The main guy we were looking for was not in this first building. We quickly moved outside and cordoned off one of the other buildings where we thought he was most likely to be. With the exterior secured, we began conducting a callout. A callout, in the most basic form, is when you have your interpreter yell out to anybody who might be in the building that shit is about to go down and they have two choices: Give up or die.
“Come out of the house!” the interpreter shouted. “The soldiers will kill you if you don’t. Come out of the house or you will die!” He repeated himself four or five times for good measure. “This is your last chance before we begin firing!”
Those were the magic words. In a matter of seconds, it was like Ali Baba and all forty of his thieves came filing out of that house. It was the most bizarre thing I’d ever seen. Usually you see four, maybe five people—the normal size of an Iraqi family—come out of a structure this size. In this instance it was an Iraqi clown car. I counted sixteen of them before I lost track.
“Is there like eight bunk beds in each room,” I asked one of the older men, through our interpreter, as he filed past me, “or are you guys just physically sleeping on top of each other?”
He just looked at me. No response. Typical.
“Is there anyone else inside this house?” my platoon sergeant asked a girl he had pulled aside.
“No,” she responded via the interpreter.
“If there’s someone in there, we’re going to fucking kill them. Do you understand? You have to tell me if there’s anyone else left inside.”
“No, there’s no one else inside. I promise.” She was emphatic.
My platoon sergeant wasn’t satisfied. He pulled a male in his twenties out of line and off to the side. “Is there anybody else in this building, because if there is we’re going to blow up the whole fucking house. You got it?”
“No, no. I swear by Allah, there’s no one else in this house,” he answered.
Today, there is a way to find out for sure if they are telling the truth: You send in one of the working dogs. Run a fully trained, battle-hardened Belgian Malinois through that house and you’ll find out real quick just how empty it is. Back then, however, canines and side plates and other protective measures were not a regular part of the SOPs (standard operating procedures) for missions like this, so you had to gather information on the fly and then go with your gut.
After everyone swore up and down that there was no one left in the building, we decided to do the charitable thing and return the line of bullshit they were feeding us. We split my assault squad into two teams. Bravo Team went to the black side of the building (the back side), while Alpha Team—which I was in—went to the white side (the front entrance). We decided to offset our breach so Alpha Team could go in slightly ahead of Bravo Team on the black side.
Boom. In.
As the dust settled from the door breach, we threw in a flash bang to disorient whoever might be waiting for us and entered into what appeared to be a tiny vestibule separating the front door from a reasonably large living room. On the other side of the room, across from the front door, we could see a staircase that led directly up to the second floor. We could also see a boatload of bad feng shui. To the left and right were parallel sets of closed doors that led to adjoining rooms. We had to clear those before moving upstairs.
Brehm and Barraza took the door on the left. Peters, another member of my team, locked down the staircase, which appeared to be barricaded at the top. My teammate Hansen and I took the door on the right. We breached our doors simultaneously. Very quickly my white light intersected with Hansen’s and we called the room clear. As soon as those words left our mouths, the distinct and deafening sound of fully automatic fire rang out behind us. As Hansen and I tried to figure out where the sound was coming from, the chaos of nonstop gunfire in those few seconds scrambled our senses. It felt like being in a hall of mirrors made out of noise. A moment later, we realized that the gunfight had erupted inside the room that Brehm and Barraza had just entered.
Then we heard a faint voice.
“I’m hit. I can’t move.” It was Brehm.
Immediately, Hansen and I pushed through the living room, following Brehm’s voice. We found him lying two or three feet inside the doorway of the adjacent room. He wasn’t moving. As we tried to pie the room to gain better visibility, that’s when we saw Barraza on the far side of the room. He wasn’t moving either.
The speed at which all of this had taken place left Hansen and me momentarily disoriented and unsure of the proper course of action. We weren’t even clear on what exactly had happened.
“I’ll pull security, do you think you can grab Brehm?” Hansen said.
“Roger,” I responded.
I jumped into the room, completely exposing my body. Hansen was pulling security, but with no line of sight into the room, I was sure a stream of bullets was going to rip through the side of my body. But I’d rather die than not give aid to my teammate. I grabbed a firm hold of Brehm’s shoulder strap and the pull strap on the back of his kit and yanked him out of the room as hard as I could.
Somehow I exited the room unharmed and was able to pull Brehm back with me into the living room. I looked down at him and began an initial scan of his body for any obvious damage, but I couldn’t find any. At this point, Brehm was nonresponsive, so I started to run scenarios through my head.
He probably just took a shot to the helmet. Or maybe the chest plate. It knocked him unconscious. Okay, that makes sense. He’s good.
Next I started to undo Brehm’s plate carriers to do a full medical sweep and search more thoroughly for any wounds. That’s when he exhaled a mouthful of blood.
Goddammit. Goddammit. Goddammit.
At twenty-three years old, five-foot-nine, and maybe 185 pounds, Sergeant Dale Brehm was a fireplug and the consummate team leader. He always had us prepared for any situation. And he’d told us many times that if he was ever wounded, we should key his mic to call in help. So that’s what I did.
“Medic, we need a medic in building 10!” I shouted through his push-to-talk.
Before I could release the button on Brehm’s radio, automatic fire opened up on the opposite side of the building. Bravo Team had just made entry from the black side and engaged an enemy combatant, killing him as they cleared their way to us. When they finally entered the living room, Peters had joined Hansen pulling security as I attempted to administer first aid to Brehm. Our platoon medic, who followed Bravo Team in, immediately dropped to his knees next to me.
“Where is he hit?” the medic shouted.
“I’m not sure, he has no exposed wounds, but he’s exhaling blood,” I replied, as the medic began to work.