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  “Big Ern lasered them, and whoever they are, they’ve put their hands up in the air. Sir, that shit was damn close. A couple rounds ricocheted off of the LRAS [laser range-acquisition sight, mounted on the top off all recon-variant Strykers], and Big Ern heard the rest whistle by.”

  “We’re driving up,” I said. “They better be IPs; otherwise, I’m going to kill them myself.”

  “I’m going to kill them no matter what, especially if they are IPs,” Staff Sergeant Boondock responded, his voice as sharp as a razor blade. “They just tried to shoot my gunner.”

  I had about fifteen seconds to figure out how to handle the situation. “Move up there, Smitty. Sergeant Cheech, call Squadron and tell them that we have received fire, most likely from IPs, but everyone is fine and I’m on the ground unfucking the goat rodeo. Haitian Sensation, wake up Suge and tell him what’s going on.” Only one real option existed, and I knew it. The Iraqi police’s notorious record for friendly fire was simply inexcusable after the amount of training American forces had provided them. Further, if I didn’t get hot, Staff Sergeant Boondock would, and his wick didn’t burn out as quickly as mine did; nor did it tend to care about things like the Geneva Convention. Finally, and certainly most importantly, Specialist Big Ern had been about a foot or two away from getting shot by Iraqis supposedly on our side. The platoon was in no position to load a second member into a medical helicopter because of yet another “accident.” By the time my fifteen seconds had ended and PFC Smitty had dropped my vehicle’s back ramp, I pulsated with an old friend. I hopped out and headed straight for the first IP uniform I saw, locking and loading my rifle for effect. I heard the golden round snap into place, there if I needed it.

  “I will fucking kill you myself if you ever, ever pull that fucking shit again, you stupid-ass mother fucker!” I screamed, my voice echoing up and down Route Tampa. I made a move to shake the IP by his collar, thought better of it, and instead backed the bigger man up into a circle of his comrades. There were seven of them in total. Months’ worth of frustration, anger, and passion poured out of me like water from an uncoiled hose. “You are the luckiest pieces of shit on this fucking planet tonight, because my soldier should have killed every single one of your asses with his 50-cal. Do you fucking understand? You all should be fucking DEAD. Don’t you understand that?”

  They didn’t. Suge jogged up to us at this point, wheezing apologies. In addition to his normal slothfulness, he had stopped to put on his cotton mask. He distrusted the Iraqi police and claimed they were all JAM. Many terps in the Baghdad area shared his dread and paranoia of being identified and uncovered by the Iraqi police as an American interpreter. They had good reason to think such, too—according to Suge, two months before my unit arrived in Iraq, one of their fellow terps had been dragged from his bed while home on leave and executed in his front yard by JAM members. His wife later told the other interpreters that three IPs had led JAM to their house.

  My soldiers circled around us, establishing a security perimeter, and Staff Sergeants Bulldog and Boondock and Sergeant Fuego walked up behind me, listening to the conversation.

  “What . . . what do you want me to say?” Suge asked, still breathing heavily.

  I sized up the Iraqi police. Fourteen saucer eyes and seven hanging jaws met my glare. I had them by the balls, and they knew it. I took a deep breath and continued, no longer shouting. “Tell them they just fucking shot at us. Tell them they almost killed one of us. Tell them we are on the same fucking side. Tell them if they ever shoot at my platoon again, or at any American for that matter, I will kill every single one of them myself, with my own M4, right here in the middle of Tampa.”

  Suge translated, struggling to match my fury, his mask drowning out most of the force of his words. I knew my language had to be very precise to make up for this. Asking him to remove his mask simply wasn’t an option. This was his country, his home. If he felt uncomfortable here, he had his reasons. Suge had risked enough already; he didn’t need a punk junior officer from across the sea patronizing him by telling him his home was safe enough to walk around in sans mask.

  “I want to know why they fired,” I said. “Did they have positive identification of an enemy force?”

  “No,” Suge translated. “They say that they hear sounds and get scared.”

  I felt Staff Sergeant Boondock bristle behind me. “How did they not see our lights?” I asked.

