Generation Kill - Evan Wright [143]
“I have no targets! No targets!” Colbert repeats. But our vehicle rocks as Hasser begins lobbing rounds from the Mark-19.
“Cease fire!” Colbert shouts.
“I got muzzle flashes, for sure,” Hasser shouts.
“Easy there, buddy,” Colbert yells. “You’re shooting a goddamn village. We’ve got women and children there.”
The reservists behind us have already poured at least a hundred grenades into the village. Colbert continues scanning it through his scope. “We’re not shooting the village, okay?” he says. In times like these, Colbert often assumes the tone of a schoolteacher calling a timeout during a frenzied playground scuffle. Mortars explode so close we feel the overpressure punching down on the Humvee. But Colbert will not allow his team to give in to the frenzy and shoot unless the men finds clear targets.
The fire from Delta Company continues unabated. One of First Recon’s air officers riding near them looks back and sees a Mark-19 gunner in Delta standing at his weapon, burning through cans of ammunition, and he’s not wearing NVGs, meaning he can’t even see what he’s shooting at. The reservists now make another classic mistake of nervous, undisciplined Marines: They fire down the axis of the convoy, their rounds skipping and exploding next to the friendly vehicles in front of them. A platoon commandeer in Alpha gets on the comms, shouting, “Get those assholes to cease fire. They’re shooting at us!”
Their wild fire continues. Then the voice of Captain America comes over the radio, quavering and cracking. “Enemy, enemy! They’ve got us on both sides!”
“Oh, my God!” Person says. “Is he crying?”
“No, he’s not,” Colbert replies, cutting off what will likely be a bitter tirade about Captain America. In recent days, Person has pretty much forgotten his old hatreds for pop stars such as Justin Timberlake—a former favorite subject of long, tedious rants about everything that’s wrong with the United States—and now he complains almost exclusively about Captain America.
“He’s just nervous,” Colbert says. “Everyone’s nervous. Everyone’s just trying to do their job.”
“We’re going to die if we don’t get out of here!” Captain America screams over the radio. “They’ve sent us to die here!”
“Okay,” Colbert says. “Fuck it. He is crying.”
The firing drops off behind us. In front, LAVs pop off quick bursts. We hear their diesels grinding as they maneuver.
“LAVs are breaking contact,” Person reports from the radio. It’s a relief. It means we’re turning around, pulling back. Mortars are still bursting steadily, while AKs crackle intermittently.
“Person, move forward,” Colbert says. “We’re covering the LAVs while they pull back.”
“Is that right?” Person asks, startled.
“They want us to envelop them,” Colbert says. “Just move up the road.”
The wisdom of driving into a column of twenty-four LAVs while they pull beside us, some still firing their weapons, escapes the Marines. Colbert’s team has no radio contact with the LAVs, nor much experience practicing an enveloping maneuver.
Person deals with the order by simply flooring it. We speed up alongside the LAVs as their guns pop off rounds in front and behind us. Their diesels growl past us as they retreat. Soon all of War Pig and First Recon are behind us. Second Platoon sits out alone on the highway for several minutes.
“Turn around,” Colbert says.
“Roger that!” Person says, evidently relieved.
“We’re moving three clicks south and punching out patrols,” Colbert says.
We draw past the hamlet lit up so heavily by Delta. “That was a civilian target,” Colbert says. “I saw them.”
He sounds tired. I think this war has lost its allure for him. It’s not that he can’t take it. During the past hour or so of shooting, he still seemed excited by the action. But I think after mourning the loss of his friend Horsehead, trying to care for dehydrated, sick babies among the refugees the other day, the shot-up kids by the airfield before that, and having seen so many civilians blown apart, he’s connected the