He looked ahead beyond the overpass to see the reveal of office buildings. It was strange to him how buildings in a distance, pressed against the horizon seemed to have a similarity to them regardless of where in the world they had been erected. He was comforted by the fact that the buildings he ran toward were fully intact and free of crumbling debris as he had seen in the desert years before. He forgot the road and let his mind drift again, releasing all of the cares of the moment, which including any concern for the lactic acid steadily building within his legs.
Mile 8
Stephen’s fire team made its way around the city’s perimeter buildings. Their unit had been called in to provide support for Operation Phantom Fury, the battle which had begun just a week before to take back the city of Fallujah from insurgents who had entered and oppressed the city. It was Stephen’s second trip to Fallujah, though only the first time he had actually stepped foot in the dense city. This time there was no daydreaming about visiting the nearby lake or enjoying the cool breeze. The trip into the city had been a horribly tense ride as their convoy stopped several times in order to respond to the several improvised explosive devises left by insurgents alongside nearly every road. When they finally reached the city, the best he could do was to see past the remnants of buildings which had been reduced to rubble. He tried to breathe without choking on the ash still floating above the smoldering city.
The violence against American forces had escalated in Fallujah. The Marines had taken over local operations in an attempt to quell the growing anger from the more than 300,000 residents in the city along the Euphrates River. Insurgents from around the region saw the city as a stronghold and turned the population against their occupiers. After only a couple of months of American management, things began to really fall apart. Somehow it was decided that the local politicians could do a better job of discouraging the insurgent influence. Marines moved out in April and set up an extended perimeter to prevent new insurgents from entering. The plan failed miserably. Fallujah, also known as “The City of Mosques,” had over 200 mosques that were located throughout every community within the city. A plethora of devotees, combined with blatant anti-Americanism from nearly every spiritual leader who had a flock, made the city a battleground for influence. The seven-month period without any American presence gave insurgents the freedom to gain support and recruit throughout the city’s mosques. They not only brought external reinforcements and weapons but they also amassed thousands of volunteers to their cause. By the time November came around, the foreign insurgency had complete control of the city.
The battle to wrangle the city back under coalition control had been a difficult one. Those among the insurgency were well-prepared for an American offensive and they knew how to convert the city into a giant labyrinth with traps and obstructions at nearly every turn. They even went to the trouble of repositioning stolen concrete barriers to limit the movement of tanks and armored vehicles. Those imbedded fighters had not been the locally converted farmer turned soldier, but instead, they were committed extremists who had been battle hardened from multiple wars in the region. Even worse, they were well trained and well supplied by Iran so its regime could wage a proxy war against the “American infidel.” Major hostilities ended with its inevitable conclusion; better training, better equipment, better leadership and an overall better battle plan won out. This along with the fact that America upheld its reputation for showing up to knife fight with a bazooka. In Fallujah, that translated to the US forces bringing nearly four times the number of experienced warfighters than the insurgents had. An American victory was a foregone conclusion even before Navy SEALS infiltrated the city and turned out the lights.
“Cleaning up pockets of resistance” was the politician’s way of saying America had won so the media could move on and shift their efforts back to educating the stateside public about the latest celebrity breakup. To Stephen’s squad, who entering the city just a couple of days after the main force achieved its primary objective at Highway 10 in the center of the city, it meant the part-time resistance fighters had either given up or been killed. Now it was time to flush out the hard-core fighters left behind by the initial strike force’s breakneck pace to retake the city. Those insurgents who dug in and remained were true believers in their cause. They were among those who were ready to die and just wanted to take out as many Americans as they could in the process. It wasn’t clean up. It was nothing less than full-throttled urban warfare.
Stephen’s lead fire team moved ahead in a single column. Since Rodriguez had the point position he was the first to emerge. He sprinted from his area of cover across an open road and disappearing behind a large pile of rubble. When his rifle emerged from behind a mass of rocks, Waters and Stephen simultaneously dipped the muzzles of their rifles and made a quick but cautious pursuit. Dropping behind the rubble, Stephen joined Rodriguez in using telescopic scope of his M4 carbine short barrel rifle to scan the broken out windows of nearby buildings. They searched for any movement, especially the ever faint shimmer of the sun reflecting off the lens of a sniper’s scope. Feeling only a moment’s comfort, he nodded to Chelp on the other side of the road.
“That’s us,” Chelp whispered to the remaining team. He gripped the two ammo belts which were harnessed over his shoulder and slapped Hooper on the helmet as he leapt past him. Hooper rose to his knees, collapsed the tripod to the base of his weapon and took off in a crouched run just behind Chelp. Once they were on the other side, Hilton and Tomlison left their cover and sprinted across to join them.
Stephen looked at his battle-tested team. The last two days had taken them through more than a dozen of these buildings. When the initial strike force came through they had been on the hunt for enemy fighters. They had moved past buildings which didn’t show signs of an enemy presence. Unfortunately, that left Stephen’s unit with the responsibility of cleaning several houses rigged with explosives but vacant of fighters. The work was slow moving, with most buildings locked down and never knowing when a door was wired to explode on contact or an insurgent hold-out waiting on the other side for his moment of suicide by glorious jihad. Stephen could only imagine the death trap that the initial strike force must have walked in to.
Twice they engaged the enemy. The first time Stephen’s team was a bit unnerved and had presented what he later described as an overabundance of fire. The team had moved into an open clearing behind a building that actually turned out to be a cafe which had lost its rear wall to artillery shelling. It was completely accidental when his squad stumbled upon the young sniper sprawled out on a cafe table peering for unsuspecting soldiers. The sniper didn’t even get a chance to aim his single shot bolt-action rifle in the direction of the team. Stephen estimated that each man on his team had unloaded half their magazines at the sniper. While it was a justifiable kill, Stephen wondered how many of those shots were the result of months of anger and anxiety being expressed through itchy trigger fingers.
The second contact with the enemy also came during a building clearing. They were in the process of entering what looked to be a school cafeteria. An insurgent on the second floor was either inexperienced, impatient or just plain scared out of his mind. He tipped off his men’s concealed location by firing an errant round with no target in sight. Had that discharge come half a minute later, Stephen’s team would have been left stuck in the large open cafeteria facing a heavily armed enemy who had positioned themselves in a well covered and elevated defensive position. It was excellent planning and the cafeteria was staged to become an effective kill box. The insurgents were not lacking in experienced planners familiar with guerrilla tactics. But they did have a significant shortage of discipline. So instead, Stephen reversed his team out the same door they had entered and called for an artillery strike. The building was little more than pea gravel within minutes.