Shooter_ The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper - Jack Coughlin [108]
“Yeah, we definitely thought there was something going on,” I said. “There was a guy up on the roof with his laptop. And I had, you know, put him in my scope, looking to see what he was doing. I didn’t know if it was an enemy or not without the use of my scope.” Oops, again. I just admitted that I had almost plugged one of the Jackals. Engel had me confirm that I was a sniper.
“And so, if you thought he had something other than a laptop, that would have been it for him?”
Be nice, I told myself, wishing he would change the subject. “I would have been able to tell. I wouldn’t have to think … you could see it. You can see pretty clearly out of that. So, yeah, I mean, if it was an enemy, we would have dealt with that.” This TV stuff was harder than it looked.
Thankfully, Engel switched to Casey and asked what our job was now.
“The job for tonight will be to make this area secure,” Casey replied. “We’re not exactly sure what happens from here. I know that there are more people that we will have to deal with later, but for tonight, we’ll just make sure that everybody’s safe around here.”
The reporter then asked if we felt safer now and whether we wanted backup support, and Bart sharply observed, “We feel as safe as we felt any other night.”
Casey flipped the question back to Engel. “Do you feel safer now that we’re here?” The reporter acknowledged, “I certainly do.”
I pointed out that we always feel safe when we’re together and that our security cordon was already in place, or else we wouldn’t be standing here talking to him. I didn’t mention we also had a thicket of sniper rifles pointed out of the windows directly upstairs. “Right now we’re completely surrounded by friendlies. I mean, it may seem all nice and dandy up here when we’re talking, but there’s, you know, eight hundred or nine hundred other guys around here with whatever we take to the fight.” Did we feel safe? Damn straight we did.
Jennings broke in to ask if the events of the afternoon meant that the war was over. That one kind of pissed me off. I didn’t believe the war was over at all. “We’re not done yet,” I said. “We’re in a safe environment right now, but we’ll be prepared for whatever happens tomorrow. When the appropriate authority ever says the war is over, then that will be good news.”
We chattered on for a bit more; then our few minutes of fame were over, and we went off to find the Sheraton dining room, where life was slower. The smell of good food was overwhelming, the plates were clean, silverware sparkled on white tablecloths, and the buffet seemed filled to bursting. This is crazy, I thought, three Marines in dirty cammies with helmets under their arms and wearing flak vests, checking out a buffet line. After being on the road for three weeks of combat, we would have been delirious with joy just to have a couple of cheeseburgers or a Philly steak-and-cheese sandwich. This otherwise rather ordinary hotel dining room seemed like a banquet at Versailles to us, and we thoroughly pigged out while the dull whumph of faraway explosions echoed from where engineers were blowing up captured enemy arms around the city.
The night passed quietly, and the only real shooting we heard was a brief duel between CAAT teams from different battalions who stumbled upon each other in the Baghdad darkness. No one was hurt.
Enrico Dagnino, the Italian photographer who had been with us during the ferocious Baghdad Two-Mile attack, came up to our room with a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label, and that helped complete this slice of paradise. With others on watch, I sipped scotch whiskey and watched the small television set in the corner as the Al Jazeera network gave its tilted version of our triumph, complete with English script rolling across the bottom of the screen that kept referring to us as “invaders.” Unreal.
I stripped down in the bathroom and took a long shower under a nice blend of hot and cold water,