The War I Always Wanted by Brandon Friedman

Author:Brandon Friedman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MBI
Published: 2007-06-13T16:00:00+00:00

Questions regarding the Baath Party were conspicuously absent. Typical responses were yes, yes, no, and yes.

Ammar was always hanging around our compound, talking to anyone who’d listen. Sometimes he’d even use one of our dry-erase boards to teach Arabic to the guys. He couldn’t get enough of the fact that he was actually getting to work with real American soldiers. Like me, he’d seen too many movies. Except the difference was that in his case, they’d taught him English.

The first raid my platoon did with Ammar was a hunt for one of Saddam’s “nephews.” Since we’d gotten to Baghdad, it seemed to me that most raids conducted by the battalion were precipitated by a tip of doubtful provenance that was going to lead us to one of Saddam’s nefarious and on-the-run nephews. Yet no matter how much high-tech equipment we used, no one could ever bag a nephew.

That week we were attached to the battalion headquarters as part of a quick-reaction force. According the captain for whom I was working, the nephew was supposed to be at a pool hall on a street lined with shops and apartments. With no margin for error in such a tight environment, Croom, Ammar, and I spent the morning rehearsing with the platoon how it would go down later that afternoon. First we had to make sure that we were going to hit the right building, and second, we had to ensure that our timing was down for all the moving pieces. It was the first mission I’d ever done where I had the privilege of getting overhead satellite imagery of the location beforehand—even though the copied photos of Daura’s center looked like nothing but urban mush.

We left in a two-platoon convoy from the Daura refinery when the sun was at its peak that day. My platoon was to raid the pool hall, while Phil’s platoon would seal off the neighborhood block. As we closed on the suspected location, my truck and Estrada’s truck peeled off from the formation. While the rest of the convoy continued to drive around the neighborhood, Estrada and I went to “casually” case the pool hall with a quick drive-by. There were people everywhere on the bustling street—kids were crowding kebab stands, men were making deals at butcher shops for fresh meat hanging in the windows, and women on apartment balconies were hanging clothes out to dry. And just where I’d expected it to be was an open door through which I was able to barely, but unmistakably, distinguish a pool cue being passed around as we cruised past. While turning the corner at the next intersection, I radioed the positive ID to the rest of the team. This was a relief—usually it was more of guess as to whether we were headed into the right building or not.

We linked up with the rest of the group a few blocks away and wasted no time in moving back to the pool hall. This time we weren’t so casual about it.

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