Hunters - U.S. Snipers In The War On Terror Page 10

  To start the mission, the marines assembled at the mouth of the valley. Mortar men pre-set target points while infantrymen prepared their weapons. Having already packed, Evers, Rush, and Parish arrived at night and immediately moved out. When Rush had entered the Korengal before, they had been hit. He knew that ACMs ran wild in the region, and he expected a fight.

  The three snipers departed under a serious mood. They wanted payback for the SEALs and were angry at having to do another seemingly endless trek through the mountains.

  On the first night, Rush and his team made it to the top of the nearest mountain and rested at the edge of a large grass field. It took them most of the night to reach the peak. They were fully camouflaged in green blouse tops to match the vegetation of trees and brush above the ground, and desert trousers and boots to blend with the dirt and rocks. They had also painted their faces.

  Though they were loaded down, they carried only standard equipment. Rush had an M16 with sixteen magazines, a range finder, spotting scope, tripod, binoculars. Evers had the M40A3 and an M4 with two radios. Parish had an M16, his medical kit, and explosives. By now, they were conditioned to carrying such heavy packs, and patrolling with them was easy.

  They waited the rest of the night, and in the morning the push began. For five days, the snipers acted as the eyes for the marines on the valley floor. Before the marines moved, Rush and Evers used their binoculars to scan the hillsides and lowlands for fighters preparing to ambush the team. Rush remembered the observation skills taught in sniper school; the school had prepared him for what they were now doing.

  In that time the snipers took on a hunter’s mentality. They realized that it was the enemy’s home turf, yet they weren’t crippled with fear. Moving through the trees and along rocky trails, they observed target areas for the battalion, and by the end of the first week, they were deep into the heart of the valley, at the base of Sawtalo Sar.

  Shah’s men lived on the valley’s highest peak, Sawtalo Sar. Rush’s sniper team arrived at the base of it before the company and waited for the infantry to meet them. After a quick rendezvous, surveillance aircrafts reported that eighty of Shah’s fighters were trying to escape. When he heard that, Evers told the company commander that his snipers would probe the village where Shah’s men were holed up. It was a plan, and the snipers resupplied themselves with food and water and then began to climb the mountain.

  It was a difficult march for the snipers. Rush was slightly paranoid knowing that it if they made contact, it would be eighty versus three. The region was Shah’s safe haven and the place where the Navy SEALs had died. They climbed for most of the night, but stopped to rest. As a precaution, they emplaced claymores around them while they slept. Rush did not want to sleep, so he took three No-Doz pills to stay awake and let his teammates rest all night. Early the next morning, they moved again, and made it to the mountain only ten minutes earlier than the company who had been moving all through the night.

  When the marines arrived, they stormed the hilltop without resistance. The company set out a perimeter allowing others to investigate the structures and debris left behind by Shah’s men. Rush noticed the wreckage area of the helicopter carrying the SEALs and the fighting positions that Shah’s men had used. Foxholes, barriers, and hides covered the mountainside.

  All the while, Evers talked with the company commander about their next objective. The marines were moving back down the hill and out of the immediate area, requesting that the snipers cover their movement.

  “Hey, guys, they’re going to take off soon,” Evers informed his team. “We’re going to stay on the ridgeline and provide over-watch for them,” he continued.

  Rush knew the plan. The snipers would continue to be advance warning, and shortly after, they threw on their packs and moved out. Along the way, Rush observed the area for the marines, and after they moved past a clearing, the snipers unexpectedly ran into a single man. He appeared to be a goatherd, but with no goats. Evers searched him, but he was clean of any communications devices. Parish took his picture for identification and they let him go in the opposite direction.

  “I just got a really bad feeling from that guy,” said Parish, “I could see it in his eyes.”

