Thunder Run (38 page)

“Sir,” he said to Redmon, “do you see this shit?”

“Oh, yeah,” Redmon said. He told Heath to wait until the two men moved closer together. Heath was feeling anxious. He had survived the thunder run up Highway 8 the previous morning, and now he had been thrown straight into another firefight. He had just blown a man apart with his coax, and he was ready to kill more of them. He had to. He had promised his wife that he wouldn't get killed. She had pleaded with him, saying, “You better be careful. I don't want you to get your ass blown up. I don't want to have to explain to our children what happened to you.” Heath was determined to keep his promise, to eliminate any threat as quickly as possible.

Redmon waited a few moments, then gave the order to fire. Heath launched a HEAT round that incinerated the two men. He couldn't see them through the thermals anymore. They had evaporated.

They pushed forward, unleashing HEAT rounds into every bunker they saw. There were government buildings on the sides of this section of Haifa Street, and snipers were firing down from some of the rooftops and windows. All four tanks in Redmon's platoon were firing—coax, .50-caliber, main gun rounds, through the windows and into the rooftops. Heath put an IMPAT round into a concrete bunker where he had seen a gunman crouching. He was shocked to see the man crawl out from the spray of white smoke and pulverized concrete, blood oozing from his mouth and ears. Heath left him there. An infantryman came up from behind, strapped plastic handcuffs on the wounded man, and put him in a Bradley to be transported for medical treatment.

The platoon came to an intersection about six hundred meters north of the small arch. Redmon saw a small blue guard booth in the median. Two men were crouched behind it. He saw a puff of white smoke and heard a loud screech. An RPG slammed into the tank's left front ballistic skirt, rocking the crew inside. Heath tried to put the targeting reticle on the booth; it was too close to get a range. He squeezed the trigger anyway, and an IMPAT blew out the bottom of the booth. Redmon couldn't see either man, but he assumed they were dead.

At least a dozen more fighters appeared at the intersection, trying to set up to fire RPGs. Sergeant First Class Phillip Cornell, a tank commander and platoon sergeant in Redmon's platoon, saw a young man wearing a red flannel shirt and work boots emerge from the shrubbery and launch an RPG. The round flew over the back of Redmon's tank and exploded against a second guard booth. Heath fired a main gun round that sent the man flying. Cornell looked back and saw that the gunman had survived—he had been bowled over and bloodied by the concussion.

Redmon radioed Wolford to let him know about the heavy contact. The captain decided to push forward to the intersection with more tanks. Every tank that arrived opened fire, but it still took another twenty minutes to clear the intersection and the bunkers and buildings around it. The intensity of the fire set some of the date palms ablaze.

It was nearly dawn now. Assassin Company had been fighting, off and on, almost three hours. Wolford suspected that the fighters he was seeing were just an advance guard. He was afraid there were many more up near the Jumhuriya Bridge, which lay at the far eastern end of the unsecured gap between the Rogue and Tusker battalions. He radioed Lieutenant Middleton and told him to take his platoon farther north to get a look at the big intersection where Yafa Street rose up to meet the foot of the bridge. The company was now back in regular formation, with Middleton in the lead.

Middleton moved to within less than a kilometer of the towering stone arch that separated the palace and government complex from the intersection. Through his magnified sights, he could tell that the arch was very similar to the arch that Staff Sergeant Gibson had smashed through the previous morning at the western entrance to the complex. And, like the western arch, the top of this arch was defended by what appeared to be either antiaircraft guns or heavy machine guns.

On the far side of the arch, a remarkable scene was unfolding. Middleton had never seen anything like it. The entire intersection was filling up with vehicles and soldiers and equipment. Vehicles were speeding across the bridge—sedans, SUVs, taxis, buses, motorcycles, military trucks—and dropping off soldiers and gunmen in civilian clothes. There was a network of bunkers in two city parks north and west of the intersection. The bridge ramp and intersection appeared to be part of an elaborate set of military fortifications.

Middleton got on the radio to Wolford. “Assassin Six, this is Red One. Sir, I've identified—” he said, and then he paused. Wolford thought he'd been hit.

“Red One, Assassin Six? Red One, Assassin Six,” Wolford said, trying to raise Middleton.

The lieutenant's voice came back over the net. “Sir, I have a shitload of vehicles up here dropping dismounts all over that intersection to the north. They're all over the place,” he said.

At that moment, Wolford realized that a massive Iraqi counterattack was being mounted. His and Flip deCamp's fears that the Iraqis would capitalize on the unsecured gap leading to the bridge had been realized. Wolford radioed deCamp back at the palace command post and described the situation.

