Fick treats the Marines to a special breakfast. He distributes two meal packs of humrats to each team, for the men to divide among themselves.

While eating hot lentil stew and rice, Espera ponders American culture. aDog, before we came over here I watched Pocahontas with my eight-year-old daughter. Disney has taken my heritage as an American Indian and f.u.c.ked it up with this typical American white-boy formula.a aPocahontas. Wonderful childrenas cartoon,a Colbert says. aI like the music.a aDog, Pocahontas is another case of your people s.h.i.+tting on mine. Whatas the true story of Pocahontas? White boys come to the new land, deceive a corrupt Indian chief, kill ninety percent of the men and rape all the women. What does Disney do? They make this tragedy, the genocide of my people, into a love story with a singing racc.o.o.n. I ask you, would the white man make a love story about Auschwitz where a skinny-a.s.s inmate falls in love with a guard, with a singing racc.o.o.n and dancing swastikas? Dog, I was ashamed for my daughter to see this.a Trombley slides in next to Espera. aYou know, my great-great-great-grandfather was a mercenary up in Michigan who had a militia where theyad kill Indians for hire. He was really good at it.a aYou know, Trombley,a Espera says, ain the fis.h.i.+ng village Iam from, Los Angeles, if I mention that Iam part Indian, most white motherf.u.c.kers will bring up some great-great-great-grandparent who was part Indian because they want to let me know that even though they look like white motherf.u.c.kers, theyare actually down with my people. You are the first white motherf.u.c.ker Iave ever met whoas said that.a aJust what race are you, Poke?a Colbert asks, referring to Espera by the nickname only his friends use. aI mean, are you Latino, Indian or white? Or are you just whatever race happens to be cool at the time?a aShut up, white boy, and go eat a baloney sandwich,a Espera says.

aNo, I mean it,a Colbert continues. aYour wife is half white. Iave met your friends from L.A. Theyare all white.a aBro, youave got a point,a Espera says. aIam afraid to hang out with my Mexican friends at home. Iam afraid if we go to the liquor store together theyall stick it up. My Mexican friends are shady motherf.u.c.kers. No job, twenty-thousand-dollar entertainment system at home, more guns than a f.u.c.king armory. The only Mexicans I hang out with are in the Marine Corps.a Breakfast ends with Fickas order to get in the Humvees and link up with RCT-1 in preparation for the new mission. aFinally, we get to f.u.c.k s.h.i.+t up again,a Person exults as we leave the road by the airfield. Colbert, however, gazes morosely out the window at Marines rolling up the road in Amtracs. They will be stationed here as guards. aThat would be sweet,a Colbert says. aGuarding an airfield for three weeks.a FICK HAS SOME BAD NEWS when the Marines reach RCT-1 at a muddy, bomb-cratered camp at the junction of Routes 7 and 17. aOur original warning order seems to be changing,a he tells his team leaders. aInstead of staging ambushes on enemy positions along Route 17, we will bust north adjacent to Route 7 and do a movement to contact.a aMovement to contacta is another way of saying they will again be driving into suspected enemy positions in order to see if anybody will shoot at them. Once again they will be following the Gharraf ca.n.a.l on a backcountry trail. aOne thing Iave learned,a Fick tells me. aIs if we do anything involving something named aGharraf,a itas not good.a Encino Man holds a company formation in an attempt to bring out the moto in his men. They stand in a sloping field at parade rest, hands clasped behind their backs, each young man looking ahead with a hard, Marine-Corps-correct thousand-yard stare. aWe all know what happened to the chow,a Encino Man says, bringing up the supply truck destroyed by Iraqis. aThis wasnat our bad planning.a He tries to muster a fierce expression, but despite his apelike features, Encino Manas face doesnat project anger well. It remains about as placid as an oatmeal cookie as he mumbles through his attempt at a rousing speech. aThey did this. The Iraqis took your food. I hope this makes you mad at the enemy. You should be really mad at them. Okay?a FOLLOWING ENCINO MANaS pep talk, Fick now piles on more depressing news. aYesterday, Marines in a supply convoy south of here were caught in an RPG ambush. They were cut off and surrounded by bad guys. They called in for help, but by the time it arrived one was dead and one was missing.a No one knows for sure what happened to the missing Marine, but according to Fick (and to media reports), itas believed that the Marine was killed, that his corpse was mutilated, dragged through a town and strung up for public display. Hearing this account, Lovell turns to his men and vows, aI am not going to be a POW, and Iam not going to die here.a The Marines arenat just grim now. Theyare slightly freaked out by the specter of mobs attacking them. They canat help but think of the Army Rangers who were attacked and mutilated in Somalia. By coincidence, the last movie shown to their unit at Camp Mathilda before they embarked on the invasion was Black Hawk Down, the slow-motion retelling of disaster befalling a small band of Americans trapped in a hostile third-world city theyad entered to liberate. The parallels now seem clear.

