“What’s that?” Seielstad said.
“Man, you’re all messed up,” Boykin said.
Zembiec looked around. Staff Sergeant Gresham was organizing the thirty-five Marines for the three-hundred-meter dash west to the schoolhouse, where 3rd Platoon was providing covering fire. Zembiec hesitated, then sprinted back to the north house, running alone up the stairs to the empty kitchen.
“Is anyone here? Marines? Any Marines here?”
He knew his questions sounded ridiculous, but he had to make sure. It was spooky, standing in a puddle of blood, yelling in an empty house, the sounds of the AKs, M16s, and .50 calibers on the tanks hammering away outside.
Careful not to slip in the blood, he scampered back down the stairs and ran across the street to the south house. Gresham was shepherding everyone out the back door and forming them up into teams in the walled courtyard. Zembiec went up to the roof for a final look around. Two Delta operators, Don and Larry, were glassing the rooftops, looking for targets. Below them a tank main gun fired, followed a few seconds later by the other.
“Fire’s died down,” Don said. “We can stay.”
Don, Zembiec knew, was a master sergeant. His flat statement was almost a challenge. Larry, who was bleeding at the neck, nodded in agreement. They wanted to continue the battle.
“I have two urgent wounded,” Zembiec said. “We’ve been killing these fuckers for a month. They’ll be here tomorrow. Come on, let’s go.”
“Let me shoot my thermo,” Don said.
To the envy of the Marines, Delta had brought some neat grenades and disposable one-shot rockets called thermobarics—new explosives that drove up the overpressure in confined spaces, creating tremendous destruction.
“All right, then we’re out of here.”
With Zembiec and Larry providing suppressive fire, Don knelt, aimed at the window on a troublesome house a block away, and fired the rocket. There was a muffled
whump!
as a corner of the building crumbled. Satisfied, the three ran downstairs. In the courtyard, Gresham lined everyone up two by two. No one was to make the run alone; every Marine had a battle buddy. Those with severe wounds were carried out first, followed by the walking wounded. Magana lay on a metal door, a Marine carrying each corner.
“Hey, you need to cover that approach,” he said in a morphine-induced slur, gesturing vaguely around.
“Got you covered, bro.”
The 3rd Platoon wanted to move forward to help. Zembiec told them to hold their position, fearing a loss of control and friendly fire if some Marines rushed forward while others pushed back. It was only three hundred meters, and they could see the schoolhouse. No way they could get lost or separated.
While the two tanks sat in the intersection and pounded both sides of the street, the wounded were carried out the back of the courtyard. The insurgents on the roofs saw what was happening and began yelling. Out of sight of the tanks, some ran down back alleys, firing from the hip whenever they glimpsed the withdrawing Marines. Behind the wounded, the rear guard of able-bodied Marines departed the courtyard in pairs. When it was LCpl Sleight’s turn to go, he took off at full speed, head down, trying to make himself a small target. After running half a block, he glanced around for his battle buddy. No one was there. He looked back—and stared into the gun barrel of an Abrams tank. The tank commander was standing upright in the turret, waving both arms frantically, gesturing to Sleight to come back. He had been running full tilt the wrong way, heading for the center of the city. Sleight quickly scurried back.
For the first two hundred meters, Wagner carried Austin. Once he had to cross a ditch by embracing Austin in his arms. Both were covered with blood and sweat, and Austin kept slipping and fighting against Wagner’s embrace. Wagner took that as a good sign that Austin would make it. When Wagner ran out of steam, Sergeant Jason Rettenberger carried the wounded Marine. But LCpl Austin eventually succumbed to his wounds.
Corporal Joshua Carpenter had taken shrapnel wounds to his eyes fighting next to Zembiec on the roof. Corpsman Watt had placed a bandage over his eyes, shouldered both their packs, and was running with Carpenter by the hand, the rounds cracking around them and brass from the hovering gunship hitting them on the helmets. It was noon, and they had been fighting for their lives for three hours. Watt couldn’t believe how exhausted he was. Getting to the schoolhouse with the two packs seemed like the longest run of his life. Toward the end he was wheezing and his stride faltered. He slowed to a walk.
Having none of that, Carpenter kept tugging at him. “Doc, why are we slowing down? Speed it up, man. I can hear those bullets.”
Boykin and Liotta were supporting Seielstad, who hobbled along, blood dripping out of the right side of his mouth, his right arm dangling, his right leg bloody, fractured, and wobbling. Rounds were zinging by, and they were almost home.
