Generation Kill - Evan Wright [157]
After reading the official statement, Fick adds, “We have rolled through this country fucking things up. Now we have to show these people what we liberated them from.”
Fick radiates quiet confidence, mixed with purpose. He tells me after the briefing, “What we did up to now was the easy part. This is where the work really begins.” Fick is under the impression that Marines will stay in this cigarette factory for at least a month, maybe longer. They will be given sectors to patrol. They will set up nighttime observation posts in neighborhoods in order to capture or stop looters, paramilitary forces or jihadis who are still active. They will come to know the people in the neighborhoods they patrol, rendering them assistance and serving as liaisons for the nation-builders—engineers, doctors, civil-affairs specialists—who are no doubt on their way.
“This is going to be tough,” Fick tells me. “But I think for my men it will give them a sense of purpose about all the terrible things they’ve seen and been through.”
A SHORT WHILE after Fick’s briefing, he invites his team leaders and me to accompany him on a tour of their new home, the cigarette-factory complex. As soon as we near the open-stake fence I discovered the night before, a crowd of civilians on the other side rushes forward. They stick their faces between the bars and begin shouting at the Marines, several of them in English. “Please, stop the looting,” two of them plead.
Fick approaches the fence, telling them, “Order will be restored very soon.”
More civilians mob the fence, shouting in Arabic, gesticulating. Fick and the others retreat from the babble. We walk into in an open area between looming warehouse structures, cross about fifty meters of barren ground and approach another section of fence—this one with no people on the other side. We’re looking out at the city when there’s a loud cracking sound, followed by a zing. A few more follow. Smoke puffs pop up from the ground a few meters behind us.
“Sniper,” several of the Marines say at once.
Lovell, who’s also an expert sniper, says the rounds are coming from close by, and that we are directly in front of the barrel of whatever gun is shooting at us. I ask him how he knows this. “You can tell by the sound,” he says. He explains that the type of cracking we’re hearing isn’t the gunpowder blast of the bullet being fired but the sonic boom the bullet makes as it crosses the sound barrier. You only hear it so clearly when you’re pretty much directly in front of the barrel. The zinging sound we also hear, he says, is something you only pick up if the bullet’s passing within a few meters of your ears. This is all more information than I wanted.
The five of us have fifty meters of open ground to cross before we can reach cover. We sprint back one at a time under fire from the sniper. For some reason, as I make the dash all I can think of is the scene from the Peter Falk comedy, The In-Laws, in which Falk absurdly urges his sidekick to run in a “serpentine” pattern when they come under fire from a band of guerrillas while stuck in a Central American dictatorship. In my fear, this scene comes to me when I run through the sniper fire. Following Peter Falk’s advice, I zigzag in a serpentine pattern as the shots ring out. It takes me twice as long to reach safety as it takes the Marines. After