Two Cobra attack helicopters swooped in low. The lead Cobra jerked sideways to avoid a stream of orange fire reaching up at it from the trees. The Cobras rolled in to attack, firing guns and rockets into the tree line. Dirt and dust hung in the air, and another burst of AAA fire floated up toward the helicopters. The white car we’d seen in the field was driving in tight circles, flashing its headlights. We’d witnessed this act too many times and directed the Cobras in on the car. A burst of cannon fire stopped its circling, and the driver slumped as smoke rose from beneath the hood. The AAA gun continued to fire. It must have been jamming, or maybe its operators were poorly trained, because it would let a few rounds rip before falling silent for seconds or minutes before firing again. Better aim and quicker fire could have torn us up.
With our attention focused east across the river, I turned in surprise at an explosion behind me. A plume of dust rose from the field beyond the irrigation ditch. As I watched, another rose next to it, followed by a rattling thump. Mortars.
“Snipers! Start scanning. Find that mortar observer,” I shouted. Mortar fire is ineffective unless it’s controlled by someone who can see the intended target and send corrections to the gun crew, allowing them to walk their rounds in on whatever they’re trying to hit. In this case, we were the intended target, and we began a deadly race to kill the observer before he succeeded in walking the mortar rounds in on our position.
Gunny Wynn put his eye to the sniper rifle’s scope, bracing himself on the Humvee hood to steady his view.
I alternated between two radios and the binoculars around my neck. “How many crises can we handle at once?” I asked the question idly, almost rhetorically, expecting a grunt from Wynn.
Instead, he paused and looked up from the scope, suddenly thoughtful. Mortar rounds continued falling. I wanted to retract the question and tell him to keep scanning.
“Always one fewer than we have.”
Shawn Patrick and Rudy Reyes also searched. They climbed onto a berm, lying shoulder to shoulder and interlocking their legs for stability. Reyes peered through the spotting scope as Patrick adjusted his rifle for a long shot. Marine snipers have a mythical reputation, and for good reason. Scout-sniper school at Quantico weeds out seven of every ten Marines who begin the course. The graduates can hit human targets a mile away with their modified Remington hunting rifles.
“Sir, check out that gray car.” Reyes rose from his belly to point at a vehicle barely visible beyond an irrigation ditch far out in the field. “I range it at one thousand fifty yards. There’s a guy inside looking at us and talking into a radio or a cell phone.”
I raised binoculars to my eyes and confirmed Reyes’s report. The car sat all alone in the middle of the field. A dark figure inside was clearly looking our way, periodically raising something to his head and moving his mouth as if talking into it. I briefly wondered if this were evidence enough to kill a man. Immediate self-defense is easy; this was something colder and more calculating. Another mortar round crashed into the field, closer this time, with almost no gap between the explosion’s flash and its bang. Slowly, inexorably, they were walking the rounds in on top of us.
“Take the shot.” Snipers don’t shoot to warn or dissuade. Patrick would try for a lethal first-round hit in the head or torso. I watched him regulate his breathing as Rudy called the wind.
While the Cobras raced the AAA gun, and Patrick and Reyes raced the mortar observer, I worried about distractions. The military calls this a combined-arms ambush. The Iraqis had us on the horns of a dilemma — get up to move away from the mortars and risk catching a high-explosive antiaircraft round, or hunker down to hide from the AAA and wait for the mortars to rain hot steel down on us. Fortunately, they were doing a bad job of it, shooting from long range and with less-than-overwhelming firepower. My instincts told me that they also would try to hit us from behind. The whole battalion stretched to our north, and we had the protective river to our east. To the west lay an open field, where any threat would be exposed. I was worried about our rear — the dirt road that led south toward the villages we’d just passed through.
“Jacks! Stinetorf! They may try to hit us from behind. Remember positive ID. Lots of civilians are running around out here.” Jacks and Stine trained their machine guns down the road, flashing me a thumbs-up.
Sergeant Patrick’s rifle cracked. Rudy, staring through the spotting scope, watched the bullet’s vapor trail as it streaked toward the target. “Low.” He saw the round enter the center of the driver’s door. Patrick racked the rifle and prepared for another shot before the target could move. He fired again. “On target.” Rudy saw the round break the glass of the driver’s window. The man in the car crumpled out of sight.
