Black Hearts Part 9

In mid-May, Task Force 77 initiated another round of offensives against Al Qaeda throughout First Strikeas AO. Beginning on the evening of the 13th, the United States claimed it killed a high-value target known as Abu Mustafa (who it believed was involved in the April Apache crash) and fifteen other insurgents in four coordinated raids in Lutufiyah. In keeping with TF-77as aunblinking eyea approach, the operators used information gleaned in those raids to immediately mount another raid beginning the afternoon of the 14th, this time on a safe house not far from the power plant.

As coalition forces approached, they started taking fire. Al Qaedaas Aeisha Brigade had commandeered several rooftops and from there shot at the helicopters with missiles and machine guns. At 5:30 p.m., they hit one of TF-77as Little Bird helicopters just east of the power plant. That copter was able to self-recover and take off again. At 5:40 p.m., however, the insurgents. .h.i.t another Little Bird. This one crashed badly only a few hundred yards northwest of Rushdi Mullah. TF-77 called in a fighter-bomber air strike, which included at least one 500-pound bomb that ripped apart several homes and resulted in dozens of dead and wounded. An MNF-I (Multi-National Forcea"Iraq) press release said that aapproximately 20 terroristsa were killed, but locals insisted that the dead were mostly noncombatants.

Several units from throughout the division were dispatched to a.s.sist in the recovery of the Little Bird and its two dead pilots, including, once again, Bravoas 2nd Platoon. In a repeat of the recovery mission in April, the salvage crews took far longer to get to the site than expected due to the dozens of IEDs and numerous firefights they met along the way. At about 3:00 p.m. on the second day, 2nd Platoon got word that the trucks were only an hour or two away. But by 7:00 p.m., after hitting two more IEDs, they still had not arrived and were not likely to make it there until morning. At that point, 2nd Platoon told the convoy to stay there, they would bring the helicopter to them. They found the house of a farmer with whom they had developed a good relations.h.i.+p. aWe told him wead pay him if he would let us borrow his tractor and trailer,a said 2nd Platoonas Sergeant Jeremy Gebhardt. aAnd he said, aNo, no, Iall drive. Letas go.a So he drove out there and we loaded up his tractor with helicopter parts.a They finished the job of getting the debris to the wrecker just before 11:00 p.m.

A military spokesperson reiterated to the Was.h.i.+ngton Post what MNF-Ias press release had said, that there were no civilian casualties related to this battle. This is not true according to 3rd Platoon soldiers who were down at the JS Bridge during this time. Platoon Sergeant Phil Blaisdell recalled, aThe f.u.c.king bomb hit this one familyas house, killed like five kids. The wife survived, but her arm was broken. They brought all those kids down to the JSB in the back of a Bongo truck, just all f.u.c.ked up. How do you face a guy that just lost his entire family except one son and his wife?a The man asked Blaisdell if they could cross the bridge, which was ordinarily closed, to bury their children in a cemetery that was on the other side. Blaisdell let them pa.s.s.

Fenlason and Norton were happy that 1st Platoon was partic.i.p.ating more fully in the companyas battle rhythms, including the multiday rotations out to Rushdi Mullah. To them, it was a sign that they were rehabilitating the platoon. They had a couple of very successful runs up there, doing patrols, gathering intelligence, rolling up bad guys. aIt was important, proving that weare not a jacked-up unit,a said Norton, aproving we could accomplish multiple-day operations miles away from any sort of higher leaders.h.i.+p.a Virtually every aspect of the platoon was on the upswing. Two months after he kicked Yribe out, Fenlason felt like the men were finally getting on board. Soldiers were shaving, wearing their uniforms correctly, cutting their hair. Their att.i.tude was improving, they were letting go of some of their anger and bitterness. aWe still couldnat take much of a setback, but we had turned a corner,a he said. aWe were well on the road to recovery.a Others noticed it too. Sergeant Major Edwards told Fenlason several times that he was now running one of the top five platoons in the whole battalion. Even some of the men say that May did seem like the beginning of a new chapter. They had been in country seven months, they were on the back end now, and things were looking up.

In mid-May, 1st Platoon returned to Rushdi Mullah. During what would turn out to be their last trip up there, several elements of 1st Platoon got into a serious firefight. On May 22, most of the platoon was back at the patrol base after a round of morning patrolling. They were relaxing, trying to cool off. They had been taking some sporadic fire coming from behind the house for some time, but it was steadily getting more persistent, moving from hara.s.sment probes to more directed fire.

After checking with Norton and Fenlason, Lauzier grabbed Specialist Barker, Sergeant Diaz, and another soldier and they headed out to maneuver on the gunmen. Norton began prepping another fire team to flank from the other direction. Barker was in the lead, with Lauzier behind and Diaz and the other soldier making up a machine gun team in the back. They flanked out right from the house and into a farm field. To their surprise, this field was much lower than the surrounding ones, and their sight was further impaired by stands of elephant gra.s.s. But they spotted six or seven insurgents on a berm about 130 yards to the northeast. Diaz and the other soldier had started firing the machine gun and lobbing rifle-fired grenades when another group of insurgents began firing from a field only 50 yards to the west. They were caught in a brutal crossfire. They hit the ground. Pinned down, they were trying to return fire but their weapons started to jam. Both Lauzieras and Barkeras M4s locked up. Diaz, meanwhile, realized that they hadnat brought a full load of machine gun ammo. At the same time, the insurgents were refining their fire, walking it closer to them. aThe rounds were just cracking all over us,a Lauzier said.

aHey, I need f.u.c.king mortars now!a Lauzier yelled into the radio. The platoonas radioman requested mortars up to battalion headquarters.

aDenied. We have fast movers in the air,a meaning there were jets in the vicinity, which is a collision risk with large caliber, high-flying mortars. But the mortars that travel with each company are small enough that they fly below jetsa minimum alt.i.tude. Nortonas fire team had the mortar team, led by Staff Sergeant Matthew Walter, with them.

