Who are we kidding?
That illiterate motherfucker isn’t reading shit!
Chapter 9
I Am the LAW
On one of my next deployments to Iraq, I was the platoon master breacher, which meant that I was in charge of all the things that go BOOM. The main advantage to this role was that I had the key to the platoon’s ammo storage. At the base we were on, all the ammo was stored in a giant Conex box, which is basically a large metal shipping container. This thing was full of every fucking type of munitions you’d ever want. It looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s weapons shed in Commando. We’re talking ammunition of every caliber, frag grenades, every single type of breaching charge from explosive cutting tape to C4, det cord, all the best shit in the world and a surplus of it.
Under normal circumstances, you’d have to sign all this boom-boom out from the ammo NCO, who was a non-operational guy with the key and a tendency to be much less generous with the munitions rations than someone like me, who was out on target every night and believed that more was merrier. But since the tempo of this deployment was extremely high and we were running through lots and lots of ammo every night and I was the master breacher, I got the key instead.
In retrospect, that was probably a really bad idea, because by this point Danny Fulton (who had become my squad leader) and I had completely stopped giving a fuck. Over the course of these last couple deployments, our operational tempo had stayed high, we’d survived plenty of close calls (like breaking down a barricaded door while an enemy combatant waited for me with an AK-47 with a 100-round drum), and we’d been on more raids than either of us could count. Fulton and I had each separately come to the conclusion that we were going to die out there, so we started pushing some serious boundaries on this stuff. If you’re going to die, why not have as much fun as possible and use as many weapons platforms as we could before our clock ran out?
One day, Fulton and I were in the Conex poking around looking for cool shit to play with when Danny pulled out this Vietnam-era upgraded rocket launcher called a thermobaric LAW (light anti-armor weapon). Thermobaric weapons work like a hedge fund in a hostile takeover—they suck all the oxygen out of the place and then implode the whole fucking thing. The blast waves are ridiculous, and they leave a massive crater of destruction. Neither of us had seen one of these rocket launchers outside of the movies, because by the end of the 1980s the Army had moved on to the Swedish AT4, and the Ranger regiment started using the two-man M3 Carl Gustaf as their portable anti-tank weapons platform. We hadn’t seen either of those weapons in a while either, simply because the nature of the operational stuff we were doing on that deployment didn’t require them.
Around 7 that night, just after chow, Fulton walked into the ready room looking for me. The ready room is the area in every military unit where we stow our kits when we get back from a mission. Each person has a little cubby where they put their helmet, their weapon, and their excess gear. (I sleep with my gun. So should you.) The rest of the room is dedicated to everything else we might need during an operation. As a team leader and the platoon master breacher, I spent a lot of time in the ready room throughout the day, building demolitions or training up our privates on breaching tactics so that all of us were always on the same page. Fulton knew this was where I would be this time of night.
Without saying anything, Danny walked over to a locker, pulled the LAW out, walked over to where I was working, and put it down on the table in front of me.
“You’re carrying this when we go out tonight,” he said.
“Fuuuuck youuuu,” I said, convinced he was joking around.
“No, you’re carrying it.”
“The fuck I am,” I said.
“Do you want me to pull rank on you?” I love Danny Fulton to death, but seriously, fuck that guy right now.
“You really want me to carry a two-foot-long thermobaric launcher strapped to my back tonight?”
He really did. He advocated loudly that I take this ridiculous action hero rocket launcher on target, despite the fact that it would be super obnoxious when I was trying to kick down doors.
“Dude, when the fuck am I going to use this thing? We shoot people in the face with our guns. That’s why we have CAS [close air support]. Why do I need this? I’m not in the anti-tank section.”
Fulton didn’t have an explanation that made sense to me. He knew damn well I was never going to shoot the fucking thing. I think he just wanted to fuck with me for a little bit. But he was squad leader, so unfortunately for me, he didn’t need to have any other reason than that.
We started mission pre-briefing around 10 or 11 P.M., so by 8 I was in the ready room literally zip-tying this thing to my kit, getting more and more pissed with each tie I secured. When you add odd-shaped weight like this to a kit that you’ve learned how to balance perfectly, you just know it’s going to dig into one of your shoulders more than the other or overburden one side of your back. When you’re walking six or eight kilometers to a target, that has a way of making the whole experience pretty miserable. Even after setting it up as best I could, high on the center of my kit, it still ended up hitting the back of my helmet with every step I took, and that’s some Chinese water torture shit, believe me.
When we got spun up for the night’s mission, I split up from Fulton and led 1st Squad for infil with the 160th SOAR guys, landing about five kilometers out from the target building in the middle of some weird, shitty farmland surrounded by a network of irrigation canals. From looking at the maps and ground reference guide coming in, the whole place seemed like an un-navigable game of Tetris with one little dirt road down the middle that was basically a straight shot through the fields leading directly to the target. We tend to stay off the beaten path, but this road looked easy, a flat three-mile hike. More importantly, it had a running irrigation ditch on both sides that we could use as cover if we needed it.
As the squads came together, we pushed toward the target. The lead element was 3rd Squad, followed by 2nd Squad, and myself with 1st Squad following trail. Fulton and I, as our squad’s leadership, found ourselves walking dead center down the middle of the road with our hands in our pockets just shooting the breeze—smoking and joking. Call it dumb if you will—if you won’t I will—but we were in the middle of nowhere and we really didn’t care. I especially didn’t care, because all I could think about was this goddamn launcher strapped awkwardly to my back. I began quietly bitching to him about it.
“Jesus, this LAW is so fucking stupid.”
“Best, you’re kind of being a pussy right now.”
“Dude, I am never going to shoot this thing.”
Moments later, rounds start clacking off from the lead element. No one is particularly alarmed, since this was a nightly occurrence, but we all find cover down along the irrigation ditch. We’re spread out over approximately fifty meters; across the road is a small village comprised of maybe fifteen buildings. Then it comes over the radio: “Troops in contact. 100 meters, 9 o’clock, multiple personnel.” From my vantage point, I can see 3rd Squad taking fire, but I can’t see exactly where it’s coming from or what they’re shooting at, so I start using the infrared laser on my weapon to paint sectors of fire for the guys in my squad to pull security.