  Rush thought nothing of it as they moved forward. As a safeguard, Evers told Rush to use the spotting scope to make sure they weren’t going to walk into an ambush. The threat of eighty fighters still remained. A thorough search revealed nothing and the snipers pressed on. They patrolled as they always had; Evers liked to walk point, with Parish in center, while Rush took tail end Charlie.

  Evers stressed stealth. The snipers always moved slowly and precisely, careful of the noise they made. It was a fundamental element for the success of such a small team. Five minutes after releasing the goatherd, the three snipers crept down a small hilltop before entering an open field with waist-high grass. There, suddenly, gunfire opened up on them.

  From the other side of the field, militants shot at the snipers. Rush knew nothing but to react. Bullets cracked near his head and arm, narrowly missing his body. He raised his rifle toward the militants and threw a long burst at them. In a flash, he remembered the immediate action drills that he had done for physical training every Thursday back in the States, and also during the mountain sniper course. His reactions were etched into his brain.

  In front of Rush, Parish unleashed his M16. However, the first volley of AK fire from the militants sent one bullet into Parish’s leg and another into his chest, knocking him onto his back. His night vision goggles and magazines stopped the second bullet, but his leg was useless. The bullet had entered below his knee and ricocheted up, tearing muscle tissue and eventually breaking his femur.

  The meeting was chance contact between the two groups. Nearly twenty militants were not expecting to find the snipers at such close proximity. In passing, they noticed the snipers and were the first to fire.

  After firing, Rush turned and bounded back as he was taught. With his back to the firefight, he felt two bullets hit his pack. Luckily they didn’t hurt him, but he knew what he needed to do next.

  “Drop your pack so you can move faster or you’re going to die,” he thought to himself.

  Steps later, he fell on his knee, pulling the quick release straps and flinging his heavy pack to the ground. At the same time, he thought about his teammates. He heard them shooting, but the enemy fire outweighed theirs. Instinctively he turned and returned fire.

  Rush dumped an entire magazine before turning to run. He was on his feet for a couple of seconds before two bullets slammed into his back SAPI plate. It felt like two sledgehammers smashing into his back. The impact shoved him forward, but he didn’t fall; instead he took a few more steps before spinning to return fire once more.

  The militants didn’t let up. They continued to fire, but the snipers answered well. Rush and Parish were not aware that immediately after contact, Evers had dropped to the ground, moved to cover, and called in mortars and artillery, even after it was deemed danger close.

  Rush’s adrenaline kept him shooting and moving quickly. While running back once more, he was shot again in the back, but his SAPI plate held strong, keeping the third bullet from entering his body. After the impact, Rush anticipated his own death. After not hearing or seeing him for a while, he assumed that Evers had been killed, and he knew that Parish was injured.

  When he stood up, immense fire rained in on him. Fifty meters away, the militants yelled at one another. Rush clearly heard their voices and remembered the video of them killing the Navy SEALs, but he was determined to fend them off. A quick check showed that he still had plenty of ammunition, and with that, Rush moved back again. He was just about behind the small hill that they had walked down. There he decided would be his last stand.

  At the same time, Parish had crawled around the hilltop as well. Rush was resting on his knee, looking for the militants, when he smelled a familiar scent. Back home in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, he had hunted deer as a kid
and he remembered the stench of gushing blood while gutting them. That was the smell, except it was not a deer he smelled, but blood from Parish’s leg.

  Parish was severely wounded and quickly losing massive amounts of blood. Rush had no choice but to set a tourniquet on his leg. The damage made Parish pale and left him in excruciating pain; Rush could see it on his face. Next, Rush thought about Evers and called out his name.

  “Evers!” he yelled, but to no avail.

  Evers had finished calling for fire and was crawling to Rush’s voice. Rush was just about to go look for Evers, when he saw him coming. It was a complete relief.

  “Keep your heads down, we’ve got support and it should be dropping soon,” said Evers.

  Evers, a qualified emergency medical technician, quickly looked over Parish. He and Rush dragged him to a more defendable position, and Parish did not look well.