“Motherfucker, you’re going to get me shot. Hurry up,” Boykin said to encourage Seielstad, who cursed back at his friend.
Zembiec, Don, and Larry brought up the rear. Don, the Delta command sergeant major, was the last to leave the field of battle.
The Jolan battle subsided shortly after noon on April 26. Seventeen of the thirty-nine Marines had been wounded. The company loved the story that trickled back about LCpl Fincannon. Badly wounded in his left arm, LCpl Fincannon was being carried to a plane in Germany when the secretary of defense walked by.
“Don!” Fincannon had yelled. “Any word on Echo Company?”
_____
Though shaken by how the insurgents had sneaked up on them, the Marines had taken care of one another, later laughing at their fears. The man who stood out in their eyes was LCpl Gomez. He was every man’s image of a Marine—tough, stoic, determined, and caring. In the school courtyard Echo Company held a farewell ceremony and painted a sign for Cpl Austin, with a colored flag of his home state and the words “Texas stands proud.”
For the next few days, Zembiec ran the battle over and over in his mind, looking for a way to get Austin out. “I pray,” Zembiec said. “I mean, for my men, not for something selfish like myself or winning the lottery.”
At an afternoon mass on the third floor of the apartment building housing the company, Father Devine, the division chaplain, gave a simple sermon.
“I was out with recon on a river patrol the other day,” he said. “We searched a small boat. Instead of being angry at us, the two fishermen offered us the one fish they had caught. They didn’t do it because they were afraid. They were good, simple men. Not all Iraqis hate us.”
Before the mass ended, from the roof came the heavy
crack!
of the .50 caliber sniper rifle.
_____
For Echo Company, April 26 was another day during a one-sided cease-fire that had extended for seventeen days. It made no difference if the insurgents lost a hundred men each time they fought. They had overwhelming manpower to send into the meat grinder. A war of attrition against Marines pinned to fixed lines created the ideal battlefield for them. The Jolan battle was the sort of encounter that could happen any day along the lines.
“The only thing the insurgents understand is violence,” Zembiec said. “I think we need to go on the offensive.”
20
____
A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL
LTGEN CONWAY HAD MONITORED ZEMBIEC’S fight on April 26. One more Marine killed and seventeen wounded. That afternoon he decided to take Latif up on his offer. The Marines would pull out, and Latif and four or five hundred armed Iraqis—some former soldiers, some insurgents, some both—would take over the city.
“I didn’t want my Marines sitting in a cordon,” Conway said. “I called General Abizaid first to get some support, because I anticipated Sanchez might balk at the idea. But that didn’t happen. Instead of an argument, I got an okay from both of them to try the alternative.”
Conway told Latif and his deputy, MajGen Saleh, that the Marines would stay out of Fallujah and support the Fallujah Brigade with money and arms. In return, the brigade would ensure a real cease-fire. “In a very few days our first convoy will move through Fallujah. General Saleh will be expected to provide security,” LtGen Conway said. “He’ll do it, or we’ll find someone who can.”
The division, from Mattis through the battalion commanders, was quietly informed that Iraqis under Iraqi generals would replace the Marines on the lines. The MEF intended to gain “a strategic victory from a tactical stalemate” by reenergizing the Sunni community, empowering former Baathists, and providing the basis for an Iraqi army.
The responses from the division were negative. Those opposed argued that “we are turning security over to the same guys we are fighting.” The agreement was called “a deal with the devil.” Because Sheikh Janabi, among others, had endorsed it, that meant the fix was in for the insurgents. With the Marines agreeing to stay out of the city indefinitely, the insurgents would take charge.
Asked for his judgment, Maj Bellon, Toolan’s intelligence officer, said, “We’re letting the muj off the canvas. They’ll use Fallujah as a base to hit us.”
Marines, however, adhere to iron discipline. The MEF was informing, not consulting the division. The decision stood as a done deal, and that was that. No leak sprang from the Marine ranks. Latif agreed to a series of meetings to work out the details before a public announcement was made.
In the meantime the fighting continued. On the night of April 27 the insurgents attacked Zembiec’s lines, and the Marines responded with the AC-130 gunship, tanks, and machine guns. An Australian camera crew on a rooftop captured an hour of spectacular red explosions and streams of orange tracers, fed live to Baghdad. A Sunni cleric featured on Al Jazeera screamed, “They are killing children! They are trying to destroy everything!” Not to be outdone, the president of the Iraqi Governing Council repeated the charge that the Americans had changed from “an army of liberation” to “an army of occupation.”