Doc Bryan leans against the wheel of a Humvee, telling his fellow Marines, in all seriousness, aWhat we should do is paint skulls on our faces. Come into these towns like demons. These are primitive people. We would scare the s.h.i.+t out of them. We need to use fear, not give in to it.a Carazales, the twenty-one-year-old who now serves as the driver on Kocheras team, says, aWhat we ought to do is send everyone off to Ace Hardware, get some chain saws, capture some Fedayeen, cut their limbs off, tie them to wheelchairs, load them in a C-130, and drop them on Baghdad. Weall just sit back in our Humvees reading Playboys.a Carazales is not much taller than an M-16 rifle. He has a Marine Corps eagle-globe-and-anchor tattoo on one leg and a BORN LOSER tattoo on the other. He wound up in the Corps, he says, aBecause I got tricked into this motherf.u.c.ker. I was eighteen, in jail, facing probation, and the DA and a Marine recruiter made a deal I couldnat refuse.a He complains, aIf I werenat in the Marines, by now Iad be making real money. Iadave worked my way up to fourteen dollars an hour, working on rigs or as a welderas a.s.sistant.a Carazales is from Cuero, Texas, hates the Marine Corps, hates officers, hates rich people. aThey should make a holiday every year where if you make less than thirty thousand dollars a year you get to drive into rich neighborhoods and f.u.c.k up rich peopleas houses. Go inside and break their s.h.i.+t. Every blue-collar man gets to sleep in a white-collar manas house.a Sometimes he asks fellow Marines, aHave you ever read the Communist Manifesto? That sounds ideal. How the upper cla.s.ses are oppressing the lower cla.s.ses. Thatas how it happens back home. Rich people, corporations, get all sorts of secret government handouts they donat tell us about.a Not only is Carazales apparently the battalionas leading Communist, heas also among the most popular men in Bravo Company. Heas a POG mechanic, but he volunteered to drive for Kocher, one of his closest friends, after Kocheras original driver, Darnold, was shot in Al Gharraf. Now, not only does he drive for Kocheras team, heas still responsible for maintaining the battalionas vehicles. He seldom sleeps, and his face and hands are invariably black with axle grease, hence his nickname: aDirty Earl.a Volunteering to be on Kocheras team has also spared him from one of the most onerous burdens in the company. Carazales previously had to drive for Captain America. Now, sitting around waiting to begin their hunt for ambushes on the route north, Carazales brings up the subject of Captain America. aDriving for that motherf.u.c.ker was jacked. Every time wead come across more of them f.u.c.ked-up civiliansa"he had to jump around getting pictures, worried my driving was too fast for his Canon stabilization system to work right.a aMan, Iam glad I didnat see any dead little children,a Garza says.

aHow do you think we would feel if someone came into our country and lit us up like this?a Carazales says. aSouth of Al Gharraf I know I shot a building with a bunch of civilians in it. Everyone else was lighting it up. Then we found out there were civilians in there. Itas f.u.c.ked up.a Carazales works himself into a rage. aI think itas bulls.h.i.+t how these f.u.c.king civilians are dying! Theyare worse off than the guys that are shooting at us. They donat even have a chance. Do you think people at home are going to see thisa"all these women and children weare killing? f.u.c.k no. Back home theyare glorifying this motherf.u.c.ker, I guarantee you. Saying our president is a f.u.c.king hero for getting us into this b.i.t.c.h. He ainat even a real Texan.a Carazales slumps back in the dirt. No one says anything. Then he brightens. aI just thought of a tight angle. All the pictures Captain Americaas taking of shot-up, dead Iraqi kids? Iall get my hands on those. Iam going to go back home and put them in Seven-Elevens and collect money for my own adopt-an-Iraqi-kid program. s.h.i.+t, Iall be rolling in it. A war veteran helping out the kids. I ought to run for office.a For whatever reason this night, Ferrando allows his men to sleep in the open beside their Humvees. Itas the first time in two weeks we havenat dug Ranger graves. At about midnight, I awaken to see the fields and palm trees across from our Humvee lit up by illumination flares. Suspended from parachutes, the chemical flames drift slowly down into the field.

I wake Person, who is sleeping next to me, and ask him whatas going on.

aItas illume,a he mumbles. aOurs.a aWhy are we lighting up our own position?a I ask.

Person snores.

I fall back asleep. Then I awaken again a few minutes later to the sound of artillery or rockets shrieking through the sky, exploding a few hundred meters directly in front of us. The blasts turn the field into a sea of molten orange and blue liquid, with waves splas.h.i.+ng up against the palms in the background. In my effort to roll underneath the Humvee for cover, I bang into Person.

as.h.i.+t!a I yell, panicking about the explosions.

aDonat worry about that,a Person says over the continuing roar. aThatas our artillery.a He lifts his head up and observes the firestorm. aItas just danger close.a He falls back asleep.

The next morning, we are informed that we are lucky to be alive. aThat was an enemy artillery strike from a BM-21 multiple-launch rocket system,a Fick says, delivering the news with a grimly amused smile. aThat system kills everything in an entire grid squareaa"a square kilometer. aThey knew our coordinates and came within a few hundred meters of us. We got lucky, again.a

TWENTY.

ON THE MORNING OF MARCH 31, at about nine, Colbertas team and the rest of First Recon, leave their encampment at the intersection of Routes 7 and 17 in central Mesopotamia to begin the next mission. Todayas objective is a town of about 50,000 called Al Hayy. Itas a Baath Party headquarters and home to a Republican Guard unit of several thousand about thirty kilometers to the north.

