Shock Factor: American Snipers in the War on Terror

CHAPTER TWO Night Assault

For months, the tide of war in Iraq had been turning against the Coalition. Thanks to the cunning strategy employed by al-Qaida Iraq’s commander, Musab al-Zarqawi, the country had fallen into a brutal civil war drawn along ethnic and religious lines. Using foreign volunteers as suicide bombers, Zarqawi had unleashed a wave of terror not on American forces, but on the Shia majority within Iraq. His minions blew up markets, mosques, and local councils and assassinated Shia officials, all in a bid to destabilize Iraq so completely that the American effort in the nation would be swamped by violence and doomed to defeat.

That spring, the strategy was working. Zarqawi’s cells had killed thousands of innocent Shia, who in turn had formed local militias that retaliated against their Sunni countrymen in night raids full of shocking levels of brutality. The war devolved into a bloody street-by-street battle for control of all of Iraq’s major cities. Where once Sunni and Shia lived together in harmony, by 2006 they were ruthlessly purging their neighborhoods and carving out enclaves as the sectarian murders left scores, if not hundreds, of dead every night.

Caught in the middle trying to control this Arab versus Arab bloodletting was the American occupation force in Iraq. Both sides carried out attacks against U.S. troops whenever it suited them. The Shia, led by Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Militia, had launched two major rebellions in 2004, followed by periodic upticks of violence in 2005 and early 2006. Meanwhile, the Sunni population, under attack by increasingly reckless and barbaric Shia militias, turned to al-Qaida in Iraq for protection and help. In Sunni-dominated areas, such as the districts south of Baghdad, the Sunni insurgents virtually controlled the countryside. Known as the Sunni Triangle, the area around Youssifiyah became one of the most dangerous places in Iraq. Here, sixteen miles southwest of Baghdad, hundreds of Coalition soldiers died fighting in the town and its environs, mostly to the roadside bombs the Sunni cells had so craftily perfected. From October 2005 through June 2006, the American units around Youssifiyah were attacked 2,296 times. The insurgents had detonated over 1,600 roadside bombs during those attacks.

The legendary 101st Airborne Division joined the fight around Youssifiyah in the late fall of 2005. From their first missions, the Screaming Eagles encountered fearsome opposition as these young Americans were on the receiving end of most of those twenty-two hundred attacks. The 2005–2006 deployment became a hellish slugfest of roadside bombs, sudden ambushes, and betrayals by traitorous Iraqi “allies.” The 101st’s 1st Battalion, 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment suffered twenty-one killed in action during this deployment, along with scores more wounded from an original force of about seven hundred.

For the men of the 1/502, each day began and ended with uncertainty. Spread dangerously thin across checkpoints and forward operating bases, they had little support available when the enemy struck at them. As the losses mounted, morale plummeted. For some of the soldiers, the enemy became all Iraqis, not just the al-Qaida-armed and — financed insurgents. What followed was a descent into one of the worst chapters of the Iraq War.

Specialist David Babineau should not have been on bridge duty that night. At twenty-five, he’d done his eight years in the Army and had been ready to get out the previous fall. But as his platoon readied for a second Iraq deployment, he’d been stop-lossed. Instead of serving out the end of his contract and hanging up his uniform, the father of three found his service extended until after this tour in the Middle East.

He never grumbled about that. Rather, he’d always exhibited leadership skills and had a knack of getting along with everyone. At times officers took note and asked him why he didn’t push to make sergeant. Truth was, he didn’t care about rank. He was happy where he was, and looked forward to leaving the Army when 1/502nd returned home later in the fall of 2006.

On the night of June 16, Babineau was detached from his platoon with two other soldiers, Private Thomas Tucker and Private Kristian Menchaca, to guard a bridge over a canal outside of Youssifiyah. The original bridge had been destroyed at some point earlier in the war. Now an armored engineer vehicle rested in its place. Called an AVLB, for armored vehicle-launched bridge, the massive vehicle carried a metal temporary bridge on its back that could be unfolded to cross such a divide as the canal. With it in place, the Coalition needed to guard it, lest it be destroyed or even stolen by the local insurgents.

For weeks, Bravo Company, 1/502 had parceled out men and Humvees to guard a series of checkpoints around Youssifiyah. The nearest one from the AVLB was almost a mile away and out of visual sight. With so many losses — Bravo had taken ten casualties by June 16—and with many of the men on leave, by mid-June the company was running at about two-thirds normal strength. Without the resources to properly man all the checkpoints, 1st Platoon, Bravo Company was reduced to guarding the bridge with a single Humvee and three soldiers.

It was a threadbare way to wage a war, and the men in the Humvee that night were bone tired and jaded.

Menchaca, a Texas-born Hispanic with an easy grin and fun-loving personality, had gone on leave only a few weeks before. His family back in south Texas was shocked at the twenty-three-year-old’s gaunt appearance and nervousness. He chained-smoked — something he had not done before the deployment, and spoke of how his base had burned down in a fire, leaving some of the men of 1st Platoon without any clothes save the uniforms on their backs. They received no influx of supplies, no additional clothes. Before he departed for Iraq at the end of his leave, he asked his family to send him some basics — soap, baby wipes, plus Oreo cookies. He always had a weak spot for them. He returned to his brothers in 1st Platoon, where his resolve and devotion never failed, even in the worst moments. On the sixteenth of June, he volunteered for the AVLB guard detail so another soldier could stay behind and enjoy his birthday.

Thomas Tucker, a twenty-five-year-old from tiny Madras, Oregon, had been equally weary, but he’d done his best to hide from his family the daily reality he faced. Before he’d headed out, he left a voice mail message back home explaining he was going on a little vacation and he’d be back soon.

A tough kid from the hardscrabble eastern Oregon high desert, Tucker grew up hunting and fishing like most rural Oregon boys. He loved to work on old pickup trucks, and his sense of humor had a knack of drawing people to him. When friends dug a little deeper, they found beyond his small-town crust a talented artistic soul. He loved music, played in the high school band, and had a penchant for sketching and drawing.

Another time, just before he went into battle, he left another message for his mother, “Be proud of me, Mom. I’m defending my country.” At his core, Thomas Tucker was an old-school American patriot.

The three men hunkered down beside the engineer vehicle and bridge and did their best to combat the boredom they would face for the next twenty-four hours. The company’s thin ranks forced the platoons to change shifts at the checkpoints once a day, instead of every four to eight hours. The men endured hour after hour of mind-numbing nothingness, parked beside the canal in the darkness of a steaming hot Iraqi night.

They did not know al-Qaida was watching them.

Babineau had seen firsthand how insidious al-Qaida’s operatives could be at times. A few months before, Babineau had been at another checkpoint when an Iraqi civilian came through it. The man was well known by the men of 1st Platoon. Always friendly to Americans, he had given the battalion tips on enemy activity in the past. This time, as he walked through the checkpoint, Babineau’s friend, Sergeant Ken Casica, approached the man to chat with him. Casica, who had tattooed his daughter’s name on his arm before the deployment, said something to the Iraqi. The man spun around and pulled a 9mm pistol from his waistband. He shot Casica in the neck, then turned his weapon on Staff Sergeant Travis Nelson, a forty-one-year-old Alabama native. Nelson had been facing the other way, and the Iraqi’s first shot caught him in the back of the head. Babineau dove for cover behind a Humvee as the gunman fired at him, then tried to kill the soldier in the turret of the vehicle. He missed, and a second later, a short burst from the turret gunner’s M240 Bravo machine gun blew the Iraqi’s head off.

After that incident, the men of 1st Platoon treated every approaching Iraqi as a potential threat.

But on this night, not a soul stirred — at least not that the three men at the bridge could see. But in the darkness, hiding in the shadows, was a well-trained team of devoted Jihadists. Silently, they watched their target, waiting for the moment to strike.

Al-Qaida’s spies had long since noticed the Americans left only one Humvee’s worth of troops to guard the engineer bridge. In Baghdad proper, it had become standard Army procedure as early as 2004 to never leave the wire with less than three vehicles. Here in the heart of al-Qaida Iraq’s stronghold, the lone Humvee was terribly vulnerable, and the insurgents knew it. They watched the shifts change every day, and they plotted an attack. They knew the nearest American reinforcements were almost a mile away, so they devised a way to delay their response. That left only a nearby Iraqi Army outpost as the only possible source of help for the three Americans. The Iraqi troops were poorly trained and undermotivated. Either al-Qaida convinced them to stay out of the fight, or they had no stomach for it. Whichever the case, the insurgent force knew it would not be impeded by America’s Coalition partner.

The hours dragged by that night. Tucker, Babineau, and Menchaca let their guard down as the darkness offered nothing but emptiness and boredom. Exhaustion set in. Almost twenty-four hours into their shift, they retreated into the Humvee, closed the armored doors, and pulled off their heavy Kevlar helmets. One of them tossed a pack of Skittles into his helmet.

The eyes on them had seen this happen before. In early June, the assault team had rehearsed their attack for two straight days as part of their final preparations.

Now was their moment. Sweeping out of the darkness, AK-47s blazing, they charged the Humvee. The soldiers bailed out of their vehicle, but they stood no chance. Before any of them could fire a shot, the enemy probably wounded Tucker and Menchaca. Babineau, in a desperate bid to escape the onslaught, bolted down the bank of the canal. Behind him, the al-Qaida assault team opened fire, raking his back and head with bullets. He fell dead into the reeds and shallow water at the edge of the canal.

The soldiers at the nearest checkpoint heard the gunfire and tried to radio the men at the engineer bridge. When they received no response, they climbed into a Humvee to go investigate. The vehicle refused to start — its battery was dead. Sick with worry, the soldiers dismounted and ran to their only other ride, an ancient, Vietnam-era M-113 armored personnel carrier. The track spun onto the road and rumbled toward the bridge, only to encounter two large objects blocking the route ahead. The driver stopped, worried that there might be a roadside bomb.

Time ticked by. The four men in back grew almost frantic. Finally, they piled out and decided to run the rest of the distance on foot. The M-113 and its crew remained behind for an hour and a half, stalled by a couple of oil drums the insurgents had placed across the road.

Fifteen minutes after they’d heard gunfire, the four men from 1st Platoon reached the engineer bridge. The Humvee appeared intact, its M240 Bravo machine gun still in the turret. Both doors on the right side were lying open. Spent shell cases littered the Iraqi dirt. At first they found no sign of their brothers. Then, beside the Humvee, they encountered a pool of blood. Then another. Thirty yards from the Humvee, they found Babineau’s body.

Thomas Tucker and Kristian Menchaca were nowhere to be found.

With dawning horror, the soldiers who first responded to the scene realized their brothers had been captured. There was no worse fate for an American in Iraq. Everyone had seen the al-Qaida torture videos. They knew that if they couldn’t find Tucker and Menchaca quickly, the worst would happen.

The platoon converged on the scene. They went to every nearby house and dwelling, interrogating the inhabitants and demanding to know what they’d seen. If anyone resisted, or seemed to know more than they were letting on, the men unleashed cold fury on them.

When the Screaming Eagles went to find out what the Iraqi Army troops had seen, they listened in stunned disbelief as their Coalition allies professed ignorance. They told the Americans they hadn’t heard or seen a thing. The lies were outrageous — everyone in the area heard hundreds of gunshots from AK-47s being fired full auto. The Iraqi Army reaction only stoked 1st Platoon’s rage.

First platoon searched for their captured men for sixteen hours straight, even as the division began to flood the area with more troops. The 4th Infantry Division sent reinforcements into the area as well. An Air Force parajumper team arrived, as did specialized dive units. Drones, helicopters, and jet fighters soon buzzed overhead.

The search soon focused on a nearby village and a power plant. At the entrance to the plant, an American discovered blood smeared on a bridge handrail. Blood trails and drag marks led from the road into the facility. All through the following morning, American troops searched every inch of the power station. They found a chunk of American body armor, and an abandoned white truck with congealing blood pooled in its bed.

The search continued. Hundreds, then thousands of American troops and Iraqi commandos descended on the area. They searched villages, conducted air assaults, interrogated detainees. All through the seventeenth, the insurgents emerged from concealed positions to launch hit-and-run attacks on the search teams. Mortar fire rained down on the Americans. The fighting killed one Coalition soldier and wounded a dozen more. Thirty-six insurgents were captured and two al-Qaida operatives killed. The area was laced with roadside bombs, twelve of which went off and destroyed or damaged eight vehicles.

Through the explosions, mortar fire, and AK-47 ambushes, the Americans pressed on in search of their lost soldiers. Finally, on the afternoon of Sunday, June 18, a sweep through the village of Rushdi Mullah netted two prisoners who told their interrogators where Tucker and Menchaca could be found.

Two miles northeast of the power plant, American troops located their mutilated bodies. Al-Qaida had mined the road around them with bombs, and had booby-trapped their remains. It took twelve hours for specialized engineers to defuse the bombs and clear a path to the bodies. When the Americans finally reached them, they discovered Menchaca and Tucker had been tortured. Postmortem, Tucker had been decapitated. Both had been eviscerated, then dismembered.

The Mujahideen Shura Council of Iraq, one of the al-Qaida front groups in country, later released a video showing Jihadists defiling the bodies. One jubilant terrorist held Thomas Tucker’s head up for the camera. The four-minute, thirty-nine-second video extolled the greatness of the holy fighters responsible for the mutilation, and announced that Abu Ayyub al-Masri, al-Zarqawi’s replacement as head of al-Qaida Iraq (Zarqawi had been killed by U.S. forces earlier in June), had personally killed both men.

The U.S. Army vowed to track down those responsible and mete out justice. In the meantime, the bodies of the three Screaming Eagles were returned to the States. In Madras, the memorial service for Thomas Tucker drew thousands of people. The procession to the cemetery where he was laid to rest was eight miles long — longer than Madras itself. Late into the evening that night, hundreds of residents protectively ringed the Tucker residence, keeping outsiders and reporters at bay as they consoled the family.

Back in Iraq, American intelligence concluded that al-Qaida had lied about al-Masri killing the two soldiers personally. Although Zarqawi had been filmed slowly decapitating an American contractor in 2003, the claim that al-Masri was involved in the murders was seen as a bid by al-Qaida to build up their new commander after Zarqawi’s death.

But who had planned and carried out the attack? And who had killed Tucker and Menchaca once the al-Qaida assault force had seized them?

Months passed seemingly without any progress in finding those responsible. Finally, in 2008, the U.S. Army developed enough evidence against three men to hand them over to an Iraqi court. DNA evidence convinced the court that one of the men had been in the truck used to drag the bodies. He received a death sentence for his role. The other two were acquitted.

Back home, pundits railed against this meager response. Where was justice for the families? One man out of the entire team was convicted? It seemed a pathetic effort compared to the barbarity that befell these two warriors. Bloggers howled at our apparent impotence, one even went so far as to say President Bush should have personally announced he would have every man responsible hunted down, much as Russian president Vladimir Putin had done after a terrorist attack in his country.

In the shadows, another story developed, far away from the media’s prying eyes. Unknown to the American public, the Iraq War’s most deadly sniper had been put on al-Qaida’s trail.

CHAPTER THREE Al Shatan

That June, sixty miles northwest of where al-Qaida captured and killed Thomas Tucker, Kristian Menchaca, and David Babineau, one of the pivotal battles of the Iraq War was raging. After the second Battle of Fallujah in November 2004, much of the surviving insurgent leadership retreated to Ramadi, a city of about 500,000 people that sprawls for dozens of miles along the banks of the Euphrates River. It had long served as the capital of Al Anbar Province, which made control of it both strategic and symbolic. Despite every Coalition effort, in the spring of 2006 the city remained a hornet’s nest. Daily, American patrols trying to secure Ramadi’s streets ran into fierce firefights or roadside bombs. Iraqi police who dared to take a stand against the insurgents had their families threatened or killed. Some were captured and beheaded by al-Qaida zealots. Others simply walked off the job, or did al-Qaida’s bidding, which inflicted major setbacks on the Coalition’s effort to establish Iraqi control of security in the area.

In early June, just after Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaida Iraq, was killed by USAF bombs, the Coalition began to concentrate troops around Ramadi. Its citizens learned of this development and, fearing a second Fallujah, began to leave in droves. A big battle was in the offing, and both sides prepared for another brutal urban slugfest.

The Americans assembled a joint force that included parts of the Army’s legendary 1st Armored Division and the 8th Marine Regiment. Instead of assaulting the city directly, the Americans threw a cordon around Ramadi, using outposts to choke off the flow of supplies and reinforcements to the insurgents hiding within the labyrinth of streets and alleyways.

Al-Qaida’s legions did not sit quietly as they were surrounded. Using teams of up to a hundred men, they assaulted many of the newly established American combat outposts and tried to overrun the troops there. Pitched small-unit battles raged around these key positions, but the Americans held firm and drove off the attackers.

Meanwhile, instead of launching a full-scale assault into the city, the Americans moved in one block at a time. Hoping to keep the damage to the city to a minimum, artillery and air strikes were used only as a last resort. Without such firepower, sniper teams became the best way to help support the patrols pushing into the city. Both sides deployed some of the most deadly snipers of the war, and Ramadi became fertile hunting ground for these shooters.

Rumors swirled through the American ranks that an Iraqi Olympics sharpshooter had been brought into Ramadi to help beat back the Coalition offensive. Known only as “Mustafa,” there is some doubt as to whether he was a concoction of al-Qaida propaganda or an actual person. Either way, the effect on American morale was significant, especially when the insurgent shooters began killing Marines and GI’s with devastating, long-range shots. Like our snipers, the enemy’s favored high ground. They took to using the local children’s hospital for hide sites, which prompted the staff there to evacuate the kids to the lower levels of the facility. Ramadi’s main hospital, a towering structure with a commanding view, also became a key sniper position, one from which the enemy sharpshooters claimed many Coalition lives.

As the battle slowly developed, SEAL Team Three deployed to Ramadi to assist with the offensive that spring. Arriving a short time after the majority of the team reached the area was thirty-two-year-old Chris Kyle. He’d been held up Stateside due to illness while his team settled into Al Anbar Province, but was eager to link up with his brother SEALs and get into the fight. Unfortunately, the military’s transportation system made this difficult, and after he flew into Baghdad, the Navy sniper could not find a ride out to Ramadi. Finally, he convinced a corpsman to help him out. The corpsman triaged Chris and an Army Ranger stuck in the same situation, and ordered both men medevac’d into Ramadi.

Despite the belated and backdoor arrival into the inferno raging around the city, Chris Kyle soon made a name for himself. A veteran SEAL who had already seen combat during the drive on Baghdad in 2003, Petty Officer Chris Kyle had a passion for all things gun — not surprising given his Texas upbringing.

Born and raised on an Odessa-area cattle ranch, he worked as a cowboy for seven years before joining the Navy. Through his college years, he roped calves and broke colts for four hundred dollars a month and a cot in the bunkhouse of a twelve-thousand-acre ranch. Horses became a passion of his. In ’92, he turned pro on the rodeo circuit, but his budding career came to a crashing halt when a bronco flipped over and crushed him in the chute before a round. Trapped, unconscious, beneath the terrified animal, Kyle suffered severe injuries while his friends struggled to get to him. When the chute gate was opened, the horse bolted. Kyle’s foot was stuck in one stirrup, and he was dragged into the arena, which inflicted even more injuries to his body. When he was finally freed and taken to the hospital, the doctors discovered he had broken ribs, a shattered wrist, bruised lungs and kidneys, two badly injured knees, and a severe concussion.

He spent one night in the hospital and walked out the next morning. His wrist subsequently required multiple surgeries to fix, and eventually the bones had to be stabilized with permanent metal pins. The accident destroyed his rodeo career, so he decided to try and join the Army, Marine Corps, and Navy. His wrist disqualified him for service.

So he returned to the cowboy life. He ate lunch from a chuck wagon and spent his days riding among hundreds of head of cattle. Seven years passed, and then his recruiter called to tell him the entry requirements had changed. He could now join the Corps with his stabilized wrist. Instead of the Corps, Kyle joined the Navy with the intent of becoming a Navy SEAL. He had heard the SEALs were the best of the best, and he wanted to roll with that crowd.

In 2003 he took part in the invasion of Iraq, riding into combat aboard three-man dune buggies and manning the rig’s Mark 48 machine gun. When he came home from that first combat deployment, he spent a week with his family before shipping out to SEAL sniper school.

Like so many great American shooters, Kyle learned to shoot from his father, who gifted him a 30–06 as his first rifle. On their North Texas ranch, Kyle and his father stalked white-tailed deer, wild turkey, pheasants, and quail. Between hunting excursions, his dad showed him the finer points of marksmanship, and soon Chris was zeroing, or sighting in, all the families’ firearms on the back forty.

When he was about ten years old, he was out with his dad, stalking deer while armed with a lever-action 30/30. He crept up to a canyon and discovered his quarry about three hundred yards away and perhaps ninety feet below him. The elevation threw him off, and it took him six tries before he finally brought the deer down. His father told him afterward, “Chris, you’ve got to learn shot placement.” He worked for hours, patiently showing his son how to do this until Chris could routinely kill a turkey with a headshot or bring a buck down at three hundred yards with a bullet to its heart.

In 2003 SEAL sniper school took that raw, backwoods talent and gave Kyle the sophisticated understanding of the long-range precision marksmanship needed to be able to take out targets well over a thousand meters away. The first two weeks of the school taught him how to use photography on the battlefield to provide real-time imagery to his commanders. He learned to take photos through his scope then upload them to headquarters via satellite radios and computers. After that, he went through a four-week-long stalking phase before transitioning to six weeks of shooting. He emerged from the course a master of all four sniper rifles employed by the SEALs. Those included the Mark 11, the Mark 12, the .300 Win Mag (for Winchester Magnum), and the Barrett .50 cal.

In 2004 Kyle served in combat again during Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he took part in the Battle of Najaf that August, then the Second Battle of Fallujah in November. He accounted for forty enemy KIA during the latter campaign.

It did not take Chris Kyle long to make an impact in Ramadi. After arriving at the main base outside the city, Chris learned that most of SEAL Team Three was busy operating on the other side of town. While he waited for a way to get out to his unit, he received permission to climb into one of the base’s guard towers and search for targets. Insurgents had been launching hit-and-run attacks against the perimeter armed with AKs and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), and Chris thought he might be able to help out with that situation.

In quick succession, he detected, tracked, and smoke-checked two enemy fighters who were trying to maneuver onto the base and spray the towers with AK fire.

Not long after, he went out with a small team to take up position about two hundred yards forward of a small Marine outpost inside the city. He and the other four men with him climbed a battered and abandoned seven-story office building that overlooked some of the main roads in town. Throughout the day, they saw only a few insurgents moving on the streets below. They would dart from corner to corner, moving like wraiths. Chris killed several of them with well-placed shots.

After sunset, the Jihadists launched an assault at the Marine outpost, just as they had at other isolated Coalition bases scattered in and around the city. This time they advanced right into Chris Kyle’s field of fire. He quickly killed three RPG gunners as the two M60 machine gunners with him opened up as well. The attack slowed momentarily, then the insurgents figured out where Chris and the rest of the team were hiding. They returned fire, and it grew so intense that the Marines at the outpost ordered them to collapse back to the safety of their walls. Two of the men made it, but Chris, an officer, and one of the machine gunners stayed behind to cover their withdrawal. Before they could get out, the enemy had surrounded their building, cutting off their escape route.

As the fighting intensified, the Marines sent out a quick reaction force, or QRF, to fight their way on foot to the building. As they fought through the two hundred yards of urban jungle to Chris’s building, a cagey insurgent lurked in an alleyway and let the patrol pass him by. As soon as the Marines had their backs to him, he swept out of his position, weapon ready. Kyle spotted him and dropped him with a single shot. He was so close to the Marines that Chris’s fellow Americans thought they were taking insurgent sniper fire.

Later, after the Marine QRF had extracted Chris and the rest of the men, an officer approached him and thanked him for saving his life. Apparently, the insurgent who had moved in behind the patrol had been drawing a bead on him when Chris’s bullet ended the threat.

In the days and weeks that followed, Chris took part in dozens of patrols and missions. He killed two enemy sharpshooters during countersniper missions in support of the 8th Marines as they sought to increase the size of their footprint in the city. In other actions, he and Team Three worked with Army units and National Guard troops. They conducted joint patrols, provided overwatch for Marine units, and went after insurgent leaders in kill or capture missions. Through all the fighting around Ramadi, Chris Kyle’s coolness under fire and incredible accuracy had become almost mythic to his fellow Navy SEALs, who nicknamed him “The Legend.” Around Ramadi, as Chris’s kills mounted, the insurgents came to know who he was, too. They dubbed him Al Shatan, or “The Devil.” The Sunni terrorists grew so desperate to stop him that they put a twenty-thousand-dollar bounty on his head. Though he was blown up in IED (improvised explosive devise) attacks seven times and wounded by gunfire on six other occasions during his ten-year career as a SEAL, no insurgent ever collected that bounty.

