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  “Fuck yeah,” I told Staff Sergeant Sitting Bull and Sergeant Secret Agent Man. “Well done, guys.”

  Sergeant Secret Agent Man grinned, but Staff Sergeant Sitting Bull simply shook his head in disgust. “Three out of five? Sir, I’m not happy with that. This isn’t a damn Meatloaf song.”

  I tapped him lightly on the head and told him to make the detainee questioning quick. They needed to go to bed. They had earned it.

  THE SUN, A SCORPION, AND SECOND CHANCES

  I yawned, too tired to bother masking the act with a hand or a sleeve. It didn’t matter what country I was in, whether I was at war or at peace, or how much sleep I had gotten the night before. I still fucking hated getting up with the sun. A shiver followed my yawn, a reaction to the recent cold front that had swept through the center of Iraq in mid-October. I zipped up my black polar-fleece top and resumed listening to the conversation between Eddie and the deputy mayor of Boob al-Sham. It was just the latest reminder that I was all bones, and God hadn’t seen fit to bless me with any body fat.

  “He wants to know if this is like a contract,” Eddie asked, stifling a yawn of his own. “He doesn’t want to sign contract. He says he only come here because Captain Frowny-Face tell him to come to pick up the freed detainees.”

  I sat on a torn white couch, marked with cigarette burns and an imprinted rose-petal pattern, in the JSS’s designated sheik meeting room. Eddie sat to my immediate left, and across from us were the deputy mayor of Boob al-Sham and a southwestern Hussaniyah mukhtar (a sort of local neighborhood chief). The deputy mayor sported a sharp grey suit, complete with a tie done in a double Windsor knot, while the mukhtar dressed in a simple white dishdasha. Both had arrived with the dawn to go over the specifics of the guarantor release form, which a local authority figure needed to sign before jailed detainees from their particular area could be released. Once the guarantors signed the forms, a grand spectacle of a ceremony occurred over at the Iraqi police compound, where Iraqis and Americans alike clapped for released—and usually confused—(former) insurgents. Sometimes the detainees appeared to have reformed or had completed their full sentence and thus paid their debt to society. All too often, though, especially recently, Camp Bucca sent these guys home early because not enough room existed to keep all of them behind bars. I wasn’t sure if this was a testament to the efficiency of American combat troops or the flimsiness of the evidence needed for detention in 2007 and early 2008, as compared to the rigid current requirements.

  Lieutenant Rant observes the pragmatic genius of his fly-trap in Alpha Company’s tactical operations center, at Joint-Security Station (JSS) Istalquaal.

  I sighed and smirked at Eddie. He had done this before too. “Tell him it’s not a contract. It’s a release form. It just says he’ll try to help keep the detainee out of trouble from now on and serve as a positive role model.”

  Eddie translated. The mukhtar nodded knowingly, but the deputy mayor spazzed out again and tugged at his hair. Fucking politicians, I thought. Even the mukhtar looked over at the deputy mayor and made an Arabic facial contortion I interpreted to mean, “What the fuck is wrong with this guy?”

  “He wants to know if detainee gets in trouble again, will he go to jail for what the detainee does?” Eddie asked. “I tell him no, but he wants you to say it.”

  I tugged on my skull cap and bit my lip. “No,” I said, “he won’t get into trouble. This is an important document, though, not simply an empty formality. He and the detainee need to take it seriously.” I silently hoped God understood that lies had a time and a place.

  The mukhtar nodded again, picked up a pen, and signed his two guarantor release forms, which corresponded to the two detainees from his neighborhood. The deputy mayor slapped his two hands together, smiled pointedly as if a television camera were recording him signing an international peace treaty, and scrawled his name across his one form. I thanked both of them and stood up.

  “I’ll go get all of us some coffee,” I said. “The ceremony starts in forty-five minutes. We’ll just hang here until then.”

  Forty-five minutes in Iraqi time inevitably turned into two hours in real time, but nonetheless, Eddie and I found ourselves escorting the deputy mayor and the mukhtar over to the Iraqi police station. A squad from Lieutenant Dirty Jerz’s platoon joined us at the gate, and to a man, they all looked how I felt.