“Sir, we've got to seal that bridge right now,” he said. “I've got to make it to that bridge, through that intersection, because if we don't, they're just going to keep loading up and coming at us all day long.”

DeCamp agreed. He was concerned that the Iraqis would move west and then south to try to outflank Wolford's tank company by exploiting the seam. He told Wolford to move forward and try to take control of the intersection and the western end of the bridge. Wolford wanted to soften up the intersection before he attacked. He requested a mortar suppression-fire mission from the mortar platoon set up on the palace lawn, then radioed Middleton to warn him to have his crews button up. The mortar rounds exploded on the southeast corner of the intersection, next to a ten-story redbrick building that housed the Ministry of Planning. Wolford could hear the explosions and could see gray smoke drifting skyward. He called for an adjustment, sending a second volley of mortar rounds exploding north of the intersection, into the bunker complex in the park.

At about 6:45 a.m., with the sun rising up over the Tigris, Wolford ordered Middleton's platoon to lead the company into the intersection. The mortar mission had just ended. Middleton's gunner fired a HEAT round into the metal gates attached to the arch, blasting them open. The tank crashed through the wreckage, followed by the rest of his platoon, with Captain Wolford right behind them.

The tankers of Assassin Company did not know—they could not have known—all that awaited them at the foot of the Jumhuriya Bridge.

EIGHTEEN

THE BRIDGE

A
s Maurice Middleton's lead tank crashed through the ruined metal gates of the palace complex and into the Yafa Street intersection, the first thing he saw was a recoilless rifle, aimed right at him. He happened to have an MPAT round in the tube, and he let it fly. The big truck-mounted recoilless rifle exploded and burned as the multipurpose round penetrated its steel armor and detonated. It was like some sort of trip wire that set off what sounded like a series of thunderclaps. Gunfire and grenades and rockets erupted from all directions—from the park bunkers straight in front of Middleton, from street-side bunkers to his far left, from a three-story building to the northwest, from the foot of the bridge to his right, and from the looming red Ministry of Planning building to his far right. It was like driving into a hailstorm. Middleton realized that he was surrounded—and he hadn't even set up his platoon yet.

On the second Assassin tank through, Shawn Gibson rolled up over a high median strip in the middle of the intersection. Machine-gun fire was ricocheting off his turret, an insistent metallic hammering. His driver swung the tank hard to the right, trying to get it into position facing east toward the bridge to form a tight arc, with Middleton to his left rear. Gibson heard the loud kick of a recoilless rifle somewhere nearby, and he was afraid one of the cannon blasts would hit his rear grille and disable his tank right in the middle of the intersection.

On the third tank, Jonathan Lustig punched through the arch and swung his tank to the west, where his locked-up turret could fire down Yafa Street. He set up to form a tight circle next to the two lead tanks, with Kennith Leverette's trail tank completing the ring behind him, to the southwest corner of the intersection. It crossed Lustig's mind that they were circling up like Custer's last stand, surrounded and under assault. He had never seen the Iraqis produce such a withering volume of fire—not during the desert firefights down south, and not on the thunder run the previous morning. It seemed well coordinated, and nothing like the wild, scattershot attacks on the highway or the desperate volleys from the bunkers during Assassin's charge to the palace. The Iraqis were bringing in artillery and mortars. Mortar rounds were crashing down onto the pavement in front of him. Some of them were duds, and Lustig saw one round cartwheel past his turret, bounce off a light pole, and go spinning down the roadway.

Lustig felt disoriented. He had been up all night, scanning the thermals, fighting his way up Haifa Street, killing and killing. Now he was surrounded, taking fire from ground level, from bunkers belowground, and from snipers and RPG teams on the rooftops. It was a three-dimensional attack, the kind of lethal urban trap that traditional army doctrine often cited as a reason not to bring tanks into a city. Lustig dropped down in the turret to talk face-to-face with his gunner and loader. “Men, I hope this gets over with quick because it's starting to get dark and I damned sure don't want to be sitting at this intersection at night,” he told them. They stared back at him. It wasn't getting dark. It was just past daybreak. Lustig thought he had been fighting all day. Now he realized he had been at it for only a few hours, and that the real fight was just beginning.

As the platoon got into position, Captain Wolford pulled his tank into the center of the intersection. He was shocked by the rate of enemy fire and by the way the Iraqis were able to concentrate it on his tanks. They were pouring so much fire on the tight little circle that some of the rounds were flying past the tanks and hitting Iraqi soldiers in the bunkers dug into the parks. But the rounds were also banging against the tanks, gouging out holes in the thick steel armor and blowing out some of the vision blocks. The tank crews could hear the hollow pop of streetlights exploding above them.