Meanwhile, as the fighting raged in Ramadi and around Youssifiyah, American intelligence picked up the trail of the men who had murdered Thomas Tucker, Kristian Menchaca, and David Babineau.

In early July, the insurgents released a second video that showed terrorists dragging Tucker’s and Menchaca’s bodies through a street while a crowd looked on and cheered. They then set the bodies afire, and kicked Thomas Tucker’s head around as if it were a soccer ball.

These were the images the Mujahideen Shura Council showed the world. But there was another video that American intelligence captured that proved the insurgents were lying about who actually killed the two 101st Airborne troopers. The Mujahideen council had announced that al-Masri, the new leader of al-Qaida Iraq, had personally executed the men. The video showed that another high-level al-Qaida leader had actually been the perpetrator. Dubbed “Muhammad” by the Americans, he had used a large knife to behead the helpless prisoners. It was reminiscent of the murder of American civilian Nicholas Berg, which was personally carried out by al-Qaida’s leader in Iraq, Musab al-Zarqawi.

Zarqawi had been killed only ten days before Tucker and Menchaca were captured. The truth was that al-Qaida’s senior command structure in Iraq had suffered a staggering blow, and the organization was struggling to recover with al-Masri now at the controls. American intelligence believed that Muhammad had been in the running to be al-Zarqawi’s replacement, at least for a short time. He had been a highly successful bomb maker for years. Personally killing two American airborne soldiers was part of his power play within al-Qaida.

Muhammad was a dead man walking, he just didn’t know it. There was no way he and the rest of those responsible for these savage killings would escape American justice. Our intel types thirsted for revenge, eager to get Muhammad in the sights of a kill or capture mission. That was no easy task. He was elusive, cagey, and well protected. Our intelligence assets pursued every lead and angle they could develop to find a way to get him.

This wasn’t just a matter of vengeance. Muhammad stood poised to seize an even more important role for himself within al-Qaida. If we could eliminate him, the terrorist command structure in Iraq would take another significant hit. Take out these al-Qaida-sponsored or controlled networks and Iraq had a chance at stability again.

That job fell to our special operations task forces and their interrogation teams. Throughout the country, the special operators were knocking big holes in al-Qaida’s local networks. Here and there, a valuable nugget of information was culled from some of the detainees grabbed on these missions.

In one case, a Special Forces team found an adolescent boy whose father had been a key player in an Anbar Province suicide-bomb cell. The team surprised the boy’s dad and several suicide bombers inside their apartment. The cell had been about to initiate an attack, and as the Americans entered the building, the suicide bombers detonated themselves. The boy and his mentally retarded brother were the only survivors.

The boy had been steeped in Jihadist propaganda. He proudly told American interrogators how the network functioned, where they kept their weapons and ammo, and pointed out all the safe houses his father had taken him to over the past several months. He was completely unaware that his bragging to the “American infidels” caused the downfall of his dad’s node in the al-Qaida network.

Such strokes of luck played out all over Iraq that summer, dealing further body blows to the terrorists wreaking havoc among the nation’s citizenry. Finally, Intel picked up a few tidbits about Muhammad. We learned that he used two safe houses outside of Ramadi and was known to frequent both several times a month. We also discovered that he traveled in a Chevy Suburban sport utility vehicle.

Based on this intel, plus photos we had acquired of Muhammad, SEAL Team Three was ordered to kill or capture him. To the team, there was no question of capturing Muhammad. They’d seen too many murderous terrorists released from Iraqi prisons after risking their lives to detain them to allow Muhammad a chance to escape justice.

SEAL Team Three was uniquely suited for the mission. Consisting of eight sixteen-man platoons, the team had been operating around Ramadi for months and had already been through multiple seven-month deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. They knew Anbar Province and the areas around Muhammad’s safe house very well already. And, of course, SEAL Team Three included one of the most lethal snipers in American history: Petty Officer Chris Kyle.

Given Kyle’s record, he was a natural for the mission against Muhammad. The plan called for Kyle’s platoon to establish a hide site overlooking the primary safe house. If their target failed to show up after a week, they would switch to the secondary safe house and wait for him there. A CH-53 Super Stallion Marine helicopter would insert them into both locations at night, and the team would take enough food and supplies for a week at each position.

The team consisted of four snipers, four AWs (automatic weapons gunners using Mark 48 machine guns) and twelve riflemen. The snipers selected a mix of SR-25s, a .50 caliber MacMillan, and Kyle’s Winchester .300 Win Mag bolt-action rifle. Kyle settled on the Win Mag as, beyond a thousand yards, it was the most accurate of the available weapons. Should they have to take a long-range shot, Kyle and his rifle would handle it.

Rounding out the team would be several “straphangers”—specialists who work with SEAL teams. This included an interpreter, a master-at-arms (Navy military policeman), a SEAL spook with sophisticated signals intelligence gathering equipment that would enable them to listen to enemy radio and cell phone conversations, plus several techs who were experts at exploiting intelligence on the battlefield, such as DNA from the men the SEALs killed.

Before departure, the plan hit a snag. Everyone wanted a piece of this mission. Menchaca’s and Tucker’s brutal murders left everyone in Special Operations Command full of rage and a desire to be in on the payback. From the original sixteen men, the team grew to over thirty, far too many than were necessary.

In early July, the Super Stallion inserted the team at the first hide site, which was a walled compound not far from Muhammad’s safe house. For a week they waited for Muhammad to show up in his American-built SUV. But his Suburban never came bouncing down the rutted dirt road to the farm that served as his hideout. The men grew bored and restless. Day after day they took three-hour watches behind their weapons and tried to remain alert. When off duty, they slept or dined on Meals Ready to Eat (MREs). Some of the men had brought books or magazines.

The magazine selection led to a lot of banter and teasing. When one SEAL noticed that his buddies were reading back issues of Men’s Health, he shook his head sadly. That prompted a long back and forth on the quality of the porn the SEALs had brought along. Playboy was always excluded from such hide sites as it was considered far too tame. Cherry and Hustler were favorites. Military History was also a staple, and the SEALs sat in their Iraqi hide site reading accounts of the Alamo, Normandy, and Waterloo as they waited for their quarry to show up.

The first hide site turned out to be a bust. At the end of the first week, the team got permission to switch to the secondary target house. The CH-53 picked them up and moved them to the alternate hide site, which was a walled farmhouse about three hundred yards from the target area.

Their new hide had been long abandoned. Surrounded by a brown-gray outside wall, the house had no running water and only bare, dirty floors. The kitchen was empty and little furniture remained. The SEALs found a single table on the first floor, which Kyle carried upstairs and positioned in the back of one room with a window that overlooked Muhammad’s crash pad. Then he and another sniper pulled a door off its hinges and laid it atop the table. That gave the men a stable firing platform, set back away from the window so that anyone outside would be unable to see the shooter and the weapon.

Part of the team, including the machine gunners, took station on the second floor in rooms on either side of Kyle’s. The rest of the SEALs found good spots on the first floor or on the roof. The men on the roof would be their fail-safe. Their job was to stay hidden. If the firefight threatened to get out of hand and the SEALs needed additional weapons in action, they would either knock loopholes in the three-foot parapet that skirted the roof, or, in a dire situation, just come up over the wall and start shooting.

The snipers established fields of fire and handed out assigned sectors to search and target. Once all of that had been worked out, the men settled back into all the boredom of a Stateside police stakeout.

Halfway through the second week, the SEALs grew convinced that the Intel guys had blown this one. Though the team never let its guard down, and the men standing watch were always hypervigilant, the mood in the hide grew more relaxed. The scene took on the trappings of a camping trip with a gaggle of old pals. The bloated size of the team led to everyone being more cramped than usual, and living atop one another created its own stress and internal dynamics.

Then one afternoon a dust trail appeared in the distance. Three vehicles approached from a rutted dirt road, and as the snipers scanned the rigs, they could see that the middle rig was a candy apple Chevy Suburban with tinted windows.

Muhammad had arrived.

“Check this guy out,” somebody said. “He’s got to be driving the only candy apple red Suburban in Iraq.”

“Arrogant bastard,” somebody else muttered.

Given how his vehicle stood out, Kyle wondered how it had taken so long to track the al-Qaida leader down.

Muhammad’s convoy was coming from a different direction than the Intel guys expected, and the SEALs would not have the shot they had prepared for as a result. The original plan had called for the snipers to take Muhammad out as soon as he dismounted from his SUV and was positively identified. Now they realized that, thanks to the direction Muhammad was coming from, by the time his Suburban reached the farmhouse, he’d be on the wrong side of the rig for an easy kill shot. He would dismount and have the vehicle between him and the American snipers.

No plan survives first contact, and the SEALs adeptly switched gears. Instead of taking Muhammad out with sniper fire alone, they decided to use every rifle and machine gun to flay the enemy convoy with gunfire once they parked. They’d kill everyone, then get back aboard the CH-53.

The three vehicles rolled up to the safe house. The lead and trail rigs were Toyota HiLux pickup trucks, each with members of Muhammad’s personal security detail. Altogether, the SEALs counted seven tangos plus their primary target.

The Mark 48 gunners fingered their triggers and waited. Before anyone could open fire, the team had to be absolutely certain they were going to kill the right people. This would entail a delay that could cost them a shot, but it had to be done.

The three rigs stopped near the safe house’s front gate and the drivers shut their engines off. A passenger in Muhammad’s Suburban dismounted and walked around to open the door for his commander.

The SEALs only had seconds now. Chances were, Muhammad would get out and walk straight through the front gate and disappear behind the nine-foot wall that surrounded the safe house.

The door opened. A dim figure wearing a Western-style jogging suit could be seen inside. He looked to be the right size and build for what they knew of Muhammad, but his face wasn’t visible.

Both Toyota drivers popped their doors and stepped outside. They held AK-47s at the ready and began scanning the area with a professionalism the SEALs did not usually see from these terrorists. This bunch had been well trained.

The figure inside the Suburban moved. His face slipped into the afternoon sunlight as he climbed out of the SUV. It gave the SEALs the glimpse they needed. No doubt, the man in the jogging suit was Muhammad. As the snipers reported the positive ID, Muhammad’s feet hit the dirt and he disappeared behind the Suburban. Their window to take him out had vanished that quickly.

The passengers in both Toyotas cracked their doors. Soon, the SEALs would face a tricky tactical challenge of having to take out all eight targets simultaneously before their quarry could take cover or return fire. No doubt the team’s firepower could overwhelm Muhammad’s security detail, but nobody wanted to suffer casualties from whatever return fire the enemy could muster. The trick was to bring everyone down before they could even get a shot off.

The Mark 48s thundered to life. All four gunners walked their fire through the vehicles at chest-height. One of the Toyota drivers went down, a fan of blood spraying across his vehicle. The other bolted, but managed only a few steps before the SEALs killed him. He tumbled and lay still, arms and legs sprawled, less than six feet from the lead pickup.

Short, accurate machine-gun bursts ripped into the trucks. The passengers in both Toyotas were torn apart where they sat. The man who had opened the door for Muhammad froze as his comrades died horribly all around him. Then Mark 48s caught him cold. More blood splattered the SUV and streaked down its custom candy apple clear-coat paint job as his lifeless body sank into the powdery dirt.

In seconds, the SEALs killed seven of the eight terrorists. Only Muhammad had survived. When the shooting started, he dove prone on the far side of the Suburban and nobody could see him well enough to get shots off. The Mark 48 gunners laid on their triggers, walking their fire back and forth until each man had burned through an entire two-hundred-round belt.

And then, an eerie silence descended on the scene. From his firing platform atop the table, Kyle scanned the SUV and could not see Muhammad. Taking out his security detail would serve little purpose if they couldn’t kill him, too. The mission would be a failure; Tucker and Menchaca would go unavenged.

The Americans waited for Muhammad to make a move. The minutes ticked by. The snipers quartered off the SUV to ensure somebody would have a shot no matter which way he moved should he spring to his feet and make a break for it. Whatever happened, they could not allow him to go through that gate. He would be able to get inside the safe house unhindered, and the SEALs did not know if there were weapons in there. They would have to assault the house and hunt for him room to room, and that ran a substantial risk of taking casualties.

The SEALs stayed glued to their sights. Could Muhammad have been hit? Is that why he hadn’t moved? The Mark 48s had sent eight hundred rounds downrange. The Suburban looked like bloody Swiss cheese. The Toyotas were riddled with bullet gashes. The convoy was a ghoulish scene. So perhaps their target had been hit. They couldn’t be sure.

An hour passed with no movement. Something had to be done to end the impasse, but sweeping the target area with part of the team was deemed too risky. Intel had warned them that Muhammad’s security detail all wore bomb vests. That information did not appear to be accurate, but the SEALs couldn’t be sure. Perhaps Muhammad himself wore one, just in case he faced capture, so he could take a few Americans with him as he punched his own ticket to Allah.

There had to be an alternative to risking lives in such a move.

Inspiration struck the SEAL commander. Perhaps they could put one over on Muhammad if he was still alive. The team called in the CH-53 and they would stage a false extraction. A few minutes later, the bird arrived and set down behind the hide site. A third of the team rushed from the house and flowed over the helicopter’s ramp to settle down inside. In seconds, the Super Stallion was back in the air, seemingly heading for home.

Kyle and the other snipers remained in the hide, waiting to see if Muhammad would react. It turned into a battle of patience. The SEALs relaxed, this was their sort of game. Kyle lay on the door, covering down on the nearest approach route between the SUV and the safe house’s front gate. As they waited, the men bantered back and forth over who might get the shot. The machine gunners squared off against the snipers and challenged them. It was on now, and the friendly competition kept everyone alert and at their best.

An hour later, Muhammad’s head prairie-dogged over the Suburban’s hood. Just his eyes appeared as he took a quick look around. The SEALs held their fire. He ducked back down. A moment later, he reappeared and studied the hide site. He vanished, thought things over, and concluded that the Americans really had left.

He stood up, right in Kyle’s field of view and sprinted for the gate. Kyle knew the range: three hundred yards, well within the Win Mag’s capabilities. Long ago, his father had taught him to use a slow, steady pull on the trigger. He mirrored that lesson as he laid the crosshairs on his running target. Muhammad was moving laterally across Kyle’s field of view, an almost ninety-degree angle. In novels and movies, this seems like a piece of cake. Pull the trigger and the target drops.

Baloney. Kyle faced a significant challenge by Muhammad’s sudden bolt to freedom. Here’s why:

Hollywood aside, shooting a moving target is no easy feat for a sniper no matter the range. There are two ways to do it: tracking and ambush. The tracking method requires following the target and keeping your crosshairs on him. To do it, you need to know your range to the target, the speed of the target, and the angle at which he is moving to your barrel. Then you set the crosshairs not on him, but in front of him. We call that “mil lead”

Mil lead is one of the quirky things about long-range precision marksmanship that makes it both an art and a science. Every sniper’s mil lead is different. Even if the target is moving at the same speed and angle, no two snipers will need the same amount of lead to hit him.

When we train to hit moving targets, we keep detailed notes in our data books. The more we practice, the more data we develop and the better we can pinpoint the mil lead we need. It is a repetitive, sometimes frustrating task that is complicated by a couple of additional factors.

First, in the field we will never know exactly how fast a target is moving. So, for humans, we have three types of leads we practice based on average speed sets. The first is a “walking lead.” Every human walks at a different pace, but that pace is within a speed range that we can use to guesstimate our lead.

A “jogging lead” is used against men who are walking unusually fast or loping. This requires a little more lead. The last we call the “run lead,” which we employ against men sprinting on the battlefield.

Through training and dedicated data mining, each sniper figures out how much lead he will need for each speed. We know those calculations off the top of our heads, so in combat we don’t need cheat sheets for this type of shot. Though I’ve been out of the game since 2005, I can still remember my run lead is two and three-quarter mils at three hundred yards. These are things we snipers never forget.

Complex enough? We’re only halfway there. Speed is only one part of the equation. The other is the angle of the target’s line of movement to your rifle. Let’s say our target is running across a street within our field of view. He’s moving perpendicular to our sniper team. That’s the most acute angle we have to deal with and because of that it will require the most lead. My run lead is two and three-quarter mils at three hundred yards only if the target is moving ninety degrees from me across my field of view.

If your target is moving diagonally from you, or toward you, that requires smaller mil leads. The less acute the angle, the less mils you’ll need to get on your target. The lead also changes depending on whether the target is moving toward your rifle or away from it.

In combat, there’s no way to tell exactly what the angle of our targets are. This is why training is so crucial. The more we practice, the better we get at guesstimating the angle, and the more accurate we become. We write everything down and memorize it, so that in combat we have instant recall and can calculate our shot placement as accurately as possible.

There’s another complication to this equation. Right-handed snipers use their right eye in the scope. Their leads are different if the target is moving left to right versus right to left. The phenomenon is the opposite for left-handed shooters. I’ve never really figured out why this is the case, but it is a universal truth. Not only does each sniper have to learn the mil lead he needs, but he must to do so for both directions of movement.

Movement speed, angle, and lead all need to be calculated on top of wind, range, weather, and elevation. Once you factor all those elements into the shot, it becomes obvious that tracking and firing at a moving target is one of the most technically demanding types of shots for us snipers. To do it well requires significant investments in training, time, data entry, and memorization. The next time you see a Hollywood film where snipers are smoke-checking running targets left and right, remember all the background math and physics that goes into every trigger pull.

There is one other way to take down a running man; we call it the ambush method. In this scenario, we anticipate the enemy’s movement and figure out a point along his projected path that will give us the clearest possible shot at him. Then we place the crosshairs on that point and wait. When our running enemy reaches our mil lead, we pull the trigger. The target literally runs into the shot. It is a slightly easier technique for taking out a moving target, but it can only be done if you know where the enemy is going. If you don’t know that, tracking is the only way to kill him.

There are some advanced ways to get around the uncertainty of what an enemy will do. If a sniper team has been watching a particular place for an extended period of time, he and his partner will study the terrain and tactical situation. Based on that study, they will assign areas of responsibility to each other. Then, within those areas, they will create their preplanned ambush points based on possible routes of movement the enemy might use. From there, the team can build a decision tree that covers all possible enemy behaviors. This is called Planning the Target Zone.

Let’s say our sniper team is covering a street with a couple of doorways and alleys in their areas of responsibility. Each man will select ambush points between the alleys and doorways to ensure that any enemy entering the area can be taken out with this method.

The downside to this, of course, is the enemy can either do something unexpected or the snipers don’t have time to work through all the possible scenarios. In that case, they have to switch to tracking their targets.

When Muhammad made his run for it, Chris Kyle had been covering his area of responsibility to the right of the vehicle. In a split second, Kyle had to judge how fast his target was running, the angle he was to the SEAL’s rifle, and his probable path. It was clear Muhammad was trying to get to the front door. Kyle had planned his target zone carefully. He shifted his reticle to one of his preplanned ambush points. Muhammad moved into his scope, sprinting flat out now. Running lead, left to right, adjusting for low wind (0–3 mph). He’d already fed proper DOPE (data on previous engagement) into his scope, so he didn’t need to factor in temperature and drop. He had a good zero.

When Muhammad reached the mil lead threshold, Kyle pulled the trigger. The Win Mag’s heavy bullet punched through Muhammad’s rib cage, knocking him off his feet.

It was a remarkable shot. Kyle had hit a moving target’s profile exactly center mass. The target area on Muhammad’s body was probably less than eight by eight inches. It was a wound that no man could survive, the sort of shot Chris had learned to make with his father while out hunting deer on the family spread back in Texas. Shot placement was everything.

The bullet did its work. Muhammad died in seconds, his body splayed on the ground only a few steps short of the front gate.

Justice served, SEAL style. The team called for extraction. The Marine Super Stallion reappeared and touched down near the hide site. Kyle and the rest of the team rushed aboard. As they choppered their way back to base, the SEALs broke out celebratory cigars. Mission accomplished. And this one felt good.

There were at least four al-Qaida operatives involved in the executions of our soldiers. Other special operations teams killed two of them. Seal Team Three took care of the other two. It was a clean sweep. In September 2001 President George Bush had told the American people, “Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes visible on TV and covert operations secret even in success.” Kyle’s bullet scored one of those secret successes. The country did not learn that the men responsible for murdering Menchaca and Tucker had been hunted down and killed. There was no closure for the families back in Oregon and Texas as a result. But behind the scenes, the SEALs made sure the executioners faced a reckoning — a far more permanent one than the driver of the truck that carried the bodies received in 2008.

Chris Kyle retired from the U.S. Navy in 2009 with two hundred fifty-five confirmed kills to his credit, more than any other sniper in American history. His service during eight years of combat in some of the heaviest fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan earned him two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars for Valor. He was wounded in action repeatedly, but never received a single Purple Heart. Just before one firefight he had been talking to his wife on a sat phone. When the bullets started flying, he dropped it and picked up his rifle. Moments later, he and several members of his team were wounded, and his wife heard him shout “I’m hit!” before the sat phone cut out. For three days she waited for word, terrified that she’d heard her husband’s final words.

When Kyle came home from his final deployment, he saw what eight years of combat had done to his wife. He made the decision to retire from the Navy to devote himself to his family. He returned to his beloved state of Texas, where he now ran a company that trains law enforcement and military snipers. But for Kyle the future wasn’t in the corporate rat race. He dreamed of a day he could throw his cell phone away, put on a pair of boots, and ride among his own herd of cattle on a north Texas prairie he could call his own.

In 2010, his best-selling book, American Sniper, was released. Chris gave most of the book’s proceeds to the families of fallen SEALs he had served with during his time in combat. He spent his days running his consulting business and reaching out to veterans with disabilities.

After serving as guardian angel for countless Marines around Ramadi in 2006, Chris and his business partner were murdered on February 2, 2013, by a Marine veteran suffering from an acute case of post-traumatic stress disorder. After a furious law enforcement chase, the Marine drove Chris’s pickup into a police car and was captured. His motives for the murder were unclear.

Chris Kyle’s memorial service was held at the Dallas Cowboys football stadium. Thousands of mourners lined the streets and filled the stands to pay their final respects to an American icon whose life had been devoted to protecting his fellow Americans. That he was slain by one of those very men in a fit of senseless violence after he had done so much for his country remains one of the most painful ironies of the War on Terror.

CHAPTER FOUR The Playground of Snipers

Ramadi in the late summer of 2006 was a city in its death throes. Unlike Fallujah, this battle was drawn out, a slow-motion car wreck that consumed Ramadi in a way not seen in military history since the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942–1943. While the U.S. forces showed restraint and only used such firepower as aerial bombs, rockets, or the main gun on an M1 Abrams tank as an absolute last resort, the insurgents were under no such limitations.

Enemy car bomb factories hidden in warehouses in or around the city churned out dump trucks filled with thousands of pounds of ammonium nitrate. Foreign volunteers, whom al-Qaida cell leaders leg-cuffed in place should they have any second thoughts about martyrdom, drove the trucks into Iraqi Police checkpoints or Coalition combat outposts. The massive blasts from these deadly weapons took down buildings and left the streets heaped with burned debris and human remains. Through some freak of physics, the drivers were usually blown straight up into the air. Their bodies would come apart, but the head was almost always found intact. During the cleanup after these attacks, it fell to American and Iraqi troops to locate the driver’s head, photograph it, and conduct a retinal scan to identify the terrorist if his eyes remained in their sockets.

Each bomb factory had specific tells picked up by U.S. military forensics experts. Some set up fail-safes, or “chicken switches,” so that if the driver tried to opt out at the last minute, the vehicle could be detonated remotely by observers watching from a safe distance. Others tore down vehicles to their bare frames, welded modifications and explosives in place, then rebuilt the rig so it looked like any other on the streets. Some of these were so cunningly constructed that even a detailed search by Iraqi security forces missed the threat concealed within them. Al-Qaida’s factories grew so sophisticated that they were able to produce tractor-trailer rigs loaded with six to eight thousand pounds of explosives. Such infernal devices took down entire city blocks when they went off.

Sometimes the bomb makers improvised even deadlier ways to attack the Coalition. On August 21, 2006, al-Qaida operatives drove a dump truck filled with fuel up to a Coalition outpost on the edge of town and successfully detonated it. The blast drenched the base in flaming fuel, killing three Iraqi police officers and horribly burning eight American soldiers.

