Word: convoy
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...convoy waddled across the sand, the world she saw was flat, dull and yellow-brown, except where the water had turned the dust to reddish paste. The big trucks had been breaking down since they left the base in Kuwait, giving in to the grit that ate at the moving parts or bogging down in the mud and sand. Her convoy followed the route that had already been rutted or churned up by the columns ahead, and every time a five-ton truck hit a soft place and bottomed out, the 33 vehicles in Jessica's convoy dropped farther behind...
Jessica remembers a foreboding, a feeling that the convoy was staggering into enemy country without purpose or direction. Two days into the mission, the convoy had dropped so far behind that it had lost radio contact with the rest of the column. One of the far-ahead convoys carried her boyfriend, Sergeant Ruben Contreras, who had promised he would look after her. The day they left Kuwait, his column had pulled out just ahead of hers--in plain view. Now he had vanished in the distance along with the rest...
...directions had seemed simple. After moving overland across the Iraqi border, the convoy would proceed north on Iraq's Highway 8, code-named "Route Blue." At the intersection of Highway 1, called "Route Jackson," the convoy would turn left, avoiding Nasiriyah. The convoy would take Route Jackson until it intersected again with Route Blue, then turn again onto Blue. On his map, Captain Troy King had only highlighted Route Blue--a straight line to Nasiriyah. There was a fail-safe in place, or at least it had been. A checkpoint at the crossing of Route Blue and Route Jackson...
Given that the area was known to be a terrorist stronghold, many former and active-duty officers are wondering how such a small convoy of soldiers--a single vehicle's worth--was left on its own, apparently far from the watchful gaze of a superior officer. "Where were the older sergeants, and the lieutenants and captain who should have prevented this crime from happening?" asks Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general...
...Kabul had been patrolled successfully by thousands of NATO peacekeepers until riots five weeks ago, which shone a spotlight on the limitations of the fledgling Afghan security forces. The riots, which killed at least a dozen, were sparked by the crash of an American convoy into a crowd of civilians. "The speed with which the government lost control of the city and rampaging demonstrators were able to take over the streets signalled to the Taliban and others that Kabul's defenses were weak. Now they are taking advantage," said a Western security analyst...