On the northwest corner was a multistory apartment building where RPG teams and snipers were running from window to window. Each time they fired, the windows were marked by flashes and swirls of gray smoke. Wolford radioed Lustig and said, “You better give that building some love.”

Lustig had his driver pivot-steer—holding one side of the driver's handle to lock up one track in order to pivot on it—so that the gun tube was pointed at the building. He elevated and fired five quick main gun rounds, the loader shoving fresh shells into the breech after each recoil. The building shuddered, but the fire from the northwest didn't stop. Lustig was impressed, despite his fear and anxiety. The Iraqis were relentless. They were standing and fighting.

The crews were expending huge loads of ammunition—.50-caliber, coax, M-240, machine-gun, and main gun rounds. They were setting vehicles and buildings on fire, and spirals of black smoke were now obscuring the intersection. Wolford had intended to try to seal all four roads and then expand his perimeter, but that wasn't possible now. It was all he could do to hold his position in the middle of the intersection.

Wolford called up the infantry platoon, which pushed through the intersection and set up on the north end, facing the park. Then Wolford got on the radio to Lieutenant Redmon, who was still south of the main arch with his platoon. “I need you up here right now!” he told him. “Haul ass, get up here!”

Redmon led the platoon into the intersection, the incoming rounds skittering off all four tanks. He saw the four Bradleys from the infantry platoon in a tight half-moon formation at the edge of the two parks, just north of Middleton's tank. Redmon swung hard to the right and set up past Gibson, toward the foot of the bridge, with the Ministry of Planning on his right.

The entire planning building was infested with snipers and RPG teams. Redmon could see them firing from windows and the rooftop. In the commander's hatch of the tank next to him, Staff Sergeant Michael Lucas saw a sniper in an upper window firing down on Redmon. Lucas, twenty-nine, had been in firefights down south, but nothing as intense as this. He had a wife and two young sons. His wife was so worried about him that she couldn't bring herself to watch TV newscasts about the war. Lucas was worried, too, and terrified, though he didn't tell his wife until much later.

When he saw the sniper, Lucas reacted without conscious thought. His training overcame his fear. He traversed the turret over and up. He fired a main gun round that tore into the window in a flash of flame and smoke. The sniper's legs were blown back into the room. His torso toppled out the window and landed somewhere on the pavement below.

To the west, Wolford was trying to mount an effective volume of fire. He believed volume of fire was the key to winning any firefight. The side that builds effective fire the quickest will prevail. But in this case, the enemy had the upper hand. The Iraqis had mounted their volume of fire faster, and it was just as effective as Wolford's tanks. Two bunkers at the edge of the park were putting down a particularly heavy flow of fire, and Wolford was trying to get his tanks to focus on them.

He radioed back to the battalion command post at the palace with a situation report. “I'm getting hammered up here,” he said. Major Rideout heard the frustration and agitation in Wolford's voice, and that concerned him. Wolford was usually calm and even-tempered. If
he
was getting riled up, Rideout thought, the situation must be getting desperate. Rideout was worried that Wolford didn't have enough firepower and was in danger of being overrun. He radioed Colonel Perkins and asked for permission to blow up the Jumhuriya Bridge—and the two bridges north of it—to cut off the flow of enemy reinforcements. Perkins told him he would have to get clearance from higher command.

At the intersection, Wolford had already fired more than five hundred rounds of .50-caliber ammunition in just five minutes, and now he needed to reload. He screamed down at his loader to hand up another box of ammunition. The loader had a stricken look. “Sir, get down in the tank!” he yelled. He had just seen more than two dozen automatic-rifle rounds ricochet off the tank's skirts. The Iraqis were walking the rounds right up the pavement to the tank.

Wolford felt something slam into his neck. It was hard and heavy, like a blow from a metal baseball bat. His head snapped back and smacked against the hatch. He tumbled down into the turret, unconscious. The loader looked at the captain's slack face and got on the battalion net. “Assassin Six is down! He's been hit!” he said.

The report sent a shock wave through the company. When a commander goes down—especially a popular and dynamic commander like Wolford—there is a brief moment of paralysis and confusion as his soldiers try to come to grips with the loss. Wolford's crews kept firing, but in a suspended way, waiting and wondering, listening on the net for more information and for guidance. Wolford had been in charge of the entire fight, and now he was down.