The truck and car bomb menace grew so severe that summer that three or four bombs a week were blowing up in and around the city. Finding the factories became a key priority, as these attacks almost always inflicted military and civilian casualties. But finding them required venturing into the heart of the city, where al-Qaida’s legions had seeded the streets and alleys with thousands of IEDs. In some places, so many had been emplaced that they resembled urban minefields, and some of the bombs were so powerful they could (and did) destroy M1 Abrams tanks and M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

When the troops tried to move off the streets and into businesses and homes, they faced another threat — building contained IEDs. Al-Qaida would wire a dwelling with propane tanks, explosives, or artillery rounds left over from the Saddam era. Once a door was opened and a wire or infrared beam was broken, the entire building would explode and come down around the patrol. Dozens of these BCIEDs detonated around the city that summer, leaving entire blocks in ruins.

Piles of concrete and rebar heaped on either side of garbage-strewn roads littered with the burned-out carcasses of cars and tireless, bullet-riddled trucks became the indelible image of Ramadi for countless American soldiers who struggled to defeat al-Qaida. Water mains were ruptured by IEDs and flooded the streets. Sewage lines, never Iraq’s strong point, clogged up or broke and added a foul stench to the ruins. Severed power lines hung limply across sidewalks, festooned trees and walls, and lay in tangles in the streets. Animals caught in cross fires lay rotting in the rubble, as nobody was willing to risk removing them since al-Qaida had been known to plant bombs around or inside their corpses. On one wall deep in the city, the enemy had spray-painted in Arabic “This is the graveyard of Americans.”

It was a graveyard. The soccer stadium, controlled that summer by al-Qaida, became a dumping ground for corpses. The enemy dug up the field and turned it into a mass grave. Civilians they’d tortured and killed were laid to rest there atop Jihadists and foreign fighters alike.

All the while, the civilians trapped within their devastated neighborhoods sought any means to survive. With shops closed and the economy destroyed, for many men the only way to feed their families was to do al-Qaida’s dirty work. The terrorists hired children to be lookouts, or to scout locations for IEDs. They paid adults to plant the bombs or to assist in their construction. Others received a bounty for the Americans they killed.

There were even contract snipers working for al-Qaida. One used a van as a mobile sniper hide. Concealed in back behind a curtain, he killed a U.S. soldier with a shot to the head, only to be overrun and captured a short time later. When he was interrogated and identified, the Americans discovered the gunman was a teacher at a nearby vocational school for women. For extra money, he moonlighted as a sniper for al-Qaida.

The Anbar Provincial Government was located in downtown Ramadi. It was a sole enclave in a sea of hostility. The governor and his staff were frequent targets of assassination attempts, and they lived under siege surrounded by a protective cordon of Marines. Anytime the governor tried to go anywhere, he and his security detail almost always came under attack. In such a situation, the government had no hope of functioning. The governor controlled nothing beyond the rifle barrels of the Marines keeping him alive.

Day after day, the fighting demolished Ramadi a little at a time. Where Fallujah had been a full-on onslaught, a set-piece battle that ended after two months of fighting, Ramadi was the battle without end. It became the Guadalcanal of the Iraq War, a brutal struggle of attrition that wore away the souls of the Americans caught in its vortex of violence and misery.

Every time an American patrol left an outpost, they were sure to encounter some sort of opposition. The threats were everywhere — bombs buried under the asphalt in the streets they used, buildings wired to blow. Random gunmen lurked in the shadows to spray AK fire and run. Zealots wearing suicide vests, grenades, and mortar fire launched from tubes mounted in the beds of flatbed “bongo” trucks so they could keep mobile were just a few of the threats the Americans faced every day. On average, any patrol in the city that summer would get attacked within eight minutes of heading out the front gate.

Despite the lethality of IEDs and suicide bombers, al-Qaida’s snipers were the threat American troops feared the most. In an IED environment, slow movement is the best way for a foot patrol to detect that sort of threat. But with al-Qaida snipers lurking in the shadows of broken buildings, atop minarets and mosques, slow movement was a death sentence. Marines and soldiers alike took to sudden rushes from one concealed position to another. They dashed down streets in one-hundred-thirty-eight-degree heat, laden with eighty pounds of gear or more, hoping the speed and sudden changes of direction would throw off the aim of any marksman who had them in his crosshairs.

Though IEDs killed more Americans in Ramadi, the sniper shots were the ones that affected the troops the most. In three months, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines (2/8) suffered eight casualties to enemy snipers. Two journalists embedded with 1/506th Parachute Infantry at Camp Corregidor (located just outside Ramadi) also fell wounded to sniper rounds.

On June 21, 2006, Lance Corporal Nicholas Whyte prepared to depart from a forward outpost on a foot patrol through a Ramadi neighborhood. Whyte, who was two days shy of his twenty-second birthday, had served in Fallujah and had done an earlier tour in Haiti before his company from 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines joined the central battle of the Iraq War. He’d been raised in Brooklyn, New York, in a tough neighborhood near East Flatbush, graduating from James Madison High School in 2002. After a year of college, he volunteered for the Marine Corps.

As he and his fellow mortarmen finished gearing up, they laughed and joked about playing multiplayer Diablo II together when they returned from the mission.

A few minutes beyond the wire, a sniper’s shot rang out. Nicholas Whyte fell dead. His stunned platoon scanned the streets, the scores of doorways and dark, glassless windows overlooking their position as they worked to evacuate their fallen brother. The moment underscored the reality of the Ramadi campaign: no matter the countermeasures taken, snipers in the city would always have the advantage. There were simply too many places to hide, too many windows, too many darkened corners of shattered buildings within which al-Qaida shooters could hide. Every time an American or Iraqi patrol moved through the streets, they were vulnerable from dozens of places at once. Even the best eyes and the most alert men in a squad or platoon could not possibly cover down on every potential threat.

Worse, when a sniper did take a shot, a platoon was often in the grimmest of situations: under fire from an unknown location with no hope of finding the source of the shooting. Al-Qaida’s snipers were masters of concealment and adopted many of the tactics they’d seen American snipers use against them, including hiding deep inside a room with a window overlooking a key street. Concealed in the darkness, they were all but invisible. Others drilled holes behind car taillights so they could fire from the trunk of a nondescript sedan. Still others used mosques and hospitals for their hide sites, believing the Americans would not fire at such places.

The foot patrols tried a variety of countermeasures to foil enemy snipers. They popped smoke grenades everywhere they ran, making it harder for the shooters to see them. They began bringing shotguns out on patrols so they could shoot locks off of gates and doors quickly as they ran from point to point. They tried moving at night, or with armored vehicles in support. Even the presence of M1 tanks or M2 Bradleys failed to deter the al-Qaida gunmen, who took to targeting the crews of such vehicles.

Private Kelly Youngblood was a nineteen-year-old M1 Abrams driver from Mesa, Arizona. A year removed from basic training, he’d deployed to Ramadi in February 2007. In a letter home to his sister, he wrote, “I’m afraid to leave the building to go to the tank because there are snipers everywhere.”

On one of his first patrols, his tank came under RPG fire and a rocket exploded right beside his tank. Just before that mission, another rocket had detonated at his combat outpost, killing one of Kelly’s friends and narrowly missing him.

Sixteen days after he arrived in Ramadi, he was shot in the head by an al-Qaida sniper as he climbed out of the driver’s hatch of his tank after a long shift within the vehicle. His brothers got him to the medics, who tried for over an hour to save him.

The sniper who killed Private Kelly had waited for hours for a tiny window of opportunity. Those shots and others made the Americans utterly paranoid. Said one Marine to a reporter, “It just feels like someone’s always watching you. It really messes with your head.”

Al-Qaida snipers overwatched every Coalition outpost in the city and its environs. It became so dangerous that a vehicle stopping at the gates of a combat outpost (COP) ran the risk of taking precision fire. Drivers learned to keep their vehicles moving, even when they had to stay in a specific area. Back and forth, back and forth, they’d switch gears repeatedly to throw off the aim of RPG teams.

At one Iraqi checkpoint, a sniper shot an Iraqi soldier. He went down in the open, and one of his comrades rushed to his aid. That act of supreme bravery cost the second soldier his life — another crack from a Dragunov rifle and another Coalition casualty.

Into this chaos and death stepped American snipers — Marines, Army, and Navy SEALs. They did their best to protect the Joes on the ground as they tried to secure the streets. From overwatch positions all around the city, they built hides and hunted al-Qaida.

One of the earliest, and best, sniper locations was the ruins of a hotel. Dubbed the “Ramadi Inn” by the snipers who established hides in it, the four-story building held a commanding view of the city and afforded the Americans excellent fields of fire along Route Michigan. Early on, they fortified the place with sandbags up to shoulder height. But the level of incoming small-arms fire showed that to be inadequate. Rounds would pass above the sandbags to ricochet around the concrete walls, and several Americans were wounded that way. Afterward, the men built the sandbag walls up to the ceilings in every room they used. There were so many in the building that the Inn was sometimes called “OP Sandbag.”

The snipers there built elaborate hides set back from the windows with narrow vision slits built into the sandbag walls. From the street, they were virtually undetectable. Yet the enemy knew the Americans held the building, and they kept up a steady rain of rockets, mortars, and small-arms fire on the place that took its toll. The snipers reverently wrote the names of all their fallen brothers on the walls under the words “Never Forgotten.”

Others scrawled motivational graffiti in their hide sites. One group of snipers wrote “Kill them all” and “Kill like you mean it” on their walls. Somebody else later added a quote attributed to Senator John McCain, “America is great not because of what she has done for herself but because of what she has done for others.”

OP Sandbag became one of the great sniping sites of the War on Terror. Hundreds of al-Qaida fighters fell to the men behind the M24s, M82 Barrett and Marine M40s concealed there. In 2005–2006, the scout-sniper platoon from the 3rd Infantry Division’s 2/69 Armored set the gold bar standard in Ramadi. The sniper element of the platoon was only ten men. Calling themselves “Shadow Team,” the section was led by Staff Sergeant Jim Gilliland. They soon earned a fearsome reputation as one of the best precision-shooting units in Iraq. Over the course of their deployment, the ten men of Shadow Team killed well over two hundred enemy fighters. They did it through careful observation, an understanding of enemy tactics, and a few surprising moments where luck and skill came together.

On one early mission, Shadow Team had set up in two hides overlooking an auto repair shop suspected of being an insurgent ammo resupply point. For eighteen hours, they watched an unusual amount of traffic come and go in the place, but could not positively identify any hostiles. They saw no weapons or IEDs, and so they remained silently in place, observing the facility hour after hour.

To combat the boredom, Gilliland quietly game-boarded potential scenarios with the men around him. How would they handle multiple targets at once? Who would have what area of responsibility? They envisioned every type of engagement they could dream up, then walked through how they would handle them until each member of the team knew his role intimately. Gilliland’s men functioned as a true team. The media’s image of the lone sniper shooting targets with one shot, one kill was nowhere in evidence within Gilliland’s section. They worked together, and in the process multiplied their effect on the battlefield.

But no matter how you plan and prepare, the enemy can still throw curveballs your way.

Eighteen hours into their overwatch mission, a four-door sedan suddenly roared into the street below Gilliland’s hide site. The car screeched to a halt less than sixty yards from their rifles.

Gilliland and the three men with him gaped in astonishment as an insurgent popped out of one of the rear doors and walked around the fender to the trunk where he retrieved a 155mm artillery shell prepped with plastic explosives in the fuse well — a classic, ready-made IED. A couple of his pals jumped out and helped emplace it. The Americans watching them could see them joking and laughing amongst themselves until one went back and sat in the front side passenger seat. They were casual and blasé, despite the nature of their mission.

Shadow Team had already seen this once before. On one of their first missions, they saw a couple of insurgents get out of a car on a busy street and carry a 155mm artillery shell across traffic to emplace it. The civilian cars stopped and waited for them to cross. Even as the fighting destroyed the city around them, its citizens tried to carve a life out of the ruins. And part of that required traveling farther and farther through the war zone just to get basic survival supplies such as water, food, and fuel. Watching two al-Qaida terrorists seed their streets with bombs was nothing new. It was business as usual in Ramadi.

At least it was until Gilliland’s men drilled both insurgents with well-placed shots from their M24s. Both terrorists fell dead before the shocked Iraqi commuters waiting to continue on their way.

This time the terrorists had blundered. Gilliland and his men were so close to where the sedan stopped that they didn’t have a good shot from their hide. Rather than use their bolt-action M24s, the men quickly grabbed their M4 carbines and rushed onto the roof of their building. Four M4s, four targets. The men took aim and unleashed a fusillade of 5.56mm bullets into the street at point-blank range from an elevated position. The first rounds tore through the driver’s side windshield, killing him before he could even move. The terrorist riding shotgun tried to bail out, but one of Gilliland’s sharpshooters stitched him as well. He slumped over, dead, half-in and half-out of the vehicle, its passenger-side door hanging open.

The men kept up the barrage. The car caught fire. A third insurgent went down as he stood in front of it after emplacing the IED. The last one was hit as well. He fell to the street, wounded, and began to crawl away from the burning car. At that point, Gilliland’s men had been spotted on the roof. Without any cover atop it, they elected to withdraw back downstairs to their hide site. By the time they got back, the fourth insurgent had dragged himself out of their field of view.

Such attacks and others knocked the casualness out of al-Qaida. They grew cautious and cunning. They hired kids to find American sniper hides, and when they did they would set up subtle signals for their al-Qaida masters. Usually the kids would pile pebbles in front of a building being used as a hide site. Other times they would signal by hanging towels in certain ways nearby.

It was hard to move around the city undetected as a result. But that did not diminish the effectiveness of the American sniper teams. The days of casually planting IEDs ended. As the snipers took a steady toll of the terrorists, they began using subtle methods to get the bombs in place. Usually, this started with a quick recon of a previous IED crater. A kid or a hired local adult would walk down the street and peer into the hole to make sure it was clear and could be used again.

The kids sometimes made passes on bicycles. They’d ride around the crater then speed off back down the street, weaving through the debris and trash to report what they’d seen. Next, a car would make several passes down the street as a second reconnaissance of the area. On each pass, the car would slow down as it went by the potential bomb site. If al-Qaida was satisfied with the spot, they’d send in the emplacement team. There were many variations on this, but usually the team consisted of two cars, one with the bomb in the trunk and the other to pull security. A van or larger sedan would follow and linger behind the other two. That one served as their casualty evacuation vehicle should anyone get hit and wounded.

They’d roll up to the site and the section assigned to planting the IED would dismount, carry the bomb to the selected location, prep it, and pull out. They did this as quickly as possible to minimize the chance of a sniper kill while they were exposed in the street.

Before American snipers began to have an effect on al-Qaida’s operations in the city, the enemy would frequently use acid to melt the asphalt in the street, then scoop it away to plant an IED. With the bomb in the roadbed, they’d bury it with the melted asphalt, then scatter trash atop the site before bugging out. Such bombs were almost impossible to detect and took a heavy toll of American vehicles. They also became impossible in much of the city where our snipers had eyes on the scene.

If al-Qaida’s sharpshooters affected our men and messed with their heads, American snipers had a profound effect on the enemy’s psychology as well. Intercepted radio and cell phone communications between cells and their commanders revealed a growing rift between what al-Qaida’s leadership wanted and what its front-line fighters were willing to attempt. More than once, a cell received orders to emplace IEDs in a particular location. The cell commander flat-out refused, telling his superiors that if he and his men did that, they would be killed by American snipers.

For both sides, killing the enemy’s snipers became a critical aspect of operations in Ramadi. Al-Qaida had the edge at first, as the locals actively assisted them and the Americans rarely moved around undetected in the city. The terrorists used such knowledge to deadly effect more than once. One of their earliest coups came in June 2004 when they caught a four-man Marine sniper team by surprise on a rooftop and killed them all. They videotaped the scene and celebrated in front of the camera around the dead Marines — images that were later posted on Jihadi websites — before making off with two M40 rifles, a thermal scope, night vision, and other gear.

One of the al-Qaida snipers around Ramadi used one of those M40s for two years. On June 20, 2006, the scout snipers from 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines (3/5) spotted a car parked suspiciously on a road near Habbaniyah, about forty kiloyards outside of Ramadi. As they watched it, they saw the driver pick up a video camera to film a passing Marine convoy of amphibious tracks. Zooming in on the vehicle, one of the Marine snipers spotted the butt of a rifle inside the car. They watched it carefully until the driver pulled it into his lap, making as if to use it against the column of vehicles passing by his position. That was enough. The Americans opened fire and killed the driver. A few minutes later, another man showed up and slid into the passenger seat, unaware that his buddy had been killed. He looked over and saw the driver and froze — the Shock Factor at work. Suddenly, he broke free from his paralysis, jumped out of the car, and ran around to the driver’s side. He threw open the door and was trying to pull the driver out so he could use the vehicle to get away. He wasn’t thinking clearly. If he had been, he’d have realized that by doing this, he’d exposed himself to the snipers who had just shot his friend. This is another aspect of the Shock Factor — irrational behavior. They don’t think; they just act. And sometimes they do things that seal their fate.

Sergeant Kevin Homestead, a member of 3/5’s scout sniper platoon, shot him dead with three shots from his M4 before the insurgent could get the car into gear. When a patrol from Kilo Company, 3/5 went to secure the car, they discovered the rifle inside it was one of the M40s taken off the Marines killed in Ramadi in 2004. The enemy sniper had dumped the expensive Unertl scope the rifle originally carried, replacing it with a cheap Tasco. Other than that, the weapon was intact.

Countersniper operations consumed both sides as the struggle for Ramadi unfolded. Jim Gilliland scored the most impressive countersniper kill in Ramadi, and quite possibly the Iraq War. The previous September, as his Shadow Team occupied the Ramadi Inn, an al-Qaida sniper killed one of Gilliland’s friends and fellow NCOs from the 2/69 as he helped lead a patrol. With the men in the street pinned down by the enemy gunman, they radioed for help, telling Jim that the sharpshooter was using a hospital for his hide. Gilliland was 1,250 yards from the hospital — technically out of the M24s performance envelope. Yet desperate times call for extreme measures. He glassed the hospital and found the enemy sniper lurking in the shadows of a fourth-floor room. He was partially concealed, giving the American only a waist-up shot.

Gilliland was using a Leupold scope accurate to a thousand yards, and his weapon was considered accurate out to seven hundred. To kill the sniper, he had to make a rough series of calculations in his head. Gilliland’s M24 was the only one the team possessed that hadn’t been painted. As a result, the men called it the “Black Gun.” This was the sort of shot the M82 Barrett would have been more suited to take, but Gilliland had the Black Gun already against his shoulder and he didn’t want to expend critical time maneuvering the heavier .50 cal into place. In that interim, the enemy sniper could kill another American.

He took aim at a point twelve feet above the sniper’s lair, then pulled the trigger. The 7.62mm bullet arced across the city and struck the insurgent in the chest. He grimaced and fell over out of sight. A subsequent patrol found him dead, the single 7.62 bullet center mass his only wound.

At the time, Gilliland’s shot was the longest 7.62 kill of the Iraq War. It did nothing to deaden the pain of losing Staff Sargeant Jason Benford, the al-Qaida sniper’s victim and close friend of many in Shadow Team.

Layered into countersniper operations in Ramadi were raids conducted on known al-Qaida hideouts. American intelligence developed information on where some of these snipers hunkered down between missions, and U.S. patrols went after them in their lairs. In one attack, an al-Qaida sniper was killed in a safe house northeast of Ramadi. When the Americans searched his dwelling, they discovered a pile of videotapes documenting all the shots he’d taken on Coalition troops.

The enemy also made a point of going after American snipers. In September 2006, Chris Kyle’s sister platoon from SEAL Team Three had kicked out a four-man sniper element to overwatch a section of Ramadi. In the morning of the twenty-ninth, the element’s snipers killed two insurgents. The enemy made a concerted effort to drive the SEALs off the rooftop. The Americans came under heavy small-arms fire, and an RPG narrowly missed them. Mike Monsoor, a machine gunner with the platoon, took up a firing position between the two snipers and returned fire.

Suddenly, a grenade sailed over the parapet, thrown by an insurgent who had carefully crept toward the SEALs position until he was virtually beneath it. The grenade hit Mike in the chest and bounced to the roof between his brother SEALs. Shouting a warning, he dove on the grenade as it detonated, shielding his teammates from its blast with his body. He died thirty minutes later. President George W. Bush later awarded Mike Monsoor the Medal of Honor for his supreme, selfless act of bravery.

Mike was Team Three’s second casualty in a matter of weeks. On August 2, 2006, part of Charlie Platoon had sortied into central Ramadi to provide overwatch support for an Iraqi Army sweep of a particularly dangerous neighborhood. Chris Kyle was part of that element, which bounded forward to establish a position in a battered apartment complex. Moments after getting on the roof, Chris and his fellow SEALs came under accurate small-arms fire. As they scrambled for cover, an al-Qaida sniper fired a shot at Chris’s friend Ryan Job. Job was manning a machine gun that morning. The sniper’s bullet struck the Mark 48s upper receiver and fragmented. Parts of it ricocheted into Ryan’s right eye and cheek, knocking him over. The SEALs quickly administered aid and evacuated their wounded brother.

Ryan lost his right eye and the vision in his left. Though blinded by the al-Qaida gunman, he returned to the States determined to live life to the utmost. He learned to hunt again and bagged an elk on one outing. In 2009 he climbed Mount Rainier, one of the most technical and difficult mountains in the United States. He became an inspiration to thousands of wounded warriors, only to die at the hands of a nurse during his final surgery to reconstruct his face. In post-op, a nurse administered an overdose of painkillers, taking the life of one of America’s most beloved SEALs.

Through 2004 and 2005, the fighting in Ramadi had simmered and smoldered. When the American slow-motion offensive to capture the city once and for all began in June 2006, the fighting flared into full-scale kinetic warfare. There was no attempt at winning the hearts and minds here, it was a straight-up slugfest with the snipers on both sides shaping the nature of the fight and the tactics employed. In the months ahead, the Iraq War would be won or lost within the streets of the Al Anbar capital.

And at this critical junction, SEAL Team Three rotated home after a long, bloody, and successful tour of duty. Replacing them in the city would be SEAL Team Five, an experienced unit whose ranks included legendary SEAL Marcus Luttrell, as well as a backwoods country-boy-turned-elite-sniper Adam Downs.

CHAPTER FIVE The Pigeon Flipper

SEAL Team Five arrived in Ramadi starting in late September 2006, set to replace Mike Monsoor’s Team Three. Composed of a solid backbone of veterans of both Afghanistan and Iraq, Team Five included perhaps the best-known SEAL in the Navy, Marcus Luttrell. Marcus had been severely wounded in Afghanistan during Operation Red Wings when the four-man reconnaissance team he was with was attacked by hundreds of enemy fighters. The other three operators assigned to the recon element were killed, along with eight more SEALs and eight air crew who died when an RPG struck their CH-47 Chinook helicopter. Thirty years old, standing six foot five, Marcus returned to duty with Team Five after only partially recovering from his wounds. He would endure agonizing pain throughout his Ramadi deployment, though he never let it stop him from getting back out in the field with his brothers.

In Team Five, Marcus was reunited with one of his close friends from earlier in his Navy career. Adam Downs met Marcus when they attended a SEAL training school together. Though Marcus was raised in Houston, Texas, and Adam grew up in backwoods Illinois, the two formed a close friendship based on their mutual love of the outdoors and hunting.

Adam prided himself on being a good ol’ boy, and the men in his platoon called him the “Redneck Mujahideen.” Rock-solid in a fight, devoted to his brother SEALs and to the mission, he’d gained a reputation for fierce loyalty and reliability on the battlefield during his first combat deployment to Iraq the year before. With Team Five, he could usually be found with a cigar in his mouth and a half-chewed old stogie stuffed away somewhere in his kit. He told Marcus and the other guys in the platoon that his old unit had not taken a single casualty when he carried that old cigar with him. It became his good-luck talisman, and he made a point of never leaving the wire without it in Ramadi.

Though both Adam and Marcus were combat veterans, nothing they’d ever experienced approached the ongoing mental and physical grind they encountered in the killing ground of Ramadi.

SEAL Team Five’s Alpha Platoon slipped through the gate at COP Firecracker and plunged into the darkened streets. It was after midnight: vampire hours for the men of Naval Special Warfare. The men wore their unit patch, a kicking bull, on their right shoulders. Mess with the bull, get the horns.

Tonight, they would seize a building in south-central Ramadi that had been picked as the site of the Marine’s next COP. With ten snipers, Alpha Platoon’s mission would be to reach out and touch anyone who tried to interfere with the COP’s construction.

The building selected had been an Iraqi Army facility at some point. Before that it had housed a small college before the war forced its abandonment. Most recently, it had served as a base of operations for al-Qaida in this section of the city. Surrounded by an oval stretch of road, it looked like a typical concrete government building in the middle of a traffic circle, which the Americans had dubbed “the racetrack.”

Adam Downs loped along with the rest of his squad. They kept about twenty yards spacing between each man — just in case somebody triggered an IED or the element suddenly took automatic weapon’s fire.

