The low-riding car, traveling through Baghdad, caught 1st Lt. David M. Lucas' attention. A car bomb, he thought.It was about 4 p.m., almost time for his platoon to stop patrolling for the day, but Lucas, a Farragut High School graduate, asked the driver of his Humvee to cut off the suspicious vehicle. The three other Humvees in his platoon followed. When soldiers surrounded the car, two of the occupants ran away. The third stayed put, rifles pointing his way. After a quarter-mile chase on foot, the soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division, weighed down by some 100 pounds of gear, caught one of the men; the other escaped. Still, the threat of a car bomb remained. Lucas asked one of the captives to open the car's trunk, "so if it was a bomb we would not be caught in the blast."
There was no bomb. But there were two men "tied up and blindfolded." Lucas and his fellow soldiers didn't know it at the time, but they had rescued two of the four Egyptian technicians who had been kidnapped early Sunday in western Baghdad, according to the Associated Press. Intelligence obtained from that rescue led to the release of the two other Egyptians, Lucas said.
The lieutenant, who turned 27 last month, brought the story to Knoxville Monday afternoon, e-mailing his wife, Erica, his parents, John and Carol, and other close relatives and friends. His subject line was "good day," a little understated but characteristic of a man described by his family as modest and matter-of-fact. Most of Lucas' e-mails home, at least those to his wife, are short, a quick "I love you" or "I'll call you." He saves most of the details for handwritten letters or phone calls, she says. But this time, it seems, the news was too good to wait. In a 12-line e-mail, Lucas detailed the day he described as "interesting."
"[T]urns out that these guys are the egyptians that were kidnapped yesterday and we just made a headsup play," Lucas wrote. "[S]o we done good tonight and actually made a difference."In a subsequent e-mail to the News Sentinel, Lucas provided additional details of the rescue, which he said involved 18 other soldiers and an interpreter, all on patrol. "Once the doors and trunk were open, we discovered the two men bound and gagged in the trunk," he wrote. "As you can imagine, the two men in the trunk were extremely happy to be rescued and very angry at their captures. We had not heard reports of kidnap victims yet, but we knew we had something. Needless to say, we were not too happy with the men once we found the men inside the trunk, but that all balanced out with the good feeling of helping two people who really needed it. So in the end it was a very good day."
A very good day, indeed. Lucas has had much worse. He and other soldiers spent Christmas Day recovering the bodies of seven family members killed when a truck, carrying butane gas, exploded near the Jordanian Embassy on Christmas Eve. Lucas told his father, John, a West Point graduate who fought in Vietnam, about that day, too. "He (David) said that the bomber specifically targeted the area to do the maximum damage to civilian residences," John Lucas, a Knoxville attorney, wrote in e-mail to family and friends. "Seeing things like this puts lost luggage and airline delays in a different perspective."
Although David Lucas hails from a military family - his two grandfathers served in World War II - his father never expected him to join. "When he was in high school, he had long hair down to his midback," he said. "It never occurred to me he would want to go in the United States Army."
But David Lucas did. He enlisted in the Army after graduating from Farragut in 1996. He completed his three years and then decided to go to college at Florida State University in Tallahassee. There, he enrolled in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). The once unlikely soldier now wanted to be an officer. In 2000, Lucas met Erica, who, like him, was majoring in international relations. Her father was in the Navy. "I was about to go into a party and I didn't even make it in. He pulled me aside," she recalls. "Then I found out he was Army, and it didn't deter me. It was kind of exciting." The two married in June 2002. She was 21. He was 24.
On June 17, 2004, David was deployed to Iraq from his station in upstate New York. The couple had just begun painting their house and tearing up the carpet when he got his orders. Today, Erica Lucas is substitute teaching in Knox County and is living with her in-laws. Checking e-mail is her lifeline. "It's literally the highlight of my day," she said. "I never used to be a big computer person."
Monday's e-mail was especially gratifying. "Like he said in his e-mail, it was a day he made a difference," John Lucas said. "These guys were scheduled to be beheaded, probably."
Later this month, the family will be reunited for the first time in eight months. Lucas is scheduled to return home on a two-week leave. "I am just looking forward to seeing my wife and family," Lucas wrote in an e-mail sent to the News Sentinel Monday night - 2 a.m. Tuesday in Baghdad, just two hours before he had another patrol duty. "All I want is two weeks of peace and quiet with the ones I love."