Mortarmen are frequently maligned for being lazy. They have heavy equipment, and it is standard practice to spread the mortar-round loads out to all the men of the platoon, which they complain about. But Walters humped all, or almost all, of his own gear. He would frequently carry the mortar tube and a dozen rounds at a time, which is about 100 pounds. So the guys esteemed him greatly. As Norton was talking to Fenlason about what sort of help they could get Lauzier, Walter asked Norton if he could borrow three men. Walter grabbed the men and ran across the road. Since he could see the enemyas tracer rounds, and generally the source of fire, he set up his 60mm mortar tube. Norton followed about two minutes later.

aHow far do you think that is? Four hundred meters?a Walter asked.

aSix hundred?a Norton said. They decided to average it. The big problem, however, was figuring out where Lauzieras team was. Since their weapons were jamming, and they were conserving the machine gun ammo, Norton and Walter couldnat tell, exactly, where their friend-lies were. They tried to determine their location over the radio, but descriptions like ain a ca.n.a.la or ato the right of the enemy firea were not hugely helpful. At Nortonas command, Lauzier ordered Diaz to fire one rifle-launched grenade at the insurgents, and Norton eyeballed their probable location back from that explosion. With all of those variables, Norton and Walter were fairly confident, but still, this was some risky business and Norton was uneasy. Lauzier, however, was insistent.

aWe are getting cut up,a he yelled into the radio. aOur weapons are jammed. We need support now. Repeat, now.a aAll right, we are working on it,a Norton responded. aI want you to lay everything you have on the exact spot where the insurgents are. And then weare going to drop mortars off of that. As soon as the mortars drop, I want you to break contact and clear the area, because weare going to sweep left to right toward the direction we think you are. Got me?a aRoger,a Lauzier responded. A few seconds later, Diazas machine gun ripped toward the berm, and Norton and Walter finalized their adjustments. Walter dropped his first round. Away it flew and detonated on impact.

aAaaaaaaaaarrrrrhhhhh!a Lauzier screamed through the mic. It was a loud and ear-splitting wail. Through the crackle of the radio, it sounded like the scream of a man badly injured. Walter and Norton looked at each other. aOh my G.o.d,a Norton thought. He felt like he was going to puke. aWe hit them. I just killed my own men.a aLauzier! Lauzier! Are you there? Are you there?a Norton yelled into the mic.

aAaaaaaaaaarrrrrhhhhh, yyyeeeaaahhh! f.u.c.king bullas-eye, dude!a Lauzier yelled. aYou hit him dead on! f.u.c.king bullas-eye! Fire for effect!a Norton had never been more relieved in his life. Walter lobbed about four or five sh.e.l.ls on and around the spot. Lauzier wanted to follow and make sure the insurgents were dead, but he didnat have any more working weapons. He told his men to break contact, and they headed back to the house. It is something he regretted years later, that he was not able to personally finish the insurgents off.

After three years of hunting, the U.S. military finally found and killed Zarqawi on June 7, in a farmhouse in a village thirty-five miles north of Baghdad. U.S. and Jordanian intelligence had gotten a number of key breaks in the weeks before. One source helped focus the Zarqawi-hunters on Sheikh Abdul-Rahman, often described as Zarqawias spiritual adviser. A small Task Force 77 team had followed Abdul-Rahman to a farmhouse where they were certain he was meeting with Zarqawi. Worried that their prey might get away if they waited to muster enough troops to attempt an a.s.sault, they requested air support. Two Air Force F-16s were diverted from another mission, and at 6:21 p.m., one dropped first one, then another 500-pound bomb on the house. Amazingly, Zarqawi survived the initial blasts as Iraqi police and U.S. soldiers swarmed the scene, but he died from injuries within the hour. Everyone else in the house, including Abdul-Rahman and a small but never conclusively specified number of women, children, and other men, died in the blast as well.

Hopes that this alone would deal a decisive blow to the insurgency, or even AQIas activities, were fleeting. On June 12, the Mujahideen Shura Council released a statement on behalf of Al Qaeda in Iraq saying that a new emir of Al Qaeda in Iraq had been appointed. Attacks resumed unabated, and a month later U.S. Amba.s.sador Zalmay Khalilzad would tell the BBC that Zarqawias death, ain terms of the level of violence ahas not had any impact.a By June, First Strike had decided to shut down the Rushdi Mullah patrol base. It simply did not have enough men to hold the position and turn it into a fully functioning outpost. Constant operations here were sapping combat strength for missions elsewhere, so on June 11, Bravo Companyas 2nd Platoon was in the process of tearing it down. They were breaking down some of the defensive positions, dismantling the concertina wire serpentines in the front, and preparing for a night mission later on. They would depart the next day.

At 3:00 p.m. on what had been an unusually quiet day until then, the house started taking fire from both the front and the rear. As the IAs on guard started returning fire, the only American on guard, Private First Cla.s.s Tim Hanley, who was manning a bunker on the front gate, saw an orange thirty-ton dump truck approach from the northeast. When it got to the front drive, it turned right and began barreling toward the gate, plowing through what few strands of concertina wire were left. Hanley started banging away at the truck with his M240B machine gun. He damaged it and may have thrown it off course, but he could not stop it from slamming into the courtyard wall and exploding into a ma.s.sive fireball. Platoon Sergeant Jeremy Gebhardt, who had walked to the front door to investigate the gunfire, was thrown across the room. Several other soldiers were picked up off of their feet, hurled against walls, and showered with debris, shrapnel, and gla.s.s. The blast shook the FOB at Yusufiyah five miles away. Amazingly, although fifteen U.S. soldiers, eight Iraqi soldiers, and one interpreter were injured, no coalition forces were critically hurt. The driveras body was ripped to pieces.

