Shock Factor (34 page)

Another RPG sizzled past Gushwa and clipped the truck's radio antennae. Bullets laced the armor plating, raking their Humvee from fender to fender. Trimble floored his accelerator, but the Humvee's turbo failed and the heavy, armored rig wallowed along at less than thirty-five miles an hour. It was a slow motion nightmare for the Oregonians. Another RPG flew at them, only to ricochet off the street and explode under their Humvee. The blast lifted the rig into the air and flung them around in their seats. A split second later, a roadside bomb detonated, studding the Humvee with hunks of shrapnel that Trimble later found embedded in their vehicle's armor plating. One fist-sized piece of metal spanged off the back of Gushwa's turret just above his head, then fell behind the rear shield with a dull thud.

“Go! Go! Go! Blow through it!” Boyce ordered. Trimble's rig wasn't up to the crisis. It limped along and was savaged by the incoming. Fourteen men in five Humvees were at the mercy of the Mahdi Militiamen. If they scored a mobility kill, the platoon was sure to be faced with a terrible choice: leave those in the crippled rig behind, or make a last stand and die together.

Gushwa meted out short bursts, playing his machine gun like an instrument. He fired, shifted, fired, shifted again. Trimble was in awe of his skill on that weapon. Though it had been two years since he'd fired a 240, and had never pulled the trigger on one while in a moving Humvee, Nate's natural ability to shoot anything with a stock and barrel made him deadly effective that day. He hunkered down behind the scope, making split target acquisition decisions as he scanned the forty-five-degree arc in front of the platoon. If the person had a weapon, Nate pinned him with the green dot sight and pulled the trigger. He kept his ammo use to a bare minimum as he carefully triggered off less than ten rounds a burst.

Behind him, though, the Mahdi hammered the other trucks. An RPG skipped across Andy Hellman's Rat Rig, singeing its soft top but miraculously doing no damage. Behind the Rat Rig, Tyson Bumgardner saw the desperation of the moment and rolled down his window. He was in the front right passenger seat, serving as a truck commander that morning. Now he stuck his M4 through the window in his door and opened fire. The fight had engulfed them so quickly, he hadn't had time to switch off his iPod, which had been connected to the Humvee's speaker system. They rolled through the fight with Pantera's “Cowboys from Hell” as their soundtrack.

Death metal filling his ears, Tyson drained his magazine, dropped it out, and grabbed another one. Just as he slammed it home, a Mahdi fighter stepped into the street and opened fire with his AK-47 from only a few yards away. Bumgardner swung his barrel and triggered a three-round burst that hit the man in the chest. Seconds later, more Mahdi boiled from an alleyway, armed with a mix of AK-47s and RPGs. The scouts fought back furiously.

Lieutenant Boyce's truck was directly behind Gushwa's. His gunner, John Ash, was a mountain of a man, at least six foot three. His height worked against him in this fight, as he was probably the most exposed American that afternoon. Manning the .50 caliber machine gun, he saw a Mahdi Militiaman dash from the alley and aim an RPG at his truck. The man was less than ten feet away and clearly had no fear for his own safety. Just as he raised the weapon, Ash blew him apart with his Ma Deuce. Boyce watched one of the man's arms cartwheel over his Humvee's hood spraying blood and gore.

The fight continued, block after block. The Mahdi had studied the way the Americans would fight from their Humvees and tailored the ambush to counter those techniques. Instead of picking only one side of the road for a linear ambush, they alternated sides at each block. Just as the American gunners zeroed in on targets, they'd reach an intersection and take fire from the opposite side. The gunners had to spin their turrets one hundred eighty degrees to reengage.

Behind the platoon, a group of militiamen pushed a pair of cars across the road, then set them afire. This effectively blocked the scouts from backing out of the firefight should the lead truck go down. Seconds later, mortar fire rained down on the street. The Mahdi had also preplanned indirect fire for their kill zone, but the platoon had managed to push farther down the road than they had anticipated.

For all their cunning, the ambush had been triggered prematurely. The Mahdi had been preparing roadside bombs when the Volunteers showed up, and now the Humvees passed stacks of mortar rounds and artillery shells arrayed alongside the street to await emplacement as IEDs.