RCT-1as force of 6,000 Marines is planning to a.s.sault through the center of Al Hayy sometime in the next twenty-four hours. But the Recon Marines will go there first. As it did on its movement to the town of Al Gharraf, the battalion will leave Route 7 and use a dirt trail hugging the edge of a ca.n.a.l. Initially, RCT-1 will parallel First Reconas movement on the other side of the ca.n.a.l. Then First Recon will race ahead, cross a series of ca.n.a.l bridges into Al Hayy, speed north and seize the main highway bridge out of the city in order to block the retreat of enemy forces during RCT-1as attack.

On this mission, First Recon will be an even smaller force than it usually is. Alpha Company has been temporarily detached from the battalion to go on a separate mission in search of the lost Marine believed to have been lynched in an Iraqi town.

We drive across a low, narrow bridge over the ca.n.a.l, and First Reconas reduced force of 290-odd Marines in fifty vehicles again becomes the northernmost unit in central Iraq. Itas the first warm morning in several days. Rain clouds blow across the sky, but the sun pokes out and the air is dust-free. The ca.n.a.l flows past us on the right, about thirty meters wide in some places.

The battalion rolls single-file on a one-lane, unpaved road that pa.s.ses through the now familiar patchwork of gra.s.sy fields, mudflats crisscrossed with trenches and berms, palm groves and small hamlets. Some have walls that come right up to the edge of the road, channeling the Humvees between the villages on the left and the ca.n.a.l on the right. Perfect terrain for ambushes.

We pa.s.s farmers in a field to our left. Colbert regards them warily and says, aThese are a simple people. These are the people Iam here to liberate.a aSmall-arms fire ahead,a Person says, pa.s.sing word from the radio.

We hit a hard b.u.mp at about twenty miles per hour. A wild dog appears out of nowhere, lunging and snarling against the windows on the right side of the vehicle. aJesus Christ!a Colbert jumps, more startled than I have ever seen him.

Despite the fear and stress, Colbert remains an extremely polite invader. When we pa.s.s more farmers on the road, he pulls the barrel of his M-4 up, so as not to point it directly at them.

A pair of Cobras drops low to our left. The armored helicopters, which we havenat seen in a few days, soar overhead with the grace of flying sledgehammers. They make a distinctive clattering sounda"as ugly and mean as they look. aCobras spotted a blue Zilaa"Russian military trucka"aahead, carrying uniformed Iraqis,a Colbert says, pa.s.sing along a report from the radio. We stop.

A machine gun buzzes somewhere up the road. aShots fired on our lead vehicle,a he says. We remain halted. Colbert gazes longingly at some weeds beside his window. aThis would have been the perfect s.h.i.+tting opportunity,a he says. aI should have done it when we first stopped.a Colbertas initial attempt to clear his bowels this morning was interrupted when the teamas mission was unexpectedly moved up by two hours. Now, at ten in the morning, with the gunfire starting, this problem is foremost on his mind.

Iave learned a few things about the Marines by now. There are certainties in their world, even in the chaos of war. As soon as a unit sets in for the night and finishes digging its Ranger graves, everyone will be moved to a slightly different position and forced to start all over again. When a team is told to be ready to move out in five minutes, they will sit for several hours. When the order is to remain in position for three hours, their next order will be to roll out in two minutes. Above all, it is a certainty that Colbert will never be able to take a c.r.a.p in peace.

Fick walks up. aThey found RPGs two hundred meters up the road in a ditch. There is a dismounted Iraqi platoon ahead that we know about.a A ripping sound fills the air. Cobras skim low over palm trees about a kilometer ahead, firing machine guns and rockets into a hamlet on the other side of the ca.n.a.l.

aTheyare smoking some technicalsaa"civilian trucks with weapons on thema"ain a cl.u.s.ter of buildings up ahead,a Colbert says.

Directly across the ca.n.a.l from usa"on our right about seventy-five meters awaya"Amtracs from RCT-1 rumble through some scrub brush outside some mud-hut homes. When moving, Amtracs produce an unmistakable sounda"sort of like what youad hear if you went to a Laundromat and filled all the dryers with nuts and bolts and pieces of junk and turned them on high. Driving next to one is deafening. Even creeping at low speed through the weeds across the ca.n.a.l from us, they make a ferocious racket. Then their machine guns start spitting at targets by some huts. Mark-19s boom. We have no idea what theyare shooting at. All we see are the gray vehicles rising from the brush, b.u.mping forward a few meters, stopping, then little orange flashes.

Listening to this mini-firefight taking place outside the doors of our Humvee, Colbert leans out his window and peers at the action through his rifle scope. He leans back in his seat and says, annoyed, aI just hope they donat orient their fire onto us.a We wait.

af.u.c.k it,a Colbert says amidst the sporadic machine-gun fire. aIam gonna do it.a He jumps out into the scrub vegetation beside the vehicle, squats and takes care of business.

Person starts singing Country Joe McDonaldas antiwar song, aI-Feel-Like-Iam-Fixina-to-Die,a with the lyrics, aAnd itas one, two, three/ What are we fighting for?a Heas interrupted by an order sent over the radio to move out. He shouts at Colbert, squatting in the field. aHey! Weare moving again!a Colbert hops in, suspenders from his partially disa.s.sembled MOPP flapping. aI made it.a He sighs.