This was Adam’s first mission as a sniper. He’d been a machine gunner and a medic with his first platoon in 2004. He’d spent that deployment protecting Iraqi politicians, which he and the rest of his team hated. Politicians were bad enough, but the Iraqi ones were a particular brand of self-serving, loathsome cowards, and the SEALs came to detest their charges.

At the end of their deployment, Adam’s platoon was finally unchained from protecting “public servants” and turned loose on direct-action missions in northern Iraq around Mosul. Those ops lead to his first firefights.

On this night, Adam had done what a lot of rookie NFL players do before their first game: they’ll overload themselves. They put on way too many pads and get so armored up that they lose the agility that attracted their coaches in the first place. Easy to do. In Adam’s case, he’d taken too much gear along. He was a jack-of-all-trades for Alpha Platoon, a sniper, a qualified and experienced breacher, as well as a combat medic. Each specialization required specialized gear, and on his first time out in all three roles, Adam tried to carry everything. His utility belt sported more gizmos than Batman’s, including two breaching explosive charges, an emergency airway kit, six tourniquets, and a radio.

He’d slung his .300 Win Mag bolt-action rifle over his back, then strapped his assault pack over it. The pack was full of more gear—40mm He rounds for the M203 grenade launcher mounted under the barrel of his M4 carbine, more medical stuff, batteries, his ghilly suit, the olive drab screens he planned to use to camouflage his hide, plus MREs and a single bottle of water. “I didn’t want to look like a pussy,” he later recalled about the minimal amount of water he carried.

“But I did have a Satanic amount of ammunition — something like eleven or twelve magazines.” Altogether, with his body armor, helmet, Rhodesian vest (or chest rig) that held his spare ammunition, and two weapons, Adam probably lugged close to ninety pounds into the city that night.

Marcus Luttrell, who was his team’s acting chief, checked on him. The two had been friends for years, and had come together in Team Five after Marcus became the Lone Survivor of a Seal Team Ten fire team from Operation Red Wings in Afghanistan the previous year. They’d gone through 18 Delta Combat Medic school together, and Adam always credited Marcus with getting him to graduation. “Marcus,” Adam later said, “taught me how to study. He pulled me through all those classes.”

“How ya holdin’ up?” Luttrell asked him.

Another thousand yards and I’ll be ready to turn a gun on myself.

No way was he going to complain or show weakness. Marcus was setting the standard for toughness within the platoon. He was a walking case study of ground-pounder injuries — his back was jacked up, his thumb and wrist and knees were all in various states of agony. While some guys would be content with Med Hold, or a desk gig, Marcus sucked it up, never bitched, and stayed at the tip of the spear.

Adam exhaled sharply and whispered, “I’m good to go.”

Next mission, he was going to prioritize all this shit. It felt like his spine was compressing.

Gunfire rang out in the distance. Through his night vision, Adam could see the greenish flares of fires burning somewhere in the city. They cast an eerie glow over the man-made horizons of the buildings that flanked this battle-damaged avenue.

As they approached the target building, the platoon peeled off into a narrow alley. They’d come at it from an unexpected quarter — unfortunately this meant scaling a wall. The SEALs climbed over it one at a time. When Adam hauled himself over it, all the extra weight caused him to lose his balance. He slipped and fell hard against his assault pack — and the .300 Winchester Magnum rifle beneath it.

Fuck this Ninja shit.

He picked himself up and kept moving as he cursed under his breath. He hoped his Win Mag and its Nightforce scope were okay.

This section of the city had once been a ramshackle slum. Trash lay everywhere in stinking heaps, and abandoned, half-ruined dwellings lined the alley.

They reached the racetrack and stacked up on the target building. A moment later, at an unspoken command, Alpha Platoon poured inside.

The place had been a carnival of horrors, a base where al-Qaida abused the locals who had dared oppose them. Some were perhaps unfortunates who violated the Shuria Law al-Qaida had implemented in ’hoods they controlled. Caught smoking? Al-Qaida’s adherents would sometimes kill the offender on the spot. Other times they’d cut off his smoking fingers. Those who were beardless, or violated the dictates of al-Qaida’s dress code, would find themselves abducted off the street and tortured in a place like this one.

The SEALs went from room to room, finding blood splatters on walls, dried blood pooled on floors, and more splashed across tables. Steel spikes, rusty iron rods, pliers and knives provided testimony to what had been happening here.

Sickened by what they’d found, the men secured the building and began to establish overwatch positions on the fourth floor. Adam began to construct his hide in the back of what had been a science classroom of some sort. Bottles and bunsen burners, sinks and rows of work spaces dominated the room. The windows had long since been shot out or shattered, leaving an unobstructed field of fire to the south. This was the most likely avenue of approach the enemy would use should they try to stop construction of the new COP, and Adam relished the opportunity to take the fight to them. Mike Monsoor and Marc Lee had died only two months before; in Naval Special Warfare, the community was so small everyone either knew each other, or knew their reputation. Team Five had arrived in Ramadi eager to avenge the loss of Team Three’s beloved brothers.

Adam set up his olive drab screens between the windows and the back of the classroom. Then he found some relatively undamaged — and nonbloodstained — tables that he dragged over to the far corner. He put two together and hefted a third atop them. Then he found a bench and slid that up there as well. When he climbed into his hide, he noted with satisfaction that he had a great view of the street and nearby buildings.

He settled into his spot and began his turn behind the Win Mag. Before he’d left the COP for this mission, he’d covered his face with cami paint, a ritual that dated back to his days in southern Illinois hunting with his best friend Justin and his father, Dale. Now he pressed his eye into the Nightforce and glassed the street. No movement yet, but the hour was still early.

He settled down and fell into his hunter’s zone: a combination of patience and alertness. He’d learned both in tree stands around Elko as a teenager. When he was ten, Dale had selected a Ben Pearson compound bow for Adam that Adam’s father then purchased as a Christmas gift for him. He and Justin spent hours sending arrows into paper plates taped to hay bales. Later, they went to archery tournaments — Justin was one of the best archers in his age group. Dale mentored both boys, and after they turned fourteen, he began to take them bow hunting.

For Adam, sitting in a hide in Ramadi in his zone brought back the best moments of his childhood. Those tree stands. Hours and hours of nothing but quiet waiting and camaraderie. Except this time, instead of waiting for a buck to come by, he was keeping watch over young Americans and trying to keep them safe.

The Army’s combat engineers showed up with all the material needed for the construction of the new outpost. They’d gotten so good at this that the troops referred to it as “COP in a Box.”

Seize, hold, expand. That was the strategy, and each COP pushed al-Qaida that much further into a corner from which its fighters could not escape. Their days of operating at will within the city were numbered. The insurgents realized it, and the fight had become increasingly tenacious.

The sun rose, and the new day began. People began moving around the city, and the insurgents were certainly reconning the new American position. Around the racetrack the engineers worked furiously against the clock to fortify the COP before the first attack inevitably came. Adam and “Dave” watched them work as Marine patrols arrived to provide extra security. They dismounted and moved out with a Humvee or two in support.

Look at those guys down there. Half of ’em were dating the prom queen this time last year. Now they’re just trying to stay alive in this fucked-up place.

This mission had meaning. In a war where orders often made no sense, and so much waste was evident everywhere, this moment, this place, had purpose. With his Win Mag, he could keep those Americans below alive. That was if the Rules of Engagement, the ROEs, didn’t get in the way. Even if they did, he’d pull the trigger and let the administrative chips fall where they may later if it meant saving an American life.

He shifted his scope and searched for activity on the rooftops down the street. Nothing of interest, but it got Adam thinking about some of the things he’d learned during the urban warfare section of sniper school back in Indiana.

The avenue stretching south had two visible cross streets. One was about two hundred yards away. These side roads channeled wind, and because of the dynamic currents in an urban environment, the wind can blow in different directions and speeds from block to block.

Take a shot at a bad guy three blocks up a street, and a sniper might have to deal with three different wind factors in the shooting equation. This can make shooting at a distance in cityscapes a significant challenge.

Another challenge is the nature of engagements in urban terrain. In rural areas, or open terrain, the range between friend and foe is usually a lot farther away than in urban areas. This makes things easier on the sniper, as he can take a Win Mag or an M40 or a .50 cal and know the general distance at which he’ll be shooting targets. In Afghanistan, MARSOC snipers routinely opened fire at Taliban fighters twelve hundred yards away or more.

In places like Ramadi, the enemy can be anywhere. Firefights will range from farther than a thousand yards down to point-blank with sudden, surprise attacks like the one that killed Mike Monsoor. Snipers have to fulfill multiple roles in a city fight, which requires multiple weapons — an operator cannot effectively clear a room with a Win Mag. Trying to shoot a target at close range with a ten-power scope presents all manner of problems as well, so the snipers in Ramadi carried M4s as well as their sniper rifle.

On the fourth floor of the new 17th Street COP, Adam had a better field of fire than usual. He could see out to perhaps eight hundred yards down the street. The buildings were not uniform in size and shape, more of a mishmash that created corners and dead spaces between the alleys and side streets. This made for lots of places for insurgents to lurk. Adam scanned each one, then started back on the rooftops.

Right away, he spotted an Iraqi male atop a building a few hundred yards away. A quick examination of the man revealed that he had no weapon in his outstretched arms, but he was holding something small cupped in his palms. He walked to the edge of the roof and flung something into the air.

It took a moment for Adam to register what he’d just seen. The man had tossed a pigeon. The bird began flying around as the Iraqi disappeared from view. He returned and released another one. Within a few minutes, he had a whole feathered squadron loitering overhead. He began to whistle and clap at them, which prompted the pigeons to do aerial front-flips. They spun and tumbled around him while Adam watched with interest.

What kind of a person played with pigeons in the middle of a combat zone?

A memory welled from his mind. A movie from a few years back … what was it?

Tom Berenger.

Denzel Washington.

This Iraqi reminded him of a scene from that movie. It was in some American urban ghetto. As Denzel’s character approaches a neighborhood, they saw the same thing. What did they call it?

Flipping pigeons.

That’s right. Training Day. The gangbangers used the birds as a way to signal impending danger.

Could this guy be doing the same thing?

Adam watched him more closely now. He was a male of military age. Bearded, like everyone else. No weapons, of that he was certain.

Where did this fit into the ROEs? Every time an America sniper pulled a trigger in Ramadi, the military made him fill out a shooter’s statement and the incident was investigated to make sure the shot didn’t violate procedures or the current ROEs.

He reported what the Iraqi was doing to his commander, who told Adam to keep an eye on the pigeon flipper.

A moment later, Dave called out the arrival of several military-aged males in the street, about a hundred thirty yards away. Just as he did, the pigeon flipper vanished. Adam checked the street. In the nearest intersection a group of men were gathering. They were laughing and smiling, like they were meeting at a park back home for a soccer game or something.

Laughter in Ramadi was not a common commodity.

What the hell was going on?

Adam looked over the crowd and saw one of the males gesture toward the COP. He was wearing a big, baggy brown sweater, the sort you might see a merchant seaman wear. It looked like it hadn’t been washed in years. In Ramadi, nothing had.

Brown Sweater abruptly stopped and looked directly at the fourth floor. He seemed to be staring right at Adam.

Okay, asshole. Maybe you know where I am. Fine. Bring it. Let’s get this on.

“Boss, can we pull on these motherfuckers?” Adam asked his commanding officer.

“Any weapons?”

“None visible.”

“Negative.”

Something did not feel right here. The gagglefuck in the street looked like nothing more than a cover for surveillance of the new COP. No sneak and peak here. They knew the ROEs and knew the SEALs could not engage them. They were exploiting the Coalition’s own rules to get a handle on the best way to launch an attack.

Adam sat there, watching them laugh and felt cold rage.

This kind of bullshit will lose you a war.

A few of the men drifted away down the side street. The remaining ones stayed only a short time longer before walking casually away. After they left, Adam pulled his eye from the scope and looked down over his rifle. The street was empty, at least for the moment.

He was about to go back to glassing the rooftops when he noticed a scuff mark on the windage adjustment dial on the side of his Nightforce.

Oh shit.

He’d zeroed his rifle to seven hundred yards before the start of the mission. The scuff hadn’t been there. With a sinking feeling he realized he must have struck it when he fell off the wall during the infil.

Was his zero off?

There was no way to tell. He couldn’t take a shot without revealing his position. Besides, if he fired randomly in the city, surely somebody would have his ass for that.

The uncertainty fed his rage.

He stared down into the now-empty street, wondering if he should swap out with Dave or another sniper whose zero was certain on his rifle.

That might be the professional thing to do.

He considered it for another moment. Each sniper’s weapon was tailored and zeroed specifically to his eye, grip, and cheek placement. He couldn’t just take another rifle and settle back down. He would have to either switch out, or make it work and compensate for any movement on the dial after he saw where his initial shot went.

Adam watched as a Marine patrol dashed into his field of view. They crossed through the second intersection a few hundred yards further down the street, their Humvees rumbling through the rubble and trash while their gunners held their heavy weapons and scanned the rooftops. The column vanished from view a moment later.

He wasn’t going to leave; no way. He’d just gotten to this shithole, and he was determined to help those Americans below in the street.

Right then, an explosion tore through the neighborhood. Dirt and debris fluttered down from the ceiling as the shock wave shook the building. The platoon radio filled with chatter. One of the Marine patrols had just taken an IED strike.

Adam gritted his teeth and seethed. There wasn’t anyone in his field of view, not even any civilians. They’d cleared the area, probably having known in advance the attack was coming.

Another explosion rocked the school. More grit filtered down from the ceiling, peppering the snipers with dust and grime. Probably asbestos, too.

The snipers had no eyes on the blast, and there was speculation as to what it was. An IED? A heavy mortar — say a 120mm? Maybe a rocket strike? Whatever the case, the enemy had just made it clear they would not let this COP go up without a fight.

A few minutes passed without any further activity. The street remained empty until a wrecker turned a corner and came down toward the COP, towing one of the Marine Humvees. The whole front clip had been blown apart by the IED hit. The wheels were mangled, the tires burned. The hood was gone, the windshield spiderwebbed with cracks, and the engine was a tangled mess of broken metal and hoses.

A burst of automatic weapons fire rang out a few blocks away. Again, Adam had no visual on it. An American machine gun rattled off a long series of replies. The exchange reminded him of his first tour as a Mark 48 automatic weapons gunner and his first firefight.

His platoon had established an overwatch position in Mosul. The unit’s snipers had set up hides on the top floor of the building while Adam and the rest of the guys pulled security on the ground floor. For hours, they kept their eyes on a fractious, hostile neighborhood until a sedan sped around a corner and screeched to a halt right in front of their building. Four insurgents with AK-47s bailed out of the vehicle, while several more came out from a doorway across the street.

It was a classic case of a sudden, point-blank situation with the enemy in an urban environment. The enemy had no idea they’d just parked in front of a SEAL Team, which made things easy. The snipers opened fire first, dropping several Muj before Adam could even pull the trigger on his 7.62mm machine gun.

Adam’s burst raked right through a window, blowing out the glass and sending shards flying into the street. He laid on the trigger and caught one of the insurgents still standing by the sedan as he wielded his AK-47. The man went down, riddled with bullets.

The enemy tried to maneuver on the SEALs’ position, but the team killed them all or drove them off.

Adam kept that fight in the back of his mind as he watched the street and listened to the sporadic gunfire erupting around the school. In an urban environment, you can’t take anything for granted. One minute you can be watching an intersection eight hundred yards away. The next you’re locked in a battle at near hand-to-hand range. Relax only at your peril.

He scanned the street again, looking for any Muj trying to sneak up on the building. Then he worked his way forward, his crosshairs passing through the first intersection. Nothing so far. He began to work on the rooftops. And that’s when he saw him.

The pigeon flipper was back on the roof.

CHAPTER SIX The Bull’s Horns

“Boss, can I engage this guy?” Adam asked as he watched the pigeon flipper. The man had sent his birds into the air over his building again, and they busily executed somersaults at his command.

If you have to ask, you probably shouldn’t take the shot.

Adam thought of the paperwork required after every trigger pull. Some JAG guy second-guessing his every move, passing judgment on whether he should have fired his weapon in the middle of a war zone. His maternal grandfather had served in Europe during World War II. What would have happened if they had these ROEs then?

The team’s officer in charge told Adam that if it becomes obvious the pigeon flipper was signaling enemy forces, he could take him out.

Who plays with birds when running gunfights have broken out all over your neighborhood?

The sun was to the man’s back as it rose over the buildings to Adam’s left. The classroom grew increasingly bright, making the Illinois native worry again that his hide could be seen from the street.

The pigeon flipper disappeared again, and the birds all landed somewhere out of sight. This gave Adam a chance to take stock. He pulled his eye from his Win Mag’s Nightforce and glanced around the room. Sunlight streamed through the glassless windows and soon there would be no shadows concealing their position. Behind him, somebody had covered the wall with camouflaged paper. It was the same woodland pattern he wore when hunting in Illinois. Against it, his hide stood out. Maybe Brown Sweater had already made his location. If not, whatever eyes were out there watching him would surely have him and Dave when the sun rose a little higher.

At least if anyone started shooting at him, he could return fire without having to worry about a prison sentence. Plus, he knew he was a better shot than al-Qaida’s warriors were.

Fine. Bring it.

He settled back into his stance and brought his eyeball to the scope. At the closest intersection, the gaggle of military-aged men returned. They were laughing and joking again, but this time, several broke into spontaneous dances. A few pointed at the school and made mocking gestures.

They were celebrating. Right there in the street, right under the eyes of the enemy they’d just hammered. Smack in the middle was Brown Sweater, slapping backs and high-fiving like some immature athlete.

Dave was watching them, too. Adam heard him say, “They’re rubbing our faces in it.”

“Yep.”

There were eight to ten in the middle of the intersection now. The celebrating died down, and they went into a tight huddle. Every few seconds, one of them would stick their head up out of the huddle and stare over at a particular part of the school. He’d nod, then drop back down into the huddle. It seemed as if they were calling their next play against the new COP.

Street football, Ramadi style. You fire the RPG at the gate, we’ll sweep left and emplace an IED.

“Can we pull on these motherfuckers?” Adam asked. But as soon as he did, he knew the answer.

“Can’t man. Can’t do it. We’re not inside the ROEs.”

ROEs the enemy clearly understood.

Adam scanned for weapons, though he knew they’d be unarmed. He checked Brown Sweater thoroughly, looking for a pistol in his waistband, or perhaps in his pocket. Nothing.

Brown Sweater’s head rose above the huddle. He looked straight up at the school’s fourth floor. From his scope, Adam could see his dark eyes seemingly boring into his.

He sees me. I know he sees me.

Snipers spend so much time watching other people who don’t know they’re being watched that they can tell who is up to no good, and who’s just a passerby pretty easily after a while. Little details — facial expressions, body movement, the way somebody walks or stands — they telegraph tension, or fear, or anticipation.

Brown Sweater’s eyes were full of hate. Adam had no doubt of that.

But he knew he could not take the shot. Even if he didn’t get prosecuted, there could be a media circus. Those vultures were always circling, looking for another Haditha story, or Abu Ghraib. Even if it escaped the notice of the press, there were other drastic measures that could be taken against a sniper who’d strayed from the ROEs. A Trident Board could be convened by Naval Special Warfare, and the sniper could be kicked out of the teams. For Adam, after ten plus years, to get booted back to the fleet as a medic was a fate worse than death.

The huddle broke as the men dispersed again. Some ran across the intersection and disappeared to the east. Some exited to the west. A silence fell across the neighborhood, broken only by a few stray AK reports in the distance. A few more minutes passed. The snipers scanned and searched to no avail.

A third explosion shattered the calm. Another IED, but this time nobody was hurt and the targeted Humvee was not damaged.

A few minutes later, the pigeon flipper reappeared on the roof. His feathered pals began their aerial acrobatics. Adam reported it, and observed him long enough to make a decision.

Okay, that’s it. This guy is definitely signaling somebody. He needs to die.

Before Adam could take aim, though, he ducked out of sight again. Adam vowed to dump the son of a bitch the next time he showed his face.

Sure enough, the birds had just landed back at their roosts when the gagglefuck returned to the intersection. The same ten, scruffy-looking males. This time, they stood close together, as if hiding from view something going on in the middle of the huddle. Adam couldn’t get a fix on what they were doing. Neither could Dave.

Once again, Brown Sweater was right there in the mix. Greasy hair combed forward over his forehead. Long enough that his bangs almost touched his eyebrows. Cold eyes.

Adam reported what was going on again. This time, the officer in charge, the OIC, had had enough. “Hey fellas, you see anything suspicious, drop the hammer. I’ve had enough of this shit.”

So had everyone else. Everything going on since sunup had been hanky. Now it was game on, bad guys.

As if they sensed it, the gagglefuck broke up again. Brown Sweater trotted off, exit stage right. The street grew quiet again. The pattern had been established, and it was getting old. Time to throw something new at these sons of bitches.

A car rolled up one of the side alleys and pulled to a stop. Brown Sweater got out and walked into the street Adam was overwatching perhaps forty yards farther down from the first intersection.

He walked along the right side of the street to a doorway. It was set back a ways from the street, and the corner of a building partially obscured Adam’s view of it. Nonetheless, he had a good enough view. He watched Brown Sweater through his Nightforce as Danny called out the range.

“Hundred ninety-three yards.”

Adam stole a quick look at the intersection to make sure the wind hadn’t picked up there. In these moments, he looked for any indicators of a breeze — a fluttering towel, a passerby’s shirt riffling, paper or trash cartwheeling as it rode the wind. Anything to get an idea of the dope to dial into the scope.

The morning was still. Nothing moved in the intersection. If Brown Sweater did anything to merit dropping the hammer on him, this would be a straightforward shot. Except the Win Mag had been zeroed at more than twice the engagement distance. Adam made a mental note to adjust for that by aiming a little lower.

But what if the fall knocked the scope out of alignment? What if the dope had been messed up when the dial got scuffed?

Brown Sweater knocked on the door. It opened, but neither Dave nor Adam could see who was inside. A hand reached out toward Brown Sweater to pass him something. For an instant, Adam had a clear view of the tailpipe of an RPG. Brown Sweater gripped it.

A bolt of adrenaline struck Adam, the same way he’d get juiced when a buck appeared in front of his blind back home when he and Justin and Dale would bow hunt. All morning, these bastards had been mocking the Americans, but not anymore. Brown Sweater finally made a mistake.

And signed his death warrant.

Adam reached up with his left hand and set his dope to a hundred yards without ever taking his eye out of the scope. The Win Mag fired a one-hundred-ninety-grain cartridge at a flat trajectory with a velocity of twenty-five hundred yards per second. At this range, if he hit him, it would be like using a sledgehammer to drive a finishing nail.

Adam forced himself to relax. Brown Sweater secured the RPG and stuffed it under his clothes.

Adam centered his crosshairs just below the man’s heart. He was standing with his right side angled toward the school, with just enough of his chest visible for Adam to get a good target picture.

He slid his index finger into the trigger guard. Brown Sweater hadn’t moved, but he wasn’t going to stay there all day. This was the moment. Adam pulled through and felt the trigger break. A split second later, the Win Mag kicked against his shoulder.

Shit! I didn’t breathe through the shot!

The 7.62mm round streaked downrange, leaving a faint vapor trail in its wake that some snipers can detect. The bullet struck Brown Sweater just above his heart, probably right in the breast bone.

Damn. Too high. Was going for his pump house.

Seemingly, in slow motion, Brown Sweater turned and looked up at the school’s fourth floor. It felt to Adam as if the two made eye contact again. This time, the anger and malice and cold hate radiating in those dark eyes were gone, replaced by a mix of surprise and utter despair. His eyebrows drooped, and his mouth opened.

Then he toppled over a few feet from the door.

Adam racked his Win Mag’s bolt. The spent casing spun out of the rifle and tinged off the desk before rolling off the edge and coming to rest on the floor below his hide. He slid the bolt back in place, jacking a fresh round into the chamber. The smell of gunpowder filled the room.

Adam watched Brown Sweater as he lay in front of the door. Whoever had been inside was nowhere in sight now, leaving his insurgent buddy to bleed out on his front porch. He was down, but had he killed him? Adam wasn’t sure. He thought about taking a second shot to finish Brown Sweater, but realized that was a revenge impulse born from all the rage and frustration the morning had brought.

Be professional. Keep it to that one shot.

A flurry of moment caught his eye. From across the street to Adam’s left, another insurgent sprinted from the cover of an alleyway. He was going straight for Brown Sweater, AK-47 in hand. He wasn’t fast — in fact the man was pudgy and overweight. But he had courage to run after his downed comrade across an open street, something his pal in the doorway most certainly did not. As he ran, Adam recognized him as another one from the intersection gaggle.

