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  “Is that what Haydar was talking about?”

  Phoenix nodded. He shared Suge’s midnight-black skin and North African heritage, but our youngest terp was rail thin and wanted nothing more in the world than to become an American soldier. “Yes. He say that it is not fair same tribes and same businesses always get big contracts with Americans. He say that his village need water-plant contract.”

  Haydar’s village fell in some of the most arable terrain in the greater Taji region, but it was also some of the most unfunded. Haydar and his Sahwa had done an excellent job at chasing three AQI cells out of their area—supposedly by means that would give the Geneva Convention some more grey hair—and deserved the massive contract the water treatment plant would provide, in my definitely biased and narrow opinion.

  “Well, what did they say to that?”

  “The American man in the sweater”—I assumed Phoenix referred to the State Department representative—“tell him that he need to make good bid, and if he make good bid, he will get contract.”

  That sounded fair, I thought. Very capitalistic. Very democratic. Very American. I slapped Phoenix on the back and stood up to leave the terp room. “Was Haydar cool with that?” I asked at the doorway.

  Phoenix laughed. “No. He pretend to be, just because it was big meeting. But how can he make better bid than Tamimis? That man with the sweater sound crazy saying that.”

  “Awesome,” I said, feeling a rant come on. “I love it when humanitarian missions reinforce the rich-get-richer notion.” Phoenix and Super Mario nodded in agreement, eager to return to their soccer match.

  I shook my head and walked back toward my platoon’s rooms. I wished the business deals over here didn’t always seem as crooked as a corkscrew. Then I hoped another delivery of mail had come into the combat outpost, as I expected a large batch of cookies from my mom. That package wouldn’t arrive until the next day.

  PHANTOM EMBERS

  I yawned. Sometimes, after I finished yawning, I was surprised at where I found myself. Like I knew I was supposed to be there, but not then, not yet, not again. Then I yawned again. I don’t know why. I just did.

  I found myself on a roof staring at a smiling ball of bright, and I was tired.

  When it happened, I didn’t know my platoon was a part of Operation Phantom Phoenix. The only reason I knew such an offensive had occurred was because I read about it on the Internet later. Things like that didn’t always make it down the chain to our level; layers upon layers of brass, taskings, and PowerPoint presentations separated me from General Petraeus. All I knew at the time was that my platoon had perched itself up on the roof of an Iraqi household on an early January morning, scanning into a neighborhood with binoculars and optics. We were watching the Iraqi army clear through a neighborhood house by house, providing outer cordon, while Lieutenant Virginia Slim and his platoon overwatched them directly as the inner cordon.

  “This sucks,” Specialist Haitian Sensation said, while holding up a pair of binos. “Why can’t we be the ones clearing the houses today, yo?” I arched an eyebrow his way, which caused him to laugh. “I mean, Yo, sir. Sir, yo. Sir.”

  Staff Sergeant Bulldog yelled from behind us, ensuring that I didn’t have to quote Higher’s party line about the purpose of joint operations yet again. “Don’t ask da LT stupid questions,” he said. “He got LT stuff to do. Just do your damn job.”

  I smirked, but I could tell Specialist Haitian Sensation had been hurt by the rebuke—like all of my Alpha section, he had learned that invoking Staff Sergeant Bulldog’s wrath in the morning was like poking a grizzly with a stick. I patted Specialist Haitian Sensation on the back and leaned over. “Don’t worry, dude, we’ll get some more of that. In fifteen months, you won’t even want to hear the word ‘raid’ anymore.”

  I glanced over the side of the roof to the ground. SFC Big Country directed security positions from there, ensuring that the section on the roof with me was free and able to complete our mission of looking for squirters without fear of being attacked from behind. Truthfully, I was amazed that the guys were operating as well as they were. We had been up all night on an observation post (OP) at a historical IED site, and I knew I wasn’t the only one running on fumes. I took a knee and pulled a notebook out of my front right cargo pocket to recheck the mission notes. Instead, I found the journal entry I had penned hours before while on OP:

  Ripped out on Rip Its and Wild Tigers and Boom-Booms of energy crack in a can flavored power citrus and arctic thunder pouring through the veins of a pseudo sugar sumo junkie completely and utterly and definitely and defiantly

