Hillah, Iraq.
We had another regrettable mixup between local and North American power today. Happily, I was not involved, but a television has met its demise. The Marines clean up the Special Forces recreational area as a token of thanks for the food and entertainment facilities the SF guys provide. Today the Marines went all out, mopping and Clorox-ing the concrete floor. They went so far as to unplug and move everything that could be moved, including the big television. After the cleaning, an unsuspecting Marine plugged the low voltage American television into the high voltage outlet.
Nobody knew anything until the Marine came into the office part of the building, discretely asking one of the SF guys to “come here a minute”. We all knew from the Marine’s tone that something was amiss, so, of course, we all went. Any time someone discretely asks someone in a crowd to “come here a minute”, you can bet something zesty is going on.
The television was smoking. It was smoking with that cheesy dry ice effect normally reserved for bad movies. The smoke was so cheesy that we all laughed out loud. There was this thick miasma issuing from the front of the television, cascading down to the floor. Ozone hung thick in the air.After a good laugh, the Marines replaced the community TV with one of their own, and we ordered another from our HQ, as there is money for things like televisions. I can assure you that the poor Marine has most certainly not heard the end of this one, though.
I have a running bet with the gunners of the vehicles. I always bet the gunner in the vehicle I am riding in on whether we will see any action tonight. I always allow them to pick which side of the bet they want, and the standard bet is a quarter. The Marines have been pessimistic lately, so they pick No Action, and I have had to pay out all my quarters. I am having trouble finding change, as the local exchange doesn’t make change in coins, but pays out change in PX pogs, which can be redeemed at exchanges only at the face value. The Marines have indicated that they will accept pogs as payment for a debt, but I don’t even have any pogs anymore, as I rarely go to the exchange. However, I will dig up find some hard currency so the tradition can continue.
I have had to submit a number of air support requests for missions in the next couple of days. In the process, I have come across the list of all the callsigns of air units in country. I found some really good ones on the list: Hellcat, Straightedge, Rawhide, and Darkstar. The best callsign I saw on there was “Anger”. I have heard of a SEAL unit with the callsign “Malice”, which is awesome. Anglico’s original call sign was Lightning, which was respectable in the “Knowing Nod Because That Sounds Cool” department. Alas, we had to give it up when an active duty Anglico unit showed up in country, and somehow convinced The Powers That Be that they had first right to the Lightning callsign. When we had to change our callsign, the Colonel came up with one on the spot that was met with less than overwhelming enthusiasm: Yazoo. Yep, that’s right.
Your steely-eyed commandos are going by the callsign Yazoo. And we are getting heat from everyone about it. Of course, no one can say anything to the colonel, and it is apparently a big challenge to arbitrarily change a unit callsign, not to mention the loss of face for admitting that your callsign was dumb. But it is tough to sound cool when you have to reply, “Anger 55, this is Yazoo 17…go ahead.”
Chow once again featured specialty drinks. The Europeans went crazy with the Coors Cutter. I saw no Mongolians at chow, but I am sure they got into the Red Bull because they were already shooting at stuff from the sniper towers before the sun went down.
Levi finally got the pumps for the pool. The filter material is on order, and the chemicals should be arriving soon. If we didn’t have all this work, we could get the pool done much faster. The pumps are labeled as 75 HP, which either means the labeling quality control needs some attention, or our pools is going to be incredibly filtered.
We finally got permission to work outside of our Area of Operations (AO). Our mission for tonight was to go arrest three very, very bad guys. These guys are so bad Hannibal Lecter would say, “Man, you need to lighten up.” In addition to the quotidian gun running and IED/VBIED construction, these guys are into kidnapping, torture, and murder. They are responsible for some of the gruesome execution videos that seem regrettably popular with the media. The really sad part about this mission is that the three live within a few hundred yards of each other, about 1000 meters from a huge base manned by a regular Army unit that has done nothing about them.
The mission had a perfect setup. The moon is in its last quarter, and wasn’t even due to rise until after we planned to be done. Even better, the booger eaters lived right on a four lane highway that is a straight shot up the road from our base. The Special Forces guys even managed a stealthy drive by with a camera, so we knew exactly which houses to go for. I managed to wrangle a couple of F-16s to provide air cover and airborne sensor capability in case some bad guys ran out the back door. Our schedule was good, and the F-16s were scheduled to meet us ten minutes before the strike time to get them coordinated and on station to watch for bad guys running away. The regular Army unit whose
backyard we were cleaning up even agreed to provide a Quick Reaction Force in case things got too brisk. We were going to be all over these guys like a hobo on a ham sandwich.
The plan was simple. Simple plans are good. Special Forces, Anglico, El Sals, and SWAT were going to roll in convoy to the objective area. 2000 meters south of the objective area (GPS is one of the most amazing and under appreciated inventions of the twentieth century), the convoy would split into two assault elements and a security element. Assault elements hit the houses, and Anglico provides security. Ready…break.
