Thunder Run (34 page)

One of Josh Wright's military instructors had once told him to analyze the countryside anytime he was driving his car, just to practice thinking about how he would defend the terrain. Wright had trained to maneuver in open desert, and his battalion had even trained briefly in Kuwait for urban combat. But he had never expected to be fighting at a highway interchange. It wasn't something he had ever thought about. And only after the battle was raging did he realize that combat wasn't like the fights he had seen in Hollywood movies. It was chaotic. Everything overlapped. It wasn't linear and confined. It was three-dimensional, with threats beating down from all directions.

Wright thought his most effective weapon at Moe was mortar fire. Thick stands of date palms blocked some of the fields of fire for the tanks and Bradleys, but the high arc of the mortars brought the rounds over the trees and straight down on the targets. A volley of 120mm mortars destroyed a technical mounted with a heavy machine gun to the southwest and killed several fighters using the vehicle for cover. In the wood line north and east of the interchange, groups of soldiers were advancing on Wright's infantrymen. He walked in seven “danger close” mortar missions, some to within a hundred meters of his infantrymen, and the mortars drove back the enemy with no harm to Wright's men. Wright was planning to bring in mortars on gunmen firing from buildings to his west, but then he got the apologetic radio call from the mortar platoon lieutenant at Curly, saying that he had used up all his rounds.

Wright had managed to get his snipers and infantrymen on the rooftops and upper stories of buildings to his north and south—though one infantryman was stabbed in the leg with a bayonet while clearing one structure. That not only gave Wright the high ground to fire down on the enemy,
but it also gave him more pairs of eyes—and thermal scopes—up high so that he had a better understanding of the battlefield. His fire support officer was also feeding Wright reports from air force pilots overhead of enemy armored vehicles approaching the interchange. Wright's tanks had already destroyed two BMPs, the Russian-made armored personnel carriers, and Wright warned the tank commanders to prepare for more.

By mid-afternoon, the losses had begun to pile up. Eight men had been wounded, including two of Wright's three platoon sergeants. Every vehicle had been struck at least once by an RPG. Staff Sergeant Jamus Patrick lost the coax gun on his Bradley to an RPG that punched through the front and sent a fireball streaking between Patrick's legs. A second Bradley coax was also knocked out, along with the main gun tube of a tank, which had a hole ripped straight through it by antiaircraft fire.

From the west and north came suicide cars and trucks, nearly twenty of them by mid-afternoon. One sedan was speeding at nearly one hundred kilometers an hour before a tank HEAT round blew it off the highway. The driver somehow survived and emerged firing an AK-47 until a burst of coax cut him down. From the west, a blue Chevrolet Caprice roared up to two Bradleys and was stopped by a blast of 25mm fire. The driver crawled out, holding a grenade. It detonated, blowing the man in half. Sergeant First Class Ford blew up a taxi that sped toward his tank carrying a crude bomb in the trunk fashioned from a propane cooking canister.

For Wright, the low point of the day came when an enemy team breached the perimeter. Somehow, a team of Iraqis rolled a 90mm recoilless rifle right under one of the main overpasses, behind Wright's tanks and Bradleys. A team of engineers was preparing to build barricades on the west side of the highway when the recoilless rifle team fired on their armored vehicle. The engineers responded with their mounted .50-caliber machine gun, killing the crew. Then they destroyed the gun with thermite grenades.

The incident alarmed Wright. The infantry had somehow missed the big gun when they cleared the interchange that morning. Wright started wondering how many more enemy teams had penetrated behind his lines. He pulled infantry platoons off the perimeter, one by one, and had them clear their quadrants again. They didn't find any other enemy soldiers, but they did uncover huge caches of RPGs, AK-47s, and Italian-made land mines. Only then did Wright realize just how carefully the Iraqis had prepared for a fight at Moe.

