The Reaper Read online

  The more I read about sniping, the more I made the connection between chess and shooting. Anticipation, analysis, and prediction based on evidence are pretty high-level thinking skills, and I started to develop them, but if you were to ask any of my teachers if I was capable of that kind of thinking, they would have probably said no. By all outward appearances, or outside of a shooting range, I probably looked like I didn’t understand the principles of cause and effect, actions and consequences.

  In the army, I had to learn a lot about navigation and orienteering. It’s funny to think about how I was finding my way in life as much as I was finding my way through the woods.

  The Cole Range is the Rangers’ version of the SEAL teams’ Hell Week. That was the point at which I really learned about camaraderie and teamwork. We started out with a group of eighty or so, and by the end we were whittled down to about a dozen. The thing that kept me going was that if you decided to drop out, you had to stand there in front of everyone and say those words. I was empowered by that. Every time another guy stopped during the middle of a march or whatever and said, “I quit,” I grew more determined to make it. Hearing “I quit” twenty, thirty, forty, fifty times over a four-day period can really boost your confidence when you’re the one hearing it and not saying it.

  I especially remember being sleep deprived and hungry as could be and being gathered near a bonfire. An instructor said, “If you just come up here, leave your team, I have a nice hot cup of coffee for you and a slice of pizza. You’ll be good to go, but you’ve got to leave your teammates.”

  A few guys would go up there and take the offer, and the instructor would say, “Welcome to Korea” or “Welcome to Italy,” or something similar letting the guys know that they were bound for some kind of ordinary duty. They’d sold themselves short and now they were getting the short end of the deal.

  I was one of seven guys who made it through to the end. I learned that my brain might shut down or quit, but my body could keep on going, and that was a lesson that served me well throughout the rest of my career.

  I was enormously proud of joining the Third Ranger Battalion in October of 2005. I was now part of the group whose legacy included the operation in Somalia that became known as Black Hawk Down, going into Grenada, fighting in the first Gulf War, rescuing Jessica Lynch. Well, not quite part of it yet. I had to report to battalion to see what my assignment was going to be.

  First, Second, and Third Battalions were each doing ninety-day rotations at that point in the conflict. When I arrived at Fort Benning, I have to admit, it was a bit of a letdown. Third Battalion was in Afghanistan at the time, but I was assigned to its Charlie Company, First Platoon. That meant there wasn’t a whole lot for me to do until the rest of the battalion got back. I definitely had new-kid-at-school nerves. I didn’t know what to expect now that I was a Ranger, and I really wanted to make a good impression. I was there with maybe twenty other guys and they hardly even talked to me, except to issue me some equipment. I didn’t have a TV or a radio, just a bed in the barracks and an iron and ironing board that I used almost constantly to press my BDUs. When I wasn’t doing that, I was polishing my boots, making sure that I was as squared away as possible. I was a nineteen-year-old kid, living his dream of being an army Ranger, and I had movie visions of how my life was going to play out.

  I also had a bit of a nightmare running through my mind. I’d heard that the Rangers had their own indoctrination program for the cherry new guys. I’d been told that I could expect them to come busting into my room and take me out partying or to quiz me on some bit of Ranger Battalion history or do anything to test me. When I got word, after a week of mostly just waiting, that the Third Battalion was inbound and would be down in just about an hour, I sat on the edge of my bed nearly paralyzed. When the guys came back in, I could hear them running and shouting, asking where the new guy was.

  What ensued was the consumption of more beer than I’d ever seen up to that point in my young life. I’d had a few beers before, but that night was the first time I was ever drunk. I didn’t want to show any kind of weakness, so I tried to keep up with them, but that wasn’t really possible. A few guys asked me about myself and my background and stuff, but nothing could distract them from the drinking and the loud music and the general air of relief they all felt. They were glad to be back home, glad that they’d sustained no casualties, and clearly, I was the only one who was thinking about the fact that we had to be up at 0600 hours for formation.

  I wandered away from the action and got back to my room and began laying out what I thought I had to have organized for the next day. I showed up at 0600 in my starched and pressed uniform, my dazzle-shined boots, and felt like the guy who wears a shirt and tie to the first day of school while everybody else is in jeans and T-shirts. That’s mostly what the rest of the guys were wearing. I was the only one not in civilian clothes. I was escorted over to the Charlie Company CQ desk and was introduced to a very large and very forbidding looking first sergeant who I would later come to know as Black Rhino. The name fit. He was well over 220 pounds of rock-hard muscle, had a coal-black complexion, and a mouth with a missing front tooth that could make him appear either menacing or goofy.

  That first time I met First Sergeant Seeley, he definitely was not goofy. He took me into a room and began his interrogation.

  “Why do you want to be here? What makes you want to be a Ranger?” His voice definitely suited his body, it came out strong and deep.

  I didn’t know what to say, and while I was standing there, the platoon sergeant came in and stood in the doorway. I could see a little bit of light behind him, but mostly just his body filling that space.

  Finally, I said, “I just want to be part of the best fighting force that the military has to offer.”

  The Black Rhino burst out laughing and then suddenly stopped. “No. I’ve heard that too many times before. I want your real answer.”

