The desert below was a sea of black. It was the hour of complete darkness, and my thoughts were wandering somewhere in that surreal blackness. An explosion sounded, and the fuselage was flooded with an ominous red flash of light. It came from the helicopter’s automated flare system, which was intended to ward off enemy heat-seekers, but more than likely we had been shot at with another rocket-propelled grenade.
Back home, people were looking forward to taking time off work, reuniting with family, and celebrating with lavish Thanksgiving meals. Meanwhile, I was freezing my ass off in a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter over hostile territory along the mountainous Iraq-Iran border. The desert nights were growing colder as the season sunk into winter, and the high-altitude air felt like a subarctic wasteland. The helicopter crew and other passengers were bundled from head to toe with cold weather gear, but my team and I had been suffering the cold for more than half an hour.
Unlike the others, we wouldn’t be returning to base. We would be living out of our packs for the next few days. The short flight didn’t warrant the unnecessary weight of packing extra snivel gear. Fortunately, we were only minutes away from our drop-off point. Soon we would be trekking through the black mountains with kit weighing well over one-hundred pounds. As the communications specialist—the RTO—I carried the team’s radio and the equipment needed to communicate with the tactical operations center back on base. My gear and rucksack were the heaviest, weighing in at one-hundred forty-eight pounds, not including my M4 rifle and its attachments. Soon the cold would be the least of my worries.
Our mission was to confirm or deny the presence of enemy forces in a village along a major supply route between Iraq and Iran. It was already known that the area was occupied by enemy forces, but what concerned command was where the forces were coming from. Recent strikes on Coalition Forces in the region had been well calculated and devastatingly effective. It was believed that the border forces in the area were facilitating the passage of trained foreign fighters into the country. My team would try to positively identify hostile forces in the village, and submit a surveillance package so that Special Forces currently on stand-by could assault the village and round up prisoners for interrogation.
After a couple of stops at false landing zones, our First Sergeant came over the radio and announced that we had reached the true LZ. It was time for us to go to work. Like machines of war, the four of us switched into combat posture. I positioned my night optic device over my left eye, attached my suppressor to the muzzle of my weapon, and racked a round into the chamber. Amidst the drum of helicopter blades and the darkness that surrounded me, the snap of my rifle’s bolt was a reassuring sound.
Our team leader, Staff Sergeant Bryant, conducted a radio check with our senior scout observer, Sergeant Fuller, and me. I used a headset while we moved to maintain communications with the team leader and the SSO, both of whom carried small multi-band inter-team radios. The fourth man on our team, the machine gunner, Specialist Reilly, didn’t carry a radio. His primary role was support, a position filled by the lowest ranking man on the team. Ironically, however, Reilly had more combat experience than Fuller and me.
Reilly was a rambunctious soldier, which caused trouble for him in his previous unit—a conventional infantry line unit. After suffering a field-grade Article 15 for disrespecting a superior officer that stripped away his sergeant stripes, Reilly tried out for our LRS Unit, hoping to get away from the conservative Big-Army bullshit. He performed well during his assessment, but the other team leaders were hesitant to add him to their rosters because of his record of insubordination. But Bryant was a different type of leader; a rarity in the infantry world. He only cared about performance and competence. He was able to look past Reilly’s unruly attitude, and he picked him up for our team.
Through my NODs I could see the helicopter’s infrared lights searching the ground for flat land as it descended. The blackness became a cruel, mountainous landscape washed in amplified green light. A familiar warmth churned through my stomach—a concoction of fear, excitement, and adrenaline.
The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment was tasked with inserting our team. The seasoned pilot landed the helicopter with such ease I almost expected to hop out onto a mattress; my senses were sorely disappointed when grit and rock crunched beneath my boots. As we dismounted, three of us maintained security around the helicopter, keeping a keen eye out for movement in our sectors. At the same time, Bryant accounted for all of our packs as the First Sergeant hurled them out of the chopper. I took a prone position to the left of Reilly. When we had all of our gear, Bryant took a prone security position next to Fuller.
The four of us lay motionless on the rocky ground as the helicopter ascended into the dark sky and cold sand pelted our faces. It joined the other helicopter that was already circling as overwatch, and then they disappeared together into the night. The fading drum of their blades taunted me, reminding me they were heading back to the relative comfort of base while the four of us were deserted deep inside hostile territory.
We lay there on full alert, surveying the area as the punishing cold settled into our bones. We waited until the silence of the night and the crisp desert mountain air were ingrained into our senses. I knew that if I expected us to survive in this area, I had to know the sights, sounds, and smells better than the natives who sought to do us harm. Out here, there were pockets of enemies so deeply rooted that high command needed a surgical team cloaked in stealth to gather intelligence on them and locate high-value targets. Out here, there were no nearby coalition bases or quick reaction forces. Out here, there were no West Point graduates or polished brass to bark orders. Out here, there were only the four of us. We were the commanders on the ground.
