Chapter 11 Target: Irhabee

 

There were some areas of Ramadi that we just simply did not go into.  The insurgency knew this, and they sought shelter there.  One of the most frustrating things about tracking down radical Islam is the duty to take in strangers and  to provide nourishment, shelter and protection to anyone who seeks it.  It is considered a sin not to fulfill this duty.

            When the insurgents needed to hide, they could go into an area and ask for protection.  The average Iraqi did not necessarily subscribe to the radical ideology that Al Qaeda professed, but he was not terribly fond of the Americans, and was required by the tenets of his faith to provide aid to anyone who showed up at his door and asked for it.  If he refused, he was killed.

            Such was the case with one particularly nasty insurgent cell leader.  He had a large extended family, and he would slip through the streets, staying with different relatives, often spending only one night in a given location.  The neighborhood he was staying in was one we simply did not patrol.  This was the heart of the insurgency, and we did not have the forces needed to control it.  The best we could do was to develop intelligence and act on it when we could.

            We had been seeking this character for a while now.  He was responsible for many attacks on US and coalition forces.  We knew that his extended family occupied most of the neighborhood around the house where he was staying, and that at the sound of an alarm, we could easily be surrounded by hundreds of armed insurgents.  Given the remote location - deep in enemy territory, through streets known to be filled with IEDs - our leaders elected for a small force of dismounted troops.  We took only eight men with us, and we left our vehicles behind.

            With our night vision equipment and accurate weapons, we owned the night.  We crept silently through darkened streets.  It was late – after midnight – but surprisingly, the many of the local people were awake.  No one was out in the streets, of course, it was far too dangerous for that, but the sound of people talking, laughing and going about their business could be heard coming through open windows.  In all of our interactions with Iraqi civilians, I don’t recall ever hearing the sound of a neighborhood full of ordinary families through their open windows.  Except for this night when we operated dismounted, the people were always fully aware of our presence and on their guard.  It seemed so normal to hear the sounds of televisions blaring, children playing and people talking.

            We always spread out when we dismounted – so a single attack could not take us all out – and we covered almost an entire city block as we moved; ten - meter intervals between us, sweeping the streets, rooftops and windows for targets.  We hoped we would not find any, because even a single shot out here could give away our presence and spell big trouble.  Our advantage was in our concealment.  Our back up humvee gun trucks and our tanks could probably get to us and bail us out if we needed them, but our mission would not succeed.  We preferred to keep the enemy off balance, and not let them know we were so deep in their backyards.

            The target house was in the middle of a block – relatives living in the houses on each side – and across a large open area.  We had no other way to get there but through the open.  Our plan was to stick to the shadows as much as possible, but we could not remain concealed the entire time.  One of our concerns was the proximity of the nearby houses, and the ease with which the enemy could flee from one house to the next.  Many of the back doors were only a few feet from the neighbors back doors, and the rooftops were an easy leap.  Once we announced our presence, our prey was likely to vanish.  Cutting off his escape was paramount.  Doing so without firing a shot was preferable.

            We were far enough into enemy territory that we figured it could take quite a while for us to get out of here.  The possibility of us having to hole up in a house somewhere and wait for help was strong.  For this reason, the squad leader was even more concerned than normal with keeping his Doc alive.  The guys all knew that if they were ever hurt, that I would stop at nothing to save them.  The knowledge that if they survived the initial injury they were probably going to survive was comforting for them.  They also knew that I had their back.  I was twenty years older and fifty pounds heavier than some of them, but I went from medic to soldier in an instant.  I never let my guys down, and I fought viciously right beside them.

            As much as I wanted to be in on the initial entry, SSG Murtha would not allow it.  We all knew the likelihood that we were going to take or inflict casualties during our initial assault, and he wanted me on the outside looking in.  I was assigned to watch the back door for anyone fleeing our assault, and my orders were to kill anyone I saw.  People fleeing from our assault were likely to be our targets, and they would sound the alarm and possibly cut off our escape if they got away.

            Normally, we engaged the enemy from a distance when we could.  Our rifles were effective at very long distances.  In this case, however, I did not want to give away my position with gunfire if I didn’t have to.  I let my rifle fall on it’s sling, and I held my Marine Corps K Bar fighting knife in my hand.  If anyone came out the back door, they would have to stop and slip around a tight corner in the darkness.  I hid in the shadows with my night vision equipment, poised to strike.  I had minimal training in hand to hand combat, but I knew enough to know that slicing the neck would stifle a scream.  I kept my other hand free, so that as my target slipped through the narrow alleyway around my corner, I could grab them from behind, yank their head to one side, and slash their throat.  If the knife didn’t do it, my pistol was easy enough to grab in it’s quick –draw holster.

            Our entry team stacked up at the door.  At the signal, they kicked it in and ran inside.  I could hear muffled sounds, and then it was quiet.  It seemed like an eternity while they searched the house.  I maintained my post like a coiled spring, ready to pounce if anyone came through that door, but no one did.  Finally, the squad leader called me and one of the other guys in to help with the search.  We wanted to spend as little time on target as possible, but we had to find our target, and we had to find evidence on him.

