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  (And?)

  Crashed through facade.

  (And?)

  They thought they had fucked me, sticking a too-skinny, crazy-eyed mustang into a foreign environment full of infantry grunts. But they hadn’t. I found redemption. I got back to a combat outpost. I got back to the line. I got back to soldiers.

  (Yes.)

  It wasn’t my combat outpost. It wasn’t my line. They weren’t my soldiers. But it would be. They would be. And I escaped Camp Taji. A right escape. A true one. A legitimate one.

  (Yes.)

  The fires of the FOB almost broke me. Almost. But almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

  (And?)

  And in atomic bombs.

  (Hi, Matt.)

  Can I go now?

  (Yes.)

  Thanks.

  (See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?)

  I forgot.

  WELCOME TO THE WOLFHOUNDS

  If one pulled out a map of Iraq again—after ensuring that it dated from the post-Baathist Party era—a thick black dot with a jagged scar down its center would be found just northwest of the slums of Saddam (now known as Sadr) City in Baghdad, next to the Tigris River’s eastern banks. Across the river and far away from the crossroads of Saba al-Bor in the remote west, this dot found attention in the same manner that monsters do in a child’s closet. Locals didn’t so much say its name as they spat it out: Hussaniyah, a city originally built as Republican Guard housing for the large military base to the west in Taji. Roughly 600,000 Iraqis called this place home in late 2008, a place so densely Shia in nature and population that Sunnis dared not venture across the highway that served as its western border. Due to the transient nature of much of the population, a blood-red-sea past didn’t soak this dot, but the spewing sewer water of the present did. There was no point in reflecting back on better times when none existed.

  The expansive badlands of north-central Iraq lay above Hussaniyah, while Diyala Province and the former terrorist capital of Baqubah were a short drive due east. West of the highway—known to Coalition forces as Route Dover—rich Sunni manors basked along the Tigris’s shore all the way south to Baghdad, artifacts of Saddam Hussein’s old power base and the privileges he bestowed upon his tribesmen.

  While Sadr City served as Jaish al-Mahdi’s foundation and Najaf remained its spiritual home, Hussaniyah represented the paramilitary group’s strongest and proudest outpost; it was akin to a baseball organization’s highest minor-league level, the last obstacle in the way of the big show. JAM insurgents came to H-Town to prove themselves to the Sadr City brain trust, and if they did so and survived, they sometimes punched their ticket to that citadel. This usually meant our enemies had everything to gain and nothing to lose—a dangerous set of circumstances for counterinsurgents intent on separating the paramilitants from the populace. The jagged scar found on the map divided Hussaniyah in two, leaving a barren one-mile stretch of no-man’s-land in the center. The west side, former Republican Guard officer and NCO housing, contained neighborhoods of relative comfort, but the east side, former Republican Guard enlisted housing, held ghettoes as vile and Third World as anything else found in Iraq. Usually, JAM’s financiers and cell leaders lived on the west side. Its trigger pullers and IED emplacers lived on the east side.

  My new unit—the 1-27 Infantry Battalion, better known by the moniker the Wolfhounds—was headquartered at a large joint-security station (JSS) just south of Hussaniyah. One of its companies (the infantry equivalent of a cavalry troop) patrolled everything west of Route Dover; another company, the one I’d soon join, patrolled everything east of Route Dover. This neatly divided the problem sets the various companies faced into Sunni and Shia. We shared JSS Istalquaal with a battalion of Iraqi National Police (NP) commandos, who served in this area instead of the Iraqi army. The local Iraqi police were also found in H-Town and the smaller population centers of Boob al-Sham and Sabah Qasar (both located south of JSS Istalquaal), and they were just as shady and of questionable intent as they had been in Saba al-Bor.

