The first time Lance Cpl. Tony Stevens was bombed in Iraq, a car packed with 155 mm shells exploded next to his Humvee just as a device containing five more shells detonated beneath it. By bomb No. 9, the former baseball minor league shortstop had become a good luck-bad luck icon and the awe of his 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment patrolling the so-called "triangle of death" south of Baghdad. With a couple of weeks remaining in his second tour of duty in Iraq, the 26-year-old might be counting the days a little more closely than most and has become a seasoned, battle-hardened veteran of the laws of physics. "When you hear the explosion, that's actually good," Stevens said, pointing out that because sound travels relatively slowly, hearing the blast means you have survived it. "It means you're still in the game." Stevens' deployment landed him in an area known for insurgents' use of what the U.S. military calls improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Some of those are vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, or VBIEDs -- military-speak for car bombs. It is not unusual for Marine patrols on the two-lane roads through towns and gray-and-brown fields to encounter three or four bombs a day. Sometimes, there are more -- many more. The bombs contribute to an injury rate of one-in-five Marines during their 6-month-old deployment here. The bombs also kill U.S.-allied Iraqi police and Iraqi National Guardsmen patrolling in unarmored pickups and cars. Many Marines here have been bombed two or three times, and a couple seven or eight. Stevens, at nine, appears to hold the record that no one wants to break.