  “Do you want morphine?” asked Evers, but Parish declined. He wanted to be conscious when the men tried to overrun them.

  Rush knew that he’d been shot, but it had not dawned on him that the SAPIs had saved his life. He felt as though he might be in shock, but when Evers inspected him, only small amounts of blood were lifted from his back.

  Suddenly, their lifelines were extended. Artillery and mortars began to fall, but they were close. The snipers lay down while explosions rocked the immediate area. Rush felt balls of dirt and rocks hitting him. At the nearest break, Evers remembered his pack had the sniper rifle strapped to it. He had dropped it before crawling away. He was not going to let the militants make off with his gear and he made a dash to get it.

  All the while, the other marines rushed to help the snipers. Once they heard the shooting, a platoon commander grabbed ten marines and ran to the snipers’ position, arriving just after the fire support had finished.

  Evers retrieved his pack, only to turn around for Parish’s, which contained the medical equipment. With it, he helped Parish while Rush kept security. One of the other marines called in a medivac.

  When it was all over, the marines swept through the area and were astounded. Not a single piece of brass was left from the enemy’s position. They had cleaned up everything except two small shards of a rag with blood on them.

  Soon, a secure landing zone was formed. Parish took morphine and was attached to an IV. Two Apaches held security for two Black-hawks to pick up Parish. Rush was ordered to go as well. He was excited to get a ride from the valley, and that he’d soon be sleeping in a bed after eating hot chow. He did feel bad for the two poor souls who were forced to carry his and Parish’s packs after they were not allowed on the helicopter.

  In the end, Parish was medically discharged. Rush was cleared of medical injuries soon and went back to sniper operations. After the incident, restrictions were set on the snipers. They weren’t allowed outside the wire with less than six men, and they needed a squad security element within ten minutes’ distance.

  For Rush, his sniper operations in Afghanistan were finished. Soon he would be back home and on his way to another war, a few thousand miles away in Iraq. He had gained respect for the enemy fighters in Afghanistan. They fought hard and with skill. On his next tour, the enemy he faced would not be much like their counterparts in Afghanistan. They would be much easier prey.

  SIX

  AREA OF OPERATIONS: IRAQ

  WITHIN two months of arriving to Iraq’s western Al-Anbar Province, Sergeant Santos, a Marine sniper, learned the dangers of traveling there. By October of 2004, roadside bombs made very few things more dangerous than navigating the country’s roads. The IEDs used by insurgents put all convoys in jeopardy, but one night Santos eluded certain death by twenty feet, and a week later he returned the favor to the insurgents.

  It started when he and his partner Steve joined two more snipers for an observation mission. Their task was to find and eliminate those responsible for planting bombs near a certain intersection. Insurgents favored that particular crossing and were able to plant IEDs there for months with no repercussions.

  For insertion, the snipers rode with MAP Three Squad, from the battalion’s Mobile Assault Platoon. To avoid mass casualties, they dispersed into separate vehicles. To determine who won the most dangerous ride, a seat in the lead vehicle, the snipers normally played rock, paper, scissors, but this time Santos took it instead.

  Experience had taught the MAP squad to travel with infrared lights and night vision goggles to avoid detection by insurgents. After a quick forty-five-minute drive, they arrived at the intersection. Santos’s Humvee stopped twenty feet from the crossing, and the marines dismounted to search for IEDs.

  Potholes and craters from previous explosions lay scattered about. Santos stuck close to the squad leader, and they both checked different holes, knowing that insurgents used them to hide mines or IEDs. When they reached the largest hole, in the middle of the road, the squad leader shoved a pencil into the dirt at an angle and hit something.

  “Check this out,” he said to Santos, who took a knee beside him.

  Wiping away the top layer of dirt, the marines uncovered two green antitank mines stacked on each other. Had they not stopped, their vehicle would have been the first to get hit, and with that amount of explosive, they would have surely died.