Bryant took a knee, his rifle at the low ready, his head on a swivel. When we weren’t training or on a mission, Bryant was a goof-off, just one of the guys. But when it came down to business, he transformed into the epitome of the model infantry leader—stoic, focused, and vigilant. When he seemed content with the motionless surroundings, he stood up, took another look around, and then motioned for us to get up.
In practiced silence, we took turns helping each other into our massive packs. I helped Fuller with his rucksack and noticed it was lighter than the others. It didn’t surprise me the self-serving prick wouldn’t carry his fair share of the weight. Fuller was concerned with his own success and reputation. He had reduced his own pack weight to ensure he wouldn’t get fatigued during infiltration. I managed to suppress my anger and made a mental note to get in his face about it when the mission was over and we were back inside the wire.
Fuller and I butted heads often. He had only been in the Army for a few years, but he was already in his mid-thirties. He had been a lost soul, a couch surfing pot-head, until he found a sense of purpose with the Army. After enlisting, he made a complete transformation. Now he bled green, and his heart beat to the cadence of the Ranger Creed. That was all fine and well, in my opinion. However, like a religious zealot, he was infuriated with the fact that I didn’t accept the Army whole-heartedly.
I had joined the Army out of a patriotic desire to serve my country after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. My plan had always been to just do my four years and then get out. Because of that, I never did fit the mold the Army tried to force me into. Like Reilly, I openly questioned orders and duties, and Fuller hated our defiance. It was fortunate we had Bryant to maintain the peace.
When we all had our monstrosities loaded onto our backs, Fuller took point, and the four of us headed into the mountain passes that loomed over us like taunting giants. The trek up and down the peaks and valleys was anything but glorious. Traversing over the precariously loose rocks with monoscopic vision in otherwise complete darkness made maneuvering difficult.
A couple of hours into our trek, our progress was further hindered by a sandstorm. We were wearing skullcrushers—a plastic device used to mount NODs that crowned the head, nicknamed for the agony the wearer felt after a few hours— instead of helmets because they were lightweight and helped to ensure a low profile. I wrapped my shemagh around my head to protect from the stinging sands, leaving only my NODs poking through the fabric.
The moon’s light intensified as the hours pressed on, but the additional light was of little help since fatigue had already set in. The M249 light machine gun Reilly carried offset his balance. With the fatigue, lack of depth perception, loose rocks, and steep inclines, he lost his footing several times, falling onto his ass, unable to get back up because of his massive rucksack.
I was bringing up the rear, so I moved up to lift him off the ground. Reilly’s frustration intensified with each spill, and by the third fall he was cursing under his breath. He wasn’t the only one to fall, and for me at the rear of the formation, it was a comical sight. Here we were, an elite infantry team infiltrating an enemy strongpoint, yet we looked like drunken penguins waddling through the hills.
“If these fuckers knew there were four fucking Americans humping around in their backyards, they’d be up in arms, hunting us down,” Reilly said after I helped him to his feet. He bent over to relieve his legs and lower back from the weight of his pack. “Fucking dumbasses.” He exhaled loudly. “Fuck.”
I moved away from Reilly and spoke over the radio. “How much further? We got some lag back here.”
“You pussies better get your shit together. We got something up here,” Fuller replied.
Considering the lack of information about what he was seeing, I let the insult pass without remark. I scanned the rear sector and shuffled back to Reilly. “What’s something?” I asked. I shook Reilly’s shoulder to alert him to the development.
“Wait one—” Bryant said. I saw him scuffling up a rocky hill to join Fuller.
Reilly and I spread out to higher ground and gratefully took knees while we maintained rear security. Bryant radioed me and indicated a nearby hill he wanted me to climb to provide overwatch as they moved in to investigate. I looked up towards the peak. It was high and steep, and my body grew tired with the mere thought of ascending it. I was exhausted, but I let the anticipation of enemy contact force my aching legs up the hill. From my vantage point, I could see a cluster of shoddy buildings no more than a click from our position. There was a fire burning in the center that indicated they were occupied by what I had to assume were hostile forces.
“Keep an eye on those buildings for movement. We’re moving up to check out these structures in the ground,” Bryant told me.
I could see the anomalies in the rocky terrain that had caught their attention. I couldn’t quite make out what they were, but they had straight edges, which indicated that they were man-made. I looked towards Reilly. He was doubled over on a knee. There was no way he was maintaining proper security. I wished he had a radio so I could let him know our proximity to potential hostiles. With Bryant and Fuller moving forward, Reilly looking like he was ready to pass out, and me silhouetted on a peak, I felt extremely vulnerable. Just a few weeks ago, our small reconnaissance community had been rocked by the news of a sniper team killed by enemies that had managed to sneak up on them during a mission. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, alerting my senses. I scanned all directions, making sure Reilly and I didn’t suffer the same fate.
Bryant and Fuller didn’t take long. They regrouped with Reilly then Bryant called me down. “What was it?” I asked when I joined them
“They built fighting positions,” Bryant said.
“Nobody’s in them?!” Despite his exhaustion, Reilly became animated again.
“No, dumbass,” Fuller interjected. “But looks like whoever built them is camped out in some buildings right over that ridge.” He motioned towards the cluster of shoddy buildings I saw earlier.
