FORWARD OPERATING BASE RAMADI, Friday, November 5, 2004 - For most American soldiers and marines here, it was hard to tell which was louder: the 10 enemy rockets and mortars that rained down just before dinnertime with ear-splitting detonations that wounded two people and sent others diving to the ground, or what came next.

Less than a minute after the enemy barrage, a battery of Paladin howitzers began "counterfiring" a burst of eight shots that required the rare use of a "red bag" of propellant. This, according to the men who operate the big guns, is the largest sack of the powder that can send a 40-kilogram, or 90-pound, shell out of the Paladin's 155-millimeter, or 6-inch, barrel at nearly 1,125-kilometers, or 700 miles, an hour for up to 29 kilometers.

The shots were so uncharacteristically loud that a group of marines who had taken cover on a second-floor barracks near where rockets and mortars had landed assumed it was another incoming enemy volley.

In fact, the blasts were being produced by Staff Sergeant Terry Cornwell and the three others in his artillery crew. Most of the time, their shots miss the attackers no matter how quickly and accurately they return fire, because the insurgents who attack this camp each day have a reliable routine: They fire a quick volley, throw their mortar tubes and rocket launchers into the back of their truck and drive away fast.

They move fast enough, that is, to escape before radar operators at the Ramadi base feed the attackers' coordinates, gleaned from tracking their launches, down to the Paladin crews near the edge of the base.

This day was different. "They said we got two of them," Cornwell said.

For the soldiers and marines here - awaiting all-out warfare in the 50-kilometer corridor between Ramadi and the insurgent stronghold of Falluja - suicide car bombers, street gunfights and ambushes at traffic checkpoints are only part of the threat. On the base, they dodge mortars, rockets and an unusually talented sniper who has killed three men in the past month from hidden lairs on the western fringe of this city of 400,000.

The Americans fight back with varied success: The enemy mortar and rocket attacks are fewer and much less accurate, the soldiers believe, because of a two-pronged defense: artillery teams that immediately shower attackers with shells, and ground-borne assault teams in armored Humvees that hide until they are radioed the location of insurgent mortarmen nearby.

Even if the mortarmen are not hurt - which is usually the case - this strategy works. As Sergeant Anselmo De La Cruz, who oversees one of the Paladins during a 12-hour overnight shift, put it, "They know what's coming."

As a result, the insurgents are denied vital minutes in which they could adjust fire and take deadlier aim at the base.

But the sniper, who remains at large, is another matter. Base officials and soldiers say the shooter is highly accurate and may be operating at a range of as much as 800 meters, or 2,600 feet. Cornwell said one soldier wounded by the sniper told him later that he believed he had survived only because he had just turned his head to look at something.

Hiding in buildings on the outskirts of Ramadi, near the eastern end of the base, the sniper remains a threat for anyone who ventures out of Ogden Gate. Teams have tried to take down the sniper, to no avail, a base official said.

The roughly 5,500 men and women of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team have suffered 22 fatalities since they arrived at this base two months ago. In addition to the three sniper victims, Captain Eric Allton, 34, died from mortar fire. All four were part of the 2nd Battalion of the 17th Field Artillery, one of several battalions based here.

One recent morning, Floyd helped lead a team of soldiers on an ambush mission to take out mortarmen caught firing at the base. Before the mission he admonished the younger soldiers: "Hostile intent, kill them dead, O.K.? Don't try to detain them. Kill them dead. Any questions?"

The mortarmen still active around Ramadi are very good, said Captain Andre Takacs, who commanded the mission. "You're probably looking at military Darwinism," he said. "The guys that didn't know what they were doing are probably dead by now."

The enemy mortarmen, the soldiers say, have figured out that the Americans are unlikely to launch retaliatory shots if they set up near civilian buildings.

But this is not always the case, and it was not for the insurgents killed and wounded by the Paladin's afternoon broadside Monday, targeted at insurgents some blocks away from a school, Cornwell said.

"They tried to use the school as cover," he said. "They were hesitant in giving us clearance, but they figured we'd hit the target."

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