Thunder Run (41 page)

On his balcony, Khaiber wheeled around and tried to squeeze off a few frames of an aircraft roaring overhead. He wanted to get a few more shots before stepping over to Protsyuk's balcony to retrieve camera gear he had left there.

On the bridge, the tanks began taking fire from a high-rise building at the eastern end, at the northern foot of the bridge. It was a beige structure with a light brown center concrete facade that protruded the length of the building. The crews began returning firing toward the base of the structure, where men with RPGs were running and hiding along the riverbank. Wolford radioed a request for a jet fighter to drop a bomb on the building to eliminate whoever was firing at his tanks. He described the building to Major Rideout back at the palace. The request was passed up the chain of command to Colonel Perkins.

Then the battalion was presented with a piece of intelligence that seemed to promise a way to disrupt the Iraqi mortar fire. Earlier that morning, in the part of the governmental complex controlled by the Rogue battalion, a Bradley crew had destroyed a car loaded with armed men. From the wreckage, the crews had recovered a two-way Motorola radio that was turned on and still working. It was a small black radio, about eight inches long and two inches thick, like a handheld police radio. Hearing voices chattering in Arabic, the crewmen turned the radio over to the battalion's military intelligence team.

Chief Warrant Officer Two Willis Young, a fluent Arabic speaker who specialized in human intelligence, was intrigued as he listened to the conversations coming over the radio. He took the radio to Nussio, the battalion's executive officer, who was in the back of his armored personnel carrier next to the converted public toilet that was serving as a command post at the edge of the parade grounds. Young translated for Nussio: someone in a tall building was describing an American tank on the Jumhuriya Bridge. He mentioned that he was in a building that contained a Turkish restaurant.

Nussio radioed Major Rideout at the Republican Palace and warned him that one of Wolford's tanks was being observed by an Arabic-speaker in a building across the river. He was concerned that the speaker was a forward observer—a spotter—for Iraqi mortar and artillery crews.

Rideout radioed Wolford at the intersection: “Hey, you've got an FO across the river with eyes on you. You need to pay close attention. I'll get back to you with more later.”

A minute later, Nussio radioed Rideout with an update. The voice on the radio was now describing more tanks across the river. He was telling someone that he wanted mortars fired to try to hit the tanks he saw on the bridge.

Rideout radioed back to Wolford and warned him to watch for mortars.

“We're getting mortars already!” Wolford told him. He described a garage across the river where RPG teams had taken cover behind construction equipment and were firing on his tanks. It was near the tan high-rise building. Rideout told Wolford to look for a building with a Turkish restaurant. That's where the forward observer was.

On the Jumhuriya Bridge, Staff Sergeant Gibson had been told by Lieutenant Middleton that a forward observer overheard on a two-way radio was in a high-rise building across the river, trying to direct mortar and artillery strikes. Middleton had relayed the report directly from Wolford, who had told him, “See if you can find a spotter.”

Gibson and Middleton were alarmed. At least one artillery shell and several mortar rounds had already slammed down on or near the bridge. If a forward observer now had a clear view of the bridge in order to direct mortar or artillery fire, he could easily bring it right down on their heads. American soldiers threatened by mortars or artillery are trained to locate the forward observer and kill him as quickly as possible. “We've got to find this guy,” Middleton said.

The tanks were receiving RPG and small-arms fire not only from the tan high-rise directly across the river, but also from gunmen running up and down a stretch of the opposite riverbank that extended hundreds of meters south of the bridge. Some of the tanks returned fire with coax and .50-caliber at RPG and machine-gun positions along that section of the opposite bank. As Gibson searched the opposite bank for anyone in a high-rise building, his gunner yelled up to him, “Hey, Sergeant Gibson, I got a guy over here looking at us with binoculars.” It was a man on the upper floor of a light-colored high-rise across the river, about a kilometer to the south.

Gibson dropped down and looked through the tank's magnified sights. The gunner had the sights on 3X magnification. Gibson punched it up to 10X. It was difficult to see through the haze and smoke, but when Gibson scanned the high-rise building the gunner had indicated, he saw a figure holding what appeared to be a pair of binoculars next to something on a tripod.

