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  Thirty minutes and a quick shave later, I sat in our MRAP as we followed Captain Frowny-Face’s vehicle to the crossed-sabers landmark, also known as the Hands of Victory, or the Swords of Qadisiyah. Built in 1989 by Saddam Hussein to commemorate Iraq’s supposed victory in the Iran-Iraq War, the Hands of Victory had become the war equivalent of a tourist trap for American soldiers in search of a photo opportunity in central Baghdad, something all of the Gunslingers took advantage of, as well, on Christmas day. This former parade ground also served as an excellent command-and-control location for Captain Frowny-Face, as he maneuvered the two line platoons around the Green Zone battle space.

  After we took the obligatory aforementioned photographs, and while we waited, most of the soldiers slept. Specialist Gonzo and I, though, had serious, earth-shattering subjects to discuss in the back of the MRAP—for instance, the mid-1990s gangsta’ rap rivalry between Tupac Shakur and the Notorious BIG, which ended with both men being killed in drive-by shootings.

  “I liked Tupac more,” I said. “I mean, ‘Hit ’Em Up’ has to be the greatest revenge song of all time.”

  Specialist Gonzo nodded. “Yeah, but Biggie’s music was more fun to dance to. Like ‘Hypnotize’!”

  “True.”

  “And he has a movie coming out.”

  “Also true. That is pretty gangsta’.”

  Specialist Gonzo started chuckling. “How do you know what’s gangsta’, sir? Aren’t you from the suburbs? In Nevada?”

  I pursed my lips together in mock annoyance. “Please, I’m the subject-matter expert for all things gangsta’ rap,” I stated. “I even got a ‘Thug Life’ tattoo.”

  “Oh yeah?” I had Specialist Gonzo rolling now. “Where’s it at?”

  I grinned maniacally. “I Sharpie it onto my knuckles. That way, all the crackers working for the Man can’t pin me down, you know what I’m saying? I’m like a guerilla gangsta’.”

  “Sir,” Specialist Gonzo wheezed between giggles, “you’re out of control.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know. I used to be normal before Iraq. It’s the army’s fault.”

  An hour or so later, a pair of contractors—one middle-aged man and one very attractive blonde woman with silicone-enhanced breasts—drove up in their sedan and distributed Oreo cookies and Gatorades to all of us, wishing us a Merry Christmas.

  “Maybe coming down here wasn’t so bad,” Sergeant J said between cookie bites. “There’s no way the cooks up at Istalquaal would be this friendly, even today.”

  We spent the rest of the day and part of the night continuing to clear the Green Zone, compound by compound, block by block. We found no sign of a VBIED or even a VBIED in construction. That night, we rotated through the dining hall at Camp Patriot for a very full and fattening Christmas dinner. The next morning we woke up and drove back to JSS Istalquaal, this time taking Route Tampa north instead of Route Senators. My nerves appreciated this adjustment. When we arrived, I headed to my room, where Lieutenant Rant found me.

  “How was it?” he asked.

  “You mean other than the giant palaces and the general’s Christmas cookies?” I shrugged my shoulders. “It was still Iraq.”

  KILLING AN ARAB

  A couple days after I rang in the New Year with a near-beer in the shower, I stood in the back of a large formation assembled in front of the battalion headquarters on our JSS. I should have been paying attention to the American flag being lowered down the flagpole and the Iraqi flag subsequently being raised in its place, a symbolic gesture resulting from the passage of the SOFA by the Iraqi parliament. But I wasn’t. Instead, my mind walked an existential ramble along the cliffs of possibility, daydreaming about lost ideals and what kind of man went to war to observe instead of kill.

  Escape.

  Forty years from now, on a snowy winter night in front of the fire, with Guinness in hand, neurotic wife somewhere in the near vicinity, and the Little Drummer Boy pahrumpbumpbumpbumping in the background, a young G grandchild bursting with curiosity will climb up on my knee and ask me about my time as a soldier in the far away country known as Iraq. The child’s voice will make the word Iraq sound romantic too, not dirty—like it still sounds in my mind.

  I will tell said grandchild about said Iraq and the sheiks I met and the terrorists I captured and the soldiers who fought next to me. And said grandchild will be interested and ask questions because it isaGand, thus, naturally bright and inquisitive. The grandchild will ask pointedly, as only a child can, “Grandpa, did you ever kill anyone in the war?”