After shooting high with his first shot, Adam adjusted his aim slightly and put the crosshairs a little lower on the running man’s body. He tracked the insurgent as he reached the other side of the street and stopped beside Brown Sweater’s bloody, twitching body.

The minute the pudgy Muj halted, Adam had him cold. He pulled the trigger, felt the Win Mag’s kick. An instant later the bullet punched through the Muj’s right side. It broke the man’s ribs and probably clipped a lung. Adam had hit him just below the mid-axillary line. Was it enough to kill him? The sniper wasn’t sure.

Damn. Too low. Just a little too low this time.

The second Muj dropped his AK and tumbled to the ground. Part of the building that jutted out toward the street blocked Adam’s view of where he fell so he couldn’t tell if his target was still alive or not.

Movement in the doorway wrested Adam’s attention away from Brown Sweater and where his pal might have fallen. He shifted the scope slightly just in time to see a woman step outside. She saw Brown Sweater and began wailing. Even from his position almost two hundred yards away, Adam could hear her cries of anguish.

She bent down and grabbed Brown Sweater’s now-still body, her own form wracked by her sobs. She pulled him toward the doorway, leaving a bloody streak on the ground in his wake. With a furious tug, she dragged him through the door. The last thing Adam saw were the man’s shoes vanish into the darkness beyond the doorway.

A few minutes later, she stepped outside again to dump a bucket of soapy water onto what amounted to her front porch. The soap bubbles turned crimson as the water mingled with the blood drying there. She stood alone, staring down at the mess, still sobbing. Then she turned and went back inside, closing the door on all the violence that had gripped her neighborhood for months now.

Who was Brown Sweater to her? Husband? Son? Brother? No way to tell. The Marines had their hands full all over the sector that morning and a squad could not be spared to investigate. Whoever he was, he’d been trying to kill the Americans in the streets around the new COP. No doubts there, and Adam would spare no sympathy for him. By dropping Brown Sweater, he knew he’d saved American lives.

His life for saving some of ours.

The sniper’s cold equation.

Shouldn’t have been doing that, buddy.

Adam and the rest of his platoon never saw what happened to the second Muj he’d shot. After he fell out of his field of view, the man was probably dragged off as well. Did he survive? Not likely. If he had, he would have had a long recovery ahead of him.

After Adam took those two shots, the gaggle never returned. Neither did the pigeon flipper. Message received. You mess with the bulls of Team Five, you get the horns.

There were four attacks against the COP that day, though. Several Marines were wounded; fortunately nobody was killed. All day long, the insurgents harassed the Americans with hit-and-run small-arms-fire attacks. They shot at the Humvee patrols with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Other attacks were designed to draw attention away from teams of dedicated IED emplacers. Team Five learned that day how al-Qaida would do anything, use anyone to get those bombs in position.

At one point, Marcus Luttrell, who had been hunkered down in a nearby room, spotted three terrified women pushing a handcart with an oil drum stashed inside it. Behind the women, a single armed Muj male moved with them, shielding his body with those of the women. Adam’s fellow snipers put a round into the oil drum, and one between two of the women that struck the ground directly under the Muj.

The Shock Factor worked to the letter here. Precision fire, even when not fatal, can destroy an enemy’s morale. The three women froze, then panicked and ran back down the street. Their panic infected their Muj captor, and he bolted back into enemy territory as well, his flip-flops flying off his feet as he fled. The Marines investigated the oil drum and discovered an IED within it. Two shots from Team Five’s snipers served to foil what could have been a fatal attack.

The SEAL platoon stayed at the 17th Street COP for five days. Altogether, they killed four insurgents, while one Marine on the roof of the building took a bullet in the back that passed down his leg and exited out at his knee. Adam was credited with the team’s first kill of the Ramadi deployment.

The 17th Street COP gave the Americans a foothold in the Qatana District. For two years, the Qatana neighborhood had been a backbone of al-Qaida’s presence in Ramadi. Now the Coalition had just stuck a knife in it. But gaining the foothold was one thing — seizing control of the neighborhood would be a totally different challenge, one that would come at a heavy cost to Team Five and Adam’s circle of friends.

CHAPTER SEVEN Sniper with a Rocket Launcher

Heroic restraint.

That’s what they called the courage needed to stay within the ROEs. With the new counterinsurgency doctrine now fully adopted, our strategy in Iraq had changed from one of overwhelming firepower to a kindler, gentler type of fighting that looked more like neighborhood law enforcement with heavy weapons than a military operation. It took guts not to shoot on sight anything that resembled a legitimate target in a city where threats lurked around every corner, hid in every alley. Bombs, snipers, mortar barrages — the enemy practiced no heroic restraint, just suicide attacks, hit-and-run raids, and massive assaults on the forward COPs.

Every time SEAL Team Five’s snipers pulled their triggers, the shooter reports had to be filed, investigations carried out. The men got to the point where they hated those things, and hated the sight of the JAG officers seemingly ready to second-guess every battlefield decision. After his first report, Adam told his OIC, “Boss, I suck at paperwork. Hell, I wouldn’t even know how to write my own name if it wasn’t stenciled on my gear.”

The reports and ever-present reminders that one wrong move in combat could destroy a career, or even land a sniper in prison, affected Adam and everyone else whenever they went into the city. They grew cautious on the trigger, and at times males they were almost certain were enemies escaped their wrath simply because whatever they were doing did not fall into the narrow range of the ROEs.

As difficult as these restrictions were for the SEALs and front-line troops, there was a point to heroic restraint. The civilians caught in the middle were the key to this fight, and the change of strategy began to make a difference to them. In one neighborhood, al-Qaida drove truck-mounted mortars into the streets almost every day to fire a few harassing rounds at the Coalition outposts nearby. The Coalition sometimes launched counterbarrages if the trucks could be pinpointed before they broke contact and sped away. The destruction the counterbombardment did to the neighborhood actually turned the locals against al-Qaida, not the Coalition. They rose up and tried to stop the enemy from launching their attacks from their neighborhood.

Al-Qaida did not take kindly to such a rebellion. They stormed into the neighborhood and burned the sheik’s house down. They caught a sixteen-year-old boy, beheaded him, and delivered his head to one of the sheik’s police units. Then, in a wave of terror, they grabbed locals, trussed them up and tied them behind their vehicles. Shouting Jihadist slogans, they drove around the neighborhood with impunity, dragging their victims sometimes to their deaths.

After al-Qaida beheaded more children, the local imam used the neighborhood’s mosque to declare holy war against the holy warriors. The sheik went to the Americans and solidified an alliance with the Coalition. American troops, with the help of the locals, swept the neighborhood and captured numerous insurgents. After that, al-Qaida entered that part of Ramadi only at their extreme peril.

After that, more and more neighborhoods followed suit. They raised their own militias, their tribal leaders sent men to join the Iraqi Police (IP). More stations were established, and though the IPs left a lot to be desired with their professionalism and resistance toward graft, they started to show courage and heart. Dozens were killed manning checkpoints designed to foil vehicle-borne IED (VBIED) attacks in the city.

As the Iraqi policemen died to protect their neighborhoods and the population slowly began to turn on al-Qaida, the flow of intelligence to American forces increased. This played to SEAL Team Five’s strengths as a surgical force, and the operators soon had plenty of specific individuals to hunt down on kill or capture direct-action missions.

Adam volunteered for missions with both elements of the platoon. As long as he was in the city, he wanted to contribute as much as possible. During direct-action missions, he usually functioned as the team’s breacher, blowing doors with small strip-charges. He’d carried out many such missions in Mosul during his previous deployment, where he had learned never to assume what lay on the other side of the door. The bad guys they encountered inside these houses never offered serious resistance. The team caught them asleep, or overwhelmed them with sheer violence of action before they could find a weapon. But at times, as they were being detained, those they captured would take a swing at an operator. That never ended well for the insurgent, who usually ended up bruised and battered, facedown, and zip-cuffed.

During one direct-action mission in Ramadi, the platoon hit a house harboring a known IED specialist. Taking out these bomb makers was one of the team’s top priorities, so the men were juiced for this mission. Adam breached the door, the operators flowed inside — only to find their man was not at home.

Fair enough. In Ramadi, the Americans had to think on their feet and improvise. The operators faked an extraction, leaving behind a small contingent that included Adam. While he and a few others hunkered down in the house, one of the SEALs hid inside the family’s outhouse. Thinking all was clear, the bomb maker slipped into the courtyard sometime before dawn and decided to go relieve himself before he entered the house.

He opened the outhouse door to find the barrel of a SIG Sauer pistol pointed at his forehead.

Game over, Fucker.

Except he didn’t know it. As one of the operators tried to zip-cuff him, the bomb maker bit him on the hand. Adam and a couple others came over to help, but the man refused to go quietly. He fought and struggled until the SEALs knocked him off his feet and kneed him in the face. After that, compliance was his watchword.

Between the direct-action missions, Team Five’s snipers played a key role in expanding the Coalition’s hold on Ramadi. They covered the construction of new outposts and kept watch over Army and Marine patrols as they swept into hostile neighborhoods. Such missions helped take the pressure off the forward COPs and push the Coalition’s presence deeper into al-Qaida-held territory. These were risky missions, and the team faced new threats from a cunning and capable enemy who knew the terrain and had eyes everywhere.

In the early hours of November 19, 2006, SEAL Team Five’s two platoons moved into the city to support an upcoming major Coalition operation in the Second Officers quarter of Ramadi. Nicknamed by the operators as the “P-Sectors” for the designations on their maps, the Seconds Officers quarter included the Al Iskan and Al Andols districts — both firmly controlled by al-Qaida.

The plan called for Marine and Army elements, supported by Iraqi troops and police, to surge into the P-Sectors and root out the enemy by going house to house in search of weapons caches, intel, and insurgents. The mission was aggressive and would strike at the heart of a key al-Qaida stronghold in the city. The SEALs knew they would be in for a fight.

Team Five’s platoon at Camp Corregidor was assigned to protect the eastern flank of the Marine units involved in the operation. Staging out of COP Eagle’s Nest, they were to take fifty men (SEALs, specialists, and their Iraqi Jundis, or soldiers) and set up three mutually supporting sniper overwatch positions before dawn.

In the meantime, Adam’s platoon at Camp Lee would stage out of COP Iron and cover the patrols from two hide sites in the Al Iskan District. They’d be rolling out light that morning, having only a dozen operators and specialists, plus five Jundis to protect the Army’s flank.

The Camp Corregidor SEALs reached their assigned buildings without incident, only to discover they couldn’t see enough of the neighborhood from two of them. The nature of the buildings and streets in Ramadi were such that the high ground that provided good, unobstructed views was difficult to find. This made the three-hundred-sixty-degree protection of any site they did pick very difficult. Most every building would have blind spots — ones that the enemy frequently had already identified and knew how to exploit.

The special operations snipers flexed and found two new positions that gave them better visibility on the neighborhood. They secured them, finding the families inside sullen and hostile — characteristics of areas long in al-Qaida’s control. But as the snipers set up their hides, they discovered that the teams could not see each other’s positions. There were too many buildings and obstacles between them. The original idea had been to pick three sites that could cover each other in case of attack. Now, each hide would be out on its own little island.

Across the quarter, Adam and his platoon departed from COP Iron at about 0200. They moved through the city on foot for over a kilometer and a half before reaching their two selected sites. The first, a three-story house, had already been secured by a squad of 1st Armored Division soldiers, which made things easy for the SEALs. Adam went up to the roof with his spotter and the team’s JTAC (joint terminal attack controller), whom everyone had nicknamed “Fizbo.” He was a Navy fighter-bomber pilot, and had already earned the SEALs respect for his dedication, professionalism, and repeated attempts to get bombs on enemy fighters during skirmishes with the enemy. Each time their chain of command had denied the request, but Fizbo’s persistence impressed the operators.

The Camp Lee element’s other sniper team set up in a house about a block away from the initial hide. They had good visibility from both positions and could support each other easily, as only a ruined building stood between them.

Adam built his hide on the third floor and started the morning spotting for “Mark,” another one of the team’s snipers. Adam had volunteered to go out with the Gold element of the Camp Lee — based platoon, as they were short-handed that morning, so he was working with operators he knew well but had not gone out into the city with many times yet.

Mark had steadied his match-grade SPR .223 caliber rifle with a shooting stick instead of a bipod. This looks just like a big “Y” and the barrel of the weapon rests in its crook. Adam hunkered down beside him with a pair of binoculars. Together, they started mapping out their assigned sector, lasing the key features so they knew the ranges to them.

Three hundred yards from their hide, the road dead-ended at a T-intersection. They couldn’t see much beyond the buildings on the south side of it, so that became the limit of their field of view to the south that morning.

After sunrise, some of the other SEALs caught sight of numerous unarmed military-aged males. Some strolled around the street, trying without success to look casual and not like they were looking for where the Americans had set up shop. A few were even less subtle. They peeked out from around corners, or lurked in the alleyways where they stared at the rooftops. Adam and Mark listened to the chatter as their brothers reported what was going on, but they didn’t see any of this themselves. At least not at first.

A few hours after dawn, a military-aged male ran into the intersection clutching an AK-47 at the low ready. He looked a little like Elmer Fudd hunting Bugs Bunny, only with Fudd in a dead sprint.

Adam called him out to Mark. The insurgent was three hundred yards away, but moving quickly perpendicular to their position, and they had only about a twenty-yard-wide field of view at the intersection. It would be a tough shot to make on the fly like this.

Mark swung his rifle back to the intersection and found the target in his Leupold scope just a split second before he vanished out of their line of sight at the edge of the intersection.

“Fuck! Can’t get the shot!” the SEAL sniper said.

Frustrated, they considered options.

“Let’s go up on the roof and see if we can get eyes on him,” Adam suggested.

Mark agreed and they climbed out of their hide and headed up onto the roof where another team was already set up and overwatching another sector. They reached the roof and crawled to the southside parapet. Mark stayed low while Adam popped his head over the edge to try to catch a glimpse of the insurgent.

A quick sweep revealed a limited field of view again, only marginally better than the third-floor hide. He ducked low and waited a few seconds before taking a second look. Nothing. No sign of the insurgent, or anyone else at that intersection.

Adam studied the buildings around the T. No movement. It was mid-morning by now, and the neighborhood looked as empty as the set from 28 Days Later. He’d had his head above the parapet for about thirty seconds when a single round impacted three inches below his chin. The bullet ricocheted and pelted Adam with concrete fragments. A split second later, Adam heard the rifle’s report.

Sniper!

Adam dropped to the roof, heart pounding. He looked over at Mark and the two exchanged a few quick expletives.

Wasn’t checking my flank. The fucking shot came from my right.

Adam stayed low and moved off the roof to report what had just happened. He found the OIC downstairs and let him know there was an enemy sharpshooter somewhere out to the southeast.

“Are you okay?” the OIC asked.

“Hell yeah!” Adam replied. “I’m still here talking to ya, aren’t I?”

More than anything, the shot pissed Adam off. That son of a bitch who almost took his head off was still out there in some dingy hide, looking for Americans to kill. No way was Adam going to stay in the relative safety of the house while that threat loomed over the Army patrols now filtering through the streets around them.

Fuck it. Let’s do this.

Adam went back to the roof and settled down beside Mark, ready to see if he could find the enemy sharpshooter. But only a minute or so had passed when Fizbo, the team’s JTAC, called out trouble.

He’d been talking to a Marine F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot orbiting overhead. The aviator had his sensors trained on the neighborhood to the south, and his video feed detected a group of insurgents massing a few blocks over. At first, there were just a few. But within minutes, they had almost twenty armed fighters.

Was their sniper overwatching them? Just like we were doing for our guys? If that was the case, the enemy knew where the SEALs were and might soon try to maneuver on their building.

Adam peered over the parapet, but the street was still deserted. He ducked back down and told Mark. Fizbo was nearby, watching the F/A-18’s video feed from an electronic device called a Rover, basically a small computer with a flat-screen monitor.

“They’re moving,” Fizbo reported. There were around thirty of them now, almost a platoon-sized element.

The enemy force bounded toward the SEALs, then slipped into a building near the intersection. The Americans waited to see what their next move would be, but none of the insurgents emerged from the building.

What were they doing?

“Hey, Boss, let’s use rockets on ’em,” one of the other operators said.

Getting permission to drop bombs in Ramadi was extremely difficult, but the Gold Team had sortied from COP Iron with two 84mm Swedish-made Carl Gustav rocket launchers and ten reloads for them. First produced in the 1940s, the Carl Gustav had been used by most NATO countries as an antiarmor weapon for half a century. Its accuracy and hitting power, combined with its portability, made it a favorite weapon inside Naval Special Warfare even though it had been phased out of service throughout the West.

The Carl Gustavs gave the Gold element some serious firepower slung across their backs. The insurgents outnumbered the SEALs and the squad of soldiers holding the three-story building. If ever there was a time to use that firepower, it was now.

Adam had one of the launchers. Fizbo coached him onto the structure the enemy had taken over. Adam loaded the Carl Gustav.

Dave, one of the other Gold element operators, had the other Carl Gustav. He loaded his, stole a quick look at the target building, and ducked back below the parapet. Then he turned to Adam and said, in a German accent, “I see them!” It was a line from the original Die Hard movie when the evil blonde terrorist was preparing to fire a rocket at a police armored vehicle.

Adam started cracking up. Even with all the tension, or perhaps because of it, he couldn’t help it. Dave’s performance was spot on, and juxtaposed against the backdrop of Ramadi, it was almost surreal.

Then the moment passed. Dave shouldered his launcher and stood up at the far end of the roof. With a fiery whoosh, he let fly with the rocket. A split second later, they heard a muffled blast as it exploded downrange.

Now it was Adam’s turn.

Better bring my A game to this rocket business.

The insurgent sniper was still out there. Would he be waiting for Adam’s head this time? His windage corrected after that first shot? Maybe he’d trained his reticle just a shade higher this time.

Adam paid little attention to that thought. If they didn’t kill these guys, the team would have its hands full if the insurgents got much closer. This was the same neighborhood where Mike Monsoor had died; the enemy in this sector had a habit of exploiting blind spots and tossing grenades.

Keep these fuckers at arm’s length or they’ll get in around us.

The enemy sniper forgotten, Adam felt a sudden sense of relish. He’d deliver some payback for Mike, but this time instead of a single bullet, he’d send a seven-pound warhead their way at two hundred fifty yards a second. His rocket was set with a slight delay, which would allow it to penetrate the building’s walls and explode inside.

In one fluid motion, Adam stood up, took aim, and pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER EIGHT The Gauntlet

Half a mile from Adam’s streaking rocket, a lone insurgent inched toward the SEAL sniper teams of Lieutenant “Jack Higgins’s” element. Jack’s men, wary of grenade attacks like the one that had killed Mike Monsoor, had set up their hides inside rooms on the top floor of the building they’d occupied. The eyes of al-Qaida noticed this, and came up with a counter to this new tactic. The lone insurgent was the messenger of that latest battlefield evolution.

This interplay between tactic and countertactic made the battlefield in Iraq an ever-changing environment. For both sides, the key to this dynamic was observation. Get eyes on the enemy, understand what he’s doing, and figure out ways to stop him. For the Coalition, snipers, aircraft, and drones provided those eyes. For al-Qaida, it was their snipers, plus unarmed men and children wandering the streets to conduct preassault surveillance.

In Ramadi, everyone watched everyone else. Those few who evaded the technology and the many eyeballs would often do telling damage to their enemies.

Staying in the SEAL element’s blind spots, the al-Qaida fighter worked his way into the house next door to the one the Americans had taken over. He went upstairs and out onto the roof, still unseen by the snipers. The two buildings were separated by only a few feet, but that did not deter this insurgent. Like something out of an action film, the man jumped across the space and ended up on the roof above the Americans.

Right then, the midday call to prayer began to blare through a local mosque’s loudspeakers. The SEALs, long used to this Islamic ritual, noticed it sounded different. As they listened, one of the Iraqi NCOs with them rushed to Lieutenant Higgins and warned him the mosque was broadcasting a message to the insurgents.

Thanks to a group of kids who had spotted the SEALs earlier in the morning, the Jihadist on the roof knew exactly where the snipers had established their hide site. He crawled across the roof to a point directly above one of the firing ports they’d cut in the wall. Before the call to prayer had ended, he swung over the parapet and hurled a grenade into the room below. The Americans had little chance to react as the weapon rolled through the room. Petty Officer “Bill Barnum,” the element’s corpsman, shouted a warning, but it was too late. The grenade exploded a few seconds later, spraying Bill with shrapnel.

As his brothers rushed to Bill’s side, al-Qaida launched a simultaneous assault on all three of the Camp Corregidor SEAL hide sites. Moments before the streets had been empty. Now they swarmed with Jihadists, rushing and bounding and firing from the hips. The snipers opened up. So did the platoon’s machine gunners. The enemy poured into nearby buildings and scrambled up the stairs into the higher floors to established support by fire positions. Soon they were hammering the SEALs with machine guns and rifles.

Lieutenant Higgins had been on the bottom floor when the grenade attack took place. As the firefight swelled, he ran upstairs to find Bill seriously wounded. One look at his leg, and the young officer knew they would have to get him out immediately.

This presented a problem. The neighborhood was alive with gunfire and running bad guys. Calling in a helo to extract Bill was out of the question — no way would anyone want to risk a bird to such intense ground fire. CASEVAC (casualty evacuation) by helicopter in such a dense urban environment was fraught with peril anyway, and it was unusual to get a wounded man out that way. In this case, it just couldn’t happen, the threat level was too high.

The platoon had inserted into the hide sites on foot. Their vehicles were back at Camp Corregidor, which made evacuating Bill by themselves impossible — unless they carried him through the inferno outside, which didn’t make any sense. Such a move would simply get more operators hurt. The only thing they could do was call for help.

Back at COP Eagle’s Nest, a mechanized infantry platoon from the 1st Armored Division was standing by for just such an emergency. Before the SEALs had departed on their mission, the company commander had promised to come out should they need armor.

They needed armor. The SEALs radioed COP Eagle’s Nest, and the Army launched four M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles their way. In the meantime, the operators hunkered down in the hide sites and waited for the Brads to come get their wounded brother. Bullets laced their buildings. The insurgents ducked and maneuvered, always supported by machine gunners and rifle fire. The SEALs didn’t have the firepower to overwhelm this many insurgents. All they could do was hold on until the Brads arrived.

Minutes passed, the operators drained their mags and slapped home fresh ones. Then, in the distance, Lieutenant Higgins’s men heard the low rumble of Bradley engines approaching. It was time to get out of Dodge.

The lieutenant prepped for the extract. Bill would be carried to the first track by another SEAL, “John Francis,” along with four Jundis. The rest of the element would jump into the other three tracks lined up in a column behind the lead Brad.

The snipers gathered their gear and dashed downstairs. Lieutenant Higgins and the others moved to the first floor, ready to dash for their assigned tracks. As they did, the firing died away. One minute, bullets filled the air, spattered the walls of their building, and cracked overhead. The next, the neighborhood fell so silent it seemed like one of those foreshadowing moments in a bad horror film.

Where had the enemy gone? Was this a hit-and-run attack? No doubt they’d heard the Bradleys coming to the rescue. Perhaps their commanders had ordered a withdrawal. Better that than stand up to the cannon carried by the American vehicles.

As the tracks got closer, the Jundis, Bill, and John Francis broke cover and went through the doorway into the midday sun. The other men followed and fanned out to set security.

That’s when an explosion blew everyone off their feet. A mushroom cloud of smoke and dirt obscured the horrific scene as it boiled through the street and over the shattered neighborhood.

A Jundi near the point of the explosion was nearly ripped in half by shrapnel. Beyond help, he died a few minutes later. Bill Barnum and John Francis sprawled nearby, their clothes afire, bleeding from numerous shrapnel wounds. The blast broke both of their legs, and as their senses returned, neither man could walk. Two of the other Jundis with them were also down, bleeding and concussed. Almost everyone else had suffered slight shrapnel wounds.

Somehow, once the Muj had figured out where the SEALs had established their position, they had dispatched a couple of men to emplace an IED near the house’s front door. Despite the fact that the operators had three-sixty security established, there were always going to be blind spots. It is the nature of an urban environment, a battlefield reality that the most cunning warriors can exploit.

The Muj in Ramadi knew every nook and cranny of this neighborhood. They were able to set the IED in place only a few yards from the front door, before backing off and waiting for the SEALs to pull out after the grenade attack. Whoever detonated the IED had been a veteran of such operations. Instead of blowing it at the first sign of the Jundis and Americans, he was patient. He triggered it only after most of the element had left the house and entered the bomb’s kill zone.