For over a kilometer, the seesaw, slow-motion battle raged. In the trail Humvee, Sergeant Randy Mitts blazed away with his M4, just as Bumgardner was doing. Mitts was a former Marine of imposing stature who came to Oregon after his service to work as a computer software engineer. Deeply religious, he arrived in Baghdad with the spirit of an avenging angel, determined to exact revenge on the Muslim world for 9/11. Now he found himself in the fight of his life, in a race to take out RPG men before they could fire their weapons on his brothers.

A brazen Mahdi fighter sprinted into the road behind Mitts's truck. Before his gunner could take him out, he triggered an RPG that exploded directly under the Humvee's rear axle. The back half of the rig lurched upwards, then slammed down with enough force to jar fillings loose.

Mitts grabbed his radio and reported, “We just took an RPG in the ass!”

It was a Groundhog Day moment. Every block brought more of the same—rockets, machine guns, AKs. The men fought back with ruthless desperation. In their wake, the road looked like a slaughterhouse. Bodies lay bleeding and torn along the length of the kilometer-long kill zone.

Many of those had been killed by sniper Nate Gushwa. His weight lifter's muscles bulged as he worked his machine gun and mowed down targets. Swinging left again, he spotted a heap of clothing on the side of the road. It looked suspicious, so he put a burst into it. The 7.62 rounds tore apart the clothing and revealed a 155mm artillery shell hidden beneath. This was the weapon of choice for roadside bombs as they could disable an armored Humvee.

Seconds after he shot up the pile of clothing, Nate's head whipsawed backward and slammed against the rear of the turret. He remained there, pinned in place for a second before his head jerked forward and hit the turret ring. He disappeared into the Humvee.

Somebody called, “Nate's been hit! He's down!”

Trimble heard him fall out of the turret, unconscious, and knew they were in real trouble. Without anyone to crew their 240, the Mahdi fighters in front of them would pour it on without fear of retribution. It would be open season on their rig. If it went down, the platoon would either have to fight in place and hope help arrived, or back out through the kill zone to the nearest intersection to make an escape. Ugly propositions at best.

The problem was, they didn't have anyone else to get up on the gun. The platoon was running with such a skeleton crew that only Kyle and Sergeant Paul remained in the rig. Paul was on the radio, calling out targets from the front passenger seat. In full battle rattle, getting Gushwa out of the way and climbing into the turret from that spot in the Humvee was difficult at best. In a Humvee being thrown around by repeated explosions, it would have been borderline impossible.

Sergeant Paul shook him. Blood streamed down Gushwa's face. One eye was covered with it.

“Nate! Nate, are you okay?” Paul said repeatedly.

Gushwa slowly regained consciousness. He hadn't been hit by any of the incoming after all. The Mahdi had created a trap, stolen from the pages of the German Army circa 1944 that was tailor made to take out Humvee gunners. They had strung a wire across the road right at gunner level. As Trimble navigated through the kill zone, the wire struck Nate right across the front of his helmet and caught on the mount for his night vision goggles. The sudden impact rammed his helmet into his forehead, opening a gash, then flung his head into the back of the turret. Later, at the Baghdad combat support hospital, he was told that if he hadn't had the neck muscles he'd developed in the gym during countless workouts, the wire would have ripped his head off. Instead, it tore two of the tendons in his neck and left him with lasting nerve damage.

If the wire had hit Nate three inches lower, it would have killed him instantly. Three inches higher, it would have slipped over him without inflicting any injury. Had that happened, the wire would have struck Ash in the turret of the next Humvee. With his taller frame, the scouts figured later that the wire would have hit him square in the neck at thirty-five miles an hour and decapitated him.

Nate would worry about the wounds later. In the moment, he realized how terribly vulnerable the platoon was without a man on the 240 above him. Groaning in pain, his eye stinging and blurred from the blood that had poured into it, he pulled himself into the turret with sheer determination. Once upright again, he grabbed the 240 and rotated right. Two running figures appeared in the scope. One was wearing a white shirt, carrying an RPG launcher. A teenaged male ran along behind him, carrying extra rockets. Before they had a chance to shoot, Nate walked a ten-round burst through both of them that knocked them off their feet. Launcher and reloads skidded along the ground as Trimble sped past them.

