Carnivore Page 22

The Iraqis had proven—to themselves and us—that they were no match for us in a straight-up fight, even when they had armor. In guerrilla warfare, however, even when you don’t know what you’re doing, you can cause a lot of problems. Some of the people we were going up against—whether they were Iraqis or Syrians or from wherever, in Iraq to participate in the jihad against America, the Great Satan—had smarts, talent, guts, or a combination of all three. Many of the IEDs we ran into weren’t so damn improvised.

  On a night in June we were doing another escort mission, protecting thin-skinned vehicles on their way to another base, then returning home. The route would be long—three hours each way—but easy, as the whole trip was on blacktop. Protecting the vehicles were me and my crew in the Carnivore II, and Staff Sergeant Sowby and his able Bradley crew.

  When we were doing task force work, we usually had close air support. Considering they could pretty much get whatever they wanted, we either had Apache helicopters or an AC-130 Spectre gunship. When it comes to combat, the Spectre is a soldier’s wet dream.

  We were almost halfway there when the Spectre called on the radio.

  “Hey, we’re picking up a signal; somebody is trying to detonate on you guys. We’re jamming the signal right now, but be advised this is a hot area.”

  Shit. “Roger.”

  We were behind the convoy, and the gunship was hovering near the front of it as we put on some speed to get out of the area. I don’t know if the Spectre pulled farther away from us, or the range of their jammer wasn’t too great, because it was only a few seconds later that a huge IED went off behind us. The blast was enormous and rocked the Brad, even though the detonation was more than 100 meters behind my vehicle. Sowby was a mile ahead of me and he felt the explosion.

  We didn’t see any insurgents, although we knew they were around. Even though we would have loved to stick around and see if we could draw some fire—and return it with interest—we had a job to do.

  After making it to our destination without further incident and refueling, I checked out my Bradley. The suspension had been hit hard—we had a damaged right rear sprocket, right front sprocket, and idler wheel. We took rubber and a screw and beat it into the spall holes so it would hold oil until we got back, as we had a lot of oil leaks. Our two Bradley crews went to work using the battle damage repair kit (BDRK) that our troop XO, Bret Chastain, had gotten for us before we left for Iraq. In less than an hour we had the Bradley up and running. Since we weren’t escorting anyone back, we left as soon as the Carnivore II was fixed.

  On our way back to our base we came upon two Marine Corps Humvees that had been hit. It looked like they’d been caught in an ambush. One of them was just starting to burn, and the other one had been hit pretty good. We stopped and checked them out. Somebody had been wounded there; there was blood on the ground and signs of a firefight.

  The Humvee that was on fire we just let burn, but the other one the Marines had unassed so quickly that they hadn’t had time to pull all their sensitive items off it. So we removed a pair of NVGs and the Blue Force tracker (GPS unit), and disabled the .50-cal on top. We then watched the other Humvee burn to the ground. Not only didn’t we want insurgents taking any gear out of it, but also we didn’t want them taking any pictures of it to show on the Internet for bragging rights.

  When we returned to Al Asad Air Base, we brought in the sensitive items we’d recovered to the Base Commander in the operations center. The battlefield in that area at that time was so confusing that they didn’t even know which patrol had been hit. The Marines were escorting fuel trucks, water trucks, and ration trucks back and forth through the desert, and they were often out of radio contact.

  So these young Marines doing the escort missions had almost no support, to the point where nobody knew which group had been hit, what had happened, or if there’d been any casualties. Nobody at the base knew anything. There was a big scramble after that; they sent out aircraft trying to find out who’d been hit, who was lost, whatever.

  The next day we did a few more post-IED repairs and then took the Bradley out on a test drive. The left front drive sprocket immediately broke off and fell on the ground. Oops. Apparently the IED had done more damage than we’d guessed—and we were 100 meters away when it went off! We later found out that the IED had been made from two 500-pound aircraft bombs—1,000 pounds of explosive, detonating 100 meters away. No wonder the blast had seemed big—it was! Between the mortars, RPGs, and IEDs, I know I suffered a number of concussions during my two tours in Iraq, even though they were never diagnosed. Headaches? Take a handful of aspirin.

