Free The Reaper: Autobiography of One of the Deadliest Special Ops Snipers by Gary Brozek, Nicholas Irving Page B

to be out there firing as close to on point as I could be. With our night-vision and thermal-imaging scopes, we were the eyes of the platoon, and there was no sense in having them be in the back of our heads—let alone the back of the bird.
    Besides, I liked riding along with the dog and the dog handler. If we were the eyes of the platoon, those guys were the nose and whatever other sense it is that those dogs possess that tips them off that something could potentially go upside down before we even had a clue. Something in my gut told me that as by the book as this operation seemed during our briefing, something was going to disrupt those plans. I trusted my instincts as much as I trusted the animal’s.
    Forty-five minutes later, we touched down and offloaded. My earlier feelings about this not being a run-of-the-mill operation were confirmed. As soon as my feet hit the ground, I noticed two things. First, the full moon painted every bit of the location in a kind of primer-gray light. Our night-vision gear was going to be even more effective as a result. Second, we weren’t going to be sneaking up on anybody. For the first time in my four deployments, the enemy was firing tracer rounds at us. Their green glow against the ash-gray backdrop reminded me of flickering Christmas lights. It was a surreal scene to have what seemed the entire galaxy above us bathing us in light while those tracers arced and flared in the distance.
    We formed up and set off with the dog Bruno and his handler, Sergeant Val, on point. About a click or so in, we came on another small village, and we could make out a circle of bodies lying outside. We could hear some heavy breathing and snoring and saw a few of the bodies rising and falling as they breathed in their sleep. I felt bad for Sergeant Val and even worse for Bruno. Bruno was trained to go after the bad guys and bite them to bring them under control, and his every instinct and training was telling him to seek and bite. Collectively, we made our way through the sleepers, figuring that the direct route was best. We entered the village marketplace. Bazaar was a good name for that location since I was always freaked out about moving along and through them at night. The small buildings all had garage door–like entrances, and they were recessed just enough to resemble cave entrances, providing who knows who with a good hiding place.
    Besides Taliban fighters, the doorways could also be hiding IEDs. The dog led the way, his tail high and twitching, his snout high and sniffing. Eventually, I lost sight of him. The first and second squads moved ahead of Pemberton and me to do the clearing.
    We had gone about thirty-five of the fifty meters we had to navigate to reach our destination when a green tracer round appeared ahead of me. I ducked and heard it sizzle past, like a bottle rocket the kids in the neighborhood used to fire at one another. It seems like a cliché to say this, but I saw all this happening in slow motion—the light wobbling as it fireballed toward me, giving off sparks of light. It was almost pretty the way it lit up the gray night. Fortunately, my brain wasn’t working in slo-mo, and I dropped to one knee and a few more tracers went over my head. Pemberton was just behind and flanking me and we both dropped to our bellies.
    In our earpieces, we were getting transmissions from the AC-130 gunships patrolling above us. Ignoring their words for a moment, I told Pemberton, “Let’s go,” and we low-crawled. By this time, the rest of the guys in the platoon had opened fire; the Taliban’s tracers were originating from a rooftop between one hundred fifty and two hundred meters away.
    We continued our low crawl to the front of the formation. The rest of the guys were laying down a lot of lead, but they weren’t hitting any of the targets. From experience, I knew that using a laser and an M4, trying to hit targets that were popping up just barely high enough that their eyeballs were