“Well, let’s go knock on their door! I’ll do anything just to get rid of some of these rounds!” Reilly was carrying eight-hundred rounds of linked 5.56 ammunition. That was considerably more weight in ammunition than the three-hundred sixty rounds of 5.56 the rest of us carried in magazines, including Fuller’s twelve rounds of high explosive 40 mm grenades.
“Shit, if we’re going to make contact just to drop weight, I’m going to toss this fucking radio at them,” I said. I could never believe that the Army, for all its money and technological superiority, couldn’t employ a lighter, more mobile satellite radio.
Fuller shifted his body and made a hissing noise. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew they were rolling in his skull.
Bryant allowed himself a quick laugh and then directed us back to business. “I wish we could, but we’ve got a mission that’s going to be fucked if we don’t get eyes on in the next three hours. We weren’t expecting this camp on our route, so we’re going to have to pick up the pace to get around them and get in position before sunrise.” In order to ensure mission success, we needed to reach our surveillance site, and we needed to do so without being detected.
I pushed my body to its extreme physical limit as we hustled those last three hours of darkness. My legs ached, my shoulders burned, and my lower back felt like it was being crushed under a slab of granite. Each time I convinced my body to move a little further, to make it up the crest of just one more peak, another hill would come into view, and my body would threaten to shut down on me. But we spurred each other on, and we kept our bodies moving for the sake of the team until we finally reached our tentative surveillance site. We arrived in accordance with our timeline, but as light chased away the shadows of the night, another dust storm settled over the area, restricting our vision. Fortunately, it bought much-needed time for us to set up our camouflaged surveillance position.
I called back to the TOC as the others prepared the surveillance site. “LRS H-Q, this is One-Three Romeo, over.”
“Go ahead, One-Three.”
Fuller set up a claymore mine to the rear of our position. Bryant unfolded an entrenching tool and eyed the rocky ground with little hope. “We’ve reached phase line, Charlie. Over.”
“Roger. Do you have eyes on the objective?”
Bryant took a few futile strokes at the ground and then discarded the e-tool. He and Reilly began to set up camouflage netting over a low spot on a rocky ledge. Fuller was walking towards me to give me the grid coordinates of the claymore.
“Negative, we’re currently in a brown-out. Will confirm eyes-on when visibility clears. Site is still tentative, over.”
“Roger. Do you have more?”
“Prepare to copy coordinates for M-1-8 mine. Over.”
“Go ahead.”
Fuller cupped a hand over his Garmin’s display and activated the backlight so I could read back the coordinates to the TOC. Claymores were largely prohibited in the OIF theatre. I assumed that was because of the controversies revolving around children maimed by abandoned mines in war-torn regions around the world. Our unit was allowed to employ them because of the dangers inherent with our missions, but we had to take precautions to ensure the mines could be destroyed or recovered if we were killed in action.
Before moving into the surveillance site, we changed out of our sweaty T-shirts—now that we’d stopped moving—to prevent hypothermia from setting in. Under the netting, we got into prone positions in a half-fan facing out towards the valley. Bryant ensured we were sufficiently camouflaged before joining us beneath the camo-net. We had spray painted it to match the satellite images of the terrain. It would blend in well from afar, which would be sufficient, since we were well isolated from foot traffic on a small ledge along a cliff that took a steep plummet down towards the valley where the village was located.
Fuller was at the far left, followed by Bryant, Reilly, and then me at the far right. Our rear was unsecured, but if an enemy were to come up behind us, he would have to climb down from the plateau above to reach our ledge. Bryant assured us that if someone came that close to our position we would be able to hear them and trigger the claymore. I wasn’t completely comfortable with his plan to leave our rear unguarded, but I knew the claymore didn’t necessarily have to kill its target. The unexpected blast would disorient any number of targets trying to sneak up behind us. That shocking force would give us the opportunity we would need to assault through our rear.
Fuller prepared the surveillance equipment while I prepared the radio and satellite antennae. The camera had to be set up precisely to watch the village but also to maintain our camouflage. We kept a leg of panty hose stretched tightly over the lens to prevent the sun from reflecting off the surface. I had to ensure the antenna was positioned at an angle to provide maximum reception while maintaining camouflage as well. We would take three-hour shifts with two men up at all times—one man in charge of surveillance, the other in charge of the radio. The camera was connected to a laptop that could be passed between Fuller and Bryant. Reilly and I would pass the radio handset between one another.
Bryant and I took the first shift. As team leader, he wanted to ensure the site was well-positioned. We had chosen the tentative site by analyzing satellite images and contour maps, but if it turned out we didn’t have a good vantage point of the village, we would have to wait out the day and then reposition at nightfall.
Reilly and Fuller took off their skullcrushers and cocooned their bodies in woobies. We were so exhausted from the eight-hour trek that Reilly and Fuller were fast asleep despite their cold, ragged beds. I fought for consciousness, my body shivering against the unrelenting cold. I wanted to talk with Bryant to help stay awake, but no words came to mind, and his focus was entirely directed towards the valley, anticipating the view once the brown-out passed.
