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ne night we entered another village and took over a house at the
edge of some large open fields, including one used for soccer. We
set up without a problem, surveying the village and preparing for
any trouble we might face in the morning.
The tempo of the ops had slowed quite a bit over the past week
or two; it looked as if things were slacking down, at least for us. I
started thinking about going back west and rejoining my platoon.
I set up in a room on the second floor with LT. We had an Army
sniper and his spotter in the room next to us, and a bunch of guys
on the roof. I’d taken the .338 Lapua with me, figuring that most of
my shots would be on the long side, since we were on the edge of
the village. With the area around us quiet, I started scanning out
farther, to the next village, a little more than a mile away.
At some point I saw a one-story house with someone moving on
the roof. It was about 2,100 yards away, and even with a twenty-
five power scope I couldn’t make out much more than an outline. I
studied the person, but at that point he didn’t seem to have a
weapon, or at least he wasn’t showing it. His back was to me, so I
could watch him, but he couldn’t see me. I thought he was
suspicious, but he wasn’t doing anything dangerous, so I let him be.
A little while later an Army convoy came down the road beyond
the other village, heading in the direction of the COP we had staged
out of. As it got closer, the man on the roof raised a weapon to his
shoulder. Now the outline was clear: he had a rocket launcher, and
he was aiming it at Americans.
RPG.
We had no way of calling the convoy directly—to this day I
don’t know exactly who they were, except that they were Army.
But I put my scope on him and fired, hoping to at least scare him off
with the shot or maybe warn the convoy.
At 2,100 yards, plus a little change, it would take a lot of luck to
hit him.
A lot of luck.
Maybe the way I jerked the trigger to the right adjusted for the
wind. Maybe gravity shifted and put that bullet right where it had to
be. Maybe I was just the luckiest son of a bitch in Iraq. Whatever
—I watched through my scope as the shot hit the Iraqi, who
tumbled over the wall to the ground.
“Wow,” I muttered.
“You dumb lucky
....
,” said LT.
Twenty-one hundred yards. The shot amazes me even now. It
was a straight-up luck shot; no way one shot should have gotten
him.
But it did. It was my longest confirmed kill in Iraq, even longer
than that shot in Fallujah.
The convoy started reacting, probably unaware of how close
they’d come to getting lit up. I went back to scanning for bad guys.
A
s the day went on, we started taking fire from AKs and rocket-
propelled grenades. The conflict ratcheted up quickly. The RPGs
began tearing holes in the loose concrete or adobe walls, breaking
through and starting fires.
We decided it was time to leave and called for extraction:
Send the RG-33s!
(RG-33s are big bulletproof vehicles
designed to withstand IEDs and equipped with a machine-gun turret
on the top.)
We waited, continuing the firefight and ducking the insurgents’
growing spray of bullets. Finally, the relief force reported that it was
five hundred yards away, on the other side of the soccer field.
That was as close as they were getting.
A pair of Army Hummers blew through the village and appeared
at the doors, but they couldn’t take all of us. The rest of us started
to run for the RG-33s.
Someone threw a smoke grenade, I guess with the thought that it
would cover our retreat. All it really did was make it impossible for
us to see. (The grenades should be used to screen movement; you
run behind the smoke. In this case, we had to run through it.) We
ran from the house, through the cloud of smoke, ducking bullets and
dodging into the open field.
It was like a scene from a movie. Bullets sprayed and plinked
into the dirt.
The guy next to me fell. I thought he’d been hit. I stopped, but
before I could grab him, he jumped to his feet—he’d only tripped.
“I’m good! I’m good!” he yelled.
Together we continued toward the trucks, bullets and turf flying
everywhere. Finally, we reached the trucks. I jumped into the back
of one of the RG-33s. As I caught my breath, bullets splashed
against one of the bulletproof windows on the side, spiderwebbing
the glass.
A
few days later, I was westward-bound, back to Delta Platoon.
The transfer I’d asked for earlier was granted.
The timing was good. Things were starting to get to me. The
stress had been building. Little did I know it was going to get a lot
worse, even as the fighting got a lot less.
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