Cache Out

Finding and destroying insurgent bombs is satisfying work, but it never seems to end.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - They spent a week combing through the potato and onion fields just south of Baghdad International Airport.

Then Staff Sgt. David Crispen of the 101st Airborne Division saw something on the ground: a raw potato that someone had been hungry -- or bored -- enough to chew on.

Next to it was some loose dirt that Crispen thought just didn't look right.

"We borrowed a shovel from one of the houses nearby," he says. "We hit metal with the first spadeful of dirt."

He says they knew it was a jackpot. In that spot alone they found a buried insurgent cache of 40 155mm artillery shells wrapped in plastic to protect them from corrosion.

Experts say the cache was enough to make up to a dozen roadside bombs, what the military calls improvised explosive devices -- IEDs.

Artillery shells are a favorite of insurgents who usually wire or daisy-chain together several for even greater explosive power.

The soldiers are pumped up about the find, knowing that the discovery has probably saved lives. Military sources say that in the last six months, more than half of all U.S. deaths in

Iraq have been the result of roadside bombs.

"They just keep planting the stuff out here," says Sgt. Gregory James, "and we keep finding it. Thank God, we keep finding it."

James' platoon provides security for the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team -- the bomb squad -- that comes in after the weapons caches or roadside bombs are discovered.

By the time the bomb squad arrives on site, the soldiers from the 101st have found a second cache of weapons and are digging up a strange assortment of artillery rounds: some 155mm rounds, but others look like bombs in cartoons -- torpedoes with bloated tops, long tails and short fins.

All of them are stacked in neat piles beside the hole in which they were dug up.

Air Force Master Sgt. Michael Pitts has been on the bomb squad for almost two decades.

"Seventeen years ago it sounded like a good idea," he jokes, "but now I'm in Iraq."

Pitts, along with his partner Senior Airman Ivan Tarin, are the first call in this area when soldiers find anything that has the potential to explode. While most people move away from bombs, they are eager to take a look.

"This is a good find," says Pitts, walking toward the cache of 155 mm artillery rounds. "These guys saved the lives of a lot of coalition soldiers today."

Back at their Humvee Pitts and Tarin grab two satchels of C4 plastic explosives, a canister of fuses and 1,000 feet of detonation cord.

"We're going to blow this thing," says Pitts, enthusiastically.

While the soldiers watch, Pitts and Tarin place parallel blocks of C4 over the pile of artillery shells. The C4 is soft and malleable. They break off some pieces, bend others, with no fear that it will explode. It takes both heat and pressure to detonate C4. The chemical compounds that make it up are inert until those forces are used on them. They poke holes in the blocks and place fuses linking one block to the next. Finally they attach the detonation cord connected to a spool.

Tarin takes a kubuton -- a telescopic baton -- from his belt, inserts it into the spool of detonation cord and begins walking away from the pile of shells.

"This is the best job in the military," he says. "I didn't quite understand it all until I got to Iraq, but now I realize how valuable the work is. When you first start, you're a little nervous, but then you get addicted to it. It's an adrenaline rush. If we don't get called out for a few days I start to get antsy."

When the cord spools out -- it's just shy of 1,000 feet long -- Pitts jumps on the radio to get all the clearances to destroy the cache. He makes sure there are no patrols in the area, then calls to make sure there is air clearance, no planes or choppers overhead.

When everything is clear he gives Tarin the green light. Tarin pulls the pin on a fuse which sends an explosive charge down the line.

The field erupts in a bright orange and red blast, followed by billowing smoke. Then there is a whizzing sound as chunks of metal from the explosion start raining down on the field around us.

The explosion has left a large crater in the field, but no remnants whatsoever of the 155mm artillery rounds. Pitts says there are about 50 EOD teams in the Baghdad area and they are busy all the time, sometimes going out on five or six calls a day.

But perhaps their busiest day was on Nov. 14 of this year, he says, when they were called out to deal with an IED on a notorious road the military has named Motorhead, which is constantly mined by insurgents.

After dealing with the first, they searched 100 meters up the road and found another, another 100 meters and another -- this went on all day until they had discovered 14 roadside bombs. It was a day none of them would soon forget.

Pitts says on his first tour of duty in Iraq he was disarming or blowing IEDs, but without a security force to watch his back. Now, he says, with James' platoon providing security, he can concentrate on the job. But that still doesn't make for a completely safe environment.

Just a week ago the EOD team came under mortar fire from insurgents while inspecting a roadside bomb.

"That was a crazy time," says Tarin. "Probably the closet call I've had in Iraq.

But the security team took up fighting positions, called in Viper helicopters for air support and protected the bomb squad while they finished their job.

Today the insurgents are silent while Pitts and Tarin place C4 on the second cache of explosives containing all the "exotic" artillery shells.

"Let's train-track 'em across," Pitts says to Tarin.

"Think we'll have enough?" Tarin asks.

"We'll make it work," Pitts says.

They lay the blocks of C4, side by side, across the artillery shells almost as if they were laying train tracks. Then Tarin cuts open some of the packets and packs the white C4 into a "snowball" which he stuffs into the opening of each of the artillery shells.

It will amplify the blast, he tells me, by using the bombs' own explosive power. They link the C4 blocks together the same way they did before and unspool the detonation cord. With the shells and C4 it will be an explosion equivalent to about one thousand pounds of TNT.

"Fire in the hole, fire in the hole, fire in the hole," a soldier yells.

Pitts pulls the detonator pin this time and a huge fireball races toward the sky. Cows tethered in a nearby field jump and shimmy to get away from the blast wave.

The troops watching the explosion cheer as a double plume of black smoke swirls around into the shape of an angry thunder cloud.

Pitts, Tarin and the security team walk up to the crater. The blast has exposed a patch of potatoes on the left and onions on the right, and the elephant grass behind the explosion has been mowed flat.

"That's what I'm talking about," Pitt says, looking over the crater, which is 20 feet deep and at least 30 to 35 feet in circumference. "That's nice."

"And no kickouts," Tarin says, referring to leftover bomb fragments.

They slap palms and walk around the results of their handiwork, satisfied that there are a few less weapons that now can be used against coalition forces. But even as this cache is blown, as dusk settles in, there is another call: a roadside bomb on Route Tampa that has to be investigated.

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