A medic ran to the front of the building, where Hanley had crawled out of the rubble of his bunker, with a ruptured eardrum and shrapnel in his neck. The truckas front axle and engine had landed directly on top of his post, which was fortified only with sandbags and plywood overhead covering. Looking at the crushed bunker, it was impossible to figure out how Hanley had survived. Hanley lost most of his hearing, however, and could have returned home, but he elected to stay with the men and finish the deployment.*

Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was inaugurated on May 28, 2006, and the s.h.i.+aite militiasa carte blanche increased substantially. Sectarian killings continued to escalate throughout the country, with more than a hundred civilians dying every day in June. By early August, the U.S. military would acknowledge that more people in Baghdad were being killed by s.h.i.+aite death squads than by Al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents. Yet throughout the summer, the Iraqi government and top U.S. commanders thwarted attempts by lower-level units attempting to rein in the s.h.i.+aite paramilitaries: American forces were not allowed to target the Mahdi Army without direct approval from either Maliki or General George Casey.

On June 14, 2006, nearly 50,000 Iraqi and American troops launched Operation Forward Together, an initiative designed to bolster security in the capital by increasing street patrols, beefing up checkpoints, and enforcing curfews. It was a failure. Two of the promised Iraqi brigades never showed up. After a day or two of calm, violence erupted in the capital again on June 17, when seven separate attacksa"a suicide bombing, a mortar attack, three car bombings, a bus bombing, and a pushcart bombinga"occurred in Baghdad, resulting in at least 36 dead and 75 wounded. And the attacks kept coming. Fifty gunmen wearing police uniforms kidnapped scores of factory workers on June 21. By July, Baghdad was averaging 34 attacks a day, compared with 24 a day in June. Despite the spike in violence, the waras planners insisted that the answer was fewer rather than more troops. On June 21, General George Casey briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff and recommended reducing the 15 combat brigades currently stationed in Iraq to 10 brigades within six months. Six months after that, he proposed whittling that number down to 7 or 8. By December 2007, according to his timeline, only 5 or 6 brigades would remain. He similarly proposed cutting the number of bases from 69 to 11. With the violence still escalating, U.S. and Iraqi forces initiated Operation Forward Together II in August, using more troops s.h.i.+pped in from Anbar. One government report described this as agiving up ground to one enemy to fight another.a That operation also failed.

* On September 25, 2007, Tim Hanley shot himself to death one year after returning from deployment. His was one of an epidemic of suicides to plague the Army and the 101st Airbornea"including eighteen suicides at Fort Campbell through the middle of November 2009. One of those was Juan Hernandez, the soldier who had performed so valorously during Charlie Companyas friendly fire incident on November 4, 2005. He shot himself to death in Coffee County, Tennessee, on October 5, 2009.

23.

The Alamo.

ON JUNE I6, Bravoas 1st Platoon was back at the JSB, 2nd Platoon was manning the TCPs, and 3rd Platoon was patrolling Yusufiyah. Rick Skidis was on emergency family leave, so Fenlason was Bravo Companyas acting first sergeant. A bunch of Freedom Rest pa.s.ses had been approved simultaneously, so several more soldiers than anybody had antic.i.p.ated were going to be gone from duty.

Fenlason was concerned about how shorthanded the company was, and he told Major Salome about it. aWhen you took out the people that were on leave, the people that were going on leave, and then you factored the pa.s.ses into it, the company was going to be short the equivalent of a platoon for three weeks,a Fenlason said. With attrition, scheduled leaves, and soldiers up at Striker for medical or other reasons, 1st Platoon had twenty-two of its a.s.signed thirty-four men on the ground. In addition to security at the base itself, the AVLB, and TCP4, their missions included morning IED sweeps, at least two patrols a day to sensitive nearby facilities, resupply runs back to Yusufiyah, daytime neighborhood patrols in Quarguli Village, nighttime overwatches in that same village, and cordon and knock searches for bad guys as the case came up.

Heading into the evening of the 16th, Private First Cla.s.s Thomas Tucker, Specialist David Babineau, and Private First Cla.s.s Kristian Menchaca were guarding the AVLB. Menchaca hadnat even been on the regular duty roster for that s.h.i.+ft, but he had volunteered so another soldier who was celebrating his birthday could enjoy it in the relative comfort of the JSB. The threesome had been on duty, in a single Humvee, for almost twenty-four hours. Their team leader, Sergeant Daniel Carrick, was on one of those four-day Freedom Rest pa.s.ses and Staff Sergeant Chaz Allen, their squad leader, had told them to be extra alert, because when Cortez and two others were out there the night before, they had taken some small-arms fire and RPG fire.

Allen had nine men to cover the two positions and they had been doing it for days. It was a ridiculous staffing situation, but it was standard practice for this deployment. So at any given time, Allen had three men on the AVLB, three men on TCP4, and three in reserve.

Just before 8:00 p.m., he and two soldiers at TCP4 were about to relieve the soldiers on guard at TCP4. He asked somebody to do a radio check with the Alamo. A minute or so went by.

aAny luck?a he inquired. Negative, the soldier said. aGimme the mic,a he said. Just then, a torrent of gunfire opened up. Allen tried to raise them on the radio. Cortez climbed on the roof of the TCP with an M14. With that gunas scope, it was possible to see the position. He yelled down that he didnat see anyone.