Trimble was amazed by his friend's grit. The scouts later estimated that Gushwa killed at least thirty insurgents with his 240 Bravo. He'd been so accurate and sparing with his ammunition that he hadn't even needed to reload. He'd fired about five hundred rounds, all while being pummeled with rockets, bombs, and bullets as Trimble bobbed and weaved through the street. Hitting moving targets from a moving platform is one of the most difficult shooting situations a sniper can face, no matter what the weapon. Nate Gushwa, less than a year removed from sniper school, showed a unique level of marksmanship on a weapon he had not used in two years. The versatility and skill he displayed that day was nothing short of spectacular.

The platoon rolled through the last block of the kill zone, their rigs battered but intact. A UAV, an unmanned aerial vehicle, drone aircraft arrived over the battlefield right after the scouts escaped the kill zone. The UAV's video camera captured over a hundred Mahdi fighters still alive and moving in the street. Scores more lay dead or wounded. The Volunteers had been outnumbered probably ten to one. Trimble credited their survival to Gushwa. He later recalled, “His shooting was key to getting us out of there that day.”

As they cleared the area, their adrenaline highs drained away, leaving them exhausted and shaking. As they gained some distance from the enemy, they allowed themselves a collective sigh of relief.

That was until the technicals began chasing them.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The Man Who Lost His Shoes

Kyle Trimble steered the scout platoon out of the fight. His crippled Humvee lurched through the final block of the kill zone and came to an earthen dyke that defined the east side of Zone 22. Rather than trying to take one of the side streets, Trimble drove up the slope and slid onto a narrow dirt road that ran along the top of the dyke. The other four trucks followed, and soon they were running southeast, the city to their right and farms to their left.

Behind them, the Mahdi seethed with fighting ire. Instead of melting away into their urban jungle to nurse their wounded and bury their dead, some of the militiamen piled into waiting pickups and bongo trucks. They sped after the scout platoon, armed with machine guns, AKs, and RPGs.

The scouts were trying to figure out how to clear the area. They'd never been on the dyke before, and they didn't know this area of Zone 22 well at all. The maps they had were unreliable at best. As they worked through their next move, the gunners spotted the mounted Mahdi force coming at them. The enemy drivers selected a north-south running side street that ran parallel to the dyke. Between breaks in the maze of buildings, the scouts caught fleeting glimpses of the technicals closing on them.

Trimble's rig still set the pace. With its turbo out, he managed to coax only about thirty-five miles an hour out of the Humvee, which was far too slow to be able to outrun their pursuers. Within minutes, the technical drew even with the American trucks. The two sides runned and gunned through the neighborhood, taking snap-shots at each other whenever there was a clear field of fire.

Gushwa stayed focused on his forward sector of fire. By now, his head throbbed with pain. His neck was so swollen he could barely look left and right. Blood continued to drip into his eye. For him, the chase became a surreal blur of colors, sounds, and shouted commands.

Up ahead, he saw a taxi go right through the dyke from east to west. As it crossed the dyke, all he could see was the vehicle's roof.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!” he shouted to Trimble. Kyle jammed on the brakes and the Humvee slid to a halt in a cloud of dust.

Some Iraqi bulldozer had cut a makeshift road through the dyke so the people of Zone 22 could move back and forth into the farmland on the east side. Nate had seen it just in time. The Humvee's front tires stopped less than a meter from a sheer, ten-foot drop. Had the taxi not driven through it at that exact moment, Nate and Kyle never would have seen the cut until their Humvee fell into it.

Those 1114s were tough, but a plunge like that at thirty-five miles an hour probably would have killed or severely wounded everyone inside.

Behind them, the other drivers skidded to a stop as well. Boyce saw their predicament clearly: unmoving now, sitting atop a dyke without cover or concealment, they were easy targets.

He ordered the platoon to back up, then dive off the left slope of the dyke. Down they went onto a rural road that intersected with the one the taxi had been using. There, they swung around in a U-turn and drove north for a ways before climbing back onto the dyke.

The maneuver threw off their pursuers, and the scouts sped north of Zone 22 into another neighborhood, marked Zone 50 on their maps. There, they drove off the dyke, looped west, and linked up with Dan Hendrickson and another company of Volunteers on the west side of the 'hood.