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The sharks are an estimated 3,000 Iraqi soldiers in Diwaniyah, a city of 300,000 people 75 miles southeast of Baghdad, where the 1991 southern Shi'ite rebellion against Saddam Hussein first started.
The Marines are the bait. Why bring the enemy out in the open so far from Baghdad? McCoy's battalion is waiting farther back in order to clear out pockets of resistance and secure supply lines. "We want to keep the enemy on their heels," he says. So as the rest of the 7th Marine Regiment pushes north toward the capital, 3/4 Battalion plans to pick a fight at the rear of the convoy. "It's just a good opportunity to kill these guys," McCoy says. "I don't say that with a lot of bravado, but we're here to break their will. I don't want to sit on our asses all day with the enemy just over there."
As a rooster announces daylight, battalion vehicles line up along the highway, pointing in every direction so as not to give away the point of attack. Then the tanks, amphibious tractors and humvees head west toward the outskirts of Diwaniyah. The chum is now in the water, and the Iraqis rise immediately to take it, pinging the Marine armor with small-arms fire. A tank crewman answers, firing his coaxial machine gun into an enemy bunker. Over the radio comes a play-by-play: "Yeah baby," says a voice. "He just ate coax for breakfast," says another. But the sharks were already on hand, and in numbers, when the Marines arrived, and they seemed to fill up the palm-studded field in front of the Americans. McCoy calls for artillery support as his soldiers fire TOW missiles.
The Marines are now spilling out of amtracs and charging at the Iraqis. The idea is to push the infantry out quickly enough to stop the enemy from establishing bases of fire. It's a tactic McCoy deployed successfully just days ago in a battle at nearby Afak and one that defines him as a commander. "Go in there as if you own the place," he says later. That sense of supremacy now takes the form of artillery shells that are pounding Iraqi positions. Another TOW missile hits a large building, which sheds dust as if someone had beaten it with a stick.
The Marines reach the edge of town, and more Iraqis surrender. An old man strips off his jacket and waddles toward a Marine position in a dirty white singlet. "There are militia on every corner in the city," he says, unfolding a now familiar story in the Shi'ite south. "They tell us to fight or they will kill our children. They say if we are captured, the U.S. will tie us up and leave us in the desert, and when Saddam returns, he will kill us."
McCoy and his humvee team--a driver, a gunner, a radio operator and a TIME correspondent--drive across a scrub-filled field and stop on a small dirt patch between two bunkers. McCoy jumps out and shoots into the bunker on his side of the humvee. His gunner takes the other. Both turn out to be empty. But McCoy's aggressiveness is classic Marine, and the men like it. "He's the first one into battle and the last one out," says a Marine. "He's not like other battalion commanders sitting in their humvees at the back." And McCoy clearly revels in being a warrior. "I'm in my happy place," he says.