Hillah, Iraq.
Things were not right. We listened to fragmented and contradictory radio traffic in the team room. SWAT had canceled on us two nights in a row, which is extremely unusual. They were late tonight, and we sat in full Battle Rattle trying to figure out what was going on. The radio traffic told of some Iraqi outfit that had been ambushed by insurgents. SWAT had taken casualties which were being evacuated to a nearby American base while SWAT withdrew from the fight. The preliminary work for an armed response was developing.
I shifted in my plastic chair. Trying to be comfortable in war gear is like trying to be comfortable in scuba gear: there is really only one environment for which that stuff is made, and outside of that environment you just try not to fidget too much. I flipped the safety of my pistol on and off a few times, and shifted again in my seat as sweat coursed down my back. Pistol safeties are mostly academic. Nobody uses them because if a situation calls for pistol work, things are already plenty unsafe. My physical discomfort was ameliorated by the knowledge that everybody else appeared uncomfortable, too.
The command element began sending tanks down to the town where the ambush had occurred. The tension and frustration in the Team Room mounted because that was our target area. There was finally a stand up fight going on, and our SWAT guys was nowhere to be found. We can’t go anywhere without them because every operation has to have an Iraqi face on it.
My cargo pockets were filled with miniature fragmentation grenades, each about the size of a lemon. The grenades kept catching on the arm of the chair as I shifted around, which didn’t make me nearly as uncomfortable as it probably should.
The phone rang, and the Captain had a hurried and energetic conversation. Our SWAT guys had not showed up because they were the ones involved in the ambush. I wondered what SWAT was doing up there before the mission as we ran out to the vehicles. We mounted up to head to the American camp a few kilometers to the north. We planned to rendezvous with another Green Beret team currently on a mission to get our respective SWAT teams rallied. Then we were going to the fight.
As we headed up north, the other Green Beret team was attacked with a massive IED near the entrance of their camp. Two of their humvees were destroyed, with minor injuries to the Green Berets. Some of their SWAT members were killed, as SWAT drives unarmored pickups. We viewed the wreckage as we drove past: a tremendous crater in the road, with twisted and scorched vehicles nearby. Blood was splashed on the road and the vehicles. The wreckage looked like a piece of spectacular work by the Special Effects Department, and I felt badly that my initial reaction was not one of real war. I sincerely hoped that IEDs, like lightning, wouldn’t strike twice. This time, the axiom held true.
Once inside the gates of the camp, we set about organizing the raid. We planned on carrying out our original mission, and briefed SWAT accordingly. Unbridled anger bristled over the Iraq police like electricity. They were very, very angry, and we would have a job keeping them reined in. I had very
little planning to do as my job is to call air strikes, and based on the radio traffic I could hear, there was plenty of air if we needed it tonight. I dozed on the hood until it was time to go.
We rolled up north, and turned onto a long dirt road that ran east and west. An American tank followed our convoy down the road to provide support. Tanks provide an awful lot of support just sitting there. They just look mean. The road was predictably lined with houses and shops on one side, and a canal on the other. I hate canals.
SWAT remained remarkably well behaved as we swarmed over our objectives. The three houses were cleared quickly, and we caught all but one of our targets. The remaining target squirted out the back, and the Whiskey 7 Anglico vehicle provided mortar fired illumination as SWAT and the ODs tracked him down. In my very professional and unbiased opinion, Whiskey 7 didn’t do as good a job firing mortars as Yazoo 25.
I had taken cover next to a building that could have been a small roadside market, although now it was empty. I played my laser pointer over the brush at the side of the canal, looking for someone or something. I leaned around the corner to work my light over the edge of the road further down. There was the American tank right there, and shining a laser sight at a tank didn’t seem like a particularly clever thing to do. I got small behind the corner again, and looked around in an effort to at least appear vigilant.
NODs are only marginally useful in an urban environment. They are incredibly good at seeing in very low or no light. However, the slightest amount of light will show as a glare that can wash out the entire picture. I prefer the monocular NODs over the binocular because it is very easy to switch between
digital and analog vision. I like having both electric and biological vision with lots of light sources around. There are always a lot of places for bad guys to hide, and I hoped to see them first.
The really scary part of this mission was that the missions are becoming so routine: swoop in, catch bad guys, leave. I tried to remain focused, but it was tremendously hard to fight off the complacency.
Once the targets were in custody, the tank began turning around while we managed to get our own convoy back in order. We journeyed back down to the main highway, then turned in some prisoners to the command element with their tanks. SWAT wanted a few words with some others we had taken into custody. We headed back to the nearby American camp so those words might be had, and I might find a cup of coffee.