  “They think that we are terrorists putting in IED. They say that Stryker lights look like car lights. They are crazy, Captain! Stryker lights are much higher in air! They are very scared what you will do to them.”

  I looked at all seven IPs. “Who fired his weapon?” I asked.

  No one spoke. They all simply looked at the ground. At least they’re loyal to each other, I thought. That’s something, at least.

  “We can smell their rifles, sir,” Sergeant Fuego said. “We’ll be able to tell that way very easily.”

  “That’s okay,” I replied. “I just wanted to see if any of them would speak. Suge, tell them that since they won’t own up to who fired, I’m holding them all responsible. I want all of their identification cards.”

  As I collected their police IDs, I glanced back and saw Staff Sergeant Boondock literally shaking with rage. His face was beat red, his eyes as dark as an abyss, and he kept pacing back and forth like a madman. Staff Sergeant Bulldog patted him on the helmet and whispered something in his ear. Sergeant Boondock nodded at Sergeant Bulldog, shook his head side to side at the IPs, and walked over to check on the soldiers on the perimeter. I knew what he thought. This had happened his last time here, too. Only last time, the perpetrators weren’t wearing a police uniform, and he could fire back.

  Even with all of the successes of the American counterinsurgency effort circa summer 2008, the Iraqi security forces’ performance remained spotty. I had worked with multiple militarily sound and tactically competent IA officers and jundis, IP officers and police, and Sons of Iraq—and many, many more who didn’t qualify as either. With the IAs and IPs, the excellent ones didn’t seem to stick around very long before they moved on to other assignments. Part of the problem was cultural: After decades under Saddam’s authoritative rule, all Iraqi military/pseudomilitary organizations reflected that approach to leadership and mission planning. Officers ruled with iron fists and tended to hold tightly onto any and all information; meanwhile, the NCO corps of these organizations lacked the independence, pride, and initiative of their American counterparts. Further, joint patrols were easy for Higher to order but far more difficult to execute. Beyond the language barrier, there existed cultural, social, and training blockades. Too often, finding that thin line between the counterinsurgency principle of allowing the local security forces to complete the mission their way, and still doing it in a correct way, became an exercise in imaginative rationalization. All of this compounded the very obvious trigger-discipline issue that plagued Iraqi security forces throughout the country. Yes, they got better every day and with every joint patrol. But at what increment could one measure success, especially when the definition of such constituted total autonomy and self-sufficiency in a jointly operated environment? Fair or not, America’s body clock in Iraq moved faster than the sands of time. We wouldn’t know for sure how successful our training of the Iraqi security forces had been until we left Iraq totally and left the Iraqis to their own wits and devices.

  But I wasn’t going to fix any of these grander issues on this night. I thanked God that no one had been hurt or killed, be it Specialist Big Ern or an IP choked to death by me or my NCOs. After writing down the IPs’ information, I told them I’d hand over their ID cards to our military police, whose sole mission consisted of overwatching the Iraqi police. Then I said, “When every one of you goes home tonight, I want you to kiss your wife and tell her that you should be dead. And then remember that kiss the next time you feel like shooting into the darkness.”

  We loaded back up onto our Strykers and conti
nued our movement to Sheik Nour’s manor.

  “You looked pissed out there, sir,” Specialist Haitian Sensation said back on our vehicle.

  “I was,” I said curtly. “I still am.”

  “I know what you need!” he said. I saw him hit a button on the iPod hooked up to our internal radio, and a familiar beat filled my ears.

  “So, tell me what you want, watch really, really want!” Specialist Haitian Sensation crooned along with the song.

  “If you want my future, forget my past,” PFC Smitty drawled from the driver’s seat, completely off beat.

  “If you want to get with me, better make it fast,” Sergeant Cheech muttered from his cupola, completely embarrassed to be contributing.

  “Now don’t go wasting my precious time!” Sergeant Tunnel (recently promoted) boomed, while bouncing to the tune in his rear hatch.

  I sighed. I had no choice but to join in. “Get your act together, we could be just fine.”