Americans back home never really recognized the skill and tactical abilities of the enemy. Much of the U.S. military underestimated their capabilities as well, at least at first. The truth was, in Iraq we faced some of the best-trained and motivated guerrilla fighters ever encountered by a Western army. Some of the ones encountered in Ramadi had been fighting in the city for three years. They were veterans, and they blended their experience with a phenomenal ability to adapt and evolve in the face of American technology, grit, and firepower.

Now, with their bomb detonated, they ambushed the SEALs and Jundis from concealed positions up and down the street. Bullets scythed through the smoke and dirt, impacting on the road all around the dazed and disoriented men.

Lieutenant Higgins opened his eyes. The explosion had flattened him, knocked him senseless, but somehow its shrapnel had missed him. He lay on the ground, confused and concussed. As his brain reset and got a handle on the situation, he realized what had happened. Looking over, he could see his men down a few yards away. That was enough to kick-start him into action. Higgins got to his feet, staggered to John Francis and dragged him back inside the house.

As he did, the element’s communicator (radioman) spotted Bill Barnum and ran across open ground through the enemy crossfire to his aid. The smoke and dust was thinning by now, and the Muj could make out the wraithlike images of the Americans and Iraqi troops as they reacted to the attack. They poured lead into the scene with everything they had.

The communicator pulled Bill back through the doorway and into the house. Bullets laced across the walls and windows, shattering things inside and prompting the SEALs to rush to the aid of the civilians inside with them. The family who lived there was frozen in terror, but several of the SEALs wrapped them up and shielded their bodies with their own. Keeping civilians safe at all costs was the new paradigm in Ramadi, and in this desperate moment, these courageous, but shocked and battered, Americans exemplified the selflessness it required.

The others still outside returned fire and retreated back to the house. They had no other choice. The street was a kill zone, and the Brads were nowhere in sight yet.

For the moment, they were trapped.

A few blocks away, “Phil Glade’s” sniper element from Camp Corregidor heard the explosion and learned from the radio chatter that Higgins’s men had suffered heavy casualties. Phil made the call to go to their aid. The problem was, he and his men were in the middle of a firefight of their own. Trying to disengage and move several hundred yards through these streets would be an extraordinary challenge.

His men pulled out of the upper floors and took quick stock of things as they reached the ground floor. They slapped fresh magazines home, checked gear, then bolted through the doorway — and into a maelstrom.

Bullets chewed the streets and walls around them. They kept their weapons at the ready, scanning for targets as they bounded through the street. One fire team would move while the other laid covering fire. They shot at the windows above them, and the rooftops seemed to be crawling with al-Qaida. Muj dashed from alleys to spray and pray with their AKs. The SEALs kept going, their extraordinary marksmanship giving them an edge over the enemy’s superior numbers.

A few blocks into their gauntlet, they split into two groups and turned down a pair of parallel alleys, still firing as they ran. Around them, the enemy would pop up in a window, or over a rooftop parapet, spray a burst at them with their AKs, then duck down a second later. Bullets pinged and whined, and occasionally a quick-eyed SEAL would drop one of the Muj as he exposed himself. For five minutes, it was like a deadly whack-a-mole game with guns and humans.

The gauntlet lasted perhaps five minutes, but to the SEALs it must have seemed like a lifetime. Finally, they reached the street in front of Higgins’s house. Here they ran into a hornet’s nest worse than what they’d just gone through to get there. Shooting for second- and third-floor rooms from multiple directions, the Muj had the street dialed in cold. Anyone who moved in it took fire.

Phil Glade and his men hunkered down behind whatever cover they could grab — doorways, walls, building corners — and tried to take some of the pressure off of Higgins. Their M4s, SPRs, and Mark 48s barked and belched flame, forcing some of the Muj to duck and seek cover of their own.

Inside the house, Bill Barnum issued a steady stream of orders to his brothers. He was the element’s corpsman, and now as he lay immobile on the floor, he directed his fellow SEALs through treating John Francis and the wounded Jundis. The Bradleys were closer now; their engines’ roar could be heard over the cacophony of the gunfight. They just needed to hang on a little bit longer.

With Phil Glade’s element outside suppressing the Muj, Higgins’s men focused on getting the wounded the care they needed. Bill was in intense pain, and both he and John were bleeding badly. The other SEALs applied tourniquets to their legs and pressure dressing to their wounds. These measures didn’t stop the bleeding, but it did slow the loss enough to give both men pain meds.

In the meantime, Higgins was still very dazed from the concussion he’d suffered during the blast. His communicator took over handling all the myriad of command-level responsibilities. He kept in contact with the Bradley platoon, explained the situation, and directed how the CASEVAC would go down once the tracks arrived. Each Bradley could hold six men. Now, with Phil Glade’s element, they had more SEALs than space inside the vehicles. They’d have to shoehorn everyone in, plus send the Brads back for a return trip into the fight just to get everyone back to COP Eagle’s Nest.

Outside in the street, the Muj seemed to recover from the surprise arrival of Phil Glade’s element. The volume of fire they’d been able to deliver had diminished at first. Now, the al-Qaida adherents displaced to new positions in their buildings and opened fire with full fury once again. The gun battle raged with ruthless intensity, both sides seeking to gain the upper hand. He who has fire superiority can dictate what happens on the battlefield. Both sides knew it, and the lead flew as they sought to dominate.

Numbers began to tell against Glade’s men. One by one, the incoming fire pinned them down. Soon things were almost as desperate in the street as they had been inside the house a few minutes before.

Down the street, the first Brad turned a corner and came into view, its tracks churning through the dust and debris riddling the roadbed. In the past, the sight of an M2 with its 25mm Bushmaster cannon was often enough to prompt the insurgents to break contact and end a fight. Not this time. Though they had no antiarmor weapons like an RPG, the enemy refused to be intimidated. If anything, the amount of incoming intensified.

The lead Bradley lurched to a stop in front of Higgins’s doorway. The SEALs told the crew to work the second and third floors of the houses up the block. The gunner went to work, the big cannon belching shells that blew through walls to explode inside with deadly effect. The gunner raked the enemy positions, blowing insurgents apart.

The Brad crew dropped their ramp, and the first group of SEALs rushed into the street. They piled the wounded inside as others stood in the entrance, firing their M4s over the ramp as it closed. Behind the lead track, the remaining SEALs dove into the safety of the other Bradleys’ armored hides.

The Army crews pulled out and raced through the shattered streets to get the SEALs and Jundis back to COP Eagle’s Nest. The SEALs dismounted and carried their wounded men and the fallen Jundi to the aid station, where they would be stabilized for evacuation to better facilities, and ultimately back to the States for Bill and John Francis. Though their mission was over, for the Brad crews it had really just started. They’d have to brave the streets one more time to pull everyone out of the third overwatch position the Camp Corregidor platoon had established. Given the speed at which the insurgents placed the IED by the doorway to Higgins’s house, the Brad crews expected to run into bombs, rockets, and anything else the insurgents could throw at them. Given their refusal to retreat, the mech infantry guys knew they were in for another hard fight.

They never flinched. The tracks lined up at the front gate and headed out back into the storm.

CHAPTER NINE Payback

Adam’s rocket streaked into the target building, punched through the outer wall, and exploded with a dull thud deep within. Fizbo watched his Rover to see how the insurgents would react to this onslaught. At first, there was no movement around the building, but as the minutes passed, a figure emerged from a doorway on the backside of the dwelling. The SEALs could not see him from their position, but he could not escape the F/A-18’s eye in the sky. Fizbo called out to Adam and the others on the rooftop as perhaps twenty others followed the first insurgent out into the street.

At least there were fewer of them.

Instead of withdrawing back toward the Saddam Canal, the gaggle assembled into a semblance of a fighting formation and dashed through the streets and alleys toward the SEALs. Fizbo related their movements and tracked them as they ran into another building.

Adam and Dave took turns popping over the parapet to identify their new location. They could see the building, but they couldn’t see any of the enemy within its walls. In the meantime, a smattering of gunfire broke out around the Americans. AK rounds pinged off the parapet and tore more chips from the concrete. It wasn’t the sustained firepower onslaught the Corregidor SEALs were facing, but the harassing fire reminded them that there were other insurgents out there — including their own sniper.

The equation could change in a heartbeat if the twenty insurgents got their guns into the fight. Armed with AKs and light machine guns, they could pin down the SEALs and make the roof untenable. Then — who knows? Perhaps they’d try to assault the position, or close to grenade-throwing range.

As Dave and Adam lay prone on the roof, their Carl Gustavs on their shoulders, two other operators crawled to them with extra rockets. They pushed the reloads into the rear of the launchers and locked them home. A slap on their helmets told Adam and Dave that they were good to go. Dave stood up, and brought his Carl Gustav on target. “Fire Gustav!” he shouted to warn the rest of the team. A second later, the rocket left the tube with a hollow-sounding kathunk.

The 84mm projectile roared toward the target building like receding thunder. A second later, the rocket exploded into the first floor. This time, instead of a muffled detonation, the neighborhood shook violently as the warhead’s shock wave rolled through it.

The enemy was getting close.

Adam’s turn. He rose to his feet, the nineteen-pound launcher resting on his right shoulder. Right hand on the handle, his index finger on the trigger guard, he brought his left hand to the foregrip. This is opposite of the Russian RPG, which is fired with the left hand. Exposed now, the seconds ticked as he studied the neighborhood until he locked his eyes on the target house. Smoke was boiling from the first rocket’s impact point.

Adam settled his right eye behind the weapon’s telescopic sight. A small, upward-facing arrow served as the point of aim. Below the arrow were a series of pluses and minuses that denoted the compensation needed for every hundred yards of range. On either side of those stretched the windage indicators — long horizontal lines that looked like whiskers sprouting from the elevation ticks. At the bottom of the sight, the weapon’s integrated range finder provided a digital readout of the distance to the target house.

Adam made a quick series of mental calculations. He was shooting down from the top of a three-story building, which complicated the shot. He wanted to hit the first floor, just as Dave had, so he had to adjust and aim low. There weren’t any cross or tick marks to compensate for firing from an elevated position, so Adam made his best guess.

He took a breath, released half of it, and pulled the trigger. Kathunk. The rocket shot out of the Carl Gustav’s barrel and lanced straight into the building. The ground shook, and a cloud of smoke and debris spewed from the impact point.

There was something almost euphoric about hammering the enemy with such awe-inspiring firepower. There is nothing low key about a Carl Gustav launch; it is loud, dramatic, and powerful. The SEALs on the roof relished the punishment they were dishing out with every rocket.

Six rockets left. Were the insurgents done? The operators reloaded and waited to hear what Fizbo could see on his Rover.

Sure enough, a minute or two later, the Muj bolted from the building. This time, it looked like some of them were wounded. Fizbo reported that the force was down to little more than a squad-sized element — perhaps fifteen men.

To the American’s surprise, they refused to disengage. They had the chance. There were plenty of avenues of escape back to the canal the SEALs on the rooftop could not see. But these Jihadists were determined. They stayed in the street and maneuvered forward, toward the Americans.

One of the operators on the roof with Adam carried an M203 grenade launcher under the barrel of his M4. He began to use it as a poor man’s indirect-fire weapon — a rifle-mounted light mortar. He lobbed the grenades in a high arc, hoping to drop one down over the buildings that masked their view of the advancing force and hit the Muj while they were out in the open.

The insurgents found another multistory building and poured into it. The SEALs retaliated with another rocket volley. The building shuddered from the impacts, and this time only a few emerged from its shattered interior.

But they still weren’t done. About a half dozen ducked and bounded to within fifty yards of the SEALs, until they took cover behind a wall. The Americans rained 40mm grenades down on them. The explosions wounded several Muj, and that broke their morale. They dragged their wounded back out of the line of fire and vanished into the labyrinth to the south.

The fighting died down after the SEALs repulsed the assault. By now, the Americans had been up for thirty-six hours straight. They were low on ammunition and exhausted. When the Army pulled its patrols in from the Al Iskan and Al Andols Districts, the Camp Lee SEALs knew it was time to depart.

As Adam and the others began to collect their gear, another group of Muj seized a building about three hundred yards away. Concealed inside, they opened up with rifles and light machine guns, stitching the parapet and southern wall of the house with 7.62mm fire.

The last rocket volley had consumed final reloads for the Carl Gustavs. With the amount of incoming they were taking now, the SEALs couldn’t pull out without a significant risk of taking casualties when they got into the street.

Fizbo had the answer. The F/A-18 overhead carried bombs as well as AGM-65 Maverick missiles. The AGM-65 carried a three-hundred-pound shaped-charge in its warhead and could be laser guided onto its target. Originally built in the 1970s as an electro-optically guided weapon, it had evolved with the technological times. By 2006 hundreds of them had already been used in Iraq and were well known for their accuracy and remarkable ability to localize damage. With a warhead smaller than a five-hundred-pound JDAM (or joint direct attack munition) satellite-guided bomb, the Maverick could tear the guts out of a building without doing significant damage to the neighborhood.

The Army and Marine patrols had been engaged all day by the enemy. The Camp Corregidor SEALs were still under attack a half mile away, and both Camp Lee positions were taking small-arms fire. As a result, when Fizbo requested an air strike, the chain of command gave the green light. Kindler, gentler, worked only up to a point.

Fizbo coached the F/A-18 pilot onto the target, gave him the nine-line information brief needed to direct his attack, and the Marine aviator made his run. Fizbo warned everyone on the roof to get down — the target house stood only three hundred yards from their position. Even with the directed blast of a Maverick, that was still dangerously close.

Adam and the other operators on the roof hunkered down as the missile left the F/A-18’s hard point and flew toward the enemy at seven hundred miles per hour. It dropped out of the sky, punched into the building’s outer wall, penetrated deep inside and exploded. The force of the blast was nothing like a JDAM bomb, and the structure didn’t even collapse. Still, the havoc it wrought on the insurgents inside was deadly. The firing from within it stopped, and another lull fell across the embattled neighborhood.

The respite from the incoming small-arms fire gave the Americans the opportunity to break contact and get back to COP Iron. They made hasty plans to depart. The Army squad holding security on the first floor would go first. As they headed into the street, Adam, Dave, and the other SEAL sniper team would cover them. If they evoked no reaction from the Muj, the SEALs would leave next, and the two groups would leapfrog back to COP Iron, covering each other as they went.

The squad from the 1st Armored left the house and rushed into the street. The SEALs stayed on their guns, waiting to see what the enemy would do. A block over, in the other overwatch position, the SEALs there began to exfil as well. It didn’t take long for the Muj to notice. These al-Qaida Jihadists had been around long enough to know that the Americans were at their most vulnerable during infils and exfils. They realized they had a final, narrow window of opportunity to hit the Americans one more time.

Like the SEALs, they had been fighting all day in the merciless heat, and had to have been exhausted. They’d taken heavy casualties trying to assault the Camp Lee SEALs, which had to have affected their morale. Nevertheless, the Muj leader rounded up enough men for a final assault.

They began to maneuver forward, hoping to cut off the Americans in the street before they could get back to COP Iron. This time, Fizbo didn’t need to give the rest of the team a running commentary on their movements. Assuming all the Americans had pulled out, they flowed into the fields of fire established by the SEAL sniper teams. The Americans opened up on them and caught them completely by surprise. One Muj went down, shot dead in the street a few hundred yards from the hide site.

That broke the enemy’s morale. The rest of the assault force scattered and retreated. They’d finally had enough for the day. The SEALs grabbed their gear, slapped home new magazines — they were perilously low on ammo by now — and pulled out. Fizbo kept in touch with the F/A-18, whose pilot scanned the way home with his electronic eyes. No sign of any other Muj elements.

Despite their fatigue, the SEALs were in good spirits. Nothing is better for morale than repeatedly hammering the enemy and stopping their every gambit. A month into their deployment now and this was the first time they’d experienced an insurgent assault. The enemy’s tenacity, willingness to take casualties, and determination to close on the overwatch sites impressed the Americans, and reminded them that they faced a far tougher foe than their countrymen back home in the States truly realized. That made kicking their teeth in that much sweeter.

Adam reached the street, the Carl Gustav strapped over his back and his M4 at the ready. Right then, the ground shook violently, and a mushroom cloud of smoke and flame rose above the rooftops to the east.

The Camp Corregidor SEALs had just been hit by the IED placed at the entrance to their overwatch position. The radio filled with reports of casualties and the need for immediate evacuation. The Bradleys reported they were on their way.

In a heartbeat, the light mood the day’s victory had inspired was wiped away by a sense of complete helplessness. Two of their own had gone down, and the Camp Lee SEALs were in no position to come to the aid of their stricken brothers. Nearly out of ammo, without vehicles or heavy weapons, all they could do was continue their exfil.

Adam felt sick. He and Dave had been cracking jokes all afternoon, feeling that they’d had the situation well in hand. Their Carl Gustavs had done considerable damage to the enemy, and most of the insurgents who had escaped those weapons had succumbed to 40mm grenades and precision gunfire. Now, as he heard the news about the Jundis, John Francis, and Bill Barnum, a wave of guilt struck him. How could he be so glib with his comrades taking such a hit? Those feelings would linger long after the last rifle report echoed through Ramadi’s battle-scarred streets.

The Bradleys from COP Eagle’s Nest returned to the fight to extract the last of the Camp Corregidor SEALs. Fortunately, they encountered no roadside bombs and the exfil on that flank of the operation went off without further incident.

Adam’s element bounded back for COP Iron and made it halfway until they were met by a platoon of Bradleys. Thirsty, hungry, covered with smoke, dirt, and grime, the SEALs and Joes piled aboard for the short ride back to the outpost. They made the last leg of the trip in near total silence, everyone’s thoughts on John and Bill.

In the aftermath of the day, the SEALs took stock of everything that had happened. They studied how the insurgents had attacked them and discussed ways to counter their new tactics. These after-action discussions sparked a new battlefield evolution. Hopefully, the next time they went out into the city, they’d be able to catch the enemy by surprise with their fresh ideas.

In the meantime, the thought of that single sniper shot stuck with Adam. He replayed the sound of the 7.62 round smacking off the concrete a few inches from his head. The guy on the other side of that scope had been good. He’d given him only a brief opportunity to take the shot, and he’d very nearly put a bullet in the Illinois native’s head.

What had happened to him? In the after-action discussions, it became clear that the enemy sniper had not fired again. Had he been killed? Probably not. The bulk of the SEALs firepower had been focused on stopping the Muj assault element. Nobody even knew from where the insurgent sniper had fired. His hide had been somewhere off to Adam’s right, that’s as specific as the Americans could get.

He had not taken another shot. The discipline that displayed was remarkable. Had he pulled out after nearly killing Adam? Or had he just gone to ground and provided eyes for the assault element?

There was no way to be sure. But one thing was almost certain: he was still out there, hunting Americans.

CHAPTER TEN Under Watchful Eyes

In the wake of the November 19, 2006, engagement, SEAL Team Five’s two platoons continued operating at a frenetic pace. Between covering Marine and Army patrols, the frogmen went after more IED makers in direct-action raids. With more Iraqi cops on the street, the flow of information from the citizens of Ramadi increased. This gave the Special Forces teams plenty of targets to go after, and very few resisted when the SEALs came knocking at their door.

There were the occasional exceptions. Adam had long since grown accustomed to switching roles depending on the mission demands. One night, he’d go out with his SR-25 and cover American patrols. Another, he’d be blowing doors for an entry team assigned to a kill or capture mission. Even after the hard fight on November 19, Adam continued to volunteer with both the Blue and Gold Camp Lee elements.

One night, during a kill or capture mission against a particularly ruthless IED maker, Adam set a strip charge on the man’s front door, stepped clear, and blew it. At the same time, the IED maker had heard the entry team reach his house and had pushed a couch in front of his door in hopes of slowing them down. As he stood in front of the door, the charge went off. Normally, these are such small explosions that only the door suffers damage. This time, in what had to be a moment of supreme karma, the bomb maker happened to be standing in the most optimal place and distance to the blast to suffer from it.

The SEALs pushed through the door, finding the splintered couch in their way and their target lying toward the back of the room. As part of the team cleared the house, Adam, functioning now as the element’s corpsman, crouched next to the wounded insurgent and assessed his condition. The strip charge had blown off three of his fingers and studded his face with wooden splinters from the door (and probably the couch). His legs were torn open and bleeding as well.

Whatever fight he had in him was gone now. The SEALs secured the house and kept the rest of the family safe while Adam worked on the wounded Muj. One of the chiefs with the team that night then had a moment of inspiration. Part of the SEALs role in Ramadi was to help prepare the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police to function independently. They were a long way off from that, but they had made significant progress since the previous spring. To the chief, this seemed like the perfect moment to help mentor the Iraqi medic who had accompanied the Jundi scouts that night.

The Iraqis knelt beside the Muj and as Adam talked them through each treatment step. They applied direct pressure to his worst injuries, then placed a battle dressing on his legs and hand. The Iraqis carried him to a waiting Humvee and evacuated him to the combat support hospital outside the city.

When the team reached the hospital, the Muj was carried inside after being identified to the staff as an enemy combatant. As he was taken into an operating room, an officer assigned to the hospital approached Adam and asked, “Why didn’t you just kill him?”

Thoughts of courts-martial, shooter statements, and moments of uncertainty on the battlefield floated through Adam’s mind as he struggled to answer that.

Blow me! You think I want to go to prison, asshole?

The words started to form, but Adam managed to hold them in check. His outspokenness within the platoon had already caused some to label him a problem child, and picking a fight with a REMF — a rear echelon motherfucker — would only make things harder on him.

He toned his response down a notch, “Well, I didn’t really want to be court-martialed.”

The officer thought this over, then asked, “How’d it happen?”

“He got hit on a breach.”

The officer nodded. “Okay, is the breacher here?”

“Also me” was Adam’s curt reply.

The officer grew agitated. “And you didn’t clean up your own mess?”

Adam’s temper flared. The son of a bitch was getting on his case for not killing an unarmed man because it meant more work for him. From a rear-echelon type, this was insufferable.

“Look, we didn’t use anything unusual. Just a strip of C-two. He was trying to barricade the door. We had no idea he was on the other side when I clacked off the charge.”

The officer scowled, then vanished into the hospital’s interior. The Muj lived, but he damn sure never made a bomb again.

Such moments were a reminder that as chaotic as combat could be, the politics and consequences of every decision and action would be scrutinized by a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacks. That scrutiny made each decision in the field harder to make. At times, the Muj capitalized on those moments.

Not long after the November 19 firefight, Blue Element from Camp Lee sortied into the city again to conduct another overwatch operation. They returned to the neighborhood of grenade-pitchers, where the Corregidor SEALs had been hit in November and Mike Monsoor had been killed the previous summer. This place was guaranteed action — nobody had any illusions otherwise.

They went in as stealthy as possible. Departing from COP Eagle’s Nest, they patrolled toward their target building in the darkness, using no white light at all. They kept noise to a minimum and relied on their night vision to see the way ahead.

When they reached the house they wanted, the front gate was locked. This neighborhood was like a fortress. Reinforced, nine-foot walls surrounded every compound, including this one. The gate off the street was wide enough to allow entry to a car or small pickup truck. One of the Blue Element SEALs carried a lock pick set, and he stepped forward to use it. A moment later, the gate swung open.

Silently, the team flowed into the compound past laundry hung and fluttering in the soft night breeze. A small stand-alone garage stood nearby, a sedan parked inside. The Americans reached the front door. In Ramadi, the SEALs never knew who would be on the other side of the door. Taking a soft approach and knocking could be an invite to a hail of bullets from some die-hard zealot hiding inside. Conversely, blowing the door risked hurting the very people the Americans were here to protect.

It was a devil’s choice.

The SEALs knocked. A moment later, a sleepy-eyed middle-aged man opened the door and greeted the men coldly. The team’s commander and interpreter explained the situation. The SEALs needed their house for a few hours. The family would be free to go about their day inside, but they would not be able to leave until the SEALs exfilled. If any part of their property was damaged, the U.S. government would compensate them.

The head of the Iraqi family reluctantly allowed the SEALs to enter his house. The women and children stayed close to him, but their fear and uncertainty was palpable. The fact was, no matter where their loyalties lay, the arrival of the Americans now made their home a target for al-Qaida.

And in Ramadi, there were eyes everywhere, watching.

The SEALs had tried to get into the house as quietly as possible. They’d encountered no opposition, seen no enemy during the infil. Whatever little noise they had generated during their patrol in was most likely masked by the sound of gunfire and explosions in nearby neighborhoods.

Yet on every mission they’d always been compromised. Kids working for al-Qaida kept watch from alleys. Jihadist snipers lay in urban hides observing critical areas. Ordinary citizens revealed what they’d seen in hopes of sparing their families and themselves from al-Qaida’s wrath.

As Adam recalled later, “No matter how low our signature, they always knew where we were.”