  I will laugh and say no, that I got lucky and was never placed in that situation, in which I’d have served as judge, jury, and executioner for a fellow human being. I was on the front lines, I’ll say, as a cavalry scout, proud of my service, and even got a tattoo on my shoulder that wrinkled up over the years, but I never had to kill anyone. It wasn’t that kind of war.

  Standing in front of the Hands of Victory, better known as the crossed sabers, in Baghdad on Christmas day, 2008.

  I will be a fucking liar when that happens.

  Little white lies coming out of the mouth of a little white liar. Who plays the technicalities game with his own grandchild? Yes, technicalities. Because I gave the order to kill someone. Luckily or unluckily, I don’t know, but that order never got carried out. Everything changed for me after that. I knew I could and would kill, and everything else was circumstantial. I drank once from the bloodlust fountain and, as a result, would drink from it forever. The opportunity to kill in the name of country, not murder, never came again because lieutenants talked on the radio instead of pulling triggers and because our counterinsurgency became so damn successful that I didn’t need to. It wasn’t a real war, not by American standards, anyhow. We reacted to explosions in Iraq; we didn’t initiate them. That’s not how the Red, the White, and the Emo preferred it. I served in a brushfire war, important to be sure, but a footnote in history, not its own chapter. Sometimes I felt ecstatic that General Petraeus and his apostles had proved so good at what they did and so profoundly shifted the war’s strategy. I knew that by doing so, they had saved the lives of some of my men—and maybe even my own.

  Sometimes I wasn’t so ecstatic. I didn’t know why. I think it had something to do with the bloodlust fountain.

  What about the Iraqis I indirectly killed? By ignoring their pleas, by not caring about their need for secrecy, by walking by them or walking to them or walking with them. I’ll never know for sure, and that’s the point. That’s why the Boss Johnsons and the Sheik Zaydans and the teenage hookers and the widows stuck with me. Because they always knew I’d be fine once I got out of Iraq. I always knew they’d never be fine because they’d never get out. Like Suge. And Haydar. And Lieutenant Anwar. They never left me just as they never left Iraq.

  And the kids. And the kids. The ones with eyes like black pools of sorrow. They didn’t even know what they didn’t have, but they did know they didn’t have it.

  Like a lizard and its tail. One can either kill the lizard or take the tail, but only the fools and the clowns don’t realize the tail will grow back. That’s how it was for America and Iraq. We wanted to slice off the chaos tail without smashing in the lizard’s head, hoping a democracy tail would grow in the meantime. We learned firsthand that wasn’t how lizards or their tails worked.

  The grandchild—my grandchild—will giggle and ask if I’m okay, since I stopped speaking a couple minutes earlier. I’ll laugh and say, “Yes, I’m fine,” put the grandchild back on the ground, and tell it to go play with the dog. Then I’ll stare into the embers of the fire, crackling with fleeting possibility, and think of the Arabian sun’s glare lost long ago. I will think of faces that no longer have names, names that no longer have faces, and places without events and events without places. I will remember how things were before they changed and how things were after they changed. Then I’ll remember why they changed, pretending to myself that I was ever able to forget such in the first place.
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  I hope that then I won’t feel like a stranger to myself.

  Escape was never an option.

  Returning to January 2009, I snapped to, still standing at attention, and watched the red, white, and black with green script of the new flag of Iraq flapping in the wind, high above JSS Istalquaal. The Iraqi security forces around me stood proudly and saluted. I carried mixed feelings about the whole affair but couldn’t bring myself to really care either way. I just didn’t want to crack up in public. Yelling to myself in a Porta-John or an abandoned corner of the JSS would suffice if I could last that long. I would.

  Just get back to the old world, I thought to myself. Everything will be fine then. Just get back.

  THE DAY OF ASHURA

  Staff Sergeant Sitting Bull sat down next to me on the black leather couch in front of the television and frowned. I looked over at him, prying my eyes from the fight taking place on the screen, and ignored the cheers and jeers of the thirty or so other soldiers who watched the fight around us.