  ESSENTIAL

  because chocolate pudding and peanut butter cracker peddling can only sustain a platoon leader high on brash and potential and circumstance and the new so long as he pings from mission to mission and from brushfire to frago and from frago to brushfire and from patrol to patrol like a manic-eyed transient hooked on the wild and fearing the banal remedy and all that comes in a powder cane of repetition operating in or around and bring it on down three hours of stolen doze in the past freakin’ twoPointfive days comma that’s sixty hours if you’re counting at home comma which doesn’t make cents already down a belt loop ’twoud appear that only the fobbits gain weight in the iraqistan and as he rights this to wrong this he can taste the blue whaling of the sleep siesta luring him to his pillow of urban camouflage boots still being on be damned face-first even down he goes like a lone proud sand castle swallowed by the night tide under a blood red moon that smiles as it cuts itself hot drops splashing like stars cue the comatose drooling see you next siesta fiesta yearesta. Period.

  One month and pocket change into the Suck. I figured I’d be splattered across hajji pavement or surrounded by fat German nurses by now. Not that kind of war. Not anymore. Too many stories and too many books and too many movies scrambled into one omelet mind, I guess. I smoke cigarettes occasionally now to keep the headaches at Guantánamo Bay, since trials and tribulations don’t exist there. An average second lieutenant only lives seven seconds in the ’Nam before falling down face-first into the jungle mud never to stand again, you savvy?

  Ohhhh. Streaming consciousness consciously streaming.

  They say if you die with your eyes open, you probably deserved it. Can’t argue with that. Negative enemy contact, continue mission.

  Find the fight you can’t win and fight it. That’s the Irish jihad. Join the ghosts.

  Only the dumb and the poor, eager to make a name for themselves, are up to hassling Team America right now. No holy war for them, only the war to survive, and that’s as cerebral as it gets. Nothing to lose and everything to gain. Kind of like the Gila monster flushed away into a crescent cloud of legalized liquid uppers.

  White 1. Out. Lights. Out. Now that’s

  SAVAGE

  Good Lord, I thought. Either I needed sleep even more than I realized or some junior varsity Beat had returned from the dead to turn my brain into his very own poetry bar. Well, there was some salvageable imagery in there; it just needed a sane, well-rested, hatchet-style edit. If only—

  “Tired, LT?”

  Fuck. I had yawned again.

  I looked over at the kneeling Specialist Big Ern, who grinned knowingly at me. “Yeah man,” I said. “I am. Just like all of us, I guess.”

  “Grab a Rip It, then!” Specialist Big Ern had quickly become the platoon’s biggest advocate for the aforementioned crack in a can. “Stay away from that hajji stuff though.” He referred to the Boom-Booms and Wild Tigers, the energy drinks hawked on the local market. “Drink too many of those, you’re reckoning to fail a piss test. If you need a Rip It, me and Van Wilder swiped a few cases for the platoon and hid ’em in our Stryker.”

  I laughed. “That’s one of those things I’m better off not knowing. Plausible deniability.” I paused. “Good to know that Staff Sergeant Boondock’s liberal borrowing policies have been passed down to his crew though.”

  Specialist Big Ern nodded. “Yeah, he�
�ll be pretty proud of this get.”

  The next two hours ticked by slowly. We passed the time by calling out distances and directions to potential hot chicks sighted. The propensity of Saba al-Bor women to dress in all-black and everything-covered garb left a lot to the imagination, but a few targets were spotted. It was kind of hard to tell. Suge wandered up to the roof and overheard the soldiers talking about the possibilities.

  “You want Iraqi woman?” he announced to no one in particular.

  “Hell yeah!” Private Van Wilder replied. “You know any, Suge Daddy?”

  “Oh, I know many Iraqi women,” Suge giggled. “I have two wives, and they have many friends who want American husband and—”

  “Wait, hold up, Suge.” I glanced around to ensure that the others had heard the same thing and it wasn’t the exhaustion playing tricks. They all wore the same raised-antenna look I knew I had, so I continued. “Did you just say you have two wives?”

  “Yes!” The tone in his voice mixed giddiness and fake surprise that we found this factoid strange; he clearly had discussed this with Americans before. “Muslims, we can marry more than one wife, if we have money to care for them. I keep one house, with younger wife on the upstairs and older wife on the downstairs.”

