The Reaper: Autobiography of One of the Deadliest Special Ops Snipers by Nicholas Irving & Gary Brozek

Author:Nicholas Irving & Gary Brozek [Irving, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Military, History, Afghan War (2001-)
ISBN: 1250045444
Google: ZP4YBAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00LKRSBBC
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2015-01-27T00:00:00+00:00

7. A Whole ’Nother Danger

As painful as it had been to be crammed into that Humvee, I was grateful that we were no longer being shot at. I’d been under fire before, but our firefights seldom lasted very long and we so frequently outgunned our opponents that the action was over in a matter of minutes. July 10, 2009, was by far the longest day of my life and the longest firefight I’d ever been involved in. I didn’t want to ever come close to breaking that record.

When we rejoined our platoon, we took our captives and separated them from one another. After a very short debrief, I was assigned to oversee one of the prisoners. Our emotions were still running high as the rest of the guys talked about what had just happened. It was like we had to keep telling ourselves the stories over and over again to make sense of what had taken place. One of the craziest things that I saw, and what really shocked me, was that everybody on the operation had multiple bullet holes through their clothing. Our body armor had done its thing and we didn’t even feel the impacts. Maybe that had to do with adrenaline pumping as well. Things got so intense during the fighting that our combat cameraman even picked up a weapon, something, as a general rule, they don’t do. Even though I hadn’t really slept more than a few minutes, maybe an hour or so total, over the course of those ninety-six or so hours, I was still too jazzed to sleep.

Finally, though, when we were waiting for transport via Chinooks, I drifted off. Just as soon as I nodded off, though, I heard a loud crack go past my ear. I immediately jumped up, put on my rucksack and stood there looking around, surveying the scene. All I saw was the rest of the guys just sitting there as calm as could be. In my head, bullets were still flying; in reality they weren’t.

Our team of six was going to fly back separately. Second platoon was going to return to FOB Bastion. We’d formed a bond with all those guys, but now they were leaving, and in a short time they were going back home. We shook hands and congratulated each other, but you could tell that reality was starting to set in and to set in hard. Kopp was seriously wounded. Several guys were wounded. For a while, none of us wanted to be alone with our thoughts, but now, as the Chinook that was to take us back to our compound was landing, it was like the truth was setting in.

On the flight back, I thought of Kopp, hoped that somehow he was going to be okay. I also thought of another guy we all knew back in sniper section. Santiago was a little Hispanic guy who we all really liked. He was only five foot four or five inches tall, but he was the dad of the entire sniper section.

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