We will roll out of LSA Anaconda, our base near Balad, Iraq, in the early morning. Anaconda is in particularly hostile territory, the so-called Sunni Triangle, where attacks on U.S. troops are commonplace. We are bound for Baghdad to attend a conference of army engineer commanders. It is cold, damp and misty and we will travel down the road in vehicles bristling with guns like a string of green porcupines, menacing all who come near.

Machine gunner scans surroundings from perch atop a gun truck.

Such convoys "outside the wire" are ordinary things. They leave Anaconda many times a day. The soldiers do not let danger constrain them. They go out strong, and fight aggressively to destroy their attackers if challenged. But they are regularly attacked all the same.

A pair of two-ton utility trucks serve as our gun trucks. They will run in front and at the tail of our little flock. Machine gunners stand to poke out of the canvas roof over the back. Four shooters in the beds will be tucked in behind sand bags, two on the left, two on the right, M-16s out, loaded and ready. The driver will ride with his rifle on his lap, barrel out the window. So will the front seat passenger, or tactical commander. All wear vests to turn away shrapnel and bullets, and Kevlar helmets, as well. The protective gear works so well that most wounds these days are to limbs and faces. People are blinded and lose arms and legs, but th survival rate is much higher than in previous wars.

The soldiers scrape the colonel’s name off the windshield of his humvee before we start. No sense advertising. Besides the gun trucks, there will be three humvees and three non-tactical vehicles–civilian SUVs, except they have sandbags covering the floors and seats to protect passengers from mines. They are full of people with weapons drawn.

The original canvas doors of our humvee are gone, replaced by crude 1-inch-thick steel sheets with no glass. Up-armored humvees, they call them. Iraqis make the doors for our soldiers in a welding shop in Balad.

The biggest risk are IEDs–improvised explosive devices. Insurgents typically hot-wire artillery shells and other munitions to make these crude bombs. They can be hidden under the sand along the edge of the pavement and easily detonated by remote control or paired wires to a battery and switch. We pass a spot where seven were blown in a daisy chain as a convoy passed a few weeks ago. New asphalt marks the craters. Another that was detonated this week at a convoy support center south of Baghdad had a kill zone of 50 meters. Wicked things.

Other risks are more conventional; shooters, hand grenades tossed from cars, trucks or overpasses, and their rocket-propelled cousins, the RPGs.

Before departure the convoy captain holds the traditional convoy briefing. Traffic will thicken as we approach Baghdad, he says. Cars, trucks, motorcycles and people will close in around us. The commander, Col. Gregg Martin, warns that we may see Iraqis carrying AK-47s. They may be working as legitimate guards, Martin says, but if anyone aims a weapon at us, or if they carry RPGs, they should be shot. "If they look hostile, shoot. Shoot, move, communicate, and if somebody gets shot, administer first aid," he says. He checks to make sure each vehicle carries someone certified in combat first aid.

Caption--Sgt. Kelly Simco, 130th Engineer Brigade, goes over route plan, weapons status, rules of engagement and response strategies to various forms of attack prior to “leaving the wire,” or taking a convoy out of the permiter security of LSA Anaconda for a run to Baghdad. Col. Gregg Martin, 130th commander, is at center.

The briefing covers route, radio protocol, weapons status, strategies for responding to IED or other attacks and the medical frequency. And then we go. "Lock and load sir," the specialist driving our humvee says as we clear the gate. On the other side in front of the machine gun nests and guards, soldiers are frisking Iraqis coming in to work. They are waiting in line.

You can smell the fresh plowed fields as we zoom away from the wire. Already at this hour little children stand beside the road and wave. We pass an M1 tank stopped on the shoulder, its crew standing on the hard turtle-shell back staring intently at something in the weeds. We always drive fast, if we can. Everyone studies the passing view. You can’t have too many people studying the view. You study the view until your eyes hurt.

The road’s shoulders are clean. They are rough and muddy but there is no trash. Amazing for this part of Iraq, where most convenient patches of ground are used for dumps. The army engineers have a project called Task Force Right Of Way in which mine detection equipment and graders are cleaning up the shoulders and searching for mines and bombs. No trash, maybe no bombs–at least no bombs hidden in dead animals or garbage.

We pull in with an assault bridge company in a convoy heading for Kuwait and their trip home. The string of trucks with boats and bridge bays stretches out of sight across the flat landscape when the road makes a turn and gives us a long view.

