Soldier Fakes His Death For 20 Hours After Being Trapped By Iraqi Snipers

In late 2007, the Iraq war is winding  down: President Bush has declared victory, and rebuilding operations are in effect. Sergeant  Matthews and his spotter Sergeant Isaac are sent to a pipeline construction in the middle of the  Iraqi desert. All the Americans working at the site have been killed, so now it is their mission  to find the culprit before they send new builders.

The soldiers hide behind a bunch of bushes and  stones to watch the location under the melting sun, and twenty hours pass without anything  happening. Matthew begins growing impatient and starts to think there are no Iraqi soldiers  left, and considering the scattered bodies, the site must have been attacked by a team that  left after completing their mission. Isaac points out there are no signs indicating a big group  moving around here, and points out that because all the workers were killed by headshots,  this could have been done by the legendary professional Iraqi sniper known as Juba.

However,  Matthews thinks it is impossible for anyone to kill this number of people in less than thirty  seconds. Eventually Matthews finally gets tired of waiting and goes down to take a closer look at  the location after asking Isaac to cover for him. Isaac explains his scope is becoming unclear, and  Matthews teases him for not changing it sooner, but this one is important for Isaac because it  used to belong to a fallen comrade.

Then Matthews goes from body to body looking for clues and  begins believing Isaac's theory when he confirms everyone died from precise headshots. He goes to  the middle of the site to figure out the possible direction of the shots while Isaac begs him to  retreat, but suddenly a shot is heard and Matthews falls to the ground, suffering great pain in  his abdomen. Desperate to help his friend, Isaac runs down in a zigzag path to avoid any incoming  bullets, but when he is about to reach Matthews, he gets shot in the leg.

Isaac has no choice but  to leave Matthews behind and run to hide behind a broken wall. Suffering but still alive, Matthews  contacts Isaac and tells them to call the base and ask for backup. First though, Isaac notices his  leg wound is quite awful, so he proceeds to tie a belt around it to stop the bleeding.

Then he grabs  his radio bag and tries to contact the base, only to discover he has no signal because the sniper  had shot the antenna. Suddenly Matthews contacts him again and asks him to spot the sniper so that  he can aim at him, ignoring Isaac when he warns him that the sniper will notice any movement and  shoot him again. Isaac starts working on making a hole in the wall with his knife to insert the  scope, only to get his hand hurt by some falling rocks.

Matthews then proceeds to attempt to reach  for his rifle, only to pass out because of blood loss. Not wanting to end like his friend, Isaac  uses a blade to remove the bullet from his leg, which is an extremely painful process, then he  bandages the wound before passing out as well. Sometime later, Isaac wakes up when he hears a  strange noise coming from his earpiece.

It turns out to be an officer from the base, and Isaac  immediately begins reporting the situation and begging for medical supplies. However he begins to  get suspicious when the officer asks him lots of weird questions, and most importantly, he requests  him to either tell them his exact position or stand up and fire in the air, claiming it is for  the helicopters to drop the supplies accurately. Isaac points out this is against protocol and will  put him in danger, and when he begins paying more attention to the man's words, he realizes his  accent is not American.

This is Juba the sniper, who has hacked into the radio frequencies to  try to set a trap. Isaac does not fall for it and calls him out, but instead of hanging up,  Juba begins asking him questions, claiming he wants to know Isaac better. Isaac tries the radio  again, but it is still not working.

Juba insists on making his silly questions, and when Isaac  refuses to chat back, Juba threatens with shooting Matthews again, which is risky because there is a  chance he is still alive. Isaac agrees to chat for a while and asks Juba to go first while he begins  drawing a map of the site on the dirt to calculate the bullet trajectory and find the possible  location of the sniper. Juba tells him he is just a regular Iraqi citizen that wants to save  his country and asks Isaac to tell him about his family, but Issac points out that is too personal. 

Then Isaac makes fun of Juba's reasoning, saying that he is killing the people that are actually  trying to develop the country by bringing schools, pipelines, and infrastructures that will boost  the local economy. This makes Juba laugh, and he explains that the money made here will  be sent back to the USA later. As time passes, Juba keeps asking questions, but Isaac continues  to refuse to say anything personal about himself, making Juba threaten to shoot Matthews again. 

However Isaac does not believe him anymore. To prove he is dangerous, Juba tells Isaac the name  of the previous owner of the scope and that he is dead, quoting Matthews' earlier teasing.  This means Juba has been listening to their conversations since they arrived.

Using his scope,  Isaac notices one of the dead men has a radio with them and he drags his body to the edge of the  wall, but not even using a piece of wood he would be able to reach it without exposing himself.  Next, Isaac tries to drink some water from his bottle only to find it empty because of a hole in  it, which Juba confirms he did on purpose. He also admits he did not miss any shots: he specifically  shot the bottle, the antenna, and Issac's leg in order to put Isaac in an unescapable situation and  make him die slowly, which he will enjoy hearing through the communicator.