  “Ahh, the joys of counterinsurgency,” I said to the squad leader. “Throwing a record-release party for guys who want to kill us.”

  The staff sergeant grunted and smirked. “Fuck it, sir, we’ll just roll him up again,” he said. “Anything to make the time go by.”

  We walked into the compound, escorting the deputy mayor and the mukhtar to their folding chairs, which had been set down in an empty field of dust next to the police headquarters. I found Captain Frowny-Face in the front and handed him the release forms.

  “Any problems?” he asked, grinning.

  I arched an eyebrow his way. “No more than usual, sir,” I replied. “They just wanted to make sure these things wouldn’t actually hold them accountable for anything.”

  My commander gave me a faux look of disapproval. “Remember, Matt, it’s an important part of the ceremony. Who knows, it might scare a few of the dumb ones into behaving themselves.”

  I winked and nodded in agreement, then found a chair in the far back next to Lieutenant Rant, who had coordinated many of these in the preceding months himself. Colonel Najij of the Iraqi National Police and Lieutenant Colonel Muhamed of the Iraqi police sat with Captain Frowny-Face in the front row, along with Sheik Modhir and his son, Hamid. Next to Hamid sat a major from our brigade who I didn’t recognize and an American in a suit who I assumed came from some sort of governmental agency. A smattering of NP commandos, regular Iraqi police, a few Iraqi civilians I figured to be the detainees’ families, and American soldiers filled out the rest of the rows. An Iraqi reporter and photographer walked around the scene, with the reporter asking Colonel Najij and Lieutenant Colonel Muhamed questions.

  A few minutes later, Lieutenant Mongo and some of his soldiers walked in from the rear, guiding the three detainees by their shoulders, towering over them like skyscrapers. I flashed Lieutenant Mongo an obnoxious thumbs-up as he walked by me, and he did an admirable job of not breaking his stone face of stoicism. They stopped the detainees in front of the audience, spun them around, and walked off. The three “reformed” insurgents stayed. Colonel Najij stood up and gave an impassioned three-minute speech, full of arm swinging, fist pounding, and moustache stroking. As the speech lacked an interpreter, I leaned over to Lieutenant Rant and asked if he knew what was being said, as his rudimentary Arabic was slightly better than mine.

  “This happens every time,” he whispered back. “There’s something about the sun, a scorpion, and second chances. You know how the Iraqis are with their imagery.”

  As Colonel Najij finished his speech, then was followed in sequence by Lieutenant Colonel Muhamed and Captain Frowny-Face, I wondered about the concept of second chances. I certainly understood it, although I remained firmly in the school of thought that reformed bloggers weren’t quite in the same category as reformed terrorists. Nevertheless, after a photograph session with the released detainees, guarantors, and the police colonels, I couldn’t help but smile when the three detainees ran into the arms of their families. One elderly lady I determined to be a mother began weeping uncontrollably as she held her son’s face for the first time in many, many months. I’ve always been a sucker for crying women, I thought to myself.

  As we sauntered back to the JSS, I reached into the air and slapped Lieutenant Mongo on the back. “Sometimes this job isn’t so bad, you know?” I said.

  He looked dubiously down at me. “Are you crazy, man?” he said. “Six months from now, this same thing will happen with Abu Abdullah.”

  I bit my lip. “Good call.”

  His point was reinforced a week later, when Specialist Haitian Sensation sent me a Face
book message, updating me on the Gravediggers and Saba al-Bor. In his message, he let me know that during a recent detainee release ceremony, Mohammed the Ghost had been cut loose a solid year before his sentence ended. He said the release shocked everyone, including the Iraqi army and Iraqi police leaders.

  I stopped thinking about the weeping mother.

  THE PORTA-JOHN CHRONICLES

  I loved Joe. He wasn’t always able to voice his opinions and thoughts directly, due to military customs and courtesies (some of them respected such protocol themselves, some simply feared the retribution of their NCOs, but the end result remained the same: acquiescence), but I always trusted that he would get his point across somehow. One of the time-honored places for such backdoor honesty was the Porta-John, a refuge where men of all ranks, colors, and creeds were both pantless and alone. Shitting was humanity’s great equalizer—especially on an army base in a combat zone.

