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gun still in the turret. Both doors on the right side were lying open. Spent shell cases littered the Iraqi dirt. At first they found no sign of their brothers. Then, beside the Humvee, they encountered a pool of blood. Then another. Thirty yards from the Humvee, they found Babineau’s body.
    Thomas Tucker and Kristian Menchaca were nowhere to be found.
    With dawning horror, the soldiers who first responded to the scene realized their brothers had been captured. There was no worse fate for an American in Iraq. Everyone had seen the al-Qaida torture videos. They knew that if they couldn’t find Tucker and Menchaca quickly, the worst would happen.
    The platoon converged on the scene. They went to every nearby house and dwelling, interrogating the inhabitants and demanding to know what they’d seen. If anyone resisted, or seemed to know more than they were letting on, the men unleashed cold fury on them.
    When the Screaming Eagles went to find out what the Iraqi Army troops had seen, they listened in stunned disbelief as their Coalition allies professed ignorance. They told the Americans they hadn’t heard or seen a thing. The lies were outrageous—everyone in the area heard hundreds of gunshots from AK-47s being fired full auto. The Iraqi Army reaction only stoked 1st Platoon’s rage.
    First platoon searched for their captured men for sixteen hours straight, even as the division began to flood the area with more troops. The 4th Infantry Division sent reinforcements into the area as well. An Air Force parajumper team arrived, as did specialized dive units. Drones, helicopters, and jet fighters soon buzzed overhead.
    The search soon focused on a nearby village and a power plant. At the entrance to the plant, an American discovered blood smeared on a bridge handrail. Blood trails and drag marks led from the road into the facility. All through the following morning, American troops searched every inch of the power station. They found a chunk of American body armor, and an abandoned white truck with congealing blood pooled in its bed.
    The search continued. Hundreds, then thousands of American troops and Iraqi commandos descended on the area. They searched villages, conducted air assaults, interrogated detainees. All through the seventeenth, the insurgents emerged from concealed positions to launch hit-and-run attacks on the search teams. Mortar fire rained down on the Americans. The fighting killed one Coalition soldier and wounded a dozen more. Thirty-six insurgents were captured and two al-Qaida operatives killed. The area was laced with roadside bombs, twelve of which went off and destroyed or damaged eight vehicles.
    Through the explosions, mortar fire, and AK-47 ambushes, the Americans pressed on in search of their lost soldiers. Finally, on the afternoon of Sunday, June 18, a sweep through the village of Rushdi Mullah netted two prisoners who told their interrogators where Tucker and Menchaca could be found.
    Two miles northeast of the power plant, American troops located their mutilated bodies. Al-Qaida had mined the road around them with bombs, and had booby-trapped their remains. It took twelve hours for specialized engineers to defuse the bombs and clear a path to the bodies. When the Americans finally reached them, they discovered Menchaca and Tucker had been tortured. Postmortem, Tucker had been decapitated. Both had been eviscerated, then dismembered.
    The Mujahideen Shura Council of Iraq, one of the al-Qaida front groups in country, later released a video showing Jihadists defiling the bodies. One jubilant terrorist held Thomas Tucker’s head up for the camera. The four-minute, thirty-nine-second video extolled the greatness of the holy fighters responsible for the mutilation, and announced that Abu Ayyub al-Masri, al-Zarqawi’s replacement as head of al-Qaida Iraq (Zarqawi had been killed by U.S. forces earlier in June), had personally killed both men.
    The U.S. Army vowed to track down