Casa de Muerte and a Case of the Heebee Jeebees

           

Casa de Muerte spray painted in black.

            “Is that a stick or somethin’?” asked Staff Sergeant Shmiddie.

            “Negative sergeant.  That is an arm and hand,” I replied.

            “An arm?”

            “Yeah, a human arm.”

            “Oh shit.”

            It was the late Fall in 2006 in southern Baghdad and White Platoon had been getting shot at and tested for a few months.  We had a midmorning patrol scheduled under cloudy skies.  As we headed for the gate to go outside the wire, or out in sector, nine 107mm rockets hit F.O.B. Falcon with several detonating close to our Strykers.  We pushed thru the barrage and hoped for a new mission plan.  We got just that.

            The troop talk (our headquarters) informed us over the net that cameras on the blimp had captured smoke plumes where they suspected the launch site of the rockets was and provided us with a grid.  We were instructed to move in and investigate.  Just 30 seconds later plans changed, again.  The camera operators saw two men leaving the possible launch site on scooters and our radio guys in the talk would relay their movement to us as this mission turned into a game of “hide and go seek.”  Oh hello, adrenaline.

            We got word that the scooters stopped in a nearby street and the men ran inside a home.  I was very pleased to be a dismount on this mission.  Our three Strykers surrounded the shack of a home as ramps dropped and we ran out to raid the house.  Inside we found two men and two women.  The women were acting docile and the men were jittery, but not acting surprised we were there.  We took the men outside so we could talk to the women first.

            “They say they are very scared of what their husbands will do,” said our interpreter (terp).

            “Are those men outside your husbands?” I asked.

            “They say no, that is why they are scared of what their husbands will do.”

            “Did those men say or do anything to you before we got here?”

            “They say they were told not to talk to anybody or they would be killed, but they are more scared of their husbands knowing other men were in the house while they were away.”

            “That’s all we needed to know, thank you.”

            Well I guess that’s the one good exception to third world countries not having women’s rights.  Those women were more scared of their husbands than they were of the men trying to kill fully armed Americans for cash from Al-Qaeda or the Jaysh al-Mahdi Militia, militants loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr.  After a quick search of the shack while questioning the women, we moved outside for the men.

            “Separate them and make sure they can’t communicate,” Shmiddie ordered.

            While interrogations of the men commenced, a team of us searched the perimeter for any kind of evidence. 

            “Eh Sergeant Vance, got somethin,’” Hall said.

            “Whatchya got?” I asked.

            “Got a video recorder. Might be theirs if we can figure out how to open the video files.  Found it over there under that water container.”

            “A video camera that nice, hidden outside this shack and under a water container?  Try to get that thing working, cause I’m betting it has footage of them attacking us.”

            “Roger.”

            Hall took Mango’s place in our platoon and I couldn’t have been happier.  He was everything an NCO wanted in a soldier.  Hall knew when to take initiative.  That’s rare in a new soldier since I usually had to play “Red Light, Green Light” with my previous 3 soldiers when it came to controlling an area.  He was white, quiet, light haired, average build and from Tennessee with a thick accent.  Hall dove right under the water container that all of us had walked past and he hit the jackpot.

            “These guys answering questions?” I asked.

            “They aren’t saying much.”

            “Got it!” Yelled Hall.

            I ran back to Hall and Woodrow as they were examining the footage.

            “Motherfuckers,” I said, starting to look like Clint Eastwood.

            The footage showed these guys launching all nine rockets at F.O.B. Falcon off route Jackson/Irish.  Yahtzee!

             “Look familiar?” I asked one of the detainees as I showed him the attempt on our lives.

            Both of the men put their heads down and had two completely different stories on why they were in that shack.  Game over.  We blind folded them and put them in separate Strykers while we finished searching the area for more evidence against them.

            “Vance, we might have another problem,” Shmiddie proclaimed.

            “What’s up boss?”

            “See those wires on the ground? That's a makeshift detonator to a command-detonated explosive. I’m going to follow the wire to see where it goes.  Make sure nobody fucks with that.  I don’t want to get blown up.”

            “Got it.”

            What that means is that Shmiddie saw a red and blue wire attached to a small, white plastic cap.  If these two wires were pressed together, they would complete a circuit.  This circuit extended thru very thin white and black wires that went into a field.  Shmiddie had to find out exactly what was intended on being detonated.  I hovered over the wires while he went solo to make sure casualties would be at a minimum in case something went wrong.