Soldiers stationed at the JSB heard the barrage too. Lauzier figured it must be the IAs shooting at something from their location on the JSB itself. The birthday soldier had been planning on bringing steaks to the men at the AVLB for dinner as a thank-you, and he had taken their order over the radio a couple of minutes ago. He tried hailing them now, but there was no response. Norton ordered Lauzier, Barker, Hernandez, Sharpness, and couple of others to rush a convoy out there.

At TCP4, the same thing was happening. Cortez and a couple others jumped into a Humvee. It wouldnat start. The battery was dead. They piled back out and into the M113 armored personnel carrier and took off.

Just over halfway through the three-quarter-mile journey to the AVLB, the QRF from the JSB patrol base hit the brakes. There were two objectsa"they sort of looked like oil drums, which could be IEDsa"blocking their path. Some of the men got out to investigate them. Though the drums turned out to be decoys, they would hold up the vehicles for an hour and a half. Lauzier, Barker, Hernandez, and Sharpness got out right away and decided to make it there on foot. They started out walking, but, increasingly worried, they began to run and finally sprinted the rest of the way.

Cortez and his men arrived first, around 8:15 p.m. There was no one there. Hundreds of bra.s.s sh.e.l.l casings were strewn about the ground. There were several large pools of blood. The men cordoned off the area and searched the vicinity. Cortez found Babineau about thirty yards away, facedown in the weeds and water on the banks of the ca.n.a.l. He had been shot multiple times up and down his back. Bullets had split his head open. There were two M4s on top of the hood and both right-hand Humvee doors were open. All three of the menas helmets were inside the Humvee. One had a packet of Skittles inside it. The soldiers had not been able to get a Mayday signal off over the radio, nor did they fire a shot. The Humveeas turret was locked and its M240B machine gun was on safe.

aThey had their Kevlars off and no weapons,a said Allen. aSo n.o.body had situational awareness. n.o.body was pulling guard. Sometimes people will say to me, aItas a direct reflection of your leaders.h.i.+p.a The first time somebody told me that, I almost f.u.c.king killed somebody. I wanted to just slit the motherf.u.c.keras throat. Mainly because youare basically stating that I allow things of this nature to take place, that I donat care.a The insurgents on the scene apparently had had enough time to sift through the truck and the menas personal effects looking for valuables, taking what they wanted. In addition to everything on the ground, and the guns on the hood, there was a PlayStation Portable on the floor of the Humvee, but two pairs of night-vision goggles and a bulletproof vest were gone.

Lauzieras fire team arrived a few minutes after Cortezas. They could hear yelling. aMenchaca! Menchaca! Tucker! Tucker!a Cortez was at the banks of the ca.n.a.l. He was trying to pull Babineau out of the water.

aWhere are Tucker and Chaca?a Lauzier asked.

aI donat know,a Cortez said, crying. aTheyare not here. They are not here.a Lauzieras team began to search the area. They headed out to the nearest houses to question, and kick the s.h.i.+t out of, anyone they saw. The Iraqi soldiers stationed on the JS Bridge itself said that they hadnat heard or seen anything, which, to the Americans, was a stone-cold lie. Either they were in on it, or they had decided to stay out of it, but there is no way they could have failed to hear the bullets. Sharpness put Babineau in a body bag, and the rage he felt was nearly uncontrollable.

aI pulled my f.u.c.king weapon up, I put it on f.u.c.king semi, and I was ready to just start spraying,a he said. Much of 1st Platoon wound up staying out all night looking for their comrades. aWe spent the whole night questioning people,a recalled one soldier. aYouare not supposed to tactically question people in combat unless youare an interrogator. We were straight-up interrogating people. Beating peopleas a.s.ses with weapons, threatening to kill them if they didnat talk. It was thug style, like a gang war, because we wanted our guys back alive and the chances of that were dwindling every second that went by.a While the rest of 1st Platoon was responding to the crisis, Private First Cla.s.s Justin Watt and Sergeant Tony Yribe were up at FOB Mahmudiyah at the same time. Both were heading up to Striker: Watt, to get some dental work done, while Yribe was having his back looked at; the blast that had killed Britt and Lopez had caused a nagging injury. They had scored a semiprivate hooch in a tent occupied by some Psychological Operations soldiers they had befriended. It was early evening and Yribe was talking to some friends out in front of the tent when a bunch of Alpha guys started running past, heading for the helicopter landing zones and motor-pool staging areas, strapping on helmets and Velcroing vests as they went.

aWhat the h.e.l.l is going on?a Yribe called out after some of them.

aDead and wounded down by the JSB,a they yelled as they ran past. The JSB? Thatas 1st Platoon, Yribe realized. He ran to the TOC to get the fuller story. Watt was sleeping when Yribe came back to wake him up.

aWatt, Watt! Hey, Watt!a he said. aHadj just attacked Tucker, Babs, and Chaca down at the Alamo and they donat know where Tucker and Chaca are. Babineauas dead.a Getting captured was every soldieras worst fear, worse than dying in a firefight or even getting blown to pieces by an IED. Insurgents were known to be l.u.s.ty, committed torturers without mercy. Soldiers frequently commented that they would kill themselves before theyad allow themselves to be captured. So the news that Tucker and Menchaca were missing was, perversely, worse than hearing that they were already dead.