This time the SEALs were determined to surprise the enemy. So far, so good. The team secured the house and set up shop. Some of the operators stayed downstairs to pull security and keep an eye on the family. Meanwhile, the Blue Element snipers climbed onto the roof to establish hide sites along with two machine gunners. The gunners set up to the north, keeping the rear of the compound under surveillance so the enemy could not sneak up on the SEALs from that direction. Adam and his spotter went to the southeast corner of the roof. The other sniper and his spotter took station on the southwest corner. Altogether, six of the thirteen-man element occupied the rooftop.

After all he’d seen in Ramadi, Adam was determined to build a hide site that could not be seen. He wanted to catch the enemy unawares. No more fuck-fuck games of unarmed insurgents celebrating in the street and mocking the Americans. He wanted to catch them, armed and up to no good, then close them out. Surprise would negate al-Qaida’s manipulation of the ROEs.

Like most houses in Ramadi, this one had a three-foot-tall parapet running along the roof’s perimeter. After what happened in November, popping up over the parapet seemed like a bad idea. As a result, the spotters had brought periscopes along, and the snipers planned to create loopholes in the wall.

When I was in Somalia in 1993, we encountered the same situation. To stay out of sight and be unobtrusive, we would create loopholes in the parapets, then conceal ourselves behind them. We quickly found that knocking holes in concrete, even the substandard stuff used in the Third World, is no easy task. It took sledgehammers and chisels, or explosives to make the holes large enough to be usable. The problem was, either option tended to blow our low signature. Plus sledgehammers are very heavy, and carrying them around in a combat environment is not something any of us liked doing.

We discovered a work around — long, hand-cranked drills. We used them to bore out a hole, then we’d enlarge it with other tools. The noise they made was minimal, and we could do it while remaining under the parapet and unexposed to the rest of the city — something we couldn’t do with the sledges.

Camp Lee didn’t have any hand-crank drills, so the only options available to Adam and the other snipers were sledgehammers and C2 charges. Using sledges took a lot of time, plus they made a unique sound that would have certainly alerted any insurgents or observers to the presence of the SEAL element. But in Ramadi, explosions shook the city constantly, even at night. The operators settled on using small C2 packets, known as Ghostbuster Charges. They figured the blasts would blend into the background cacophony. Plus, there would only be two used almost simultaneously, which would minimize the enemy’s ability to zero in on their location, should they want to investigate the source of the explosions.

Adam set his C2 charge at the same time the other sniper team emplaced theirs on the far side of the roof. A moment later, they detonated them both. Adam’s charge created a perfect loophole, but the other charge must have been placed on a structurally weak spot of the parapet. It blew the entire corner off, which created great visibility, but Uncle Sam’s taxpayers would have to pick up the repair bill.

The snipers settled into their spots and went to work improving their hides. Dawn was still a few hours away, so they had plenty of time before the insurgents liked to come out and play. Few risked moving around at night, knowing that the technology the Americans carried gave them a huge advantage in the darkness.

Adam positioned his SR-25 on its bipod, its suppressor set back from the eight-by-eight loophole. Using 55 °Cord, he strung a tan screen in front of the SR-25’s barrel and then built overhead concealment with his poncho liner. That way, when the sun came up, he would not be backlit to anyone looking at his loophole from ground level.

To counter any insurgent attempt to get on the roof, as they had on November 19, the SEALs set up Claymore mines hung against the outside parapet. Any Jihadist who thought he was Spiderman would climb up the wall and trigger a hailstorm of seven hundred polished ball bearings, each precisely an eighth of an inch in diameter. Setting one of those off was guaranteed to turn a human being into a fine red mist.

A few hours before dawn, Adam and his spotter, Bud, were in position and had already prepped their field of view. Using their PVS-22 night scope, they had eyes on an intersection two hundred twenty-one yards to the south. On the northwest corner of the intersection stood an abandoned school. Across the street to the south was a store of some kind that seemed to still be functioning. The rest of the neighborhood was composed largely of walled compounds, one abutting the other. Most shared at least one common wall. Alleys and side streets delineated each block.

Adam’s loophole gave him a good, if narrow, view of the intersection. Around 0400, he detected movement at the intersection. At first, only one military-aged male appeared. He was unarmed, but he was looking around furtively. That made Adam instantly suspicious. He focused in on the man and watched him like a hawk. He didn’t seem to have any clue there were eyes on him. A few minutes later a truck pulled up and stopped half in and half out of Adam’s field of view. Three more military-aged males climbed out. They all stood together for a few minutes, chatting and looking around, then they went toward the back of the truck and out of Adam’s view. A couple of them reappeared as they walked into the store on the southwest corner of the intersection.

Who makes deliveries in Ramadi at 0400?

Nobody.

This smelled wrong. Bud and Adam talked it over. Neither man had a good view of the truck, and they could only see the males in the street from about the rib cage up. And most of the time they couldn’t see their arms either. They were able to confirm they carried no weapons, but still this seemed very wrong.

The men came back out of the shop, climbed into the truck, and drove off. Adam swapped out with Bud in order to catch a quick nap. The day would be a long one, and both men would take turns ensuring they had something of a sleep cycle.

At 0500, Adam woke up and spelled Bud on the SR-25. The sun was starting to come up by then, so he pulled the PVS-22 off the SR-25’s rail mount and stuck his eye in the scope. Yellow-orange light was just starting to stream across the street and intersection below, casting sharp shadows created by the buildings to the east.

From out of the shadows came one of the military-aged males again. He was scowling with that tough-guy, I’m-in-charge sort of look that he’d seen on insurgents’ faces before. He stopped in the street, glanced around, as if he were conspiring to do something. The truck returned, and the others piled out again. They disappeared behind the truck, then reappeared briefly. Bud and Adam could only see them from the ribs up again, but it looked as if each man was carrying something heavy with both arms. They went into the store.

The snipers talked this over. It looked like these guys were resupplying a forward cache, something al-Qaida did all the time. In the heat of a fight, the insurgents knew exactly which building, shop, or house to run to if they needed ammo, water, explosives, or medical supplies. The SEALs had seen it many times, those buildings became focal points of activity during sustained firefights.

Two hundred twenty-one yards. An easy range, but a difficult shot since the men were moving around and Adam could only see them from mid — rib cage to the top of their heads. The elevation would not be an issue this time as the snipers were only two stories up. Wind was light to negligible.

Adam and Bud decided it was doable. If any of the four revealed a weapon or military supplies, the insurgents would fall within the ROEs and they could take the shot. As it stood, they knew something was wrong with the unfolding scene down the street, but both knew if they opened fire, their shooter’s statement would be closely scrutinized.

The military-aged men reemerged to gather in the street again. They stood together, talking and taking sidelong glances around the intersection for several more minutes. Adam watched through his scope reticle set on one of them.

Just give me a reason.

No weapons. No military supplies. What if they were bringing in wares for a legitimate business?

As if there were any left in this place.

Adam made the decision. He knew, sensed, and felt these guys were bad. Ordinary citizens didn’t act this way in Ramadi. Their scowls, the way they glanced around, the way they postured in that too-cool-for-school sort of way that he’d seen other insurgents mimic, plus their age — it all added up to al-Qaida.

The neighborhood was another indicator. This place was bad karma, one of the P-Sectors that had always been contested whenever the SEALs had gone into it. They’d been given a little more latitude to engage in this area, simply because of the level of resistance typical there.

Adam resolved to engage these guys and close them out. He told Bud, who agreed. The shooter statement remained in the backs of their minds, but this was the right call.

Before they had a chance to open fire, the men by the truck scattered. The truck drove away without at least three of the men.

Minutes passed. The street remained empty, the shop dark and seemingly abandoned.

What were these guys up to?

They hadn’t had any visible weapons. Adam started second-guessing himself. Should he have opened fire earlier? Where had they gone? His narrow field of view through the loophole left him frustrated. Bud swept the neighborhood with his periscope, but saw no sign of them either.

Adam checked his watch. Fifteen minutes had passed since they’d last been in the street. Could the truck be going back for another delivery run?

Something black sailed over the west side of the parapet. It hit Bud’s leg and rolled onto the roof.

“Mother fuck! Grenade!” Bud shouted.

Adam leaped to his feet to see the device right beside his spotter. Bud kicked it as hard as he could, and it skipped across the roof toward the north wall even as both SEALs flung themselves toward the second-floor doorway.

Adam and the rest of the men on the roof piled into the second-floor main room, but Bud was still trying to get in when the grenade exploded. Shrapnel tore into his leg. He reached the doorway and leapt inside the comparative safety of the main room on the second floor.

Another grenade arched overhead. It landed with uncanny precision in the other sniper team’s hide on the southeast corner of the roof, where it exploded.

Adam untangled himself from the pile of pissed-off operators. As he stood up, Bud calmly asked, “Hey, dude, can you look at this?”

Adam went over to his friend and examined his wounds. He’d taken shrapnel in his heel, and his leg had a nasty gash. It looked painful, but not too serious.

“Yeah,” Adam said nonchalantly. “You’re okay.”

He set to work bandaging his brother’s wounds.

With their cover blown, their OIC made the decision to extract and get Bud medical help. The SEALs called back to the nearest Army outpost and asked for Bradleys that had been standing by again as a quick reaction force.

As they waited for the Army’s tracks to come pull them out, the SEALs crept back out onto the roof to collect their gear and disarm and recover the Claymores. All the while, they kept half-expecting another grenade to come sailing over the parapet.

Once again, the Muj’s knowledge of the neighborhood played to their advantage. There was simply no way the SEALs could get eyes on every possible avenue of approach. And these guys knew exactly where the blind spots were. They had reached the street the Americans had entered the compound from and used the outside wall to conceal their attack. How they were so accurate with their throws is anyone’s guess. They must have had plenty of practice. Or a career in Major League ball in their pasts.

The Brads arrived, and the team prepared to exfil. They gathered downstairs, promised the family they’d be compensated for the damage to their roof, then made hasty plans for their departure. Every other man leaving the front door would take an alternate approach through the compound to the outside gate. One right, next man left, third man right.

Out the door they went. Left, right, left. The men flowed through the courtyard, then reunited by the main gate in the outer wall. They’d pull security around the Brads in the same manner. Left, right, left, set up and cover Bud’s exfil into the nearest track. Once he was in, everyone else would climb aboard.

They began to move. Adam went through the gate at a dead run with the EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) specialist. Three feet away from them lay an IED. Both men froze for a split second as they realized what had happened. It was a repeat of the tactic used on November 19. Except this time, the IED was close enough to kill or maim most of the team.

They called it out and sprinted for the tracks. Everyone else did the same. The Bradleys and their armored hulls were the only thing that could protect them at this point.

The bomb failed to detonate. The Americans got aboard the Brads and the Army drivers threw them in gear and lurched back for COP Eagle’s Nest.

Heart still pounding, Adam looked over at Bud. His friend offered a wry smile and said, “Hey, brother, no worries. We’ll get ’em another day.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN The Kill or Capture Christmas

Another fucking day.

Adam sat in the rubble of the abandoned building and took a drag on his cigarette. Two days into this op, and so far it was a bust. They’d been covering Army patrols again in one of the P-sectors, fully expecting a fight to develop, only to be confronted with hours of boredom. December in Ramadi was cold as hell, and the men spent most of the time shivering in their filthy uniforms. To make matters worse, when they patrolled into this empty dwelling, they had to wade through ankle-deep sewage that soaked their socks and feet.

After a few days, these overwatch positions always developed a unique funk. Think football locker room meets Porta-John, foul breath with the occasional spritz of cordite and gunpowder.

Adam finished his smoke, flicked the butt into the debris around him, then regarded his boots. His feet had ached with cold for two days. A few hours ago, they’d started to go numb. Bad sign. He unlaced one boot and shucked it off. The stench that poured forth was so foul that he gasped.

When you can stand the smell of your own feet, you know it’s bad.

Trying not to breathe, he peeled off the sweat- and sewage-soaked sock. The flesh beneath was blotchy, red, and reeked of decay. His toes were turning blue. The skin was pruned, as if he’d spent hours in a bathtub.

Trenchfoot. Most of the rest of the team had early signs of it, too.

Adam pulled off his other boot and laid both socks out to dry. As he rummaged around for another pair in his pack, Vic, his spotter on this mission, entered the room. He took one sniff and froze. Nose scrunched, he stared down at Adam, momentarily speechless.

“What?” Adam asked.

“You gotta fucking be kidding me!”

Adam shrugged and returned to digging in his assault pack.

Vic took a step back, “Nope. Nope.”

“What is your fucking problem?” Adam asked.

Vic shook his head, “I can’t be around you right now.”

He vanished through the door, chortling as he went.

Adam found his spare socks and returned his attention to his feet. What a mess. He dried them as best he could, then gave them a coat of powder before covering them with his fresh pair of socks. They’d have at least one more day here, and these would have to last.

Christmas Eve in Ramadi. Back home families were trimming trees and hanging stockings. Closest thing to a stocking here were his shit-coated, standard-issue wool socks.

Adam stretched out under a poncho liner and drifted off to sleep. He needed a few hours of downtime, then he’d be back upstairs on the rifle again.

When he awoke, Vic was waiting for him. “Hey man, how about I get the first watch on the gun?”

“Sure,” Adam said.

He grabbed his gear, laced his boots up, and headed with Vic up to the roof to stand the next watch. Then he remembered something and turned back for his pack. Adam’s mom had sent the team a few trappings of holiday cheer. Christmas Eve afternoon seemed like a good time to break his out.

“Here,” he said to Vic, handing him a Santa hat.

“Fucking awesome!” Vic put it on with a wide grin.

Adam did the same. Most of the other guys had brought theirs along as well, and the men off watch wore them, basking in the sense of irony. Christmas in Ramadi was like Yom Kippur in Tehran.

They climbed the stairs to the roof and low crawled to their hide. The building they occupied was oriented north-south. Adam and Vic took the north end of the roof, their hide situated to cover a street and an intersection to the west. Their view from the roof was a narrow one, offering eyes on part of the street below and only a few compounds on the far block. The nearest intersection was about a hundred ten yards away.

Vic settled down behind the rifle and stuck his eye in the scope. Adam lay next to him, both men still wearing their Santa hats. Vic glassed the street, studied the compounds, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. The two men settled into a long wait. December had been a lot quieter than the first two months of the deployment. The tide had definitely turned against al-Qaida, but that had made the die-hards even more desperate. Still, the hangers-on, the ones in it for the paycheck, and the uncommitted had started to abandon the cause. More and more Iraqi cops were being trained and deployed around the city, and order was gradually emerging from the chaos. Hard fighting still lay ahead. Everyone knew that. But at least they were seeing progress after months of bloody stalemate and attrition.

“Got something,” Vic called out.

Through their loophole, the two SEALs could see a solitary figure, slinking around the corner of one of the compounds across the street.

“Hundred ten yards,” Adam called.

The insurgent thought he was being sneaky. Not so much. He’d edged to the corner to peer out at the SEALs’ position, but he apparently was at lunch when his terrorist training camp covered barrel discipline. Now, here he was in a combat environment oblivious to the fact that his AK-47’s barrel was sticking out beyond the corner as he held it at low port.

“Dude has an AK,” Vic said.

“I see it. That’s what you want,” Adam replied.

“Yep.”

This was as clear-cut as they came in Ramadi. The shooter’s statement didn’t even enter into either American’s head. Vic waited. The insurgent kept looking up the street toward their hide, still using the corner for concealment. Only the barrel of his AK, a sliver of his shoulder, and head were visible.

Vic held his fire and waited patiently for the Muj to give him a better target. The patience paid off a minute later when the insurgent concluded the coast was clear. He swung around the corner and hugged the wall as he moved up the street straight toward the snipers.

The move gave Vic a full frontal shot, and he capitalized immediately. He pulled the SR-25’s trigger and drilled him center mass. The insurgent recoiled and fell backwards. He landed on the ground, with just his AK and feet visible to Vic and Adam. He wasn’t moving.

Vic pulled his eye out of the scope and looked over at Adam. “Dude, thanks for letting me take first shift behind the gun. Best Christmas present ever.”

The other sniper team on the roof suddenly stirred. Another insurgent carrying an IED wandered into their field of vision. Either they were facing the second string, or they’d finally emplaced without being detected and the insurgents had no idea the SEALs were in their neighborhood.

The other team took the shot and dropped the IED carrier. He tumbled into the street and lay motionless.

If they didn’t know the SEALs were in the area before, the enemy knew now. It could have been they were reconning by true believer with these first two guys. The Muj had done that in the past. If they suspected American troops were close by but didn’t know exactly where, they would send martyrs into the street to draw fire. Others would watch and look for the muzzle flashes in order to pinpoint the American positions. Then the Muj would launch an assault.

An eerie calm settled over the neighborhood. The snipers stayed extra vigilant, searching for any movement around them. Something was going to happen. Exactly what it was kept their senses on a razor’s edge.

Adam was glassing the intersection when movement by Vic’s target caught his attention. He focused his spotter scope on the man. He was still lying there, his feet and AK visible and nothing else. It didn’t look like he had moved. But what had?

Just then, the tip of a pole came into Adam’s field of view.

“What the fuck?”

Adam reported it to Vic. He quickly got eyes on it, too.

Whoever was on the other side of the pole stood inside the courtyard of the nearest compound. He was out of sight, staying low as he fed the pole through the courtyard gate and out toward the corpse.

They watched as the pole poked the dead man’s feet. It seemed surreal.

“Did that just happen?”

“Yeah. Yeah it did.”

The pole poked the corpse again.

Man that is morbid.

The two Americans watched as the pole-wielder tried to hook the corpse and drag it toward the courtyard gate. He didn’t have the leverage to move it far. Finally, the pole withdrew, and the corpse was left alone.

Nothing happened for several long minutes. Then the courtyard gate swung open and six armed men burst through it at a dead run. Each one carried an assault rifle and extra magazines. They hooked left as they hit the street and charged the SEALs’ position. One dropped to his knee and brought his AK to his shoulder as he covered his comrades’ movement. Another dashed across the street and did the same thing.

The other four kept running in pairs for a few dozen yards before skidding to a stop and dropping to one knee as well. Rifles up, they scanned the way ahead and searched for any sign of the American snipers.

The two Muj behind the main group stood up and rushed forward. They streamed past their fellow Jihadists, sprinting as fast as they could.

They were bounding by buddy teams. These guys had military training. Good military training. It was the same tactic every single American infantryman learns before ever joining his unit.

In a few seconds, they had advanced almost forty yards. Adam and Vic had waited to engage, but now it seemed like the moment had come to ambush them in the street. As the team prepared to open fire, one of the other SEALs on the roof crawled over to the parapet near them. He pulled a grenade off his chest rig, tore the tape off and shouted, “FRAG OUT!”

With a single fluid motion, the SEAL stood up and hurled the grenade with all his strength. Adam watched in complete surprise. He’d flung the hell out of that thing.

It was a world-class throw, just as good as the ones the SEALs had endured in this hood so many times before. Now they at last got a chance to dish it out. The grenade struck the street right in front of the main force of insurgents, now perhaps fifty yards away. Before they could scatter, the weapon detonated in a whirl of smoke and steel splinters.

Two of the insurgents went down with shrapnel and blast wounds. As the smoke boiled through the street, the other four ran to their assistance and dragged them out of the fight. By the time Vic and Adam had an unobstructed view of the street, it was empty.

As usual, the SEALs had an F/A-18 on station overhead. The pilot reported that the insurgent force had withdrawn to get their wounded to medical help — so much for their assault. Yet, Adam couldn’t help feeling they’d missed an opportunity. If they’d opened fire on them a few seconds later, none of them would have escaped such a point-blank fusillade. Still, there was something deeply satisfying about paying the Muj back with their own weapon of choice.

The element remained in their overwatch through the night and into Christmas Day. The stench grew insufferable inside the building, and exhaustion overtook the men despite their best efforts to stay warm and maintain a sleep cycle. Finally, on the evening of the twenty-fifth, the team exfiltrated back to a Marine outpost.

As they smoked and waited for transport back to Camp Lee, the outpost began to bustle with activity. The men didn’t care; they just wanted hot chow, a shower, and some real sleep in the bunks. The trucks arrived, and the men climbed into the rigs. As they did, a Marine colonel walked over to the platoon’s OIC and started talking to him.

Adam and the others watched them converse and felt a sinking feeling. They’d been out for days, their feet were disasters. They were fatigued and cold.

But there would be no break. The team’s OIC told the SEALs to dismount and huddle up. They did so in silence, gathering around their leader and the Marine.

“We’ve got time sensitive, actionable intelligence,” the colonel explained. “We have four targets, and we have to hit them tonight. We need your help.”

At first, some of the SEALs thought this was a joke. Four kill or capture missions in one night? Then it sunk in. This was real, and they would be going back out in a matter of minutes. The men they were going after were bomb makers. Each one they grabbed would save American and Iraqi lives. They understood the importance, but that didn’t stop them from grumbling about it.

Vic looked over at Adam, and said, “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Together, they walked back to their truck and began to gear up for an assault role. The SR-25 would remain behind. Both men would carry M4 carbines. Adam gathered his medical gear. He would be the assault element’s breacher, so he grabbed his C2 charges as well.

Then, in the dead of Christmas night, they slipped beyond the outpost’s walls and into the shattered streets. The temperature had dropped to below forty-five degrees, so cold the men could see their breath as they moved.

As they approached their first target house, the operator on point and the team’s EOD tech spotted an IED. Everyone stopped as the bomb expert inched forward to examine what they’d encountered.

It didn’t take long for the EOD tech to discover a second IED. Both had two Russian-made 155mm heavy artillery shells daisy-chained together. One of these shells would have been more than enough to inflict catastrophic casualties.

The team still had a JTAC and an aircraft on station overhead. Through the plan’s thermal imaging system, the pilot detected the command wire. It ran from one of the bombs directly to the target house.

The bomb maker had booby-trapped his own neighborhood.

The team worked its way around the bombs to stack up on the target house’s front gate. The decision was made not to use an explosive charge to gain entry, but the gate was not one that could be picked. The only other option was a small battering ram their Jordanian interpreter carried.

Adam moved forward to the gate, adrenaline coursing through him. The place could be rigged to blow, and surprise would be the only thing that could protect them. Get inside, collar the bomb maker, and get him flex-cuffed before he could hook that command wire up to a battery and blow the IEDs. Or blow something he’d planted in his house.

A stab of fear struck Adam. He’d gone through this entire deployment in total control of fear. Now, as he thought through this situation, dread swept over him. What if the bomb maker had a trip wire across the gate? Or an infrared trigger?

How many Americans had died in such traps already?

Adam motioned for the ’terp to come up with the ram. The Jordanian was huge, muscled, and fiercely loyal to the SEALs with whom he had worked for years. He hefted the ram and slammed it into the door as hard as he could.

It didn’t break.

The sound of the impact echoed through the neighborhood. Certainly, those inside the house had been awakened by it. The team would have only a few more seconds before the inhabitants were up and moving to defend themselves.

The Jordanian backed up, then swung the ram again. It crashed into the gate, but it still did not give way.

They were so exposed in the street. No cover, no protection. What if there were more IEDs nearby that the team had not detected? The longer they remained in place, the greater the risk.

Inside the house, people stirred. The bomb maker and his cohorts would not be surprised now. With that element lost, their only hope was to get in before they could put up an effective defense.

The Jordanian ’terp took another swing. This time, the gate gave way, revealing a small courtyard and the house beyond.

The team poured through the door, Adam third in line. They sprinted across the courtyard and into the house, weapons at their shoulders as the inhabitants shouted and screamed.

The Americans cleared the entry room then fanned out — to find one of the bomb maker’s confederates using a baby as a human shield. A SEAL rushed over and pulled the child from his hands as another tackled the coward and got flex cuffs on him. The SEAL held the child only long enough to give him to his mother, who had been silently watching the scene from across the room.

Adam moved with practiced fluidity. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. His M4 at his shoulder, he worked to clear his section of the house. As he came to a stairwell, the bomb maker suddenly bolted from the darkness and came straight at him, yelling something wildly, arms outstretched as if trying to grab him.

Adam lowered his rifle and push-kicked the bomb maker. The blow stopped the man cold, and before he could recover, Adam kneed him hard in the midsection. The insurgent flailed, and Adam rained blows on him until he finally quit resisting.

In minutes, the SEALs had separated the men from the women and children, then positively identified the bomb maker and one other insurgent. A search of the house revealed an H-rack chest rig, good for carrying extra AK-47 magazines, but nothing else. No bombs or explosives, and the men could not find the command wire the aircraft’s pilot had reported.

The Jordanian ’terp questioned the males found in the house and reported that they were being evasive. Had the SEALs had more time, they could have conducted a more thorough search. As it was, they had three more targets to hit. The Americans wrapped up the two wanted men and headed off to hit the next target.

