After an interesting but, all things considered, quiet embed in Adhamiya, Pete and I are back where we were a couple days ago getting ready to wrap things up.  We went up to the roof to smoke.  It was hot but tolerable.  Once again, it was remarkably quiet.  Once again, that turned out to be temporary.  Shortly after we got up there we heard the crack of Kalashnikov fire, followed by the thud of a .50 caliber machine gun and the pop of M4 rifles.  A single stream of red tracer fire flew through the sky once, then again.  At one point we saw a distant flash, then heard an explosion a few seconds later.  Pete thought it sounded like a grenade.

This went on for a while.  It sounded close, and we were wondering if maybe insurgents had attacked the checkpoint in front of the base.  We oriented ourselves using the dark office towers in the distance, trying to figure out if the fire was coming from the direction of Adhamiya or Sadr City.  We went downstairs a couple times to ask some of the soldiers if they knew what was going on; when we came back up to the roof gunfire was still erupting sporadically.  Of course, when Pete went downstairs to get a digital recorder the noise died off almost completely.

I'll be writing a bit more about the embed in the next day or two; right now I'm beat.

 

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