Generation Kill - Evan Wright [37]
The senior enlisted man, a company operations chief, tells Doc Bryan he had trained his weapon on him and almost fired, believing he was an enemy infiltrator.
In the layers of incompetence Recon Marines feel they labor under in the battalion, this company ops chief is nearly at the top with Captain America and Encino Man. They call him “Casey Kasem,” because of his warm, gravelly voice, which over the radios sounds like that of the old rock DJ.
In his late thirties, lean and dark-haired, Casey Kasem usually rides with Encino Man. Casey Kasem’s job is to ensure that the Marines have enough supplies—fuel, water and batteries for their night optics. Like Encino Man, he’s one of those rear-echelon men in a support position, who ordinarily wouldn’t have deployed with the Recon Marines.
One of the things that burn everyone up about Casey Kasem is the fact that he failed to bring enough batteries or adequate rechargers to operate the platoon’s only PAS-13 thermal-imaging device. Unlike their NVGs, which amplify existing light, the PAS-13 uses heat and can see through dust and foliage. The PAS-13 gives the platoon a critical advantage and means of survival in night operations, but largely because of a supply snafu they blame on Casey Kasem, the platoon only has enough batteries to operate the PAS-13 for a couple of hours each night. Within a few days, when they are at the height of their operations in ambush country, the men will sometimes go whole nights without any batteries at all for their PAS-13, and in at least one instance, this deficiency will nearly kill them.
Adding insult to injury, while Casey Kasem apparently failed to bring enough batteries for the Marines’ critical night-fighting gear, he did have the presence of mind to bring along a personal video camera. He is constantly sticking it in everyone’s face as part of his effort to make a war documentary that he hopes to sell after the invasion. “He’s just another king-size jackass making life more dangerous for us,” Doc Bryan says.
Tonight Casey Kasem is highly agitated because he and Encino Man have concluded that “enemy infiltrators” have moved into the Marines’ position and are preparing an attack.
“Over there. Enemy infiltrators,” he tells Doc Bryan, pointing toward the village he and others on the team have been watching.
While Doc Bryan is not technically a Marine, he is a product of the Navy’s most elite special-warfare training and could have chosen to have been placed with either Navy SEALs or a Marine Recon unit. Doc Bryan, who arguably has better combat training than many Recon Marines, is supremely confident of his judgment. “That’s a village,” Doc Bryan says.
“No. Over there,” Casey Kasem whispers excitedly, pointing along the canal. “Looks like a squad-size group of Iraqis, maybe an RPG hunter-killer team observing us.”
“Those are fucking rocks,” Doc Bryan says. “They’re not moving.”
“Not moving,” Casey Kasem says, “because those are the most disciplined Iraqis we’ve seen so far.”
Casey Kasem sounds the alert up and down the line. Marines are pushed out with weapons and optics to observe the Iraqi “squad.” Only at first light do the Marines definitively prove to Casey Kasem that the “disciplined Iraqis” are indeed rocks.
Through the heightened alert, Colbert spends the night calming his team. When Garza takes the watch on the Humvee’s Mark-19, Colbert tells him, “Garza, please make sure you don’t shoot the civilians on the other side of the canal. We are the invading army. We must be magnanimous.”
“Magna-nous?” Garza asks. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Lofty and kinglike,” Colbert tells him.
“Sure,” Garza says after a moment’s consideration. “I’m a nice guy.”
EIGHT
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THE MARINES ARE ALMOST EUPHORIC the next morning, March 23, when Fick briefs them on the next leg of the invasion. He doesn’t know for sure yet where they