The two whipped outside and tried to find a ride or a flight down to the JSB to help with the search. Alpha was spinning up a ma.s.sive Quick Reaction Force. Yribe and Watt asked everybody they saw if they could get a ride. No one had any seats. Finally, an officer told them that they werenat going anywhere anyway. Hundreds of soldiers were already flooding the area and no one thought bringing two more who were close friends with the kidnapped was going to help anything. So throughout that night, they had little to do but scrounge for updates and talk in their bunks.

aIt just drives me crazy that all the good men die and the s.h.i.+tbag murderers like Green are home eating hamburgers,a said Yribe.

aMurderers?a Watt asked.

Yribe told Watt about the day at the checkpoint, how he had found the shotgun sh.e.l.l, how Green had confessed to him, how Yribe had followed up the next day, and how, once he was convinced that Green really did it, he told Green that he needed to get out of the Army or he would get him out himself.

Watt couldnat believe what he was hearing. On the one hand, it sounded like something Green was capable of. On the other hand, it was unbelievable because it didnat add up.

aHow in the f.u.c.k is Green going to single-handedly escape the wire without an NCO knowing, murder four f.u.c.king people by himself, without other people knowing, and then infiltrate that same wire?a he asked.

Green swore that he acted alone, Yribe said, and that Cortez and Barker had nothing to do with it. But they must have, Watt a.s.serteda"it doesnat make any sense otherwise. No, Yribe insisted, they wouldnat do that. And anyway, Yribe said, the less I know about ita"and the less you know about ita"the better. Just forget I said anything.

But Watt couldnat forget it. That night, he lay on his cot thinking about Tucker and Menchaca, who he, and everybody else, suspected were being tortured at that moment. And he thought about Green doing much the same thing to a whole family of Iraqis. Tucker and Menchaca were some of the best guys Watt had ever known. Tucker always talked about fis.h.i.+ng and the pickup trucks he liked to work on. And Menchaca was quiet but respected, a friend to everyone. He was from Texas, but he still had a heavy Mexican accent that he turned up even heavier when he was goofing around. He had gotten married just a month before deployment. Babineau, though, had been married for years and was a father of three and shouldnat have even been there. He had been astop-lossed,a the policy that allowed the Army to forcibly retain soldiers scheduled to be discharged if their unit was deploying within a certain window of time. Watt couldnat stop thinking about that: Babineau was here on stolen time. Babs had done his eight years already, and now he was dead.

Goodwin showed up at the JSB with 3rd Platoon around 9:00 p.m. He had been in constant radio contact since the first call, but almost immediately, commanders several levels above him had taken control. When a aMisCap-DuStWUna (aMissing, Captured-Duty Status, Whereabouts Unknowna) happens, the Army moves fast. An Apache Longbow arrived within minutes. A Predator unmanned drone started hovering overhead within half an hour, tracking any suspicious activities. Relief units from the 2-502nd started arriving at each TCP location and halted all motor traffic throughout the area. An Iron Claw team and other, larger relief units were heading to Yusufiyah as their staging base. An Iraqi special operations forces unit went into action, and dive teams and division-level QRFs at Striker began gearing up.

aAt that point,a Goodwin said. aI didnat know what to do. Honest. I was talking to so many people on the radio, I was having a hard time keeping straight who I was talking to. It was insane.a Within another hour, Colonel Kunk and Sergeant Major Edwards showed up too. aThey took over the show and began to abuse 1st Platoon,a Goodwin recalled. aAnytime they had a free moment, they were yelling at Norton, about how much 1st Platoon sucked and how worthless they all were. Anything that they were told by 1st Platoon, they considered lies or they just chose not to listen to them.a In less than five hours, approximately 400 soldiers had searched three objective areas in the vicinity of the attack site. Throughout the night, elements of the 101st Airborne and the 4th Infantry conducted searches, set up blocking positions, or prepared for mobilization at dawn.

As had become the norm during critical times for the 1-502nd, Alpha Company got the call to take the lead. They moved up fast as part of a multiunit clearing effort of Malibu. Bravoas 3rd Platoon walked up Malibu as well, following the guidance of helicopters and drones. Blaisdell remembered searching the house of a Quarguli sheikh on Malibu with whom they were on relatively friendly terms. Because he forgot to strap up his helmet, it popped off just as he was flinging himself over the courtyard wall. He and his helmet landed at the feet of the sheikh, who was waiting for them. Blaisdell had never seen a sheikh in his underwear before. aI knew he knew a lot of what was going on, but he wasnat going to tell us anything,a he said. aThat would have been a death sentence for him and his family.a After a brief operational pause in the earliest hours of the morning, Alpha and several other units moved northwest (more than 8,000 coalition troops would ultimately aid in the search), discovering b.l.o.o.d.y drag marks on the road leading to the power plant. As they searched throughout the morning, they found pieces of a U.S. body armor vest, a white Bongo truck with a thick pool of blood in the flatbed near an office building on the plantas grounds, and blood on the handrail of a bridge over a ca.n.a.l at the plantas front entrance.

With temperatures soaring past 110 degrees, Alpha took small-arms fire and mortar fire throughout the day. While Alpha inspected a village on the north side of the power plant and other nearby environs, ma.s.sive air a.s.saults cleared wide swaths of countryside almost continuously. Colonel Ebel, Lieutenant Colonel Kunk, and Major General James Thurman, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, flew up to the Russian power plant looking for a status update from Alpha commander Jared Bordwell. aI had an Army Dive Team and a PJ [Air Force Para Jumper] Dive Team with me, diving in that ca.n.a.l up by Caveman,a said Bordwell. aAnd we had just been in a firefight with some guys earlier in that morning. And they wanted to know what was going on and what we thought. And I started to brief General Thurman, and he just cut me off and started briefing me. He started briefing me on what had been reporteda"from me, up to hima"and based on what had gotten changed along the way, he was telling me that I was wrong. And Colonel Kunk and Colonel Ebel just sat there. It was frustrating to see my two senior leaders not say anything. They just let the general tell me what I thought, which wasnat accurate by any means.a After searching well into the next day, most of the men of 1st Platoon returned to the JSB to try to get some food and rest for an hour or two before heading back out. But Kunk and Edwards were unhappy with the state of the base. aThe first thing that sergeant major does is yell at us about the JSB being dirty. The very first thing,a said 2nd Squadas Chris Payne. aHe doesnat pull the guys together and say, aHold your heads up, weall do what we can do to find these guys.a Neither did the battalion commander. Something to unify the platoon. It didnat happen. All that happened was that the men got yelled at.a Under orders from Sergeant Major Edwards, Payne went down to the Bat Cave and hauled all the rest of the men out of their racks and they started picking up cigarette b.u.t.ts.

