Chapter 18

Very early the next morning, I was with a power company pole truck and crew that hurriedly planted a pole near the compound, but on the other side of the road, between the power lines and the road. We were making it look like we were a regular construction crew, complete with transit, sighting toward the open area between the compound and the Mosque. We dug a hole in the front and another in the rear of the Mosque in areas that were in a direct line with buildings in the compound. The surprise we added was a hundred pounds of explosives in each hole with a radio detonator. The antenna strung out of the hole and attached to the pole set on top of the explosives. As soon as the poles were set, the workmen all took a break, had a drink of water, and smoked a cigarette, like any crew would before taking off. The whole time we were working, I checked over the land separating us from the compound. I couldn't see any exposed mine triggers, but that didn't mean they weren't there.

The next step of the plan was to bring in the National Guard. Four Abrams tanks came lumbering up the road. As they neared the compound, the radio signal was sent and the two sets of explosives were blown. We had not considered that the poles would become projectiles but they didn't harm anyone or any property as they shot straight up and came back down to rest near two huge holes.

We made our announcement that anyone who wanted to come out should do so now, unarmed with their hands on top of their head. We kept repeating the announcement, escalating what would happen if they did not come out. I gave the order for the commander to blow up the sentry stations on the corners, then to blow holes in the walls and the gates. Eight mortar teams began lobbing explosive shells into the compound, eight rounds at a time.

As soon as we blew the sentry stations, heads appeared above the walls with rifles poking over. The heads all had turbans so they made easy targets. As soon as they fired the first round from the compound is when the mortars started.

The highlight of the day was the six big caterpillar bulldozers that I sent between the compound and the Mosque to dig as fast as they could to uncover the suspected tunnel. Using three big bulldozers in the front and three in the back it took less than ten minutes to break into the tunnel. We kept digging until we had opened a hole that exposed the full opening in both directions. We discovered that there were two tunnels where we suspected that one would be, and the explosives had completely collapsed both tunnels. This was good as that would mean most of the people from the compound would not have been able to escape to the Mosque.

I led some troops into one of the tunnels that headed toward the Mosque. We had traveled only fifteen to twenty yards when I saw what looked like a trip wire. I shined my light across it several times and told the men, "Let's get out of here before they have a chance to set it off remotely."

Having anticipated this situation, I took a satchel charge, set the timer for two minutes and we got out of the tunnel. When the charge went off, it set off the charge that had been waiting for us. The whole tunnel collapsed all the way to the Mosque. Some troops went up the other tunnel toward the Mosque and returned quickly to repeat the process, with another charge going off, and collapsing that tunnel as well.

I could hear sporadic rifle fire inside the compound, so we knew the mortars did not take out all of the suspected terrorists. The troops were cautioned not to attempt to directly engage the suspects, but to call in the tanks to put some explosive rounds into whatever building they were receiving fire from.

The National Guard commander had the bulldozers begin driving across the land over the open area to the walls of the compound. No mines went off, so he had the bulldozers start tearing down the compound walls.

While standing with the National Guard Field Commander, I caught a movement from the corner of my eye. Up high, on the roof of the Mosque, a man was raising a rifle to fire at someone. I quickly put a burst into him causing him to fall to the ground. I hollered for everyone to take cover as there were enemy on the roof of the Mosque.

The Commander said, "Guess that place isn't a protected place of worship any longer. Want us to take it?"

I said, "Why don't we blow the doors at the front and rear and announce that they can come out or perish within the fallen walls. That place is coming down, all the way. We have to find the explosives that were stolen from the construction company."

He sent a squad to the front and rear doors to set charges that would blow the doors completely off. When they were set, he issued the order and the doors were blown. He had a tank get up close, pointing its long barrel toward the door and they began playing the recording in English and Arabic to come out unarmed with their hands on their head. Amazingly the Imam came out alone clutching his Koran, walking tall, back straight, with measured steps. He was showing that he was proud of his position.

The man couldn't or wouldn't speak English, so we had to call for an interpreter in order to question him. Meanwhile, the fighting was still going on in the compound. This had been going on now for almost a half-hour, an extraordinary amount of time for a firefight.

