One Bullet Away

“Moonlight, this is Hitman Two. We’re oscar mike to the zone.” (He used the abbreviation for “on the move.”)

“Roger, Hitman Two. Give us a buzz saw and a NATO-Y.”

The pilot had requested the most favored method for guiding a helicopter into a landing zone in the dark. The NATO-Y, standard throughout the Western militaries, is four chem lights tied to premeasured lengths of parachute cord. When laid on the ground and pulled taut, they form a Y. One of the Marines pulled it out, already tied, and cracked the four chem lights. He laid them across the landing zone, with the base pointing into the wind and the two legs marking touchdown points for the helicopter’s main landing gear.

The buzz saw is a single infrared chem light tied to a two-foot strip of parachute cord. The Marine cracked it and began swinging the cord like a lariat. Through night vision goggles, the spinning chem light stood out as a circle of shimmering light, a beacon to guide the aircrew into the little patch of grass where the team squatted in the tree line.

I turned my head as the rotor wash blasted dust and twigs against our bodies. Dull green light spilled from the cargo bay as the ramp dropped. The team leader counted his team aboard, placing his hands on each man. Then he reached into the grass beneath the ramp and yanked the NATO-Y up into the helicopter. Leave no trace. The pilots added power, and we headed toward breakfast. I’d heard recon Marines call themselves “the quiet professionals,” and now I understood why. Except for radio calls to the ROC, the team had spoken fewer than ten words in twenty-four hours.

By September 2002, the platoon had filled to full strength: twenty-three Marines divided into three teams of six and a five-man headquarters section. The whole battalion gathered on a Friday afternoon in the adobe mission-style chapel at the base. The topic was Iraq. It was an incongruous setting for a war briefing but the only building that could seat everyone comfortably. I walked in with Gunnery Sergeant Mike Wynn and Sergeant Brad Colbert.

Gunny Wynn was from Texas, wise and wiry. He had served in combat as a sniper in Mogadishu in the early 1990s, and then again while working at the U.S. embassy in El Salvador. When I’d learned he was going to be my platoon sergeant, I had called Eric Dill at his new post in Hawaii. “Get on your knees and thank God,” he said. “You got one of the best.” Like Staff Sergeant Marine, Wynn wasn’t a yeller. He earned the respect of his men by being honest and fair. As a more seasoned lieutenant, I didn’t require the same coaching I’d needed two years before, so Wynn and I were partners from the start.

Sergeant Colbert would lead Team One. He was a blond, cerebral San Diegan, known as “the Iceman” for his cool performance as a recon team leader on our raids near Kandahar a year before. We all slid into a wooden pew together and chatted before the start of the brief.

President Bush had recently told the United Nations that its failure to enforce resolutions against Iraq would leave the United States no choice but to act on its own. The senior Marines in the battalion had seen all this before, and the general consensus was still that diplomatic blustering would result in some kind of negotiated solution. No American tank would ever roll into Baghdad. The room grew quiet as the division chief of staff, a colonel, took his place on the altar.

“Worshiping the god of war,” Colbert muttered.

The colonel introduced representatives from the division staff, each of whom would brief his own area of expertise. A pimply lance corporal, described by the colonel as “the most knowledgeable person in the division about the Iraqi army, its weapons, and its tactics,” climbed the altar to give an intelligence brief. Gunny Wynn leaned toward me. “If that’s true, then we’re in a world of shit.”

I heard only pens scratching on paper as representatives from the division’s logistics shop ran through plans to use funnels to conserve water and explained how to test captured fuel for contamination. Suddenly, the colonel interrupted the brief.

“I don’t hear any motivation, Recon Battalion. Give me a ‘Kill.’”

He wanted us to shout “Kill!” to prove we were motivated by the brief. Looking at Wynn, I asked, “Who is this clown? Does he think he’s talking to recruits at Parris Island?”

The battalion chuckled and shifted uncomfortably, offering only a tepid response to the colonel’s order.

“Get up, go outside, and come back in here with a little more fire.”

I thought he was joking, but he pointed at the door without smiling. We shuffled out to the parking lot, about-faced, and reentered to sit down again. Gone were the professionalism and concentration. I saw and felt surliness and disappointment. We had come for a brief about the war. The colonel had treated us like children and lost us. I hoped our lives would never depend on him.