“This guy could be anywhere,” I said. “He has to know we're looking for him by now. We may have to call it a day.”
“Maybe we should swing back da house one more time, make sure that white truck ain't there,” Staff Sergeant Bulldog recommended. “Just to make sure.”
“Sounds good to me.” We loaded back into our Strykers and moved east from whence we came, with Staff Sergeant Boondock's vehicle in the lead. After months of pleading, we had switched Staff Sergeant Boondock to the
senior scout position with Staff Sergeant Bulldog's blessing. This helped both men's careers as Staff Sergeant Bulldog was more than ready for a platoon of his own, and such a move freed him up in the event that one became available.
About halfway back to the Daraji village, our front Stryker slammed on its brakes, just past a small turn to our left that snaked north into more farmlands. This brought the entire patrol to a halt. A few seconds passed, and I keyed the hand mic.
“3, this is 1. What's up? Why'd you stop?”
“We're staring at a vehicle that matches the new description,” he said. “It was traveling west until it stopped when we came up on it.”
Before I could respond, Staff Sergeant Boondock spoke again. “He's moving! He's fucking gunning it north! We're past the turn though!”
“Take the lead!” I yelled to PFC Smitty, who slammed on the accelerator and took the north turn in pursuit of the fleeing truck. From the gunner's cupola, Sergeant Prime reported that we were about seventy-five meters behind the truck but closing. The Stryker engine hummed with glee as we winded through backcountry dirt roads on a high-speed canal chase.
My heart pumped with excitement, but I attempted to maintain calm on the radio. “2, 3, follow us. We got a bead on this fucker.” And then on the internal net: “Prime, when we get close, point the 240 [M240B machine gun] straight at him to let him know we mean business. Smitty, how fast are we going?”
“Heh, sir, you don't wanna know. We're good. Don't worry.” I found out later the answer to my question was forty-nine miles per hourâin a nineteen-ton armored vehicle.
Approximately thirty seconds later, with the truck's speed fading and us within twenty meters, Sergeant Prime aimed his machine gun straight north. “He sees it!” he reported. “The truck's turning right, into a driveway!”
“We're dismounting!” I yelled, while PFC Smitty parked our vehicle perpendicularly to the driveway. As the ramp dropped, I jumped out of the back with Sergeant Fuego, Corporal Spot, Specialist Tunnel, and an IA jundi right with me. Suge eventually followed.
As we rounded the corner of the driveway, a lone Iraqi male tossed a metallic object into the lawn, turned around, and crouched over in a defensive position resembling that of a cornered animal. He found five rifles oriented on the tiny spot just between his eyes. He then put his hands up in the air. No question existed as to the man's identity; in person Ali Daraji looked
almost exactly as he did in his target photograph, just with a beard and longer, curlier hair. My men searched him and the white truck, finding pistol cartridges, seven fake identification cards, a large hunting knife, and a computer hard drive. Corporal Spot and Specialist Tunnel walked into the lawn and found the Glock pistol he had thrown off his person moments before.
Staff Sergeant Boondock walked up a minute or so later with his dismounted team and found me crowing in jubilation as the soldiers finished up their search. Sergeant Fuego had flex-cuffed and blindfolded Ali and sat him underneath a nearby tree.
“We got the bastard!” I exclaimed, ecstatic that we had nabbed our guy, adrenaline from the chase still coursing through my veins. This moment was why I had fought to stay with my platoon, I was sure of it. This was why I had told the Establishment to kiss my skinny Irish ass. It made all of the melodrama of the last two months worth it. “We got this stupid-ass raghead, and he won't be killing anymore little girls with his stupid-ass rockets anytime soon!”
Staff Sergeant Boondock laughed. “Easy, sir. Save the racial epithets for me. I call them ragheads and hajjis; you're supposed to call them local-nationals.”
I bit my lip, chided myself, and nodded. Although amused, he was right. I needed to stay cool, no matter how excited or satisfied.
“But,” the NCO continued, “my preferred slur to describe the Iraqi people is camel jockey. If nothing else does, that better make the cut for that book you're going to write. And you better not quote me saying anything
soft
!”
