Shooter_ The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper - Jack Coughlin [90]
Another vehicle appeared at the top of the rise, came toward us, and showed no sign of slowing down. At about eight hundred yards, I put a round into the engine block, but instead of stopping, the car actually sped up! Marines around me, thinking of suicide bombers, opened up with a tremendous volume of fire; the driver was killed, and his car was riddled with holes. The passenger door came open, and a man about fifty years old got out and staggered away, moving clumsily, until he was dropped a few feet from the car. He was later found to have a pistol in his belt, but the driver was clean.
I grew concerned with all of the shooting going on. The snap of our sniper rifles firing at specific targets seemed to be signaling a general barrage of gunfire from the grunts. They were shooting just because we were shooting, just as everyone had opened up on poor Ach-dead on the bridge last night. Fire discipline was breaking down in a confusing situation.
Our attack was by no means complete, for although we had taken the bridge and were not advancing any farther today, we had to hold what we had captured. We had pushed the enemy out of his prepared positions but were still clearing the area and knew that those soldiers had to have gone somewhere, for we had not found enough bodies to account for them all. Were we facing a massive counterattack? Were suicide bombers going to come at us in cars and trucks? What about an ambush? The factor of uncertainty in such a supercharged atmosphere rose higher than the hundred-degree temperature.
I had a bunch of trained snipers with big scopes on their rifles, ideal for this kind of work, so I found the Kilo executive officer, and he agreed to let us use our advanced optics beyond a new trigger line. We would eyeball whoever was coming down the road and stop their vehicles by putting bullets into engines and tires. Anything that came closer would be free game for the grunts. That might get us out of what could easily become a shootout, with the possibility of civilians being caught in the middle. But communications in a war zone are always chancy, and not everybody had a radio, so the word did not reach all of the Marines who were still crossing the bridge and enlarging the defensive perimeter.
Another car came over the crest of the road. Carrington and I watched until it reached six hundred yards, still on the sniper side of the line, and then we shot the engine block. The vehicle didn’t slow down at all but seemed to accelerate. There were two Iraqis inside, both wearing dark clothing, and although we couldn’t be certain, we had no choice, because the car kept coming. I took the driver and Carrington zeroed on the passenger, and once again we fired together and killed them both. The car chugged a few times, veered to the side of the road, and gave up, but once again a slashing outburst of Marine fire savaged the vehicle and the people inside. I watched through my scope as bullets punctured shiny holes in the painted doors, blew out the tires, shattered the windows into webs of glass, and made the already-dead bodies jump.
“Godammit!” I yelled. “Stop shooting! Stop it! Let us do this!” We had already done the job, and the thunder of infantry fire that sliced up the vehicle was totally unnecessary. I yelled for the grunts to cease fire, but even that took time, until the shooting finally eased with a ripple effect, like a wave in a stadium crowd. One guy would stop firing only when the guy next to him stopped. This was terrible.
I heard the Kilo XO shouting down the line, “Let the snipers deal with the civilian