By about 3 p.m., Wright began to get urgent radio calls from his platoon leaders, warning him that they were amber on ammunition for both tanks and Bradleys, and amber on fuel for the tanks. They had already cross-leveled ammunition, trading off from crew to crew. Some of the crews were black—too low to sustain the fight—on .50-caliber and coax ammunition. Wright decided to consolidate his perimeter, to give up some of his gains in order to reduce the stress on men and machines trying to defend a bigger chunk of terrain. It was at that moment, and only at that moment, that Wright feared he might be overrun.

Wright radioed Twitty and laid out his fuel and ammunition situation, including the fact that some of his tanks were on their last fuel cells. They could still fight while shut down, but they would not be able to maneuver—and Wright did not want to be in that predicament with nightfall only a few hours away. He felt more confident after discussing the situation with Twitty, who assured him he would not let Wright go black.

Over the next hour or so, Wright's spirits soared and plunged. First he heard over the net that the resupply convoy had been launched. Then he heard it was ambushed. Then he heard the convoy had reached Curly and had resupplied the mortar crews, which meant Wright could now request mortars again. Then he heard that several ammunition trucks and fuelers had exploded at Curly—
his
fuel and ammo. Then he was told he had priority for any requests for artillery. And finally, he heard that the resupply convoy had reached Larry, where it was reconfigured in order to move farther north to supply Wright's team at Moe.

The firefight at Objective Larry had eased by the time Johnson, Bailey, and Polsgrove led the remainder of the resupply convoy north toward Objective Moe. But the fight at Moe was still in full swing, and the convoy rolled straight into it. Johnson and Wright talked over the net, with Johnson explaining that his men would hold their fire to avoid hitting friendly positions. Johnson trusted Wright, who knew the situation on the ground, to cover his convoy from enemy fire.

Johnson, under fire, led the convoy into the interchange. He paused long enough to allow the reconfigured fuel and ammunition trucks now designated for Wright's team to peel off. That was Johnson's understanding of what was supposed to happen; it was the way they had done it at Larry. But in the chaos and confusion of the handoff at Curly and, now, in the midst of the firefight at Moe, the lines of communication broke down.
Word had not reached the supply convoy, and the trucks were not peeling off at Moe. They were waiting to pull out behind Johnson. It was too dark and smoky at the interchange for Johnson to see what was happening behind him, but he assumed the supply trucks had peeled off to resupply Wright's combat team. But as Johnson pulled out to lead his men to secure the Kindi Highway, as ordered by Colonel Perkins, the resupply vehicles followed them.

From the commander's hatch on his Bradley, Wright watched them go. His heart sank. He had waited all afternoon for his fuel and ammunition, and now it was rolling up the highway and disappearing down the exit ramp to the Kindi Highway.

In the hatch of his armored personnel carrier, First Sergeant Moser could see the first hints of fear in the eyes of some of his men. They were all running low on ammunition. Moser had earlier discussed his ammunition needs over the net with Captain Bailey when Bailey was with the resupply convoy at Curly. Now Moser's M113 crew was completely out of 7.62mm ammunition, which meant they could fire neither of their big M-240 machine guns. He thought about borrowing some 7.62mm ammunition from the Bradley crews but, as the first sergeant in charge of tracking fuel and ammunition, he knew the Bradleys were running low, too. Then Moser saw the resupply convoy roll past the interchange and speed toward the city. That was
his
fuel and ammo. “What the hell are we supposed to do now?” he said.

SIXTEEN

PLAYING THE GAME

S
omewhere in the jumble of supply trucks and Humvees lined up on Highway 8, somebody was playing a George Strait CD. Lieutenant Philip Xuan Luu usually let his guys listen to music during downtime, and this was certainly downtime. Luu's support platoon had been stacked up on the highway, just west of the brigade command post, for several hours on the morning of April 7. There wasn't much else to do except listen to music and talk. Luu was in charge of the fuel and ammunition support platoon for the Desert Rogues battalion, whose combat teams were now firmly established in the palace complex downtown. Since topping off the Rogue tanks with JP8 fuel just before they launched the thunder run at dawn, Luu's men had been sitting and waiting for the call to roll north to bring up the battalion's fuel and ammunition—the R2 package, for rearm and refuel. Each of these battalions had its own resupply package.

