Generation Kill - Evan Wright [142]
Then, after proceeding five kilometers north of the magic line, machine guns, rockets and mortars flash ahead of us in the darkness. The enemy has opened fire on the LAVs in front of us. Now I can see their outlines in the strobe-light effect of bombs and tracers going off around them. The blasts sound like hammers beating on the sides of Colbert’s Humvee.
In the first moments, enemy ambushers who are entrenched alongside the road launch approximately forty RPGs at War Pig’s column. In Wennberg’s LAV, shrapnel from the RPGs immediately shreds four of his vehicle’s tires. He estimates about 120 Iraqis are attacking from the west. Their ambush was coordinated enough that they held their fire until all of the LAVs had rolled into their kill box. As the enemy fire from the west intensifies, more Iraqis dug in to the east start to open up. They “bracket” the convoy by dropping heavy 82mm mortars on both ends of it, north and south (where Colbert’s Humvee is positioned). These Iraqis have apparently figured out that the LAVs use thermal sights, and many of them are concealed beneath blankets to minimize their heat signatures.
The convoy halts. Through the windshield in Colbert’s vehicle we can see the outlines of the LAVs as bombs flash all around. The LAVs open up with everything they have. Their cannons stutter explosively, spewing out tracer lines like red ropes that lash the ground for hundreds of meters on either side of the convoy. Pom-poms of fire bounce up from their targets. Iraqi tracers stream in toward them. The opposing lines of tracer fire tangle around one other, making it look almost like the two sides are dueling each other with glow-in-the-dark Silly String.
“I have no targets, no targets,” Colbert shouts. The fire just ahead of us makes a steady roar. We could be standing at the edge of Niagara Falls.
Hasser shouts down from the turret. “I don’t see nothing!”
There’s nothing close enough for the team to engage. We watch the gun battle go on in front of us several minutes. Then the Iraqi fire into the LAV column drops precipitously. A lone Iraqi machine gun continues to spit tracers toward the LAVs. A half dozen of them pour fire onto it, but every time it looks like they’ve silenced it, the enemy machine gun starts up again. This duel continues on and off for another five minutes.
In the relative quiet that follows, Colbert leans out his window, using his nightscope to observe a small hamlet of four to eight mud huts perhaps twenty-five meters to our immediate right. In the window of the closest hut there’s an amber light from a lantern or a candle.
“There’s nothing there,” Colbert says after studying the hamlet for a long time. “Just civilians behind a wall in back.”
“Small-arms fire to our rear,” Person says, passing on a report from the radio.
Then we hear AKs—they make a sharper, more substantial cracking sound than Marine M-4s—directly behind our vehicle. Fick reports over the radio that enemy fire is coming directly in on his Humvee about 100 meters behind us. Several rounds snap close to his head.
Recon Marines behind us return fire. It’s not heavy yet, just intermittent crackling, like branches snapping in the woods.
“I have no targets, no targets!” Colbert repeats.
All at once, Marines in vehicles far to the rear of Fick’s seemingly open up with every weapon they possess. Their gunfire sounds like a torrential rain. It’s Delta Company, the reservist Marines. They’re blazing away with machine guns and Mark-19s.
“Jesus Christ,” Colbert shouts, laughing. “Those guys are putting down FPF.” FPF—or final protective fire, shooting every weapon you have—is what Marines are trained to do only as a last-ditch measure. “They must think they’ve got the Chinese coming at them across the frozen Chosin,” Colbert says, referring to the epic Korean War battle.
The village to our immediate right now comes under heavy machine-gun and Mark-19 fire from the Marines in Delta. As dozens of their grenades bounce off the huts and flash, exploding just thirty meters from us, a few Marines in Bravo open