The Reaper: Autobiography of One of the Deadliest Special Ops Snipers (25 page)

Fortunately, there were several good positions from which Brent and I could fire, and the shots would only be in the seventy-five to ninety-five-yard range. Relatively easy shots with the only complicating factor being who else was going to be moving around and among the bad guys. A storage shed was nearby the main house and that was where I planned to set up. After a few more minutes of looking at all the images, I walked back upstairs to pack. I was so weak that I knew I’d have to travel light. Downgrading my ammo was one way to do that, and I chose to only take two magazines. If I needed more, Brent would be able to supply me. I loaded up on water and hydration packets, figuring that if I was out of commission healthwise, then no amount of ammo would matter.

I sat through the mission brief slugging down canteens of water and hydration fluids, trying to stay focused. I knew I couldn’t make any kind of sense, so I had Brent do our part of the brief. I could barely get through the whole brief, and just after Brent finished up, the commander walked in. We all stood at attention, and I could sense that I was having a hard time not weaving. He looked over at me and said, “Are you all right, soldier?”

“Yes, sir. Good to go, sir.”

I knew my response didn’t have any of that gung ho snap that it was supposed to have, but it did get me through. The commander spoke to us, talking about the fact that we only had three weeks left in our deployment and we’d be done and needed to finish up strong. He pointed out that our target was a particularly important one—another suicide vest maker. I was having trouble focusing on his words, drifting on some random thought. But when he got to the part about the strong likelihood that the compound was heavily loaded with HME supplies (home made explosives) and that we needed to be extra vigilant, I was right back there with everybody. There’d been a recent incident during which the Taliban set off a cache of explosives in a similar kind of compound, killing and wounding many civilians and then claiming that the deaths and injuries were due to an American airstrike or a mortar round. That was upsetting the locals as well as the folks back home.

Getting blown up was not the way I wanted to go out, and like most of the guys, the possibility of an IED or HME getting me was always in the back of my mind. I don’t know if it was my weakened physical state, but as I sat there listening to the commander, all I could think of was that I wanted to get the hell out of that country and go home. We’d taken a lot more casualties than I’d ever experienced on my previous deployments. As we walked out of the briefing room and made our way to the vans, Brent was beside me, muttering, “This sucks.”

The prop blasts and the diesel exhaust made it feel like the already hot air was on fire. I was barely able to make it into the belly of the Chinook, the force of those winds so battered me. I sat down and closed my eyes, unable to battle my sleepiness. I hadn’t eaten anything since I’d gotten sick. The guys were amazed. My mom had just resupplied me with cans of ravioli and a five-pound bag of gummy bears. I used to amaze everybody by going through that whole bag in a couple of days. I’d tried with the gummy bears, but they’d clawed their way back up and out of me.

Brent sat down next to me. He wrapped his arms around me and hugged me, in a singsongy mom voice telling me, “There, there. It’s okay, baby.”

“Dude, not right now. I don’t feel good and I don’t need this crap from you.”

I must have sounded really pissed because Brent backed off. “If you need to, man, we’ll get you to stay on the helicopter. If things get bad, they’ll set you down.”

“No. I’m good. I can do this.”

“All right. Don’t slow me down though.”

“Roger that.”

Brent hit it on the head. I was torn because I didn’t want to let the guys down by not being there to help them out, but I also didn’t want to be a liability to any of them by not being able to perform at my best.

They all knew that I was struggling and throughout the two-thousand-meter run to the objective they offered words of encouragement and support. I should have figured that, even though we were getting dropped off so near to the objective, the pace was going to be really high—especially with the presence of all those explosives. We had to get there before anybody could detonate the stuff. I ran with my head down the entire time, puking a little bit, a thin liquid, carrying my rifle like it was a suitcase. A hundred meters from the compound the lead element of the assault force came to a complete and sudden stop. All their lasers lit up and the guys began a slow creep toward the target building.

