Taking the Battle to the Enemy

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A few anxiety-ridden minutes later, the men again take cover in the government center. The other humvees lurch in on busted tires. Between Whiskey and Echo, seven vehicles have wheel or windshield damage. A few gunners are dazed. One has had his neck grazed by shrapnel, but again the men have evaded serious injuries thanks to the reinforced armor of their vehicles. For the next few hours they wait for a support team with extra tires. When the vehicles are fixed, the men will head out to swap with another platoon. Rapicault's humvee is disabled — this is the sixth time he has been hit — and efforts to tow it fail when it skids sideways into a concrete barrier, busting the axle.

All told, 13 IEDs have been detonated in Ramadi Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning. The explosions and the chase — it's not always clear who is chasing whom — continue into the next day. Two Echo Company Marines have been killed and one wounded by small-arms fire and an RPG attack. By noon Wednesday, things begin to settle. The battalion has detained 15 people and seized a weapons cache. The Americans believe they have killed 30 to 40 insurgents but can't say for sure because the insurgents quickly remove their dead and wounded. Rapicault calls it "a very successful day" and says he hopes the seizure of mortar shells, pipe bombs, AK-47s, machine guns and RPGs means the next few days, at least, will be quiet.

The push on Fallujah comes the following night. The tanks and troop carriers led by the 3/5 pull out of the base around 9 p.m. An AC-130 Spectre gunship — known to the Marines as "Basher"--is already in the air. After an hour, the battalion vehicles set off. The neon-green lights of the Fallujah mosques are visible in the distance. The main target, though, is an old soda factory just south of the city's main thoroughfare; insurgents are thought to be congregating in the area. The nerve center of the jihadist network, the military believes, is just to the west, in an area the Americans dub "Queens."

On their way toward the factory, the vehicles turn off a paved road onto a dusty plain and struggle with the uneven terrain and fine sand. One tank gets stuck for a spell. "So much for rolling right on in," says Captain Brian Chontosh, who heads the infantrymen of India Company. But they are protected. The deep percussion of artillery impacting the target area booms through the night, sending a huge black cloud into the sky. Aerial surveillance spots a pickup truck with a mounted machine gun moving in from the west. From above comes a deep rumbling sound. "Basher took it out," says a radio operator in Chontosh's carrier. Insurgents seen trying to set up a mortar position are killed with a TOW missile fired by another company. Around midnight, as the convoy approaches the factory, the Americans take gunfire from the upper floors and off both flanks. The shooters are immediately silenced by tank shells and heavy machine guns. India Company grunts dismount and move through the factory and surrounding buildings. There are no further exchanges.

Chontosh sets up a command post in the sand and lights a cigarette. "It's time for a defensive mind-set now," he says, settling back to await the insurgents' reaction. On a screen with a live satellite feed, he monitors movement in the surrounding area. There isn't much to see. Word from headquarters is that communications intercepts suggest the insurgents thought this was in fact the big showdown and had congregated in the middle of the city. But other than random bursts of small-arms fire, which is met with heavy fusillades, there is little action at the soda factory. Chontosh meets with the 3/5 commander, Lieut. Colonel Patrick J. Malay. They agree that things are looking good, but Malay says, "Let's not press our luck" by staying too long and "letting someone get lucky with a mortar." Twenty minutes later, they head out.