Hunters: U.S. Snipers in the War on Terror (24 page)

All that aside, if the exact situation arose again, he knew what to do. He had seen too many casualties from IEDs, and if he had the power to stop it, he was not going to be the sniper who allowed people to get injured or killed by any more.

Days later, Johnny and his team were assigned to the same mission. This time they planned to observe from a different location. They slipped off base early on June 17, under the cover of darkness. The patrol lasted longer than expected because of an abnormal number of convoys on the roads. Humvees mounted with lights shining in 360 degrees were the ones to avoid. The snipers knew that the gunners inside shot at anything they saw, and everyone hit the ground when they passed. Alex kept a pop-up flare handy, a signal meaning “friendly,” just in case they took rounds. He was already annoyed that the radio was not working again, but he had not had enough time to give radio checks before losing contact.

Shortly before sunrise, Johnny and Stabler stopped the team to recon possible hide sites. The satellite imagery they used to mark an initial position deceived them. The designated building was actually a small platform only a few feet off the ground and was not big enough for the entire team. With little time, Johnny and Stabler searched a nearby structure. Inside, the feel fit the description of buildings used by terrorists to videotape their killings. Bullet holes sprinkled the walls, along with Arabic writings. There were also plastic sheets on the ground.

“Is this a kill house?” Stabler asked.

“It looks like it,” Johnny replied.

Though they did not want to stay there, the sun was about to rise and they had no other options.

Johnny called the team in and everyone prepared the hide. Immediately there was a problem. From the building, they could not see the all of the primary objective, the mosque. Several buildings were in the way, making it only half-visible. The gas station, a meeting point for insurgents and a known IED hotbed, was the secondary objective, and it was in plain sight. The secondary objective would now have to become the primary.

In the hide, communications took priority and Alex went to work. He sat against the wall and pulled out the radio. Johnny and the others set up security, except Stabler, who prepared the shooting position. The front doorway had the best view, and he placed the rifle there facing the gas station. He found that the area could not fit more than one person, so whoever manned the gun would have to relay everything to the team.

The snipers were in place and ready to observe by sunup. Stabler rested Johnny’s MK-11 on a tripod and took first watch. He had screwed on the suppressor for Johnny, who preferred the rifle over the M40A3 because of its ability to put rounds downrange faster. Stabler did not care what weapon he had just as long as he could shoot it. Johnny sat a few feet away with his Mossberg 500 pump-action shotgun handy. The MK-11 allowed him to carry a close-range weapon, and he preferred a shotgun. Josh had an M4 with an M203 grenade launcher, while Alex carried an M4.

Shortly after sunrise, the action picked up. The gas station was three hundred yards away, next to a four-way intersection with a stoplight that maintained traffic in all directions. Stabler scanned the area and noticed a white Toyota pickup with six men stopping on the side of the road. The front passenger got out, walked to the back, and opened the tailgate. Four men in the back looked nervous while the front passenger grabbed something and walked a few meters behind the truck.

“Hey, boys, get ready,” Stabler announced, but he could not make out the object in the man’s grip. He instantly adjusted the scope’s focus, but the man had bent down and was finished by the time Stabler zoomed in. Suddenly, a separate car that was parked on the opposite side of the road acknowledged the truck and they drove off in different directions. They vanished to the sound of Stabler swearing out loud.

He was furious. Everything had happened so quickly that he could not tell if the man had softened the ground or planted something. If he’d planted an IED, Stabler was responsible for any damage, or so he thought. Either way, it was over and he could only wait to see the outcome.

After minutes of cursing, Johnny relieved Stabler to get his mind off the incident, but Johnny was also thinking. As small as it was, their building was not an ideal defensive position. If his team made contact, they could easily be overwhelmed with well-placed RPGs and machine guns. Fallujah in 2004 had taught Johnny the effects of a well-trained enemy. Stabler and Johnny formed a plan.

