Part 47 (1/2)

One day, we were in a house in another part of the city. We'd engaged a bunch of insurgents, killing quite a few, and were waiting through a lull in the action. The bad guys were probably nearby, waiting for another chance to attack.

Insurgents normally put small rocks in the middle of the road to warn others where we were. Civilians usually saw the rocks and quickly realized what was going on. They always stayed far away. Hours might pa.s.s before we saw any people again-and, of course, by that point, the people we would be seeing would have guns and be trying to kill us.

For some reason, this car came flying over the rocks and floored it, speeding toward us and pa.s.sing all sorts of dead men on the way.

I threw a flash-crash but the grenade didn't get the driver to stop. So, I fired into the front of the car. The bullet went through the engine compartment. He stopped and bailed out of the car, yelling as he hopped around.

Two women were with him in the car. They must have been the stupidest people in the city, because even with all that had happened, they were oblivious to us or the danger around them. They started coming toward our house. I threw another flash grenade and finally they started moving back in the direction they'd come. Finally, they seemed to notice some of the bodies that were littered around and started screaming.

They seem to have gotten away okay, except for the foot wound. But it was a miracle they hadn't been killed.

The pace was hot and heavy. It made us want more. We ached for it. When the bad guys were hiding, we tried to dare them into showing themselves so we could take them down.

One of the guys had a bandanna, which we took and fas.h.i.+oned into a kind of mummy head. Equipped with goggles and a helmet, it looked almost like a soldier-certainly at a few hundred yards. So we attached it to a pole and held it up over the roof, trying to draw fire one day when the action slowed. It brought a couple of insurgents out and we bagged them.

We were just slaughtering them.

There were times when we were so successful on overwatch that I thought our guys on the street were starting to get a little careless. I once spotted them going down the middle of the street, rather than using the side and ducking into the little cover area provided by the walls and openings.

I called down on the radio.

”Hey, y'all need to be going cover to cover,” I told them, scolding them gently.

”Why?” answered one of my platoon mates. ”You've got us covered.”

He may have been joking, but I took it seriously.

”I can't protect you from something I don't see,” I said. ”If I don't see a glint or movement, the first time I know he's there is when he shoots. I can get him after he's shot you, but that's not going to help you.”

Heading back to Shark Base one night, we got involved in another firefight, a quick hit-and-run affair. At some point, a frag came over and exploded near some of the guys.

The insurgents ran off, and we picked ourselves back up and got going.

”Brad, what's with your leg?” someone in the platoon asked.

He looked down. It was covered with blood.

”Nothin',” he said.

It turned out he'd caught a piece of metal in his knee. It may not have hurt then-I don't know how true that is, since no SEAL has ever actually admitted feeling pain since the beginning of Creation-but when he got back to Shark Base, it was clear the wound wasn't something he could just blow off. Shrapnel had wedged itself behind his patella. He needed to be operated on.

He was airlifted out, our first casualty in Ramadi.

THE CONSTANT GARDENER

Our sister platoon was on the east side of the city, helping the Army put in COPs there. And to the north, the Marines were doing their thing, taking areas, holding and clearing them of insurgents.

We went back for a few days to work with the Marines when they took down a hospital north of the city on the river.

The insurgents were using the hospital as a gathering point. As the Marines came in, a teenager, I'd guess about fifteen, sixteen, appeared on the street and squared up with an AK-47 to fire at them.