  On the day I reported to the Wolfhounds, my new battalion commander told me he didn’t care about what had occurred in 2-14 Cavalry, he just expected me to perform as an army officer to the standards demanded and needed by American soldiers. He then asked if I preferred to stay at Taji as a staff officer or to be sent out to the JSS. There were no platoon leader slots available—not that a young captain with nearly two years of platoon leader time needed any more—but a slot for a lethal targeting officer in Alpha Company remained open. I tried not to sound too eager when I responded, “The JSS would be awesome, sir,” and then thanked him profusely for the opportunity.

  Although their problems were minor when compared to what I experienced with 2-14 Cavalry, the Wolfhounds organization certainly had its own internal issues and its own flaws, just like any other unit. Consequently, when I talked to the platoon leaders deep into the night, trying to calm them down about the failures of a bureaucracy designed to make their men carry the greatest burden, I referenced my own days as a know-it-all lieutenant. But these failures weren’t really mine to critique or carp about. 1-27 Infantry and its leaders—the field grades and otherwise—gave me a second chance to fight the war on the ground level when, quite frankly, I wasn’t owed one, and pettier leaders would have kept me from it simply out of spite for being in the newspapers. Initially, I was nothing more than “the blog guy,” but with time, and after proving myself capable, I regained my identity and my swagger. The blog guy became Captain G, and Captain G contributed to the war effort, which is why I went over there in the first place. Subsequently, I settled into more of an observer role, rather than playing an active character myself, with regard to the unit’s structural dynamics.

  If JSS Istalquaal were a solar system, it would have orbited around The Hammer. It seemed as if all operations revolved around his actions and goals for the area, whether they actually did on a particular day or not. As the battalion’s senior company commander, The Hammer led with a prototypical blend of strength, smarts, power, humor, and grace. He led men in the most intense of environments as naturally as most of us walked. His soldiers worshipped him while concurrently fearing his every step; this led them to push themselves to new limits of competency no one else believed possible. His superiors’ respect for his leadership was based more on awe than remembrance. Just as we junior officers who served under him secretly hoped to be more like him, The Hammer’s superiors secretly hoped they had been more like him when they were company commanders. Our fantasy was just as impossible as theirs. Men like this were revered for a reason, and that reason was grounded in their scarcity. As an armor officer in an infantry battalion, The Hammer quickly took me under his very large and broad wing—in addition to all his other gifts, he was also built like a brick house, something that certainly didn’t hinder his status as a local legend, especially in the hypermacho world of combat arms—and schooled me in the ways of the grunt and how they differed from the ways of the scout.

  A self-described bull in a china shop, Captain Frowny-Face commanded the other rifle company stationed at JSS Istalquaal. Sporting an old-school flattop and an equally old-school mentality, Captain Frowny-Face earned his nickname for going straight through obstacles rather than around them, the personal feelings of others be damned. A yellow smiley face, with a flattop and a straight line in lieu of the actual smile, soon became his visual emblem and could be found all across JSS Istalquaal, from Porta-John walls to the sides of storage units to the computer lab. Due to his traditional approach to commanding a company, Captain Frowny-Face never let his soldiers know what they meant to him and instead preferred to have them believe that they were responsible for his perpetual frown. During a few revealing talks in the company TOC though—usually late at night, waiting for a long mission to end—he occasionally revealed to us junior officers milling around just how much he cherished commanding Alpha Company. I worked for both The Hammer and Captain Frowny-Face at JSS Istal
quaal, and despite my very pronounced and very public decision to leave the army at the end of our tour, both men took me in as one of their own and continued to develop me professionally.

  Both companies burst with talent at the platoon and squad levels. In Alpha Company, both Lieutenant Mongo and Lieutenant Dirty Jerz proved a new theory of mine correct: The more passionate a platoon leader got after a mission, the more proficient he was during said mission. Lieutenant Mongo, who played defensive tackle for West Point before he got commissioned into the infantry, liked to come off as a meathead football player, but I quickly learned there was much more to him than that. He led from the front, both literally and figuratively, and with his tireless emotional strength, he seemed intent on breaking the army before it broke him. He, like many of us junior officers, believed the army needed to be the learning organization it professed to be rather than the zero-defect institution it really was. While most of us, myself included, eventually shrugged our shoulders in apathetic acceptance of this reality, Lieutenant Mongo never could bring himself to do that. I didn’t just respect his unwillingness to compromise, I envied it. Outside of the wire though, he carried himself as a sort of beardless Caucasian Santa Claus with the local-nationals, delighting children and adults alike with a deep, jolly belly laugh.

