Thunder Run (36 page)

Just before dark, two suicide vehicles tried to breach the perimeter, but the bombs inside both cars exploded prematurely when hit with tank fire. After that, the Iraqis fired several RPGs straight into the air, dropping them down inside the perimeter like mortars. Then it was quiet.

Wright decided to send two tanks to the Baath Party headquarters to grab all the ammunition they could carry, and also to get a better understanding of how much fuel and ammunition was available. Sergeant First Class Ford was red on ammunition; he had fired almost nine hundred rounds from the .50-caliber machine gun. Ford's tank and a second tank from his platoon were dispatched for the two-and-a-half-kilometer ride down the highway. They drove through small-arms fire most of the way down.

At the resupply point, Ford discovered that there was enough fuel and ammunition for the entire combat team. He radioed Moser and asked him what he wanted. It was like calling home on a supply run to the hardware store.

“Yeah, Twenty-five Mike Mike ammo!” Moser told him. The Bradleys were low on main gun ammunition. “Grab as many cases of Twenty-five Mike Mike as you can carry.”

Ford and his wingman filled up on fuel and stacked their turrets and bustle racks with ammunition boxes. There was no way to take back more fuel. The other two tanks would have to make their own trip.

When Ford and his wingman returned to Moe, Moser unloaded the Bradley ammunition onto his armored personnel carrier and delivered it to the Bradley platoons. Then he sent the remaining pair of tanks down the highway to the Baath Party headquarters to refuel and load up on ammunition.

Later that night, after the enemy fire had virtually ended, Moser rode his personnel carrier down to the resupply point, escorted by a Bradley and another M113. Their little convoy rounded up the remaining fuel and ammunition trucks and escorted them back to Objective Moe, where the Bradleys were refueled and the rest of the ammunition was unloaded.

Wright now believed his position was the strongest it had been since he pulled into the interchange that morning. His perimeter had held, and now he would be able to expand it. He had enough fuel and ammunition to last at least another day. He had mortars if he needed them, plus artillery. He owned Objective Moe now, and he knew the Iraqis would never get it back.

For Colonel Perkins, the delivery of the fuel and ammunition to Wright's combat team secured his hold on the city center and Highway 8. He had run a race against the night, and he had finally won it. All three combat teams on the highway were now resupplied and in control of their interchanges, where the firefights had eased for the night. Inside the city, the tank battalions were dug in with a fresh supply of fuel and ammunition. Perkins had been deeply worried all day, fearful that he would be trapped inside the city. Now the battle was playing out the way he had envisioned it over the past several months. His men were in for the night, and Perkins wasn't planning on ever sending them back out. If the Iraqis wanted their city back, they would have to come and fight for it.

SEVENTEEN

COUNTERATTACK

O
utside the Republican Palace, Major Kent Rideout helped set up the Tusker battalion command post in the main driveway, just off the building's towering northeast portico and beneath one of the bronze Saddam busts. Rideout had fought his way up Highway 8 inside a Bradley, and now its rear ramp had been lowered to serve as his makeshift communications center. As the executive officer, Rideout was responsible for coordinating what the military calls combat multipliers—artillery and mortars, fighter planes and helicopter gunships. He ran the command post.

Although it was surprisingly quiet around the palace on the afternoon of the seventh, Rideout was worried about the exposed seam between the Tusker and Rogue battalions. He feared the Iraqi soldiers and militiamen who had fled Assassin's charge into the palace compound would infiltrate back through the seam. Tusker now held the expanse of palace and government buildings from the Republican Palace west, past the bend in the Tigris, to the Sujud Palace and Baath Party headquarters—a stretch about four kilometers long. Rogue was securing the military parade grounds and reviewing stand, the tomb of the unknown soldier, the Rashid Hotel, the information ministry, Zawra Park, the Baghdad zoo, and the amusement park. But in between was a gap that ran east to the river, where a series of five bridges over the Tigris were not yet secured. Rogue's easternmost blocking positions were at least a couple of blocks from the bridges, and those units couldn't see whether enemy fighters were stealing across the river.

Rideout and Flip deCamp, the Tusker commander, thought Rogue should push all the way to the bridges to seal them. They feared the Iraqis would pour across to mount a counterattack. Both men relayed their concerns over the brigade net to Major Rick Nussio, Rogue's executive officer. Nussio understood their dilemma, but he couldn't spare any units to push to the bridges. Rogue was in a hell of a fight near the zoo—a bigger fight than anyone had anticipated. They were fighting off dismounts and suicide vehicles. If Nussio shifted units to the east, it would open a new, bigger seam to the west, where Rogue was now linked near the Baath Party headquarters with the China battalion. So he told deCamp and Rideout he was sorry, but he couldn't help with the bridges.