As Person drives forward, Colbert says, aI think weare gonna take some fire when we come around the next bend.a Colbertas instincts are money. The first mortar of the day explodes somewhere outside the vehicle as soon as we make the turn. No one can see where it hit, and judging by its m.u.f.fled sound, it was probably several hundred meters away. We stop. To the left, thereas a hamlet: four to six earthen-walled homes. Theyare cl.u.s.tered together about fifteen meters from the road, nestled beneath low-hanging fig trees. In front there are crude fences made of dried reeds, used as paddocks for sheep and goats. It has the primitive feel of one of those Nativity sets they build in town squares at Christmas. Chickens run about, and a half dozen villagersa"older women in black robes, older men in dingy white ones, all of them barefoota"stand gawking at us. Despite the almost biblical look of the place, there are power lines overhead with electric wires feeding into the huts. The Marines get out, take cover behind the hoods and open doors of the Humvees, and scan the rooftops, walls and bermed fields behind the hamlet for enemy shooters.

But after about five minutes of this standoff, the villagers approach. The Marines step out from around their vehicles. A translator is brought up. The villagers say there are no enemy forces in their hamlet. Even as they speak, there are more explosions in the distance. Person, still sitting in the Humvee, hears a report from the radio that other units in First Recon, now spread out along two kilometers or so of this narrow lane, are receiving enemy mortar fire.

A shoeless farmer approaches. His face is narrow and bony from what looks to be a lifetime of starvation. Shaking his fist, speaking in a raspy voice, he says through a translator that heas been waiting for the Americans to come since the first Gulf War. He explains that he used to live in a s.h.i.+a marshland south of here. Saddam drained the marshes and ruined the farmland to punish the people there for supporting the 1991 rebellion. aSaddam believes if he starves the people we will follow him like slaves. Itas terrorism by the system itself.a I ask the farmer why he welcomes Americans invading his country. aWe are already living in h.e.l.l,a he says. aIf you let us pray and donat interfere with our women, we accept you.a The farmer, with gray hair and his narrow face wrapped in wrinkles, looks to be about sixty, with a lot of those being hard years. I ask him when he was born. 1964. I tell him weare the same age. He leans toward me, smiling and pointing to his face. aCompared to you, I look like an old mana he says. aThis is because of my life under Saddam.a I find his self-awareness unsettling. One of the few comforts I have when looking at images of distant suffering is the hope that the starving child with flies on his face doesnat know how pathetic he is. If all he knows is misery, maybe his suffering isnat as bad. But this farmer has shattered that comforting illusion. Heas wretched, and he knows it. Before going off, he warns the translator that we are entering an area where the Baath Party is strong. Then he asks if he can join the Marines and go to Baghdad with them. aI will kill Saddam with my own hands,a he says.

ABOUT 500 METERS AHEAD of Second Platoonas position by the hamlet, Marines in Third Platoon spot a Zil bouncing through the field. There are about twenty young Iraqi men packed into the rear bed. Theyare armed but wearing civilian clothes. The truck stops, and the Iraqis attempt to flee by the ca.n.a.l. Marines train their guns on them and they throw their arms up in surrender. The Iraqis insist they are farm laborers who have weapons because they are afraid of bandits. But before being stopped, they tossed bags into the field. The Marines retrieve them. Inside, they find Republican Guard military doc.u.ments, and uniforms still drenched in sweat. Obviously, these guys just changed out of them. The men in Third Platoon take the Iraqis prisoner, bind their wrists with zip cuffs (sort of a heavy-duty version of the plastic bands used to tie trash bags) and load them into one of the battalionas transport trucks.

THE BATTALION PUSHES FORWARD a few more kilometers. Cobra machine guns buzz in the distance. Mortars explode every few minutes now, but theyare still far offa"hundreds of meters away, we guess.

In places the trail is almost like a tunnel bounded by reed fences and overhanging trees. Itas the most dangerous terrain to operate in, short of being inside a city. But the weird thing is, itas awfully pretty, and everyone in the vehicle seems to be feeling it. A few days earlier, when the battalion raced into Al Gharraf under fire, there were Marines I talked to afterward who said that when they saw the dazzling blue dome of the mosque by the entrance, they felt peaceful, despite the heavy-weapons fire all around.

Basically, there are things you react to almost automatically, even in times of stress. A tree-lined trail bending past a ca.n.a.l is still pretty, even with hostile forces about. During one halt, Colbertas team is completely distracted by several water buffalo bathing on the banks of the ca.n.a.l. Trombley gets out of the vehicle and walks over to thema"even as several mortars boom nearbya"and has to be ordered back by Colbert.

Second Platoon reaches another hamlet, a walled cl.u.s.ter of about seven homes. Colbertas team and the others are ordered to dismount and clear this and the next several hamlets, going house-to-house. Higher-ups in the battalion have grown increasingly concerned about the mortar fire. The Cobras overhead havenat been able to find the positions of those launching them. The hope is that by making the Marines more aggressive on the ground, they can scare up better information from the villagers.

Colbert leads his team into the hamlet by bounding toward it in stages, their rifles ready to fire. Several men emerge. Colbert shouts, aDown!a gesturing with his M-4. They drop to their stomachs in the dirt. Marines step toward them, rifles drawn, and force them to interlock their fingers behind their heads. Then about twenty women and children stream out. Espera is tasked with herding them toward the road.

