Free Thunder Run by David Zucchino Page B

the enemy fire suppressed while he figured out how to get back on the proper highway.
    Suddenly they were rolling into a traffic circle—Qahtain Square in the Yarmouk section of Baghdad. Gruneisen radioed the captain: “Did you go through a traffic circle?”
    â€œNegative.”
    Iraqi military trucks were parked along the square. Soldiers were milling around. It was a staging area for attacks on the column. The tank rumbled into the square. The Iraqi soldiers stared up at the big tan machine, shocked to see an M1A1 Abrams barreling down on them. The tank crew stared, too. They had never expected to confront the enemy in such a personal way—literally face-to-face. There was a brief, suspended moment.
    â€œOh, shit,” Gruneisen said.
    The Iraqi soldiers didn’t open fire. They ran—they scattered everywhere. It struck Hernandez as preposterous. There were five Americans surrounded by dozens of Iraqis in the heart of the Iraqi capital, and the Iraqis were fleeing. He had a mental image of cockroaches scattering when you turn on the kitchen light.
    Gruneisen ordered Peterson to speed through the circle. There wasn’t enough time to back up and turn around. He wanted to just plow through the circle, past the trucks and soldiers, and head back the way they had come. The soldiers scattered out of the way. Gruneisen couldn’t tell whether anyone was firing at them. As they rolled into the circle, Hernandez saw a yellow pickup truck speeding toward them with two men in the front seat. There wasn’t time for a warning shot—no time to determine whether these were wayward civilians or militiamen trying to ram them. Hernandez got off a burst from the M-240. He saw a spray of blood stain the windshield and watched the passenger go down. The driver hit the brakes and the pickup spun and went into a skid.
    â€œStop! Stop!” Gruneisen ordered Peterson. He couldn’t stop. There wasn’t time. The pickup’s doors flew open and the driver stumbled out, smeared with blood. The tank plowed forward, flattening the pickup and crushing the driver. The jolt sent the M-240 flying out of Hernandez’s grip. It skittered across the asphalt. “Get that!” Gruneisen yelled to Hernandez. But then he changed his mind. It would be suicide to get out of the tank. They were all alone, with enemy all around. He had Peterson back up to free the tank from the wreckage of the pickup. Then they lurched forward, crushing the M-240 to render it useless to the Iraqis. Hernandez got behind the remaining M-240, the medium machine gun mounted on the loader’s hatch.
    The tank rumbled out of the circle, the treads chewing into the pavement. Peterson hollered, “I’m not stopping for anything!” He aimed the tank toward a ramp leading back through the spaghetti junction, where Hernandez spotted an Iraqi military truck parked on the shoulder. A wounded soldier was on the ground, next to his rifle. A second soldier was motioning to him to stay still, to pretend he was dead. Hernandez was seized now by an irrational anger. He wasn’t afraid. He was beyond fear. He felt only rage—at losing a tank, at losing his weapon, at being lost and trapped, at the enemy playing dead. He felt a remarkable sense of focus and clarity. He had decided that anyone in an Iraqi uniform was going to die. It didn’t matter that they were wounded or pretending to be dead. If they had a uniform and a weapon, they were a threat to his crew. He let fly with the mounted M-240 and killed both soldiers.
    Gruneisen was pounding away with the .50-caliber, trying to clear the right side. He was checking his grid when he saw a blue highway sign through the smoke: AIRPORT. Then he saw an Abrams tank on the highway. It was Charlie Six Five—Lieutenant Shane Williams, the last tank in the column. Williams had fallen behind after pumping a HEAT round into Diaz’s burning tank. He had been listening on