Thunder Run (22 page)

Perkins continued to press his case. “I am more secure on the palace grounds than I am at Saints,” he told Austin, referring to Objective Saints, the code name for the tactical operations center at the junction of Highways 1 and 8 eighteen kilometers south of the city center. “We have a significant strategic opportunity that we wouldn't want to miss.” He added, “Have spoken with my battalion commanders. If we hold the LOCs, stay the night, this war will be over.”

A few minutes later, Austin radioed back. “I'm concerned about the fuel situation and our ability to hold the LOC” on Highway 8, he said. “It'll require significant combat power to do so.” Even so, he said, Perkins's request to stay was being passed up the chain of command. “I'm working on it,” Austin told him.

Then Austin abruptly changed the subject. He asked Perkins if he had located a monument or statue suitable for a public display of destruction. Blount, Austin, and Perkins had discussed beforehand the need to demonstrate in a very public and dramatic way that American forces had penetrated the heart of the city. Perkins asked Schwartz and deCamp to find a statue or monument of Saddam.

Schwartz radioed Captain Conroy and told him that higher command was “looking for a real good monument.”

Conroy said, “This is a great monument—Saddam on a horse.”

Schwartz cleared it with Perkins, and Conroy was finally given permission to take the statue down. He already had an MPAT round in the tube. Perkins radioed Conroy. “Don't miss,” Perkins told him.

Perkins then radioed Austin on the division net. “We've found a statue of Saddam at the review stand—with key vantage points.”

Austin asked Perkins, “Method of destruction?”

“One-twenty millimeter,” Perkins said.

“Feel free to use as many rounds as it takes,” Austin told him.

Blount's voice came over the net. “If you make any speeches, keep it short,” he told Perkins. He didn't want American forces acting like occupiers—or worse, gloating before the Fox News camera.

“There will be no speeches,” Perkins assured him.

From his commander's hatch across from the reviewing stand, Conroy told his gunner to let the round fly. An MPAT round is designed to punch a hole through the thick steel armor of a tank or personnel carrier before detonating a high-explosive shape charge in its warhead. The round pierced the statue's thin bronze shell and exploded in an eruption of brown smoke, shattering the horse and blowing Saddam's head from its torso. Conroy's crewmen retrieved the head later and hauled it around on the bustle racks, a singular war trophy.

Conroy had never experienced such euphoria—not during the sprint up from Kuwait, and not even on the momentous thunder run to the airport. He felt a sense of achievement and finality, a conviction that all his soldiers' training and sacrifice had built to this moment of triumph. He believed that this very moment, preserved for history by the Fox crew, would define the American defeat of the Iraqi regime. For the first time since leaving Kuwait, Conroy let himself believe that the end of the war was close at hand. His company had now secured optimum positions in and around Saddam's parade grounds and reviewing stand, a perfect 360 degrees of control, with clean, overlapping sectors of fire. There was no doubt in his mind that they were spending the night—and many more nights after that.

Just across from the reviewing stand, Schwartz and deCamp were interviewed live on Fox TV by correspondent Kelly. The two lieutenant colonels played off each other like a stand-up team—deCamp the energized and frenetic front man, Schwartz the restrained and confiding straight man. The overall effect was of two men thrust suddenly into unfamiliar surroundings, still getting their bearings but somehow persuaded that they stood at the crest of an irreversible tide. For TV viewers, it was a jarring and disorienting tableau. The split screen showed Information Minister Sahaf on the left, jaunty and boastful in his beret and gold-rimmed spectacles, describing Americans dying at the gates of Baghdad and vowing, “God will burn their bodies in hell!” On the right screen were deCamp and Schwartz, helmeted little men grimy with dust and sweat, squinting through the smoke, their voices straining over the steady pounding of Rogue's tank cannons at the far end of the parade field.

Schwartz mentioned that his tanks were parked outside Iraq's Ministry of Information about one and a half kilometers to the northeast. He had hoped that Sahaf would be addressing the media from the building, though the minister was actually just across the Tigris, at the Palestine Hotel overlooking the river's east bank. The ministry building had been abandoned.

