Colgan was determined to transform the platoon into a combat unit that could handle street patrols and raids on enemy safe houses, neither of which the Tomb Raiders had ever conducted. And so the hooch became a training center. Every afternoon the platoon practiced close-quarters combat and house-clearing techniques in the basement. Colgan rearranged the furniture to simulate different settings and ordered three $300 battering rams for kicking in doors.

"Get in loud, fast and violent," he told them, while insisting that they treat those they found inside with respect. "They're young, they're new," Colgan wrote of the platoon in an e-mail to his sister Liz. "But they're doing good." It took just three raids, Whiteside says, for the team to gel. Over the next three months, the platoon conducted more than 40 raids on houses of suspected insurgents and former members of Saddam's regime in Adhamiya. In July, Colgan led the platoon on midnight searches of a Muslim cemetery next to the Abu Hanifa mosque, where insurgents were believed to be storing weapons. Colgan instructed the soldiers to bang the lid of each crypt; if it sounded hollow, the troops hoisted the 250-lb. granite slab and looked inside. On its second graveyard hunt, on July 4, the platoon netted a rocket-propelled-grenade launcher and 31 rpgs. A later search turned up a stash of the explosive C4. Afterward, the platoon nicknamed itself the Tomb Raiders.

Colgan's most valuable asset was his skill at gathering intelligence. "He was better and quicker than anyone else," says Lieutenant Lucien Ilardi, leader of one of the two other platoons in the Tomb Raiders' battery. Platoon leaders usually act on intelligence passed down from their commanders or from special-ops units, but Colgan generated tips himself. He cultivated informants on the streets and dined in the houses of new Iraqi friends. One gave Colgan a gold charm bracelet for the baby he and his wife were expecting. He memorized the names, residences and descriptions of top Baathists. On patrols, Colgan tirelessly chatted up locals, recording their complaints in a green notebook he kept in a Ziploc bag. "When that notebook comes out," Schermerhorn says, "we know we're going to be there another hour."

With Colgan at the helm, the platoon's morale soared. Even in 130¡ heat, the Tomb Raiders sometimes ran patrols five times a day on four hours' sleep. No one minded. "The first five months just flew by," says Whiteside. Colgan's disarming style seemed to soften the hearts of the people of Adhamiya. "There are very few people who can break into your house, arrest your husband and then by the TIME he leaves, have everyone waving and smiling. It takes a special person," says Whiteside. "We all thought, This cat is invincible."

THE ROOKIE'S MISSION
Nov. 28: Having arrived in Baghdad only three days ago, Orion Jenks has missed all that bonding. Now he is preparing for his maiden trip outside the wire. Yesterday Jenks spent Thanksgiving away from home for the first time, eating rubbery turkey with a bunch of strangers in a chow hall decorated with the corny Pilgrim motif of a kindergarten. The battalion required all soldiers at the base to speak to their families for five minutes on the phone, but the call only added to Jenks' longing for home. "I was hating life," he says.

Jenks grew up in San Francisco, where he says he often heard the rattle of a drive-by shooting. He claims he had a gun pulled on him once, while skateboarding through the Mission District. "I'm not scared, I'm anxious," he says, putting on his flak vest before patrol. "I don't like to be coddled. It's like driving. You don't learn until you do it." Listening to the new guy's bravado, Schermerhorn shakes his head. "He's green," the veteran says. "He talks a lot and thinks he knows everything."

As the platoon's three humvees pull out of the gates, Jenks' gun is turned the wrong way. "First off, you want to make sure your weapon is pointed away from other personnel," Schermerhorn says. "Watch out for other personnel at all times. Eye contact with buddies." Then he adds, "Have fun out there. No need to get your a__hole all tight." The convoy arrives at a local playground. The soldiers dismount and begin handing out candy to swarms of children. Before long, the kids are climbing all over them, asking for money, trying out the English profanities American soldiers have taught them. When Jenks gets flustered by the tumult, Schermerhorn walks over. "All you have to remember is you are in control out here. They respect you when you are in control," he says. "But most of the people here are good people. They deserve the same respect as you would give your mother."

Back at the house that evening, Schermerhorn is still preoccupied with Jenks. "I'm worried about him," he says. "I heard him say he could handle this because he was shot at back home. Well, I was shot at when I was living in the city, and I've never felt the fear I've felt here."

WHAT NOT TO SAY
Dec. 1: Ronald Buxton walks into the hooch and slumps onto the sofa, exhausted. "I just made the call," he tells Kamont. In August Buxton's wife Audrey gave birth to the couple's second child, Jared. Buxton was scheduled to leave Iraq this month to see the baby for the first time, but he received word in November that his redeployment had been delayed two months. Tonight he delivered the news to Audrey over a satellite phone. She and the couple's 7-year-old son broke down crying. Buxton was quiet. "I listen a lot," he says.