Very small and difficult to see, but Shmiddie's eyes saved some lives that day.

            “White 4, this is White 3.  We got a five gallon drum EFP IED crusted in dirt by a trash pile and need to make this route black ASAP,” Shmiddie said on the net.

            “3, this is 4. Roger,” replied our platoon sergeant, Pons.

            To put things into perspective, a coke can sized EFP (Explosively Formed Penetrator) IED can take out a humvee.  A five-gallon drum would cut a 20-ton Stryker in half and maybe send it through an apartment complex.  It was resting by some trash on the side of a heavily traveled route.  To make that route “black” means to shut it down.

Over a half mile away, we found where the wires ended.

            “EOD is en route,” Pons said after reporting to higher.

            As we waited for EOD, we got a call from the talk asking that we go to the original grid of the launch site and investigate after EOD showed up to relieve us at the EFP site.  We complied.  Keep in mind, we still have two detainees.

            “Sergeant Vance, this asshole won’t shut up,” Hall said.

            “He’s probably bitching about how we ruined his big payday.  First he fires rockets on video and then he tried to obliterate a Stryker.  Take a shotgun and charge it one time next to his head.  That’ll shut him up,” I said back.

            Chk, chk!  That detainee sat up straight and about pissed his pants.  He thought he was going to be executed.

            “That’s enough, I don’t need them shittin’ all over my Stryker,” Shmiddie pleaded.

            “Mount up White, time to roll,” our platoon leader said.

            We found the launch site.  There were nine stands from where the rockets were launched and a tenth rocket that never fired on top of a tenth stand.  The evidence on these guys was definitely earning them a trip to a dark, small cage.  Next to the launch site was a half constructed yellow brick and cinder block house.  We dismounted the Strykers and searched the area for more evidence.  I started with the unroofed structure.

107mm Rocket that luckily didn't work.

            “Shmiddie what’s all this white shit on the ground?” I asked.

            “No idea. Lime maybe?”

            I turned a corner and saw a bright blue rope sticking out of the ground.  The dirt around it looked fresh.  Protocol was to get a metal detector around suspicious looking things like that in case it was an IED or land mine, but I had a gut feeling it wasn’t an explosive.  It was way too obvious considering the lengths the two detainees went to conceal their EFP boom boom.  Nobody else was in the room so I took a chance with my own life.

            I gave the rope a little tug from a distance and it seemed to give way fairly easily, so I got closer and pulled much harder.  The rope gave, dropped it from my hands and I fell right on my ass.  I couldn’t believe I was staring at a half decayed human arm and hand.  After others from my platoon started to come into the room I looked around.  It wasn’t sticks or kindling to make fire that was lying around.  It was human bones.  I had just accidently uncovered a mass grave.  The “white shit” on the ground was lime; meant to mask the smell of all the corpses. 

            “You ok, Vance?” asked Shmiddie.

            “Yeah, I just. I don’t know. I guess I have a case of the heebee jeebees, man. I’m gonna smoke by the trucks. Just give me a few.”

            “Yeah, go for it.”

            We had come across a lot of dead bodies before and I had no problems, but the idea that so many people were just dumped in a hole got to me.  They were a few hundred feet from an entire town and our detainees probably put them there.  What the fuck is wrong with these people.

Days like that opened my eyes to how insignificant we all can be in the eyes of monstrous people.  In many places around the world, Darwinism takes a dark turn in the name of survival.  This is why combat vets are always ready for something to go down and prepared to kill to survive.  Its not easy to hide, but just take one look at us when we’ve been startled by something.  You won't make that mistake twice.  It may seem morbid, but this made me appreciate life so much more.

             Specialists came in to investigate the scene as we headed off to Cropper, a jail we brought detainees to in the green zone for further “questioning” and “trial.”  I never got a body count, because there wasn’t enough time for the investigators to count them all.  It was a busy and productive day for White.  We rolled out with our heads high and happy we were all alive as the sun set under clearing skies.

             “Are we going to eat dinner chow in the green zone before coming back to Falcon, Sergeant Vance?” asked Lemon from the driver’s hole.

             “Hell yeah, man.  I think its Mexican night too,” I replied.

             “Woo hoo!”