When Isaac finds the  bullet he took off his leg, he takes a closer look and begins calculating the weapon model Juba  has by making some sneaky questions. He also calls Juba a terrorist, which makes Juba laugh again  as he points out that the Americans are the ones illegally entering a foreign country with weapons  ready to kill people. While Juba talks, Isaac does some more calculations and looks through his  scope to finally reach the conclusion that Juba is hiding under a huge pile of trash.

He has been  under these harsh conditions for a long while, not to mention the overwhelming heat, meaning this  guy truly is a professional. However Juba denies being the famous sniper and once again claims to  be a regular Iraqi man. Judging by his accent, Isaac guesses Juba must be a former US army  officer that betrayed them, but Juba dismisses this as well and explains he only kills  people that attack him first.

In return, Isaac shares the story of how he met his best  friend when he was a child and how they enlisted together later as adults. Soon dehydration and  exhaustion begin having a hard effect on Isaac, who falls to the ground as he hears Juba tell  him he will staple his tongue to his chest. Next, Isaac tries to trick Juba by putting a jacket and  helmet on his rifle and waving it above the wall, but Juba does not fall for it.

What does fall is  the helmet, landing on the other side of the wall, so now Isaac can not protect his head either. Such  a silly mistake is the sniping point and makes him cry. More time passes, and Isaac becomes desperate  enough to try to take a risk.

He runs towards a body lying on the ground and steals his bag and  radio before running back to the wall as he dodges all the bullets Juba immediately throws at him.  In the bag, Isaac finds water and some candy that he immediately devours, but unfortunately this  radio isn't working either. Juba also punishes him for this risk by shooting at the wall and  heavily damaging his scoper.

Suddenly, Isaac hears some disturbance coming from his earpiece  and realizes it is Matthews, who is still alive. Isaac yells the location of the sniper at him, and  Matthews immediately takes out a piece of metal to use in order to look at the pile of garbage. While  Matthews moves extremely slowly to grab his rifle, Isaac keeps the sniper distracted by making  small talk, and he learns that Juba used to be a teacher in Baghdad.

When his students got  killed during an American attack, he decided to get revenge. The wall Isaac is hiding behind is  the ruins of said school. Then Juba asks Isaac while he keeps carrying the damaged scope, but  since Isaac refuses to answer, Juba threatens to shoot Matthews again.

Desperate to save him,  Isaac confesses that he keeps the scope in memory of his old friend, who died because of a  mistake Isaac made, and he still feels guilty. In the meantime, Matthews places his rifle and  blindly aims at the pile of trash, shooting at all the bullets he has as Isaac shoots as well to  pretend the noise comes from him. When Matthews is about to reload his gun, Juba suddenly  shoots him back, hitting him right on the shoulder.

Isaac asks Matthews to crawl toward him  to find safety behind the wall, but unfortunately when Isaac goes close to the edge to help, Juba  shoots Matthews in the head. Isaac has to watch him die and finally snaps right into a breakdown,  saying he wants to go home. Juba informs Isaac that if he really wants to leave then he will  not shoot him, but Isaac is skeptical.

Later, Juba asks Isaac why he is still there despite  the war being already over. Isaac pauses for a moment before replying he is there because it  was actually he who killed his old friend. It turns out he accidentally shot his previous  sniper partner while trying to kill an enemy, and Isaac has been lying to everyone, saying his  friend had been killed by the bad guys.

Suddenly Isaac hears some noise coming out of the radio  and rushes to check the signal, being happy to hear conversations going on. However his happiness  is short-lived because while he can hear voices, he can not send any messages because of the  damage the radio took. To Isaac's shock, Juba joins the conversation he is hearing, and  the man uses Isaac's name to ask for help.

Isaac finally realizes that all this time Juba has been  hacking into American communications, pretending to be a soldier needing help to lure backup teams  to the area and kill them all easily thanks to the surprise factor. Isaac tries to interrupt  the conversation to no avail. Sometime later, Isaac wakes up to the painful feeling of a crow  pecking on his leg wound.

Seeing as even the birds think he is already dead, Isaac decides to take a  risk and retrieves Matthews' rifle using some rope and a stick, then he aims it at the pile of trash.  At that moment, helicopters arrive at the area and reveal Isaac's location without knowing this is  a trap. Wanting to save the incoming soldiers, Isaac pushes the wall to make it crumble,  creating a curtain of dust that makes it hard for Juba to get Isaac's location.

Isaac begins  shooting at the pile of trash without knowing if he has hit his target or not. In order to find  out, Isaac finally stands up from his position, and he is shocked to notice Juba is not using  this chance to shoot back. This makes Isaac believe he has effectively killed Juba.

Soon the  helicopters arrive and quickly carry Isaac away on a stretcher, immediately giving him medical  attention. Isaac tries to tell them about Juba, but he can not be heard because of the noise from  the helicopters taking off. Suddenly Juba starts shooting at them, killing the medical soldiers  one by one before hitting the pilot as well.

The helicopter quickly goes down and crashes on  the ground, instantly killing Isaac and allowing Juba to keep his word: technically, Isaac had  not been shot. Then Juba hacks into the USA lines again and pretends to be an American  soldier to lure his next team of victims.