Hunt takes Strykers door to door

[David]

SEAN COCKERHAM
MOSUL, IRAQ - The Stryker armored vehicle ground to a halt in front of a market that was a maze of pungent spices, bright fabrics and used T-shirts.

"We're looking for a suicide ops guy," said Lt. Blake Hall of Lakewood, leader of the scout platoon from Fort Lewis. "He's a pretty big fish."

Army officials believe this insurgent leader is responsible for everything from bringing foreign fighters into the country to coordinating their suicide bombings.

The Sunni insurgency in this northern city of 2 million people is mostly homegrown. But Hall said all of the suicide bombers he's heard of during his four months in Mosul were brought in from outside Iraq.

Suicide attacks have been a major threat here in recent weeks, targeting Fort Lewis Stryker brigade soldiers as well as Iraqi police and armed forces. Hall's scout platoon has captured several suspects lately. But Saturday's mission showed some of the big obstacles Fort Lewis troops face in fighting an unseen enemy that can melt into the local population.

This is what the scouts do almost every day: Look for insurgents. Sometimes they find them; sometimes they don't.

Soldiers from Lightning platoon fanned out into a market area and blocked exit routes. They lined up more than two dozen young men and a handful of women wearing head-to-toe burqas, checking for weapons and identification. A donkey hitched to a cart calmly took in the scene.

"I want everything out of their pockets. Everything," said Staff Sgt. Armando Zavala, a 25-year-old from Fort Lewis.

Zavala led several soldiers through the crowded market to search for the suicide operations master. The market was in an old part of Mosul, with narrow, winding streets and stalls that looked like they hadn't changed much since the Ottomans ruled this city.

Baskets of spices in vibrant yellows and deep crimsons stood outside the stalls, their aroma overpowering the stench of garbage in the streets.

But there was no sign of the insurgent big fish the soldiers were after. He might have run away.

"A guy in a red and white turban took off down this alley when we got here," said Hall, the 24-year-old officer who leads the scout platoon.

Suddenly, machine gun bursts splintered the air.

"Incoming! This way, we've got shots fired!" Hall shouted, leading a half dozen soldiers running through a filthy alley toward the gunfire.

The scouts, part of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, burst through an open door into a nearby house. They ran to the roof to take up firing positions, while the Iraqi family who owned the house stayed downstairs.

More gunshots rang out. A loudspeaker from a neighboring mosque drowned all other sounds out with the rhythmic Muslim call to prayer.

The shots went on, but farther away, as the Fort Lewis soldiers strained their eyes for targets.

Most of the platoon had remained back at the market. That included Sgt. 1st Class Gerardo Viera, a 30-year-old from Lakewood, who speculated that the gunfire was meant as a diversion to help the insurgent leader escape.

It easily could have been caused by one bad guy sending a cell phone alert to another, Viera told Hall, who had returned to the market by now.

Hall agreed and went to question the Iraqis his platoon had lined up against a wall.

"I was shot at by many terrorists here not long ago. And I heard gunfire here today. So I know they meet here," Hall told them through an interpreter.

As is normally the case, all of the Iraqis said they didn't know anything about any insurgents.

The suicide operations leader was nowhere to be found, and Hall's platoon started to leave. Their action wasn't over, though: Another Fort Lewis platoon had fired on the attempted kidnapping of an Iraqi national, apparently breaking it up.

The kidnappers, possibly wounded, had escaped. Hall's scout platoon rolled to the scene and questioned the owners of a fruit stand.

"Ask them if they saw armed men with wounds around here, wearing ski masks," Hall said through the interpreter.

Just as the Iraqis were saying no, nothing like that happens around here, earsplitting gunfire erupted.

Hall and his men sprinted back to their Strykers and rolled toward the sound of the shots. They ran down the vehicles' ramps and began rushing through houses, looking for the kidnappers.

One group of four soldiers, getting no answer to their loud knocking, kicked open the door of a house and charged inside with guns pointed.

All of the rooms inside were locked. So they kicked through each door, to the kitchen, the two bedrooms and finally the roof, shouting "Clear!"

The kidnappers were nowhere to be found. So the scout platoon rolled back to base, stopping long enough to check out a car but finding nothing to justify detaining the occupants.

The platoon's snipers were waiting for them, having been left out of this mission because the unit was short a Stryker vehicle for the day. The snipers didn't much like missing the action, but they brought hamburgers and Chinese food from the chow hall for their returning comrades.

Hall said that even though they didn't catch the suicide leader, they still disrupted the insurgents and put them on the defensive.

"You win some, you lose some," is how one soldier summed up the day.