I laughed. “Gotcha, on both accounts.” Then I grabbed Suge and started questioning Ali Daraji. Extremely unhelpful, he refused to answer anything about the rocket attack, or anything else for that matter. He just glared at me and Suge sullenly, not speaking at all. We relaxed his flex-cuffs and gave him a bottle of water anyway.
The house in whose driveway we made the arrest belonged to a family with no connection to Ali Daraji or his clan. Though initially surprised and scared to find us on their property, they became very hospitable once we explained how we had ended up there, and they brought out chai for everyone. The children of the house began chanting, “Bucca! Bucca! Ali Baba, Bucca!” (Prison, prison, the thief goes to prison) at Daraji.
We stacked all of the collected evidence in front of Daraji, took off his blindfold, and told him to smile his biggest terrorist smile. The three jundis
posed behind him, backs straight, faces hard. Then, with my digital camera, I snapped the photograph affectionately known as the money shot, nicknamed after the climactic move popularized in modern porno films. The money shot would be used both at Ali Daraji's eventual trial and for Coalition forces' posters and propaganda, showing the strength and independence of the Iraqi army to their people. With the rundown over, we now went back to the combat outpost.
“Thank you,” I whispered on the way back to no one in particular. “Thank you. I really needed that.”
ALL BECAUSE OF A POPSICLE STICK
“What the fuck was that?
Did you hear that?”
I sure had. The unmistakable sound of nearby rifle fire nipped at my eardrums over the running Stryker engine. Instinctively, Staff Sergeant Bulldog, Corporal Spot, PFC Smitty, and I dropped to one knee on the ground, using my vehicle as cover. We had just finished clearing a reported IED site on Route Tampaânothing more than a dirt mound with a long popsicle stick stuck in the middle of itâand were walking back to our Strykers when the gunshots started.
“3, this is 1,” I said into my dismount radio. “We're hearing gunfire. What do you guys see up there?”
Staff Sergeant Boondock's Stryker sat one hundred meters to our front, oriented due south, our direction of travel.
“We got six or seven dismounts spread across Tampa, walking in some kind of fucking line formation. Two of 'em just shot their rifles off to the west. Isn't there an IP station around here?”
“Roger,” I said. “There's one just southwest of your position.” As we remounted the Strykers, I intended to drive us down to the dismounts' location and verify whether they were IPs or not. I didn't think any type of enemy force would walk across Route Tampa in a line formation, but after seven or so months in Iraq, I'd seen stranger things.
“White, this is White 1. Let me know when you're redcon-1,” I said, now back on my vehicle. “3, we're going to drive down to those dismounts and see what the fuck is up. I think those guys are probably spooked Iraqi police,
but we'll see. After that, we'll continue to Nour's for security operations for the night. We'll be there for the long haul, until 0900, so remember to rotate out your gunners, andâ”
“Break! Break! Break!” Staff Sergeant Boondock's voice ripped across the radio net, interrupting my verbose mission vomit. “We're taking fire! I say again, my vehicle is being shot at by those mother fuckers!”
I waited for the inevitable burst of 50-caliber from Specialist Big Ern to return the favor. When it didn't come, morbid thoughts raced through my mind. No, I thought. Not another one. Not like this.
“Sir, I saw the muzzle flashes,” Sergeant Cheech said from my gunner's cupola. “They were definitely firing right at the 3 vehicle.”
“If it's IPs, flash your brights!” I finally shouted over the net. “If it's not, kill them!”
Three millennium seconds passed before Staff Sergeant Boondock replied.
“Big Ern lasered them, and whoever they are, they've put their hands up in the air. Sir, that shit was damn close. A couple rounds ricocheted off of the LRAS [laser range-acquisition sight, mounted on the top off all recon-variant Strykers], and Big Ern heard the rest whistle by.”
“We're driving up,” I said. “They better be IPs; otherwise, I'm going to kill them myself.”
“I'm going to kill them no matter what, especially if they are IPs,” Staff Sergeant Boondock responded, his voice as sharp as a razor blade. “They just tried to shoot my gunner.”