  It was a wakeup call for Santos. Right then, he made it his personal mission to stop the roadside bombs there. That night, as MAP Three waited for explosive ordnance disposal technicians to blow the mines, Santos, his partner, and the other team members hiked to a hilltop nearby to keep eyes on the area.

  The next morning, they realized that the elevated position gave them a commanding view. From left to right, the open desert stretched as far as their eyes could see. A civilian road spanned east to west, eventually running along the base of their hill only 100 meters (330 feet) below them. Another road, strictly limited for Coalition Forces use only, ran north to south, and where the two roads met marked the intersection at eight hundred meters (half a mile) from the team.

  Two days later, around noon, Santos’s partner, Steve, was on watch. Santos and the other team leader, Adam, rested while the last marine, Anthony, held radio watch and rear security. Shortly after he took over, Steve watched a vehicle pull into view.

  “Hey, a truck just stopped,” he informed his team. Normally, civilians slowed at the intersection to avoid colliding with military vehicles, but stopping was strictly prohibited.

  When the snipers heard this, they all reached for optics. A large semitruck was parked on the east-west road, and the driver quickly jumped from the cab and sprinted to the pothole where the mines had been found. There, he dug into the dirt, and once he realized that the mines weren’t there, he ran back into his truck.

  As team leaders, Santos and Adam were forced to make a decision. The man obviously knew about the mines, but he didn’t appear to have weapons. They decided that it was best to stop the truck anyway.

  “Engage him,” they said.

  That’s exactly what Steven wanted to hear. He quickly pulled the .50-caliber M-107 in front of him and aimed in. They had previously ranged the intersection and preset their scopes to fit the distance. Two months out of sniper school, Steven would now be putting the training to use, but by the time he had settled in for a shot, the truck was driving away.

  “Aim below the engine block,” said Adam, but the truck’s velocity caused Steven’s first shot to hit the trailer attached to the back of the semi.

  At that speed, sniper rifles were useless.

  “Cease fire,” said Adam, patting Steven on the back. They figured that the driver wouldn’t have been able to see the one shot, and hopefully he hadn’t realized that he was being targeted.

  After reporting the incident, the team stayed in place. Steven beat himself up over the shot, but Santos explained that almost anyone would have missed. Around dusk, the snipers prepared to extract. In a few hours a MAP squad would take them back to base, and while they packed, Steven took watch again and noticed that a c
ar had stopped at the intersection.

  “Guys, we have another vehicle,” he relayed to the others.

  This time Steven had the SASR handy. When the snipers looked toward the vehicle, they saw two men jump from the backseat and run to the side of the road. They carried shovels and dug, while a third man carried two objects toward them; they were artillery rounds fashioned into IEDs.

  “This is it,” said Santos. They didn’t have time to report the action; they had to engage before the men escaped. He asked to use Adam’s M40A3 lying nearby.

  “Go ahead, I’ll spot,” said Adam.

  Steven planned to disable the car while Santos targeted the men. The two of them lay side by side and waited for Adam to count down to fire simultaneously and minimize the insurgents’ ability to locate them.

  “Five, four, three, two, one” counted Adam, and the snipers opened fire.

  Santos, however, laying next to Steven, hadn’t anticipated the back blast of the .50-cal. It threw dirt into his eyes and knocked his rifle over before he could fire. When he recovered, he quickly picked his rifle up and scooted to the left, out of the Steven’s dust.

  When he found the car, Steven’s bullets sent sparks into the air like fireworks. The driver realized the situation and started the vehicle. Santos swung his rifle to the right, searching for the men digging; one stood completely still, in shock. He was Santos’s first target.

  Wiping dirt from his face, Santos concentrated. His crosshairs bounced momentarily until he slowed his breathing and relaxed. The man in his sights turned his head toward the car, just as Santos let one fly, but his shot missed. It was close enough to make the man duck, but instead of running for the car, he ran in the opposite direction.