Part 62 (1/2)

People would say that a lot. It irritated me when it was someone I didn't know well. The people I did know well respected that I might not know every detail but I knew what I needed to know.

IN THE VILLAGES

With things relatively calm in Sadr City, we were given a new area to target. IED-makers and other insurgents had set up shop in a series of villages near Baghdad, trying to operate under the radar as they supplied weapons and manpower to fight Americans and the loyal Iraqi forces. The Mahdi army was out there, and the area was a virtual no-go zone for Americans.

We had worked with members of 4-10 Mountain Division during much of the Sadr City battle. They were fighters. They wanted to be in the s.h.i.+t-and they certainly got their wish there. Now as we b.u.mped out into the villages outside the city, we were happy to have a chance to work with them again. They knew the area. Their snipers were especially good, and having them along improved our effectiveness.

Our jobs are the same, but there are a few differences between Army and SEAL snipers. For one thing, Army snipers use spotters, which we don't, as a general rule. Their weapon set is a bit smaller than ours.

But the bigger difference, at least at first, had to do with tactics and the way they were deployed. Army snipers were more used to going out in three- or four-man groups, which meant they couldn't stay out for very long, certainly not all night.

The SEAL task unit, on the other hand, moved in heavy and locked down an area, basically looking for a fight and having the enemy provide us with one. It wasn't so much an overwatch anymore as a dare: Here we are; come and get us.

And they did: village after village, the insurgents would come and try and kill us; we'd take them down. Typically, we'd spend at least one night and usually a few, going in and extracting after sunset.

In this area, we ended up going back to the same village a few times, usually taking a different house each time. We'd repeat the process until all the local bad guys were dead, or at least until they understood that attacking us was not very smart.

It was surprising how many idiots you had to kill before they finally got that point.

COVERED WITH c.r.a.p

There were lighter moments, but even some of those were s.h.i.+tty. Literally.

Our point man, Tommy, was a great guy but, as it turned out, a terrible point in a lot of ways.

Or maybe I should say sometimes he was more of a duck than a point man. If there was a puddle between us and the objective, Tommy took us through it. The deeper the better. He was always having us walk through the worst possible terrain.

It got so ridiculous that finally I told him, ”One more time, I'm going to whup your a.s.s, and you're fired.”

On the very next mission, he found a path to a village that he was sure would be dry. I had my doubts. In fact, I pointed them out to him.

”Oh, no, no,” he insisted, ”it's good, it's good.”

Once we were out in the field, we followed him across some farmland on a narrow path that led to a pipe across a path of mud. I was at the back at the group, one of the last to come across the pipe. As I stepped off, I sunk right through the mud and into c.r.a.p up to my knee. The mud was actually just a thin crust atop a deep pool of sewage.

It stunk even worse than Iraq usually stunk.

”Tommy,” I yelled, ”I'm going to whip your a.s.s as soon as we get to the house.”

We pushed on to the house. I was still in the rear. We cleared the house and, once all the snipers were deployed, I went to find Tommy and give him the thras.h.i.+ng I'd promised.

Tommy was already paying for his sins: when I found him downstairs, he was hooked up to an IV and puking his brains out. He had fallen into the muck and was completely covered with s.h.i.+t. He was sick for a day, and he smelled for a week.

Every article of clothing he'd been wearing was disposed of, probably by a hazmat unit.

Served him right.

I spent somewhere between two and three months in the villages. I had roughly twenty confirmed kills while I was there. The action on any particular op could be fierce; it could also be slow. There was no predicting.