Part 45 (1/2)

”Come on!”

Some of the Iraqis started to stir.

I eased toward the gate, knowing I was all alone. Here I was, holding a pistol on a dozen insurgents for all I knew, and separated from the rest of my boys by a thick wall and locked gate.

I found the gate and managed to jimmy it open. The platoon and our Iraqi jundis ran in, surrounding the people who'd been sleeping in the courtyard. (There'd been a mix-up outside, and for some reason they hadn't realized I was in there alone.)

The people sleeping in the courtyard turned out to be just a regular extended family. Some of my guys got them situated without firing any shots, rounding them up and moving them to a safe area. Meanwhile, the rest of us ran in to the buildings, clearing each room as quickly as we could. There was a main building, and then a smaller cottage nearby. While my boys checked for weapons and bombs, anything suspicious, I raced to the rooftop.

One of the reasons we'd selected the building was its height-the main structure was three stories tall, and so I had a decent view of the surrounding area.

Nothing stirred. So far, so good.

”Building secure,” the com guy radioed to the Army. ”Come on in.”

We had just taken the house that would become COP Falcon, and, once more, done so without a fight.

PETTY OFFICER/PLANNER

Our head shed had helped plan the COP Falcon operation, working directly with the Army commanders. Once they were done, they came to the platoon leaders.h.i.+p and asked for our input. I got involved in the tactical planning process more deeply than I ever had before.

I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I had experience and knowledge to add something useful. On the other hand, it got me doing the kind of work I don't like to do. It seemed a little ”admin” or bureaucratic-coat-and-tie stuff, to use a civilian workplace metaphor.

As an E6, I was one of the more senior guys in the platoon. Usually you have a chief petty officer (E7), who's the senior enlisted guy, and an LPO, the lead petty officer. Generally the LPO is an E6, and the only one in the platoon. In our platoon, we had two. I was the junior E6, which was great-Jay, the other E6, was LPO, and so I missed a lot of the admin duties that go with that post. On the other hand, I had the benefits of the rank. For me, it was kind of like the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears-I was too senior to do the bulls.h.i.+t jobs and too junior to do the political jobs. I was just right.

I hated sitting down at a computer and mapping everything out, let alone making a slideshow presentation out of it. I would have much rather just said, ”Hey, follow me; I'll show what we're going to do on the fly.” But writing it all down was important: if I went down, someone else would have to be able to step in and know what was going on.

I did get stuck with one admin job that had nothing to do with mission planning: evaluating the E5s. I truly hated it. (Jay arranged some sort of trip and left me with that-I'm sure because he didn't want to do it, either.) The bright side was that I realized how good our people were. There were absolutely no t.u.r.ds in that platoon-it was a real outstanding group.

Aside from my rank and experience, the head shed wanted me involved in planning, because snipers were taking a more aggressive role in battle. We had become, in military terms, a force multiplier, able to do a lot more than you might think based on our sheer numbers alone.

Most planning decisions involved details like the best houses to take for overwatch, the route to take in, how we'd be dropped off, what we would do after the initial houses were taken, etc. Some of the decisions could be very subtle. How you get to a sniper hide, for example. The preference would be to get there as stealthily as possible. That might suggest walking in, as we had in some of the villages. But you don't want to walk through narrow alleys where there's a lot of trash-too much noise, too many chances for an IED or an ambush.

There's a misperception among the general public that SpecOp troops always parachute or fast-rope into a trouble zone. While we certainly do both where appropriate, we didn't fly into any of the areas in Ramadi. Helicopters do have certain advantages, speed and the ability to travel relatively long distances being one of them. But they're also loud and attract attention in an urban environment. And they're relatively easy targets to shoot down.

In this case, coming in by water made a great deal of sense, because of the way Ramadi is laid out and where the target was located. It allowed us to get to a spot near the target area stealthily, comparatively quickly, and with less chance of contact than the overland routes. But that decision led to an unexpected problem-we had no boats.

Ordinarily, SEALs work with Special Boat Teams, known at the time and in the past as Special Boat Units, or SBUs. Same mission, different name. They drive the fast boats that insert SEALs and then retrieve them; we were rescued by one when we were ”lost” on the California coast during training.

There was a bit of friction between SEALs and SBUs back home in the bars, where you'd occasionally hear some SBU members claiming to be SEALs. Team guys would think, and sometimes say, that's like a taxi driver claiming to be a movie star because he drove someone to the studio.

Whatever. There are some d.a.m.n good guys out there. The last thing we need is to be picking fights with the people who are supporting us.

But that's a point that works both ways. Our problem in Ramadi came from the fact the unit that was supposed to be working with us refused to help.

They told us they were too important to be working with us. In fact, they claimed to be standing by for a unit with a higher priority, just in case they were needed. Which they weren't.

Hey, sorry. I'm pretty sure their job was to help whoever needed it, but whatever. We hunted around and found a Marine unit that was equipped with SURC boats-small, shallow-draft vessels that could get right up to the sh.o.r.e. They were armored and equipped with machine guns fore and aft.