I found the Captain directing traffic and he said, "We're having trouble penetrating that one building. Apparently the doors are on the far side and we can't get through the other side yet. It looks like all of the resistance is within that building. Have any ideas?"

"Have your sharpshooters shoot at the rifle ports. I'll go along the wall until I find the door and blow it from the outside. I should find it and we might have to make another plan, but let's find out where you get in and out of the building first."

I went across the open area to slide up against the wall and began moving around the building. I was behind the building in the narrow passageway between the building and a reinforced outer compound wall when I finally found a steel door that didn't have any handles on the outside. I set a charge with a five minute timer on it, but didn't think it would do much good since it was a small charge, only a pound of explosive material.

After making it back to cover where the command center was, I explained what I seen and checked my watch telling them that the satchel charge should go off soon.

We heard it go off, but the sound was muffled by the buildings being close together. The rifle fire from the firing ports kept right on coming. That's when I remembered how we got through a few well fortified buildings in Iraq. I had them bring four tanks up and begin firing at the base of the building. Actually blowing holes beneath them. The walls may be strong but the floor was probably just four inches of concrete. My plan was to blow some holes deep enough then use a charge to take out the floor all together.

Eight rounds of tank shells opened a huge hole beneath the building. You could now see a large crack in the concrete of the structure. I suggested, "Give them one more shot of the give up speech, then let these tanks give that cracked wall a shot."

Again after a full two minutes of the recorded announcement, the commander gave the signal to fire. Thank goodness everyone was down behind something to keep from getting hit from the rifle fire, because when the third tank round hit the building, there was an explosion so huge that the tanks were rocked backwards from the force. Debris rained on everyone.

"Holy shit!" Yelled the National Guard Captain. "Christ, that must have been some kind of storage bunker. I guess there's no sense in looking for survivors. Let's mop this place up and tear it down."

I said, "Caution your men, there could still be men hiding throughout the compound who haven't given up. You can bet they are armed. Tell them to be careful."

I walked to one of the buildings that had housed the entrance to the tunnel and when I went in, you couldn't tell where the tunnel entrance was. One of the troops with me found it beneath a table and cautiously opened the trap door. As the door was opening, several rounds came flying out. I pulled a grenade from a troop's vest, pulled the pin and dropped it into the opening. The other troop dropped the door and we crouched down to keep the shrapnel from hitting us.

The force of the blast blew the door off. I looked down into the tunnel to see several bodies strewn around. At the bottom of the stairs were three doors. I went down in the carnage and unbolted the center door. This went to the main tunnel. A troop that came with me opened the door to the left. We both were ready with our rifles and found what looked like a bunk room. We opened the door to the right and found it full of rifles and ammunition. There were cases of what looked like old issue C-4 crates and two full cases of detonators. I left a troop there to guard the booty and went for the Captain so we could get some demolition people to remove the old C-4 and detonators.

Once that was done, I checked on the other tunnel entrance. The men were still hunting for the entrance. We continued to look until we tried to move a bookcase and found it was fixed to the wall. Some men brought in axes and crowbars and soon had the bookcase torn away. I found a demo guy with a satchel charge and we cleared the building while I set a two-minute charge. I told all the troops to be ready, as there could be armed men behind the door.

When the charge went off, I stood to put my rifle through a blown out window. Four men came out of the hole in the wall, firing AKs in front of them, not caring where they were shooting. I put all four down with bursts from my MP5 and waited to see if there were any more men coming out. We cautiously went down the stairs and unbolted the only door there. It led to the tunnel going to the Mosque and you could see daylight a short distance from the door.

Knowing the compound was now almost completely cleared, I went back to the front of the Mosque to see how they were doing there. The Commander and the FBI Agency Chief said there had been no more people come from the building. There was only one thing to do. I went back to see the Captain of the men around the compound. I asked him, "I need five or six really good, experienced men to search an unknown building, some urban troops."

"I have a squad trained in, and experienced in, Special Forces activities, let me get them."

When he brought them back, they stood at attention in a line as if being inspected. I looked at the six men and their gear and asked, "Do you have sufficient ammunition or do you need to pull some more. A sergeant said, "We are ready, Sir."

