(3 of 10)
Jessica began to wonder, If her truck broke down, would anyone even notice her at the side of the road? There was a lot to be afraid of here. But that was what she was most afraid of, whether it was reasonable or not. She was afraid of being left behind. "I hoped that someone would see me, that someone would pick me up," she said. "But you didn't know it. You didn't know."
Three days into their mission, the transfer case in her five-ton truck "just busted"--and she and her sergeant were stranded. For a few bleak heartbeats, it looked as if her little girl's fear was real. Then a humvee swerved off the road, and the driver beckoned to her. "Get in." It was Private First Class Lori Ann Piestewa, her best friend. The sergeant hopped in another truck, and they rolled on. A Hopi from Arizona who had been Jessica's roommate at Fort Bliss, Texas, Lori was recovering from an injured shoulder and had been given the choice of whether or not to deploy with her unit to Iraq. She went because Jessi did. A 23-year-old mother of two, Piestewa knew that her roommate was nervous, and she did not want her to face the desert, and war, on her own. "She stopped," said Jessica. "She picked me up. I love her."
--MISSING ROUTE JACKSON
The directions had seemed simple. After moving overland across the Iraqi border, the convoy would proceed north on Iraq's Highway 8, code-named "Route Blue." At the intersection of Highway 1, called "Route Jackson," the convoy would turn left, avoiding Nasiriyah. The convoy would take Route Jackson until it intersected again with Route Blue, then turn again onto Blue. On his map, Captain Troy King had only highlighted Route Blue--a straight line to Nasiriyah. There was a fail-safe in place, or at least it had been. A checkpoint at the crossing of Route Blue and Route Jackson had been manned by soldiers to direct stragglers to the detour, to safety. But by the time the 507 finally got there, it had been abandoned.
Later, the soldiers saw lights winking ahead. They were happy. They thought it was the main convoy. They had caught up. They were safe. But the closer they got, the clearer it became that something was wrong.
The sun came up on the city of Nasiriyah.
Instead of turning around, King led the soldiers through. The city was beginning to come to life. One Iraqi soldier at a guard post looked at them and waved. King "believed in error that Blue was his assigned route," wrote the Army in its report. "A navigational error caused by the combined effects of the operational pace, acute fatigue, isolation and the harsh environmental conditions." In the cabs of the trucks, the soldiers knew only that someone had messed up.
The convoy lumbered all the way through downtown. There was no gunfire, no real sign of hostility. But in the houses and behind the walls, Saddam's soldiers and militia were reaching for their AK-47s and rocket launchers and heading into the morning, into the bounty that had been laid before them. King finally noticed his mistake.