Generation Kill - Evan Wright [116]
The men, who ultimately have no choice in the matter, reluctantly voice their support of Fick’s orders—ones that he has no choice but to follow, either. After he goes off, Pappy says, “The people running this can fuck things up all they want. But as long as we keep getting lucky and making it through alive, they’ll just keep repeating the same mistakes.”
What galls the men is the fact that they are situated just a few kilometers from the bridge. To them, it seems like a no-brainer to send a foot patrol out and observe the bridge before driving onto it. “Reconnaissance,” Doc Bryan points out, “is what Recon Marines do.”
Confidence is not bolstered when an Iraqi artillery unit—thought to have been wiped out by this point—sends numerous rounds kabooming into the surrounding mudflats. The men break up their discussion. However beautiful artillery might look when it’s arcing across the sky onto enemy positions, when it’s aimed at you, it sounds like somebody’s hurling freight trains at your head. Everyone runs for the nearest hole and takes cover.
Following the Iraqi strike, we watch Marine batteries pour about 100 DPICM rounds onto the town side of the bridge four kilometers distant. Each DPICM round, loaded with either 66 or 89 submunitions, produces spectacular starbursts as it explodes over the city.
FOR TONIGHT’S MISSION, Colbert’s team wins the honor of driving the lead vehicle onto the bridge. The team climbs into the Humvee just before eleven o’clock, some gobbling ephedra for what’s expected to be an all-night mission. Colbert is not especially sanguine about the condition of the team’s equipment. Due to the shortage of LSA lubricant, his vehicle’s Mark-19 keeps going down. On top of this, on a night when they are going to be rolling through a hostile town, then setting up ambushes on back roads, there’s almost no moon, which makes the operation of NVGs less than ideal. Ordinarily, the team would turn on its PAS-13 thermal-imaging scope, but tonight they have no batteries for it. (Fick does not hide his anger toward Casey Kasem for failing to keep the teams supplied with these items. “That guy’s either running around with his video camera shooting his war documentary or sitting in his hole reading Maxim, while my men don’t get what they need,” he complained earlier.) Even though the team will be moving with impaired night-vision and a faulty main gun, Colbert tries to put a good spin on things. “We’ll be okay,” he says as they start the engine. “Just make sure you look sharp through those NVGs, Person.”
We roll onto the darkened road, heading toward the bridge at about twenty-five miles per hour. Far up ahead, we see headlights from a lone vehicle moving down perpendicular to the road we’re on. It reaches the approximate location of the bridge and the lights go off. Colbert is watching this, debating its meaning: Some farmer driving at night toward a bridge that’s been pounded with artillery for several hours? Fedayeen sending up reinforcements or using the headlights to signal someone?
The team ceases its speculation when Cobras thump overhead. They fire multiple volleys of zuni rockets, striping the sky in front of us with white burn trails that culminate in multiple explosions near the bridge. We make out trees—not palms but spiky eucalyptus trees—silhouetted in the light of the bursting rockets.
Cobra pilots radio down to Maj. Shoup that their thermal-imagining devices are picking up “blobs”—possible heat signatures of people—hiding amidst the eucalyptus trees by the foot of the bridge. The