very direct and personal
Special Delivery
to you. That personal aspect makes us more than messengers of death. We are deliverers of fear.

 

PART I

SPECIAL OPERATIONS

 

CHAPTER TWO

Night Assault

YOUSSIFIYAH, IRAQ
THE HEART OF THE SUNNI TRIANGLE
JUNE 16, 2006

For months, the tide of war in Iraq had been turning against the Coalition. Thanks to the cunning strategy employed by al-Qaida Iraq's commander, Musab al-Zarqawi, the country had fallen into a brutal civil war drawn along ethnic and religious lines. Using foreign volunteers as suicide bombers, Zarqawi had unleashed a wave of terror not on American forces, but on the Shia majority within Iraq. His minions blew up markets, mosques, and local councils and assassinated Shia officials, all in a bid to destabilize Iraq so completely that the American effort in the nation would be swamped by violence and doomed to defeat.

That spring, the strategy was working. Zarqawi's cells had killed thousands of innocent Shia, who in turn had formed local militias that retaliated against their Sunni countrymen in night raids full of shocking levels of brutality. The war devolved into a bloody street-by-street battle for control of all of Iraq's major cities. Where once Sunni and Shia lived together in harmony, by 2006 they were ruthlessly purging their neighborhoods and carving out enclaves as the sectarian murders left scores, if not hundreds, of dead every night.

Caught in the middle trying to control this Arab versus Arab bloodletting was the American occupation force in Iraq. Both sides carried out attacks against U.S. troops whenever it suited them. The Shia, led by Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Militia, had launched two major rebellions in 2004, followed by periodic upticks of violence in 2005 and early 2006. Meanwhile, the Sunni population, under attack by increasingly reckless and barbaric Shia militias, turned to al-Qaida in Iraq for protection and help. In Sunni-dominated areas, such as the districts south of Baghdad, the Sunni insurgents virtually controlled the countryside. Known as the Sunni Triangle, the area around Youssifiyah became one of the most dangerous places in Iraq. Here, sixteen miles southwest of Baghdad, hundreds of Coalition soldiers died fighting in the town and its environs, mostly to the roadside bombs the Sunni cells had so craftily perfected. From October 2005 through June 2006, the American units around Youssifiyah were attacked 2,296 times. The insurgents had detonated over 1,600 roadside bombs during those attacks.

The legendary 101st Airborne Division joined the fight around Youssifiyah in the late fall of 2005. From their first missions, the Screaming Eagles encountered fearsome opposition as these young Americans were on the receiving end of most of those twenty-two hundred attacks. The 2005–2006 deployment became a hellish slugfest of roadside bombs, sudden ambushes, and betrayals by traitorous Iraqi “allies.” The 101st's 1st Battalion, 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment suffered twenty-one killed in action during this deployment, along with scores more wounded from an original force of about seven hundred.

For the men of the 1/502, each day began and ended with uncertainty. Spread dangerously thin across checkpoints and forward operating bases, they had little support available when the enemy struck at them. As the losses mounted, morale plummeted. For some of the soldiers, the enemy became all Iraqis, not just the al-Qaida-armed and -financed insurgents. What followed was a descent into one of the worst chapters of the Iraq War.

2000 HOURS
JUNE 16, 2006

Specialist David Babineau should not have been on bridge duty that night. At twenty-five, he'd done his eight years in the Army and had been ready to get out the previous fall. But as his platoon readied for a second Iraq deployment, he'd been stop-lossed. Instead of serving out the end of his contract and hanging up his uniform, the father of three found his service extended until after this tour in the Middle East.

He never grumbled about that. Rather, he'd always exhibited leadership skills and had a knack of getting along with everyone. At times officers took note and asked him why he didn't push to make sergeant. Truth was, he didn't care about rank. He was happy where he was, and looked forward to leaving the Army when 1/502nd returned home later in the fall of 2006.