"Will ya be at ease? I'm not a "sir" and we're going to go into that Mosque because we were fired upon from it. The Imam is out so any personnel we find will probably be hostile. Be ready, this is as dangerous as being back in the sand. The Captain will have troops at the back door to block any escape and we have to go search two floors. We were fired on from the roof which means we have to get up high, so look high when we're on the second floor. Split up the sightseeing. Not only left and right, split up high and low. I'll go point and perhaps draw fire. Let's go."

We went into the building cautiously. It took fifteen minutes to clear all of the little prayer rooms along the side of the main prayer room. There were two stairways going upstairs, so instead of splitting up, I went to the doorway and called in four regular legs (ground troops) to watch the front stairway while we went up the rear one.

At the top of the stairs, I cautiously opened the door to slide into the shadowy room. The only light came from a small window at the far end of a long narrow room. As there was no furniture, there was no place to hide, so I scanned the ceiling and did not see any tiles out of place.

We went through the first door and looked down a corridor that led to rooms at the far end. Through the other door, we entered a large room with doors to small rooms all around it. We stayed against the walls and cautiously went to each door, opened it, and shined our flashlights around the room, making sure there was nothing important, especially personnel.

Since there was no outlet from this room, we went back to the corridor and began checking the doors on each side. When we looked into the last room, we saw a ladder under a large opening. One of the men went up the ladder and poked his flashlight up and turned it in all directions.

Three separate rifles fired at the flashlight but didn't hit it. We knew there were at least three men up there with rifles. I hollered and said, "Give up, come out, you will die if you do not give up at this time. We will not kill you if you come out now. This building will be torn down in a few minutes. Please come out."

When there was no response, I put a fresh thirty round magazine into my rifle and sat on the ladder, huddled over. The troop who had shined the flashlight thought all the fire came from a single direction. I poked my rifle through the hole and fired, sweeping the area where the rifle fire came from. When the bolt locked back, I pulled my rifle down and slid another magazine in and repeated the sweep. As I loaded my third magazine, a troop climbed the other side of the ladder and when I began to fire he used the flashlight and tried to see in the direction I was firing.

When I pulled back down he said, "I think you got em all. There's a walkway that goes in that direction and there are downed men in a pile on a platform over there."

I told the man to come up with his flashlight as I went up. I put my fourth magazine in and poked my head above the ceiling. The troop swept around a full three hundred sixty degrees to make sure there were no other walkways before focusing on the walkway and the platform with the men. Four men followed me up above the ceiling and down the narrow catwalk to the platform. One of the downed men was still alive and groaning. We put a compress on his gut wound and pulled him down the catwalk and handed him to the men below. We pulled the other four men to the opening and dumped their bodies to the second story floor.

After recovering the suspects' rifles, I noticed the access ladder to the roof was right there. I told a troop that I had to check the roof since that was where we had been shot at from before. When I started up he grabbed my arm and patted his head and said, "Helmet." I shrugged my shoulders and went on up. I pushed the trap door all the way then slowly raised up to look around. The trap door shielded me in one direction so I looked in the other three quickly. It looked clear so I peeked around the trap door and didn't see anything there either.

The roof had several large air conditioner units on top so I had to check behind all of them. I motioned the troop up the ladder and used hand signals to indicate we needed to check out the available cover. I pointed at myself as the bird dog and he was to be my cover. He nodded.

My left shoulder was sore but I don't think I hurt the collarbone. I think I was just straining it a little. I cautiously approached each big air conditioning unit and quickly peeked behind it. I was down to the last two units and almost letting down my guard when I heard some scraping. I waved and pointed to the unit that I heard the noise from. The roof was tar and gravel, so I picked up a handful of gravel and tossed it high and lifted my rifle pointing that way.

The gravel hit and a turbaned man jumped up and tried to fire his rifle. The troop and I fired at the same time. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a movement to the right of the troop, turned and fired automatically. Another robed man in a turban staggered back from the force of the three quick rounds I put in him.

