Chapter 1

Jawal al-Maliki sat at his desk and peered intently into General John Venes eyes, "General, we have to disband the militias if there is any hope of bringing peace to Iraq. If we can get rid of al-Sadr's militia the others will follow suit and lay down their arms. Al-Sadr is the key. As long as he defies us there will continue to be trouble. I want the Coalition troops to lead the attack. Our Iraqi forces are riddled with al-Sadr sympathizers so I can't use them. Do you think that your superiors will allow you to do it?"

General Venes stood up, "Let me get in touch with Washington. I'm sure the DOD will go along. Al-Sadr's been a thorn in our side for a long time. If you are willing to acknowledge that you ordered us to get him, I don't think that Washington will hesitate a minute."

"I will send you the papers when you are ready to attack," al-Maliki said standing up to shake the General's hand.

Al-Maliki sat down heavily once the General was gone. He had only been the Prime Minister for a couple of years and already had two assassination attempts on his life. The sooner he got rid of these Americans the better. If he hadn't been called to help his country he would have been safely in France by now.

Two days later Private Ralph O'Brien, USMC, aged nineteen, was hunched behind the remains of the pickup truck shaking so hard that he was afraid that the Iraqis would hear his bones rattle. He heard the screaming of the wounded; both the Marines and al-Sadr's militia. He had only been in Iraq for two weeks and here he was in a battle with this ass-hole cleric's militia. O'Brien wished that he was back home in Arkansas; he only joined the Marines to impress his girlfriend. She started gushing over some recruiter in his fancy uniform and Ralph signed up the next day. He didn't really give a shit about the Iraqi's, Iraqi oil or what the Iraqi's did to each other. Several bullets hit the overturned pickup and O'Brien tried to get closer to the ground. He lay on the ground hugging his rifle beneath him. He heard someone yelling and he raised his head a little and saw his Captain yelling at him from the safety of another overturned vehicle.

"O'Brien get your head out of your ass and lay down some covering fire at the building. The medics are trying to get our men out. Cover them! Now fight damn you."

Private O'Brien scooted forward and looked around the wreckage of the truck. Several rounds suddenly hit the truck and he pulled his head back and then took another quick look. The building where the militants were holed up was hooked onto the mosque and it was used as a school, social center, militia headquarters or whatever they wanted to use it for that day. O'Brien already knew that the mosque was off-limits. If the militia ran into the mosque the Marines were to pull back. Luckily there was a small courtyard between the Mosque and the building that the militia was fighting from. Whenever someone attempted to run for the mosque the Marine machineguns tore them up.

O'Brien saw a man with a black turban run past a window with a gun. O'Brien pulled his head back and began to think about home. He wondered what his mother was doing right now and wondered what his girl was doing. He stuck his head around the wreckage and saw the man with the black turban run past the window again. O'Brien aimed his rifle at the window. O'Brien said to himself that if turban head ran past the window again he was dead meat.

It was several minutes before he saw the man in the turban start past the window. O'Brien pulled the trigger and the sound of the shot resounded off of the metal of the truck. He saw the man's head explode and the man dropped out of sight. O'Brien pulled back to the safety of the pickup truck. He felt queasiness in his stomach. He had never killed a man before. The Marines trained for this all the time but doing it was something else.

The gunfire from the building began to slow down until there was none coming from the building. Suddenly there was loud screaming coming from the building and about twenty men began running toward the Marines with their automatic weapons blazing. Private O'Brien saw a movement out of the corner of his eye and when he looked to where the movement was, he saw an Iraqi pointing a rocket propelled grenade at his cover. O'Brien started to scream but the grenade hit before he could get the scream out. The pickup truck came to rest on top of his lifeless body.

The wave of Iraqi's began to grow and people with guns began to come from everywhere; the whole town seemed to turn out in support of the militia and it seemed that they all had guns. For a while the Marines cut them down as soon as they left the safety of the buildings. The Marines' ammunition began to run dangerously low and the Captain called for a retreat. During the retreat several more of the Marines fell. The Captain saw the militants killing the fallen marines by slitting their throats. The Captain called for reinforcements and held out until the reinforcements arrived. When the Captain limped back into the staging area he had lost over half of his force.

During the debriefing the Captain was questioned intensely on the amount of resistance that he had encountered. Al-Sadr's militia was known to be fierce fighters but there had never been anything like this. The Colonel had to find out why the militia tried to defend their place as hard as they had. They might have been constructing bombs inside when the Marines attacked.

A Master Sergeant came into the room and handed the interrogator a slip of paper. The interrogator was a bird Colonel. When he read the paper he gasped and then handed it to the Captain. The dispatch said the al-Sadr had been killed by American Forces during a raid on the mosque. Al Jazeera TV was already reporting that al-Sadr had been killed by the American Marines bursting into the mosque with guns blazing while al-Sadr was praying with his followers. Every news report made sure to state that it was American Marines. The reporter spat out the word American.

"I'm going to request that you be immediately rotated out of Iraq. There'll be a price on your head tonight; maybe there's one already," the Colonel said, "Do you know what Marine killed the cleric? We might defuse this if we offer him up to the Iraqi government."