It’s all farmland. Low brush, bog, irrigation canals and fields. Very wet after the rain. People lob handfuls of mortars into the base from this place at night. The mortars are extremely inaccurate and random and the base is huge, so mostly people ignore them unless they happen to land near. Our artillery zeros in on the point of origin and returns high explosive fire at a ratio of 3:1 and better, within a minute, usually. We fired a lot last night. I woke up in the morning remembering all the noise and thought maybe I had dreamed it but was assured by others that no, we had shot a lot. "They’re getting very aggressive," the colonel says of our gunners.

We turn onto the highway, one of the country’s main supply routes. Now we are in civilization. We stay in the left lane, away from the shoulder. Iraqis in civilian cars and pickup trucks pass on the right. They are typically full of men in Arab robes and headgear, although sometimes there are women in the back seats, and children. Except for the clothes and the relatively old fleet of vehicles, it is typical of highway traffic anywhere. Beside the road, women in black robes walk, shepherds tend flocks that forage along the ditches or wait patiently in fluffy tan clouds around stands while their comrades are slaughtered, gutted, skinned and hung up for sale. We pass a couple of missile sections with tail fins still attached, about 12 or 15 ft long. No warheads. Their paint is peeling. More war wreckage in the ditch still, eight months after the Iraqi army fell apart. A few shattered vehicles, a tank, some trucks, a burned-out bus, something that once had tracks on it. There is a big gun. Howitzer? It’s on a carriage. The barrel must be 15 ft long.

We’ve been separated from the bridge convoy for awhile, but now we catch up. They are stopped in the left lane. We shift right and meet the wall of a traffic jam and are swiftly packed in by trucks and private vehicles. The heavy trucks won’t risk it, but two or three lanes of sedans and pickups begins to form spontaneously on the dirt shoulder, bleeding out onto the field on the side. Some strike out wide across the open ground. Nobody, it seems, wants to put up with a traffic jam.

We’re mired in a sea of irritated Iraqis. Word comes over the radio that an IED has been found ahead. Our soldiers always ride with their gun barrels sticking out the windows, casually pointing at the other drivers as we go by. You get used to guns pointing at you around here. It happens all the time. Now the soldiers study their neighbors over leveled barrels. They are not menacing, but they are menacingly ready. That’s the point. The colonel dismounts to walk forward and see if there is anything that can be done. He has long since found his officer’s pistol insufficient for such trips. These days he also carries an M-16. His inner circle follows. They wind through the civilian traffic for a few hundred yards. Many people smile and nod, even say good morning and thank you or other encouraging things, but a few ignore us, and one driver calls out that we are to blame for everything. The colonel pauses to argue the point. He urges the man to help coalition forces catch the terrorists who are killing Americans and Iraqis too, and we walk on. Eventually we come to an armored vehicle whose gunners are keeping the free-flowing civilian traffic at bay. Behind it a line of trucks on the pavement stretches away for miles.

A traffic jam is a traffic jam, even in a combat zone. Soldiers dismount and stay on guard, enmeshed in a sea of immobilized civilian traffic.

The soldiers with the armored vehicle tell us that an explosives disposal team is dealing with the suspected IED. It might take only a little while, or maybe an hour or two, or possibly three. There’s no way to know. The colonel walks back to see what can be done to improve security around the little cluster of vehicles, and then the traffic suddenly starts to move. Everything abruptly comes unglued and we roll again toward Baghdad through strips of highway. Wide muddy aprons are dotted with tire shops, peddlers stands, gas stations, junkyards, schools, garbage dumps and–everywhere–people standing beside the road. Mothers and dads clutch the hands of small, neatly dressed school children. They stand in the thick mud, waiting to cross, waiting for a break in the 3, 4, 5 or 6 lanes of the crawling, blowing, smoking river of cars and trucks and soldiers with their loaded weapons drawn. The engineer in the passenger seat in front of me, a captain nearing the end of a year here, keeps his rifle pointed out the window, as if absent-mindedly drifting the sights across every passing car. He makes eye contact with anyone he can as we pass each other by. He frequently smiles and lifts his left hand from the trigger to waive, but in his other hand he holds his pistol below the window ledge, covering even that apparent lapse with yet another layer of security.

(All photos by Tom Sawyer for ENR)