“He's just across the street from us,” Schwartz said, deadpan. “We'll go over and talk to him. They can look right outside their window. They can see us.”

DeCamp was asked whether the brigade's thrust into Baghdad was significant tactically or symbolically. His face lit up.

“Today is symbolic in the sense that we already had it,” deCamp said, speaking rapidly in a hoarse voice. “The victory was won a long time ago. Now, today, we're just securing the symbol of the victory. About five days ago, his [Saddam's] regime was done. He was just continuing his propaganda. Today we just ended his propaganda campaign—because he can continue to show his lies on TV, but we're showing the American public where we are.”

A tank cannon erupted somewhere behind them and Schwartz said, “There are a lot of bad guys still out there. There's not a lot of celebration going on yet, but we're feeling very good about being here. We've still got a lot of work to do.”

Perkins felt his own confidence surge. Standing next to his personnel carrier, looking out over the blanket of smoke and haze that draped the parade grounds, he asked deCamp and Schwartz for situation reports. Both commanders assured him that their positions were secured, and both said they felt just as strongly as Perkins about staying the night. They didn't want to have to fight their way back out of the city. They were certain they could defend and hold their ground.

Perkins thought he was close to persuading Blount to let him set up for the night, and he was confident that the brass was flexible enough to let the commander on the ground make the call. Already, the senior command seemed to be focused on how to manage any American tactical victories inside Baghdad. Even before the Saddam statue fell, Perkins had received word from higher headquarters, through Austin, not to fly the American flag. Someone at the higher command, watching the Fox feed, had seen Major Rick Nussio hold up a three-by-five-foot American flag on the parade grounds. An order came down: there would be no overt displays of triumph, no lording it over the Iraqis. Perkins radioed Nussio and told him to put the flag away. But he later suggested that his men turn their right shoulders—the shoulders with the Stars and Stripes patch—toward the Fox camera.

Perkins confirmed for Blount that the Rogue and Tusker crews had shut down their tanks to conserve fuel. It was standard operating procedure; the brigade had shut off the tank engines down south after seizing terrain and securing their positions. The turbine engines burned fifty-six gallons of fuel an hour while rolling at full clip, about thirty gallons an hour when maneuvering in battle. They had left on the mission that morning carrying eight to ten hours of fuel—conservatively, four hours to get into the city and four hours to get back. The mission was now approaching Hour Four—the hour Perkins had set for himself for reaching the decision to stay or retreat. The crews could still fire their weapons systems, but each hour the tanks were turned off bought Perkins another hour. He wanted to make sure he had enough fuel to get out of the city if it came to that, although he was confident Steph Twitty's China battalion would hold the Highway 8 interchanges that the tank battalions had just blasted through.

At the Spartan Brigade TOC—eighteen kilometers south of the city center—Lieutenant Colonel Eric Wesley was feeling vindicated. The battle plan he and Perkins had been discussing for months was playing out almost flawlessly. The tank battalions had penetrated to the heart of Saddam's regime without losing a single man—a remarkable achievement considering the number of forces arrayed against them and the size of Baghdad itself, a sprawling metropolis of more than 5 million people.

Wesley was in charge of the TOC, which was running smoothly and efficiently that morning. The TOC was the brigade's computerized brain. It was a portable command center created by parking armored communications vehicles back to back, like covered wagons in a circle. The TOC had been set up inside the abandoned agricultural warehouse complex, in an open courtyard framed by two-story buildings. Officers monitored battles on laptops and radar screens, and via secure FM and satellite radio networks. They stood at map boards and sat at terminals arranged on folding tables. Olive drab canvas had been stretched over metal frames to provide walls and a roof. All information and data were routed through the TOC—division headquarters at the airport, Perkins and the tank battalion commanders in the city, warplanes circling the city and spy planes high overhead, and the artillery and mortar teams and scout platoons. Wesley and his crew of battle captains and NCOs inside the command tent were monitoring the battle, receiving and relaying updates and situation reports.