As the sandstorm died and light slowly seeped into the valley, I could already begin to see the outline of buildings. I hoped desperately that we had chosen our site well, more for our own sake than the mission’s. I heard Reilly’s deep, steady breaths, and my thoughts drifted to the luxuries of home. I was sure I would never take a bed, a pillow, or a heater for granted again.
With little else to occupy my mind, my thoughts drifted to my family back home. They always reunited for the holidays, but I hadn’t spent a Thanksgiving with them for a couple of years because I was away with the Army and preferred to save my leave days for Christmas. This year, I couldn’t even take the time off if I wanted to. I was doing a fifteen-month tour in Iraq and wouldn’t get my mid-tour break for another few months. I would be missing Christmas as well as Thanksgiving, and I knew I would be on their concerned minds more than ever this holiday season. I felt guilty for not calling home like the other guys made it a point to do so often. There was just something about phone conversations I wasn’t comfortable with. Soldiers always had to make empty promises to their loved ones that they would return home to see their faces. But there was really no way we could know that would happen. Not until we were out of Iraq and back in the United States.
A loudspeaker down in the village caught my attention. The morning Muslim prayer chant roused the villagers to their knees for the start of another day dedicated to Allah. The chant always sounded ominous to me at that quiet hour. It carried up to our ledge, sounding much closer than I would have expected.
Shortly after prayer, the dust settled, and the faded silhouette of the village cleared into images of people milling about. The valley was lush and green, unlike the rough terrain west of the mountains. From our position, some three clicks away, it looked like a lost paradise, but I figured it smelled like shit, just like all the others.
“Call it in. Eyes on,” Bryant whispered to me with a tinge of excited satisfaction.
He adjusted the settings on the laptop as I confirmed our surveillance position with the TOC. I was grateful the insertion and infiltration phase of our mission was officially complete, but now we had an undetermined amount of time we would have to spend in surveillance. We were outfitted to last a maximum of six days in our cramped positions, laying still on our stomachs. Fortunately, contrary to what most people would expect, time flies relatively quickly when the days are separated into three-hour chunks.
In the first day of surveillance, we could still feel the exertion of the previous night; the three hour shifts didn’t provide enough rest to fully recuperate. We spent the day in cycles of deep sleep, followed by waking hours of exhaustion. By the second day, our bodies felt rested, and by midday we became restless. By late afternoon, all four of us were alert, and we lost track of guard shifts. We talked about anything that came to mind, made macabre jokes that only infantry would find humorous, and made fun of Fuller for having the urge to shit so soon on the mission. However, we always maintained surveillance on the village, keeping track of every military-aged male and cargo truck that entered and left. At night, we took short shifts, stretching our legs and relieving ourselves on the plateau above the ledge.
Sometime during the third morning, Reilly shook me awake. In that instant, I heard a cowbell and woke with a start, leveling my weapon towards the valley.
“Shhh.” Reilly held a gloved finger up to his lips. “They’ve been stopped there for the past twelve minutes.” He indicated a trail of Bedouins resting within the rolling hills a few hundred meters down the mountainside. The adults sat in circles drinking tea, their livestock arranged in a tidy row, and their children running around cheerfully. “You’re up. It’s time for radio check.” I took the handset from him begrudgingly.
“I know when to do radio checks,” I replied harshly. I was never a morning person, and I tended to be irritable when I was woken unexpectedly. Reilly didn’t seem to care; he crossed his arms over his machine gun’s stock and rested his head there to fall to sleep.
I called over the net , “LRS H-Q, this is One-Three Romeo. Radio check. Over.” Nobody answered, so I said it again. When I still didn’t get a reply, I felt my irritation building up again. I reached down to the radio positioned by my right thigh. I noticed a couple of boys clambering up the mountainside to our right, but didn’t think much of it at the moment. I confirmed my radio settings were correct and made sure satellite strength was strong. I called the TOC again.
A tired voice came through the earpiece of my handset. “Roger, One-Three. Read you Lima-Charlie. Over.”
I thought I recognized the radio operator’s voice. I wanted to cuss him out, but I knew there was a possibility others in the operations center could hear me over the speaker. “Do your fucking job, you fat, POG piece-of-shit,” I said with my finger off the transmitter. The commo guys back on the FOB, despite their duties, were infamous for getting trashed whenever they could get their hands on alcohol, pills, or weed. They, along with other non-infantry personnel, seemed to sometimes forget we were in a war zone and that some soldiers actually entered into harm’s way.
I had lost sight of the kids, but after a few moments, I could hear their laughter nearby. I looked over at Bryant, who was looking at me inquisitively. I leaned in towards him. “A couple of boys from the group are running around back there somewhere,” I said.
We heard the boys’ laughter again, and Bryant’s eyes grew large. It sounded like they were running right up to the rear of our position. Bryant nudged Fuller awake, and I did the same to Reilly. I was hoping the boys would change direction, or that the Bedouins would call them back to continue their journey, but instead their voices came ever closer until I suspected they were just a few feet from the claymore.
