After climbing up an embankment onto the highway, the battalion sped off to the north to find a position for the night. My platoon was left behind to set up a hasty roadblock to protect the battalion while it searched. We stopped at the northern end of a modern bridge that swept up from Al Hayy and spanned the dirt lot we’d driven through. I put three Humvees abreast across the highway, with their guns pointed south. Anyone choosing to attack us would have to cross the bridge and face the massed firepower of our machine guns when they were up on the span with nowhere to hide. We had a good position, exposed atop the elevated roadway but also easily defended and identifiable to pilots overhead in case we needed air support.
“Espera, put a strand of wire two hundred meters down the highway and tie some red chem lights to it,” I said. I wanted to avoid a close-quarters firefight all alone there on the darkening highway at the city’s edge. Drivers would see the lights on the wire, and I hoped they would turn around.
“Roger that, sir.” He and two Marines jogged down the road, dragging a coil of concertina wire that Gunny Wynn and I had carried strapped to the hood of our Humvee. They tied three red chem lights to it and turned to run back to the platoon. Over the sound of our idling engines, I heard a vehicle motor droning closer. Two dim headlights popped over the crest of the bridge. Twenty rifles and machine guns zeroed in on them as Espera and his guys slipped back into our lines.
Wynn took control, saying, “Relax, gents. Wait till he gets to the wire and give him a chance to stop. If he comes through the wire, waste him.” Gunny Wynn was always at his best when our situation was at its worst. He exerted a natural calming influence on the platoon.
I slid the charging handle of my rifle back to check that I had a round in the chamber, then banged the forward assist to be sure it would fire when I pulled the trigger. One of my secret terrors was that I’d try to shoot in a firefight and hear only the hollow click of a firing pin striking empty air. I joined the rest of the platoon and watched the headlights growing larger.
Suddenly, it seemed as if the wire wasn’t nearly far enough away, and I chided myself for not putting it three hundred meters down the highway. If a car hit that wire doing sixty miles per hour, we’d have six seconds to react. On the radio, I learned that we had no air support and that the battalion was still searching for a place to set up for the night. Our instructions remained to stop any traffic approaching from the south.
I exhaled as brakes groaned and the headlights slowed. The beams swung around and were replaced by two red taillights receding back down the bridge. Wire and chem lights had been a good idea. The Iraqi driver had seen them, heeded them, and saved his life. The Marines stood up and stepped out from behind guardrails and armored doors. Smiles, jokes, and backslapping all around. A fight averted is second in exhilaration only to a fight won.
“Lieutenant, check out all that traffic to the west,” Sergeant Lovell said, pointing back toward the bridge we’d crossed earlier. A stream of headlights bobbed north along the river.
“Goddammit, they’re flanking us,” I said. I called the battalion and told them what we saw. It seemed as if our presence on the highway was well known and the fedayeen were either escaping to regroup somewhere to the north or were moving along our flank to attack us from another direction. Major Whitmer requested clarification of the vehicles’ exact location and number.
We peered hard through the dusk. Location was no problem — there was only one road over there, and they were clearly on it. We could see six or eight pairs of headlights at any given time, but they continuously came into view and then disappeared again behind the trees. Clearly, there were dozens of vehicles in all. They looked like open-bed trucks full of men — figures clustered together in the back, standing shoulder to shoulder. This was consistent with what we’d seen the fedayeen doing in other towns. Confident that we had a legitimate target, Major Whitmer called an artillery fire mission to the batteries south of Al Hayy, and we watched as rounds began flashing along the distant road. It would be great to kill some fedayeen, but pinpointing artillery onto individual moving trucks was nearly impossible, so we settled for making that escape route less attractive and perhaps keeping some of the bad guys bottled up in town for the next morning’s battle.
Our attention snapped back from the distant road to another pair of headlights rushing toward us on the bridge. Unlike the previous pair, these were high off the ground — a truck. I heard mashing gears as it accelerated over the crest of the bridge. It was moving fast, with no sign of slowing down. Maybe the driver couldn’t see us.
