The Killer Elite

Marines call exaggerated displays of enthusiasm — from shouting "Get some!" to waving American flags to covering their bodies with Marine Corps tattoos — "moto." You won't ever catch Sgt. Brad Colbert, one of the most respected Marines in First Recon and the team leader I would spend the war with, engaging in any moto displays. They call Colbert the Iceman. Wiry and fair-haired, he makes sarcastic pronouncements in a nasal whine that sounds a lot like David Spade. Though he considers himself a "Marine Corps killer," he's also a nerd who listens to Barry Manilow, Air Supply and practically all the music of the 1980s except rap. He is passionate about gadgets — he collects vintage video-game consoles and wears a massive wristwatch that can only properly be "configured" by plugging it into his PC. He is the last guy you would picture at the tip of the spear of the invasion of Iraq.

The vast majority of the troops will get to Baghdad by swinging west onto a modern superhighway built by Hussein as a monument to himself and driving, largely unopposed, until they reach the outskirts of the Iraqi capital. Colbert's team in First Recon will reach Baghdad by fighting its way through some of the crummiest, most treacherous parts of Iraq. Their job will be to screen the advance of a Marine battle force, the 7,000-strong Regimental Combat Team One (RCT 1), through a 115-mile- long agricultural-and-urban corridor that runs between the cities of An Nasiriyah and Al Kut filled with thousands of well-armed fedayeen guerrilla fighters. Through much of this advance, First Recon, mounted in a combination of seventy lightly armored and open-top Humvees and trucks, will race ahead of RCT 1, uncovering enemy positions and ambush points by literally driving right into them. After this phase of the operation is over, the unit will move west and continue its role as ambush hunters during the assault on Baghdad.

Reconnaissance Marines are considered among the best trained and toughest in the Corps. Maj. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the Marine ground forces in Iraq, calls those in First Recon "cocky, arrogant bastards." They go through much of the same training as do Navy SEALS and Army Special Forces. They are physical prodigies who can run twelve miles loaded with 150-pound packs, then jump in the ocean and swim several more miles, still wearing their boots, fatigues and carrying their weapons and packs. They are trained to parachute, scuba dive, snowshoe, mountain climb and rappel from helicopters. Many of them are graduates of Survival Evasion Resistance Escape School, a secretive training facility where Recon Marines, fighter pilots, Navy SEALs and other military personnel in high-risk jobs are put through a simulated prisoner-of-war camp with student inmates locked in cages, beaten (within prescribed limits) and subjected to psychological torture overseen by military psychiatrists — all with the intent of training them to resist enemy captivity. Paradoxically, despite all the combat courses Recon Marines are put through (it takes a couple of years for them to cycle through every required school), almost none are trained to drive Humvees and fight in them as a unit. Traditionally, their job is to sneak behind enemy lines in small teams, observe from afar and avoid contact with the enemy. What they are doing in Iraq — seeking out ambushes and fighting through them — is something they only started training for around Christmas, a month before being deployed to Kuwait. Cpl. Person, the team's primary driver, doesn't even have a military operator's license for a Humvee and has only practiced driving in a convoy at night a handful of times. Gen. Mattis, who had other armored-reconnaissance units available to him — ones trained and equipped to fight through enemy ambushes in specialized, armored vehicles — says he choose First Recon for one of the most dangerous roles of the campaign because "what I look for in the people I want on the battlefield are not specific job titles but courage and initiative." By the time the war is declared over, Mattis will praise First Recon for having been "critical to the success of the entire campaign." The Recon Marines will face death nearly every day for a month, and they will kill a lot of people, a few of whose deaths Sgt. Colbert and his fellow Marines will no doubt think about and perhaps even regret for the rest of their lives.

Colbert's first impression of Iraq is that it looks like "fucking Tijuana." It's a few hours after his team's dawn crossing into Iraq. We are driving through a desert trash heap, periodically dotted with mud huts, small flocks of sheep and clusters of starved-looking, stick-figure cattle grazing on scrub brush. Once in a while you see wrecked vehicles: burnt-out car frames, perhaps left over from the first Gulf War, a wheel-less Toyota truck resting on its axles. Occasionally there are people, barefoot Iraqi men in robes. Some stand by the road, staring. A few wave.

"Hey, it's ten in the morning!" says Person, yelling in the direction of one of the Iraqis we pass. "Don't you think you ought to change out of your pajamas?"

Person has a squarish head and blue eyes so wide apart his Marine buddies call him Hammerhead or Goldfish. He's from Nevada, Missouri, a small town where "NASCAR is sort of like a state religion." He speaks with an accent that's not quite Southern, just rural, and he was proudly raised working-poor by his mother. "We lived in a trailer for a few years on my grandpa's farm, and I'd get one pair of shoes a year from Wal-Mart." Person was a pudgy kid in high school who didn't play sports, was on the debate team and played any musical instrument — from guitar to saxophone to piano — he could get his hands on.