Iraq: Melting into the City

It looks a little spooky out here," Captain Jon Stubbs shouts above the roar of his humvee as he leads two platoons of the 3rd Battalion of the 153rd Infantry Regiment on a patrol through the heart of Adhamiya, Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhood. The cause of Stubbs' concern: it's only 7:30 p.m., and the streets around Abu Hanifa Mosque are empty and dark. "This place is usually buzzing like downtown Manhattan late into the night," says Stubbs, 32, a native of Searcy, Ark. "If people have gone home this early, they must know something nasty is about to happen."

So Stubbs orders up a show of force--"to reassure the good guys and warn the bad guys." He commands his platoons to dismount and walk through the warren of trash-strewn alleyways around the mosque, starting with the most dangerous of them all, a street the Americans have dubbed Terrorist Café. It is lined with lean-tos and shacks that serve as teahouses and kebab stalls, some of them patronized by leaders of the Sunni militant groups that have turned Adhamiya into a hotbed of insurgency in the Iraqi capital--a "Little Fallujah in the middle of Baghdad," in the words of a local shop owner.

Stubbs' men know these teahouses well; they have engaged the enemy on this street and have captured some of its commanders here. But on this evening a couple of nights before Thanksgiving, most of the teahouses are inexplicably shuttered. Here and there, faces press against the windows or peer out from doorways, staring at the Americans as they walk past, with their M16s pointed down the streets or up at the roofs in constant anticipation of enemy fire. To break the tension, Stubbs occasionally smiles and waves, and he sometimes gets a smile in return. But most of the Iraqi faces project a mixture of fear and hostility. "Something's going on, and these folks know it," the captain says.

As the platoons leave Terrorist Café and proceed down the next dark alley, some dogs begin to howl. The soldiers stiffen and point their gun-mounted flashlights in all directions. "The dogs are the Iraqi early-warning system," alerting insurgents to the approach of strangers, Stubbs says. "They're very effective." Half an hour later, the patrol ends without event. The platoons get back on their humvees and return to their forward operating base, known as Gunslinger. Stubbs is relieved to have completed the mission but can't shake his suspicion--one that is heightened when, a few blocks from the mosque, Adhamiya suddenly springs back to life, with shops and restaurants doing a roaring trade and the pavements filled with people. "There was definitely something going down back there," the captain says, shaking his head in frustration. "I'd sure like to know what."

In fact, TIME later learned from sources in the insurgency that a rebel group had planned an attack on the night of the patrol. The intended targets: U.S. snipers who were perched on rooftops close to Abu Hanifa Mosque, watching for suspicious activity. The insurgents' plan was to hit the snipers' positions with rocket-propelled grenades and then ambush the platoons that would ride to the snipers' rescue. It's unclear why the attack was called off, but the unexpected arrival of Stubbs' patrol and its show of force in the streets may have been factors.