The next day the JTF spokesman, BrigGen Kimmitt, cited eleven violations of the cease-fire in the past twenty-four hours, charging that the civic leaders “had not delivered” on their promises. Outside Fallujah, Toolan had driven to the western side of Queens, where LtCol Kyser was pushing up with Battalion 2/2 against steady mortar and machine-gun fire. To straighten out the defensive lines, MajGen Mattis had authorized Kyser to move north and tie in with 1/5 on the right flank. Battalion 2/2 had taken seven wounded the day before, as small gangs in taxis and rumpled old cars drove down from the city, got out, and ran into abandoned houses, fired from several hundred meters away, and darted off. The streets were strewn with rubble, and each time the Marines moved forward, they found sandbags, binoculars, bipods, empty shells, and bloody bandages. Bullets snapped overhead.
“They’re in that house six hundred meters to our front,” Kyser said.
“If you have positive ID, take it out,” Toolan said.
“Each time?” Kyser asked, not sure what a cease-fire meant.
“If you’re under fire, you’re in a fight,” Toolan said. “Take it out.”
Toolan and Kyser stood on the rooftop while the air officer, Captain Neil Sanders, picked up the handset of his radio.
“Ninety-nine Aircraft, this is Swami. Marines in southwest Fallujah in contact. Any aircraft audible?”
An air force AWACS command and control aircraft answered, giving Swami the frequency to reach Bud 2-1, two F-16s in a holding pattern south of the city.
“Bud two-one, this is Swami. Target is a house at eight six one two eight nine zero four. Forward friendly troops at eight six zero three eight eight four three. I’ll talk you on.”
Both Swami and Bud 2-1 were looking at the same 1:8,000 scale photomap with five-meter imagery that showed every one of the more than 24,000 houses in the city.
“Bud two-one, from the mosque at Donna and Henry, go three blocks south. There’s an open field, right? Okay, go west one block. See the end house facing south? How many windows on the top floor?”
“Swami, there are two, with arches.”
Swami turned to Kyser and Toolan. “I’ll bring them in on a twenty mike-mike run east to west, then GBU it.”
Kyser nodded. A few minutes later a burst of 20mm explosive rounds raised dust along the south wall of the house.
“Bud two-one, that was dead-on.”
The Marines stayed under cover while a five-hundred-pound GBU, or guided bomb unit, blew through the roof of the targeted house and collapsed the walls. Toolan drove back to his headquarters, and Battalion 2/2 moved steadily forward.
In the forty-eight hours since Conway had approved the Fallujah Brigade, air force, navy, and Marine warplanes had dropped three dozen laser-guided bombs in Fallujah, destroying ten houses holding snipers or machine guns in 2/2’s area. No civilians were seen in the area. Kyser appeared to be pressing up against the main line of resistance.
_____
By April 29 Iraqi circles in Baghdad were buzzing with rumors about Baathists or former generals returning to power. Tony Perry, embedded with Battalion 2/1, decided to stake out the Fallujah Liaison Center and see who was meeting with whom. LtCol Suleiman drove up, accompanied by LtCol Jabar. That was normal and Perry was thinking he had wasted the day when MajGen Saleh strode into the narrow courtyard in his green uniform from Saddam’s era, with the red beret and epaulets showing his rank. Latif, in an old blue suit and tie, walked behind Saleh, benevolently beaming at Suleiman’s excited National Guard troops, who were leaping to their feet, saluting, smiling, and murmuring about “the generals.”
Saleh swept by Suleiman without acknowledging him and disappeared into the conference room. Lieutenant General Conway and MajGen Mattis arrived a few minutes later and went into the conference room. Suleiman, red with anger, began spouting in English about “insult, insult.” Toolan hurried over to take Suleiman and Jabar into a side office.
Perry stood against the wall, scribbling into his notebook. “The exotic life of the foreign correspondent,” he said as Toolan walked by, shaking his head.
Behind the closed door Toolan, with SSgt Qawasimi translating, tried to calm Suleiman down. You have disgraced Jabar and me, Suleiman said. My goals in the city are like yours. First you put Hatim over me and now this. You don’t know Hatim. I don’t know him. I know Saleh. He is your enemy.