Since he was acting first sergeant, Fenlason did not get out to the JSB until the next day. aKunk had moved his TOC down there,a he said. aSo now you got Edwards, Kunk, Salome, and all their little wizards down there. All I did was go in and take my a.s.s beatings. They didnat want us around them. All they wanted us to do was cook their f.u.c.king food. I remember Kunk screaming at me one night because we didnat make enough food for his people, giving me the aHere we are looking for your G.o.dd.a.m.n soldiersa routine while I am trying to explain that heas never told me how many people heas actually got down here. And Edwards is screaming at me every which way.a aThat was it for me,a said one 1st Platoon Bravo soldier. aI was done after that. I didnat give a f.u.c.k about anybody but my platoon. Other platoons, I didnat give a f.u.c.k. I didnat talk to anybody else after that. Other platoons were looking at us: no sympathy. They were looking at us like it was all our fault, giving us the aDo you know how much pain you caused?a routine. It was just bad.a

24.

Dilemma and Discovery.

MULTIPLE SWEEP AND SEARCH operations were conducted simultaneously throughout the next forty-eight hours on both sides of the Euphrates, but physical clues and human intelligence kept leading back to the vicinity of the power plant. As that was happening, Watt was obsessively mulling over everything Yribe had told him, even after they made it up to Striker the next day. It continued to nag at him. He weighed all the scenarios, he tried to evaluate all possibilities, and it just didnat compute, that one guy could get into a house and control an entire family in that situation. There was no way Green could have done it alone. No way. There just had to have been more people. He brought it up with Yribe several times, and each time Yribe refused to entertain the notion. Yes, Yribe said, he took Greenas word on how it went down. No, he never asked Barker and Cortez about it. Why not? Tons of reasons, Yribe said: Because he didnat really want to know, because G.o.d would sort it out in the end, because the last thing 1st Platoon needed was more trouble, because it was already ancient history. And because it was none of his businessa"and it was none of Wattas business either.

The search for Tucker and Menchaca was continuing. There were TVs in the Striker chow hall tuned to Fox News or CNN and people would just keep on feeding their faces. Watt couldnat believe it. He was so angry at these soft, smug rear-echelon motherf.u.c.kers. Look at them, he thought. Two missing soldiers were not going to get in the way of their sundae with sprinkles. He wanted to get up on a table and scream at them about how this entire room of fat, pasty f.u.c.kfaces was not worth a single one of those guys.

Going to Striker was like going to a different planet, he thought. Anytime any soldiers from 1st Platoon were up there, some NCO from the finance corps or quartermaster corps could be virtually guaranteed to stop them in the chow hall and get on their case for wearing the old green patches on their uniforms rather than the ones designed for new ACU digital pattern uniforms. First Platoonas fury would be hard to contain. aEat my b.a.l.l.s, dude,a they would say. aYouare lucky I even have a f.u.c.king patch. This is the one patch that got handed down to me through twelve people so you could check what division I am from before deciding it was cool to be a c.o.c.ksucker. I donat have any other f.u.c.king patches because all of my other f.u.c.king uniforms got toasted when our f.u.c.king FOB burned down.a Even worse was when the aFobbitsa from Striker, as they were called, would be forced to come to Yusufiyah. They would arrive in their crisp uniforms and their s.h.i.+ny Humvees and bust out their cameras taking pictures of all the combat squalor. The piles of wreckage, the mangled Humvees, the scruffy soldiers. Watt couldnat stand it. It was like it was all a show for them, all a story they could tell their friends back home about how they had really seen some s.h.i.+t back in Iraq, man. And Watt knew these rear-echelon r.e.t.a.r.dsa friends would then all buy them rounds of drinks and toast their buddies, the war heroes. It made him seethe.

Just yesterday he nearly murdered someone. A female NCO in line at the Green Beans coffee shop was complaining about the communications blackout in effect because the names of the missing soldiers had not yet been released. She was irritated that she couldnat turn in a paper for an online correspondence course she was taking. Watt exploded.

aAre you f.u.c.king serious, you f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h?a he yelled. aIall tell my friends to die at a more convenient time for you, you f.u.c.king piece of s.h.i.+t.a He physically went for her, intending to do her some sort of harm he wasnat even in control of, and he had to be dragged out of the place. Luckily, there were a bunch of infantry NCOs there, so they let Wattas outburst slide as long as he just got out of there. As he reluctantly slinked off, he was glad to hear them tell her, in a much more polite manner, that she really should shut the h.e.l.l up.

Around lunchtime on June 19, Watt ran into Bryan Howard and Justin Cross. They were returning from leave and appreciated the chance to commiserate with a guy going through the same thing they were. Tucker and Menchaca had still not been found, but all around Striker, it seemed like just another day to everyone else. Since Watt spent much of the deployment as the platoonas radioman, he had a better memory for where people were located on particular days than the average soldier. As they were talking, Watt remembered that while both guys were members of 3rd Squad at the time, Howard had been a part of the group at TCP2 that day back in March.