“If we make contact, this is what happens,” explained Johnny. “After I shoot, you all have to push out of this building. I’ll maintain contact until you all take cover, and then you guys open up. I’ll take Governal and we’ll sweep through the objective,” he said.

They all agreed, and it was not long before the scene was thrown into action. Minutes later Johnny watched an eighteen-wheel semitruck stop where the other truck had been. Two men fell from the cab. One walked to the rear of the trailer while the other stopped directly center. Johnny had a waist-high view only.

“Hey, boys, we got a truck,” said Johnny to his teammates.

The man near the center of the trailer caught Johnny’s attention. He was squatting and reaching for something in the undercarriage.

“I got a guy. He’s squatting,” Johnny relayed to his team.

The man washed his hands from a spigot. When he was finished, he dug at the ground exactly where Stabler had described. Johnny watched closely but could not tell the size of the hole in the ground. He anxiously waited to see if the man was going to plant something. Suddenly the man pulled a blue jug from the undercarriage and placed it on the ground.

Earlier that year, insurgents had made IEDs with chlorine and nitroglycerine packed in jugs. Other reports from areas such as Adwaniyah confirmed that insurgents were using antifreeze jugs for IEDs. Johnny considered the man’s actions, combined with the actions of the men earlier, and the jug. The entire situation was similar to the procedures used by IED cells. Johnny could not let the man get away, and instantly chose his fate.

“He’s got a blue jug,” said Johnny, “I’ve got positive identification.”

Stabler waited for Johnny’s next move.

“So . . . ?” he questioned, wondering why Johnny was taking so long to shoot.

He did not know that Johnny was taking a breath to get his natural point of aim.

The suppressor fixed to the MK-11 helped mask Johnny’s shot. The man did not know what hit him. Johnny’s crosshairs lay on his chest, and the man twitched after the first shot, but Johnny did not let up. He fired two more times before the man stood up and stumbled away.

The team instantly executed the plan. Johnny moved the rifle to the side and grabbed his shotgun.

“Let’s go!” he said.

Alex dropped the radio and picked up his rifle. Stabler followed Johnny through the front door while the SAW gunner and the rest of the team followed Alex, except one marine who stayed on the sniper rifle for over-watch.

Outside, Stabler led the team twenty meters to the front and took cover behind a few trees near a small dirt mound. Johnny and Governal moved up while the team laid covering fire.

The truck was still running, and by now others were getting out. Two of the men ran to the back of the truck, leading the marines to believe that they were going for weapons. Alex unloaded on a man looking toward him from behind a tire. Stabler lobbed a grenade from his M203, placing it under the truck and blowing out the back tires.

“Dump it!” shouted Stabler to the SAW gunner, to give Johnny and Governal suppressive fire. Stabler lobbed another grenade and landed it perfectly on the opposite side of the truck just as Johnny and Governal reached the road.

Johnny rounded the front of the truck with his shotgun resting firmly in his shoulder. He searched for any threats and noticed four wounded men on the ground. His eyes were drawn to one of the men reaching for a cell phone. He remembered that cell phones were used to trigger IEDs and the jug was only a few feet away.

“Stop!
Giff! Giff!
” he shouted in Arabic, but the man was unfazed.

Johnny did not hesitate, knowing that he and his team were dead if the man set off an IED. He leveled the shotgun and blasted the man in the face, immediately incapacitating him. Governal covered Johnny’s back and warned a few cars to stay clear. He had turned in time to see the man crawling toward the phone. If Johnny had not shot him, he would have.

The remaining men raised their hands in surrender. One man leaned against the tires and looked toward Johnny.

“Insha’Allah,” said the man with a smirk while he pointed to the sky. He meant that whatever happens, it is God’s will.

“Who in their right mind would taunt marines at this point?” thought Johnny. Only insurgents with a death wish.

Vehicle traffic stopped in both directions as the marines tried reporting the incident, but the radio still did not work. A few hundred meters away, a four-vehicle convoy moved toward the snipers’ position, having heard the shootings. Alex met them and tried to use a Humvee’s radio to make contact with the COC, but the Humvee radio was not working either. He eventually turned to the satellite phone again.