I proceeded to clear the rest of the roof before I went back to the troop. He let out a big sigh and said, "Thank God you saw that guy, I didn't. I saw you turn, and for a second it looked as if you were firing at me, then I realized you were looking past me. That's as close as I've come in two deployments."

"Let's get down and get out of here. I'm done with this place. We'll let someone else clean this up."

We got down off the roof, dropped out of the ceiling, walked back downstairs, and out the front door. I reported to the National Guard Commander what we had found in the ceiling and the roof leaving him to look for the corpsmen.

The medics had a truck set up with a tent and were treating some of the people we had captured. I caught the eye of one of the corpsmen and brought him to where we were out of sight. I pulled up my shirt and showed him a compress I had put over a grazing wound I had received when I was trying to get to the bunker building in the compound. I didn't tell anyone about it as I wasn't finished yet, and I knew most of these people panicked at the sight of blood.

The corpsman frowned at me and said, "That could have been bad, you might have bled out."

"I looked at it. That's why I tore off my T-shirt and used it as a compress. Patch it. I don't think I need any stitches. I was leaning way over, so the vest rode up, exposing some skin."

The corpsman went out into the workroom and returned with an older guy in a white coat. "So you've got a scratch, huh? Let's see,,, ah, okay, you don't need any stitches, clean it up corpsman, put some antibiotic cream on it and put a big bandage over it. Make sure you get his name for a heart. It looks like he's our only casualty."

The corpsman got me cleaned up then asked me for my name, rank, and unit. I told him, "Forget it. I'm not military. I'm one of the government guys out here."

"I have to have a name and unit, Sir."

"I'll give it to you, but lose it. Don't turn it in, or at least forget and turn it in a couple of weeks from now."

The corpsman frowned. I pulled my badge and ID card. He wrote the information down and smiled. He said, "You can go now. Clean that daily and put a fresh cover on it."

When I walked out into the main workroom, the troop that had gone up to the roof cornered me, "Were you hurt? I thought I saw a dark spot on your side. Were you hit? You were already hurt when we went up there, weren't you?"

The doc and the corpsman were listening while I was trying to shush the guy. "Come on, let's get out of here. I'll tell you all about it."

The doc hollered at me, "Hold it there, soldier, ah, you in the jeans. Let me look at that leg."

Shit, this is too much.

"Look, I've got a prosthesis because I lost a leg in Iraq. That's ancient history. My leg has no problem."

The doc said, "Let me see, I want to see how it looks after your experience today. That's an order, Son."

He wasn't my boss, but I didn't want to belittle the guy. He was a doc and did help a lot of people. I sat on a gurney and pulled up my pant leg. He asked me to unbuckle the leg and looked under my sock at the stub. He nodded and said, "Doing good. What is it, two, three, four years?"

I nodded, "A little over three now."

He was looking at my prosthesis and pointed at it. "Well, well, this guy's been in a scrape before. He's got a round buried in the metal. I'll bet that showered you with little metal splinters. Did it?"

I nodded again.

"Talkative aren't you. He showed the crowd that had now gathered around to look at my leg and the round buried in it. Handing it back he asked, "How'd you lose the leg?"

"RPG, didn't hide good enough."

He wouldn't give up and asked, "That the only time?"

"One other minor wound. Didn't lose any time."

"I'm sure you didn't. Put this back on."

The troop that had been with me said, "Jesus, you were hit already and on a peg leg going up on that roof. Christ, you saved my ass on a fake leg."

"The leg doesn't mean anything. I lost one, they gave me another."

The doc was so smart, "Yeah, but it took you almost a year to learn how to use the new one."

I was being a smart ass, "It takes kids a year before they learn how to stand too."

"Get out of here. You've shown these guys that you aren't a cripple. Thanks for watching out for one of ours."

I nodded.

The troop wasn't going to let me alone. I finally had to say, "Look, you have a squad, go to it. They may need you to do something. It was good working with you." I stuck out my hand. We shook and he reluctantly left to find his squad.

I finally found the Marshal Service and FBI group. I had a bottle of water and a sandwich while we went over what had been done. The FBI had a stenographer with us to take down our reports as to the actions we had participated in. I gave them brief accounts of each of the actions I had been involved in with my name and badge number.