Shooter_ The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper - Jack Coughlin [82]
I reloaded, took a deep breath, and swept the area again, finding nobody else to shoot. I was still in my zone, emotion suppressed, brain engaged, my actions virtually robotic. My concept of a Mobile Sniper Strike Team—wheels to get to the area of action, then roaming at the front of the advancing forces, guarded by an experienced security team—was getting a thorough workout. My reach was hundreds of yards in front of the advancing troops, and I was sowing disarray and confusion. The idea worked!
Seven minutes after we bagged the guy on the garage, as we were getting ready to leave this building and move forward again to leapfrog the battle, an enemy soldier wearing the snazzy tan uniform and red beret of the Republican Guard walked into the middle of a street, almost as if he were on parade. From only 324 yards away, I spent thirty seconds examining him in detail and waiting to see if anyone else would join him in the open. He was calmly walking around as if he, instead of me, were the king of the world, and in his right hand he carried an AK-47 that looked almost new. Then he turned around, and that was his death notice, for it appeared that he might be leaving. I had the crosshairs precisely between his shoulder blades, and my bullet sent him slumping to the ground like Jell-O falling out of a mold.
Three kills from one any area is enough, because you don’t want to draw special attention from the enemy. So we took off again, only now with an Italian photographer running in the middle of our line. The last thing we needed was one of the Jackals getting whacked while tagging along with us. I went into the lead spot because I had been in urban warfare before, but Casey kept yelling at the boys to get in front of me and finally just grabbed my shirt to stop me. “Stay the fuck behind me! I’m not messing around. You don’t have anything to defend yourself with,” he barked.
“Yes, Mommy,” I replied.
“Fuck you,” he said. “Stay behind me.” He took point instead.
The battle was still ferocious, with a continuous din of explosions and gunfire, as we made our way forward. We had to get to that bridge. A Marine Amtrac parked in an intersection opened up with a heavy machine gun when we dashed across one street and almost nailed Daniel. But he missed, because Daniel was still not in Baghdad and therefore was not allowed to die yet. We decided to go into a tall house that was surrounded by an eight-foot wall and a locked pair of huge metal gates. With no India Marines around to clear it, we did it ourselves. We formed a stack along the wall; then I tossed a grenade inside, and Casey went over at the sound of the explosion, spider-dropping into the courtyard, one of his boots landing in a bucket of water and fuel. He opened the gate, and we went inside through the front door, but when we got to the roof, we discovered that tall buildings nearby shut down my sight line. We had just wasted a lot of time. The battle was rolling and booming, and we dashed back down and headed for the sound of the guns.
My mind was totally on the job now, and when I get that way, I am fucking invulnerable. Everything else faded from my thoughts; life slowed down and became a black-and-white movie. The mechanics of the craft had taken over my body and the rifle was now part of me, as my mind whirred with permutations, calculations, and scraps of knowledge picked up doing this job in many places over the years. Things automatically fell into their proper places without my even realizing that I was thinking about them.
We joined some of the India guys atop a good building, and I settled in and spent five minutes