The Killers Direct Hits Zip

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Its a warm afternoon in October, and soldiers from Ahmeds elite battalion are preparing to lead the offensive for the city. Wearing a T shirt that says American Sniper and a backwards baseball cap, he takes a thick finger and swipes through pictures of dead and wounded comrades. On the dirt roads outside, soldiers shout over the rumble of Humvees as they turn an empty village near the front lines into a forward operating base. Over the last two years, as theyve pushed back the ISIS caliphate, the process has become routine Check houses for bombs clear them of broken glass rig them for electric carry over water, rice, generators. Then move on and do it all again, a little wearier and often with fewer men. They are Iraqs best soldiers, heralded as the Golden Division the almost invincible killers of ISIS. They are Iraqs best soldiers the lead battalion of the three brigades of special forces that are heralded as the Golden Division, the almost invincible killers of ISIS and they know the final battle in Mosul rests on their shoulders. Passersby had honked their horns and cheered when, two days earlier, they rolled north in a convoy from Baghdad. The Killers Direct Hits Zip' title='The Killers Direct Hits Zip' />The highway shook as flatbed trucks hauled their bullet marked Humvees toward the front lines, each painted in the trademark black of the special forces, with the black clad soldiers perched on top like gargoyles as Iraqi flags thrashed in the headwind. The battalions commander, Maj. Salam al Obaidi, 3. SUV emblazoned with a screaming eagle. A compact and fiery man with a buzz cut and trim mustache, his exploits against ISIS have made him one of the most recognizable soldiers in Iraq. When he rolled through checkpoints, Iraqi soldiers and Shiite militiamen came up to his window to shake his hand and take selfies. The photos in Ahmeds phone show the darker side of the story. In one, Maj. Salam is lying blood smeared and unconscious in his Humvee at the end of the last big offensive, in the sprawling province of Anbar, his skull fractured and shrapnel dug into his head, shoulder, and chest. His vehicle was hit by an ISIS anti tank rocket, and he barely escaped with his life. Ahmed has more photos. They show the corpses of special forces soldiers killed in various battles with ISIS. Military intelligence deleted them from his phone, he says, but he found software to bring them back. The scale of the casualties this elite group of soldiers is taking is a closely guarded secret, as generals worry that revealing their extent could crush morale. Iraq needs a myth to rally behind heroes to give a broken country hope and these soldiers are it. But winning the war on ISIS also threatens to wipe them out. Ahmed is a gunner who spends the long days during Maj. Salams assaults perched in the turret of his Humvee, laying down suppressive fire. Like many of his colleagues, he spent years during the Iraq War fighting alongside the US troops who trained him. In retaliation, members of a Shiite militia kidnapped him and, using a knife, tried to peel off his face, then shot him and left him for dead on a roadside. A scar from that attack runs along his scalp line. Other wounds are harder to see. Still holding his phone, he lets out a scattershot burst of more recent war stories, like the photos violent and strange. In one, he chases a jihadi down a war torn street as the mans severed arm flaps at his side. In another, a snipers bullet smacks the reinforced glass of his turret a few inches from his face, and he unravels for a moment, firing at the home where the shot seemed to originate. I went crazy on the house and destroyed it, he says. I didnt even care if there was a family inside. He puts away the photos. Im not supposed to show these to anyone, he says. Warzer Jaff for Buzz. Feed News. The ICTF approaches eastern Mosul. Eleven days later, Maj. Salam moves his forces across the river to begin his assault into Mosul. It will be a battle far longer and bloodier than anyone anticipates, but as he gathers his deputies for a pre dawn briefing, he seems excited to start. I want space for the tanks, he says, looking up with alert brown eyes at the dozen men standing around him. Rather than standing over his men and barking orders, he reclines cat like on the floor of a rural home and calmly lays out the battle plan, a touch of gray in his buzz cut and jagged scar along one side of his head. An airstrike hits in the darkness outside, pulsing the ear drums of the soldiers and rattling the windows in their frames. Kurdish forces have rolled ISIS lines back to Mosuls outskirts to set the stage for Maj. Salam to infiltrate the city. We are not in a rush. Were not in a rush at all, he says. The most important thing is no casualties. On the porch, Ahmed the Bullet pulls on a pair of fingerless gloves and begins to strut and banter with his colleagues, getting loose before a day behind the. Maj. Salam walks over to me. Though he stands just 5 foot 8, his natural intensity seems all the more powerful for being concentrated in his compact frame. They will send women at the convoy, they will send little kids at the convoy, he says. No matter what, you cannot leave the Humvee. Okay. Warzer Jaff for Buzz. Carel 1Tool Software. Feed News. Members of the battalion at the start of the Mosul offensive. The battalions US made Humvees shudder and snort as the drivers switch on their ignitions. As they gather around them, some soldiers pull on ski masks with the skull face of the Punisher, a comic book vigilante. One wraps his head in a black and white keffiyeh. They step up into the vehicles in crews of four and five and set off as the sun begins to rise. I sit in the back seat of a Humvee near the center of the convoy. Ammo boxes are stacked beside me, and around them is a clutter assault rifles, gas masks, a rocket propelled grenade, a case of water bottles, a cardboard box of potato chips. The stocky legs of the gunner, Abbas, a gruff twenty something from Baghdad, hang down from the turret as he balances on two more ammo boxes. He turns a hand crank to rotate the turret, scanning the horizon and yelling down to the driver. A wiry soldier sits behind the passengers seat and keeps watch out his window, a textbook sized slab of bulletproof glass. The Humvees creep in a long column through the dirt of abandoned farm fields, pausing as sappers in a mine resistant truck search for improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. They detonate them in controlled explosions that push up geysers of earth. His voice crackling on the radio, Maj. Salam commands the convoy from the first Humvees passenger seat. His aim is to capture a village called Topzawa, which sits astride Highway 1, the road that offers him a straight shot into Mosuls eastern gate. This is not our job, street fights. We entered into a dirty kind of war.