The boys broke into hushed tones. I slowed my breathing so I could hear better and try to locate the kids who were so close to discovering us. Although I didn’t understand Arabic, I knew what they boys were discussing. The claymore’s clacker was lying beside Bryant’s hand, and I watched it jump, making its way towards his feet. Bryant cursed and grabbed hold of it just as it came to a stop. He pointed an angry finger at me to go topside.
Moving outside of cover with the sun overhead and people nearby was tremendously risky, but we had little choice in the matter. I draped my shemagh over my dark hair and wrapped it hastily around my neck as I pivoted around on my belly. Bryant instructed Reilly to watch the Bedouins and told Fuller to watch the town to make sure nobody saw us move. Bryant joined me topside. Ours were the only two weapons with suppressors, since Reilly carried the light machine gun, and Fuller’s primary weapon was technically the M302 grenade launcher mounted under his rifle. We slithered up to the overhang, and I caught sight of the two boys squatting in a way that made them look like vultures. One boy held the claymore in his small, dirty hands while the other boy leaned in, wiping it free of dust, trying to discern what the inscription said.
The inscription read, Front Towards Enemy. Bryant raised his rifle and, without thinking, I looked through my own sights. The first thought that went through my mind was a mantra that we were told over and over again: The mission always comes first. Our mission andsurvival depended on remaining undetected. The boy holding the claymore came into my sights, and an ugly rush of guilt washed over me. The boy may have been speaking the language of his fathers, the language of the country where we had come to wage war, but his image in my rifle sights was still that of a boy, an innocent child who could very easily have been born in any part of the world—a little brown boy who could have been born in South Texas, if fate had deemed it so.
I lowered my rifle and saw Bryant do the same. I don’t think either of us had thought our actions through when we had instinctively raised our sights at what we felt was a threat. He looked at me and mouthed the words, Grab him, pointing to the boy with the claymore. I nodded. My heart pounded wildly in my chest. I could hear the sound so loudly in my ears that I almost believed the others could hear it too. Bryant moved his rifle to his back and placed his arms into push-up position. “Go,” he snapped. We shot up like crocodiles taking down unsuspecting prey at the water’s edge. I landed on top of the boy closest to me, forcing the breath out of him. The other boy managed a short cry before Bryant covered his mouth with his dirt-crusted glove.
The terrified boys wrestled in our arms. “Flexicuffs,” Bryant hissed down to Fuller and Reilly several times, raising his voice each time until they heard him. Reilly crawled to us with all four flexicuffs we’d brought. He helped restrain the boys’ arms behind their backs. I tried whispering to mine—Don’t worry, we aren’t going to hurt you—but he couldn’t understand. His face had become bloody from rubbing against the rocky ground as he desperately tried to squirm free.
While we gagged them, the boy under Bryant managed to let loose a sharp scream, louder than the first. Bryant quickly smothered his face, and the three of us froze in anticipation. I heard chatter on Bryant’s radio. He relayed to us that Fuller said the group had been roused by the scream. Reilly gagged the boy, and Bryant took a knee, risking his concealment, to take a quick look around. He raised his ACOG scope towards the Bedouins and told us a few men were heading into the mountains.
“What the fuck are we going to do with these two?” Reilly asked.
“Fuller, we need to get these boys under cover. Can we move?” Bryant waited for a response then cursed to himself when it didn’t come back positive.
I held my boy down and looked around for a place to hide, but I already knew there was nowhere to go other than our surveillance position. Fuller must’ve told Bryant it was safe to move because he and Reilly dragged the boy carelessly onto the ledge. I watched them move, hunched over, Bryant’s rifle hanging from his shoulder. I knew their camouflaged bodies were silhouetted against the bright, blue sky. I was sure someone saw them—if not the travelers, surely someone from the village. This mission’s fucked, I thought to myself.
I scanned my surroundings, trying to keep an ear out for the men from below who came to investigate their boy’s bloodcurdling cry. Bryant’s head popped up from the ledge, and he motioned for me to bring the boy to him. I tried staying low as I dragged the boy across the ragged earth. Somehow we managed to get back under cover without being spotted. But with the two squirming boys, our profile had become more conspicuous.
“What are we going to do with them?” Reilly glared scornfully at the crying boys. They eventually gave up trying to wrestle free from our grasps. Bryant didn’t say anything, but I could see the gears in his head working. “These little fuckers are going to get us caught!”
“Keep it down. We’ve got one coming in close,” Fuller warned.
I had been so intent on watching the boys that I didn’t notice a man clambering up to the right of me, where the boys had climbed up. Bryant and Reilly kept the boys’ faces down in the dirt as we watched the man. He called out to the boys every once in a while, and each time he did, the boy under Reilly would wrestle against his restraints and try to scream.
“Shut the fuck up.” Reilly smashed the boy’s face into the ground, and I cringed with the violence of it.
“Hey!” Fuller seethed.
“Chill that shit out,” Bryant whispered.
“These fuckers are going to get us caught and killed!”