  We got some new parts, and with the help of a Marine and his forklift we had the Carnivore II fixed in less than 72 hours. That mission was typical—six hours on the road, we got blown up, and we never saw anyone we could shoot. At least none of us were injured.

  Working with Tier 1 units like JSOC can sometimes be really interesting. One afternoon I was hanging around the operations center and got to watch “Kill Cam”—the video from a Predator drone. Most of the time, unless there’s some sort of ground action going on, it’s boring, but as I was watching, a little smoke trail emerged from behind the Predator. Uh-oh. Then on the video screen—sky, ground, sky, ground, sky, ground, sky, ground, ground, ground spinning, ground spinning, ground spinning, static. The Predator had a mechanical problem and just burned right in.

  As the officers were trying to make a decision about whether we were going to go out and recover the drone, the camera started working again. We saw feet and people picking parts off the drone, looking into the camera lens, and then the camera went dark when it was put inside a car trunk. In case you’re wondering, the Predator was recovered.

  Our six-month stint with JSOC ended without anyone dying—at least on our side.

  Several things happened at the same time that year. We transitioned from using predominantly Bradleys to up-armored Humvees, and Crazy Horse took control of one of the major supply routes in eastern Baghdad. My platoon would be working with the 3rd POB (Public Order Brigade), Iraqis who wanted the best for their country and were willing to work hard and risk their lives to get it. Captain Burgoyne was our Troop Commander. He was tall and thin and reminded me of John Wayne in The Sands of Iwo Jima. We gave him the nickname Captain America for the way he always conducted his operations, just like the all-American soldier. Burgoyne called me into his office along with Sergeants Todd Young and Mark Madrey, the Platoon Sergeants from First and Fourth Platoons, to come up with ideas on how to take out the IED threat in our new zone in Baghdad. All four platoons spent two days doing recons of the area, and we knew it was going to be a tough job.

  We came up with a great plan. Our mission was set and ready when Captain Burgoyne threw us a curveball and told us we were going to do a river assault on some islands in the Tigris. Insurgents were apparently hiding out there.

  We laughed long and hard at that. “Yes sir! I’ll go get my peg leg!”

  Except he was serious. Long story short, Third and Fourth Platoons got the mission and, yes, it was down the Tigris River. The 318th Engineer Company, better known as Lightning Over Water Company, would be our ride across the river in their bridging boats. We’d joined the freshwater navy.

  Before we could do the mission, we had to go through quick training. Our training consisted of jumping into an Iraqi swimming pool in full kit and taking it off without filling our lungs with water. They call it drownproofing. That pretty much sucked. When I was attached to the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg I had to do five parachute jumps. Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane made about as much sense to me as jumping into an Iraqi swimming pool in full kit, but you don’t have to like it, you just have to do it.

  The plan was to first take two boats upriver on a recon to check out if there were any sandbars that would screw up the bigger boats we’d use for the mission. We put the 318th’s boats in the water downriver about 20 miles from the biggest island. The first boat held Captain Burgoyne, Lieutena
nt Cummings, Lieutenant Goulet, Staff Sergeant Ingleston, myself, and three members of the 318th.

  The second boat was filled with members of the 318th who would provide cover and overwatch for us. Never ones to take half measures (or go anywhere without our Bradleys when we didn’t have to), we positioned three Bradleys from my platoon in overwatch on the east side of the river, where they could follow our movements.

  The boats had an elevated platform, like a flat-bottomed johnboat, and forward and aft of that was a deck actually under the waterline. Things almost never work out the way they’re supposed to, and only 20 minutes into our mission the second boat had engine trouble and had to turn around. We still had three Bradleys and some Apaches to cover us, so we didn’t feel vulnerable and kept moving north.

  The weather was beautiful, and I was daydreaming about being back in Mosquito Lagoon in Florida with my buddy Mike Marple and my boys fishing for reds when the water around the boat started exploding. I looked to my right and saw insurgents firing from the west riverbank, about 150 yards away. Standing up on the elevated deck, I fired several magazines from my M4/203 at them.

