In an instant, time stopped. I heard no sounds. I felt no movement. My mind focused squarely on the flash that had ripped a hole in the darkness. After almost seven months in Iraq, I instinctively knew what was happening in those milliseconds, but strangely, I questioned it.

What the fuck is that?

The explosion was so close that I had no time to blink before the gut-wrenching concussion slammed into our vehicle, instantly followed by the loud clap of the detonation echoing through the urban canyon. Shrapnel peppered our gun truck. I was thrown to the left as the blast picked up our vehicle and dropped it back down in the middle of the road. As quickly as the blast had come, it was gone, leaving us in hazy silence and confusion. Dust filled the vehicle. Stunned, no one spoke a word as we rolled forward on momentum. An odd but familiar metallic taste permeated my mouth as the pungent smell of cordite filled my nose.

I thought of my marines.

“Anyone fuckin’ hit?” I yelled, running my hands down the length of my legs. A piercing ring resonated in my ears. I felt nauseous. Thankfully, I was in one piece. The expletive-laced replies from my marines came back almost in unison. Although pissed off and angry, they were alive and physically in one piece. I thanked God, a compulsion that had become all too common in Ramadi.

Sergeant Anderson swung right in the turret behind the machine gun, leaning into the weapon mount waiting to release a barrage of automatic-weapons fire.

“You see anyone? You got PID [positive identification]?” I yelled, grabbing the radio handset and scanning through the front right window. My head spun from the explosion; I was dizzy but pushed through it. “Negative. Not yet,” Anderson shouted back. He searched for a target, his night vision goggles (NVG) exposing the darkness in shades of green. We all expected the night to erupt in gunfire and more explosions.

“Just fuckin’ shoot, Anderson,” echoed from the backseat, “Light ’em up.” I hurriedly replied, “Negative. Wait for a target, dude. You don’t know who’s out there.”

I completely trusted Anderson’s decisions. My comment was directed at the passenger, a marine from our unit who was hitching a ride with us. We didn’t blindly shoot into the darkness. We didn’t want to kill civilians, and we didn’t want to shoot our fellow marines or soldiers. Anderson was a professional and knew the risk of a blue-on-blue incident.

I keyed the handset. “Wild Eagle Two-Two from Five-Seven.” I had to force myself to speak calmly. Calm down, Angell. Relax, think, and then speak. I kept trying—no response. Through my NVGs, I looked into the side mirror of the vehicle. Wild Eagle Two-Two’s gun truck was silhouetted by the infrared headlights of the escort vehicle behind it. They weren’t moving. They were stopped in the middle of Route Michigan, in the middle of Ramadi, Iraq, one of the most dangerous cities on the planet in 2006.

“Stop,” I told Sergeant Dyer. He quickly hit the brakes. “Murray’s gun truck isn’t moving.”

In front of us, though, the lead escort vehicle’s outline grew smaller and smaller as they continued west. “Gunfighter Three, this is Wild Eagle Five-Seven. We’re stopping. Our other vehicle is hit and immobile,” I explained to the convoy commander as I watched his vehicle disappear into the darkness.

“Negative. Get out of the kill zone” was the cold response. I cursed them below my breath but knew the tactic. You had to get out of the kill zone. They had no choice; neither did we. Frustrated, I replied with a verbal jab.

“Copy. We’re stopping. I’m not leaving my fellow marines.” There was no way my team and I were going to leave Captain Shane Murray, Corporal Donnelly, or the rest. I kept trying to reach them on the radio but received nothing in return.

The city was silent and dark. We were only about a mile from Camp Corregidor, but it might as well have been a hundred. We felt alone and feared for the fate of Murray and his team, although no one uttered such a thought.

“All right. Fuckin’ turn it around. Let’s get it over with,” I told Sergeant Dyer, shaking my head. Anxious and nervous, we had no idea what was happening in or around their gun truck, but we had to do something. I had to make a decision. The disturbing thought that Murray and his marines might be dead danced in my head.

Turning around was easier said than done. Attached to our gun truck was a small trailer with the gear, packs, and belongings we were moving from Camp Corregidor to Camp Ramadi as our time in Iraq wound down. Sergeant Dyer backed up, moved forward, and then backed up and moved forward again in an attempt to turn the gun truck. We all expected to get hit by another IED. We sat bracing for it, waiting. Some of us even plugged our ears. We had become accustomed to the feeling; we knew it would happen, and we wanted to get it over with. There was no other choice. Deal with it.

We had become experts at dealing with it: dealing with the confusion, with the monotony, the boredom; dealing with the excitement and adrenaline, the longing for family and home, the fear, the heat, the frustration; dealing with the nonsensical rules of engagement, the film of dirt and sand coating everything we touched, and the horrible smell of this country; dealing with this godforsaken city and its apathetic citizens. We dealt with the piercing screams of Iraqi women who had seen their husbands and sons gunned down.

We dealt with watching young children running through raw sewage to escape a firefight. The only thing we really wanted to deal with was the enemy, the insurgents. But this was Ramadi. We were forced to deal with all of it. This was our war.

The enemy was an ambush attacker, typical of guerrilla fighters throughout history. He attacked at the time and place of his choosing and only when he held the tactical advantage, when we least expected it. Over time, you come to accept that death can grab you by the hand and take you into the unknown abyss in an instant. It’s the only way to survive and still be able to operate and accomplish your mission day in and day out for seven to thirteen months at a time. Before long, this acceptance becomes mundane. You grow accustomed to seeing death around every corner. You and your fellow marines and soldiers, your brothers, laugh when an insurgent’s bullet misses your head by millimeters. You are amused at how surreal and crazy the whole situation is. You run towards gunfire. You are addicted to the violence that old men and women in Washington, DC, say is just and righteous. You feel a thousand feet tall. You’re an alpha male, a fucking warrior, a Spartan. You are a combat marine who will give your life to protect your brothers.

Everything changes when you see home on the horizon. As it approaches, you start thinking about reuniting with your wife, your children, your friends and family. The possibility that you might leave Iraq alive becomes real. You no longer laugh at death. It becomes clear that death means business, so you had better respect that because you are both in the same line of work. He’s just more efficient.

At this point in our deployment, we had become quite accustomed to extreme violence and its ever-present companion. We were a key element of a small ad hoc task force that brought together the unique capabilities of US Army snipers, scouts, and US Marine Corps ANGLICO (Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company) teams. We cast aside interservice rivalries, stepped out of the road-bound gun trucks, abandoned conventional operations, and jumped into the world of hunting insurgents in their backyard and from their own homes. We became the ones hiding in the shadows, bringing death unto our enemy when he least expected it—when we held the advantage.

We were ANGLICO. We brought death from above. We were United States Marines.