Every morning around 6, like clockwork, Spc. Johnny Jones would instant-message his wife. It was 3 p.m. in Iraq, but back home in Derby, Kan., her day would be just beginning.
“Hi honey, last night we...” and he’d tell her everything that had happened.
But Laura Jones, 36, always had too much to do to wait at the computer screen for him to write. They had two teenage daughters and a 10-year-old boy that she had to get up, feed and send off to school.
Then five preschoolers would troop in for a day-care program that she ran out of her home.
She kept a baby monitor next to the computer to make sure she heard when her husband’s message arrived. But on this morning, Feb. 22, 2007, the monitor was silent.
•••
“Can you hear me?”
Staff Sgt. Mike Seefeld was leaning over Jones, who lay slumped against the steering wheel inside the wrecked Humvee. Parts of the truck were ablaze.
The squad known as Assassin 2-2, part of Bravo Battery of the Kansas National Guard’s 161st Field Artillery, had just been ambushed, first by a chain of roadside bombs and now automatic rounds streaming from thicket of vegetation near the road. The squad was returning fire.
A piece of shrapnel had sliced through Jones’ cheek, and a large portion of his skull had been blown off. Seefeld swallowed hard.
“You’re going to be OK. I’ve got the bird coming.”
Jones could neither speak nor open his eyes, but he squeezed the sergeant’s hand.
•••
Laura’s husband had told her in his previous e-mail that he would be out on a special mission that he wouldn’t be able to talk about. But Johnny, as he always did, said, “Don’t worry.”
And Laura, as she always did, wondered, “And I’m supposed to do that how?”
So that morning she thought, “OK, maybe the mission had taken all night and he was sleeping.” But she called his parents in Ozark, Ark., anyway.
“Usually if he didn’t come on in the morning, I wouldn’t call his dad and mom and bug them or anything,” Laura said. “That day I did. I don’t know. I just knew.”
•••
After the daisy chain EFPs exploded — vicious roadside bombs that use molten copper to cut through some of the toughest armor — Seefeld had bolted from his lead Humvee. He took off in a low crouch toward the damaged vehicle while firing his M-16 at the roadside. Bullets pocked the road as he ran.
The shattered vehicle sagged on its right side, where the blasts erupted. Soot blackened the windows, and the headlights were still lit. The Colby, Wis., man quickly scanned the interior. The squad leader, Staff Sgt. David Berry; the gunner, Spc. Peter Richert; Staff Sgt. Jerrod Hays; and Jones weren’t moving.
“Medic!” he yelled.
Spc. Amanda Kistler was already on the way. Sgt. Nathan Reed and Spc. Travis Waltner exited their second-in-line Humvee after they saw Seefeld run by toward Berry’s truck. They told Kistler to wait until they were sure it wasn’t a trap.
“If you’re getting out, I’m getting out,” she said, grabbing her kit.
Left behind was Spc. Sean Wing. “If you see anything,” Waltner told the 20-year-old gunner from Kingman, “shoot it.”
They dashed to Berry’s side of the vehicle; Seefeld tried to open his door. It was jammed, but the one behind was blown off.
“Sgt. Berry! Sgt. Hays!” he called out.
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