I had about fifteen seconds to figure out how to handle the situation. “Move up there, Smitty. Sergeant Cheech, call Squadron and tell them that we have received fire, most likely from IPs, but everyone is fine and I'm on the ground unfucking the goat rodeo. Haitian Sensation, wake up Suge and tell him what's going on.” Only one real option existed, and I knew it. The Iraqi police's notorious record for friendly fire was simply inexcusable after the amount of training American forces had provided them. Further, if I didn't get hot, Staff Sergeant Boondock would, and his wick didn't burn out as quickly as mine did; nor did it tend to care about things like the Geneva Convention. Finally, and certainly most importantly, Specialist Big Ern had been about a foot or two away from getting shot by Iraqis supposedly on our side. The platoon was in no position to load a second member into a medical helicopter because of yet another “accident.” By the time my fifteen seconds had ended and PFC Smitty had dropped my vehicle's back ramp, I pulsated
with an old friend. I hopped out and headed straight for the first IP uniform I saw, locking and loading my rifle for effect. I heard the golden round snap into place, there if I needed it.
“I will fucking kill you myself if you ever, ever pull that fucking shit again, you stupid-ass mother fucker!” I screamed, my voice echoing up and down Route Tampa. I made a move to shake the IP by his collar, thought better of it, and instead backed the bigger man up into a circle of his comrades. There were seven of them in total. Months' worth of frustration, anger, and passion poured out of me like water from an uncoiled hose. “You are the luckiest pieces of shit on this fucking planet tonight, because my soldier should have killed every single one of your asses with his 50-cal. Do you fucking understand? You all should be fucking DEAD. Don't you understand that?”
They didn't. Suge jogged up to us at this point, wheezing apologies. In addition to his normal slothfulness, he had stopped to put on his cotton mask. He distrusted the Iraqi police and claimed they were all JAM. Many terps in the Baghdad area shared his dread and paranoia of being identified and uncovered by the Iraqi police as an American interpreter. They had good reason to think such, tooâaccording to Suge, two months before my unit arrived in Iraq, one of their fellow terps had been dragged from his bed while home on leave and executed in his front yard by JAM members. His wife later told the other interpreters that three IPs had led JAM to their house.
My soldiers circled around us, establishing a security perimeter, and Staff Sergeants Bulldog and Boondock and Sergeant Fuego walked up behind me, listening to the conversation.
“What . . . what do you want me to say?” Suge asked, still breathing heavily.
I sized up the Iraqi police. Fourteen saucer eyes and seven hanging jaws met my glare. I had them by the balls, and they knew it. I took a deep breath and continued, no longer shouting. “Tell them they just fucking shot at us. Tell them they almost killed one of us. Tell them we are on the same fucking side. Tell them if they ever shoot at my platoon again, or at any American for that matter, I will kill every single one of them myself, with my own M4, right here in the middle of Tampa.”
Suge translated, struggling to match my fury, his mask drowning out most of the force of his words. I knew my language had to be very precise to make up for this. Asking him to remove his mask simply wasn't an option. This was his country, his home. If he felt uncomfortable here, he had his
reasons. Suge had risked enough already; he didn't need a punk junior officer from across the sea patronizing him by telling him his home was safe enough to walk around in sans mask.
“I want to know why they fired,” I said. “Did they have positive identification of an enemy force?”
“No,” Suge translated. “They say that they hear sounds and get scared.”
I felt Staff Sergeant Boondock bristle behind me. “How did they not see our lights?” I asked.
“They think that we are terrorists putting in IED. They say that Stryker lights look like car lights. They are crazy, Captain! Stryker lights are much higher in air! They are very scared what you will do to them.”
I looked at all seven IPs. “Who fired his weapon?” I asked.
No one spoke. They all simply looked at the ground. At least they're loyal to each other, I thought. That's something, at least.
“We can smell their rifles, sir,” Sergeant Fuego said. “We'll be able to tell that way very easily.”
“That's okay,” I replied. “I just wanted to see if any of them would speak. Suge, tell them that since they won't own up to who fired, I'm holding them all responsible. I want all of their identification cards.”