  I shrugged. “I just want to fight, First Sergeant. I’m here to fight and go to war.”

  “That’s what I want to hear.”

  At that point, he informed me that I was going to be assigned to the Third Squad in Charlie Company as an assaulter. I was given my M4 rifle and a 203 grenade launcher. I was pretty much left on my own. There was distinct division between guys who earned their tabs—the ones who’d completed Ranger school—and the other guys like me. We were there on a trial basis, and I felt the pressure of believing that my every move was being closely monitored and evaluated. To that point, I’d not done a whole lot of specific training with weapons, and it was clear that we were being prepared for urban combat. Although I’d fired weapons before, it was a new experience to be in a small room with several other people, friendlies, knowing that you had to be very accurate.

  Wearing night vision was also hard to adapt to. I don’t know if my color blindness had any effect on me, but I never really liked using that device. The first time I put on PVS-14s, I got to experience what it would be like to lose an eye. The device slides down and blocks the vision in one of your eyes, and that really messes with your depth perception. I probably spent as much time bumping into things as I did making forward progress. Later, when we got into small unit training and I had to combine night vision work with my infrared laser sighting on my weapons, I had a whole new level of respect for what these guys were capable of. It was so different from open sight in daylight. Point and squeeze became my new mantra. Put the laser on the target and squeeze. Eventually, spending enough time with the night vision, figuring out what magnification settings worked for me, made me more comfortable. Our brains eventually adjust and compensate for perceiving two different images simultaneously—a near one and a far one—but it did take a lot of time.

  Physical training was still rigorous with the added dimension of P-Mask runs—when you wore your protective mask, what most people think of as gas masks. We were trying to simulate the high-altitude environment of Afghanistan.

  During an airport
seizure drill, I really got a sense that this was now big-boy stuff. Nighttime parachuting, hot-wiring vehicles to get them off the runway, lots of coordination among the various units and responsibilities.

  I had never worked so hard in my life as I did in those six months prior to my first deployment. Twelve- to sixteen-hour days were the norm. Family life was non ex is tent. Some of the guys told me that trying to maintain a working marriage was almost impossible, and the Ranger battalions had a really high divorce rate.

  I don’t know if I would have done as well as I did if it weren’t for Mark Cunningham. He didn’t mind me asking all kinds of questions about what it was going to be like over there—the terrain, the people, our living quarters, and anything else I could think of. I also worked the chain of command properly and wasn’t afraid to ask my squad leader for clarification. I think that being the new guy and not being afraid to ask questions helped.

  It was during that training cycle, during another of the many airport seizures, that I had that parachute incident when I could have easily died. I had one other near-fatal encounter, this time with a tin of Copenhagen. Mark was from Tennessee, and he said he’d been dipping tobacco since he was a pup, as he put it. One day, I was dragging, just having one of those low-energy days when I could barely keep my eyes open.

  So Mark said, “If you can’t stay awake, try some of this stuff.” He always had a little bump below his bottom lip. He handed me the can.

  I opened it and saw the dark, coarse cut of tobacco. I immediately thought of my days spent fishing and the worm dirt. I squinted at it and then at Mark.

  “Here, like this.” He took three fingers and pinched a bit of it.

  I did as he said. At first, all I felt was a bit of warmth on the inside of my lip and then it was like someone had opened a faucet in my salivary glands. I was almost drooling, and I was trying to spit as best I could, but I could feel little bits of the tobacco going down my throat as my saliva slid down from my jaw. The next thing I knew, I was a bit dizzy and light-headed. Mark and a few other guys were laughing at me, and then suddenly my head was spinning and a moment later everything in my stomach came flying out of my mouth. The guys were laughing hysterically, and as sick as I was feeling, I couldn’t really blame them.

  They told me that everybody has a similar experience their first time doing dip. That was the only real hazing, if you want to call it that, I experienced. Once all the training began, we really bonded as a team. By the time we finished that intense six months and learned we were on our way to Tikrit, I thought I was really ready. Of course, I wasn’t. I remember on our flight from Germany to Tikrit, I had a moment of panic when the red lights came on and the pilot announced that we were in Iraqi airspace. I thought that this was going to be like D-day. We’d land, drop the ramp, and run off with bullets flying all around us. That’s when the panic set in. I didn’t have any magazines of ammo with me or in my weapon. I tried to calm myself by saying that I could borrow some from one of the other guys. How could I have been so stupid as to not load my weapon.

  When we landed, the ramp did go down, but we didn’t take any enemy fire. We all loaded into vans, kind of like airport hotel vans, and as we drove off, I saw the familiar arches of a McDonald’s, a Burger King, and what was unfamiliar, a Green Bean coffee store.

  Nothing could have prepared me for the smell though. Diesel fuel and oil, human excrement. Still, the first time I set foot on Iraqi soil, I felt a thrill of pleasure. Wow. I’m here. I’m in combat.

