Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing. My previous post was just that. I should have knocked on wood or something superstitious like that. For the lazy that don’t want to scroll down to remember what I had written about last time I will refresh your memories. Simply put, it was about how we often get the call to go “REDCON 1” which means grab all our gear, get on the vehicles and roll out to save the world or fight some fight somewhere.

Now that we are all on the level, here is the story.

First off I was sound asleep as usual. I was so asleep I didn’t hear the 3 mortar rounds impact about an hour before we got the call to go to “REDCON 1”. This time the eye in the sky had seen four masked men “hi-jack” and large cargo truck and kidnap the three people in the truck. Two of the men were thrown in the trunk of a black sedan and the other was put back in the truck. All the kidnappers were masked and armed with AK-47’s and one was wielding a large knife. Imagine that if you will; you are pulled out of your truck at gun point beaten severally and then shoved in the trunk of a black car in Iraq at 3PM. Not my idea of a good time.

This was all seen by an Air Force “Air Scan” team or "the eye in the sky", that I still have no idea where or who or what they are. They are just a voice on the radio telling us bad things are happening and that we must go. It’s kinda weird.

We roll out pretty quick and head north. To the rescue! As we make our way up there Air Scan watches the sedan and the large stolen truck leave the scene and head down some back roads. The sedan goes one way and the large truck going another. The kidnappers have no idea they are being watched this entire time. The same time the sedan gets to one house the truck arrives at another. Three gunmen from the sedan hop out and rush in the house. Moments later I imagine they see/hear us on the horizon blazing through the fields to their house and one guy runs out pops the trunk and out pop the two hostage and they take off in a mad dash for their lives. He has his rifle with him but never shoots them, don’t know why, but I am glad he didn’t.

Minutes after we arrive at the house where the sedan and the three gunmen ran inside, with their weapons. At this time we are given clearance to destroy the house with the tanks. This would have been an easy solution to the problem. One well placed shot would dismember the gunmen inside easily and blow out most of the walls of their little house. As I move my dismounted team closer to the house we notice that there are women and children looking out a window in a small hut behind the house. Therefore making the choice or leveling the house not such a good one. So just like an episode of COPS there we are at a stand off with the gunmen. As far as we know there are three of them, they are armed and possibly willing to fight. Up against us, The Good Guys, with two Kiowa helicopters, two M1A2 Abrams tanks, two M1114 Up-Armored Humvees and me and my squad of 4 dismounts. (A “dismount” is a soldier on the ground, on foot, with a rifle and the soldiers to his left and right.)

Obviously the odds were against them and they knew it too. We got the interrupter on the loud speaker and after a few convincing words about how they will turned into a red mist once the tank rounds rip apart the house and that there is no where for them to run because the helicopter will hunt them down and destroy them and a few other choice words about there mothers, the doors opens and out comes each kidnapper, one by one. Each one having to lift their shirts and turn around to make sure they aren’t strapped with explosives. This is where I left the scene. I left two members of my team there with the Iraqi Army soldiers that were moving in to clear the house and a few more of our guys that moved up in the trucks now that it was clear.

With all that secured at the house “Josh” another member of the team, and I head off in search of the two released hostages. Not to detain them or for anything bad, but to make sure that they were not wounded or injured and to get their sworn statements saying; “Yes these men put a gun in face, beat me senseless and shoved me in the trunk of a car.” We push out looking trough the fields for the men. We make it about a half mile out and come of a small berm and in the distance we can see the two men laying on hill waving a white flag they had made from one of their T-shirts.

When we come up to them there on the hill and they are ecstatic, rambling all kinds of Arabic and making gestures of thanks, doing this kissing their hand motion that’s a way of saying “thank you so much”. They are dripping in sweat and look really beaten. We know we need to get them and ourselves to a secured area and when we motion that we all need to all walk back to the trucks they both point to their feet and shake thiers heads.

In their barefooted mad dash for their lives they managed to tear the skin of their toes and heels. The rocks and dirt that had been baking in the 120 degree sunlight all day ripped and burned causing blisters on the skin that was left. The younger man was able to limp along with the help of a shoulder from Josh; who is a small guy, not short, just the type that might blow over on a windy day, which made it funny to watch. The other man was not able to walk or even stand for that matter and his return was now left up to me. Taking all this in; I was left with no other real option.

I hand Josh my rifle, and me, and with all my gear on, in the 120 joyful degrees of an Iraqi afternoon, I lift the man over my shoulders in what’s called a “fireman’s carry” and start walking back a little over a half mile to relative safety. Once you get someone up on you shoulders like that and get moving forward you don’t want to stop, you just want to get them there and get them off you. Especially if they smell like he did, but he is an Iraqi and he had been stuffed in a trunk and then did a mile long dash for his life, I would smell pretty ripe too.

From there we move to the next house and call the last kidnapper out and he gives up just like the others. In the back we find the kidnapped man tied up and barricaded in a chicken coup, he was beaten a little but was in better condition and was even working his way untied and planning a dash of his own

The kidnapped men are bandaged up by “Doc” the kidnappers are detained and as we are blindfolding them and putting them in the trucks we let them watch as we burned their black sedan to the ground and riddle it with bullet holes in their front yards that they won’t be seeing for many, many years.

Justice served.