Wesley had guided Perkins up Highway 8 that morning, relaying feeds from 150-foot-long E-8C surveillance planes equipped with JSTARS radar—the joint surveillance and targeting aperture radar system. The radar system's MTI—moving target indicator—provided real-time warnings of approaching vehicles by transmitting data to radar screens inside the TOC. Wesley was able to see blinking lights on a screen, superimposed with a map depicting Highway 8, and then warn Perkins by radio of any approaching enemy vehicles. Commanders in tanks and Bradleys kept track of other American vehicles by watching blue icons on digital maps displayed via the FBCB2 system. Through on-board GPS systems, each command vehicle constantly relayed its changing location to other vehicles equipped with FBCB2.

Through the system, also known as Blue Force Tracker, Wesley was able to communicate by text with Perkins if Perkins's vehicle was out of FM radio range. The TOC also relayed reports from air force pilots scanning the highway. Lieutenant Colonel Gantt's artillery was under TOC control, as were the mortar crews, the multiple rocket launchers, and the fighter planes providing close air support. The entire battlefield—from the tank crews at the Republican Palace and parade grounds to the infantry now setting up on the Highway 8 interchanges—was being choreographed at the TOC that morning.

Wesley had also been mindful of the propaganda war. He had been monitoring the intelligence radio frequency, listening for word of any media reports of American tanks in the city so that he could keep Perkins updated. The BBC was particularly significant because of its global reach and because the network had failed to report the presence of Rogue's tanks in the city during the April 5 thunder run. When Wesley told Perkins that the BBC was reporting American tanks inside the palace complex, cheers went up over the radio net.

At the same time, Wesley had been holding two embedded reporters at bay. Julio Anguita Parrado, a Spanish reporter, and Christian Liebig, a German journalist, had been pestering Wesley for permission to alert their home offices about the American incursion into central Baghdad. The two young men had decided not to ride in on the thunder run, judging it too dangerous, and now they were desperate to keep up with competitors embedded with units inside Baghdad. Wesley did not want Parrado and Liebig filing too early and revealing the brigade's battle plan prematurely. But when Wesley heard from Perkins that the tank battalions had secured the palace area, he nodded to the two reporters and said, “Go!” Cheers rose up inside the TOC as the reporters bolted from the TOC to call their offices on their satellite phones.

It was an emotional moment for Wesley. He and Perkins had been preparing for this mission for months, and now the brigade had taken over Saddam's government complex in a matter of hours. Things had moved more swiftly and dramatically than Wesley had ever imagined. He wanted to talk to Perkins privately, away from the monitored radio net, to congratulate him and share his own sense of elation. He walked out of the TOC to retrieve his iridium satellite phone from his Humvee, which was parked just inside the front gate of the compound. He took off his helmet and set it down on the hood, then stripped off his flak vest and tossed it inside the vehicle. He punched in Perkins's satellite phone number and wandered through the compound in the aimless way that people pace while talking on a mobile phone.

Perkins sounded upbeat and invigorated. He was standing inside Saddam's government complex now, and he tried to explain to Wesley how surreal it felt to be in control of a place that had been at the heart of the regime's command and control apparatus just days earlier. Wesley congratulated his boss, and the two men reflected on their planning sessions back in Kuwait and their preliminary bull sessions back at Fort Stewart.

“Eric, you wouldn't believe it,” Perkins said. “It's everything we would've hoped for.”

Wesley said, “Congratulations, sir, I—” and at that moment he heard what sounded like the whine of a low-flying airplane. For an instant Wesley wondered why close air support would be flying over the TOC, and so low. Then an orange fireball blew past him and a thunderclap slammed him to the ground. He was in the dirt now, struggling to catch his breath. All the oxygen seemed to have been sucked from the air. The sky had turned black. He felt an intense heat.

Wesley heard Perkins's voice: “What's up?”

He realized he still had the satellite phone in his hand. His head cleared. Now he realized what had happened. It wasn't an airplane he had heard. It was a surface-to-surface missile. The entire TOC compound was engulfed in flames.