A salvo of three mortars. .h.i.ts a couple hundred meters northwest, sending geysers of dirt and smoke up behind the village. The Marines pay them no heed. A much closer mortar, impacting maybe seventy-five meters to the west, seems to come out of nowhere. When theyare this close, you hear a sounda"fffft!a"just before the boom. Then, as a result of the sharp increase in air pressure, your body feels like itas been zapped with a mild electric charge. But weare stopped here, and thereas nothing to do about it. Mortars fall in a totally random pattern. Itas not like thereas a guy crouched somewhere in a field with a rifle, trying to pick you up in his scope. Youare not being individually targeted. You have to take comfort in the randomness of it all.

I walk up to Espera, guarding the hamletas women and children on the road. An old lady in black screams and shakes her fists at him. aThis brings me back to my repo days,a Espera says. aWomen are always the fiercest. You always have to look out for them. Doesnat matter if itas a black b.i.t.c.h in South Central or some rich white b.i.t.c.h in Beverly Hills. They always come after you screaming. Donat matter if youave got a gun. Itas like women think theyare protected.a Colbertas team enters the first group of homes. Earthen walls are adorned with bright pictures of flowers and sunsets, artwork clipped from magazines. The day has grown hota"hitting the mid-nineties outsidea"but the homes are naturally cool. Trombley is impressed. aItad be pretty neat to live in one of these,a he says.

A bedroom in one hut stuns the Marines. Against the bare walls, thereas a CD player, a TV with DVD, mirrors, a painting of a horse on velvet, electric lamps and what looks to be a California King beda"chrome and black-lacquered frame with leopard-print covers. It looks like theyave stumbled into the crib of an East L.A. drug lord.

Nearby, thereas a locked windowless hut. Marines try to kick the door in, but itas padlocked with a chain. They chop it off with bolt cutters and find the village stash: two AK rifles, piles of weed and some bags with white powder that looks like either cocaine or heroin. Colbert confiscates the rifles but leaves the drugs. aWeare not here to f.u.c.k with their livelihoods,a he says.

Mortars continue to fall for the next hour while we slowly b.u.mp up the trail. With the rising heat, and Marines in their MOPP suits bounding across fields, scrambling up walls and kicking in doors, everyone is pouring sweat. Tiny gnats swarm everywhere. They seem to have miniature teeth. Black clouds of them descend, then you feel your neck and eyelids and ears being chewed on.

Colbert slumps against the Humvee, taking a rest, his face throbbing red. aI almost went down in that last village. Iam at my limit.a He sucks water from a drinking tube attached to a CamelBak pouch and starts to sing, aIam Sailing Away!a He stops. aThis is dangerous as h.e.l.l,a he says.

Thereas a shot ahead. Person picks up a report from the radio. aA dog tried to attack a friendly, so he shot him.a aThat was needless,a Colbert says.

Two mortars explode somewhere.

Captain America struts past with his bayonet out. aCharlieas in the trees!a Colbert calls after him, quoting a line from Platoon.

BY THREE-THIRTY in the afternoon we have reached a bend in the ca.n.a.l, approximately ten kilometers south of the Marinesa objective, Al Hayy. There is a mosque ahead. A few moments earlier, Cobras shot up the fields beside it, pulverizing suspected ambush points, but all is quiet now. The battalion halts while officers plan the final push to Al Hayy.

Everyone remains sitting inside Colbertas Humvee, waiting. After six hours of searching for an elusive enemy on this back trail, the men on Colbertas team are worn down, their nerves frayed. The chatter and happy pro-fanities and inside jokes have ceased. Even Person just stares vacantly out the window.

The silence is broken by an unusual new sound, a series of high-pitched zings. Orange-red tracers streak through the air and slam into the berms in front of and behind the Humvee. Large-caliber rounds are being fired at us from across the ca.n.a.l. You can actually see some bounce and tumble after they strike the ground just a few meters from us. For a moment, we simply watch, mesmerized.

aPerson, get out of the vehicle,a Colbert orders.

All of us dive out of the left side of the Humvee to avoid the incoming fire on the right. We scramble up and then down a meter-high berm, which s.h.i.+elds us from the attack.

Rounds rake across the row of Humvees, making that weird noisea"zip zip zing. They sound like the screaming cartoon bullets fired by Yosemite Sam. Up and down the line, Marines jump out of their vehicles and take cover.

Behind our berm, Colbert says, aThatas a G.o.dd.a.m.n Zeus!a Zeus, the nickname for a ZSU, is a powerful, multi-barreled Russian anti-aircraft gun. (Other Marines later posit that the Iraqis were using a slightly different weapon, a ZPU.) Several Marines in the battalion fire rifles and .50-cal machine guns wildly and ineffectually across the river. But as more Zeus rounds streak in, they dive for cover, too. No one can figure out where the enemy position is located. Marines, who often laugh off other forms of gunfire, now burrow facedown in the nearest comforting patch of mother earth. The entire battalion is pinned down.

