War Stories (42 page)

Once again, President Reagan was on the phone—this time with Italy's Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, who promised that all four would be tried for hijacking and murder. Craxi lied.

The three “trigger-men” were detained, but Abbas, dressed in the uniform of an airline pilot, was secretly put aboard a Yugoslav airliner and flown to Yugoslavia. From there the PLF terror chieftain flew to Tunisia to meet his old buddy Arafat. A few months later, fearing that the Israelis might be closing in on Abbas, Arafat arranged for him to move to Damascus and from there to Baghdad.

President George W. Bush had named Abbas in a speech last fall as part of his argument for removing Saddam Hussein from power. “Iraq has . . . provided safe haven to Abu Abbas,” he said, then added, “And we know that Iraq is continuing to finance terror and gives assistance to groups that use terrorism to undermine Middle East peace.”

The PLF faction led by Abbas has been a conduit for the money Saddam provided to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers—it's widely believed that millions of dollars have been provided for this purpose.

In response to the news from FOX News Channel about Abbas's capture, we hook up our satellite transceiver but learn little more other than CENTCOM's refusal to comment on whether Abbas would be detained in Iraq, at some American base, or in another country. Nor would anyone comment on whether Abbas would be tried in the United States for the
Achille Lauro
hijacking and its aftermath.

Later in the day, when someone at the network realizes that I was involved in the initial capture of Abbas, I am asked to recall the event. After nearly two decades, I can still hear President Ronald Reagan's
words when he told the nation what had happened: “You can run, but you can't hide.”

   
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #37

      
With RCT-5 and HMM-268

      
Samarra, Iraq

      
Wednesday, 16 April 2003

      
1800 Hours Local

We spend the night of the fifteenth and all the next day in the bombed-out shell of a Republican Guard headquarters of some kind. Col. Joe Dunford has brought his Alpha Command Group up and co-located it here with Sam Mundy's CP. And as if he knew what was coming, Lt. Col. Jerry Driscoll flew in here this morning with a section of CH-46s. It seems as though everyone here is aware that the mission is about to change dramatically for all of us. Dunford and Driscoll both have said that they expect the Marines to be pulled back down, south of Baghdad, at any moment.

While most of the organized fighting has stopped, there are still pockets of resistance in the major cities of Iraq, particularly Mosul and Baghdad. Most of the snipings and ambushes seem to be the work of irregulars, the fedayeen, some of the tens of thousands of criminals Saddam released from the prisons just before the start of the war, and, of course, remnants of the regime. These sporadic incidents are being readily put down and the nights are becoming more peaceful.

An interesting and touching moment occurs this morning as Driscoll's helicopters land in a farmer's field. As soon as the engines shut down, the farmer walks out to the helicopter. I expect a complaint for scaring his animals or damaging his crops. But instead I see that the farmer is carrying fresh chicken eggs—one for each crew member.

Gunnery Sgt. Pennington tries to decline, knowing that these eggs might well be all the farmer has. Pennington tries to offer the old man some of the humanitarian rations the Red Dragons carry. But the elderly farmer is adamant and insists that the Marines take the eggs. And so for the first time since leaving Kuwait, we have an omelet, and we eat it while the old man, sitting on his haunches, eats the rice from the U.S. ration package. The smile on his face transcends any language barriers.

After that shared breakfast, Jerry Driscoll and I walk over to the RCT-5 CP so that the pilots, crew chiefs, and corpsmen from the two helicopters can properly initiate Griff as an honorary Red Dragon air crewman. The ritual involves duct-taping Griff to a litter, carrying him to where a set of clippers can be plugged in, and then shaving his head. The mission is accomplished in less than five minutes to the tune of the Marine Hymn—intended to mask the sound of Griff's screams.

While Jenkins is getting his much-needed “trim,” Dunford, Driscoll, Mundy, and I are sharing some of Gunny Cheramie's good coffee. We had just gotten around the potential pleasures of a shower, clean clothing, and porcelain toilets when I get a call on my Iridium from the FOX News Channel foreign desk.

“How far is Camp Pennsylvania from where you are?” asks the duty officer in New York.

“About five hundred miles,” I reply. “It's in Kuwait. I'm just south of Tikrit. Why?” I ask with a twinge of uncertainty.

