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Ten miles later, we burst into the middle of Afak, a much bigger city of about one hundred thousand residents, where prickly palm trees needled above the ragged, dirt-brown buildings surrounded by low cement block walls.

Armored units normally avoid such narrow streets, for once inside those corridors, mobility is lost and the advantage can go over to the rocket-propelled grenades of the enemy. This time, though, we threw so much muscle into the town that the buildings shook. Abrams tanks weighing seventy tons rumbled across a bridge built to handle only automobile and truck traffic, and the rest of us followed in an armored convoy. As soon as we hit downtown, the Amtracs dropped their rear ramps and the grunts poured out to secure the nearest buildings. I heard the familiar sound of gunfire. The Iraqi soldiers and fedayeen paramilitaries were fighting back.

Our Humvee came in right behind the tactical headquarters, and Casey had the boys spill from the truck and fan out for security. I stayed in place atop the Humvee and locked into a tight shooting position, with my boots braced against the combat packs that hung around the edge of the truck. My breathing slowed, my movements were smooth and economical, and I put my mind totally at ease as I swept my scope over the rooftops, windows, and doorways of the brown buildings.

Almost immediately, I spotted motion in a third-story window about two hundred yards away. Two men were setting up an RPK light machine gun with a two-hundred-round drum of 7.62 mm bullets and pointing it toward the tactical headquarters, which was easily identifiable by the forest of radio aerials. About a third of the machine gun barrel was already sticking out of the shadowy window by the time I found them, and if they opened up on the Tac, it would be a turkey shoot and Marines would die. I knew the Marine who was in the turret of the Tac headquarters Amtrac, unaware that an enemy machine gunner was about to open up on him, but if I yelled a warning, the Iraqis would start firing. I had to act.

The two Iraqi soldiers were crowded so closely together in the window that I could not tell which one was the actual gunner, but it didn’t really matter, because both of them had to die. I did a quick laser range check, brought my rifle to a stop, and saw the dimness change into a complete outline as I dialed in exactly 212 yards. They looked like the old cartoon characters Mutt and Jeff, one tall and one short. I framed Jeff, the little guy on the left, and squeezed the trigger. Boom! My bullet went in two inches below his heart, and the soldier’s knees buckled and he slumped over, dead, exactly where he had stood, wedged between the second man and the edge of the window. Shit. Wrong guy.

When the first one went down, I could see that the other soldier was the real gunner and was about ready to open fire. But instead of shooting or jumping aside to safety, Mutt delayed for a fatal moment to look down at his fallen buddy, as if to ask, “What happened to you? You’ve got an unsightly hole in your chest.” Then he compounded his mistake by turning his attention away from the Tac to look for me, the guy who had shot his friend. That gave me a small pause for the cause, time enough to manipulate the bolt of my rifle, see the spent cartridge pop out, and slide a new one in. I knew the windage and range were accurate, so I locked the crosshairs on the right side of his neck. What are you looking at, asshole? He was totally ignorant of his precarious position, standing perfectly still for a sniper, so I again squeezed the trigger and this time watched as the bullet exploded from my rifle with a muzzle velocity of more than 2,550 feet per second. It slammed the soldier completely around, a sure-kill shot, and his machine gun toppled back inside the room. The entire episode of taking out Mutt and Jeff had lasted no more than three seconds.

The loud echoes of my shots bounced around the walls, and the Marine in the Tac turret yelled, “We’re taking fire!