• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The battle was now advancing quickly through the streets, and it was time for us to move if we wanted to get out front. The India Company commander radioed that he could see a tall building a few miles away, which he believed to be a major hotel that towered over everything around it. “If we can get snipers up there, they should be able to see a long, long way,” he said. From my rooftop perch, I could see that it was too far away for us to reach anytime soon, but we had to find another position.

We took off down the stairs and emerged from the dark interior into a battle that was still going on around us. Dave Howell took two snipers and went to link up with the moving tactical headquarters, while Casey, the Panda, and I headed for another tall structure, accompanied by four other Marines who had joined us.

We broke into a large industrial structure that had huge locker rooms on each floor and headed for the top. It was seven stories tall, but when the Panda and I got up to the roof, we found it was worthless as an overview site. While downstairs, there was no way to know that bigger buildings nearby blocked all of the sight lines on the roof. “Shit,” I exclaimed. “We can’t stay here.”

Casey had lagged behind to establish rear security for us and was trying to make sense of a storm of radio traffic. The battalion was running into occasional hot spots, but there was no organized opposition truly worth the name. We met him about halfway up the stairs as we were running back down, and I yelled, “You took me to the wrong building, fucker!”

“What?” Casey replied incredulously. “This is the one we pointed to back at the other building. Jackass.” Not exactly proper military courtesy, but the exchange of information was perfect.

“No, it isn’t. This is the wrong one, so get me to the right one.” I was hot. Time was wasting.

“What the fuck are you talking about? There isn’t a better-looking place anywhere around here.” It was a moot point, because we were already leaving, running down the stairs and arguing as we went. We burst through the door yelling, “Coming out!” and the harsh Iraqi sun, well into the morning sky by now, slammed our eyes.

Marines were everywhere, pushing through a confusing battlefield. Our plan was falling apart because of the lack of resistance, but why argue with success? We caught up with McCoy, who was receiving piecemeal fragments of official orders and adjusting to those frags as the battalion surged like the undertow pulling along a beach and sweeping everything before it. He called in the flanking companies to orient the battalion toward a technical university and the headquarters of the Iraqi air force.

I had his attention for only a moment and asked, “Sir, the battle’s moving too fast, and our objectives are changing by the minute. Can you give me any idea of what’s up next? Where you want us to go?”

“I know, I know,” he replied, not even looking up as he studied his maps of downtown Baghdad and put his finger on one grid square. “We’re going to take out this air force headquarters compound … right here. Find yourself somewhere to support that attack.”

Casey marked the grids on his own map, and our Humvees raced through the tangled streets of the city, trying to get in front of our highballing mechanized battalion. Burning cars belched smoke, and the bodies of some dead dudes lay scattered about. To support the unfolding attack, we had to get into position before it was launched. That was the whole point of a mobile sniper team, but it meant driving headlong into the dangerous abyss of an urban environment.

The morning had been one of steady, small fights, and the intelligence officers thought the air force compound might be the first real stronghold of the day. Even as we whizzed through the streets, down canyons of uncleared Iraqi buildings with average citizens waving at us from windows, while we kept watch for the barrels of guns to appear from those same windows, Casey heard another call on the radio. The India Company commander wanted to know if his troops should proceed to