Cross wandered off at one point, and Watt tried to get Howard to talk about that day. But he decided he had to do it craftily, as if he knew more than he actually did. They discussed all of the messed-up stuff they had seen, and Watt insinuated something about, well, the really messed-up stuff that had happened in March. What are you talking about? Howard asked. You know, Watt said, behind TCP2, with the family, the ones that got waxed that day. And the girl, the girl that got burned? Convinced that Watt did indeed know the whole story, Howard talked about it all, at length. He filled in many of the missing pieces about Cortez and Barker and even the extent of Howardas own involvement. He had had to hold down the TCP with just Sch.e.l.lera"and the radio that the others down at the girlas house werenat responding to anyway. He told Watt about how he still didnat really believe them until they returned, with the blood-stained clothes.

That night, Watt recounted to Yribe what Howard had relayed to him. Yribe said he couldnat really believe it, but he didnat see what good was going to come from digging it up. While it was bothering Watt to the point of obsession, Yribeas philosophy was it had nothing to do with him.

aWatt, dude, were you there?a Yribe asked.

aNo.a aHave you talked to anybody who was personally there, at the house, when it happened?a aNo.a aWhat you know is what somebody heard from somebody else. Thatas what you know, right?a aYeah.a aSo you donat really know a lot, do you?a aI guess not.a Watt didnat know much, but he just knew it was true. For a while, he did try to forget about it. But he kept coming back to the father, that was the thing that kept him up at night. He couldnat sleep at all anymore, and that was the image that haunted him. It was horrible, what happened to them all, especially the girl, but Watt kept focusing on the father. Watt wasnat a parent, he wasnat even married, but he supposed it was simply because he was a man that the father was the one he identified with the most. He imagined the powerlessness, the literal impotence, of having armed men break into your house and there being nothing you could do to protect your family. Watt ran it over in his mind again and again. What would that feel like, to realize that you and the people you love were about to be blown away? When did all hope vanish? When did the Iraqi man realize that he, and his whole family, were going to die? When the gun started going off, or before? When the bullet slammed into his skull, or before? aIad just imagine what it would be like to spend my last moments on Earth like that,a he said. aAnd I couldnat think of a worse way to go.a Watt called his father, who had been an airborne combat engineer in the late 1970s. He asked his dad what he would do if his brothers in arms had done something really bad.

aWhat is it?a his father asked.

aI really shouldnat say,a Watt told him, abut it is bad beyond anything you could imagine. What would you do?a Watt asked.

aYou should let your conscience be your guide,a his father said. aIf it is as heinous as you say, you canat let your loyalty to your men get in the way of doing what is right.a Watt resolved that he couldnat just let this pa.s.s. aIf I kill someone in combat,a he reasoned, athatas the risk that the other guy involved has agreed to take. And I stand just as much of a chance of getting my ticket punched as the guy I am trying to kill. But civilians are different. The guys who did this had to pay. Not to say that if I never turned them in, they wouldnat be paying for it, in their own heads. Your own conscience is worse than any punishment that anyone else can lay on you. I think thatas part of why Yribe was saying he wouldnat turn them in. But thatas not good enough. Not for that s.h.i.+t. Not after I and all the rest of us busted our b.a.l.l.s the entire time. I didnat get to go out on a kill spree because I was hurting. We all sucked up the same bulls.h.i.+t and we didnat get to wig out.a Finally, after a midafternoon sweep through Rushdi Mullah on Sunday the 18th, two detainees helped pinpoint the location of Tuckeras and Menchacaas bodies, which were located on Monday, June 19, just before 8:00 p.m., about two miles northeast of the power plant. Because it was possible they had been b.o.o.by-trapped with IEDs, they had to be examined by an Iron Claw team and it took another several hours before their remains could be recovered.

Judging from a video shot by the insurgents, this seems to be the vicinity where the bodies were mutilated. There were about a dozen men milling around the already dead and desecrated bodies. Both soldiers appeared eviscerated and half-naked, dirty with caked blood and mud, just as one would appear after being dragged behind a truck. Tucker was decapitated, and a man, after holding his severed head aloft like a trophy, placed it on Tuckeras own body. Another set of hands at-temped to light both soldiersa ACUs on fire. The tape is particularly revolting because the men are so nonchalant. They are slightly agitated but donat seem worried, hurried, or anxious. As dusk appears to be falling in the background, they are in a subdued yet celebratory mood, half-singing, half-shouting aAllahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!a According to a briefing by Major General William Caldwell and an appearance on Larry King Live, coalition forces conducted over twenty-five combat operations, cleared twelve villages, and conducted eleven air a.s.saults over seventy-two hours. The Air Force logged about four hundred flight hours of fixed-wing and about two hundred hours of unmanned drone flight time. One coalition force member died and twelve were wounded. One armored vehicle was destroyed and another seven were damaged. They encountered a total of twenty-nine IEDs, of which they discovered seventeen, and twelve detonated. They killed two Al Qaeda operatives, questioned dozens of people, and detained thirty-six.

Before the bodies were found, the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC) had issued a statement saying the men had been captured and more information would be forthcoming in a few days. The day after, another statement appeared, also purportedly from the MSC, stating that the new leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq had slaughtered the two himself. Significantly, considering insurgents would later claim they mounted this attack as revenge for the rape of Abeer and the murder of her and her family, neither communiqu made any mention of the March atrocity.

