Shock Factor (37 page)

Around 0600, Lieutenant Boyce watched from the seventh floor as dawn broke over a city aflame. Eastern Baghdad had once again become a battleground. Rocket fire flared and distant muzzle flashes winked in the black streets below even as the sun crested the eastern horizon. The beauty of the red-orange dawn provided a stunning contrast with the skirmishes that seemed surreal to the Americans. At the same time, the sun blazing in their eyes made scanning Sadr City more difficult. Had it not been for the tactical situation, they would have found a hide that let them put the sun to their backs.

To Boyce's left, Darren “Buck” Buchholz lay catnapping beside his Barrett .50 caliber rifle. The platoon had acquired the semiauto version of the weapon, and already they'd found it their most deadly precision weapon. The Barrett stretches almost five feet long and weighs twenty-eight and a half pounds, making it as cumbersome as one of the platoon's M240 Bravo machine guns. The Barrett can hit targets over a mile away with a bullet traveling nearly twenty-eight hundred feet a second. The incredible velocity gives the round the ability to penetrate concrete and vehicular armor. Officially called the Special Applications Scoped Rifle, the Barrett is capable of knocking out vehicles and penetrating armor. A popular misconception holds that the weapon cannot be used against human targets under the Rules of Land Warfare—mainly due to the fact that it tends to cause people to explode when hit.

Buchholz was universally respected in the platoon for his dedication and refusal to quit. He spoke his mind and never held back his opinion to anyone regardless of rank. That blunt approach was refreshing, but not surprisingly it sometimes caused friction. If he was tough on those around him, nobody was harder on himself than “Buck,” as the other scouts called him.

Darren was a native of Dallas, Oregon, a small rural community nestled at the base of the Coast Range. He grew up prowling the woods with a .22 that his dad had taught him to shoot. Just as he left high school, he started hunting deer and elk with his grandfather's pump-action .30-06. He later switched to a Steyr .30-06.

In December 1998, he joined the National Guard and was pulled into Bravo Company 2–162. He stayed with the unit for only nine months, before growing dissatisfied. He wanted to be more than a rifleman, and he wanted to find a way where he could make an impact within the battalion. Buchholz was a man imbued with a sense of service who always wanted to contribute. Not surprisingly, his attitude caught the attention of the scout platoon, and he received an invite to join. Maries pulled him into the sniper section not long after, and he graduated from the Little Rock schoolhouse in 2001.

Until sniper school, Darren's sense of perfectionism stemmed from a lack of self-confidence. He constantly criticized himself and never measured up in his own eyes. That came to a head in sniper school. Between the stress and the pressure, the PT and the technical work that demanded the utmost attention, Buchholz discovered the key to success for himself. No matter how tired, he had a knack for staying focused. At times, while others grew frazzled from exhaustion and the chaotic environments they were thrown into, Buck could stay calm and learned to trust his training. It all clicked one day in the field, and he knew he'd make it through, though half his classmates did not.

When he missed the August 6 firefight, he beat himself up for days. He raged at himself for not just sucking it up and rolling with his brothers. Never mind the fact that he couldn't walk. He'd started to spiral, and some of his old self-doubts returned. When this mission came up, he absolutely refused to be left behind. For him, it wasn't just an opportunity to avenge Giordi's loss, it was his chance at redemption.

While Darren slept, his new spotter, Joe Blon, kept watch on his scope. With Gushwa wounded and out of action, they'd be partnered up for a while. Blon was an unknown to Buck, and this would be their first mission together.

Downstairs, Tyson finished up his meal and rushed back to join Buck and the others. Along with Tyson's M240, the scouts had deployed two other machine guns, manned by Staff Sergeant Paul and PFC Albert. The gun Paul lay behind was the same one Nate Gushwa had used during the August 6 firefight. Both Tyson and PFC Albert's guns had only iron sites.

The snipers had set up their overwatch position in a half-built room on the northeast side of the building behind some of the scaffolding clinging to the exterior that they'd seen the night before. Iraqi construction crews had Sheetrocked one interior wall, and that became the dividing line between Tyson's M240 and the rest of the platoon. Buchholz had positioned himself next to the interior wall, with SSG Paul's machine gun and PFC Albert's deployed to his left. The rest of the men carried M4 carbines. Each scout on watch covered a specific sector of Sadr City. Through their optics, they'd seen considerable movement, but so far the targets they were stalking had eluded them.