The only guy I see poking his head up is Trombley. He had the presence of mind to grab the binoculars when he dove out of the Humvee. Now he scampers to the top of the berm, sits up like a gopher and scans the horizon. He looks around excitedly, eagerly taking in this terrifying new experience. I see him smile.

aThatas cool,a he says in a low voice as another salvo of Zeus rounds zings past. Then he adds, aI think I see where it is, Sergeant.a Colbert and Person now rise over the berm, somewhat more cautiously than Trombley. Following his initial directions, they spot what they think is the enemy-gun position about a kilometer away. Colbert orders Ha.s.ser onto the vehicleas Mark-19 grenade launcher, and with Zeus rounds still screaming in, the team methodically directs fire toward the enemy position.

A Cobra noses down over the field across the ca.n.a.l to join in the hunt. It rears up as AAA fire comes at it from the ground. The enemy rounds miss the helicopter, and it doubles back to renew its attack.

The Cobra strikes a white truck parked in the field with its 20mm Gatling gun, causing the truck to burst into flames. Then it fires a h.e.l.lfire missile at what the pilot thinks is one of several Zeus AAA guns. Low on fuel, the Cobra is forced to break off its attack.

Different perspectives on the ground produce radically different versions of events. Kocher, just 150 meters up from Colbertas position, watches the white truck set on fire by the Cobra and believes this is one of the worst things heas seen so far in the war. He later says, aI saw civilians in that truck, and I watched them burn up alive.a Captain Daniel OaConnor, a First Recon officer also involved with controlling the air strikes that afternoon, later says, aI couldnat prove the white vehicle the Cobra lit up was enemy, but every time it showed up, bad stuff happened. So we were okayed to take it out.a Two columns of inky black smoke rise on the opposite side of the river. We take no more Zeus fire. I ask Trombley why he showed no signs of fear, seemed quite calm in fact, when he sat up on the berm and located the position of the gun that seemed to be terrorizing just about every other Marine in the battalion. aI know this might sound weird,a Trombley says, abut deep down inside, I want to know what it feels like to get shot. Not that I want to get shot, but the reality is, I feel more nervous watching a game show on TV at home than I do here in all this.a He tears into his plastic meal-ration bag. aAll this gunfighting is making me hungry,a he says with a cheerful smile.

aAll this stupidity is making me want to kill myself,a Person counters grimly, one of his first displays of low spirits in Iraq.

Despite having wiped out several AAA guns with the help of the Cobras, the battalion is again starting to take incoming mortars by the bend in the ca.n.a.l. The Marines are ordered to break contact and roll back two kilometers.

The battalion pulls off the trail into a muddy depression surrounded by berms. The vehicles pull in close together. We wait for the Cobras to refuel in order to accompany the battalion on its final dash into Al Hayy.

Mortar fire grows more steady. With each wave of incoming bombs, the explosions get a little louder, a little closer. The initial volleys land more than a kilometer away, then move to within about five hundred meters of First Reconas position. The orderly progression of the mortars suggests that an enemy observer is on the ground nearby, directing them. Marine snipers push out to the perimeter and try to spot a man or woman with a radio amidst the shepherds, farmers and other civilians in the surrounding fields.

Colbertas vehicle is parked beside one of the battalionas fuel trucks. I decide I donat like sitting next to 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel during a mortar attack. I walk over to the truck holding the roughly twenty enemy prisoners of war (EPWs) Third Platoon picked up earlier in the day.

Theyare packed into the rear of the flatbed, sitting on benches along either side. During the Zeus attack, the prisoners, who were left in the truck while their Marine captors dove out and took cover, gnawed through their plastic wrist cuffs.

Marines are retying the Iraqisa hands behind their backs with parachute cord. The EPWs are men in their twenties, wearing jeans or black trousers, striped soccer jerseys, one guy with an Opel car logo on his s.h.i.+rt. But these arenat the docile, defeated EPWs First Recon encountered earlier in the war.

Several of these guys are defiant. They mad-dog the Marines with angry stares and wiggle in their seats, trying to cut the cords binding their wrists. Others turn their backs and squirm away from Marines attempting to retie them. They make exaggerated grimaces and complain loudly in Arabic. Binding EPWsa wrists tightly enough to cut off their circulation and make their skin bleed is a pa.s.sive way of punis.h.i.+ng them. A few Marines I talk to later on will brag of doing this, or of slamming a guy in the face or nuts when no one is looking.

But itas also extremely hard to deal with twenty guys who are resisting being tied up. Americans, of course, are also trained to evade and resist capture, but this doesnat make it any less enraging when the enemy is doing it to them.

aWhat would these guys be doing to us if they were holding us prisoner?a a Marine shouts nearby. aHow do you think wead be treated?a aWe ought to tie these motherf.u.c.kers to the hoods of our Humvees before we drive into the next ambush,a another Marine says.

An officer with a shaky knowledge of Arabic steps forward to calm the rising tensions. In halting, polite Arabic, he tells the EPWs they will not be harmed or executed, then asks them to please stop trying to escape, or the Marines will be forced to wrap burlap sacks over their heads. The EPWs immediately calm down. Two guys in the rear of the truck, both of whom have matching Saddam mustaches, start making buffoonish faces, trying to ingratiate themselves to the Americans. One of them repeats in English, af.u.c.k Saddam!a Each time he says it, his buddy squeals with laughter. Soon, several others join ina"howling and making funny facesa"and the truck suddenly takes on the character of a small, clown-only travelling circus.

