E-Mail This Article to a Friend Picking up the pieces (continued)

IT’S JUST BEFORE midnight, the night after Christmas, and it’s raining in Baghdad. Lieutenant Colonel Frank Sherman, commander of the First Battalion, 13th Armor Regiment, sits in his humvee just inside the gate of a former Iraqi base that hugs a bend in the Tigris River and used to contain a notorious secret-police prison. His unit and a battalion from the 82nd Airborne use the base now. The prison cells are used by the Americans to hold Iraqis found with weapons or otherwise threatening the unstable peace.

The base sits on the edge of a Baghdad neighborhood called Al-Hurriyah. Across the river is a grand mosque where Saddam was seen walking through the streets during the invasion, just before he disappeared for nine months.

Idling ahead of Sherman is an open truck packed full of paratroopers from the 82nd, about to embark on a late-night raid. Each one is armed to the teeth; some have machine guns, and one has a shotgun strapped across his back. The soldiers like the rain because it will keep the curious indoors, but it also means they won’t have any protective helicopters circling above.

There are more elements of the raiding party spread out through the area unseen, like the Special Forces team that moves to its launch point in a few SUVs. Among the American raiders are Iraqi translators wearing ski masks, to shield their identities from hostile countrymen. They carry bullhorns so they can yell orders into buildings.

Sherman has been on the radio with the other raid commanders making final preparations. He turns to his driver, a young sergeant. He describes the three types of cars that his scouts spotted earlier, cars full of armed men and circling the raid area.

"If they come anywhere near you, stop them," he tells the sergeant. "They’re going to be armed, so keep your weapon up. If you see anything that looks like a fucking weapon, start dealing."

With that, the convoy rolls, with all lights off, ready to do violence while Baghdad sleeps.

Like Colonel Gold, many of the soldiers in Iraq today do the hearts-and-minds work of civil affairs by day and then the rough work of raids and searches when the sun goes down. Sherman is one of Gold’s battalion commanders. There’s a cleric named Ahmed Hussein Al Dabash in their area whom they want to capture for questioning. Sherman says Dabash has been using his prayer calls at a mosque to incite violence between Shi’a and Sunni, and to prod his followers to attack Americans.

On December 9, there was an explosion at an area mosque. Dabash, a Sunni, blamed the Shi’a, saying the mosque was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades. Sherman says an investigation revealed that Dabash’s mosque was being used to make IEDs, and the explosion was a bomb that went awry.

The thing is, the Americans know him. Sherman and other officers have met with him repeatedly, in meetings where Dabash was friendly and accommodating. But the Army has heard what he says during prayer calls, which is not friendly or accommodating. He’s also suspected to have Al Qaeda ties, and, Sherman says, some "national level" intelligence people want to talk with him.

One of the raid leaders, a captain from the 82nd named Gabe Barton, says if they find him, they won’t be strangers. "He’ll know me," Barton says.

Dabash has followers, and it’s expected they won’t give him up easily. Besides the three armed cars spotted by the scouts and the men on Dabash’s roof with automatic rifles and grenades, Sherman expects that when word gets out in the morning that the cleric is under American detention, the locals will "go nuts."

The neighborhood happens to contain the warehouse for the World Food Program, which feeds the city, and another warehouse, which provides medical supplies. Sherman is concerned that local anger will fall on the two facilities, so he has some of his tank units and psychological-operations teams ready to "flood the zone" if Dabash gets grabbed tonight.

Earlier in the evening, before raid preparations go into full swing, Sherman and his officers eat a dinner of Christmas leftovers and watch the Cleveland/Orlando basketball game. Sherman is going into the raid alongside his men, with two broken fingers in a cast, fingers he broke pulling a pistol off a local standing by the side of the road. He talks about the raid a bit over dinner. They expect the worst.

"This could get violent," Sherman says. "We think they might fight for him."

Dabash is believed to be at one of four locations, each one given a code name for the raid: Objectives Moe, Larry, Curly, and Shemp. They’ll hit the house first where the guards on the roof were seen, on the assumption that he’ll be there.

Unlike weapons searches, in which they pick through a home top to bottom, they plan to get in and out fast — Dabash is there or he’s not. During a pre-raid briefing with the team leaders and Special Forces, Sherman tells them to move fast and be as silent as possible.

"If you gotta make noise to get in, make noise," he says. "But you are most vulnerable in the street waiting to get in. You know this."

The streets of Baghdad on a rainy night at 1 a.m. are quiet and empty. Maybe one or two cars pass as the raiders move toward Dabash’s homes. Scouts are already up on the nearby roofs watching for movement when the 82nd troops pull up to Dabash’s street. Sherman leaves his humvee with the team medic, John Walker, and runs in quietly with the raiders.

The first house they get into without too much trouble, but Dabash is not there. One soldier comes out with an AK-47 across his back. While they’re inside, a scout spots a man running across the roofs to a neighboring house. The troops break down that gate only to find, parked in the driveway, one of the cars seen patrolling earlier. They break in and search it for weapons, but find none.

They try again with the next house and pull out two men who say they’re just visiting for the night. And they pull out Dabash’s brother. All three are cuffed and put into the back of the open truck, where they sit in the rain when the party moves to another part of the neighborhood.

It’s hard to see much of it at 2 a.m., but this area seems to have some nicer streets, with short, gated driveways and orange trees in the front yards. Around the corner, sewage flows down the street.

For all the noise the raiders make breaking doors down, no one comes outside. Women in some of the target houses scream and wail when the soldiers crash in, but neighbors do not rouse.

