Inside SEAL Team Six(95)

Unlike many of the Afghans and Iraqis I’ve encountered, the Kurds, who occupy northern Iraq and make up about 17 percent of Iraq’s total population, seem to appreciate Americans and what our country is trying to achieve.

The first time I arrived in Iraqi Kurdistan, my interpreter explained the absence of trees. “Saddam had them all burned down so that when he attacked, people couldn’t hide behind them.”

When I pointed out that there seemed to be many more women on the streets than men, he said, “That’s because Saddam had the men killed.”

Then when I noticed a large number of little boys and girls with cysts on their necks and faces, he said, “That’s because the gas that Saddam used against us gets into the DNA and is passed from one generation to the other.”

The terrain wasn’t as brutal as the dictator had been, but it was pretty demanding. I was teaching a weapons and small-unit tactics course in the snow-and-ice-covered mountains not far from the Iranian border with a former ■​■​■​■​■​ man and another security contractor. There was a two-thousand-meter mountain I wanted to climb, so I asked my colleagues if they wanted to do it with me.

The ■​■​■​■​■​ guy said, “The mountain road is too dangerous. We might run across an IED.”

“We can avoid the road and run up the side of the mountain and post-hole through the snow,” I replied. “No one’s going to place an IED on the side of the mountain where there’s not even a trail.”

We started out together, but I arrived at the top first. At the summit stood a little wooden hut.

After my two buddies arrived, I looked over a snowbank through the door opening and saw somebody’s hand on an AK-47. Seconds later, four soldiers emerged and they held us at gunpoint.

With my hands held over my head, I tried to explain why we were there. Unarmed and wearing cold-weather workout gear, we hardly looked threatening. Nor did the Iraqi soldiers, who seemed to be in their late forties and fifties.

The one soldier who understood a little English translated for the others. They lowered their rifles and invited us into their little shack. As we sat on a rug, they shared tea and bread with us and explained that they were on guard against foreign fighters sneaking across the border from Iran.

Sometime in 2005, I traveled two hundred fifty miles northwest of Baghdad to Mosul, Iraq, with three other Americans ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ At the time, the ancient city of two million was the scene of constant and severe violence as its diverse ethnic, religious, and political groups vied for supremacy.

On December 21, 2004, fourteen U.S. soldiers, four American employees of Halliburton, and four Iraqi soldiers had been killed by a suicide bomber who entered a dining hall at Forward Operating Base Marez near the main U.S. military airfield at Mosul wearing an explosive vest under an Iraqi security service uniform. Another seventy-two Americans were injured.

After arriving and completing our mission, the four of us stopped at a safe house where American soldiers were defusing a rocket that had been placed near the front door. The chief who ran the building said, “You guys came at the right time. We need more shooters. We’re being attacked all the time.”

The four of us were armed and ready. But nothing much happened during the daylight hours other than our hearing rocket attacks and small-arms fire off in the distance. At night, as we prepared to leave, the chief said, “Great. Now that you guys are leaving, we will be attacked again.”

The four of us climbed into an armored vehicle with our gear and weapons and headed to a deserted field on the outskirts of the city where we were scheduled to meet our aircraft.

As we drove, we heard the chief shouting over the radio, asking for the QRF (quick reaction force) to respond: “We’re being attacked!”

We couldn’t turn around. Instead, we waited in a darkened field for about forty-five minutes until a blackened six-seat prop plane landed. As we scurried aboard, the pilot shouted, “Hurry up! Hurry up!”

Recognizing his voice, I said, “Al?”

“Don?”

He turned out to be a pilot and a good buddy from ST-6 who is still flying high-risk missions all over the Middle East.

As I sat with him in the cockpit, he said, “When I first starting flying here, soon after the war started, I noticed all these little lights coming at me, like fireworks, and quickly realized that they were tracers and I was being shot at from the ground. But I love it! I love the action!”

Al approached the Baghdad airport, then started to corkscrew in so suddenly that I felt like my stomach was coming out of my throat.