In his tank at the edge of the bridge, Lustig heard Gibson describe the tripod and “some kind of optics.” Lustig thought it might be a GLLD, a ground/vehicular laser locater designator—a tripod-mounted laser targeting device used by forward observers to direct artillery fire.

Middleton relayed the information by radio to Wolford. Moments later, the captain radioed the lieutenant back for a more detailed description. “What do you have?” he asked.

Middleton described the figure on the balcony, the tripod, and what appeared to be binoculars. Wolford asked him for the range—the distance to the building. He knew the marines were moving up the opposite bank somewhere to the south, and he was worried about accidentally firing on them. Middleton said the range was 1,740 meters. The captain told him to stand by.

The radio nets were humming. Wolford was trying to keep Rideout and deCamp informed, while also fielding reports and requests from his platoon leaders and directing his gunner in the firefight. Lieutenant McFarland radioed to ask about Captain Barry's position. Wolford gave McFarland the location, then turned his attention back to the situation across the river. He still wanted bombs dropped on the tan high-rise at the opposite end of the bridge, where gunmen were firing on his tanks. He was also worried about mortar fire, and in particular the forward observer Gibson and Middleton had just identified in the tall building across the river and farther south. The spotter had to be eliminated.

Wolford got back on the radio to Middleton. “Okay,” he told him, “you've got permission to take the target out.”

Middleton relayed the order to Gibson, who turned to his gunner and told him, “Fire a HEAT round at the target.”

The round erupted from the gun tube with an orange flash and tore into the side of the building, just below and to the right of the balcony where Gibson had seen the figure standing. It exploded in a cloud of gray smoke and debris. Gibson was fairly certain he had finally taken out the forward observer.

Moments later, Major Nussio called Rideout with an update from the monitored Motorola conversations: “Whatever you're doing, keep it up. This guy is now calling his buddy and saying he's getting suppressed and has to move.”

Rideout radioed Wolford and told him, “Whatever you're fucking doing right now, keep it up! You're starting to move the guy around. He has to find a new location.” Rideout thought it was a hell of a coup, to drive out a forward observer using a captured radio.

Now there was more fire coming from directly across the bridge. Gibson had his gunner traverse the gun tube. He spotted four men with RPG launchers as they took up firing positions behind a wall in an alley at the far eastern end of the bridge. He fired another main gun round that collapsed the wall and, Gibson thought, killed all four men. He traversed the gun tube again and scanned up and down the riverbank, searching for more targets.

Consumed by the fight, Gibson had no idea that the HEAT round fired moments earlier had mortally wounded Taras Protsyuk, the Reuters cameraman who had set up his camera on the balcony. Protsyuk was thirty-five, with a wife and an eight-year-old son. The impact had also struck Jose Couso, the Spanish cameraman who had been filming on the balcony below, severely wounding him in the face and leg. Couso was thirty-seven, with a wife and two children, aged six and three. Couso and Protsyuk both died of their wounds at Baghdad hospitals.

On the second balcony outside Room 1502, Reuters photographer Faleh Khaiber was knocked unconscious by the force of the blast, his head cut by flying debris. He recovered, along with two other journalists who were also injured by the exploding tank round.

At some point just before the Palestine was hit, Major Mark Rasins, the operations officer for the Tusker battalion, had been frantically trying to help Rideout and Wolford locate the building with the Turkish restaurant—based on the intercepted Motorola conversations. Rasins was extroverted and hands-on—the type of officer who was quick to address problems. Riding in a Bradley at the end of Barry's Cyclone Company as it moved past Wolford's company, Rasins was listening to the discussions over the brigade radio net. He thought the battalion needed to get out into the streets with an Arabic-speaking interpreter to find someone who could locate the Turkish restaurant. Rasins had the Bradley driver rush back to Sujud Palace, where Rideout had told him he could find Abdulla, a university teacher from California who was one of the brigade's interpreters.

