Generation Kill - Evan Wright [87]
Before leaving, Fick and Gunny Wynn raise the possibility of there being a formal inquiry into the shooting. After they walk off, Trombley turns to Colbert and asks, “Is this going to be okay, I mean with the investigation?”
“You’ll be fine, Trombley.”
“No. I mean for you, Sergeant.” Trombley grins. “I don’t care what happens, really. I’m out in a couple of years. I mean for you. This is your career.”
“I’ll be fine.” Colbert stares at him. “No worries.”
Something’s been bothering me about Trombley for a day or two, and I can’t help thinking about it now. I was never quite sure if I should believe his claim that he cut up those Iraqis in Al Gharraf. But he hit those two shepherds, one of whom was extremely small, at more than 200 meters, from a Humvee bouncing down a rough road at forty miles per hour. However horrible the results, his work was textbook machine-gun shooting, and the fact is, from now on, every time I ride with Colbert’s team, I feel a lot better when Trombley is by my side with the SAW.
SEVENTEEN
°
SUNSET ON THE NIGHT of March 27 turns the surrounding fields red. First Recon’s camp by the airfield is spread across three kilometers, with the Humvees on the outer perimeter spaced about seventy-five meters apart, hidden under cammie nets. Looking out, all you see are dried mudflats, rippled with berms and sliced with dry canals. It looks like a 1950s sci-fi fantasy Martian landscape.
They tell us to dig our holes extra deep tonight. The battalion remains cut off, deep in “bad-guy country,” as Fick says. To prevent hordes of RPG teams or enemy tanks from overrunning the perimeter, the Marine Division, about twenty kilometers southwest of here, has pretargeted its artillery to land within “danger-close” range of the camp should it be requested. If the enemy appears in the nearby fields, a quick SOS to division headquarters will bring dozens or hundreds of artillery rounds splashing down near where we are sleeping.
For the first time in several days, the night sky is clear. I watch shooting stars from my hole. There are more stars than you would typically see in North America because there are no streetlights. Clear skies also mean U.S. military aircraft, hampered by dust storms the past several days, now have free rein. It’s a busy night in the sky. Past sunset we hear unmanned drones crisscrossing overhead, then the buzzing of propeller-driven P-3 observation planes. Antimissile flares, thrown out by unseen jets, make the whole sky blink. Bombs flash on the horizon. Iraqi AAA guns send up tracer rounds, which look like strings of pearls. I see the enemy AAA batteries firing north, east and west of us, a graphic reminder that there are hostile forces all around.
Near midnight, a team on Alpha Company’s sector of the perimeter observes lights that appear to be moving about six kilometers away. The Marines count somewhere between 120 and 140 different lights. Lights could be produced by all sorts of things—a small town with electricity (south of here a few days ago we did see some towns that still had power), a bunch of civilian vehicles or an Iraqi military convoy. Since these lights seem to be moving, the Marines rule out the town option. The men on the team aren’t sure what’s producing the lights, but their nervous platoon commander believes they represent a possible threat. He radios the battalion that a convoy of “one hundred forty vehicles