Random Acts of Violence

It's time, I guess, to speak of the unspeakable. The RAV. Not cute little SUVs from Toyota, but Random Acts of Violence.

It has been pretty quiet here in the IZ for quite a while -- seems like a month or so. That changed pretty dramatically today.

Today (Sunday) is part of our "weekend," meaning we don't report to work until 1200. That means turning off the alarm clocks and chillin' in bed until the mood moves you. The mood that moved us this morning turned out to be the "duck and cover" alarm at 0830, followed closely by one pretty impressive boom and one not so impressive one.

For some perspective, there have been a lot of duck and cover alarms since I arrived here five months ago. There have been a lot fewer accompanying booms, meaning the vast majority were false alarms. So starting the day with a rare double boom was a bit ominous and disturbing.

Two hours later, we get two more booms with no alarm at all. They turn out to be vehicle-borne IEDs outside the IZ, but those tend to be huge explosions and real attention-getters. Four hours after that we get more alarms and more booms and it is starting to become a real nuisance.

We get one more early in the evening, and this is the one that makes me think about RAV and the bizarre reality into which I have been thrust. I had just left the dining facility, after yet another most excellent feast, and was waddling back to the office when I heard a high-pitched buzzing sound somewhere overhead. It was a new sound to me, and a bit of a mystery until I saw nearby security guards sprinting for the nearest shelter.

Now, these guys are out patrolling every day, a few of their buddies have been killed by rockets, and they are sensitized to the sound. So it was kind of like the famous EOD t-shirt: "I'm an explosives ordnance expert. If you see me running, try to keep up." I piled into the shelter with them and another dozen folks (this is about a five foot by ten foot space, so a bit close. And, of course, hot).

Fortunately the rocket was way high and wide of the compound because it impacted before half of us reached the shelter. Which also probably why it didn't trigger the alarm. But that is where the RAV thoughts come in to play.

I have some close friends that were here when things were really, really bad. These guys were commanders of combat units, so they weren't comfortably ensconced in the most secure chunk of real estate in Iraq, as I am. They saw people die, some of them their own soldiers. In telling their stories, the death of soldiers was often ascribed to the fact that it just wasn't their day.

I thought that was a bit cold, but I'm quickly changing my mind. It is incredibly random, and here in the IZ maybe even more so. So far, all attacks are from rockets and all rocket attacks originate several kilometers from where we are. The weapon of choice is the Katyusha rocket. It is not a precision weapon. Hitting a target 3-5 kilometers away with one is kind of like trying to hit someone with a bottle rocket 50 yards away.

Or like me trying to hit a fairway with my driver on the golf course. You know the range and direction to the target, but the outcome is very much in doubt. But every once in a blue moon it all comes together and works as planned. That is the first part of the randomness. The next is whether or not anyone happens to be anywhere near where it lands. There is quite a bit of acreage here, and the kill radius of a 107mm Katyusha is fairly small. Still, there are areas in which people are almost always moving around, potentially at risk.

Which brings us to the final random factor: who is it that just happens to be moving around in the wrong place, at the wrong time? I am almost always either in my CHU or at my desk when an alarm goes off. I have been caught outside a few times, but always for false alarms. Until today. So for the first time in five months I happened to be in the open during a real attack, but it passed harmlessly outside the compound (as most do).

But it makes you think. Of the nearly infinite outcomes of the trajectory of that rocket today, there were some that would have been disastrous.

If it wasn't your day.