Rasins and Abdulla arrived in the Bradley a few minutes later at an intersection held by Barry's company just off the west bank of the river at a bridge north of the Jumhuriya Bridge. They found a cluster of men in civilian clothes near the river. The men were like tourists, craning their necks and trying to see the firefights raging up and down the riverbanks. Abdulla spoke to a neatly dressed middle-aged man who said he knew the building where the Turkish restaurant was—it was directly across the Jumhuriya Bridge. It was the beige high-rise. That suggested that the Iraqi spotter overheard on the Motorola had been in that building. The man added that the building housing the restaurant recently had been taken over as the headquarters for Iraqi military intelligence. Rasins grabbed the man, put him in the back of the Bradley, and rushed to the Jumhuriya Bridge. But by the time they reached the intersection, the Palestine already had been hit.

Meanwhile, Colonel Perkins had begun to act on the Tusker battalion's request for an air strike on the beige high-rise. As he discussed the air strike with Major Rideout over the radio, Perkins was overheard by Greg Kelly, the embedded Fox News correspondent. Kelly was standing next to Perkins on the raised front driveway of Sujud Palace, where the colonel's command vehicle was parked. When Kelly heard Perkins discussing a high-rise building across the Tigris, he told the colonel to make sure the building wasn't the Palestine Hotel. Kelly knew the hotel was somewhere across the river, filled with journalists.

Perkins had never heard of the Palestine. The east bank of the Tigris was not his area of operations. It had been assigned to the marines, who were still fighting their way up through the southeastern edge of the city. Kelly told Perkins that most of the foreign press were staying at the Palestine. He knew it was across the river, but he wasn't certain of its exact location.

Kelly offered to call his New York office on his Thuraya satellite phone to try to find someone who could describe the hotel. He was given the number in Amman, Jordan, of a Fox producer who had recently stayed at the Palestine. Kelly reached the producer and jotted down notes as the man described the hotel. Kelly was trying to relay the descriptions to Perkins, but finally he just handed the phone to the colonel and let him speak to the producer himself. Kelly had been with Perkins for the entire war, and he had never seen him so insistent and agitated.

Perkins wanted to make sure that the building being targeted for the air strike wasn't the Palestine. He sent a soldier down the ramp to get Chris Tomlinson, an Associated Press reporter embedded with the brigade's Attack Company. Tomlinson, who had served in the army, was wearing a tanker's CVC communications helmet and had been monitoring the brigade's radio traffic. He rushed up the ramp to find Perkins desperately asking about the Palestine. Did Tomlinson know what it looked like?

Tomlinson had never been to the hotel, but he offered to contact the AP reporter based at the Palestine. He sent an e-mail message on his laptop and also tried calling on his Thuraya satellite phone. There was no reply. Much later, Tomlinson realized that the hotel had already been hit and that all the journalists were either fleeing their rooms or helping evacuate the mortally wounded reporters.

Tomlinson called the AP office in Doha, Qatar and asked Danica Kirka, his editor there, for the map coordinates of the Palestine. She didn't know, so she tried calling the Palestine and sending a text message over the AP internal network to the AP reporter there. Again, there was no reply. Kirka told Tomlinson that AP reporter Nico Price, now in Amman, Jordan, had just stayed at the Palestine. She patched Tomlinson through to Price, who gave him a detailed description of the building. Tomlinson took notes, then gave Perkins a description of a tall, pink-colored building with balconies jutting out at an angle. He told him it was located at the sharp bend in the Tigris River, right next to the Sheraton Hotel.

Perkins radioed Rideout at the palace with the description of the Palestine. He told the major that he wanted to be certain the high-rise directly across the bridge wasn't the Palestine Hotel before he approved dropping a bomb on it. Rideout said the high-rise wasn't pinkish in color, nor was it located next to any other tall building or the bend in the river, which was farther south. Based on the description he had been given by Wolford in preparation for the air strike, Rideout did not believe it was a hotel.

At this point, deCamp got on the net. Perkins told him to make sure his people didn't accidentally fire on the Palestine Hotel. DeCamp had never heard of the Palestine. It wasn't in his sector. The only hotel he knew about was the Rashid Hotel, which had been taken by the Rogue battalion the day before. But deCamp did know from Wolford, and from scouts posted behind the Republican Palace, that RPG teams and snipers were firing from positions up and down the opposite riverbank. He told Perkins that he'd find out about the Palestine.