Short description
With more than sixty confirmed kills, Coughlin is the Marine Corps' top ranked sniper. This is the harrowing first-person account of his life on and off the modern battlefield.
Long description
Marine Sniper Sgt. Jack Coughlin carried his specially designed bolt action rifle-- and its nearly magical scope-- into a landscape of sandstorms, firefights, and chaos during Operation Iraqi Freedom. As marines charged through the desert and leapfrogged through bizarre, treacherous urban battlefields, Coughlin and his sniper teammate did their job and did it well: One by one, they spotted their targets-- up to a half a mile away. And one by one their targets died. Coughlin has more than 60 confirmed kills. In this extraordinary account from battlefield Iraq, Coughlin tells the story of his own unique war, from stealthy, slowly-unfolding long range kills to unplanned firefights-- and how one sniper team adapted and thrived in a battle zone unlike any they faced before... With vivid portraits of Coughlin' s fellow marines and the battles they fought from Al Kut to Baghdad center, SHOOTER takes readers to the frontlines of the war in Iraq and gives a brutally honest account of a man trained to hunt humans, who had the courage to do his deadly job-- and live with it once the shooting stopped.
Review
The 3rd Battalion has a veteran sniper, Staff Sergeant Jack Coughlin, for whom the war in Iraq was only the latest of many wars; he fought in Mogadishu, too. On the first day of battle at the Diyala Bridge, he had eleven kills. He is one of the best snipers in the Marine Corps, perhaps the very best. When I asked one of his commanders about his skills, the commander smiled and said, 'I'm just glad he's on our side.' - Peter Maas, war correspondent and bestselling author of Love Thy Neighbor