The sun rose higher. Some of the men took a break from their observations to tear open MREs, and they scooted back deeper into the building to wolf down their breakfasts while others took their place on watch. The floor Boyce selected lacked outer walls on every side, which gave them a sweeping view of the city. With first light, it became clear to the scouts that the place hadn't been worked on in months, thanks to the escalating violence in the area. The floor was littered with debris, stacks of drywall, and other supplies. Most of the interior walls had yet to be framed. The men leaned against bare steel I-beams as they ate.

The morning dragged on. By 1100, the sound of gunfire echoed through the city as more battles broke out between patrolling American units and marauding bands of Mahdi fighters. Yet so far the neighborhood they were watching remained quiet. A few civilians went about their morning routines. It amazed the Volunteers how these Iraqis seemed to take the violence in stride. They made do under conditions most Americans would find impossible. Commuting to work under the constant threat of roadside bombs or getting caught in a crossfire between Mahdi RPG gunners and M1 tanks in traffic conditions worthy of Los Angeles had already claimed a lot of civilian lives.

Buchholz woke up and stretched. He sat up and leaned against the Sheetrocked wall far enough into the room to remain out of sight from the street below. Blon, his spotter, was on an M24, glassing the peaceful-looking neighborhood. He would take his place and give him a break in just a few more minutes.

Not far away, Sergeant Paul, who had been Gushwa's truck commander on August 6, stared intently through his binoculars.

He said, “Hey, Buck? I think we've got something.”

The neighborhood was not as innocent as it first appeared.

Darren returned to his Barrett to have a look. Eight hundred yards away, a group of teenaged boys streamed from a house into the quiet street. A few of the boys carried tires, which they piled in an intersection and set afire. The scouts had seen this sort of thing before and knew these pyres functioned either as a rally point for other insurgent cells, or as a way to melt the street's asphalt so a bomb could be emplaced in the roadbed. Whatever the boys' intent, it telegraphed to the Americans that something bad was going to happen soon.

Boyce crawled over to watch the tire fire through his binoculars. Meanwhile, the other scouts assembled on the firing line. Tyson Bumgardner slipped behind his M240 Bravo machine gun. Its butt to his shoulder, he lay prone and watched the scene in the street over his weapon's iron sites.

A rash of gunfire swelled in the distance. A rocket-propelled grenade exploded. Somebody went cyclic on a machine gun. Brunch in Sadr City; the place was a zoo.

The Oregon snipers maintained their sharp watch on the streets. Suddenly, the men heard the hollow
thunk
of a mortar being fired. The round exploded near Patrol Base Volunteer. Nobody saw the tube.

The kids tossed a few more tires into their bonfire just as a white sedan sped around a corner and came into view. Buchholz and Paul tracked it to a ramshackle dwelling, where it stopped and the doors flew open. Four black-clad men jumped out and ran behind the house into the backyard. Buck kept his Barrett's scope on them.

The four men paused in the yard. One looked around then nodded to the others. Together, they lifted camouflaged sheets of plywood off the ground, revealing a shallow pit with an 82mm mortar nested inside. They jumped inside the pit and manned the weapon. There was a stack of ready ammunition at hand, and one of the men bent down, grabbed a round, and dropped it into the mouth of the tube.
Thunk!
The round arced over the city and exploded somewhere to the west of the platoon's position. The mortar had been preregistered to strike Patrol Base Volunteer. It was a cunning way to get off a few quick rounds before the Americans could locate their launch point and retaliate. They'd probably fire three or four more, then get back in their car and drive to another mortar pit to do the same thing.

It was time to spring the ambush. Boyce quickly assigned the men specific targets and told Buchholz to initiate. Once he fired the Barrett, the rest of the platoon would open up as well. They would smother the mortar teams with firepower in a matter of seconds. Quick, surgical, and deadly effective. With luck, nobody would even see how they died or where the Americans were hiding. The stand-off distance they had would make sure of that—at least for a while.

