Spc. Allan Montoya, a humvee gunner and communications specialist for Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Brigade Special Troops Battalion, performs a functions check on his M-240 machine gun Nov. 28 on Camp Taji, Iraq. Montoya, a Houston, Texas native, serves on a team that escorts and pulls security for explosive ordnance and disposal personnel as they perform their mission of disposing of improvised explosive devices and weapons caches.