In addition to the bridges, Rideout was also worried about occasional enemy fire from the east bank of the Tigris. He had no idea what was over there. He had satellite imagery maps of only the west bank—the palace and government complex. The east bank had been designated as the area of operations for the U.S. Marines, who were still fighting their way north through the southeast corner of the city. Behind the palace, Tusker's scouts used their thermal sights to identify gunmen popping up out of fighting holes to fire across the river. Rideout had the scouts fire grenade launchers at the opposite bank. He wanted to suppress the enemy fire, but he didn't want to fire .50-caliber machine guns because the muzzle flashes and tracers would clearly identify the battalion's positions. The grenades managed to keep enemy fire to a minimum.

Rideout had a lot on his mind. He was an intense, driven officer. He could be brusque and short-tempered, and he had a reputation as a no-nonsense commander. But he was respected within the battalion as a soldier who knew his stuff, and one who demanded top performance from himself and others. That week, in particular, Rideout was a deeply troubled and conflicted man. He was haunted by a friendly fire incident, an accident three days earlier that had cost the battalion its first death in Iraq.

On April 4, on a narrow road about fifteen miles southeast of Baghdad, Rideout had been at the tail of an armored column attacking Iraqi positions. A Russian-made T-72 tank had just been destroyed, and the crews were watching it burn. Without telling anyone, a captain on the convoy, Ed Korn, climbed out of his armored vehicle and headed into a forest of date palms. Korn was not well known within the battalion; he had joined the unit just six days earlier. He was thirty-one, an energetic and enthusiastic Gulf War veteran who had volunteered for the Iraqi war in March and had rushed north to join the battalion in the southern Iraqi desert. Known to his friends as Jason, not Ed, Korn had told fellow soldiers on the ride up through the southern Iraqi desert that he was not going to let the fear of death hold him back, or paralyze him, once he got into combat.

It was hot on the fourth, and Korn was wearing just his flak vest over a brown T-shirt as he disappeared into the palms. He hadn't told anyone where he was going, or why—he may have been trying to scout enemy positions—but a sergeant got out and followed him. When Korn stumbled across a second T-72 camouflaged by palm fronds, he sent the sergeant back to the column to retrieve an antitank weapon.

From his vehicle, Rideout noticed a campfire just beyond the burning tank, well over two hundred meters away. A teapot was on the fire, and there were sleeping bags on the ground and chickens wandering around. Rideout assumed it was a campsite for Iraqi tank crews. Suddenly he saw someone near the campfire drop down, then stand up and hide behind the second T-72 tank. Rideout's driver, Specialist John Durst, saw him, too. Durst asked Rideout for permission to fire. Both men were convinced the man was an Iraqi tank crewman. “Engage,” Rideout said.

Durst took aim and fired a single round from his M-16. The man went down. It was an incredible shot—the most amazing shot Rideout had ever seen. He slapped Durst on his helmet. “Great fucking shot!” he told him.

Next to Rideout's vehicle, a captain commanding a Bradley was scanning the area through thermal sights and spotted the second tank, just beyond the burning tank. He also saw the man Durst had hit. He was on the ground, his hand raised in the air. The captain ordered his gunner to destroy the tank to prevent it from firing on the column. Rounds from the 25mm main gun tore into the T-72, setting it aflame and sending ricochets tearing into the wounded man on the ground.

At that moment the sergeant who had accompanied Korn emerged from the tree line behind Rideout and yelled to the major: “Captain Korn is in the woods, sir!” He pointed to the trees.

Rideout couldn't believe it. “You have got to be fucking kidding me!” he said. He radioed a cease-fire order to get the attention of the Bradley commander, then raised his fist, the signal to the Bradley crew to stop firing.

Rideout's heart was pounding. He gathered up a few men and walked through the woods to the campsite. He hoped desperately that he would stumble across Korn along the way—that he would see the captain grinning and bullshitting about finding an enemy tank. But when they reached the campsite Rideout could tell that the dead man on the ground, his torso blown in half by the Bradley, was Ed Korn. His glasses were still on his face. It was the worst day of Rideout's long military career, and it weighed on him terribly. He knew he would have to live with it for the rest of his life.

Three days later, Korn's death was still a crushing weight as Rideout worked to solidify the battalion's positions around the Republican Palace. He had not slept in three days, and he was exhausted. Around 11 p.m., when things seemed at least somewhat under control, Rideout realized he needed to sleep for a couple of hours. He would be no good to anybody if he didn't get some rest. He went inside the palace and dragged a mattress from one of the bedrooms. He flopped it on the driveway outside, next to his Bradley, and fell into a light slumber.

Just before midnight, Rideout bolted upright. There was a huge explosion that reverberated off the palace walls. As Rideout leaped to his feet, still in his underwear, some of the officers who were awake started laughing at him. The engineers had just blown up a cache of enemy weapons and ammunition, but nobody had told Rideout. Now ammunition was cooking off and some of the palm trees were on fire. The whole city was probably awake. And if the enemy had been wondering where the Americans were, they certainly knew now.

Rideout was furious. “You guys are a bunch of idiots,” he said. “You just gave our fucking position away. That's just super.” He gave an order to stop blowing up weapons caches, then tried to go back to sleep.

