Memoirs of an Outlaw: Life in the Sandbox

Chapter 27: Cops and Robbers

There were very few times that something exciting and entertaining happened on a routine patrol. However, when something did pop up, we made sure we made the most of it.

It was a normal night patrol on the MSR. We had been traveling the road back and forth for a few hours. During that time, we received information over the radio that there was a car traveling the MSR that would fire at convoys as it passed them. They sent the description of the vehicle over the radio along with a license plate number. Three men armed with automatic weapons were traveling in a white Mercedes-type car. The license plate was in Arabic, so there was no point in writing it down because it would take forever for us to try and match it. Now that we had the information, we just needed to find them.

Every half hour or so, we would pull off the side of the road and set up a hasty listening/observation post (LP/OP). We would stay there for about twenty to thirty minutes and then resume our MSR patrols. This routine carried on for the better half of the patrol.

About three hours before our shift was up, we pulled off the road to get into yet another LP/OP. Five minutes after we got into our positions, one of the gunners noticed a vehicle and a truck that was parked on the shoulder of the far side of the road. After a closer look, they noticed it looked similar to the car we were looking for. Not only that, but men were standing to the side of the car and looked as if they were digging or possibly dropping something on the ground. Instantly, we thought we had caught insurgents in the act of planting an IED.

Lieutenant Snipes had all the scouts run over to the car’s position while the LAVs surrounded the vehicles and blocked traffic. Sergeant Jones took his section of scouts and searched the car while I took my section to search the truck. I had the driver stand by his vehicle as I searched him for weapons. Lance Corporal Duarte and his team searched the truck. We came up empty-handed on the truck, so I began to question the driver. All I could gather was that he stopped by the side of the road to fix something, and then the car pulled up in front of him. He sounded pretty innocent, but there was still something out of place.

Sergeant Jones’s discovery was a different story. He relayed the license plate description back to MEF headquarters, and it came up a match. He immediately began searching the three men but couldn’t find anything. Slightly disheartened, he had his team go through the car. That was where the treasure lay: three AK-47s, a pistol, a hand grenade, and a few hundred rounds of ammunition. In addition to that, they found a box with wires that could have been used to create some kind of remote detonating device.

He immediately put the three men on the ground and zip tied their hands behind their backs. His team searched the car more thoroughly but found nothing else. After receiving the description of what had been found over the radio, Lieutenant Snipes decided to have the truck driver zip tied too. Meanwhile, I had a few scouts search the area where we believed they had been digging and found nothing, raising suspicions even higher. But with the language barrier and limited interrogation skills, we couldn’t figure out anything else.

With nothing left to find, we now had to figure out what to do with the vehicles. We couldn’t just leave them on the side of the road because they would either get stolen or be used to make car bombs. So we did what we thought was best and brought them with us to Camp Fallujah.

The truck was a giant, orange eight-wheeled truck. It was stick shift, but not of the type that I had driven in the States. The car was an oddity. It was an old Mercedes model with a few upgrades on the inside. The radio had some kind of navigation device built in to it. After fiddling with the controls for a bit, I couldn’t even figure out how to turn it on. I could open it and close it, but nothing else seemed to work, which bothered me to no end. It had been a long time since I had listened to a car radio, and I wanted the damn thing to work.

Since I didn’t know how to drive the truck, Lieutenant Snipes had Duarte drive it and assigned one of the scouts to ride with him as security. I jumped in the Mercedes with Forsyth to provide communication with the platoon just in case anything happened. I was ecstatic. Nothing could have sounded so great at that time. I got to drive a Mercedes in Iraq. How many people would be able to say that?

We integrated the vehicles into the middle of the platoon to provide added security. I started up the engine and waited for the word to move out. Once Duarte indicated he was ready, we started our trek back toward Camp Fallujah to turn in the prisoners and vehicles.

The drive back was one of the most memorable rides I have ever had. Forsyth and I continued to mess with the radio in hopes that it would turn on. I pushed the seat back to give myself some more room and got the feeling that I was riding in style. We were having the time of our lives and enjoying every second of it. We were on a joy ride in Iraq.

When we arrived at Camp Fallujah, we were directed toward the temporary prison building. It was a place where they held prisoners before sending them over to Abu Ghraib. We parked our vehicles outside and waited as Lieutenant Snipes went inside to talk to the guards. I reclined my car seat and relaxed for a bit. After a while, I went over to Sergeant Krall’s vehicle to brag to the other scouts how great it felt to drive. Some of the guys went over to the car to check it out and see if they could get the radio working.

We waited for what seemed like an hour. Lieutenant Snipes exited the building, but he didn’t seem happy. He called us all over to his location to receive a quick briefing. Snipes informed us that they would not take the three men or the vehicles. Yet the truck driver, the man who was least guilty, would stay at the temporary prison while they sorted his identity out. The only thing they would do was take the weapons, tag them, and give a receipt to the men so they could pick them up in the morning.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said. What the hell was going on? We had just captured the men they had told us to find, and now they wanted to release them. Something was amiss.

“Listen, I didn’t make the rules,” Lieutenant Snipes said.  “We’re being told that we have to actually catch them in the act of planting a bomb or shooting at us in order for them to go to jail.”

“Ain’t that some bullshit,” someone behind me said.

Another one of the guys asked, “Sir, we found a cache of weapons on them.  What more do they need?”

Lieutenant Snipes seemed just as pissed but knew he had to follow orders.  “I know you’re all pissed.  I am, too.  But, orders are orders and we gotta let them go. Let’s mount up and we’ll drive them back to where we found them.”

Some of the guys could be heard muttering obscenities under their breath and complaining about how the whole situation was bullshit as they walked back to their vehicles. Where was the justice in this law system? The only way we could arrest someone was if we caught him in the act and had proof? It made no sense. No one in his right mind would wait to take a snapshot of a crime in progress before apprehending the suspects. However, we were the low men on the totem pole, we had no say.

Once everyone got into their vehicles, Forsyth and I got into the Mercedes, and Duarte and a scout jumped into the truck.  We headed out of Camp Fallujah pissed off and a bit demoralized, but we still got a bit of revenge.

Instead of driving the men back to their original spot, Lieutenant Snipes wanted to drive out to a remote area and let them find their way back. We drove off the road onto a dirt path and followed it for about one kilometer. I stopped the vehicle about one hundred meters to the front of the platoon. We got out of the car and brought the Iraqis over to our position. Forsyth and I knelt them down beside the vehicle, and I began to cut their zip ties. Rage rushed through my head, and I wanted nothing more than to hit each one of them on the back side of the head with my rifle. They were criminals intent on killing as many Marines as they could; they knew it and we knew it, but we could do nothing to stop them. They would most likely come back another day and take an American’s life, and it would be our fault.

While I was cutting them loose, Forsyth went around the car and slashed each of the tires. Maybe we couldn’t do anything to them, but we could to their car. With a broken car, they would have to walk back, giving them time to reflect on the bad things they had done. Justice was partially served in our eyes.

We headed back to the LAVs to load up and return to Camp Baharia. We left that day one pissed-off platoon. It showed us how things actually worked out there. The justice system was flawed. We played by the rules, and they used the rules against us. Something was not right there.