Then a salvo of incoming mortars puts a stop to their antics. They explode about 200 meters away, with columns of smoke rising up from the nearby field. Several of the EPWs try ducking down, but their wrists are bound to the sides of the truck. One EPW squirms ashamedly on the bench. A powerful odor comes from the truck. Apparently, heas just had a cla.s.sic combat-stress reaction and defecated in his pants.

PAPPY AND REYES have pushed out together onto the perimeter as a sniper team, hunkering down behind a berm and setting up their M-40 rifle. They spot a man whom they believe to be a forward observer for the mortars. Heas in a white pickup parked nearly 600 yards away across the field. With the rules of evidence being somewhat looser in a combat zone than they are back home, the man in the truck earns himself a death sentence for the crime of holding what appear to be binoculars and a radio. Pappy fires three shots, aiming at the manas center ma.s.s through the door. After his rifle steadies, Pappy observes his target for a few moments. The man is slumped forward in the truck, apparently dead.

This is Pappyas second sniper kill in Iraq. Returning to his Humvee, he seems to take no satisfaction from it. When some fellow Marines excitedly press him for details of the kill, he doesnat want to talk about it. All he says is, aThe man went down.a The mortar fire ceases. Evidently, Pappy killed the right man.

Fick gathers his team leaders to explain the final phase of the mission. In about five minutes the battalion is going to head back up to the bend in the ca.n.a.l, push beyond the mosque, drive through a few kilometers of densely concentrated hamlets, then approach the western edge of Al Hayy. The trickiest part will be entering the town. The convoy will be forced into a series of S-turns while crossing two separate bridges over ca.n.a.ls. Then the Marines will race past about two kilometers of built-up urban terrain, reaching an elevated roadway. There, the Marines will drive up an earthen ramp onto the main highway out of the town and seize a key bridge. The goal is to seal off the primary escape route out of Al Hayy, in preparation for RCT-1as a.s.sault through the cityas center, which is now expected to come in about ten hours, at four in the morning.

After briefing his men, Fick says privately to me, aThis is Black Hawk Down s.h.i.+t we are doing.a He adds, aThe fact that we never initiate contact with the enemya"itas always them on usa"is wearing on these guys. In their training as Recon Marines, itas a failure every time they get shot at first. It doesnat matter that weave done well shooting our way out of these engagements. Theyare supposed to be the ones initiating the contact, not the enemy.a AS THE CONVOY MOVES OUT from its position in the mudflats and starts rolling, single-file, on the trail toward Al Hayy, Cobra escorts pour rockets and machine-gun fire into a nearby palm grove. Watching the attack, Colbert says, aThis country is dirty and nasty, and the sooner we are out of here the better.a Though almost no one ever talks about religion, some Marines silently say their prayers. At a wide spot in the trail just before the mosque, Esperaas vehicle pulls up beside Colbertas. Both vehicles are going about twenty-five miles per hour. I glimpse Corporal Jason Lilley, the twenty-three-year-old driver of Esperaas vehicle, clenching the wheel, staring ahead unblinking. His lips are moving. He later tells me that although heas not a big Christian, he was saying, aLord see us through,a over and over.

After we pa.s.s the mosque, machine guns and small rockets, called azunis,a being fired by the Cobras kick up a ma.s.sive dust cloud that envelops the convoy. The road sinks down and snakes between tree-lined hamlets. Some of Reconas transport trucks rolling in the middle of the convoy take fire. At least one has its tires shot out but rides on the rims.

We reach the edge of the city and cross the first bridge into an industrial area of low-slung cinder-block buildings, with a dense cl.u.s.ter of apartment blocks to our right. In all the dust kicked up, several of Reconas supply trucks take a wrong turn.

Colbertas team and the rest of his platoon hang back to provide cover while the drivers of the lost team unf.u.c.k themselves and turn around. We stop for several minutes, surrounded by walls and windows in the hostile city. We hear AKs and machine guns clattering, but donat see any muzzle flashes.

Charlie Company, which is now crossing the second bridge in the S-turn, is coming under fire from a building seventy-five meters away. Charlieas lead vehicle is commanded by Sergeant Charles Graves, a twenty-six-year-old sniper. An RPG round blows up beside his open-top Humvee. Shrapnel superficially wounds one of his Marines in the leg. Their vehicle is raked with machine-gun fire. One round cuts through a piece of metal inches from Gravesas head. His Mark-19 gunner opens up on the building where the enemy shooters are concealed. The building is kind of prettya"a long, pale-blue stucco structure with arches along its second story. Gravesas Mark-19 gunner saturates it with thirty-two rounds, blowing giant holes in the front of it, collapsing part of the roof. Watching the destruction as his team speeds past, Graves thinks, he later tells me, aItas f.u.c.king beautiful.a No more fire comes from the building. By now, Colbertas team has picked up the lost supply trucks. We turn toward the building hit by Charlie Company. As we roll by the smoking ruins, Person shouts, ad.a.m.n, sucka!a Across from the building, a live Arab lies in the road. Heas in a dingy white robe, squeezed between piles of rubble. The man is only about two meters from where our wheels pa.s.s, on his back with both hands covering his eyes. After being subjected to hostile fire all day, thereas a kind of sick, triumphant rush in seeing another human being, perhaps an enemy fighter, now on his back, helplessly cowering. Itas empowering in a way that is also depressing. All the Marines who drive past the man train their guns on him but donat shoot. Heas not a threata"childishly trying to protect his face with his hands. To the Marines, the man doesnat even merit being shot.

