Free Shock Factor by Jack Coughlin Page B

the fender to the trunk where he retrieved a 155mm artillery shell prepped with plastic explosives in the fuse well—a classic, ready-made IED. A couple of his pals jumped out and helped emplace it. The Americans watching them could see them joking and laughing amongst themselves until one went back and sat in the front side passenger seat. They were casual and blasé, despite the nature of their mission.
    Shadow Team had already seen this once before. On one of their first missions, they saw a couple of insurgents get out of a car on a busy street and carry a 155mm artillery shell across traffic to emplace it. The civilian cars stopped and waited for them to cross. Even as the fighting destroyed the city around them, its citizens tried to carve a life out of the ruins. And part of that required traveling farther and farther through the war zone just to get basic survival supplies such as water, food, and fuel. Watching two al-Qaida terrorists seed their streets with bombs was nothing new. It was business as usual in Ramadi.
    At least it was until Gilliland’s men drilled both insurgents with well-placed shots from their M24s. Both terrorists fell dead before the shocked Iraqi commuters waiting to continue on their way.
    This time the terrorists had blundered. Gilliland and his men were so close to where the sedan stopped that they didn’t have a good shot from their hide. Rather than use their bolt-action M24s, the men quickly grabbed their M4 carbines and rushed onto the roof of their building. Four M4s, four targets. The men took aim and unleashed a fusillade of 5.56mm bullets into the street at point-blank range from an elevated position. The first rounds tore through the driver’s side windshield, killing him before he could even move. The terrorist riding shotgun tried to bail out, but one of Gilliland’s sharpshooters stitched him as well. He slumped over, dead, half-in and half-out of the vehicle, its passenger-side door hanging open.
    The men kept up the barrage. The car caught fire. A third insurgent went down as he stood in front of it after emplacing the IED. The last one was hit as well. He fell to the street, wounded, and began to crawl away from the burning car. At that point, Gilliland’s men had been spotted on the roof. Without any cover atop it, they elected to withdraw back downstairs to their hide site. By the time they got back, the fourth insurgent had dragged himself out of their field of view.
    Such attacks and others knocked the casualness out of al-Qaida. They grew cautious and cunning. They hired kids to find American sniper hides, and when they did they would set up subtle signals for their al-Qaida masters. Usually the kids would pile pebbles in front of a building being used as a hide site. Other times they would signal by hanging towels in certain ways nearby.
    It was hard to move around the city undetected as a result. But that did not diminish the effectiveness of the American sniper teams. The days of casually planting IEDs ended. As the snipers took a steady toll of the terrorists, they began using subtle methods to get the bombs in place. Usually, this started with a quick recon of a previous IED crater. A kid or a hired local adult would walk down the street and peer into the hole to make sure it was clear and could be used again.
    The kids sometimes made passes on bicycles. They’d ride around the crater then speed off back down the street, weaving through the debris and trash to report what they’d seen. Next, a car would make several passes down the street as a second reconnaissance of the area. On each pass, the car would slow down as it went by the potential bomb site. If al-Qaida was satisfied with the spot, they’d send in the emplacement team. There were many variations on this, but usually the team consisted of two cars, one with the bomb in the trunk and the other to pull security. A van or larger sedan would follow and linger behind the