Part 12 (1/2)

DUNE BUGGIES AND MUD DON'T MIX

Geared up and strapped in, I sat vibrating in the gunner's chair of the DPV shortly after nightfall March 20, 2003, as an Air Force MH-53 lifted off the runway in Kuwait. The vehicle had been loaded into the rear of the PAVE-Low aircraft, and we were en route toward the mission we'd spent the past several weeks rehearsing. The waiting was about to come to an end; Operation Iraqi Freedom was underway.

My war was finally here.

I was sweating, and not just with excitement. Not knowing exactly what Saddam might have in store, we'd been ordered to wear full MOPP gear (”Mission Oriented Protective Posture,” or s.p.a.cesuits to some). The suits protect against chemical attacks, but they're about as comfortable as rubber pajamas, and the gas mask that comes with them is twice as bad.

”Feet wet!” said someone over the radio.

I checked my guns. They were ready, including the 50. All I had to do was pull back the charging handle and load.

We were pointed straight toward the back of the helicopter. The rear ramp was not all the way up, so I could see out into the night. Suddenly, the black strip I was watching above the ramp speckled with red-the Iraqis had kicked on anti-aircraft radars and weapons that intel had claimed didn't exist, and the chopper pilots began shooting off decoy flares and chaff to confuse them.

Then came the tracers, streams of bullets arcing across the narrow rectangle of black.

d.a.m.n, I thought. We're going to get shot down before I even get a chance to smoke someone.

Somehow, the Iraqis managed to miss us. The helicopter kept moving, swooping toward land.

”Feet dry!” said someone over the radio. We were now over land.

All h.e.l.l was breaking loose. We were part of a team tasked to hit Iraqi oil resources before the Iraqis could blow them up or set them on fire as they had during Desert Storm in 1991. SEALs and GROM were hitting gas and oil platforms (GOPLATs) in the Gulf, as well as on-sh.o.r.e oil refinery and port areas.

Twelve of us were tasked to hit farther inland, at the al-Faw oil refinery area. The few extra minutes it took translated into a h.e.l.l of a lot of gunfire, and by the time the helicopter touched down, we were in the s.h.i.+t.

The ramp dropped and our driver hit the gas. I locked and loaded, ready to fire as we sped down the ramp. The DPV careened onto the soft dirt ... and promptly got stuck.

Son of a b.i.t.c.h!

The driver started revving the engine and slapping the transmission back and forth, trying to budge us free. At least we were out of the helicopter-one of the other DPVs got stuck half on and half off the ramp. His 53 jerked up and down, trying desperately to free him-pilots hate like h.e.l.l to get fired at, and they wanted out.

By this time I could hear the different DPV units checking in over the radio. Just about everybody was stuck in the oil-soaked mud. The intel specialist advising us had claimed that the ground would be hard-packed where we were going to land. Of course, she and her colleagues had also claimed that the Iraqis didn't have anti-aircraft weapons. Like they say, military intelligence is an oxymoron.

”We're stuck!” said our chief.

”Yeah, we're stuck too,” said the lieutenant.

”We're stuck,” said somebody else.

”f.u.c.k, we got to get out of here.”

”All right, everybody get out of your vehicles and go to your positions,” said the chief.

I undid the five-point harness, grabbed the 60 off the back, and humped in the direction of the fence that blocked off the oil facility. Our job was to secure the gate, and just because we didn't have wheels to do it with didn't mean it wasn't getting done.

I found a pile of rubble in sight of the gate and set up the 60. A guy came up next to me with a Carl Gustav. Technically a recoilless rifle, the weapon fires a bad-a.s.s rocket that can take out a tank or poke a hole in a building. Nothing was getting through that gate without our say-so.

The Iraqis had set up a defensive perimeter outside the refinery. Their only problem was that we had landed inside. We were now between them and the refinery-in other words, behind their positions.