Part 10 (2/2)

Colbertas team is ordered to move to the front of the battalion and set up a roadblock at the north end of the town. We stop near a large industrial complex that looks like a cement factory or machine shop. There are some houses beyond that, then open fields.

Espera pulls his vehicle up beside Colbertas on the road. The two of them orient their guns north. With the battalion and all of RCT-1 behind them, their two Humvees const.i.tute the northernmost Marine unit in central Iraq. Their job is to turn away any cars that come down the road from the north. Itas a little before six in the evening. There are tall, leafy trees to our left casting blue shadows over us in the fading daylight.

In the past few hours Colbert and other team leaders in the battalion have developed what they hope will be less lethal means of stopping cars at roadblocks. Instead of firing warning shots from machine guns, they will launch colored smoke grenades. The hope is that drivers will be more likely to heed billowing clouds of colored smoke blocking the road than warning shots fired over their vehicles. Fick and other commanders had initially opposed this kinder, gentler method to halting traffic, with Fick arguing, aMarines are supposed to be an aggressive force. If our stance is less aggressive, weare more likely to be challenged by bad guys.a But the enlisted Marines, tired of shooting unarmed civilians, fought to be allowed to use smoke grenades.

Now, when the first vehicle, a white pickup truck, approaches, Colbert strides into the road, ahead of the Humvees.

aDo not engage this truck!a he shouts to his men.

He fires a smoke grenade from his 203 launcher. It makes a plunking sound almost like a champagne cork popping, then bounces into the road, spewing green smoke. Three or four hundred meters down the road, the white pickup truck turns around and drives off.

A couple of cars arrive. The second is a taxi. It speeds up after the launching of the smoke grenade. The Marines by the Humvees hunch lower on their weapons, getting ready to fire.

aDo not engage!a Colbert shouts. He fires another smoke grenade.

The taxi drives through the smoke; then moments before the Marines are about to light it up, the driver cuts a tight, wheel-squealing U-turn. Even on good days, Arab motorists tend to drive like kamikaze pilots. Itas not easy for a Marine to differentiate between run-of-the-mill reckless Arab driving and erratic behavior that would indicate a suicide bomber.

The Marines discuss the taxia”debating whether the driveras nearly fatal game of chicken with them was a result of his poor judgment, or the possibility that heas a Fedayeen scouting Marine lines. Their conversation distracts them from the next caras approach.

The blue sedan seems to appear out of nowhere. Perhaps it came from a side street behind the cement factory. In any case, Colbert doesnat step into the road to launch his first smoke grenade until the car is less than 200 meters away.

aDo not engage!a Colbert repeats.

As soon as Colbert fires his smoke grenade, a Marine SAW roars to life, spitting out a short burst. The car, maybe a hundred meters away now, rolls to a stop, green smoke blowing past it. The winds.h.i.+eld is frosted. Two men in white robes jump out. One, who looks to be a young man in his early twenties, has blood streaming from his shoulder. The men run hastily toward a mud-brick house by the road and disappear behind a wall.

Ha.s.ser stands to the left of Colbert, with the b.u.t.t of his SAW pressed to his shoulder. It was his gun that fired.

aThat was a wounding shot, motherf.u.c.ker!a Colbert yells, uncharacteristically p.i.s.sed. aWhat the f.u.c.k were you doing? I said, aDo not engagea!a Ha.s.ser remains frozen on his SAW.

Colbert walks around to him. He lowers his voice. aWalt, you okay?a Ha.s.ser lowers his SAW and stares at the car.

Colbert squeezes his arm. aWalt, talk to me.a aThe car kept coming,a Ha.s.ser says, mechanically.

The smoke disperses in the breeze, and Marines make out the outline of a manas head behind the shattered winds.h.i.+eld. He is sitting upright, as if still holding the wheel. Pa.s.senger doors on the right side of the car hang open. The driver seems to be alive, rolling his head from side to side.