In keeping with the pattern of making changes only after a tragedy had occurred, or, as 1st Squad leader Sergeant Chaz Allen put it, aNothing is taken seriously until something serious happens,a tons of defensive equipment flooded down to the JSB and the TCPs, and a new staffing directive was issued: Every TCP needed to have at least eight men and two trucks at all times, no exceptions. Rather than this being welcome news, virtually everyone in Bravo despised the new manning constraints because, without more troops, too, just conforming to the regulation was nearly impossible. aIt was killing people on sleep. It was exhausting them even more,a said one platoon leader.

25.

aRemember That Murder of That Iraqi Family?a

A COUPLE OF days after Tucker and Menchaca had been found, Fenlason and Norton were still decompressing. They had just lived through the most intense emotional and professional experiences of their lives. Simply dealing with the loss of three guys was enough, but to be the constant focus of, and focus of abuse from, Kunk and Edwards and Ebel and who knows who else all the way up to Division had been hard to take. No doubt, there would be investigations. The knives were going to come out, that was certain. They welcomed it in some regards. At one point, Fenlason was so fed up with Edwardsas riding him that he told him that he just wasnat going to talk to him until the investigating officer showed up. When Edwards and Kunk had finally moved their TOC back to Mahmudiyah, Fenlason and Norton could try to focusa"againa"on getting the platoon back on its feet. They honestly didnat know if it could be done this time.

Watt had looked at it from every angle. He had searched for all the ways to avoid it, but he knew he had to tell. Why did he track down Howard, trick him into revealing everything? He wished he hadnat. He wished he could un-know what he knew. But now that he was convinced that Barker, Cortez, and Green had raped that girl and killed her and her family, there was no way he couldnat tell. He was worried. Paranoid is not too strong a word. This was serious stuff and he was choosing to put himself in the middle of it. He was accusing his own brothers in arms of murder. The way everyone was tweakeda"everybody had become borderline insane to begin with over the course of the last eight months, and now they were all grieving over Tucker, Menchaca, and Babineaua"he truly could not predict how anyone was going to react to what he had to say. He wanted to keep it out of his immediate chain of command. He was worried that the reflexive impulse among junior leaders would be to protect the unit, either to dismiss what Watt was saying without investigating it or to cover it up. But he was also worried that those he was accusing might try to hurt or even kill him. He wanted to get the information in the hands of someone with the authority to actually do something about it, yet outside the regular battalion structure.

On June 23, as Watt was finally heading back from Striker to the JSB, the convoy stopped at FOB Yusufiyah to pick up Staff Sergeant Bob Davis from the Combat Stress team. After the catastrophic loss to the platoon, he was heading down to the JSB too, to visit the men.

Watt made a beeline for Davis, pulled him aside, and said, aHey, I need to talk to you.a Once Davis had gotten the broadest outlinea"that Watt was not involved and had no evidence, but that he had heard a plausible story that some 1st Platoon members had committed a very serious crime and that he wanted Davisas help in reporting ita"he told Watt to stop right there. This was neither a confession nor a counseling session. He was required to report any crime a soldier told him he had committed or had firsthand knowledge of. But all Watt was telling him was hearsay, so Davis wasnat sure how to handle the matter.

aI need to check with my own XO [executive officer] on how to proceed, and I donat have a way to contact my own chain of command right now,a he told Watt. aI am not blowing this off, but I am gonna have to get back to you.a This was not the response Watt was looking for. Now that he had committed to telling, he was bursting the whole ride down to the JSB. His mind was racing. He needed to talk to someone he could trust. Upon his arrival at the JSB, he got sent to TCP4 as part of an element to relieve a team headed by Sergeant John Diem. Watt was so happy to see Diem. There was literally no one in the world Watt trusted more than Diem. No one had their head screwed on straighter than Diem. No oneas moral compa.s.s was truer.

As they were doing the handoff, Watt said to Diem, aThings might get hairy in the next couple of days, so I want you to have my back. I need you to promise me that youall protect me.a aWhat the h.e.l.l are you talking about?a Diem asked.

aI have some information about some f.u.c.ked-up stuff that guys in this unit did, I canat tell you about it now, but in a couple of days, some people might have it in for me, so you need to protect me.a aBulls.h.i.+t. You are going to tell mea"nowa"what in the f.u.c.k you are talking about.a And Watt did.

Diem went back to the JSB and immediately went on four hours of guard. While on guard, Diem decided he could not honor the promise Watt had extracted from him not to tell anyone. This was too serious. Wattas head was not in the game, for starters, and distracted soldiers make mistakes. Plus, if Watt was in danger from some of the men, he would be more so if rumors started leaking. The only option was to get the whole mess right in front of the chain of commandas nose as soon as possible. Four hours later, as soon as he came off guard, he went straight to Fenlasonas office. Norton was there, and the two were talking.

aWhatas up, Diem?a one of them asked. He said he needed to talk to them. Sure, they said.

aYou remember that murder of that Iraqi family? Back behind TCP2 that happened several months ago?a Diem asked.

Vaguely, they said. Rings a bell. What about it?

Well, Diem continued, it had just come to his attention, but he had good reason to believe that the perpetrators might not have been Iraqis.

aWhat?a they said. aWhat exactly are you saying here?a Diem said that Watt had just come to him. Watt was not involved, but he had spoken to two soldiers with firsthand knowledge of that day who said that Green, Cortez, and Barker killed that family. He didnat have any evidence and this was all thirdhand, Diem said, but he thought Fenlason and Norton should take it seriously. They said they would, but Diem had to tell them everything he knew. And he did, describing everything Watt had told him. He acknowledged his info was sketchy, and he wasnat even sure exactly how many soldiers were involved. They talked for a while and tried to consider all angles, including what the best next step was.