  Suge Knight instantly became a rock star, and my soldiers were his adoring fan base. Even Staff Sergeant Bulldog, who had walked over with the intent to break up this impromptu gathering, got lured into the absurdity of the conversation.

  “You can fuck both of them?”

  “Oh, yes. Many times.”

  “You can fuck both of them at once?”

  “No, no. That is very bad in Islam. One at a time is good.”

  “So, you’re like a black Mormon?”

  “Eh?”

  “What’s your record, Suge?”

  “Record?”

  “What’s the most you have had sex in one day?”

  Suge stroked his chin, contemplatively. “In youth, twelve times. Now, six times a day is good.” He flexed. “It keep me strong!”

  “Do they fight?”

  “Sometimes. Then I yell at them to stop, and they stop. If they do not, I hit at them, and they stop because I am king of house. They respect me very much and must listen to me.”

  “You have kids with both of your wives?”

  “Oh, yes. Kids are very good! They make life happy.”

  “How many kids do you have?”

  “Ten kids. Six boys, four girls. I make the two babies when this war start. I see smoke from American tanks and American heli-choppers and American bombs so I go inside and be with wives.”

  “Suge, you’ze the pimp mackdaddy!”

  More giggling. “I know, I know. I have very good wives and very good family. I loves them very much.”

  Intrigued, I asked the terp how his large family felt about his current occupation.

  “I am worry that my family would be hurt if people know I work with Americans,” he said grimly. “So I do not tell them.”

  “They don’t know you work with us? Not even your wives?”

  “Women cannot keep from the talk!” Suge exclaimed. “They be too proud of me and do the chatter when I am away. Then they will die!”

  Captain Whiteback called over the radio at this point and told us to pack up and meet him back at the outpost. Our conversation ended. The mission was over. At least, this one was. Sleep awaited.

  A few days later, I read about the details of Operation Phantom Phoenix and the major portions of the offensive taking place in Diyala Province, which lay to our east. More than ten American soldiers died there while clearing houses rigged with bombs.

  One of them was a staff sergeant from Reno named Sean Gaul. I didn’t know him, but I wish I had.

  THE GREAT DRAGUNOV JIGSAW PUZZLE

  “Hey, LT.” Staff Sergeant Boondock’s brusque tone cut through the incessant prattle of four Iraqi women, who were upset at being shepherded out of their house in the desert orange dawn. “You’ll want to check this out.”

  I left Suge with the locals and followed Staff Sergeant Boondock’s lead around the corner of the house—a mud hut, really, consisting only of two small rooms that supposedly housed two military-aged males, one of the men’s mother, three younger women, and four children. We were operating in the farmland outskirts of Saba al-Bor, acting on a tip one of the local sheiks had provided us about a new family in his area housing insurgents affiliated with JAR. The information relayed to us had been flimsy at best, and that, combined with the unabated fatigue that came after an all-night OP transitioned, without interruption, into a predawn raid, had left the majority of the Gravediggers impatient, annoyed, and eager to get back to the combat outpost. All we had found thus far had been a plethora of poorly threaded blankets, some homemade herb the grandmother claimed helped the children with their many illnesses, and a torn Van Halen tee shirt that Specialist Big Ern thought he had owned in 1987 when he sported a mullet and drove a pesticide truck for a living.

  Sergeant Axel and Private Das Boot awaited our arrival on the backside of the mud hut. They stood next to a well from which a water pipe emerged, connecting to the residence in question. Through the eyes of a green lieutenant, everything looked about as normal as a Middle Eastern abyss could look. They didn’t exactly cover what happened next in the ROTC leadership labs.

  SFC Big Country (left) and Specialist Haitian Sensation patrol through a Saba al-Bor marketplace, in early 2008.

  “Watch this, sir,” Staff Sergeant Boondock said, not breaking a stride. He raised his arms to grasp the center of the water pipe, stood up on his tip toes, and tilted the pipe toward Private Das Boot. “Reach in there,” he instructed the young private.

  The soldier did as he was told. “There’s hay in here, Sergeant,” he said. “Reach deeper.”