None of the Marines say anything for a moment. Colbert looks at the car, then down. He breathes deeply, as if struggling to put his emotions aside. Having watched him cry a few days ago after the shooting of the shepherd, I suspect itas not always easy being the Iceman.

aItas okay, Walt,a Colbert says. aYou were doing your job.a Since the Marines on these vehicles are at this moment in history the foremost units of the American invasion here, thereas a burden that comes with that. Theyare not allowed to simply run up to the car and see if they can help the guy. Colbert radios Fick, whoas a couple hundred meters behind, and tells him thereas a man shot in the car ahead. He requests permission to go up to it and render aid to the driver.

aNegative,a Fick tells him. The battalion has ordered the platoon to advance a few hundred meters past the car.

We drive toward the blue car. The shot man behind the wheel appears to be in his forties. He sits upright with good posture, his hands on his lap as if they slipped off the steering wheel. He wears a white s.h.i.+rt. His right eye stares ahead; his left eye is covered in blood dripping down from the crown of his head. Heas alive. When we pa.s.s within about a meter of him, we hear his rapid breathinga”a shus.h.i.+ng sound.

Due to a temporary rotation in the team, Trombley is on the Mark-19 and Ha.s.ser is in the seat to the left of me. He rides closest to the man he just shot, and stares ahead, refusing to look as we drive past, listening to his dying gasps: Shhhh! Shhhh! Shhhh!

n.o.body in the Humvee says anything.

As Team Three rolls behind us, Doc Bryan raises his M-4 and tries to get a bead on the man. Without telling anyone else, he has decided to shoot the man in the head and give him a mercy execution. But his Humvee bounces, and he misses his chance for a clean shot.

We stop several hundred meters up the road and get out. There are some huts ahead. Fick and I see a pregnant woman walking toward them. Fick gets a bright yellow pack of humrats from his truck to give to her, and we walk toward her, with Fick holding the humrats high. The woman sees us and veers toward the huts. We walk faster. She starts running, and we do too. Then Fick stops abruptly. aThis is ridiculous,a he says. aWeare terrorizing a pregnant woman.a We watch her flee. aGiven the way things are going,a Fick says, aitas probably wise of her to run when she sees Americans.a ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES LATER, First Reconas headquarters units roll past the blue car with the wounded man it. Navy Lieutenant Aubin, the battalion physician, insists on stopping so he can examine the driver.

What Aubin finds is yet another testament to the skills of the Marine Corps rifleman. Of the three rounds Ha.s.ser fired, one hit an occupant in the shoulder (whom we saw jump out), one skimmed into the hood and the third entered the driveras left eye. The 5.56mm round then did a ninety-degree turn through the manas brain and went straight up, exiting through the top of his skull. Basically, the man has been lobotomized. Aubin pokes and pinches the skin on the manas upper body and finds he is totally unresponsive, a vegetable. But no arteries were hit. The light, venous bleeding from the entry and exit wounds is not enough to kill him. His breathing and heart rate are good.

Aubin concludes that in a hospital a man with these wounds could live indefinitely. Here, without care, he will die of starvation, infection or swelling of the brain. Unlike Doc Bryan, who was ready to shoot the man, acting as a vigilante mercy killer falls outside of everything Aubin believes in as a doctor. He administers morphine and Valium to quell any pain in case the victim comes to (which is medically possible), but not enough to kill him. He is torn by the dilemma posed by this patient. Aubin later tells me, aIn the States we donat practice euthanasia. If we remove someone from life support, I donat make that decision. We have committees of doctors, lawyers, family members, clergy who all debate it.a Aubin knows that to leave the man is a death sentence, but he decides not to call in a medevac. Marine resources are stretched thin. He leaves the man in the care of medical personnel with RCT-1, who will be holding the town. The wounded man dies, unclaimed by anyone, a day later. Marines donat know anything about him other than that he was unarmed, behind the wheel of a blue car, when he drove onto a narrow, blacktop road where an American shot him in the eye.

TWENTY-SIX.