“Well, that's where the 4th Infantry Division is forming up,” he answers. “Someone at the Pentagon has asked for you to be embedded with them as they move into Iraq.”

“Yeah, well, tell 'em I smell real bad and maybe they'll take someone else,” I say, hoping that maybe Greg Kelly or Rick Leventhal might have been cleaned up by now.

“Can't,” he replies. “They asked for you by name. Besides, the other teams are on the way home.”

“Well, that's a stunner” is all I can say, knowing that this isn't going to go down well with Griff, who has a new baby at home. “How long?” I ask, hoping for an answer of a few days.

“Couple of weeks,” he says and then hastily adds, “There is some thought that they might find Saddam.”

“Okay,” I say, “a couple of weeks—but if I'm not home for my daughter's wedding in June, you might as well leave me here, because I'll be safer in Baghdad than in my own kitchen.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

YOU'RE IN THE ARMY NOW

   
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #38

      
With 3rd Battalion, 66th Armored Regiment

      
4th Infantry Division, U.S. Army

      
80 km south of Baghdad, Iraq

      
Saturday, 19 April 2003

      
0700 Hours Local

I
t's the road trip from hell. Or maybe this is hell. Griff and I are stuffed into the back seats of two Humvees headed slowly north across the southern desert—part of an enormous 4th Infantry Division convoy, crawling at less than fifteen kilometers per hour deep into Iraq. It's one hundred degrees Fahrenheit in the shade and—you guessed it—there's no shade. The dust kicked up by hundreds of vehicles swirls around us like a self-generated sandstorm. Grit coats everything and it cakes on our clothing where the sweat soaks through. My backside has been numb for at least a day. All feeling has left my feet. I am contemplating cruel forms of torture to inflict on the crazed sadists who work at the FOX News Channel foreign desk. Then I remember—I volunteered.

Early on the morning of April 17, Jerry Driscoll and his wingman flew Griff and me all the way back to Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait—a distance of more than five hundred miles—so that we could “marry up” with our new unit. We headed immediately for the MAG-39 billeting area and threw our filthy clothing into new washing machines and our bodies into the new showers. Both had been installed by the Seabees while we were in Iraq. It was the first real cleansing either of us had in twenty-nine days and it may well be the best shower I've ever taken.

Two hours later we emerged with clean bodies garbed in clean clothing, ready to join the Army. Not knowing where HMM-268 would be when we returned from covering the 4th ID, we made a quick round of “goodbyes,” “see-you-laters,” and “be carefuls” with the Marines before an Army SUV came by to pick us up.

The trip to Camp Pennsylvania—the TAA for the 4th ID up along the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border—takes less than an hour. We arrive in time for noon chow in the mess tent. After eating our first non-MRE meal in nearly a month, Griff and I go with our new hosts, the 66th Armored Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division, to load our gear aboard the vehicles that will be taking us back into Iraq. About a mile from the tents of the base camp, an enormous three-hundred vehicle convoy is formed up in four long columns of trucks, fuelers, Humvees, and scores of heavy equipment transporters.

Heavy equipment transporters are huge tractor-trailer rigs that have M-1 tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and M-113 APCs chained to their low-riding flatbeds. The Army calls them HETs, but in the Marines a HET is a “human exploitation team” that helps collect and interpret intelligence. In the Army, a HET is a rig that is twice as big as any eighteen-wheeler on an interstate highway in the United States. They are used to reduce wear and tear on armored vehicles by hauling heavy equipment from a staging area to a site nearer the battle zone, where the armored vehicles are off-loaded and deployed for
combat. The closest thing to these behemoths in the Marines are the tractor-trailers the engineers use to haul bulldozers and bridging equipment.

Maj. Douglas Cox, the convoy commander with whom we'll be riding, is surprised that the U.S. Marine Corps doesn't have any HETs until I explain that the Marines have to haul all their tools of war around on amphibious ships. One of his lieutenants listening to our conversation inquires skeptically, “Then how did the Marines get their tanks, LAVs, and AAVs all the way up to Tikrit?”

“They drove,” I answer.

“All the way?” he asks, incredulous.

“All the way from the ships that off-loaded them,” I reply, trying not to sound too smug.