Tonight there's just a particularly annoying wall to scale and a rooftop to reach. The roof seems like a nice place to relax until the sky above it is filled with whizzing terrorist AK-47 fire and much nastier Marine responses.

This will be the first of many times the phrase "nowhere to run, nowhere to hide" rattles around my head.

We watch what would be the beginning of another routine of the week. The enemy hunkers down at night, intimidated by the hi-tech night-vision gear the U.S. military commands. Then, the bad guys get out at first light to make trouble.

What they don't know is that the Marines want the guys to come out. That's what they came for.

Later, we find ourselves on yet another roof for an end-of-day officers' meeting with Chontosh. As sniper fire flies overhead, the Marines get word that a group of 15 to 20 militants are roving around a neighborhood a few blocks away.

As I quickly learn, Chontosh (who won an award for bravery in last year’s initial invasion of Iraq) is not one to sit back and let his guys do the dirty work. Moments later we are out on the street, heading for potential trouble.

Make that REAL trouble.

Seeing somebody you had been joking with the day before being carried out of a house on a stretcher brings everything into sharp clarity.

Looking at an injured fellow's bloody flak jacket and vest stays with you.

Watching the belongings of someone who has been killed being packed away to be shipped back to family in the States underscores that this is all as serious as it gets.

A few squad members are very shaken and two have to be pulled out of the action. The rest, outwardly at least, seem pretty stoic, ready to press on and get the job done.

When I ask Chontosh what he feels about the day's losses, the captain almost seems annoyed at the question.

"How does it feel to lose a good man?" I ask. Without missing a beat, but also not looking at me, staring at the scene where a sniper cut down one of his commanders, he snaps, "Any man going down."

India Company still hasn't cleared out the neighborhood where the militants were first spotted on Wednesday. And the hope to wrap up India's assault early is long forgotten.

Now the Marines are going to level a neighborhood to make sure the bad guys never use it again. It isn't quite the "destroying a village to save it" formula of the Vietnam War, but it comes close.

Air strikes, tank fire and mortar barrages make minced meat out of school buildings and houses. When the dust clears and the rubble stops falling, Chontosh takes us on a tour of the place.

His instincts are pretty good. We go into a room in a schoolhouse knee-deep in insurgent weaponry. There isn't a schoolbook in sight. No school buses in the courtyard ... just a vehicle rocket launcher.

And in the houses all around, Marines pull anti-personnel and tank mines out of one place, rockets out of another, a complete IED factory in the bedroom of a third.

More Marines are injured, including Jensen, who is hit by fragments from grenades hurled by insurgents from the roof of the building. Jensen limps away, and within a day claims he's at 95 percent strength. "I can even run on the leg!" he proclaims to me.

Not good enough. Capt. Chontosh takes him out of the fight.

And there's more grousing about the Iraqi security forces who will have to take a major role in making sure Fallujah works in the future. Some of their units are filling in behind other American squads that have done the heavy lifting. Without proper radios or other equipment they are blamed more for getting in the way then helping out, even firing around U.S. military forces.

One of the officers in charge of training the Iraqis tells me the brass wants a full Iraqi Army up and running in six months. "It's not going to happen," he complains.

Sounds like our Marines are going to be sticking around.

I'd like to say these guys are fresh and raring to finish the job. But to be frank, our boys look like toast. Some still haven't gotten over the losses of the days before. And all are a lot more careful as they work through every house.

They still have time, though, to go through some mail, which has somehow found its way into the heart of this terror enclave. Lance Cpl. Jelnick reads me his girlfriend's letter. There isn't anything extraordinary in it.

What is extraordinary, however, is that she has written him a letter every day he has been in Iraq.

The 20-year-old Chicago Cubs fan is comforted, but also filled with the feeling that maybe he'll have to get serious about her when he gets out of all this. Eeek ... love! Sometimes trickier than dealing with insurgents.

The day starts like most others. We check out mosques that Marines believe have been used by insurgents as terror "bed and breakfasts" — sleeping places and medical stations for use between attacks.

Marines also find plans and propaganda associated with attacks. Right down to some maps.

Then another platoon marches off to check out one last bunch of houses.

India Company literally is just a few blocks from finishing its chunk of the assault. But its Marines are about to walk into a terror hornet's nest as bad as any military unit will find in the operation in Fallujah.

Back at India Company's makeshift headquarters, a fateful word crackled over the radio: "Contact!"