Generation Kill - Evan Wright [104]
After briefing his men, Fick says privately to me, “This is Black Hawk Down shit we are doing.” He adds, “The fact that we never initiate contact with the enemy—it’s always them on us—is wearing on these guys. In their training as Recon Marines, it’s a failure every time they get shot at first. It doesn’t matter that we’ve done well shooting our way out of these engagements. They’re supposed to be the ones initiating the contact, not the enemy.”
AS THE CONVOY MOVES OUT from its position in the mudflats and starts rolling, single-file, on the trail toward Al Hayy, Cobra escorts pour rockets and machine-gun fire into a nearby palm grove. Watching the attack, Colbert says, “This country is dirty and nasty, and the sooner we are out of here the better.”
Though almost no one ever talks about religion, some Marines silently say their prayers. At a wide spot in the trail just before the mosque, Espera’s vehicle pulls up beside Colbert’s. Both vehicles are going about twenty-five miles per hour. I glimpse Corporal Jason Lilley, the twenty-three-year-old driver of Espera’s vehicle, clenching the wheel, staring ahead unblinking. His lips are moving. He later tells me that although he’s not a big Christian, he was saying, “Lord see us through,” over and over.
After we pass the mosque, machine guns and small rockets, called “zunis,” being fired by the Cobras kick up a massive dust cloud that envelops the convoy. The road sinks down and snakes between tree-lined hamlets. Some of Recon’s transport trucks rolling in the middle of the convoy take fire. At least one has its tires shot out but rides on the rims.
We reach the edge of the city and cross the first bridge into an industrial area of low-slung cinder-block buildings, with a dense cluster of apartment blocks to our right. In all the dust kicked up, several of Recon’s supply trucks take a wrong turn.
Colbert’s team and the rest of his platoon hang back to provide cover while the drivers of the lost team unfuck themselves and turn around. We stop for several minutes, surrounded by walls and windows in the hostile city. We hear AKs and machine guns clattering, but don’t see any muzzle flashes.
Charlie Company, which is now crossing the second bridge in the S-turn, is coming under fire from a building seventy-five meters away. Charlie’s lead vehicle is commanded by Sergeant Charles Graves, a twenty-six-year-old sniper. An RPG round blows up beside his open-top Humvee. Shrapnel superficially wounds one of his Marines in the leg. Their vehicle is raked with machine-gun fire. One round cuts through a piece of metal inches from Graves’s head. His Mark-19 gunner opens up on the building where the enemy shooters are concealed. The building is kind of pretty—a long, pale-blue stucco structure with arches along its second story. Graves’s Mark-19 gunner saturates it with thirty-two rounds, blowing giant holes in the front of it, collapsing part of the roof. Watching the destruction as his team speeds past, Graves thinks, he later tells me, “It’s fucking beautiful.”
No more fire comes from the building. By now, Colbert’s team has picked up the lost supply trucks. We turn toward the building hit by Charlie Company. As we roll by the smoking ruins, Person shouts, “Damn, sucka!”
Across from the building, a live Arab lies in the road. He’s in a dingy white robe, squeezed between piles of rubble. The man is only about two meters from