  Captain Burgoyne ordered the boat skipper to take us behind an island and out of the line of fire. As long as I could see them, I was going to keep shooting, and I fired six 40 mm grenades out of my M203. I loved shooting that thing. I packed it all that time, so for damn sure I wanted to shoot it when I got the chance. Realizing that I seemed rather alone in my work, I looked around inside the boat only to see that everyone had dropped below the waterline except me. I was on the engine deck, even with the top of the boat, while everybody else was lying on the decks below the waterline, shooting over the edges of the boat. The hell with hunkering down, I could still see them, and they were still shooting at us. I fired another 30 rounds from my M4, but it seemed that everybody who lived along the river had run to the shore with their AKs when they heard our engine. There were hundreds of people shooting at us along the shore.

  “I’m out of ammo!” I said, and felt something along my leg. Always looking out for me, Burgoyne was holding up a magazine. I burned through that magazine, then another, then another—everybody in the boat who wasn’t in a position to shoot was passing them up to me.

  Burgoyne got on the radio net and talked the Bradleys onto the insurgents. Sergeant Craig opened up with his main gun, hitting the insurgents with more than 50 rounds of 25 mm high-explosive. Those who didn’t die stopped firing and tried to get organized. I’ll give them this—they were persistent. However, by that time, our attack air support was back overhead, and since I was the only one with eyes on target I called them in. Apaches kick ass—the AH-64D has a minigun and rocket pods and can take out tanks or infantry, whatever’s on the menu.

  “Max 26, Max 26, Crazy Blue 4, I’m in peril, I need you on my POS right now.” I paused; I was trying to find my grid on the map and couldn’t. Fuck it. “Okay, I’m the only boat in the river,” I told him. “Repeat, only boat in the river.”

  I could see him coming in. He said, “You’re the only boat in the river?”

  I said, “Roger that, being engaged from the west side of the river.”

  He asked, “You are the Ground Commander?”

  I looked down, and Burgoyne was still below the waterline. I said, “Yes I am, go ahead and engage.” Max 26 went in and ripped those dudes up with his 30 mm chain gun and 2.75-inch rockets. It was beautiful. When we got back I wrote him up for a Flying Cross and it was approved. Later I gave him a big thank-you letter and a big bottle of scotch. He deserved it, because we were getting fucked up.

  Going back down the river the way we’d come, we ran into yet another firefight. More insurgents on the far bank, peppering the water around us with their AKs. This time there was no delay on our part, and both Craig’s Bradley and the Apache Max 26 hammered their position. We made ourselves useful and fired at them as well, and it was over pretty damn quick.

  Even if we’d wanted to cruise the river looking for another fight, it was time to head back. I had fired all 10 of my 203 rounds, and we only had about 120 5.56 mm rounds left between the eight of us on the boat. I had to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation, and laughed all the rest of the way downriver. Everyone in the boat was looking at me like I was crazy, but it wasn’t me, it was what we were doing.

  So when we got back, there was water leaking everywhere in the boat. There was an M249 light machine gun soft-mounted at the rear of the boat and an M240 mounted at the front of the boat, but nobody had touched them. All the way around that boat, everywhere above and at the waterline there were bullet holes, everywhere except for the 18 inches of hull where I was standing. That was just one of the many times when I should have died and didn’t. I learned something new that day—I was seeing water splashes in front of me and thought the Iraqi incoming was falling short. However, when the water splashes at an angle, that means the bullet’s still moving, they were skipping and hitting the boat all around me.

  The Iraqis never could shoot worth shit. That whole “put the stock against your shoulder and look down the sights in the general direction of the target” thing seemed too tough for most of them. We called their shooting style “Iraqi Offhand”—hold the rifle up and forward, in the general direction of the target, and blow off a whole magazine on full auto. If they were aiming at you, you were pretty safe. As always, the bullets to watch out for were the ones addressed “To Whom It May Concern.”

  Captain Burgoyne just shook his head at me and said, “Crazy Jay, you are crazy.”

