I talked Wynn onto them, and he rested his M40 sniper rifle on the hood of the Humvee. Patiently, he stared through the scope, ignoring the noise and confusion swirling around him. His finger tightened on the trigger, then slackened again, waiting for the perfect shot. I was turning to answer the radio when his rifle cracked.
“Don’t know if I hit ’em, but that’ll make ’em think twice.”
Two of the men ran out from behind a berm. Christeson opened up with a light machine gun, spitting 5.56 mm rounds at them in bursts of eight or ten. I saw through my binoculars that he was aiming high. Tracers arced over their heads as they ran.
“Lower, Christeson. You’re shooting too high.” My voice sounded calm, almost like a coach on the rifle range. Again, this surprised me. I was learning that leadership under fire is part theater. There must be competence to back it up, but appearances go a long way toward setting the tone for the whole platoon. Christeson dropped his rounds, and the men fell. “Keep an eye out, Christeson, and kill anyone else who comes at us from that direction.”
Only a football field away in the other direction were the walls of Ar Rifa. Like most Iraqi towns, this one blended the East African and Soviet brands of despair. The houses were some combination of mud, cinderblocks, and unfinished wood. Water cisterns perched on flat roofs, and makeshift television antennas crawled from upper-story windows like steel ivy. Dark windows, many without glass, broke the thick walls. The buildings sat close together, separated only by narrow alleys closed off with wrought iron gates. Government buildings, generally made of stone or poured concrete, stood out among the houses. Their spare, symmetrical forms oozed authoritarianism. Often their only ornamentation was an Iraqi crest over the door, and sometimes a tattered green-and-black flag flying in front. In my military judgment, Ar Rifa was a densely concentrated natural fortress of thick walls and tall gates, and we sat far too close to it.
Our sporadic gunfire died out, and no one moved in the fields around us. The Marines settled into a tense wait, eyeing their watches and damning RCT-1 for being so slow. I stood next to Christeson as he scanned the tree line. As far as I knew, the earlier shooting had been his first at close human targets, and I wanted to feel him out a bit.
“That was good shooting, Christeson.”
He looked surprised that I was addressing him. “Thanks, sir.” Christeson was the youngest member of the platoon. Normally, in a recon unit full of senior Marines, a private first class would be fresh meat. But Christeson could hold his own. He had received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy to become an officer but had turned it down after 9/11 to enlist as a Marine grunt. I respected him for that.
From the south, artillery boomed. They were shots, not impacts, and Wynn glanced at me with a raised eyebrow. I shook my head. Don’t know. The rounds rustled overhead and exploded into the northern end of Ar Rifa. Someone was controlling the fire mission, and the only Americans up there were recon’s other companies. I got on the radio. Alpha Company was shooting at the Ba’ath Party headquarters. We wondered about the wisdom of dropping high-explosive artillery shells into a crowded town, regardless of the target’s legitimacy. More questionable news followed: our company commander was on his way to our position to work up a mission to deter those gunmen moving in the trees to our east.
I met the captain when his Humvee pulled into our small circle. “Sir, we took some shots at them, and they seem to have gotten the idea,” I said. “We’re glassing the area but haven’t seen anyone moving.”
“Yeah, but Alpha Company’s up there calling for fire, and I want to call a mission, too.”
I couldn’t believe it. We were going to fire artillery to keep up with Alpha Company. “Sir, I’d rather go on doing what we’re doing. We’ve got things under control.”
“You just keep tabs on your platoon, Lieutenant Fick, and let me work up the mission.” Three minutes later, I listened as he made a botched call for fire to the battalion. I sat on my hands until he called in a target location only two hundred meters from where we stood. Anything inside six hundred meters was considered “danger close” — requiring special care due to its proximity to friendly troops. In this open ground, we’d be showered with shrapnel from our own rounds. I started to intervene.
“Sir, that’s way inside danger close. Cancel the mission,” Gunny Wynn said with growing alarm.
“We’re shooting it. Keep quiet,” he replied.
“It’s an empty field!” I shouted. “We’re watching it. You’re going to hit us with the rounds, and probably RCT-1, too, since we don’t know when they’ll be coming up the road. Cancel the fucking mission.” I reached to take the radio handset from him.
I later found out that Major Whitmer was on the other end of the radio, and he was even angrier than I was. He threw the handset down in disgust, screaming about “that fucking idiot,” whom the battalion staff secretly called “Shitman.” His candor earned him a disapproving look from Colonel Ferrando, since the division chief of staff was within earshot. But he rejected the mission and put a limit on the damage wrought by the captain’s ineptitude. The CO drove off after threatening me for challenging his authority.
In keeping with our tradition of a crisis a minute, Sergeant Espera ran up, crouching low behind the Humvees to thwart any snipers watching us. “Sir, I’ve got a flat tire. We need to change it now so we’re ready to move.”
I considered this, using the framework my Quantico instructors referred to as “turning the map around” — looking at the options from the enemy’s perspective. What would I do, as a fedayeen commander, if I saw a Marine Humvee up on a jack with men frantically changing a flat tire? I’d capitalize on their weakness and attack. At worst, I’d catch them immobile and inflict casualties. At best, I’d force them to withdraw, leaving the Humvee for me to burn as a trophy of American impotence.
“Espera, I can’t let you do that here,” I said. “You have to take your team and drive up to Goodwrench’s position. They have more people and can help you change the tire faster. Sorry. Get your boys together and go now. We could be moving any minute.”
He shot me a glance, half-trusting and half-doubting. Another second’s consideration and Espera nodded, seeing the logic. “Roger that, sir. I’ll call you when we’re en route back here.”
Espera’s open-back Humvee crept out from the drainage ditch and raced up the highway, bumping unevenly on its rim. Watching them go, I felt another pang of responsibility, and of respect.
Three hours after stopping, we still hadn’t seen a single Marine from RCT-1. Watching the sun slide down the sky, I was more and more uncomfortable about sitting in one place. Tactical catastrophes are rarely the outcome of a single poor decision. Small compromises incrementally close off options until a commander is forced into actions he would never choose freely. I didn’t want to become the subject of a case study taught at Quantico, and I certainly didn’t want to be pictured in Dr. Death’s killology slide show.
Although Ar Rifa’s gates and shutters had been closed when we arrived, curious townspeople gradually began to venture outside the walls, peering at us. Some waved, while others drew their fingers across their throats. Up the road, dozens of Iraqis scoured the pavement, scavenging spent brass bullet casings from the earlier shooting. I called battalion headquarters to request a translator. Ten minutes later, a Humvee roared down the road and deposited Mish in the mud next to me.
Mish, a Kuwaiti, despised the Iraqis, who had overrun his country only a decade before. He weighed more than 250 pounds, and he kept his long hair coiled in a pile beneath an American-issue helmet. Even after the Marine Corps concluded that weapons of mass destruction were no longer a threat and allowed us to remove our MOPP suits, Mish could never be found without his chemical suit, gloves, and cumbersome rubber boots. Now he eyed the growing crowd with distaste before ambling across the road to talk.