  I was still a bit out of it from the Ambien, the long hours of sleep, and the sense of disorientation that comes from climbing into an aircraft in one part of the world and climbing off it in another. We were told that we’d be conducting an operation that night. The briefing was a blur, and then what seemed like minutes later, we did a final check before mounting up. My squad leader came up to me and said, “Everything good to go? Give me a heads-up.”

  “Batteries good, roger that.”

  He rechecked my lasers, my night vision, my radio, both of us checking and rechecking everything.

  Cunningham approached me and nodded. “Don’t worry about it. Everything’s going to be good to go. Should be in and out.”

  Next thing I knew I was sitting in the doorway of a Black Hawk helicopter, squeezed between two other squad members, the pilot making sharp turns while flares and the rounds from the miniguns lit up the sky. I was startled by the sound of what seemed to be a chain saw, but it was just the laser array emitting more tracers downrange. When we got to the one-minute mark, I leaned out against my straps and saw this lone building in the middle of all this flatness.

  Oh, crap, this is it.

  As soon as that thought was complete, the helicopter flared to scrub off all its speed. Like a horse being brought to a sudden halt, the helicopter rose nose first and its ass end settled, and we were in a near hover.

  Stepping onto the ground, I thought of the moon. The soil where we’d landed was so fine and dustlike that it reminded me of the images I’d seen as a kid of our astronauts jumping around on the moon, kicking up little dust clouds. I didn’t have time to get lost in space. Everyone around me was moving, seemingly in different directions, guys zigzagging, cutting off angles to the building. I remembered that my team was responsible for covering and cutting off anybody coming out of the right side of the building. I was really shocked by how fast everything was happening. By the time I was able to make sense of what I was seeing, half the team was already making entry into the door of the building. I was still fifty meters away. I noticed the quiet, the absence of the sound of helicopters.

  I finally got my stuff together and ran toward the angle I was supposed to cover. As I was moving, I heard a loud pop. At first it didn’t register, but then I realized it was the flash grenades/bangers going off. I tried to picture what was taking place inside the building, but more than that, I was wishing I was inside there. I’d been told that nothing we did in training could really prepare you for the real thing. It was kind of like the difference between a practice and an actual game. Yes, you were told that you should practice with the same intensity you’d bring to the game, but the violence of action they’d talked about didn’t really compare.

  What bothered me as I sat loading my weapon before we left was realizing that I might have to fire these live rounds at another human being. You couldn’t really train for that reality. I grew up in a religious family, and obviously, “thou shall not kill” is something we all believed in and put into practice. As I was sitting there on the Black Hawk, all kinds of thoughts were flying around in my head. By the time we’d reached the objective, I was really numb to all those thoughts and feelings and just kind of went on autopilot. That’s what all that training was for—just do the things you’d done dozens of times before, don’t think too much, just respond.

  The mission went well. We killed two of the targets and apprehended a third. What I remember most is getting back to base and eating chow and watching CNN. Our mission was a breaking-news headline. I thought of all those people in all those airport terminals waiting for their flights half listening to what was going on in my part of the world.

  I’d arrived.

  5. A Long Day of Reckoning

  By the time I’d gotten to Afghanistan and my deployment as a sniper team leader with Pemberton and the rest of the guys, I’d become used to the idea that we were making headlines. At that point those stories weren’t major ones and I knew that back home a lot of people had grown tired of our involvement in Afghanistan. It had to seem to them that nothing was ever going to change. We didn’t take that attitude at all. I was beginning to see that the Taliban really had their boots on the neck of many of the civilians, that the people were caught up in a big mess not of their own making. Regardless, we had a job to do and a way to put our training to its best use.

  Even though we’d had those two days off, I think everybody could sense that this was not going to be a typical deployment. The high
operational tempo of those first few days had really set the tone. You could tell that morale was high because of what was going on. Some of the guys in the squad were so hyped up they couldn’t sleep well, so all-night movie marathons went on, and eventually some of the guys were in the computer room watching replays of our missions, looking at the satellite feeds, anticipating what our next objectives might be, and doing their own form of recon. I think that, to a man, we sensed that there’d be another mission coming up and that kept us at a high pitch.

  Our forty-man platoon was housed in its own separate area, so we didn’t have much contact with anyone else, but even within that small group, Pemberton and I were the only snipers. It wasn’t like there was a rule that you only hung out with the guys who did the same job or were in your squad, but most of the other Rangers we were with had deployed together. Because you carried out the same role with the same guys, you naturally spent more time with them and got to know them better. To put it in football terms, it was as if you had the offense and the defense, and Pemberton and I were the kicker and the punter. Other guys from those first two units also worked with us as part of the overall special teams unit, but there was only one of him and only one of me. I was back, in a sense, to being that new kid at school.

  Pemberton and I had been through training together and we were pretty tight, but we both knew that sitting around together on our off hours was a recipe for disaster. During training we had been with other spotters and snipers who’d been paired off, and in some ways we were like married couples. And if you hang around with enough married people, you probably know someone like Thomas and Albright. After we discovered how much the two of them got into verbal fights with each other, we referred to them as Itchy and Scratchy, after the TV cartoon characters on The Simpsons. They shared a room, and they were almost like little kids, brothers, who argued over who got to sleep on which level of the bunk beds.