BAGHDAD — Sgt. Jared Provost wasn’t satisfied after he uncovered a pipe bomb early Tuesday from beneath a pile of tumbleweeds and a bag on a street outside one of the U.S. military’s largest bases.

The 28-year-old reservist from Lake Charles, La., pulled the explosive from a divot near the road’s edge and separated the detonation system — a washing machine timer and a radio pager — from the ammunition.

But Provost wanted to keep looking. His persistence paid off about 15 minutes later when one of his partners, Sgt. Shane Reed, uncovered two more bombs on the other side of the lane.

“They’re expecting us not to find the other,” said Reed, 25, of Port Barre, La., after he uncovered two more makeshift bombs made of 155 mm artillery rounds.

The double discovery illustrates the latest techniques by insurgents fighting the U.S. military and a new Iraqi government. In the past few weeks, insurgents have begun planting one bomb as a decoy, then using gunfire, grenades or even a second bomb to catch troops off-guard, according to Provost, Reed and other members of the 1st Platoon, Company A, 1088th Engineer Battalion, 256th Brigade Combat Team.

Part of the battalion’s mission includes combing the streets of Baghdad looking for unexploded bombs. They use a “Buffalo,” an armored mine-clearing vehicle with an arm attached so its riders can get a close look at a suspected bomb without too much risk.

On Thursday, Reed and Provost worked with two other sergeants from Opelousas, La., Herman Peterson, 32, and Michael Lamb, 23. The foursome covered more than 30 miles while traveling slower than 15 mph, scouring the roadsides for suspicious-looking trash, dead animals, boxes and even dirt. When someone saw something interesting, they’d stop and use the arm to inspect.

Reed, the driver, stopped about three hours into the mission because something had caught his eye.

“What are you looking at?” Lamb asked.

“Dirt,” Reed said, though an inspection with the Buffalo’s arm proved fruitless.

But it was “suspicious dirt,” a fresh mound of soil similar to the one that led him to dig for the second set of bombs earlier in the day.

His instincts have developed after the experiences of another platoon in their company. During the past week, 2nd Platoon took hits in two separate incidents because of decoys, with four soldiers wounded and one member of an accompanying bomb squad killed, according to soldiers.

In one instance, a soldier with the 1088th was shot in a drive-by while waiting for a bomb squad to detonate a bomb. In another, a second bomb went off minutes after soldiers set a perimeter to disable the first.

“We’ve had other incidents,” said Sgt. Robert Castille, 23, of Opelousas, a member of the 2nd Platoon who was at both attacks. “But never like that.”

The 2nd Platoon is taking a week off from bomb-searching, and so Provost and Reed’s platoon have taken over what normally is a shared duty.

According to 1st Lt. Michael Fourtenot, his 2nd platoon has been on 94 missions and discovered 35 IEDs and eight pieces of unexploded ordnance in four months.

But every time his platoon goes out, he knows it’s a target.

“They know what the Buffalo is,” he said of the insurgents. “They wait for us.”

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