  Our platoon kept moving south on Tampa, while my vehicle sang along with the Spice Girls due to a clairvoyant attempt by my soldiers to calm me down from the incident with the Iraqi police. It worked.

  All of the Iraqi police involved spent the next day and night in jail as our military police conducted an investigation of the shooting, and they subsequently spent a week on suspended duty. All seven returned to the job full-time the week after that. While more escalation of force and friendly fire incidents occurred in the brigade’s AO over the course of our deployment, I never read or heard about one happening at that particular IP station.

  HELL

  The sun was a hammer.

  High noon. Mid-July. A patrol that required dismounting. A new contender with an old face ascended to challenge the concept of war for peace. It reigned in flares of tyranny, punishing the masses and the elite alike. What it lacked in staying power, it made up for in promises of daily rebirth, rising from the ashes of night as a big ball of phoenix.

  Down went the ramp and out went the soldiers.

  97 degrees . . . 98 . . . 99 . . .

  It started with baked air, enveloping us as soon as we exited the air-conditioned vehicles. A man on fire on the outside differed from a man on fire on the inside. On the inside, life burned into clarity. On the outside, life burned out. Every breath brought in a rush of too-familiar heat. Each movement, each action, felt surreal and forced, executed far too deliberately to be natural. I took a gulp of water. The dry taste remained. Walk, damn it. Walk.

  100 . . . 101 . . . 102 . . .

  “Stay hydrated, guys,” Doc said. “Don’t wait until you’re thirsty to drink water.”

  The personal tragedy faded away on days like this. With the heat so unrepentant, so unapologetic, no alternative existed. It was, and always had been, and would continue to be, so. Iraq was all we did, all we knew, all we remembered. Patrol, damn it. Patrol.

  An exhausted Staff Sergeant Bulldog takes a deep breath in front of the combat outpost in Saba al-Bor, while a group of Iraqi civilians wait in line for mattresses. The governance center occasionally held mass aid distributions for the Saba al-Bor population, giving away items like bottled water and clothing. Because the governance center was collocated with the American troops, the soldiers inevitably became responsible for securing the distribution effort and maintaining the peace.

  The lightest glide, the heaviest step. The extra gear weighed down my bones—bones that had already sacrificed so many crucial pounds to the sun gods on days just like this. How much more weight can a body lose, I wondered. I hadn’t been this thin since high school, and my face showed it, no matter how much food I shoved down my throat. The skinny frame of a teenager, the sad eyes of an old man. Talk to the locals, damn it. Talk.

  A man on fire dances for rain.

  105 . . . 106 . . . 107 . . .

  “Would you rather die in a freezer or a refrigerator?” PFC Van Wilder asked no one in particular. “At first I chose the freezer, ’cause it’d kill me faster or whatever, but now I think I’d rather die in the fridge, ’cause there’s more food in there. I want to go out with a full stomach, you know?”

  Sweat flowed as an exoskeleton of lacquer, underneath cloth and body armor alike. It felt like a river of lizards running free, each bead and drop a separate reptile stream. As a child of the desert, I understood and appreciated its arid, parched, barren beauty. But this defied understanding. This defied appreciation. We walked in a forsaken land. Take notes, damn it. Take notes.

  111 . . . 112 . . . 113 . . .

  Not a cloud in sight. Not a sandstorm in reach to cool everything down with dust and clutter. Only rays graced the horizon, subjugating rays cracking their whips of light.

  “It’s hotter than Africa right now!” Specialist Haitian Sensation exclaimed, somehow still smiling. “It’s hot enough here to make a brotha’ want to invest in an igloo, you feel me?”

  Oh, no, not today, I thought. Not the kids. A throng of Iraqi kids recognized my officer bars and wrapped around me like a wire on a spool. I tried to avoid their eyes but couldn’t. A little girl tugged at my sleeve. “Mistah,” she asked. “Chocolata?”

  I glared down at the little girl. She held out a small piece of chocolate for me. I smiled. “Shakrin,” I said. Good Lord, I thought. I must look like hell when the kids are offering me chocolate instead of demanding it. Care, damn it. Care.

  115 . . . 116 . . . 117 . . .