Luu had no idea what was going on in the city. He had lost radio contact with his superior, Captain Anderson Puckett, the battalion S-4, or supply officer, who had gone into the city on Rogue's armored column. Luu had only two radios, so every time he wanted to communicate with the rest of the vehicles, he had to walk up and down the column, speaking to his men one at a time. He liked to keep his people informed. They were nervous about pushing all the way up into Baghdad in soft-skinned vehicles, and Luu wanted to reassure anyone who might need a little bucking up.

Luu was twenty-five, the son of Vietnamese immigrants. His father had been a lieutenant in the South Vietnamese navy and had seen action in the Vietnam War. As Saigon was falling, he fled as a political refugee, passing through refugee camps in the Philippines and Guam before a Lions Club in Arkansas sponsored his entry into the United States in 1975. Philip Luu grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, where his father had found work as a
car mechanic. In part because his father had attended a military academy in Vietnam, Luu decided to attend West Point. He was commissioned in May 2000, and had been in the army less than three years by the time he was put in charge of Rogue's support platoon.

Hauling fuel and ammo wasn't the most glamorous job of the war, but Luu knew it was essential—every bit as essential as commanding a tank or Bradley platoon. He knew the combat teams depended on his platoon to keep them supplied with the matériel they needed to sustain a fight, and that the armored crews appreciated their efforts. And in this case, in the pivotal battle of the war, Luu and his men absolutely had to reach the city center in order for Rogue to fight through the night.

The George Strait music was still playing when Luu heard what sounded like a jet fighter flying overhead. He was in his Humvee with his helmet off, chatting with his former roommate from Fort Stewart. Luu's driver, Private First Class James Lundquist, yelled out, “Hey, LT, there's one of our jets getting ready to hit some targets. That's cool!”

Then somebody hollered “Incoming!” and the TOC went up in flames in the compound across the highway. Luu thought the convoy was being bracketed by artillery. He had always told his soldiers to move out immediately if they ever came under artillery fire. Now, even before he could pull on his helmet and give the circular arm signal to move out, his drivers were in their truck cabs and cranking the engines. Luu saw the support platoons for Tusker and China start to move, but he had no idea where they were going. He didn't know where he was going, either, but he knew he had to get his vehicles out of the impact zone.

His convoy was in the southbound lanes of Highway 8 because the other two support platoons were jammed into the northbound lanes. Luu ordered Lundquist to speed north. He knew the lanes had been blocked up ahead because the engineers had not yet cleared mines from the southbound lanes, but he was hoping to find a way to turn off before he reached the minefield.

Luu spotted a dirt road to the left and yelled at Lundquist to take it. Lundquist was screaming at him, “LT, where we going? Where we going?” Luu told him to shut up and make the left turn. The road took them west, then turned sharply to the south, back toward the burning TOC.

“We're headed back to the impact area!” Lundquist screamed.

“Don't worry about it,” Luu said. “Just keep driving.”

Luu braced for another artillery barrage and began thinking about which way he would go if they got bracketed. The road turned again, leading them around the TOC and then to the south. Luu led the convoy down, speeding for nearly four kilometers before signaling everybody to pull over and park in a herringbone pattern for security. They were now well south of the TOC. Some of the drivers were pretty shaken up, and Luu walked back and tried to calm them. It didn't help matters when word came over the radio that the TOC had been incinerated by a missile, with several KIAs.

They waited for a good while on the highway until Luu heard from Captain Puckett, who had located a radio that allowed him to get through over the battalion net from his position downtown.

“Be careful,” Puckett told Luu. “The brigade TOC got hit.”

“Yes, sir, I know that,” Luu said.

“And Three-Fifteen just got ambushed.”

Luu hadn't realized that China's resupply convoy had moved north, much less that it had been hit.