Even in my sick fog, I knew that something was up. Normally, they would have kept up that high pace right to the objective. The whole surprise, speed, and violence of action thing was now out of sorts. They began signaling back to us that they had their eyes on somebody and he was very, very close. We kept advancing, and as I got past the corner of a building that was on the far outside part of the lower leg of the L, I could see the assaulters within ten feet of the man. He turned around, and then after we tried a few words of Pashto, he sprinted off shouting at the top of his lungs. That was followed by a tracer round going from the center of the compound straight up into the night sky, a clear signal to other bad guys that something was up.

Something definitely was up. Armed fighters streamed out of that building and suddenly things were in total chaos. Women, children, and men were all running around screaming. It was impossible to sort and track who was who. Shots were being fired, and as we’d always said, once the first bullets fly, that plan you had goes to shit.

I made my way to the building I’d targeted and rested my ladder against it. I saw Brent flying at a dead sprint before pulling up at his structure and mounting his ladder. We both took our positions. I saw him peering over the edge. He had his Glock out and I watched him as he scanned his roof, checking to be sure no one was up there, doing exactly what the manuals state you should be doing.

Brent, despite his being a joker, was generally a real by-the-book kind of guy. In one of our first balcony meetings, he told me about an operation that really reinforced for him the idea that rules are rules and shouldn’t be broken unless absolutely no other option exists. His spotter had climbed onto a roof and didn’t execute the scan and check the way he should have. As it turned out, he made contact with the enemy and was shot in the eye. Fortunately, he survived and was even able to take the shooter out. Brent was amazed, as was I, by that spotter’s calm. He came down off the roof, walked over to some of the other team members and said, “Hey, guys, I got shot in the face. I need some help.” He got the help he needed and recovered well enough to stick around in the army for another three years.

Unlike Brent, I didn’t like using my pistol after a climb. I was interested in getting up there as fast as I could, and I wasn’t as agile as the Ninja, who could climb with that pistol in his hand faster than me without one. I always thought that if I got to the point where I could see someone on the roof I was about to mount, I’d push the ladder back and fall to the ground. Better to get that kind of minor injury than to get shot.

On this trip to the top, I saw what appeared to be a pile of black clothes but nothing else. I got on the roof, dropped into a low-crawl position, and made a hard right to the far side of the building. From there, I spotted a man in the courtyard of the compound. He was peering around a corner of one of the buildings. The courtyard itself was muddy, looking like it had been freshly watered—soaked is more like it. He was looking toward our main objective, the main house where the assaulters had planned to be. I knew they were in proximity to that location because I could hear the nine-bangers and one-bangers going off, serving as a distraction to the enemy. Those devices sound like a weapon’s discharge, but they have the added element of flashing lights.

I heard the sound of an AK going off, and looked down to see the guy I’d spotted firing randomly into the air, either to gain attention to his position or who knows what. I zoomed my scope all the way out, wanting to keep as close to him as possible while still being able to make out the environment around him. He was about eighty meters away. At that distance, I’d normally have the zoom all the way in, tight enough that I could make out fine detail on him like a button on his shirt. In this case, that wouldn’t be effective because I wanted to be able to track the position of the women and children in the courtyard. I also backed the elevation on the scope all the way out.

At this point, he was behind the building, just sticking the muzzle of the rifle out and firing randomly. I remember seeing that in the movie
Black Hawk Down,
and thinking it was a stupid tactic, that by firing all those rounds he could have possibly hit someone. I eased the safety off on my rifle, and fired at him, hitting him square in the chest. He dropped but then he raised his head and started screaming. Then I saw blood spurting into the air. I didn’t wait to see him bleed out, but it was clear he no longer posed a threat.

I continued to scan, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw that black pile of clothing move. I figured it was the wind or maybe my fever delirium had me seeing things. Someone from our team had cleared the body I’d shot, and I knew that nobody had thrown anything up on that roof either. I looked back and that pile started quaking again. I’d been down on my belly in a good firing position, so I rose to one knee to get a better look at what was going on. I thought maybe a chicken was up there. I’d seen different fowl on top of these low roofs a bunch of times before and a few cats as well. I edged closer to the pile and then I really thought I was seeing something. I was five feet from the pile when a human figure emerged, did a kind of cartwheel, got to its feet, and then sprinted across the roof before diving over the edge.