“Know your role, Reilly,” Fuller warned.
Bryant had the rank and authority to exercise over all of us, especially Reilly, but he usually reserved that control until it was absolutely necessary.
“Just keep him quiet until we can get ex-filed,” he said. “Fuller, prepare the surveillance package to send up to HQ.” He looked up at me, and I could see the cloud of defeat in his eyes. “Call in a compromise. Get helicopters on standby.” Bryant was the rare type of soldier who invested every ounce of himself into a mission. He had even postponed his mid-tour break in order for our team to take on a high-profile mission. It just so happened that his scheduled R&R also coincided with his son’s birth, but in Bryant’s eyes the Army was more miraculous than the gift of life.
I called in a soft compromise and informed headquarters we needed to be extracted, but the radio operator just told me to wait. I kept an ear out to our rear, knowing that Bryant had precious few options beyond blowing the claymore if one of the men walked up on us.
“One-Three, this is Six Actual. Do you copy? Over.”
Zero-Six, or Six for short, was the company commander’s call-sign. “Roger,” I said.
“This is not a hard compromise, correct?” A hard compromise meant hostile forces had discovered us, and we were under fire or in immediate risk of coming under fire.
“Correct, sir. Soft compromise. Over.” Bryant’s interest piqued when he heard me say “sir.”
“Tell me what happened,” the commander said.
I tried speaking as quietly as possible as I gave him a quick summary of the events, told him we had the boys in custody, and informed him there were four men looking for them in our area.
“Can One-Three Actual get on the net?”
I offered the handset to Bryant. He already had one hand on his rifle. He looked down at the sobbing boy restrained beneath him and decided it was safe to accept the handset. He listened and told the commander he thought it best to ex-fil tonight, but that we could hold out longer if absolutely needed. Down below, a couple of the men rejoined the group of Bedouins. They talked in an excited manner, making gestures up into the mountains and down towards the village.
“Roger, out,” Bryant said and passed me the handset. As he did so, the boy beneath him squirmed free with surprising speed. He carelessly rolled down the steep cliff then stumbled to his feet when the ground leveled out. He ran, crying through his gag to the group of Bedouins.
My breath caught, and Bryant and Reilly cursed. Reilly pushed his boy into me and aimed down the sight of his SAW. In that split second, I saw Reilly gunning down the boy in my mind’s eye.
War had desensitized Reilly to a degree the other three of us hadn’t yet reached. Reilly’s previous deployment had been a harrowing experience—he had witnessed the death and dismemberment of several of his comrades. With disgust and regret, Reilly had once recounted to me the memory of the IED attack that claimed five of his platoon members’ lives. He had been a gunner in his platoon’s convoy. He spotted the boy on the roof just in time to see him raise a walky-talky to his mouth once the US convoy was in the daisy chain’s kill zone.
Fuller let out a shrill, “No!” with such a degree of empathy I almost didn’t recognize his voice.
“Don’t fucking pull that trigger,” I forced out as quickly as possible.
Bryant grabbed the sight of the machine gun, keeping his palm over the optic so Reilly couldn’t see. “It’s too late, Reilly!”
The boy in my arms felt the tension, and he curled into a ball, crying uncontrollably.
“I’m not about to be killed because of these sand niggers!”
“There’s nothing we can do now.” We watched as the boy made it to the group, and the men removed his gag. “Let the other one go. The best we can hope now is that they get spooked and move out of the area as quickly as possible.”
I made the boy look me in the eye, and I pointed down to his people. I told him to go to them and to take them away as fast as possible. I didn’t think he understood me, but his eyes registered some sort of comprehension that I tried to take comfort in. I removed his gag and gave him the freedom to wiggle away from me.
“I don’t agree with this,” Reilly said to Bryant.
“Well, you don’t have a say in it.”
“Fuck.”
“What did command say? Are we ex-filing tonight?” Fuller asked as we watched the boy tumble down the same route the other boy had taken.
“No, they have reliable intel of an HVT entering the area. They want us to get eyes-on and then walk in the strike.”
“Fuck,” Fuller echoed.
I watched the second boy join the group. They scooped him up into grateful arms and carried him away with them. They moved out quickly, and in that moment it seemed Bryant’s hope had come true. But we would soon find out things wouldn’t be so simple.
The rest of the day passed slowly and silently. A palpable tension filled our little surveillance site. Command sent us a picture of the high-value target, along with background information. Just after sunset, a convoy of four vehicles arrived from the east. We recorded the development, but we couldn’t positively identify any of the males, nor did we see any weapons. The men disappeared into several buildings, and after a few moments the village became silent and restful, no different than the previous two nights.
“We should call in the strike and get the fuck out of here,” Reilly said.
I agreed. “We saw some eighteen men dismount from a convoy that obviously came from the Iranian border. Such a large number of MAMs in a hostile area seems like actionable intel.” From Fuller’s silence, I assumed he agreed with us as well.
“Not until we have positive ID on the HVT,” Bryant said. There was an edge in his voice none of us wanted to question. He seemed determined to make up for trying to abort the mission or for letting the boy escape.