  “Yo, sir, Las Cruces just called us. He said he knows who planted that IED the Iraqi police found earlier this morning. It’s pretty crazy and nothing like we guessed.”

  I nodded. “Sure. Of course. Las Cruces wants nothing more than to ruin the entire JSS’s ability to watch UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship, a mixed martial arts organization immensely popular with American soldiers). That much I already knew. What more do I need to know?”

  Staff Sergeant Sitting Bull laughed. “How about the fact that we got Badr Corps operating in Hussaniyah now?”

  My jaw dropped, and I raised my eyebrows protractedly. “Okay, you’re right. That is worth knowing. When the fuck did the Badr Corps move this far north?”

  “Have fun!” Lieutenant Rant waved from another couch as we stood up. “Today seems to be an insurgent day, not a contractor day. Lucky me!”

  Like JAM, the Badr Corps qualified as a Shia extremist group, although that phrase didn’t truly encapsulate the organization’s history or intent. Originally formed as an anti-Saddam Hussein, pro-Shia paramilitary, the Badr Corps actually fought with Iran against Iraq in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War, which ended in a stalemate. The Badr Corps tended to draw from a more educated, wealthier demographic than the upstart Jaish al-Mahdi and had proven far more supportive of Iraqi security forces in the aftermath of the American invasion, as many of their own members joined the Iraqi army and the Iraqi National Police. Nevertheless, elements of the Badr Corps still functioned as a paramilitary on the streets of Iraq, although it was rare for them to operate on this end of Baghdad. Their political capital rested in Karbala, and the organization had played a pivotal role in the Battle of Basra against revolting JAM elements in March 2008.

  I walked back to our company TOC to read Sergeant Secret Agent Man’s report about Las Cruces’s information. The IPs had found three antipersonnel IEDs, filled with steel ball bearings, some four hours before near a populated street corner in the center of Hussaniyah. Although set for remote detonation, the IEDs did not explode, even with the IPs around. All of this struck us as bizarre for three reasons: (1) JAM didn’t normally target their own people instead of us, (2) JAM didn’t normally use ball-bearing IEDs instead of EFPs, and (3) today was the Day of Ashura, a prominent Shia holiday. JAM seemed as concerned with public relations as we did, so an IED attack on this day failed the basic logic test. And now we knew why. The Badr Corps had planted the IEDs targeting JAM members.

  As I scanned his report, Sergeant Secret Agent Man enlightened us with more details. “Basically, sir, the Badr Corps wanted to make a big splash in Hussaniyah to let the populace know they’ve arrived. Killing JAM leaders in front of everyone on a Shia holiday would definitely do that.”

  “But aren’t they a Shia organization as well?” I asked.

  “They are,” Sergeant Secret Agent Man replied, tapping his mouth with a pen. “But H-Town is not made up of many of their people, so it seems like a risk they’d be willing to take. Hussaniyah is too poor and too far north to be loyal to the Badr Corps.”

  “So why didn’t they blow it up?”

  Sergeant Secret Agent Man tapped his mouth with the pen again. “That’s something I’ve been trying to figure out. I don’t know. It was still remote activated; unless the remote was out of range, they should have been able to detonate it at any point. The only thing I can figure is that they didn’t want IP blood on their hands. They knew we’d come after them then.”

  I put the report down. “Okay, that all makes sense. But do we have anyone saying this is the Badr Corps other than Las Cruces? And why is he so sure it was them?”

  “He’s the only one so far. And he’s so sure because he’s one of the guys they wanted to kill. An IP who recognized a Badr Corps member driving into Hussaniyah at dawn tipped JAM off, so they avoided all of the Ashura activities and stayed at their safe houses.”

  I started rubbing my temples and longed for some painkillers. Or a cigarette. Captains Frowny-Face and Clay were all at a battalion meeting right now, so I was the head mother fucker in charge. Hooray. And such.

  “What holiday is it again? I get all of these fucking Islamic holidays mixed up, except for Ramadan, because they starve themselves.”

  Both of the HUMINT collectors laughed. “It’s the Day of Ashura, sir,” Staff Sergeant Sitting Bull said as he stuck a large wad of dip into his mouth. “The one where the Shias beat their chests with whips. The actual day changes every year, but it’s almost always sometime in January.”