On the night of June 16, Babineau was detached from his platoon with two other soldiers, Private Thomas Tucker and Private Kristian Menchaca, to guard a bridge over a canal outside of Youssifiyah. The original bridge had been destroyed at some point earlier in the war. Now an armored engineer vehicle rested in its place. Called an AVLB, for armored vehicle-launched bridge, the massive vehicle carried a metal temporary bridge on its back that could be unfolded to cross such a divide as the canal. With it in place, the Coalition needed to guard it, lest it be destroyed or even stolen by the local insurgents.

For weeks, Bravo Company, 1/502 had parceled out men and Humvees to guard a series of checkpoints around Youssifiyah. The nearest one from the AVLB was almost a mile away and out of visual sight. With so many losses—Bravo had taken ten casualties by June 16—and with many of the men on leave, by mid-June the company was running at about two-thirds normal strength. Without the resources to properly man all the checkpoints, 1st Platoon, Bravo Company was reduced to guarding the bridge with a single Humvee and three soldiers.

It was a threadbare way to wage a war, and the men in the Humvee that night were bone tired and jaded.

Menchaca, a Texas-born Hispanic with an easy grin and fun-loving personality, had gone on leave only a few weeks before. His family back in south Texas was shocked at the twenty-three-year-old's gaunt appearance and nervousness. He chained-smoked—something he had not done before the deployment, and spoke of how his base had burned down in a fire, leaving some of the men of 1st Platoon without any clothes save the uniforms on their backs. They received no influx of supplies, no additional clothes. Before he departed for Iraq at the end of his leave, he asked his family to send him some basics—soap, baby wipes, plus Oreo cookies. He always had a weak spot for them. He returned to his brothers in 1st Platoon, where his resolve and devotion never failed, even in the worst moments. On the sixteenth of June, he volunteered for the AVLB guard detail so another soldier could stay behind and enjoy his birthday.

Thomas Tucker, a twenty-five-year-old from tiny Madras, Oregon, had been equally weary, but he'd done his best to hide from his family the daily reality he faced. Before he'd headed out, he left a voice mail message back home explaining he was going on a little vacation and he'd be back soon.

A tough kid from the hardscrabble eastern Oregon high desert, Tucker grew up hunting and fishing like most rural Oregon boys. He loved to work on old pickup trucks, and his sense of humor had a knack of drawing people to him. When friends dug a little deeper, they found beyond his small-town crust a talented artistic soul. He loved music, played in the high school band, and had a penchant for sketching and drawing.

Another time, just before he went into battle, he left another message for his mother, “Be proud of me, Mom. I'm defending my country.” At his core, Thomas Tucker was an old-school American patriot.

The three men hunkered down beside the engineer vehicle and bridge and did their best to combat the boredom they would face for the next twenty-four hours. The company's thin ranks forced the platoons to change shifts at the checkpoints once a day, instead of every four to eight hours. The men endured hour after hour of mind-numbing nothingness, parked beside the canal in the darkness of a steaming hot Iraqi night.

They did not know al-Qaida was watching them.

Babineau had seen firsthand how insidious al-Qaida's operatives could be at times. A few months before, Babineau had been at another checkpoint when an Iraqi civilian came through it. The man was well known by the men of 1st Platoon. Always friendly to Americans, he had given the battalion tips on enemy activity in the past. This time, as he walked through the checkpoint, Babineau's friend, Sergeant Ken Casica, approached the man to chat with him. Casica, who had tattooed his daughter's name on his arm before the deployment, said something to the Iraqi. The man spun around and pulled a 9mm pistol from his waistband. He shot Casica in the neck, then turned his weapon on Staff Sergeant Travis Nelson, a forty-one-year-old Alabama native. Nelson had been facing the other way, and the Iraqi's first shot caught him in the back of the head. Babineau dove for cover behind a Humvee as the gunman fired at him, then tried to kill the soldier in the turret of the vehicle. He missed, and a second later, a short burst from the turret gunner's M240 Bravo machine gun blew the Iraqi's head off.