American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U. S. Military History

B
EACH 
B
ALLS AND 
L
ONG 
S
HOTS
I
was watching from the roof one afternoon when a group of
roughly sixteen fully armed insurgents emerged from cover. They
were wearing full body armor and were heavily geared. (We found
out later that they were Tunisians, apparently recruited by one of the
militant groups to fight against Americans in Iraq.)
Not unusual at all, except for the fact that they were also
carrying four very large and colorful beach balls.
I couldn’t really believe what I was seeing—they split up into
groups and got into the water, four men per beach ball. Then, using
the beach balls to keep them afloat, they began paddling across.
It was my job not to let that happen, but that didn’t necessarily
mean I had to shoot each one of them. Hell, I had to conserve
ammo for future engagements.

---

I shot the first beach ball. The four men began flailing for the
other three balls.
Snap.
I shot beach ball number two.
It was kind of fun.
Hell—it was a 
lot
of fun. The insurgents were fighting among
themselves, their ingenious plan to kill Americans now turned
against them.
“Y’all gotta see this,” I told the Marines as I shot beach ball
number three.
They came over to the side of the roof and watched as the
insurgents fought among themselves for the last beach ball. The ones
who couldn’t grab on promptly sank and drowned.
I watched them fight for a while longer, then shot the last ball.
The Marines put the rest of the insurgents out of their misery.
T
hose were my strangest shots. My longest came around the same
time.
One day, a group of three insurgents appeared on the shore
upriver, out of range at around 1,600 yards. (That’s just under a
mile.) A few had tried that before, standing there, knowing that we
wouldn’t shoot them, because they were so far away. Our ROEs
allowed us to take them, but the distance was so great that it really
didn’t make sense to take a shot. Apparently realizing they were
safe, they began mocking us like a bunch of juvenile delinquents.

---

The FAC came over and started laughing at me as I eyed them
through the scope.
“Chris, you ain’t never gonna reach them.”
Well, I didn’t say I was going to try, but his words made it seem
like almost a challenge. Some of the other Marines came over and
told me more or less the same thing.
Anytime someone tells me I can’t do something, it gets me
thinking I can do it. But 1,600 yards was so far away that my scope
wouldn’t even dial up the shooting solution. So I did a little mental
calculation and adjusted my aim with the help of a tree behind one
of the grinning insurgent idiots making fun of us.
I took the shot.
The moon, Earth, and stars aligned. God blew on the bullet, and
I gut-shot the jackass.
His two buddies hauled ass out of there.
“Get ’em, get ’em!” yelled the Marines. “Shoot ’em.”
I guess at that point they thought I could hit anything under the
sun. But the truth is, I’d been lucky as hell to hit the one I was
aiming at; there was no way I was taking a shot at people who were
running.
That would turn out to be one of my longest confirmed kills in
Iraq.