  Lieutenant Dirty Jerz tended to favor a far more silent approach to the platoon leader’s eternal bout with bureaucracy. Just as competent as his larger and louder peer, he had learned as a prior-service enlisted soldier to pick and choose his battles with Higher. He also happened to be the only person I’d ever met from the state of New Jersey who wasn’t a scumbag, something he knew and laughed about, hence his nickname. His soldiers liked to gibe Lieutenant Dirty Jerz for going over to the “dark side” of the officer corps, but their respect for him was both transparent and unwavering. This sometimes rattled other officers in the battalion, who weren’t used to seeing such open displays of loyalty from soldiers and NCOs for their lieutenant.

  Lieutenant Rant served as Alpha Company’s artillery officer. Like Skerk in Saba al-Bor, he handled all money issues and contracts for Hussaniyah. As a result, he quickly reached the top of the list of Iraqis’ most wanted men on JSS Istalquaal, and rightfully so—his competence and drive had no equal. Another West Pointer, Lieutenant Rant could wax poetic on any subject—and often did. The role of steroids in modern baseball, the generational gap within the officer corps, the eternal benefits of pajamas, and Chihuahua ownership were just a few of the topics of Lieutenant Rant’s hour-long discourses with himself and an attentive—or otherwise—audience. Our company XO, Captain Clay, and the Headquarters platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Hammerhead, needled Lieutenant Rant endlessly. I shared a room with these three, and the debates’ intensity was usually only matched by their absurdity.

  The Great White Hope, one of The Hammer’s platoon leaders and one of my old housemates from Hawaii, helped ease my transition to the Wolfhounds. An armor captain from Wisconsin, The Great White Hope loved the high life as much as he hated staff officers feigning knowledge of life out of the wire, and his will seemed as tenacious as his skin was fair. Luckily for him, we wore far too much equipment and body armor for the Iraq sun to do any real damage. He certainly provided a welcoming face for me in my first days as a stranger in a strange land. The ever-poised Captain Pistol Pete served as The Hammer’s recon platoon leader, while the maniacal Lieutenant Goo served as his artillery officer. As was often the case in deployed military life, after a few weeks of getting to know these men, it seemed like we had been comrades for years. It certainly felt like years.

  Once I slid over to Alpha Company to be their lethal targeting officer, Captain Frowny-Face put me in charge of their two human intelligence (HUMINT) collection teams—army speak for intelligence soldiers embedded with combat units. Staff Sergeant Sitting Bull and Staff Sergeant Jorge led these two teams, and they and members of their team—like Sergeant Secret Agent Man and Specialist Wildebeest—would soon become my soldiers. Further, given that my new position required more time behind a computer than a platoon leader’s did, I also became well acquainted with Specialist Gonzo, the company’s communications expert. Staff Sergeant Sitting Bull’s reputation preceded him: While assigned to an assaulting company in Sadr City, he had practically single-handedly identified and deconstructed a JAM cell that emplaced EFPs en masse, a story that even reached our ears up in Saba al-Bor back in April during Sadr’s spring uprising.

  The differences between Saba al-Bor and Hussaniyah were many, as were the differences in the personalities that marked the experience. But from 2-14 Cavalry to 1-27 Infantry, from Suge to Specialist Gonzo, and from the struggles in the Sunni farmlands west of the Tigris to the hemorrhaging in the Shia sewer blocks east of the great river, enough similarities arose for me to realize that my microcosm wasn’t the particular AO I operated in. My microcosm was Iraq. The principles of counterinsurgency remained the same, as did the basic lessons of the experiences.