I didn’t blame him for losing the boy. I saw the escape unfold, and there wasn’t much he could’ve done. The boy had been sly and determined to escape. If anyone should be blamed, it was the company commander, but I didn’t say as much. None of us said anything else. Fuller repositioned the mine, and we continued through the night in silence.
I was up with Bryant as morning twilight entered the valley. I gratefully removed my skullcrusher and rubbed the sore spots on my head. When I looked up, I was thrilled at what I saw. The men from the previous night’s convoy emerged from buildings armed with AK-47s and RPGs.
I heard Bryant laugh. He was watching the village through binoculars. “I didn’t see the HVT, but let’s call it in before they move out.”
I called the TOC to fill them in on the development. They instructed us to keep an eye on the trucks as long as possible while they sent in the assault force.
The majority of men loaded into two pickups and a cargo truck and then drove westward out of the village. The fourth vehicle in the convoy was a newer model SUV that looked too rich to be travelling through Iraq. It headed east, back towards Iran.
Only a few minutes had passed, and it wouldn’t be much longer before the trucks followed the road to the north then veered west again, out of our sight. The assault force was travelling in MH-47 Chinooks, which travelled faster than Blackhawks, but they would still take a half-hour or so to arrive. We woke up Fuller and Reilly. Fuller manually controlled the camera to record the movement of the trucks. Bryant watched through binoculars and called out the details of weapons and personnel so I could record them in my field notebook.
“Come on. Don’t leave yet…” Bryant said as the convoy of armed men reached the bend that would divert the road north. An awkward sensation crawled over my neck as the trucks slowed to a near stop. It seemed as though they had heard Bryant’s whispers and obliged him. The trucks continued precariously off-road, heading westward into the hills, towards the base of our mountain. My stomach churned, and my throat grew tight.
“Now, this is some bullshit,” I said.
“I fucking knew some shit would happen,” Reilly said, but the usual angry passion was missing from his voice.
“They must’ve sent someone to loop back into the village. Probably collected a nice reward for ratting out four American soldiers,” Fuller said.
“Should we break contact now?” I asked, preparing to call it in and pack up the communications equipment. The trucks below stopped near the site in the hills where the Bedouins had rested the previous day. Battle-ready men jumped from the trucks, prepared to lay down their lives in fulfillment of their righteous duty.
Bryant set down the binoculars and laid out magazines in front of him. We would be holding our ground. The rest of us followed his lead since it would be difficult to reload from our kit while prone. “If we get up now, we’ll expose our position, and we don’t know if they have a force set up in our rear to intercept us. Our best chance is to lay low and try to keep from getting discovered until the assault force can get here,” he explained.
There were sixteen men below, two of which stayed with the vehicles. The armed men spread out and began clambering up the slopes, weapons in hand. In that moment, I had little faith in Bryant’s plan. If they knew we were up here, there was a chance the boys could have given them reliable information regarding our position. In that moment, I realized death could be just moments away. The others must have been thinking the same because, for once, Reilly didn’t say anything at all, and Fuller pulled an incendiary grenade out of his pack.
As the men clambered up the slopes on our flanks, the fear set in. I had experienced doses of fear before on previous missions, but never a fear so great that it numbed my limbs.
Bryant had been silent as he watched the men move closer and closer, nearly surrounding our position. “Pick a target in your sector and open up on my mark,” he finally said.
Opening fire with reinforcements so far out would be suicide. I racked my brain for another solution. “Wait!” I said. The assault force wouldn’t arrive for another twenty minutes, but jet fighters could get there in fifteen. I called the TOC and told them to scramble fast-movers to our location from the Air Force base at Ballad. I gave them the team network so they could contact Bryant when they were in range.
“That won’t be soon enough,” Bryant said.
“That’s not what I’m counting on,” I said and began scanning stations I had pre-programmed into my radio. There was a civilian contractor on the closest base who operated a civilian plane as a surveillance platform. It would fly over an area just to report what it saw on the ground. It wasn’t very effective because it was slow and loud; the enemy would hide from it when they heard it coming, but that’s exactly what I was counting on. I pulled up their frequency and tried to get a response. A gruff, old voice answered back, and from the noise in the background I could tell he was currently in the air. I felt a wave of hope. I gave him a quick run-down of our predicament and asked him to come in as fast and low as possible. He was a civilian contractor, so he didn’t have to accept my proposal, and he surely didn’t have to fly low, considering there were armed men on the ground, but the old man sounded more than willing to help.
“Airscan can be here in five mikes,” I told Bryant. “When it comes overhead, we should detonate the claymore and toss out frags. We can spook them into believing we have air support before the fast-movers get here.” I was thinking and acting so quickly I didn’t even know if it was a good plan. I wasn’t sure Bryant would accept it, so I raised my rifle and targeted an enemy carrying a RPG. Through the magnified sight I could see his face twist and frown as he struggled slowly up the slope. I moved my sight, so his face was a blur at the edges of the optic.
“I knew I brought you along for a reason,” Bryant said, and from his tone I could tell he was smiling.
