Phil Klay - Redeployment

Staring at Vicar, it was the same thing. This feeling, like, something in me is going to break if I do this. And I thought of Cheryl bringing Vicar to the vet, of some stranger putting his hands on my dog, and I thought, I have to do this.

I didn’t have a shotgun, I had an AR-15. Same, basically, as an M16, what I’d been trained on, and I’d been trained to do it right. Sight alignment, trigger control, breath control. Focus on the iron sights, not the target. The target should be blurry.

I focused on Vicar, then on the sights. Vicar disappeared into a gray blur. I switched off the safety. There had to be three shots. It’s not just pull the trigger and you’re done. Got to do it right. Hammer pair to the body. A final well-aimed shot to the head.

The first two have to be fired quick, that’s important. Your body is mostly water, so a bullet striking through is like a stone thrown in a pond. It creates ripples. Throw in a second stone soon after the first, and in between where they hit, the water gets choppy. That happens in your body, especially when it’s two 5.56 rounds traveling at supersonic speeds. Those ripples can tear organs apart.

If I were to shoot you on either side of your heart, one shot… and then another, you’d have two punctured lungs, two sucking chest wounds. Now you’re good and fucked. But you’ll still be alive long enough to feel your lungs fill up with blood.

If I shoot you there with the shots coming fast, it’s no problem. The ripples tear up your heart and lungs and you don’t do the death rattle, you just die. There’s shock, but no pain.

I pulled the trigger, felt the recoil, and focused on the sights, not on Vicar, three times. Two bullets tore through his chest, one through his skull, and the bullets came fast, too fast to feel. That’s how it should be done, each shot coming quick after the last so you can’t even try to recover, which is when it hurts.

I stayed there staring at the sights for a while. Vicar was a blur of gray and black. The light was dimming. I couldn’t remember what I was going to do with the body.

LT says drop the fucking house.Roger that. We go to drop the fucking house.

I gather my guys, make a sand-table diagram. I’ve got a dip in while I brief, and the dip spit’s evaporating as soon as it hits the ground.

HUMINT says the place is an IED factory filled with some bad motherfucking hajjis, including one pretty high up on the BOLO list. SALUTE report says there’s a fire team–sized element armed with AKs, RPKs, RPGs, maybe a Dragunov.

I make 2nd Fire Team the main effort. That’s Corporal Sweet’s team, and Sweet’s a fucking rock star. Stellar NCO. Sweet’s SAW gunner is PFC Dyer, and Dyer’s excited because here’s a chance to finally pop his cherry and shoot somebody. He’s nineteen, one of our baby-wipe killers, and all he’s killed so far in the Corps has been paper.

I put 1st Fire Team in support. Corporal Moore’s team. Moore’s a bit of a motard, always thinks his fire team should be main effort, like it’s a fucking prize. He could be less oo-rah, but he’s good to go.

I put 3rd Fire Team in reserve, as usual. They’re Malrosio’s, and he’s dumber than Fabio on two bottles of NyQuil. 3rd’s had an easy deployment so far because I don’t give his team anything too complicated. Sometimes it helps to be led by an idiot.

When we get to the house, the other squads set a cordon and we tear down the road and bust in the back door. M870 with lockbuster shells. Boom, and we go.

Back door leads to the kitchen. Right, clear. Left, clear. Overhead, clear. Rear, clear. Kitchen, clear. We roll through, don’t stack, just roll. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. Corporal Sweet’s fire team clears houses like water running down a stream.

Next room there’s AK fire as soon as we go through the doorway, but we’re better shots. End state is two hajjis, no survivable wounds, no injuries on our side, just another day in paradise. Except Corporal Sweet leads 2nd Fire Team to the bedroom and hajji jumps out shooting blind from the hip and plugs lucky into Corporal Sweet. Two get stopped by his SAPI plate, but one goes through the nut protector and into his thigh. PFC Dyer’s on Sweet’s ass, second man through the door, and he fires a burst of 5.56 into hajji’s face. We clear the bedroom, call, Corpsman up, and Dyer drops down to pack Sweet’s wound. It’s bleeding bright red, maybe hit the femoral.

We keep moving. 1st Fire Team steps up and Doc P’s in with Dyer on Corporal Sweet now and, oh, hajji’s still breathing, so Doc tells Dyer, Go pack the wound in hajji’s face, do the four life-saving steps, restore the breathing, stop the bleeding, protect the wound, treat for shock. I get on the IISR to the LT to call for CASEVAC.

We keep moving. Bedroom, clear. Head, clear. Pantry, clear. Whatever the fuck this room is, clear. First deck, clear.

LT gets on and says they’ve got a CH-46 in the air coming to save Sweet’s life. He asks for status, so I shoot Doc P a look like, WIA or KIA? Doc says, Urgent, no joke, and I tell the LT as we stack outside the door to the basement.

We drop a flashbang, and when it goes off we flow downstairs. There’s three down there. One’s al-Qaeda, but he’s shook by the flashbang and there’s no weapon in his hands. He looks like he’s seventeen and scared, and when we flex-cuff him and start to go through all the usual EPW shit, he pisses himself. That happens sometimes.

No threat from the other two in the basement, a policeman and a jundi from the 1st Iraqi Army Division. They’re tied to a chair in front of a video camera on a tripod. They’re beat to hell, and there’s a nice pool of blood working the floor.

Corporal Moore sees the camera and the two guys who’ve been tortured. Real quiet he says, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. But we all know what this is.

Lance Corporal McKeown looks at the camera and says, Al-Qaeda makes the worst pornos ever.

Moore looks over at the EPW, who we’ve got facedown on the deck, flexcuffed and blindfolded, and says, You son of a bitch cunt-ass SOB. Moore takes a step forward, but I stop him.

1st Fire Team unties the two guys and starts first aid. AQI used wire to strap them to the chairs and it’s dug into their skin, so getting them loose is tricky without stripping off more flesh. Also, something’s wrong with their feet. I say, Bring ’em to the CCP Doc’s set up on the first deck. The house is clear now, whole thing took under two mikes, so pretty good except for Sweet, and that’s a real motherfucker. Any groin injury’s a nightmare wound.

In the basement there’s a weapons cache, usual shit, AKs and RPKs, homemade explosive, RPGs, some rusty 122 mm arty shells. I leave that to Moore and go check on Sweet.

Upstairs, I see Doc’s already pulled out the QuikClot and put it on the wound. A bad sign, and that QuikClot shit burns, but Sweet forces a grin. He gives me a thumbs-up, looks down at Doc working on his thigh, and says, Hey, Doc, you wanna give me a BJ while you’re down there? Doc doesn’t look up.

PFC Dyer’s working on the hajji he shot in the face. I see he’s pulled apart his own IFAK to get gauze for the hajji. Not supposed to do that. Your IFAK is for you.

Hajji’s bad. It looks like half the jaw is gone. There’s bits of the beard, still attached to skin, sitting on the other side of the room. Dyer’s holding down hard on the gauze to stop the bleeding, and I can see he’s got the look. So I grab Lance Corporal Weber and tell him to take over from Dyer, give him a break.

CH-46 touches down in under ten mikes. That’s enough time for Sweet to stop joking and start saying the usual shit people say when they’ve been hit bad. I tell him we won’t let him die. I don’t know if I’m lying or not.