  Such a realization scared the fuck out of me—because it reminded me that I still had six months left. Six months left in a combat zone. Six months away from love, safety, and escape. Six months still in danger and still trapped in the too real. Six months left.

  We still had six months in Iraq.

  THE GOLDEN HOUSE

  I spent my initial month at JSS Istalquaal with Havoc, The Hammer’s company. As the Wolfhounds’ senior company commander, he was charged with orienting me to their battle space and various problem sets before I settled into my position with Alpha Company. That was the official party line, at least. Unofficially, I knew he would observe my mission-planning, decision-making, and tactical abilities as a means of gauging my competency in order to ensure the 2-14 Cavalry hadn’t sent over a walking disaster in addition to a problem child. I understood the nature of this feeling-out process and did my best to meet The Hammer’s high expectations and standards. As when male dogs meet one another and immediately start smelling one another’s nether regions, if my new unit was going to put me in charge of soldiers, they needed to verify first that I had both my brains and balls in order.

  One of my first missions in this new stead was leading a Headquarters platoon patrol back to Camp Taji, where we picked up a State Department representative and escorted him back into sector for a meeting with the local Shia chieftain, Sheik Modhir, and the 1-27 Infantry XO. While the NCOs and soldiers of the patrol provided inner and outer security, I joined the State Department man inside for the meeting. The State Department representative served as a part of our brigade’s embedded provincial reconstruction team. Although these units had been in Iraq for a couple years as a means of jump-starting local and national civil services, it hadn’t been until the Sunni awakening and the Sahwa movement that these reconstruction teams really began to make headway. We lived classic counterinsurgency—clear, hold, and build.

  I’d never been to Sheik Modhir’s residence before, but the soldiers briefed me on what to expect. “Sir,” my Stryker driver said, “his place is fucking big. Like, cocaine-dealer big. Ever seen Scarface?”

  “Of course. About thirty times.”

  “Well, it’s just like that, but with Iraqis instead of Cubans and Sons of Iraq instead of drug dealers.” A short pause followed. “And American dollar bills instead of cocaine.”

  Sure enough, as our patrol turned off of Route Crush and into the sheik’s property—which lay just west of Hussaniyah proper, straddling the border with Route Dover and the Sunni lands—my jaw dropped in awe. The splendor of the multiple-villa compound contrasted starkly with the squalor surrounding it on all corners. Thick, green palm trees lined the driveway, shading the first—and last—real lawn I saw in Iraq. The grass sparkled with the vitality of color and the audacity of health, both of which were rare sights in the land of turbans. Already unnerved, I let my eyes leave the landscape to absorb the estate’s architecture. A total of five separate buildings rested across the expansive grounds. The largest, which
I guessed to be the main house based on its three stories and new paint job of white with gold trim, stood in the center of the lawn, cresting it like a new sun. Two smaller lodges lay off to the main house’s southeast and appeared to be older structures, judging by their worn structures and fading paint. Two more lodges off to the main house’s southwest mirrored these, but these structures also shone with white paint and gold trim. As the Stryker’s ramp dropped, I hopped onto the ground. A Sahwa member gave me a thumbs-up and a toothless smile that reminded me of a meth addict and pointed at one the smaller lodges in the southwest. I assumed this was Sheik Modhir’s meeting house and started walking in that direction. The State Department rep—who had earlier introduced himself to me as Kevin—and his interpreter followed, while a squad of soldiers automatically formed a security diamond around us.

  I slowed my pace to match Kevin’s as we approached the meeting house. “Have you ever met with this guy before?” I asked.

  He nodded and smiled somnolently. “Many times. It’s always . . . an experience.”

  The view of the Iraqi village Sabah Qasar from the rear hatch of a Stryker. Navigating the narrow dirt roads proved a great challenge in these massive armored vehicles. Tragedy occasionally occurred when a too-brave soul or darting child got too close and was subsequently crushed to death.