  “Why?”

  “Everybody else was taking cover, and you were just standing up there returning fire.”

  I said, “Sir, where the fuck was I going to go? You were on my feet. You all act like I’m some kind of hero or some shit. I’m just slow. There was nowhere for me to go, because you were already there.”

  I had a real hatred for boats after that.

  We’d gone out on a simple recon, gotten involved in two firefights, and nearly burned through all of our ammo. That had not been the plan at all, and I believe Burgoyne’s exact words were, “Fuck this.” After a quick rethink, command changed the plan. We would now assault the island from smaller RB-15s, which are seven-man rubber boats that can be put in the water almost anywhere. I appreciated the fact that they could be put in anywhere, which added a level of surprise to the plan, but rubber isn’t exactly known as great defense against bullets.

  The day of our assault, I was number-one man and would be the first guy out of the boat. We put into the water without much fuss and headed into the river. Waiting for the first incoming round, the first splash of bullet hitting water, was nerve-racking, but we made it across to the target island without incident. As it turned out, none of the four islands even had insurgents on them. Well, hell, at least I got to play Navy for a few days, but then it was back to work.

  CHAPTER 21

  SNIPING IS AS SNIPING DOES

  When you’re riding around in armor, the way you usually find IEDs is when they blow up. That wasn’t good enough for us. In addition to a number of action plans that we started implementing, we realized that having scout/sniper teams supporting us would be invaluable. Not only could they provide overwatch when the troop was static, it would be a good way to catch the insurgents as they were planting IEDs. We were also personally invested in killing every one of the bastards who was planting IEDs, as we’d just lost one of our own, Sergeant Lonnie Parson.

  Iraqi insurgents were taking the rockets out of the pods of Hind-D helicopters to make their IEDs. They would set them up on the road and stick them in a PVC pipe or cut a half moon in the ditch to aim them. They’d hook up wires, command-detonate them, and hope they hit something. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t.

  Lonnie Parson was the Platoon Sergeant of Bravo Troop, and he was hit by one of those Hind rocket IEDs. It hit him in the side, just under his body armor, and it did not explode, but the warhead went inside his chest cavity. It took
EOD and the medics a while to get it out of him, and he didn’t make it.

  As happy as we would have been to send out a sniper team to kill every bad guy in the area, there weren’t Army sniper teams just sitting around looking for something to do—if we wanted it done, we had to do it ourselves. The plan we drew up with Captain Burgoyne was simple. I had my platoon broken down into two sniper teams and a heavy support team of three Bradleys. Staff Sergeant John Williams was back in-country with Crazy Horse and would be in charge of one sniper team, while I would be in charge of the other. My new Lieutenant, David Dejesus, along with Sergeants Sowby and Craig, would be in the Bradleys.

  Lieutenant Dejesus was a green Lieutenant, right out of the U.S. Army’s new Lieutenant School. He was a smart, quiet kid from Puerto Rico, and I really liked him. He served well on his first tour in Iraq.

  I could have backed off and rode around in the Bradley behind armor, but that’s not how I operate. Lead from the front and look for a fight. I was the Platoon Sergeant, but I felt I was the only one in my platoon who had the skill to take on the task. I’d been in the Army almost as long as some of the new kids had been alive and was hunting for a decade before that. Also, I didn’t mind killing people, and sniping can be quite different from heated combat. My spotter was Staff Sergeant Jared Kennedy, who was the Commander of his own Bradley before we decided to shake things up.

  Kennedy was from Hawaii, of Hawaiian or Polynesian descent. He was slightly younger than me and a simply outstanding soldier. He was one of the finest NCOs I ever had the pleasure of working with. I could have chosen anybody as my spotter, and I chose him. He knew what he was doing and what needed to be done, and we worked well together.

  In a sniper/spotter team, the sniper generally stays on the rifle, looking through the scope for or at a target. The spotter has a rifle as well, but his main job is to help direct the sniper onto the target—or targets, as the case may be. Traditionally, spotters tend to use binoculars more than they do rifles, but in Iraq, we rarely had only one target when it came time to shoot.