Boyce's plan to initiate with the Barrett made sense. Buchholz could take out a member of the mortar team with the first shot. It would not be an easy one to make. He had to factor in distance, elevation difference, wind, air temperature, humidity, and even the bullet's spin drift. To do it right required multiple, simultaneous calculations in his head. This is one of the reasons why there are two men per team. The spotter's job is to help with those calculations and even help dial in the shooter's scope. There are so many factors that need to be kept track of for a long-range shot, you really need two brains working together to be most effective.

Darren called to his spotter. No answer. He tried again. Nothing. He popped his head out of the scope long enough to look around. No sign of him. Where had he gone?

Kyle Trimble saw Buck by himself and moved over to spot for him. Using a pair of binoculars, the two men worked through the tactical and environmental issues. Buck got the range to their target. The first mortar tube was 625 yards away.

He dialed the range into his scope. Then he took a breath. It was time to take the shot. He let out half the air in his lungs before he pulled the trigger. The Barrett sounded like a howitzer in the semienclosed space of the building. The muzzle brake blew the weapon's gas exhaust ninety degrees to the right—directly into the Sheetrocked wall only a yard away. It sent a concussion wave rebounding off the wall that struck Darren so hard he thought somebody had kicked him in the head. It knocked him off the rifle and left him momentarily stunned.

He'd been so anxious to take the shot, he'd forgotten about the wall—and he'd forgotten to get his ear protection as well. Next to him, Trimble writhed. He'd been knocked flat as well. On the other side of the Sheetrock, perhaps four feet away, Tyson heard the Barrett thunder and felt the floor shudder from the muzzle blast and concussion wave.

Six hundred and twenty-five meters away, the Mahdi mortarman simply exploded. The other scouts saw him one instant, in the next there was nothing but a red mist settling in the air.

That Barrett is a fearsome beast. The ammunition it uses makes it even more destructive and terrifying. High Explosive Armor Piercing Incendiary, or HEAPI, is a jack-of-all-trades bullet that does a little bit of everything to whatever it hits. The outer shell is a mix of lead steel with a copper jacket. Inside the tip is the incendiary mixture, followed by the high explosive compound RX51-PETN. Behind that is a bullet within the bullet. This is the armor piercing part of the munition, made of tungsten carbide and capable of drilling through two-inch plates. When an HEAPI round strikes a target, it burns, explodes, and penetrates almost simultaneously. It'll stop vehicles, disable crew-served weapons, and cause human beings to disintegrate.

The rest of the platoon opened fire as Buck and Trimble snatched earplugs and slammed them home. Trimble moved over to help Bumgardner with the 240. He didn't have a spotter, and Kyle could see Tyson's bursts were falling short. Tyson had set his weapon's tangent for five hundred yards, and in the excitement had forgotten to adjust to seven hundred before he took his first shots. Before Kyle could settle in, Tyson adjusted fire and tracked the rest of the mortar team as they tried to escape. The Mahdi ran out into the front yard and tried to get into the sedan. Bum's 240 spat lead, and this time, he was right on target. His bullets tore into the car and left the men of the mortar team lying in bloody heaps around it.

Kyle brought his binos to his eyes just as Bum asked him to get him on another target. He didn't have to wait long: targets were boiling out into the street from everywhere.

A block away, the boys by the tire fire turned to see the ruined sedan and the dead men bleeding out into the asphalt. Instead of running away, they retrieved mortar ammunition from hidden stockpiles around the neighborhood and rushed them to concealed mortar positions.

Meanwhile, Darren rolled back onto his rifle and settled behind the scope. The scene on the street had changed in a matter of seconds. From the original two mortar crews, the neighborhood now swarmed with Mahdi Militiamen. They came rushing from houses and buildings all up and down the street. Darren glassed the area, watching dozens of armed insurgents running around seemingly at random. Everything was happening so quickly. Heads popped up. Vanished behind walls. Figures darted from one car to another. It was a target-rich environment, but in an overwhelming way. Trying to single an enemy out from the anthill-like circus below required intense focus and discipline.