WALTER Ha.s.sER, who shot the man in the blue car, is one of the most well-liked Marines in the platoon. Heas twenty-three years old, six feet two inches tall and knows the lyrics to just about every hit country song recorded between 1960 and 1974. Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash are his heroes. He has a beautiful country singing voice, and in his case Colbert makes a special exemption to his ano country musica rule. Following the ZSU AAA gun attack south of Al Hayy during which Ha.s.ser had climbed into the turret under fire and had taken out the enemy gun position, the team had seized the bridge north of the town to the accompaniment of his singing Glen Campbellas aRhinestone Cowboy.a Raised in a rented farmhouse in Louden County, Virginia, by a single mom who, he says, adidnat have no college,a Ha.s.ser grew up working on farms and hunting. He seems like your basic country good old boy, but what he enjoys most about the Marine Corps is both the brotherhood and the diversity. aBack home you pal around with your own kind,a he says. aI never thought my best friends would be Mexicans. Here, weare brothers, and we all look out for each other. Thatas the best part of being in a war. We all get to be together.a Earlier in the morning, when everyone had been complaining about the sorry state of MREs, Ha.s.ser had explained his basic philosophy of life. aEvery chance you have, you should try to hook people up. People in the MRE factory donat understand that. h.e.l.l, if I worked there Iad be sneaking in extra pound cakes, jalapeo cheese packs, Tootsie Rolls. You gotta throw things to people when you can.a Now, driving out of Al Muwaffaqiyah, with the sound of that dying manas gasping still fresh in everyoneas mind, Ha.s.ser stares out the window into a blazing sunset. The SAW is loose on his lap. His wrists are draped across the top of the weapon, but his fingers arenat touching it, almost like heas ignoring it.

aHow are you doing?a I ask him.

aJust taking it all in,a he says.

THE OBJECTIVE TONIGHT on April 2 is to reach the outskirts of Al Kut, the Marine Corpsa goal in central Iraq. Itas about thirty kilometers north of Al Muwaffaqiyah. Before the Marines set out from Al Muwaffaqiyah, several old men on the road stopped Second Platoon, offering detailed information about ambushes ahead. Fick, Meesh and I talked to them for several minutes. One of the old men caught my eye. He pointed up the road and dragged his finger across his neck, making a throat-slas.h.i.+ng gesture to indicate danger ahead.

Now, as we drive up the route in convoy with the battalion, Colbert picks up reports of sporadic gunfire from the radio. aWeare expecting enemy contact at the intersection two clicks up the road,a he says. aPerson, get your NVGs out. This could go past dark.a aOne thing about the Marines,a Person says. aWe always know how to wrap up a day.a aSmall-arms fire to the rear,a Colbert says.

aYeah. Game on!a Trombley says excitedly from the turret. Itas his first time on the Mark-19, and heas eager for the chance to blow stuff up with it.

aStay frosty, Walt,a Colbert says.

aYeah,a Ha.s.ser says.

I look over at him next to me. Heas still not touching the SAW. Heas just listlessly staring out the window. Iam glad of his humanity. The fact that heas clearly so broken up by his shooting of that civilian just confirms what a decent guy he is. But I wish he wasnat showing it right now.

We hit the intersectiona”the suspected ambush point, with berms on the left, a stand of palm trees on the right. No shots are fired.

aStop!a Colbert says.

We halt between the trees and the berms in the suspected kill zone.

aWhat are we doing?a Person asks, his voice betraying a hint of nervousness.

aThey want us to stop,a Colbert says. aI guess weare trying to flush aem out.a We sit for several minutes, trying to bait the ambushers into shooting. n.o.body says anything. Itas that leaden silence of old action movies where all you hear are heartbeats and watches ticking (though no oneas actually wearing a mechanical watch).

aMove up fifty meters,a Colbert says.

Again we sit in silence, broken abruptly when Trombley cuts a loud fart.

Everyone jumps. Nerves are so wired in the vehicle, some mistook it for the blast of a distant mortar.

aJesus!a Colbert says.

aSorry,a Trombley apologizes.

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