Buxton pulls out his Palm Pilot, which carries a photo album of his family and a glossary of 238 Arabic words and phrases. Slight and bespectacled, Buxton is the platoon's resident egghead. He downloads daily briefings on economics and politics from the Cato Institute and practices his Arabic with the dozen Iraqi interpreters who work at the palace. Since picking up a few beginners' books in Kuwait in May, Buxton has taught himself to read Arabic, and can converse casually with locals in Adhamiya. "I can't stand to be around people I can't understand," he says.

When they are inside the wire, Buxton and the rest of the soldiers in the platoon wrestle with how much to tell their families about the risks of life outside it. Grimes keeps the worst details out of her letters to avoid worrying her mother. The really "bad stuff" she saves for phone conversations with her dad. Buxton says his wife "knows I'm here, but she doesn't know specifics. She knows what she doesn't know." Which means she does not know any of the details of the night of Nov. 1.

In the run-up to that date, insurgents were increasingly often attacking military convoys with home-made bombs known as improvised explosive devices (IEDS)—typically, munitions disguised as roadside trash and detonated by remote control. While on patrol Sept. 23, the Tomb Raiders helped evacuate a U.S. military police officer who had been hit in the eye by shrapnel from an ied. On the way back to the palace, Colgan's vehicle disappeared in a cloud of dust when a second bomb exploded near it. "I thought they'd been hit," says Major Scott Sossaman, the battalion's operations officer who had been communicating with Colgan. "For 10 seconds we didn't know what happened." Then Colgan's voice crackled over the line again. "We're O.K.," he said.

By the beginning of Ramadan in late October, the 2nd Battalion was finding five ieds a week in Adhamiya. At the same time, the palace compound was taking fire from mortars and rocket-propelled grenades nearly every night. Ilardi discussed the sector's deteriorating security with Colgan. "These ieds are getting crazy," Ilardi said. "I don't know how we can combat it." Colgan shrugged and said, "We have to keep doing what we're doing." Ilardi says both men agreed that they should keep the thick windows of their humvees closed to prevent shrapnel from flying in.

In an e-mail to his father, Colgan sounded uncharacteristically worried, writing, "Dad, it's getting old, and it's getting crazy." On Oct. 31, after a mortar attack on the palace injured two soldiers, the Tomb Raiders combed the streets of Adhamiya looking for the perpetrators. They came up empty, but Colgan believed he had obtained a fix on the coordinates of a suspected insurgent cell leader. The next morning he e-mailed his father again: "The fighting is very one-sided. They are on the offensive, and we are mostly on the defensive. Only TIME will tell, and I hope it works out for this place. I just don't ever care to visit again."

On the night of Nov. 1, the platoon was tasked with staying in reserve at the base, ready to serve as the battalion's quick-reaction force in case of an attack. At 11:30 p.m., an rpg landed inside the walls of the palace. Members of a sister platoon to the Tomb Raiders were on patrol at the TIME and opened fire on a vehicle they believed had launched the grenade, but the car got away. The Tomb Raiders loaded into three humvees and joined the chase, Colgan riding shotgun in the lead vehicle and Schermerhorn driving. When the convoy reached a bridge leading out of Adhamiya, Colgan told Schermerhorn to swing around to cut off traffic going toward it. His window was down.

As the vehicle turned, an explosion went off under the humvee's right tire. "It felt like we hit a boulder," Schermerhorn recalls. "A shock wave went through the vehicle. I was stunned for a split second. I was deafened for a few minutes." Whiteside, who was in the gunner's turret, was knocked unconscious by the blast and fell onto Buxton's lap. Buxton patted him in the dark, feeling for blood, but found none. As Whiteside righted himself, Schermerhorn waited for Colgan's instructions. But Colgan was unconscious. Blood poured out of the left side of his forehead. His eye was bulging and purplish. "Get him home!" Buxton yelled.

Schermerhorn sped away, the humvee's flat tire flapping crazily. Whiteside climbed out of the turret and began trying to resuscitate the lieutenant. Colgan made a gurgling sound. He has a wife and kids, Whiteside thought. We've got to keep him alive. Buxton grabbed the radio handset. "This is Tomb Raider 6-3 Delta," he said. "Lieutenant Colgan is down."

Colgan's eyes were open when the three soldiers carried him into the aid station inside the palace compound. Two special-forces medics began to stabilize him. They asked Colgan his name. "Ben," he said. "What happened?" The medics performed a tracheotomy to help him breathe. Colgan's face was covered in blood, and his eye was protruding out of its socket, but his pulse was stable. A medevac helicopter took Colgan to the 28th Combat Support Hospital in central Baghdad. When Lieutenant Ilardi returned from his patrol, he rushed to talk to Grimes. She told him Colgan was responsive and that his eye had been damaged but it might be salvageable. "I've seen crazier things," she said.

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