Before first light, the team completed their marathon kill or capture tour of the greater Ramadi area. They returned to the Marine outpost as bone weary as they’d ever been. They handed over their detainees, climbed into their trucks, and drove back to Camp Lee, Christmas over, their Santa hats stowed in their assault packs. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be wearing them in this city, or anywhere else in Iraq, come this time next year.

CHAPTER TWELVE The Face of Victory

Another day in Ramadi came to an end. The shadows crept over shattered buildings as smoke uncoiled upward from mortar and rocket impacts to mingle with the haze that made Iraqi sunsets so striking in Anbar Province. Periodic gunfire echoed through the streets as the denizens of this hellish place slowly settled into their nighttime routines.

As darkness fell, the SEALs of Team Five’s Blue Element sortied from a forward combat outpost to patrol deep into the city. They passed through entire neighborhoods that were little more than abandoned rubble. A few blocks further, they came across streets and buildings virtually undamaged, scenes of normalcy unfolding around them. People went about errands. Others sat next to shops and quietly smoked. Scooters weaved through the foot traffic as a few cars eased down the avenue.

Another block — more empty ruins. They slipped around overturned cars, burned-out kiosks, and avoided the dead cats and dogs scattered in the street.

The patrol consisted of about twenty men: perhaps a dozen SEALs, an EOD tech, a Navy pilot who served as their JTAC, a couple of interpreters, and a handful of Iraqi Army scouts the Americans called Jundis. They dashed from alleyway to alleyway, bounding down the streets as they kept their weapons at the ready and searched for potential threats in the windows and rooftops above them. A few blocks later, the postapocalyptic ruins gave way to a bustling neighborhood whose buildings had suffered only superficial blast and shrapnel damage. More scooters. More foot traffic. It looked much like any other Arab city in peacetime.

Except for the looks the SEALs received.

The men on the street paused to stare at the patrol. Eyes narrowed, hate radiating from them, the scowls made the SEALs defensive. Sniper Adam Downs, carrying his black SR-25 7.62mm sniper rifle muttered to a buddy, “Mouth-breathing shitheads.”

They’d probably take fire the moment they rounded the corner. That was how things worked in Ramadi. Unarmed males could not be shot. The enemy knew it. They’d stand in the street and watch the Americans go through their own morning rituals, then retrieve a weapon and fire a few shots as soon as an opportunity presented itself. It was a whack-a-mole sort of war, one that sucked the marrow from a warrior’s soul. Never knowing who the enemy was, most American veterans in this city came to assume everyone was.

The glares continued until the patrol rounded the block and were confronted with another ruined section of the city. When first in the city, Americans found it odd and even disorienting to see these patches of everyday life juxtaposed amid so much carnage and devastation. It was sort of like seeing the aftermath of a Midwest tornado. In some places nothing was left as the twister cut a swath of devastation through a town. But standing beside that path would be houses and dwellings completely untouched, while their neighbor’s home a few yards away was nothing but splinters. The storm of war did the same thing to Ramadi.

Blue Element reached a six-story apartment complex. Aside from shrapnel marks and a few bullet holes on the walls, the place seemed in remarkably good condition. This was an upscale neighborhood, once full of Saddam’s cronies and Ba’athists who had gained a piece of the dictator’s pie. Now, even the rich here in the city had been reduced to bare survival levels. Though their building was largely unharmed, there was no water in the district. Or power. Or sewer service. Mail service was a distant memory, and every trip out for food and supplies meant risking a family member’s life.

The SEALs flowed inside the building and began to clear it. As one of the element’s snipers, Adam carried both his SR-25 and an M4 Carbine. Going room to room, making sure there were no bad guys, made no sense with the long-barreled SR. With the suppressor attached to it, the weapon was almost three and a half feet long — far too cumbersome for close-range, room-to-room work. So Adam hefted his M4 when he stacked up on a door with the rest of the team.

Many of the apartments were empty, their residents having had the means and will to flee the chaos for safer areas — like Syria. Then Adam rapped his knuckles on a door up on the sixth floor. An old man opened it and gazed at the American sniper. His eyes fell to his weapon, then back to Adam’s face.

For a second, Adam thought he’d be treated to the same sullen expression and menacing glances he’d seen countless times since getting to Ramadi in October 2006 with the rest of SEAL Team Five. Instead, the old man smiled, stepped aside, and gestured for Adam and the others with him to enter.

“Welcome. Please come in, have chai tea with us,” the old man said. Adam saw he wasn’t that old — perhaps mid-forties or early fifties. But the hard life here, and the place he called home, aged these people well beyond their years.

He led Adam and some of the others from Blue Element into the main room, where he offered his guests a seat. Adam sat down across from a middle-aged woman, her face wrinkled and lined from life in this place. She stared at his black SR-25, which Adam had unslung and now held beside him.

The old man disappeared into the kitchen to brew tea. A young boy appeared, perhaps twelve years old. He came in and sat beside his mother, dark eyes wide as he stared at Adam’s sniper rifle.

Adam had seen boys work as the eyes of al-Qaida in the street. He’d heard stories of suicide bombers of all ages. As the boy looked his weapon over, the southern Illinois native stared back, his senses on a hair trigger.

If that kid pulls a pistol, I’ll shoot him dead.

A moment later, the boy’s brother ambled into the room. Adam judged him to be maybe five or six. He smiled as he took station next to his mother. With a start, the SEAL sniper realized the child was mentally retarded.

Earlier that year, in Samarra, al-Qaida had strapped a suicide vest to a mentally retarded and wheelchair-bound teenager who’d been unofficially adopted by the local Iraqi Police. They wheeled him into the city’s main station, where he went to greet the chief of police, as was his routine.

Al-Qaida detonated him and assassinated the police chief.

Adam regarded the child.

What kind of a fucked-up place is this where I have to worry about kids pulling guns and trying to kill me?

When he was the boy’s age, he lived in the shadow of a coal mine, the only real industry in Elko, Illinois. Everyone he knew had a parent who worked in the mine, and for decades it had been almost a family tradition for sons to follow in their father’s footsteps. Graduate from high school, go to work for the mine, and join the local union. It was a good life, a good wage, and the men would knock off on Friday nights in the fall and disappear into the woods to hunt and fish for the weekends.

What future did these boys have?

For that matter, how did this family even support itself? The head of the house looked too old to work. Besides, with the economy virtually nonfunctional, what work was there?

Aside from laying IEDs and killing Americans, anyway.

Al-Qaida was the economy.

The mother made eye contact with Adam. She said something and pointed at his SR-25.

Adam looked down at it. Before this deployment, he’d gone to sniper school carrying a camouflaged SR-25 through all its rigors. Naval Special Warfare had intended that each sniper would carry the same rifle through training and into combat so that he would know the weapon intimately.

That didn’t happen with Adam’s class. There was a shortage of weapons, and he had to hand his over to the class behind his. He’d been issued this black one just before they left Virginia Beach for Iraq, and he hadn’t had the time to paint it. Or name it for that matter.

The woman said something to him, and Adam shifted his gaze back to her.

“She wants to know if you are a sniper,” the element’s ’terp explained. He was standing behind Adam.

“Yeah, I am.”

The old man returned, carrying a platter of teacups. Adam took one, as did the others in the room. When everyone was served, the old man sat down and offered a cigarette to Adam. He took it, and soon they both were enjoying a smoke together.

The mother said something else. The ’terp translated.

“If I’m walking home from the market and I drop something in the road, will I be shot by a sniper if I pick it up?”

Adam tried to conceal his shock, but the question rocked him on his heels. How the hell was he supposed to answer that?

Do you think we’d shoot an old woman?

Not in normal circumstances, that’s for sure. But in Ramadi, where nothing is as it seems, Adam had to concede that the question had merit. He began to think it through.

If he’d been watching through his scope, and the woman dropped something in the street and ran, or left it and moved away, he would consider that suspicious. All American snipers in the city had seen that routine before as al-Qaida’s IED planters would use tactics such as that to emplace their deadly weapons and detonation systems.

If she dropped something and ran, she could get shot.

Adam turned to the ’terp and said, “Tell her that if she drops something, pick it up right away and put it back in her bag.”

The ’terp translated and the woman nodded. They stared at each other for a moment until Adam added, “Just try to pretend we aren’t there. Nobody’s going to be mad at you.”

They sat in silence and drank chai tea together. For Adam, and most of his fellow SEALs, this was the closest encounter he’d had with Iraqi civilians. Usually, the only interaction he had was through his scope, trying to determine who had hostile intent and who was just trying to survive amid the ruins.

Ruins. Most of the city had no power, but this apartment had electricity. The lights were on, and a nearby television was on with the sound muted. It was set to Channel Two, which played American movies.

Adam’s eyes wandered around the room. Typical Iraqi upper-class home. Nicer furniture, nicer cups. Rugs of some value on the floor. It seemed to Adam that Iraq was a classic case of binary economics. The wealthy lived in splendor, but the vast majority of the people eeked out subsistence-level livings in cinderblock and concrete dwellings largely devoid of such luxuries as furniture or electronics. From what he’d seen, there was no middle class. Just haves and have-nots.

His eyes came to rest on a portrait hanging on the wall behind where the old man sat. President George Bush smiled out from the frame. For a second, the recognition of the American president left him astonished. Usually, inside people’s homes, the SEALs found photos of Iraqi politicians or clerics. In Shia homes, there was usually a portrait of Moqtada al-Sadr hanging somewhere.

But never President Bush.

The old man saw Adam’s fixated gaze and realized at once what had attracted such attention. Solemnly, he said, “George Bush is the only one who cares about us.”

After the ’terp translated, Adam nodded. He felt the same way. Back home, most people lived in the myopia of their daily ruts, never looking up beyond their narrow horizons to see that the sons and daughters of the nation were locked in a brutal and pivotal war. The soldiers and SEALs here were the forgotten legions, pushed from the mind’s eye by a people seemingly more intent on shopping than service in time of conflict.

But President Bush felt the burden of sending troops into harm’s way every day. You could see it with the sincerity of his words at every visit to bases and forts around the country and world. He loved being with the troops. And he tried to set the example for the rest of the nation with his actions and support.

Now here, thousands of miles from the White House, an Iraqi just shared the same sentiments with Adam.

We walk away from this mess now, and a lot more people will die.

The old man knew it. The war had dragged on for three years and the political landscape back home was being redrawn by those opposed to it. The Democrats in the House and Senate had declared the war lost two years before, and had been using it as political leverage against the Republicans ever since.

“George Bush is the only one who cares,” the old man said again.

He took a sip of chai tea, then asked, “Why did you let the Democrats take over?”

The ’terp translated and Adam started to laugh, “I’m happy to say I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

The old man smiled, and the ice broke. More tea was poured, and the rest of the family gradually came in to meet the Americans. The eldest daughter, perhaps twenty-three, sat with her younger brothers. She was a picture of sculpted beauty. Disney princess eyes, long dark flowing hair, skin the color of caramel. Most women avoided Americans, and the SEALs had been told never to interact with them on the street or in houses, as it would offend Arab sensibilities. A teenaged girl appeared as well. She looked to be a year or two older than her brother. Same big, dark eyes as her sister — it was clear she would be a beautiful woman someday, too.

If she lived long enough.

It hadn’t been reported much in the media, but the al-Qaida fighters living in Ramadi had taken a page from their Afghan brethren. To cement local alliances with tribal sheiks and leaders, they would marry into the families of the locals — sometimes by force. In some places, al-Qaida had taken over an area simply for the available pool of women. Some they used as little more than prostitutes — slaves to their urges and whims. The women were horribly abused. Those taken or married for political gain were treated perhaps somewhat better, but not much.

Would that be the fate of these two?

The conversation flowed freely, the ’terp serving as the bridge between cultures. What they found was a common humanity that gave them mutual ground from which to build rapport. That, and George Bush.

The clock ticked on into the night, the rest of Blue Element set up overwatch positions on the rooftop. Soon, Adam and those in the apartment would take a shift upstairs while their brothers caught a little sleep in an empty apartment down the hall. In the meantime, the younger kids teased Adam about the green cravat he’d strapped like a sweatband around his head. It was his homage to Tom Berringer’s character in Platoon, a movie he’d seen dozens of times as a kid. The SEALs kidded him, too. One finally said, “Dude, they’re right. You look like Pat Benatar with sideburns.”

Then the youngest boy reached for Adam’s SR-25.

The mother came unglued. The lightness of the conversation vanished. The child only wanted to touch it. Adam knew he wasn’t a threat.

“No! No! No!” the mother shrieked. The boy recoiled, but his eyes never left the SR-25. He looked at it with open wonder and reverence.

For an instant, that look took Adam back to his own childhood. Was this the first weapon the boy had seen up close? He remembered his own reaction when his best friend’s father gave him a Ruger 10/22 rifle for Christmas one year. He had held it and looked it over with the same expression. His best friend, Justin, had received one as well. Justin’s dad taught them how to use them safely. He taught them how to hunt, and the two boys spent hours hunting squirrels and other small animals with them.

Adam made a gesture, letting everyone know it was okay. The boy stepped forward and tentatively put a finger out toward the SR-25’s barrel. The old man seemed okay with this, but again the mother went crazy.

“No! No! No!”

Was it fear of the weapon that drove this? Or was it fear that her son would grow to love them? There was no way to tell, and Adam wasn’t about to ask. The boy retreated and sat back down.

“What will tomorrow bring us?” the old man asked, suddenly serious.

Adam couldn’t answer that. How could he? Instead, he asked, “Do you need anything?”

“Diesel fuel. For the generator,” the old man replied quickly.

One of Blue Element’s chiefs called to Adam, “Don’t promise anything, man.”

Adam nodded and told the man he’d do his best to help.

The conversation continued until, somewhere long after midnight, it was Adam’s turn to take a shift on the roof. He said his good-byes and slipped upstairs, his SR-25 in his hands now. In the morning, the Army and Marines would establish another outpost in the city. This time, it would be an Iraqi police station. The 1st Armored Division had become quite adept at these operations. A leapfrog forward from one COP to another suitable site in a lawless neighborhood, and the ground pounders would seize a building or part of a block that would make a suitable base. As soon as it was secured, a stream of combat engineers would arrive with everything from Texas and Alaska barriers to Porta-John’s, sandbags, concrete, and communications gear. As the SEALs looked out for their fellow Americans from these sorts of overwatch positions, the engineers would turn the buildings into a secured compound. From the new base, the Coalition troops stationed there would live with the locals and patrol the neighborhood until al-Qaida’s presence receded further into the city like a sanguine tide.

One block at a time, one neighborhood converted and secured. Al-Qaida fought for every inch of the city — they’d declared Ramadi the capital of the Islamic Caliphate of Iraq in October 2006. This would be where they made their stand, and they would stop at nothing to secure victory.

And men like Adam? Every time they pulled the trigger, they had to write a report justifying why.

As he settled down for his first watch that morning, Adam reflected on his encounter with the Iraqi family. He was a two-tour veteran of Iraq. He’d been in firefights large and small. In each, he fought to protect his brother SEALs, or his fellow Americans. For him, that was what the war here was about — keeping Americans alive so they could return to their families.

Now it was something more. Everyone said we could not kill our way to victory in Ramadi. Al-Qaida always found more bodies to throw into the fight, and sooner or later we were going to leave this forsaken place.

The only answer was families like the one downstairs. They needed protection. Their spirit and their belief that this nightmare would end only with America’s help had to be preserved until the Iraqis themselves could face al-Qaida on more than even terms.

The Americans went into the Iraqi police station without incident. The engineers came out with all their equipment and gear — their COP in a Can — and set up the force protection. Another neighborhood saved from al-Qaida’s clutch. At least for now. The inevitable counterattack had yet to materialize.

Days later, when Blue Element left the apartment and returned to Camp Lee, Adam sat down at his computer. He hated computers. He’d rather be stacking seabags than writing e-mails and had never gotten into games or video consoles. He’d spent his youth out in the woods with his pal Justin, hunting with their Rugers at first, later with bows. That’s the life he wanted again.

But what will tomorrow bring?

Adam brought up his e-mail account and pecked out a note to his mother back home in small-town Illinois. He thought of home, the church he’d attended until he left for the Navy and how his mom still attended it regularly. He wrote about the family he’d met and asked her to put the old man, his wife and children into the church prayer list that Sunday.

Their salvation would be our victory.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN Al-Qaida’s Graveyard

The Iraqis worked under the summer sun, seemingly oblivious to the stench. They’d dug out the remains of the soccer field’s turf to find the bodies piled, one atop the other. Most had been tortured before being dumped at the stadium. Some had their genitals cut off and shoved into their mouths, others were found beheaded or beaten so badly their arms, legs, and skulls were broken.

Guarded by Iraqi Police and American troops, “Operation Graveyard” disinterred dozens of corpses and laid them to rest elsewhere in the city. This stadium, used as an al-Qaida dumping ground for years, had long since become a place of death and despair, a symbol of Ramadi’s fall from one of the urban jewels in Iraq to a modern-day Stalingrad.

This gruesome excavation was a symbolic, pivotal step toward normalization after four bitter years of warfare. In January 2007, attacks on American forces in Ramadi averaged about thirty-five per day. The snipers on both sides continued to play their shadowy roles, and both sides inflicted casualties on each other nearly every day.

Yet after the Christmas Eve firefight, Adam and his fellow SEALs rarely saw the enemy again during overwatch missions and patrols. The population had turned its support to the Coalition so staunchly that if their tips didn’t result in immediate action, the people sometimes took matters into their own hands.

In one neighborhood, an al-Qaida sniper opened fire on an American patrol. The local civilians figured out where he was before the Americans did. They stormed his hide, dragged him into the street, and beat him senseless until the U.S. patrol arrived and detained him.

Those incidents, unheard of a few months ago, became increasingly common through the first months of 2007. In neighborhoods all over Ramadi, the local imams and sheiks banded together in what became known as the Anbar Awakening movement, a grassroots tribal revolt against al-Qaida led by a pro-American sheik. They sent tribesmen to join the police forces, despite the heavy casualties the Iraqi cops incurred from suicide bombers and vehicle-borne IEDs as they manned checkpoints in their districts or on the city’s outskirts. The police, once considered little more than a corrupt armed mob, helped turn the tide in the city. Their resolve stiffened even as they suffered terrible blows from al-Qaida attacks.

The SEALs carried out kill or capture missions throughout the next three months, bagging bomb makers and financiers. The locals became so helpful that they sometimes led the SEAL team directly to the door of known bad guys. In one case, an informant knew the exact apartment where an al-Qaida sniper was living. He directed the kill or capture element to the complex, which was less than a quarter of a mile from a Coalition COP. The SEALs gained entry into his home so quickly that the gunman was caught completely by surprise. When the Americans reached his bedroom, they found the sniper having sex. He was so intent on his lady friend that he never heard the SEALs until they dragged him off the bed. Inside the apartment, the entry team found weapons, bomb-making material, and ammunition.

Another enemy sharpshooter removed from the equation.

Success piled on success. After that al-Qaida gunman was pulled from under his sheets, the SEALs never again took fire around COP Eagle’s Nest. Since October, the team had played a key role in degrading al-Qaida’s midlevel leadership network. Other teams went after the senior leaders with equal effect. Combined with the mood on the street turning against the Jihadists, and the rise of the Iraqi Police force, al-Qaida’s resistance in Ramadi crumbled by late spring 2007. By then, Adam and the rest of SEAL Team Five had packed up and headed for home.

At the end of June, a force of some sixty insurgents tried to infiltrate into the city to reignite the fighting. Locals saw them coming and tipped off the Iraqi Police. They in turn warned the Americans in the area, who set up an ambush and wiped the force out. After that engagement, al-Qaida virtually gave up on Ramadi. What had once been named the capital of their murderous caliphate now became the safest city in Iraq. That summer U.S. forces did not sustain a single attack for eighty straight days.

Almost every tribe had joined the Awakening by that summer. The population’s decisive turn made all the difference, and despite al-Qaida’s attempts to stop the movement by assassinating its leadership, they had lost their grip on the Iraqi people. By the fall of 2007, to be a Jihadist in Ramadi was a death sentence. The locals sought them out, and falling into civilian Iraqi hands was a far worse fate than capture by the Americans. Revenge killings finished off the stragglers.

The caliphate had failed. By making their stand in Ramadi, al-Qaida shot its bolt. Though there remained pockets of fierce resistance throughout Anbar Province and elsewhere in Iraq, the Battle of Ramadi crippled the enemy. Never again would the Jihadists threaten Iraq or the American effort in the country. But like so many other crucial campaigns in military history, it had been a near run thing.

The Marine, Army, and special operation snipers played a key role in ensuring ultimate victory. Month after month, they proved the effectiveness of precision marksmanship in a city battle. Urban warfare is the most intense and casualty-producing form of conventional warfare, and Ramadi illustrated that. Yet the snipers showed that they could affect the battlefield in significant ways. When the Rules of Engagement changed, curtailing the full use of the firepower available to the Coalition, snipers became even more important. Their precision fire saved countless civilian lives, and that was where the real battle in Ramadi was won. Once the civilian population came over to the Coalition’s side, al-Qaida’s days in the city were numbered.

Snipers also saved the lives of countless American and Iraqi soldiers as well. In the worst days of 2005 and 2006, almost every patrol that sortied into the city took fire. It was often impossible to determine who was shooting at the patrols and from where. In the ruins of the city, there were just too many hiding places, and al-Qaida fighters were masters of camouflage and concealment.

Those losses were mitigated by the presence of friendly overwatching snipers. From their perches atop buildings or in their upper stories, they could scan ahead of the patrols and help keep them safe by taking out threats as they developed. Other times their eyes on the battlefield provided vital intelligence, kept patrols from walking into ambushes, and stopped many an IED-laying team from completing their missions.

The number of lives taken by Coalition snipers during the Ramadi campaign will never be known. Nor will the number of Coalition and civilian lives they saved with their actions. In both cases, though, the snipers decisively affected the flow of the battle. Few battles in modern history were influenced so heavily by so few trigger pullers.

When those men came home, they did so without fanfare. Their share of the credit in the Ramadi victory was largely ignored by the American press, who had long since moved on to other stories. They remain largely anonymous — these Marines, Army, and special operations shooters, despite the fact that they helped turn the tide in Iraq.

Adam returned home with the rest of the team in April 2007. He was ready to call it a career, and dreamed of homesteading someplace. In Ramadi, he’d dreamt of a little farm, some cows and chickens, and mornings in a blind someplace, alone with his bow and his thoughts.

He struggled with the decision right up to the last minute. Ultimately, he reenlisted and served four more years. He spent time in an assault cell and loved every minute of it. While serving with Team Ten, he married and had a son. Right after his son was born, Team Ten deployed to Nigeria to help stand up their new counterterrorism force. While Adam admired the Nigerian troops he helped to train, the separation from his young family proved especially hard on them all. For ninety days, he worked diligently at his assigned task. The poverty in Nigeria was a true eye-opener for him, and by the time the deployment ended, Adam never wanted to leave American soil again.

In April 2011 he separated from the Navy and settled down on a farm. He’s at his happiest now in a tree blind, waiting for the perfect buck to come along. His son sits beside him, and as his best friend’s dad did when they were kids, now Adam imparts his outdoor skills to his boy.

Ramadi is never far from his heart and thoughts, though. The battle for that city grew in importance until it became a test of wills between the United States and al-Qaida. The resolve of men like Adam and the Americans and Iraqis he served with in the city sustained the fight even in the darkest hours. It was that resolve that finally broke al-Qaida’s hold on the city, and eventually to all of Anbar Province.

In September 2007, after a summer free from attacks and violence, the citizen of Ramadi began to dig through the rubble and salvage what they could. The process of rebuilding the devastated city would take years. But one symbol offered them hope. The soccer stadium, once the sight of a grisly mass grave, had been transformed by the Coalition. Once the neighborhood surrounding it had been secured and the bodies removed, engineers descended on it. They rebuilt the stands, laid turf, and striped the field.

Every evening at five o’clock, the citizens would gather in the stands to watch local teams play on the grounds there, made hallowed by the blood of their neighbors. They cheered and reveled in this one aspect of normalcy among the ruins. Youth teams — the children of Ramadi — would play every week as well. Only a few months before, some of them had been the paid eyes and ears of al-Qaida. They had hunted for the Americans, for the SEALs and sniper teams all the while unwittingly working against the very people determined to secure a future for them. Now at last, they had the opportunity to be kids again.

In 2013, four years after President Barrack Obama ordered a complete pull out from Iraq, forces opposed to the Baghdad government, some assisted by a wing of al-Qaida once again growing in strength, retook Ramadi and Fallujah. For the American veterans of both campaigns, the news came as the worst possible blow. For the citizens of those battle-scarred city, they once again faced wanton murder, oppression and violence. Only this time, they had little hope of salvation. The American troops had all gone home.