  “Ah,” I said reminiscently, “but of course.”

  The Day of Ashura commemorated the Muslim martyr Husayn, who died in the Battle of Karbala in approximately A.D. 680. Unlike Sunnis, Shia Muslims considered Husayn the rightful successor to the Prophet Muhammad. Many Shias chose to celebrate Husayn’s death by slapping themselves or flailing themselves with chains or maces, symbolically exhibiting that they shared in his pain and sacrifice. A year before—had it really already been a year?—the Gravediggers and I had stumbled upon an evening street festival during Ashura along Route Swords in Saba al-Bor. I danced with Sheik Banana-Hands and his eldest son and ate frosted dates with Boss Johnson, who, despite being a Sunni, had shown up to the event as an act of good faith toward his Shia brethren. The three of us and SFC Big Country then held an impromptu conference on the side of the street, discussing the ills and troubles of the Saba al-Bor area. At the time, I truly believed we had made serious headway in the mending of Shia-Sunni relations in our particular AO. Less than two weeks later, Boss Johnson’s car blew up, taking his splatter particles and brain matter with it, less than a mile away from Sheik Banana-Hands’s house. And now, one year physically and a decade mentally later, I was dealing with the Badr Corps making a play in the sewer politics of Hussaniyah. Needless to say, frosted dates and chest flailing aside, the Day of Ashura was not my personal favorite of the Muslim holidays.

  “Any objections to sharing this with Lieutenant Anwar and his boys?” I asked Staff Sergeant Sitting Bull. “They usually have a quick turnaround with lower- and mid-level guys, and they probably should know that the Badr Corps is making a play.”

  Staff Sergeant Sitting Bull shook his head. “No, that’s a good idea. As long as we don’t let them know where we got the info, I don’t care.”

  I walked over to the National Police dispatcher and informed him that I needed to speak with Lieutenant Anwar immediately. Concurrently, the mortarmen/tanker combo platoon went on mission and conducted a follow-up patrol around the Day of Ashura festivities in central Hussaniyah. Under strict orders to stay on the perimeter of the gathering, Iraqi police approached them, informing the platoon leader that another antipersonnel IED rigged with ball bearings had been found. Battalion dispatched EOD, which successfully dismantled it. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Anwar and I met, and I informed him of the Badr Corps intelligence. He thanked me and beat it back to his headquarters only five minutes after our meeting started. I took this as a good sign.

/>   The next day, Lieutenant Anwar claimed they had detained one Badr Corps member responsible for the IEDs, who informed them that they had been dispatched from Karbala to make inroads in Hussaniyah and to attempt to dismantle JAM special groups in our area. He also told the National Police that the other Badr members had fled after the Day of Ashura, and he doubted they’d return anytime soon. We couldn’t verify this information, though, because the National Police rejected our request to question their detainee tactically. This spurred Staff Sergeant Sitting Bull to think that they hadn’t detained anyone and had instead made up the story to try to impress American forces.

  Either way, we never heard of any more Badr Corps activity in the greater Hussaniyah area during our time there.

  AIR ASSAULT

  Just as our logistical elements began planning for our redeployment back to Hawaii in mid-January, Higher ordered the Wolfhounds to execute a series of air assaults on both sides of Route Dover in an effort to conduct more show-of-force missions. The stated purpose for such missions was “to show the Iraqis what we’re still capable of.” Both companies were tasked with three air assaults each; for the Gunslingers, the first and second occurred in Tha’alba and Sabah Qasar, small farming and retirement communities south of JSS Istalquaal, and the third landed in an isolated pocket of northwestern Hussaniyah. I accompanied Lieutenant Mongo’s platoon on the second air assault to Sabah Qasar.

  Air assaults consisted of the movement of infantry forces by aircraft—almost always helicopters in the modern American military—to pieces of key terrain on the battlefield. Traditionally, air assaults occurred so the infantry units could seize or hold the key terrain, but in the Iraq counterinsurgency, we simply cleared the houses and neighborhoods near our respective landing zones. Sometimes, soldiers rappelled out of the helicopters during an air assault, but nothing that precarious proved necessary for our insertions. We would offload as the Black Hawk helicopters touched down on the ground for a few seconds, jumping down into the prone position to secure the landing zone.