Wolford's loader checked him for wounds. There was no blood—just a red welt on the captain's neck. Wolford was breathing and muttering, “Holy shit . . . holy shit.” Finally he mumbled, “I'm all right, I'm all right.” He was stunned and disoriented. He looked down in his lap and saw an expended .50-caliber brass ammunition jacket. Something had hit the brass as it lay on the turret, sending it whistling into Wolford's neck. The blow had briefly knocked him unconscious, but now he was coming out of it.

“I'm all right, I'm all right,” he said again. “Let's go.” He climbed up into the turret to get back on the .50-caliber. It was dented from the small-arms fire. Wolford tried to fire it but the gun was jammed.

To Wolford's east, closer to the foot of the bridge, Sergeant First Class Phillip Cornell had set up his tank behind Redmon, his platoon leader. Cornell was the platoon sergeant. He was thirty-four, a Gulf War veteran from Orlando, Florida, with a wife and eight-year-old son. He was garrulous and extroverted, with stiff red hair and a thin red mustache. His narrow face was often creased with a wry smile, as if he were about to relate a funny story.

Cornell had seen Wolford go down in the hatch and had ordered his driver to back up. He wanted to get over and help cover the captain's tank. He was up in the cupola, trying to direct the driver while struggling to get his .50-caliber elevated to fire into the planning ministry. As the tank turned, he saw muzzle flashes erupting from behind palm trees in the park to the north. He yelled to his gunner, “Come left! Come left!” trying to get him to fire into the trees.

In the middle of the intersection, Lustig saw Cornell standing up in his cupola, exposed to fire. He said to his crew, “Hey, that guy's going to get hit if he doesn't get his ass down inside.” Cornell liked to be up and out of the hatch, where he could get a clear look at targets and help direct fire.

As Cornell was shouting instructions to his gunner, something exploded against the front of his tank. Hot shrapnel ripped through the machine-gun mount and tore into Cornell's chest. He was wearing a tanker's vest, which is smaller and lighter than the standard body armor worn by infantrymen. A shard sliced through the base of his throat, just above the top of the vest, and tunneled down through his chest. Another piece of shrapnel tore a hunk of flesh from his elbow. The blows slammed Cornell down into the turret. For an instant he thought something had smacked into his vest, and he started to say something. But then he saw blood spurt from his chest and splatter his gunner, Sergeant Paul Harris. Cornell thought,
Oh, damn, this is serious.

Harris knew he had to get pressure on the wound right away. It was flowing like a geyser. He looked around and spotted a rag. He grabbed it and pressed it against Cornell's chest, hard. Even in his pain and terror, Cornell was mortified. The rag was filthy. It was smeared with grease and oil. What the hell kind of infection was
that
going to cause? Then he had another odd thought:
This tank is going to be hell to clean.
The crews had been told when they were issued their tanks in Kuwait that they would be required to turn them in as clean as they had found them. Cornell envisioned spending days trying to get all the blood out.

Harris rummaged around inside the turret and found the first-aid kit. He pulled out a compression bandage and replaced the dirty rag, stanching the surge of blood. Cornell's feet felt warm and wet. His boots had filled with blood.

Cornell's loader that day was Staff Sergeant Greg Samson. Normally, a tank's loader is the most inexperienced man on the four-man crew. But Samson was a veteran NCO who was normally a tank commander. He instantly took control of Cornell's tank, giving the crew a swift, seamless change of command. Samson got on the radio and said, “Sergeant Cornell is hit!”

Lieutenant Redmon asked how bad it was.

“It's pretty fucking bad,” Samson said. Cornell was down and bleeding.

Redmon radioed Wolford and said, “White Four just got hit. Looks like it's in the chest. Looks pretty fucking bad.”

Wolford was still groggy, but he was able to order Redmon to mount a medical evacuation back to the aid station near the palace. Redmon knew what to do. The company had trained over and over on medevac procedures. He had two tanks back up to form a protective wall, then ordered Samson to pull his tank back through the arch and on to the aid station. Under fire, escorted by a second tank, Samson directed the driver through the arch, sped down Haifa Street, and got Cornell loaded into an ambulance back near the palace. DeCamp rushed up from the palace to the ambulance exchange point, for he believed it was important for a wounded man to see his battalion commander. He was startled by Cornell's pale and bloodless look, though the sergeant was still conscious and talking.

At the intersection, Wolford was back up in the cupola, still unable to fire his .50-caliber. He was trying to get his gunner to fire the coax into the two troublesome bunkers to his left, at the edge of the park. The gunner was focused on a building where soldiers were running back and forth and firing. Wolford was getting irritated. He couldn't seem to get the gunner's full attention.