It took little more than five minutes before we heard Airscan flying in. Those had been the longest minutes of my life as the enemy surrounded our ledge, and we anticipated having to blow the claymore before the plane arrived. We heard the enemy yelling to each other and saw those below us pointing into the sky. We knew they had spotted the civilian aircraft when they opened up with small arms’ fire. They weren’t running like I had hoped. I got on the radio and told the pilot to stay safe, not to come in too low. The last thing I wanted was his blood on my hands because of a stupid trick that might not even work.
We each pulled a pin from a grenade and held the spoon to the body. When we saw Airscan fly overhead, we tossed them in all directions. Bryant blew the claymore. The explosion felt like a five-ton bomb; I thought our little ledge would crumble beneath us and send us rolling helplessly into the enemy. But the ledge held, and as we recovered from the mine blast the grenades exploded, sending dirt and shrapnel in all directions. The enemy went into complete pandemonium. A few of them retreated to the trucks. Others were yelling, too afraid to move.
The gruff old man called in, saying the enemy were running like chickens with their heads cut-off. I thanked him, but he told me they would make another pass. I was grateful for his aid, but I told him to not to fly in so low. He hadn’t listened to me the first time. Airscan made another pass, this time with no explosions. The enemy hadn’t pinpointed our position with the first pass, and Bryant decided he didn’t want to risk them seeing us toss more grenades.
The second pass spooked them, forcing them to run for whatever cover they could find. Bryant told me the fast-movers were ten minutes out, coming from the west. I relayed the information to Airscan so they could clear the airspace. The radio operator came over the net, sounding reluctant to leave us with armed men all around. He wished me luck and told me he wished he could do more.
As the sound of Airscan’s engines grew faint, several of the enemy became emboldened again. The armed men moved quickly up our flanks, shouting praises to Allah.
“Open fire?” Fuller asked Bryant.
He held up a hand for Fuller to wait while he spoke to the fast-movers. He spoke plainly, informing them we were danger close, enemy all around us, and he just needed them to fly in slow to spook them. We couldn’t pop smoke for the jets to confirm our position, but since they weren’t actually dropping ordnance, we decided it would be fine. We just hoped they would fly over the correct position. The jets slowed somewhere overhead, and the sight of them, after an explosive attack from a civilian aircraft, sent the enemy sprinting for their trucks. I punched the air, barely suppressing a cheer of excitement. Reilly placed a hand on my head and shook furiously.
“Touch me again, and I’ll have your ass doing push-ups,” I said with mock anger.
Bryant clasped my hand and smiled. It was all the praise I needed, considering he was a man of few words.
“Not the best technique, but it worked,” Fuller said.
“Better than anything you came up with,” I joked.
“Touché,” he relented.
The trucks hauled ass back to the village, which was the worst place they could have retreated. The assault team had received our surveillance package, which diagrammed the village. By now, they had reviewed all of the windows and doors they could use to their advantage. The two Chinooks arrived with two AH-64 Apache attack helicopters as escorts. Bryant used our laser designator to paint a building where we’d seen a large number of fighters enter. Much to my surprise, the Apaches sent a volley of rockets towards the target.
“Holy shit! There’s no way FORSCOM would’ve ever approved that,” Reilly said.
The Chinooks hovered overhead and dropped repel ropes, but instead of soldiers, attack dogs fitted with harnesses zipped down the lines. CAG operators followed the dogs down. There wasn’t much else for us to do at that point. Bryant was in constant communication with the CAG unit, so I watched the spectacle through binoculars as the dogs rushed into alleys and buildings with teeth bared. There were cameras fixed to the dogs’ backs, and operators watched the feeds from screens attached to their vests as they stacked on the buildings Bryant directed them to. The operators assaulted the buildings and cleared them with amazing speed.
Blackhawk helicopters arrived with infantry wearing black patches to set up a cordon around the village. I got in contact with the cordon unit on my radio and called out squirters—people trying to run away from the scene. They rounded them up with ease. The entire engagement was over within an hour, and the Chinooks landed as operators led prisoners, bound and blindfolded, up the ramps. They eventually called us down. We quickly packed up and hustled down the mountain to the waiting helicopters.
Despite the two Apaches circling overhead, I didn’t drop my guard until we reached the Chinooks. Inside the village, the black-patch infantrymen were clearing the buildings of the dead bodies the Special Forces left in their wake. They tossed the black body bags into tidy rows, sometimes making insulting jokes about how heavy the body was. Initially, I felt bitterness towards the men for dishonoring the dead, but my aversion was quickly replaced with a sick sense of satisfaction when I remembered the bags were filled with the men who had threatened our lives just moments ago.
A few operators pulled security for us as we made our way up the ramp. The bearded operators aboard congratulated us as we passed by. I reached our four open seats and let my rucksack drop from my back. I fell into my seat and took a grateful breath. It felt like the first breath I had taken since morning. It was Thanksgiving Day, and as we headed back to base I felt a dark claw gripping my core. I made a silent promise to call my family back home. I’d come to realize there were things in this life I was truly thankful for.