“Damn, I didn't know that,” he said.

“Highway Eight is still hot,” Puckett said. “Sit tight down there and wait a couple more hours.”

Luu was relieved. His men were professionals and would follow orders, but few of them were eager to drive their soft-skin vehicles through a free-fire zone. In part because of the ambush of the China convoy, four Bradleys were being dispatched now from the city center to escort the convoy. Each of the five ammunition trucks was mounted with a .50-caliber machine gun, and both Luu's Humvee and his platoon sergeant's Humvee also had .50-calibers. Even so, it was eighteen long kilometers into the palace complex.

Two hours passed, and Luu and his men began to assume that they would be spending the night on the highway. It was mid-afternoon, and they knew that commanders did not want the resupply convoy trying to negotiate Highway 8 in the dark. They figured they would go in at first light. That was okay with most of the crews, who preferred to give the combat teams at the interchanges more time to secure the highway.

Then Luu got a radio call from Captain Puckett. “We're going to spend the night in Baghdad,” he said. “We need you to come up, bring all your fuel trucks, all your ammo trucks.”

Luu wasn't expecting the order at this late juncture. “Are you kidding?” he asked.

“No, I'm not,” Puckett said flatly. He paused and added, “By the way, the highway is still hot.”

Luu and Puckett had a sort of running joke going between them, involving Luu's pleas during earlier thunder runs to have his guys included. Several times down south, Puckett had refused to include the support vehicles during combat missions. Some of Luu's guys were action junkies, and they wanted a taste of combat. Luu had thought he did, too. But now, with Puckett ordering them into the middle of the brigade's biggest fight of the war, he wasn't so sure.

“Hey,” Puckett reminded Luu, “you wanted to play the game.”

Luu laughed and said, right over the radio net, “Yeah, but I didn't want to play
this
game.”

Luu walked down the convoy line, breaking the news to the drivers and gunners on the fuel and ammunition trucks. They seemed more surprised than afraid. Luu reviewed the rules of engagement—all the details about firing warning shots into the roadway and then into engine blocks if vehicles approached the convoy. Luu didn't expect his men to waste a lot of time on warning shots, given what had happened to the 3-15 resupply convoy. He told them not to be afraid to shoot at anything that seemed to be a threat. “If it looks suspicious,” he said, “go ahead and light it up.”

When Luu got back to his Humvee at the head of the convoy, he had a sudden worrying thought: What would happen to his bike if he got killed? He had a beautiful Harley-Davidson motorcycle back home. It was his prized possession. He didn't want to go into the fight without clearing up that little piece of business. He sat down with the guys inside his Humvee and gave them specific instructions. If he didn't make it, they were to make sure the bike was handed over to his best friend back in Fort Worth.

At the palace complex that afternoon, Lieutenant Colonel Flip deCamp had discussed his resupply needs with Colonel Perkins. DeCamp's tanks had been shut down for several hours, saving significant amounts of JP8 fuel. But with nightfall approaching, deCamp wanted his tanks to be able to maneuver if the Iraqis launched a counterattack in the dark. The tank battalions would not risk staying the night without the resupply convoys.
The only question now was when to launch them—and how to protect them. By mid-afternoon, deCamp thought the time had come to order his battalion's convoy up Highway 8. Perkins agreed, and he told deCamp to launch the package.

DeCamp decided that speed, not armor, was the convoy's best defense. He thought it was safer to go with wheeled vehicles, which could move faster than the tracked vehicles. For security, he would dispatch a scout platoon in armored Humvees mounted with .50-caliber machine guns. With just Humvees and trucks, the convoy could probably maintain a forty-five-mile-per-hour clip, fast enough to speed through the enemy gauntlet, with the .50-calibers laying down suppressive fire.