            Unlike our predecessor unit, we now operated in a new and sovereign Iraq.  The elections we oversaw were the beginning of their new democracy, and they now operated under constitutional law.  We could no longer take prisoners and send them away indefinitely.  We had to collect evidence, witness statements, and photographs.  Our prisoners faced trial in an Iraqi Court.  This was a good idea in theory, but in practice it was unreliable.  We could not reveal our methods for gathering intelligence to the Iraqi Court system, and frequently the targets we sought would purposefully keep an arms - length distance from any weapons, munitions or documents that could incriminate them.  We relied heavily upon finding evidence with the target when we detained them.  If we did not find any, they were often  released.  A bigger hurdle was the Iraqi Court system itself.  The judges were reluctant to take the word of an American against an Iraqi.  They also considered killing an American to be commendable.  The standard penalty for killing one of us was two months in Abu Gharib prison.  During their two - month stay, the insurgents we captured in Ramadi would network with others from around Iraq, train together, and emerge from prison a whole lot more lethal than when they went in.

            Our initial search came up empty…Our target was here, but this house was too clean.  We found the requisite single AK-47– and three magazines.   They were only allowed one magazine, but having three was not a big enough crime to keep this guy behind bars for very long.  We could not reveal the real evidence –information from insurgents - against him in an Iraqi court, for to do so would be signing the death warrant of our informants.

            I could feel the tension as I came in.  The target was in handcuffs and blindfolded, but sneering and smug.  He was defiant toward us and verbally abusive to the family.  Our interpreter gave us an idea of what he was saying to them, and it was not nice.  They sat stone –faced while we searched.  I looked at them and I had the distinct impression they would not miss this jerk when he was gone.

 The initial entry team was beginning their second round of searching, more thoroughly this time, desperate to find enough evidence to send this known terrorist away for a long time.  He had been responsible a lot of attacks, and we had been seeking him for quite a while.  We were not likely to have this opportunity again, but we could not stay here long.  The longer we stayed here, the greater the risk of being discovered.

I looked at the room where our target had been sleeping.  Clearly it was a guest room – normally used as a sitting room, there was a spare mattress on the floor, and a few blankets.  On one wall was the usual wall cabinet full of drawers with blankets, pillows and mattresses stacked on top, all the way to the ceiling.  There was something about this Iraqi hospitality.  Most homes had a supply of spare bedding big enough to house an army – and they sometimes did.

The room had a few drawers open, but most of the furnishings were still intact and undisturbed.  Little had been touched on the first sweep, probably because the guys were busy arresting the bad guy.  We divided the rooms between us, and worked furiously to search the place.  I worked with another soldier in the room where the target was found sleeping.  If he had any time at all to hide his weapons, they would be in this room.

I thought back to the fire scenes I had processed back home.  We would spend hours digging through the rubble to expose the floor, where we would find the tell-tale burn patterns left by a flammable liquid.  We left no stone unturned there, and I was not about to do so here.  Every drawer was dumped and pawed through.  Every mattress, blanket and pillow was shaken out and thoroughly examined.  I was extremely thorough, and as we worked, the young soldier with me began to despair, thinking we would find nothing.

Finally, in the bottom of the lowest drawer, I found something.  This particular device looked innocent enough – it was a small black tubular object, only two inches long and maybe an inch across.  It was the sort of thing that anyone might have kicking around in their junk drawer or toolbox – a forgotten gizmo that attaches to a tool we no longer use.

It was a rifle grenade adapter, the same type we found months earlier in the house of the red headed merchant.  I turned with a smile, and held the adapter up.  Finally, we had our man.  Ironically, he probably did not put that adapter in the drawer.  It had probably been there for a long time but it was enough to send him away.  AK-47’s were allowed for home defense against common criminals, but rifle grenades were clearly an offensive weapon used by the insurgents to kill Americans.

The target seemed incredulous that we found something.  He had been so smug, defiantly cursing us and his Iraqi hosts in Arabic while we searched.  He refused to obey our commands to be quiet, and was really getting on everyone’s nerves.  He was calling the men worthless traitors and insinuating that the women were all whores. The more noise he made, the more likely we were to be discovered.  A quick and silent ex-fil could turn into a real problem if we woke up the neighbors.

We photographed the rifle grenade adapter and the extra magazines.  The real evidence on this guy was probably human intelligence gathered by secret means – and it would never see the light of day in an Iraqi court.  To reveal it would be to compromise our ability to gather further evidence, endangering many lives. I really did not know or care if the stuff we found belonged to him, we were taking a killer off the streets either way, and this evidence was going to work.

By some Arabic words known only to our interpreter and the prisoner, our interpreter somehow managed to convince him to shut up.  I suspect he promised to kill him instantly if he attracted any attention, and that was fine with us.  Somehow we made it back out to our trucks without being discovered.  The Iraqi family seemed just as happy as we were to have this jerk out of their house, quietly whispering “Shukran” as we slipped out the door – Arabic for “thank you”.  The unfortunate truth was that their adherence to the tenets of their religion forced them to shelter this infidel in their house while he defiled Islam, insulted their women and promised brutal and horrible vengeance on the men.

 

We all slept pretty good the next day, knowing we had done some good that night.