  “Captain, I will teach you trick for heat in Iraq,” Suge said. “You must drink lots of chai! The chai is hotter than sun, so it make your body and mind cool. So, we stop for chai soon, yes?”

  As with some of its powdered cousins, it became too easy to overdose on lines of sunshine.

  Time passed differently here. Back home, we were slaves to stimulation, part of a microwave society addicted to instant gratification. In the Middle East, especially over the summer, we joined the locals as slaves to existence, part of a microwaved society sustained by instinct. Not better, not worse, just different. Slower. Harsher. Grittier.

  Hotter.

  120 . . . 121 . . . 122 . . .

  The thermometer stopped there. The mind stopped there. We kept moving.

  BACK TO THE FOB

  As the platoon traveled north on Route Tampa, my mind again wandered elsewhere.

  In from the wilds. Provisionally. Like foxes at a farm, feigning domestication to prowl for scraps, anxious to return from whence they came, complete with their spoils. Don’t make the hate for the housebroken and fire seekers too obvious, or It’ll give us away before we complete mission. With all the shadiness and misinformation of a too-smooth rogue picking up his date before the big dance, oiled up and emanating spring cologne and radiating charm and assuring her father that she’ll be home by midnight, ten minutes prior even, and oh, of course sir, I only have the noblest of intentions. Right. Just don’t check the glove compartment.

  Of course we’re going to rape and pillage the bountiful and the civilized. We’ll finish up well before midnight. It’s what the periphery does to the conventional. Take what you need in a mad eruption, blinded by the passion and the craving and the need, and race back to the lands of the untamed, before the regulations and parameters strike or, even worse, you getgotcaught permanently behind the bars of bureaucracy and have to work there, like any other staff mutt, comfortably numb in Little America, far from where actions reign supreme in eternal pyramids of grey, but flowcharts and spreadsheets and percentages have no meaning tangible or otherwise, but freedom is free to those willing to look for it in the daymares of suicide bombers wrapped in black mystery and night-dreams of intestines splattered across a stop sign like bleeding spaghetti noodles and function lords over form like a stoned pre-electric Dylan trapped on stage at a boy-band concert, confused as fuck, but ready to dominate anyway because nature demands it of him. That place could make you lose it, you know, if you spent too much time out there. Where? Out there. Crazy.

  Hit the switch. Civilization beckons. Time to behav
e.

  When our Strykers reached the front gates of the FOB, I heard my voice on the radio net as I repeated the timeline for the platoon. “White, this is White 1. It is now 1130. You have three hours to shower, eat at the chow hall, stock up on tobacco, and do whatever else you need to do back here. We’re leaving at 1430 and rolling straight back into sector. We should be back at the combat outpost sometime after midnight.” I paused, racking my mind for that other thing. “Most of us probably need haircuts too.”

  Three hours of quiet. Three hours of autonomy. Three hours in which I was my only responsibility. Three hours in which every slamming door and every loud noise wasn’t an IED exploding in the distance or the longprophesized great mortar strike. I wasn’t all that hungry, and I didn’t crave cigarettes or dip like many of my soldiers did. But I would go straight homicidal on both the joker and the thief if I didn’t shower. Hot water, cold water, I didn’t care—just as long as it looked clean and sprayed off the Iraqi grime.

  Specialist Haitian Sensation hit the brakes on the vehicle, jarring PFC Smitty awake in the back. I heard Sergeant Cheech cursing at someone outside the vehicle from the gunner’s hatch.

  “What’s up?” I asked him on our internal radio.

  “Fucking fobbit freaked out about the 240 [machine gun]. He wants it pointed straight up in the air, and, yeah, I fucking forgot to do that when we hit the gates. But it’s not like I forgot to clear it. He acted like I had the thing oriented at him and set on fucking burst.”

  I chuckled to myself. This same thing happened to at least one of the gunners every time we rolled back to the FOB, about once every two weeks. They were so used to scanning that they lost track of when we had moved back into the wire and into safety.

  “Eh, he’s just doing his job,” I offered.

  Sergeant Cheech’s continued slurring suggested that he did not care about the details of said fobbit’s job description.