American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

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“Feet wet!” said someone over the radio.
I checked my guns. They were ready, including the 50. All I had to
do was pull back the charging handle and load.
We were pointed straight toward the back of the helicopter. The
rear ramp was not all the way up, so I could see out into the night.
Suddenly, the black strip I was watching above the ramp speckled with
red—the Iraqis had kicked on anti-aircraft radars and weapons that intel
had claimed didn’t exist, and the chopper pilots began shooting off
decoy flares and chaff to confuse them.
Then came the tracers, streams of bullets arcing across the narrow
rectangle of black.
Damn, I thought. We’re going to get shot down before I even get
a chance to smoke someone.
Somehow, the Iraqis managed to miss us. The helicopter kept
moving, swooping toward land.
“Feet dry!” said someone over the radio. We were now over land.
All hell was breaking loose. We were part of a team tasked to hit
Iraqi oil resources before the Iraqis could blow them up or set them on
fire as they had during Desert Storm in 1991. SEALs and GROM were
hitting gas and oil platforms (GOPLATs) in the Gulf, as well as onshore
oil refinery and port areas.
Twelve of us were tasked to hit farther inland, at the al-Faw oil refinery
area. The few extra minutes it took translated into a hell of a lot
of gunfire, and by the time the helicopter touched down, we were in
the shit.
The ramp dropped and our driver hit the gas. I locked and loaded,
ready to fire as we sped down the ramp. The DPV careened onto the
soft dirt . . . and promptly got stuck.