The brief was so straight forward that we actually had a bit of time before we had to marshall up the convoy. I cleaned and loaded my weapons, cleaned and loaded the coffee maker, and even casually loaded up my gear in the vehicle. Lance Corporal Conway, my usual gunner, was optimistic and ready for action. He owes me two quarters, so he opted to raise the bet to fifty cents and chose Action for tonight. He figured the bad guys would fight, and he wanted to even up the betting score.
Loaded down with 5.56mm justice and a piping hot cup of Kona Blend, the Justice League set about fighting crime for the night.
I have developed a theory that I will call the “Hitting The Fan” theory, at least until I come up with something more clever. Trouble rarely comes singly. When things go wrong, a lot of things tend to go wrong. The day of your big presentation, you will not only oversleep, but the car will be low on gas and you will spill coffee on your new pants.
For me, I had a tough time with the air I ordered up. I don’t think I helped contribute to mission success, unless standing around looking good helps achieve success. If so, then I will stick with what I am good at.The vehicles marshalled up. In a stunning and uncharacteristic display of initiative, the Iraqis didn’t even bother asking us for water, opting instead to raid the Poles’ supply. Vehicles found their places, and things were looking good.
Then the Iraqi Colonel in charge of SWAT decided to pay a visit. He wanted to see how his guys were doing, and chat with the Special Forces and El Sal commanders to see what his guys needed, the recent insurgent unrest in Iraq, and boy hasn’t it been hot lately. Dealing with host nation people, particularly colonels, is a tricky business. Coalition Forces can’t do a thing without an Iraqi presence, so we have to tend that relationship carefully. And Arabs really aren’t big on punctuality, so time lines don’t really hold much sway. The colonel gabbed for nearly 45 minutes, causing the convoy to leave half an hour late.
Normally, this is not such a big deal. However, one must be timely when dealing with airplanes as a practical matter, as well as professional courtesy. As soon as we cleared the gate, I contacted the primary controlling agency to advise that we were running late. As I have only a short range radio to control air, I couldn’t contact the F-16s to advise them of our delay. Not that it mattered really, because the F-16s had probably already been airborne for a while to be at the objective on time. Otherwise, things ran smoothly. The roads were empty as it was two hours after curfew. At the agreed upon waypoint, the line of vehicles split into three assault forces, and rolled along in formation, just like the Blue Angels.
I finally got in contact with the F-16s as we ingressed the target area. As they got their eyes on the convoy, we rolled into town.
The left assault force converged on the left set of houses. Anglico in the center rolled into the middle of town, and stopped in the road. The right assault force hit their objective on the right side of the road.
Lots of armed men jumped out of heavily armed vehicles. They never knew we were coming to town.
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM
The demolitions guys blew down the four gates with water impulse charges, all within ten seconds of each other. SWAT stormed the houses, and began clearing rooms. I could hear the flash bang grenades going off. The SWAT and Special Forces guys didn’t seem to want to take any flash bangs back with them.
We were so late on the target that the F-16s needed to leave for gas. This wasn’t so bad as we had achieved a rather thorough surprise, and no one was running out the back doors. The jets left which gave me time to practice a skill that is becoming all too rare: staying the hell out of the way. I provided security with my rifle, and generally kept my eyes open for things. This also provided an opportunity to take some photos of your Marines and soldiers in action:
Suddenly, two Apache helicopters flew low over the areas, and began orbiting overhead. Then a convoy of humvee gun trucks and trucks full of soldiers turned the corner, and began speeding towards the objective area. We flashed our lights to tell them to stop, and they flashed their lights to tell us to let them through. There was a tense moment while we figured out they were Americans, and they found we were, too. They were the Quick Reaction Force on duty at the nearby camp. The QRF was never told we were operating in the area, and had mounted up quickly to go find out what all the noise was. Actually, we were pretty impressed that they Reacted, and more so that it was Quickly. They even brought helicopters. Our guys had not really counted on much help from that bunch if things got warm.
We managed to capture two of the three thugs we were after, and only missed the third because he hadn’t come home that night. The primary target was trying hard to buy his freedom, and ratted out six of his henchmen on the Deathsquads. Ultimately, we arrested eight very bad guys.
The jets returned as the convoy formed back up.
The jets orbited overhead until we were back in the camp. We debriefed until approximately 0330 in the morning. As we were finishing up, I got a phone call for the next operation planned, which was to start in approximately 20 hours. We had managed to get some major air assets as we are going after a very large target, and there were questions to be answered. I started working the phones and the email, and was getting a lot of work done until the secure internet connection failed. I learned later that at midnight Zulu (Greenwich Mean Time), all the encrypting software expired because it was now a new month. So, at four in the morning (Iraq is four hours ahead of GMT, and eight hours ahead of the East Coast), I was suddenly unable to use the email. I flailed with it for a while, then worked the phones to cover as much as I could. Finally, I called it quits about 0530 to get some sleep.