LEO FOX WAS only one mile from his camp outpost, part of a 10-person patrol on what was supposed to be a typical eight-hour run. He could go as long as a month and see no action. Or, during a three-week stretch, his outfit was raiding a house or building at least every other day. Complacency … that was the real killer.
Especially on a typical eight-hour patrol. Then came the blast. An IED. Actually, a VBIED: a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. A VBIED is often a stripped car packed with hundreds of pounds of explosives, along with ball bearings, glass, nails, and anything that can maim, disfigure, or even worse. Fox was in the gunner’s hatch, basically where gunners enter or exit near the turret of an