  A look of confusion crossed Private Das Boot’s face as he strained his reach further into the pipe—confusion that subsequently turned into shock. He pulled out an piece of metal, approximately eight inches long and three inches in diameter, that glinted in the arriving daylight. It shined with polish and showed no signs of rust or neglect.

  Staff Sergeant Boondock and I spoke concurrently. “Mother fuckers,” I said, while he said, perhaps just as eloquently but definitely more accurately, “A mother-fucking bolt.”

  “How’d you know something was in there?” I asked Staff Sergeant Boondock.

  “Fuck, sir,” he replied, barely able to contain his satisfaction with himself, “you know I wake up in the morning and piss excellence.”

  The next half hour passed in a blur. With the discovery of the rifle bolt, I unleashed my platoon’s rejuvenated energies and instinctive hunting skills upon the mud hut. The two men, who had already been separated, simply hung their heads in resignation when I showed them the metal piece, asking if they knew anything about it. Suge laughed in their faces and told me that they knew better than to claim ignorance at this point. The rest of the family stood quietly off to the side and gathered around a homemade fire in a barrel as we ransacked—as gently as possible—through their personal belongings, unearthing a trigger assembly, five ammo magazines, and at least one hundred 7.62-mm rounds in a carefully dug cubbyhole found underneath a rug. Corporal Spot unwrapped the mother load, found even deeper in the water pipe: a Russian-made Dragunov sniper rifle carefully swathed in dishtowels and very recently cleaned. SFC Big Country still furrowed his brow, though, when I suggested that we were nearing the end of the search. “We’re still missing the stock,” he said, racking his mind for potential hiding spots we had overlooked.

  “Damn it,” he continued, stalking over to the barrel where the family huddled around the fire for warmth. He shooed them away and doused the flames with water from his CamelBak hydration system. Smirking, he reached a burly Midwestern hand into the barrel, pulling out a very charred, but still recognizable, homemade wooden rifle stock. I shook my head in disbelief as Suge started grilling the grandmother. She smiled and shru
gged her shoulders.

  “A mother protecting her son?” I asked the terp.

  “Yes,” he answered. “Crazy female.”

  I instructed the Gravediggers to start policing up the hut and blindfold the two detainees while I inventoried our bounty; SFC Big Country walked back to his Stryker to update Bravo Troop headquarters. As Staff Sergeant Boondock and Sergeant Axel led the two men away, I snuck a glance toward the family left behind. The grandmother stared stonily into the distance, seemingly oblivious of her departing son, his friend, and the strange Americans. Two of the younger women fought back tears, while the third walked back inside, nursing the youngest of the children. The other three children wept openly, and one of them tried to run after our detainees before the women collectively scooped him off of the ground.

  As we walked back to my Stryker, the sniper rifle and accessory parts in hand, I looked over at Suge. “I feel kind of bad, you know? These guys are probably just stooges, trying to make some money.” I nodded back at the women and the children. “I mean, it’s not like this is their fault. How are they going to support themselves now?”

  He looked back at me in a blizzard of skepticism. “Do not feel bad, LT. They should not have bred with stupid mother fuckers.”

  One didn’t always have to use big words or utilize profound analogies to articulate a philosophical known.

  A DIFFERENT WORLD

  The army divides its officers into three categories: company-grade officers (lieutenants and captains), field-grade officers (majors, lieutenant colonels, and colonels), and general officers (the top dogs with stars on their collars). Concurrently, there are three levels of warfare: tactical, operational, and strategic. As a junior officer who spent his entire time of service in the tactical function, my dealings with general officers were minimal, but I often interacted with—and took orders from—field grades.

  I respected many of the field-grade officers I served under or encountered and found them to be men of honor, strength, and great wisdom. Men like our brigade commander, whose strict adherence to the counterinsurgency principle of precision targeting set the tone for our brigade for the entire deployment. Men like my first ROTC instructor, a devout 101st Airborne loyalist and pupil of General Petraeus, who back in 2002 convinced me I had the swagger required to be a combat-arms officer. Men like our unit’s first squadron commander, who had established the cavalry in the middle of the historical infantry land of Hawaii with as much Stetson-wearing, spur-sporting pizzazz as the ghosts of Teddy Roosevelt and Jeb Stuart and George Patton demanded.