It turns out the raid missed Dabash by half an hour. Sherman calls a huddle of the raid leaders, including a Special Forces team that had been out doing its own work.

"He went into a mosque," Sherman tells them. "There’s not much we can do if he goes into the mosque." Sherman turns to the Special Forces leader. "Can you get us in the mosque?" Sherman asks. "Not really," replies the guy. "I didn’t think so," Sherman says.

Based on a tip from the Special Forces team, they try one more house. It’s only a few blocks away, and they head right over. It’s close to three in the morning and still drizzling when they approach the place. The Iraqi translator yells through the bullhorn to open up. A man calls back, asking in Arabic what it’s all about. The raid leader, Captain Barton, tells the translator to tell the man it’s the Americans, and if he doesn’t open up they’ll break the door down. When the man hesitates, they begin a countdown starting at 10. No one comes to the door, and a sergeant starts kicking it in. It’s metal and it doesn’t break, but the rattle is enough to bring the man and his wife and daughter to the door.

The women stand off to the side in front of the house crying and muttering while the man is questioned. When they figure out he’s not the right guy, Barton apologizes to the two women and tries to calm them down. The Americans get ready to go. The family goes back inside and the soldiers mount up and leave.

Driving back to the base, Sherman takes what good he can from the experience, even though the big fish got away. He says the other raiding parties did take in a former Iraqi general who’s suspected in the insurgency, as well as two of Dabash’s lieutenants.

"Well, three out of five is not so bad," he says.

The two men who claimed to be just visiting are taken back to one of the first houses, un-cuffed and taken inside. All the addresses are recorded so claims officers can go back and reimburse the homeowners for broken locks and smashed windows.

The brother, however, will spend some time in the old prison, which has not changed much since the Iraqis ran it, except its present inmates aren’t tortured and executed. There were about 15 in there the night of the raid, either sleeping or huddled under wool blankets.

Sherman says Dabash will get word that his brother is now in detention at the old secret-police prison.

"We’ll tell him, ‘We have your brother. You need to come in and meet with us.’ So, we’ll try it that way. If he takes off, he takes off. Then we’ll release his brother. But he doesn’t know that now."

After almost four hours running through the streets of an otherwise silent city, the Americans are back behind the wire. Later, driving down side roads on one of the dark patrols and observation missions they do every night, scout-team leader Sergeant First Class Mark Davey, of St. Louis, speaks highly of Sherman from the front seat of his well-armed humvee.

"He’s fearless," Davey says. "He’s a warrior."

Davey and his men like what they do, prowling around the streets looking for trouble before trouble finds them and their friends. It’s during the wee hours that insurgents plant the IEDs to blow up in the morning. Davey and his guys are out there looking for that stuff.

Like the officers above them, they’re well aware of the pressure to succeed in Iraq. The fact that it’s a presidential-election year is not lost on Davey. Sliding through the rainy night, thinking about what an extra dose of politics might mean to his mission, Davey says simply, "It’s gonna suck ass."

THE IRAQIS are of mixed emotions about the Americans. They can see all the money the US is putting into the country, and that’s only good. As Bremer said, they don’t want the occupation, yet they don’t want the Americans to leave. The ones who aren’t insurgents are grappling with new freedoms. The ones I spoke with — teachers, handymen, entrepreneurs, both men and women — were thankful and optimistic. And afraid.

Each of the American soldiers I spoke with said the same two things. The first was that it’s their job to be there, and they’ll do it as best they can. The other thing the Americans say is that they are there for the kids. They look to the Iraqi children with hope, knowing that they won’t forget the Americans who came in and fixed their school, or took some bad guy out of the neighborhood. When the kids pelt them with rocks the soldiers understand it’s as much of a game in a violent country as the kids they see punching each other hard and laughing about it.

As miserable as it is, and it is miserable, the Americans make the most of it when they can, even if that means surfing the Internet while off-duty or playing volleyball until the sun goes down. Some become close friends, like Ash Garza and Keith Adkins from Nunis’s team. (Ash will drive up from Texas to be Keith’s best man when Keith gets married in Santa Cruz this summer.)

That said, many have been there since the invasion, and really want to go home to their families. The thrill is gone. "I’d rather read about this from my house or watch it all on TV, if you don’t mind," said one soldier who’d been there long enough. "Our fun meters are pretty much pegged out, man."

The last night I was in Baghdad, I packed my bags, and when I was finished, I went outside to smoke a cigarette. As I opened the door, there was a huge whoosh and thump and boom not far off. I turned back, not knowing if it was just some freak air pressure rushing out of the building, or something else.

"That was a 120mm mortar round. It landed about 150 meters away," said one of the civil-affairs soldiers who came outside to see.

As he lit up a smoke, sirens started going off near the impact. Usually when that happens, shells are lobbed back, unless, using very fast radar, the Americans can figure out that it was fired from a populated area, as the insurgents like to do. Nothing went back out this time.

A soldier who’d been in the building using a computer came out, too. Her bunk was in another building, and she had a bit of a hike to get there. Despite the shell that had just landed nearby, she didn’t care. Maybe because it was the holidays and she was thinking of home more than usual, or maybe because she figured no more shells would come in, and even if they did she’d take her chances, or maybe she was just tired; regardless, she set out alone.

"I’m walking home," she said, and disappeared into the darkness.

Andrew Scutro is a reporter at the Monterey County Coast Weekly, where this article was originally published. He is the only reporter from the alternative press to spend time embedded with a military unit in Iraq. While in Baghdad, Scutro traveled with the 490th from Abilene, Texas, an Army civil-affairs unit. He can be reached at andrew@mcweekly.com