I hustled over to the edge. I couldn’t tell if he was armed or if he had a bomb vest on or what, but I didn’t want to shoot him, just get him to stop. I was pretty good at placing rounds right past someone’s ear to let them know that they’d better freeze. This time, though, because of the downward angle from which I was firing, the bullet impacted just in front of him as he ran, kicking up a spray of dust and some clods of mud. He stopped in his tracks. I called the guys in and watched as they grabbed him, zip tied him, and herded him off.

I tried to calm down. I was breathing pretty heavily and was also pissed at myself for not having cleared that roof. Right where the pile had been, where that body emerged, was an AK. I could have easily bought it for not following procedures, but I once again got lucky. I have no idea why he didn’t take me out. That didn’t factor into my not shooting him, but I still wondered what the hell was going on. I picked up the AK and inspected it. A round was chambered so he could have easily fired it on me.

I called it up over the comms, letting the guys know that I was going to toss down that AK so they could collect it. That got the chatter going about a guy being up there, armed, and me not shooting him. A few guys commented on how lucky I was and how it could have gone really bad, really fast for me. I agreed and thanked my lucky stars and everything else that contributed to my heart still pumping blood.

I resumed my prone position as the guys did their investigation, making sure no one else was coming to join the fight. All the dead were collected in one spot, being photographed. Their weapons were checked, and photos of the magazines to show that rounds had been fired were taken, all to prove that we had been engaged by the enemy. A small team broke off and entered the building I was on top of. Sergeant Val brought Bruno in a few seconds later, and that dog started going nuts, barking and snarling. Everybody came running out of the building, coughing and screaming up at me, “Irv! Jump! Irv! Get off that thing!”

I was so out of it that I knew even that short jump could mess me up, so I got down the ladder as fast as I could, grabbed it, and got fifty feet away as fast as my rubbery legs could carry me.

Simmons, one of the assaulters, came up to me, shaking his head. He put his hand on my shoulder and leaned in close, his face distorting in my vision.

“You were sitting right on top of a cache of IEDs, explosives, and a bunch of chemicals and fertilizer.”

Dorsey, who frequently worked with the C-4 we used, added, “Highly, and I mean
highly,
unstable compounds. Fire a shot into there and the whole thing goes—” He lifted his eyebrows and put his hands together in front of him and then lifted them toward the sky like a mushroom cloud.

I shook my head, not wanting to believe what they were saying. “No way.”

“See for yourself—” Dorsey stood sideways and swept his arm in the direction of the hut.

I peered inside and it was mind-blowing to see all that stuff in there. Grenades, RPGs, stacks of fertilizer bags, jars and boxes of chemicals, buckets of nails and screws and other scrap metal all stacked and piled from floor to ceiling.

I stepped away and stood off staring into the sky. Twice in one day. First the cartwheel man, as I called him, hadn’t shot me in the back when he’d had the chance, and there I was on top of thousands of pounds of explosives and none of these guys had detonated them. I didn’t want to think about it anymore, but everybody else did. I couldn’t blame them.

I heard a bunch of voices, but couldn’t keep track of who was speaking.

“Wait a minute, the dude on the roof—”

“The one who jumped off—”

“The route he was taking could have put him right in that doorway.”

“Why’d he stop?”

“That warning shot. What would have happened if—”

I came to the conclusion that the guy wanted to take out more than just me. He could have shot me, but if he’d gotten off the roof and back into the building, he could have done a whole lot more damage.

Fortunately, we had more work to do. We’d killed three of the MAMs (military-aged males) and captured another pair. One of them was our objective and he was fairly high ranking. I figured he had to be. We’d uncovered weapons and explosives caches before, most every time, in fact. But nothing compared to this. There was enough stuff there that they could have planted IEDs along every roadway and every doorway in Kandahar. We also found a burlap sack of heroin, little plastic bags of what looked like black tar.