  From Kuwait to Camp Taji to Saba al-Bor to Istalquaal, I always read the walls of the Porta-Johns, especially after the dramatic happenings that polluted day-to-day existence in the army. What better place to learn how the soldiers really felt about things? I wanted more than a “Yes, sir,” damn it, I wanted the truth. Sure, the standard artistic renditions of the female anatomy scattered said walls. And you could always count on at least one limerick breaking down the most basic of bodily functions into rhyme. But within this bawdy shell of smut, some real witticisms worthy of commemoration existed. It was like the juicy custard inside a stale donut, but in word form. Admittedly, temptation occasionally struck, imploring me to participate in the Sharpied shenanigans, but officer humor usually lacked the brevity necessary for such contributions. So I continued to simply observe, chuckle, and pull out my notebook to copy the clever ones down for veracity’s sake.—“Conduct a sniper check in a combat zone. Salute an officer.”

  —“Wash your hands before returning to war! Thanks.—Command Sergeant Major.”

  —“I hate Lieutenant (blank)” was followed by “Me too. His blowjobs were less than enthusiastic.”

  —A lot of anti-Bush rhetoric generated some pro-Bush rhetoric. Both were equally vitriolic and condemning and probably served as a microcosm of the political consciousness in our nation.

  —“Rangers may lead the way, but that’s only because a scout pointed them in the right direction” was followed by “Scouts suck! Infantry rulz!” which was in turn followed by “Good comeback.” The final response read, “Thanks, asshole.”

  —You could find pretty much every Chuck Norris joke ever. (My personal favorite was, Chuck Norris once traveled to the Virgin Islands. They are now known as The Islands.)

  —“I miss my wife” was followed by “I miss her too,” which was in turn followed by “Don’t worry. Jody’s treating her real good.”

  —“End the war. There’s a secret treaty in the blue water below you” (an accompanying arrow pointed down into the toilet).

  —A lot of jokes about marines being dumb.

  —A lot of jokes about sailors being gay.

  —A lot of jokes about airmen being . . . well, airmen.

  —“Reenlistment papers found here” (an accompanying arrow pointed to the toilet paper rolls).

  —“The Sun God is a pussy” was written after a particularly cold day.

  —“America isn’t at war. Soldiers are at war. America is at the mall.”

  A NIGHT WITH LIEUTENANT ANWAR

  The flame in the distance danced in defiance of the black abyss enveloping it. Its proud orange screams had no base and seemed to hover in mid-air like a torch, unconscious of and unyielding to anything else along the nighttime horizon. I had learned the month before that the flame in the distance was nothing more than a burning oil refinery located miles away from JSS Istalquaal, but that didn’t stop me from staring into it for the occasional lost moment, inevitably thinking about other lost moments in other lost times. I liked to pretend some magic still existed, even in the dark.

  I stood on the front porch of our company TOC, pacing back and forth, in a futile effort to keep warm. A bloody half-moon snarled down at us in repugnance. While I normally didn’t pay attention to the days of the week—after ten months in Iraq, they all blended together—I knew it was Monday because I awaited the arrival of Lieutenant Anwar, the Iraqi National Police intelligence officer, for our weekly sync meeting. Eddie waited for us inside, but I had found that Lieutenant Anwar liked being greeted outside and escorted into our company area; like most Iraqi officers, he had a flair for pomp and ceremony. I didn’t consider either my specialty, but in the name of international partnerships, I acquiesced and did what I could.

  Shortly thereafter, a shadow materialized out of the darkness in the shape of Lieutenant Anwar. He was a short, stocky man with dark brown skin and short black hair, and the only thing crisper than his black moustache was his police uniform. We certainly made for an odd couple, due to my gangly frame, perma-unkemptness, and wild shock of brown hair that straddled the lines of military regulation. Nevertheless, I always enjoyed our sync meetings, mainly due to Lieutenant Anwar’s very real and very fiery passion for his job. Unlike some of his peers, he legitimately wanted to make Hussaniyah a safer place and did not simply go through the motions to placate either his superiors or us. When I first joined the Wolfhounds, one of Captain Frowny-Face’s first directives for me had been to temper Lieutenant Anwar’s spontaneous, reactive targeting method and develop his analytical approaches. We learned on the job together.

