None Left Behind by Charles W. Sasser Read Free Book Online

That was how he reduced his chances of being caught and punished. Shoot and scoot. That was his MO. Use a residential neighborhood, a mosque, or some other public place into which no American GI would dare return fire. Pop off a round or two and then haul ass.
    This was fucked-up,
Rhodes thought,
when they could shoot at you but you couldn’t shoot back.
    â€œBreak! Break! Break!” The L.T. (lieutenant) was on the radio with Delta HQ and Second Platoon. “Contact! We have contact. One sniper. Stand by.”
    Excitement surged through the platoon, but it didn’t last long. In fact, the contact, such as it was, was almost a disappointment after all the buildup prior to the start of the mission. Just the single shot and after that, aside from the barking of dogs inside the town, nothing else. Second Platoon on its way through Khargouli rousted a couple of teenagers sneaking around with a jug of hooch.
    It wasn’t much of a war so far.
    That is, it wasn’t much of a war unless
you
were the one getting shot at. Then it was
war
whether it was one shot or a barrage. Murphy seemed surprised and indignant that someone had actually tried to kill him.
    â€œThe son-of-a-bitch shot at me! Did you see that? The bastard tried to waste me.”
    â€œWe need to get the motherfucker,” Grom said, furious and scared at the same time.
    â€œRelax,” Corporal Jimenez counseled. “This is just the beginning. You’ll get your chance for payback.”
    By now, all PFC Rhodes wanted was to get this shit over with and go home. The first night in battle hadn’t been kind to him. First, he damned near drowned. Then the hajjis started taking potshots. He had a feeling things were going to get much worse before they got better.

SEVEN
    By the time of Operation
Desert Storm,
the first Iraqi war in 1991, the four-wheel-drive, wide-bodied High-Mobility Multipurpose Vehicle M998 or updated M1114 (HMMWV, “hummer,” “humvee”) had largely supplanted most light trucks within the U.S. military, including the old workhorse quarter-ton Jeep used since World War II and the Vietnam-era APC (Armored Personnel Carrier). At least seventeen configurations of the heavy-duty vehicle were now in service, ranging from cargo/troop carriers and ambulances to automatic weapons platforms and TOW missile carriers.
    The army had drafted final specifications for the HMMWV in 1979 after concluding that militarized civilian trucks no longer satisfied tactical requirements. The hummer first saw combat in Operation
Just Cause,
the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. Over 10,000 were employed by Coalition forces during Operation
Iraqi Freedom
beginning in 2003.
    Like the quarter-ton Jeep, the original hummer was designed for operations behind friendly lines and therefore was not armored against intense small arms fire, much less against machine guns and RPGs. It was not until after the Somalia disaster that the army recognized the need for a more protected vehicle to be used in urban combat.
    AM General, a subsidiary of American Motors Corporation, began limited production of a fully armored humvee in 1996, the M1114. Only a few of those were available prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. “Up-armor” kits were installed instead on the original prototypes. These kits included armored doors with bullet-resistant glass, side and rear armor plates, and a ballistic windshield.
    Where up-armor kits were unavailable, inventive soldiers improvised “hillbilly armor” out of scrap metal. In December 2004, Secretary ofDefense Donald Rumsfeld came under harsh political criticism for failing to provide better-equipped trucks. As a result, most hummers in the war zones were either immediately up-armored or replaced. By the time the 10 th Mountain Division deployed its 2 nd BCT, nearly all hummers in Iraq were the new, improved version.
    The M1114 held up well against most small arms fire and lateral IED