IN WESTERN IRAQ — The Milky Way arcs overhead: a sweep of stars so vivid as to resemble glitter shot across the bone-dry desert sky. For all its dazzle, though, the galaxy offers barely a flicker of gauzy light to the sand and rock below.
In military terms, there is only 1% illumination of the battlefield.
Time to go hunting. Time to be hunted.
The impending transfer of governing authority over Iraq fades to abstraction for Marines pressing the relentless war against insurgency and terrorism in Iraq.
Marines preparing to strike "outside the wire" of their bases believe that insurgents especially prize the killing of a Marine as a way to bloody America's pride.
As midnight approaches, two thoughts gather in the mind of squad leader Sgt. Andrew Hewuse of Colorado Springs. The first concern is the men of his patrol -- his 17 young enlisted Marines. Hewuse, a fleshy, big-smiling, slightly rumpled man, served three years in Army artillery and has put in four years as a Marine infantryman. Preparing for combat patrol is a process of assembling weaponry and equipment, checking radio frequencies, plotting routes, rehearsing procedures, planning for the worst and psyching up Marines who have been in the fight for months.
The second thought in the sergeant's mind is personal.
"I hope to God I make it out of this patrol alive." He continues: "It's a roller coaster out there. You never know. You drive through town and people are waving. Why are they waving? Are they saying hello? Are they signaling to an ambush ahead?"
The primary mission now for Marines spread out across the desert and unstable cities west of Baghdad is to prepare police and civil defense forces for the return of Iraqi sovereignty Wednesday. The other half of the job is to hunt the insurgents.
It is a round-the-clock battle against ambushes, snipers, landmines and, most frequently, against those who almost daily plant 155-millimeter artillery shells, or bundles of shells, along supply routes.
At 12:56 a.m., weapons bristling and rounds chambered, Hewuse directs his patrol through the sandbagged gate. He rides in the first of three menacing turret-mounted Humvee "gun trucks." A troop-carrier Humvee fills out the patrol -- Hunter 3 squad of Weapons Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, from Twentynine Palms, Calif.
Hewuse reports via radio: "We have departed friendly lines." In the distance, towns and villages along the Euphrates River glow like distant campfires. Otherwise, darkness is as complete as the inside of a suitcase.