Johnny hastily searched the truck. The men had no weapons, but then again IED cells typically did not carry small arms. With a glance in the cab, he moved to the back and blew the locks off the trailer. A few microchip boards and rags were strewn about, but not much else. He did not have time to search deeper into the trailer, nor did he want to, because the longer they stayed on the road, the more likely it was that they would be counterattacked.

All of the men on the ground had Syrian identification cards. There were also two Syrian-made cell phones and numerous religious tapes. Everyone suspected they were terrorists, and it was no secret that the prime route for foreign fighters infiltrating Iraq was from Syria.

The snipers loaded the QRF vehicles for extract while other marines cordoned off the area. Everyone was happy that they had stopped the IED cell, and though they found no weapons, the snipers expected the other marines to find IEDs or IED-making materials when the truck was fully searched. The problem was that no one managed to completely inspect the truck.

When the snipers left the scene, the marines only opened the door to the trailer. Directly in front of the door were a few crates of soda, but no one bothered to crawl inside the fifty-three-foot trailer. Nor did anyone bother to inspect the undercarriage or the blue jug. Coincidently, a tow-truck driver, with no recommendation from the marines, arrived to drag the truck off. The marines did not treat the tow driver as suspicious at the time. Only later did they realize that he seemed out of place. They allowed the truck to try towing the eighteen-wheeler, but with all but one tire blown, it was impossible to move it. When the truck failed, it left, as did the marines.

When the snipers arrived at base, they were greeted with praise. A few recon marines along with other snipers heard about their success and congratulated them. Even the battalion sergeant major gave them a pat on the back. The mood quickly changed, however, when, after they cleaned up, they debriefed at the COC.

“Why couldn’t you get comms with us?” yelled the intelligence officer after they walked in.

They did not have an answer. Only later, with suggestion from Alex, did they realize the problem. All Humvees in the battalion were equipped with IED jamming devices which sent an electronic signal a few hundred yards in each direction, essentially detonating any electronically controlled IEDs before the vehicles reached the bomb. They were great for their purpose, but the Humvees were parked so close to the COC that the jamming devices obstructed its radio frequency. It was a problem that went unsolved for some time.

The snipers were taken aback by the officer’s temper. Johnny explained the incident, but the officer was furious. He was concerned because there were no weapons found. Stabler reminded him that the other marines were supposed to have inspected the scene, but they were already at base, also. It was too late in the day to inspect the truck now, and the command planned a thorough search the next morning. By then the truck was gone.

The snipers were further scolded.

“I don’t know what happened, and I don’t know what you guys saw, but I can’t help you,” finished the officer. He left a bad feeling with the snipers.

They knew that the officer had been investigated for the Haditha incident during their last deployment, and that he wanted nothing to do with this new incident, even if it meant throwing the snipers under the bus.

The circumstances of the shootings sparked controversy among the command. It did not matter that the Syrian men acted just as IED cells had, or that the truck had not been searched by the marines, the fault was put squarely on Johnny, and he was to be fried.

An investigation began on Johnny that evening. The snipers were in lockdown and were not allowed privileges, but Johnny received the worst. The next day he was informed that his inability to make correct choices endangered the team. The result was immediate relief from his team leader position and expulsion from the sniper platoon. This was a sniper who had received meritorious promotions and awards, but all that was insignificant now. Everything that he had worked so hard for was taken in an instant, and it hurt.

For the rest of the deployment, Johnny was put on guard. Ironically, he was supposed to guard the people who wanted him prosecuted. Other marines steered clear of him, and the seriousness of it all hit Johnny after overhearing a gunnery sergeant tell his marines to keep away from the murderer, referring to him. To cap it all off, when the marines convoyed back to the main base to fly from Iraq to the USS
Bonhomme Richard
, one officer notified Johnny that he should not fire his weapon under any circumstance, even if they came under attack. When he heard that, Johnny knew right away that he needed a good lawyer.