your connection to The Boston Globe  Drive to Baghdad filled
with tension  ON THE BAGHDAD AIRPORT ROAD -- Specialist Edward
Gonzalez spun the turret around quickly and locked it into place
with a loud clank, training his machine gun on the traffic
behind him. The radio had just crackled with a warning: A
suspicious vehicle was moving in close on the Army convoy.
"What kind of car was it, again?" Gonzalez, 28, of Alice, Texas,
belted out, ducking his head momentarily into the rolling
armored Humvee, which has "Big Country" emblazoned on the
windshield. First Lieutenant Jeffrey Porter, 25, of Tomahawk,
Ky., dropped the radio and turned to his left, calmly describing
a white 1995 Volkswagen Brasilia and telling his gunner he had
been warned that the car might be rigged with explosives.  Some
people call this road, the only way from the airport to
Baghdad's Green Zone, the most dangerous highway in Iraq.
Lately, it has become a magnet for enormous, fiery explosions.
People boast that they've traveled it and are