  Posing with Lieutenant Anwar of the Iraqi National Police after a meeting.

  “Salaam aleichem, Cap-e-tan,” he said, sticking his hand out of a long pea coat sleeve.

  I shook his hand and patted him on the back. “Salaam aleichem to you, Anwar,” I replied. “How’s life?” We began walking into the building, where the heater greeted us. My body smiled.

  “Life . . . good?” he said, chuckling to himself for holding a conversation in English, no matter how basic. “And you?”

  “Zien!” I said, using the Arabic word for “good.” Anytime an interpreter wasn’t around, we tended to keep conversations simple.

  As we came into the meeting room, I spotted Eddie’s wrinkled skull hunched over in a chair in the center of the room and heard a deep, nasal snore coming from that direction.

  “Hey, Eddie,” I said, grinning back at Lieutenant Anwar, “you okay, man?”

  “Yes, sir!” Eddie said, bolting up. “I . . . uhh . . . just close my eyes for a bit before the meeting, you know?” Eddie worked hard and never stopped being on call for interpreting. He certainly deserved his power naps.

  I sat down to Eddie’s left, while Lieutenant Anwar sat to his right. I pulled out my notebook and the latest high-value-target list (HVTL) printout from my cargo pocket. The number one name on the list had remained the same since the beginning of the summer. “Have you guys heard anything new regarding Ali the Beard?” I asked Lieutenant Anwar.

  “We hear he come up from Sadr City last week for funeral,” Lieutenant Anwar responded through Eddie. “But source says he left right after, in convoy of six black trucks. We didn’t hear he was here until after he left.”

  Late or not, this info definitely qualified as news to me. Although not as well organized as Staff Sergeant Sitting Bull’s and Staff Sergeant Jorge’s source networks, the Iraqis had proven to be very skillful at developing their own independent networks and tended to rely on a larger number of individuals than we did. They relied less on technology and money—our strengths—and more on cultivating personal relationships and developing trust, built-in cultural advantages we simply could not mimic or replicate.

  “No,” I said levelly, “I had not heard that. Thank you for sharing that. We’re still tracking his brother Abbas in Hussaniyah though.”

  Lieutenant Anwar nodded. “As are we. We get very close many times, but it does not matter until we have him in jail.” He slammed his fist on the table for emphasis, then pulled out a packet of ci
garettes. Eddie and I both accepted one, and Lieutenant Anwar lit all three. He continued to mumble to himself in Arabic about Abbas.

  “He does not like Abbas the Beard,” Eddie explained to me between puffs.

  I smirked. “I gathered that.”

  I glanced down at my HVTL for the next name on the list, but Lieutenant Anwar pressed forth.

  “What do you know about Qusay al-Juma?”

  I bit down on my lip, hoping I hadn’t done so too noticeably. While in theory we shared all our information and intelligence with the Iraqi security forces and they did the same for us, in practice neither occurred. I knew Lieutenant Anwar held pieces back from us, and we did the same. Staff Sergeant Sitting Bull, in particular, proceeded very cautiously with what he shared, assuming correctly that the Iraqis’ internal units were riddled with leaks and spies for JAM. Further complicating these information exchanges were ambiguous rules about security clearances that read and briefed well but held no place in a fast-paced, ever-evolving counterinsurgency. We waded through them to the best of our abilities. In the meantime, the answer was that we knew a lot about Qusay al-Juma. But the hows and whys of such weren’t for Lieutenant Anwar or any other Iraqi right now. I shrugged my shoulders and begrudgingly planted another seed of mistrust in the Mesopotamian soil. “He dropped off our radar last month,” I said. “What about you?”

  He stared back at me protractedly, and I forced myself to maintain eye contact. “We have tried the past week to gain information on his whereabouts and gathered nothing.”

  Our conversation continued, with me going down my HVTL and Lieutenant Anwar rattling off names from memory. A slow, methodical, verbal swap meet evolved; when I gave him a tidbit, I got one in return; when I put forth a gem, one was quickly spat back at me. Forty minutes and two cigarettes each later, Lieutenant Anwar leaned back in his chair and said offhandedly, “Did you hear that we detained Hussayn the Star in a raid two nights ago?”