After clearing the second bridge, the convoy races up to about forty miles an hour, speeding past the urban ma.s.s of Al Hayy to our right. Ahead of us Charlie Company comes under sporadic AK fire from the town. Marines shoot back. Corporal Caleb Holman, a nineteen-year-old .50-cal gunner, sees a man perking up in some scrub gra.s.s fifty meters from his Humvee near the middle of the convoy. Firing armor-penetrating SLAP rounds from his .50-cal, Holman blows the top of the manas head off.

TWENTY-ONE.

A FEW MINUTES BEFORE SUNSET on March 31, First Recon reaches its objective: the bridge that serves as the main road out of Al Hayy. It presents another strange juxtaposition typical of Iraq. After moving all day through primitive hamlets, the Marines now stand at the foot of a span that, with its long, graceful concrete lines, wouldnat be out of place on the German autobahn. Bravo Company is tasked with setting up the blockade on the highway at the north end of the bridge. The rest of the battalion pushes a kilometer farther north up Route 7.

Colbertas team and the others in the platoon pull their Humvees up to where the guardrails start at the foot of the bridge. They point their main guns toward the bridge, which rises in a slight crest about 200 meters from their position, where it stretches over a ca.n.a.l. Beyond that, the highway drops out of view, as it descends toward Al Hayy about two kilometers to the south.

Three Marines sprint onto the bridge with a bale of concertina wire, which they stretch across the roadway. They run back to the Humvees in the last minutes of daylight. The area around the highway where the Marines have their blockade is a barren no-manas-land. The ground is saturated with salts that push up to the surface, forming a white crust on the mud. In the twilight gloom, all you see is the pale whiteness of the salty flats. Fick walks up, grinning. Even loaded down with his vest, flak jacket and bulky chemical-protection suit, he displays his characteristic bouncing stride. Right now itas more buoyant than usual. aI feel like for the first time we seized the initiative,a he says, surveying the roadblock. Everyone seems to be swaggering.

After nearly two weeks of feeling hunted, the Marines have done what they were supposed to do: They a.s.saulted through resistance and took an objective. Psychologically itas like a game of king of the hill, and they now occupy the high ground. This small band of young men controls the key exit from a town of 50,000.

First Recon Battalion is completely alone. The Marines are twenty kilometers north of the nearest American unit, RCT-1. They are thirty kilometers south of Al Kut, home to approximately 15,000 Iraqis in a mechanized division. There is nothing between them and those thousands of Iraqis but a straight, narrow highway. Only later will it become clear that most regular Iraqi forces wonat fight; on the night of March 31, that fact is unknown. Adding to their sense of isolation, First Recon has lost communication with its air cover this evening, as the result of a technical glitch. If the battalion is attacked, it will have to fight on its own.

ONE THING THE MARINES havenat trained for, or really even thought through, is the operation of roadblocks at night. The basic idea is simple enough: Put an obstacle like concertina wire in the road and point guns at it. If a car approaches, fire warning shots. If it keeps coming, shoot it. The question is: Do the Iraqis understand whatas going on? When it gets dark, can Iraqi drivers actually see the concertina wire? Even Marines have been known to drive through concertina wire at night.

The other problem is warning shots. In the dark, warning shots are simply a series of loud bangs and flashes. Itas not like this is the international code for aStop your vehicle and turn around.a As it turns out, many Iraqis react to warning shots by speeding up. Maybe they just panic. Consequently, a lot of Iraqis die at roadblocks.

The initial killings at First Reconas roadblock come just after dark. Several cars approach the bridge with their headlights on, coming from the direction of Al Hayy. Bravoas .50-caliber gunners fire warning bursts. The cars turn around and leave. Then a tractor-trailer appears, its diesel engine growling. The Marines fire warning shots, but the truck keeps coming.

A few seconds after the truck fails to heed the second warning burst, its headlights dip onto Bravoas position, blinding the Marines. The truck sounds like it must be doing thirty or forty.

aLight it the f.u.c.k up!a someone shouts.

Under the ROE, a vehicle that fails to stop at a roadblock is declared hostile, and everyone in it may justifiably be shot. Almost the entire platoon opens fire. But for some reason, these Marines who have previously put down enemy shooters with almost surgical precision are unable to take out even the truckas headlights after several seconds of heavy fire. Red tracers and white muzzle flashes streak across the bridge. Mark-19 grenades burst all around the truck, but it keeps coming, horn blaring.

Just before reaching the concertina wire, the vehicle jackknifes and screeches. Someone has finally managed to hit the driver, whose head, they later discover, is blown clean off. Meanwhile, three men jump from the cab. Espera, who is wearing night-vision goggles, sees them and fires his M-4 from a crouching position, methodically pumping three-round bursts into the chest of each, as he was trained. Almost as an afterthought, the Marines shoot out the last headlight of the truck.