The officer in charge of coordinating the resupply run was Major Kent Rideout, the battalion's executive officer and deCamp's number two man. Rideout was posted in the driveway outside the Republican Palace, where Assassin Company had set up its tanks and Bradleys in a defensive perimeter. He radioed Captain Ed Ballanco, the S-4, or supply officer, who was now with the Task Force 4-64—the Tusker battalion—resupply convoy parked along Highway 8 just north of the new brigade TOC. Rideout told Ballanco that deCamp had decided to launch the convoy in order to get it to the palace before dark. “You're going with wheels only,” he said.

Ballanco didn't like hearing that. He wanted to take armor along. There was a tank available—in fact, it was deCamp's command tank, HQ Six Six, nicknamed
Hannibal.
The mechanics had worked on it all night, trying to get a broken track repaired, and now it was finally ready to go. DeCamp had been forced to ride into Baghdad in a tank commanded by one of the company executive officers, which meant the battalion commander had been loading ammo and firing an M-240 while trying to direct the battle over the radio. Now, with deCamp's tank repaired and ready, Ballanco wanted to use it as a security escort.

Over the net, Ballanco asked Rideout: “You
do
know what happened to Three-Fifteen's LOGPAC?”—the logistical resupply package for Task Force 3-15, the China battalion. Ballanco had heard, incorrectly, that five men had been killed in the highway ambush of China's resupply convoy, not two.

“Just wanted to make sure you knew about that because we're going to go in and it's going to be hot all the way through,” he told Rideout.

“Roger, I know that,” Rideout said. “But we need that LOGPAC in here right away.”

Ballanco considered just saying the hell with it, he'd take the tank anyway. It could keep up with the wheeled vehicles. Ballanco had argued with Rideout on previous occasions, and a couple of times he had just gone ahead and done things his way, regardless of what Rideout wanted. He and Rideout usually worked it out later. But now Ballanco decided to do it Rideout's way, to forget about the tank and do what he was told.

Ballanco had a long discussion with the captain in charge of the scout escorts about how to stagger the vehicles in the convoy. They decided to put scout Humvees at the front and rear, then blend the other scout Humvees into the convoy, each one protecting a pair of fuel and ammunition trucks. They made sure to separate the fuel trucks so that if one fueler was hit, it wouldn't trigger the explosion of another fueler. Ballanco would ride in the middle of the convoy, in his Humvee. It was a soft-skinned Humvee, but it had a .50-caliber mounted on top.

Then Ballanco was reminded that Rideout had told him earlier to leave his Humvee and ride in the engineer company commander's M113 armored personnel carrier. The carrier had three radios, versus just one radio in Ballanco's Humvee. Going in the M113 would give Ballanco better communications. The engineers, along with the mortar teams and other tracked vehicles, would be coming up separately from the main convoy, about twenty minutes behind.

Ballanco didn't like the idea. He was asking his drivers to go up Highway 8 in soft-skin fuel and ammo trucks. He'd look like a coward in front of his own men if he suddenly opted for the relative safety of an M113. And if he left his Humvee behind, he would be stuck inside the city without his own means of transportation and without all his gear. He would also have to leave behind his Humvee driver and gunner. Both men were begging Ballanco not to leave them. They were young and eager to get into the fight. Ballanco's gunner, Private Justin Morey, was eighteen. His driver, Specialist Christopher Wood, was twenty-one. To Ballanco, a ripe old twenty-nine, they seemed like kids. They hadn't seen much combat, and they didn't want to miss the pivotal battle of the war. They were hounding Ballanco: “Come on, sir, come on! Take us in!”

Finally Ballanco made the call. He was taking the Humvee. He tried to amuse himself with a morbid thought: if he ended up getting killed in a soft-skin vehicle after being ordered to ride in a personnel carrier, he'd have some explaining to do.

Ballanco was an independent type, a bit of a risk-taker. He had grown up as an air force brat, the son of a fighter pilot, and he had always wanted to be a fighter pilot himself. But in college, at Florida State, he decided to join the army ROTC, mainly because he thought the army offered more leadership possibilities. He was commissioned after graduating in 1996, and he welcomed the opportunity to serve in Iraq after his father had served in the first Gulf War.