Shooter_ The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper - Jack Coughlin [46]
Dave had come out of Force Recon, and although he was the senior enlisted man in the battalion and a trusted tactical adviser to Colonel McCoy, he would always be just a fuckin’ grunt at heart. He loved to go tearing across the battlefield so he could guide a fight, and I had assigned two good snipers, Staff Sergeant Dino Moreno, a dark-haired Italian who had been placed in my slot as the sniper platoon sergeant when I moved over to be the H&S gunny, and Corporal Mark Evnin, a New Englander, to ride shotgun with him. When Howell’s regular Humvee driver decided to become a pacifist just before we went to war, Dave kicked his ass out of the truck and Evnin became the driver. The fourth seat was given to one of our more popular embedded reporters, John Koopman of the San Francisco Chronicle. We called him “Paperboy.”
Dave Howell was the only person in the Corps who called me John, instead of Jack, but usually only did so when he was angry, just as my father had done. Now I felt like my surrogate dad had given me a Christmas present. I grabbed Casey and headed for McCoy’s command post.
The new mission would have a totally unexpected result for me. Not only was I finally going to get into the shooting war, but since necessity breeds invention, a flat tire on a Humvee was about to become a stepping-stone to an important new variable in my craft, something that had never been taught in sniper school. My concept of a Mobile Sniper Strike Team, shelved long ago, was about to be reborn. The answer had been right under my nose the whole time.
Radios provided a low grumble of background noise in the large tent as McCoy sketched out his plan with a black grease pen on a whiteboard. Marines were tied down in independent struggles on Route 1 and on Route 7, but a thin east-west road called Highway 17 linked those two main highways. We were to go and capture that road to open a new supply route over to the beleaguered Task Force Tarawa, but the road was dotted with towns and villages, any one of which could be an enemy strongpoint, and we would have to tackle them, one after another. Since it was not in our nature to be passive, McCoy ordered, “Go in like you own the place. We’re going to kick over the beehive and see what comes out.”
McCoy and his staff had come up with a way to counter the Iraqi ambush teams that fired their barrages of rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs, from the second row of buildings in a town, not the front row nearest the road on which the convoys were passing. That gave them some extra concealment and cover. So the Boss decided that if those turkeys wanted something to shoot at, we would give it to them.
We would stick a big sword right into the heart of any organized resistance by having our heavy armor bust straight into a town like a penetrating arrowhead. Then the tanks would sit there, intentionally presenting huge targets, begging to be shot at. An Abrams tank can shrug off a hit from a Hellfire missile, so while an RPG may go bang against its sides, actual damage is usually slight.
While the Iraqi ambushers took potshots at the virtually impenetrable armor, our infantry would hit the first row of buildings, then attack the ambush teams in the second row and create a wide buffer zone under our control, right in the middle of town. Our fast-moving CAATs and air strikes would seal off the escape routes.
After McCoy had given his orders, a small group of us gathered around a small table to hear Officer Bob lay down his own interpretation of the plan, which I considered a harebrained scheme that was almost sure to get me killed. Suddenly, I wasn’t happy anymore. Bob said that when the armored column crashed into the hostile and unsecured towns, “I want Coughlin and his spotter to gain access to some high ground to cover the Main.”
Had I heard him right? “Sir, you want me to go up into a building?” I asked as the other Marines, officers and enlisted men alike, looked over at me. Having snipers up front was one thing, but I would not run a suicide mission.
“Yes. I want