It was the first chance in several days for members of the battalion to sleep. Lieutenant Colonel deCamp went inside the palace to catch a quick nap. He hadn't slept much over the past few days. Captain Ed Ballanco, who had brought up the fuel and ammunition convoy, also went inside the palace to try to get a couple of hours of sleep. He foraged through one of the bedrooms and found a bed and plopped down. He kept thinking how strange it was—how no one would ever believe it—that he was sleeping in Saddam Hussein's palace.

Phil Wolford's tank crews were beat, too. After nightfall, Wolford put four tanks on Ready Condition One—up and ready to fire, with all crewmen at their battle stations. He put the other tank crews on Ready Condition Two—ready to fight in fifteen minutes. Two crewmen on each tank would be able to catch quick naps, then switch with the other two crewmen assigned to scan through the thermals and monitor the radio. They had turned off their engines early that afternoon to conserve fuel.

Staff Sergeant Shawn Gibson had stood so long in his tank turret that his legs and feet had swollen grotesquely, and they throbbed with a searing pain. He was glad to get off his feet. He climbed up on the turret and lay flat on his back. He put his M-4 carbine next to him and lay his 9mm pistol across his chest. He didn't expect to fall asleep—he was notorious in the platoon for never sleeping. He always told his crew, “I'll sleep when I get home.” Gibson was voluble and easygoing, a thirty-eight-year-old NCO who had spent almost seventeen years—nearly half his life—in the army. He was born in Philadelphia, but his mother had packed up the family and moved to Virginia when Gibson was seven to get away from drug gangs in North Philadelphia. A veteran of the first Gulf War, Gibson had a wife and three children anxiously awaiting his safe return from Iraq.

On this dark night, outside the palace, Gibson kept bolting upright every time he heard noises in the dark, but he was at least able to take the pressure off his swollen legs and feet. After stretching out for a while, the swelling subsided and the pain eased. Later on, unable to sleep, he crawled down next to the tank to relieve himself.

On the command tank, Wolford managed to get a radio call through to his good friend Captain Steve Barry from Cyclone Company. Barry was holding the Fourteenth of July traffic circle and bridge, just a kilometer west of the palace. The two commanders discussed the seam between their positions and Rogue's and the fact that neither of them had a clear picture of exactly where Rogue's guys were set up. Barry told Wolford it was fairly quiet at the circle, but he expected a counterattack at some point. Wolford agreed. “This can't be all there is,” he said. “There's got to be a lot more.”

When the time came for Wolford and his loader to take a break, they switched with the driver and gunner on Wolford's tank. Wolford hadn't taken his boots off for days. His feet were foul, and he wanted to air them out. He and his loader both took off their boots and stretched out on top of the tank. They fell asleep almost instantly.

Just beyond the northeast corner of the palace, Sergeant First Class Lustig had been posted on the perimeter with three other tanks from his platoon. The crews were watching the main palace road, known as Haifa Street, which broke sharply to the north and led through the palace complex to the foot of the Jumhuriya Bridge about one and a half kilometers away. Straight up the roadway, a few hundred meters away, Lustig could see a small stone archway that separated the main palace grounds from the rest of the palace complex.

By 3:20 a.m., Lustig had been down in the turret for about half an hour, scanning the roadway through the thermal imaging system while two of his crewmen dozed atop the tank. It was hot and stuffy inside, so Lustig climbed up through the hatch to get some fresh air. When he came back down and squinted again through the thermals, he saw the glowing green forms of two men several hundred meters away. They were casually strolling down the road toward the arch. Lustig thought they might be from the company's infantry platoon. The infantry was supposed to be posted on the beachfront behind the palace but, he thought, perhaps they had sent a patrol down the road without telling anyone.

Lustig looked again through the magnified thermals. The two men weren't wearing Kevlar helmets. He shook his head to clear his vision. He was afraid he had dozed off and was seeing things in his sleep. He looked again. He had the sights set on ten-power magnification, and now he could see that the two men were dressed in civilian clothes. They wore backpacks, with satchels strapped to their chests. They were carrying automatic rifles—and suddenly at least twenty more men came into view behind them, all of them carrying weapons.

Lustig told the two crewmen atop the tank to wake up and get to their positions inside the turret. “We've got enemy dismounts coming up the road,” he whispered. The crewmen were slow to respond, so Lustig started cursing to get them to move. He got on the radio, trying to alert Captain Wolford back at the palace driveway. The captain was asleep on top of his tank, but his gunner was on the radio. The gunner heard Lustig whisper that dismounts were approaching. Lustig sounded angry with his crew. “There's gonna be a fuck load of trouble if these guys don't start getting down inside,” he whispered over the radio.

Lustig looked through the thermals again. The men on the road had split into two groups, with a dozen or so moving through the trees on the left side of the road and another ten to fifteen advancing next to a two-meter wall on the right side. Lustig charged the .50-caliber machine gun, preparing it to fire. He saw one of the men handing out RPG grenades from a backpack. He got back on the radio.

By this time, Wolford had been shaken awake by his gunner. He leaped up in his stocking feet and put on his communications helmet. Lustig was still whispering, trying not to give away his position.