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  “You in charge of this circus?” I asked, approaching the crouching shadow.

  “You know it,” came the reply, slightly slurred, due to the dip. He spat into the darkness before continuing, nodding down at Saba al-Bor. “Nothing doing, tonight, except for that shit five minutes ago. Too cold.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s too cold for me too, but somehow I’m still wandering around on a rooftop in Iraq in the middle of the night.”

  He nodded. “This place isn’t like it was the first time I was here,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Ask me again in a few months.”

  “Everything good with the guys?” I asked. “I tried asking a couple of them, but all I got was the rehearsed ‘Yes, sir! Absolutely, sir!’ that you NCOs teach them to say to officers.”

  Sergeant Spade chuckled. “Yeah, LT, they’re good. There have been some squabbles and shit, but that’s normal.” His words proved prophetic. Over the course of fifteen months, there were some arguments and even a few fistfights within the platoon, but nothing too serious. Things like that were bound to happen with nineteen- and twenty-year-old kids cooped up together constantly, under the stresses of combat, for well over a year. It was usually kept in-house, with punishments doled out by NCOs who kept their understanding—and amusement—to themselves.

  After leaving my gunner at his post, I walked downstairs and back outside to the front gate, where Sergeant Axel, Specialist Big Ern, and Private Das Boot were manning the main entry control point (ECP). A maze of crisscrossing razor concertina wire led up to the gate, with imposing T-wall barriers stacked on both sides of the entryway. Sergeant Axel and Specialist Big Ern leaned against a Humvee parked at the gate, while Private Das Boot sat up in the vehicle’s gunner’s cupola, diligently manning a long-barreled 50-caliber machine gun. His long legs forced the tops of his knees out of the hatch, and he compensated by bending his back forward, hunching over the weapon. This had not gone unnoticed by the other two Gravediggers.

  “He looks like a crawdad in a tree up there, doesn’t he, sir?” Specialist Big Ern said, using an Appalachian analogy I was unfamiliar with.

  “Uhh, sure, absolutely,” I said. “How’s it going down here?”

  Sergeant Axel, still laughing about Specialist Big Ern’s Carolina slang, said, “We’re good, LT. No visitors since Colonel Mohammed, Boss Johnson, and all of the other sheiks left a few hours ago.”

  “Right on. How much longer until the next shift comes on?”

  Sergeant Axel checked his watch. “One more hour,” he said. “One more glorious hour with Big Ern and the Big Soviet here!”

  Private Das Boot snorted from above us, offended, as he always was when called a Russian. “I am German and American,” he said. “Both sides of me hate the Russians.”

  “Not as much as you hate the Turks, though. Right, Das Boot?” asked Specialist Big Ern. “Remember what Staff Sergeant Boondock taught us about embracing the hate!” He then threw the revolution fist—recently rechristened in Staff Sergeant Boondock’s section as the hate fist—straight into the air. It was common to see said hate fist during fragos, early mornings, and long, unending nights.

  Private Das Boot gave this some serious thought. “Hmm. I do not know,” he said. “That’s tough. I guess they are the same?”

  “What about the Estonians?” I asked. It was an honest question, as I was genuinely unfamiliar with Germany’s relationship with its Baltic neighbor. Unfortunately, my history question would have to be answered another day, as bringing up the Stones led to another hot topic for my soldiers.

  “I know I love that female Stone,” Private Das Boot said, a grin spreading lustfully across his face. “There is nothing hotter than a beautiful woman with a gun.”

  “Get it!” Sergeant Axel yelled, encouraging our young soldier’s fantasy. “Get after it, Das Boot, like the dirty Kraut you are!” Despite his front, Private Das Boot had still been too shy even to talk to the female Estonian soldier who occasionally dropped by our combat outpost. Everyone in the platoon figured he had an in being a fellow Euro and all, but none of us had any experience with Estonian women, either, so no one was too confident with that scheme. He kept saying he would give her his MySpace profile link, but such a prolific step in relationship development had yet to occur.

  I checked my watch and realized I’d been gone from the TOC for more than two hours; consequently, I told Sergeant Axel to radio me if they needed anything and headed back into the combat outpost away from the pale moon and into a bastion of artificial heat. In the TOC, the three Headquarters platoon NCOs sat around playing cards, their Hottest Latinas debate apparently settled. “Everything okay out there, sir?” one of them asked. “No need to sound the alarms for the Alamo Drill?”

  I shook my head and reached for the coffee pot. “Just another quiet night,” I said. “Nothing doing.”

  MOHAMMED THE GHOST

  It was the day after the great red dust storms ended, a little more than a week after our squadron lost its first soldier to a deep buried IED in the farmlands west of Saba al-Bor. I lay in bed, staring at the wall from the top bunk, basking in the rarest of days—one in which I could sleep in. I thought about nothing and how awesome it was to think about nothing and how if life went well, nothing wouldn’t be so rare anymore. The gears of my mind were just beginning to grind toward muscle movement, mainly a product of memory rather than a conscious decision, when SFC Big Country barreled through the door.

  “The IA got Mohammed Shaba!” he said, staying just long enough to drop off his now empty mug of coffee. Just like that, he was gone, I was back in Iraq, and my nothingness had burst like a star cluster, illuminating all kinds of gut-wrenching, hidden somethings back into plain sight. I cursed to myself, slapped myself in the face, and hopped off the top bunk. The nothingness was now gone. Maybe next lifetime, I thought to myself.

  So, they got the Ghost. Saba al-Bor’s native son, a known terrorist and wanted murderer, had been a general thorn in the side of Coalition forces for the better portion of the past year. Much of his celebrity status was overblown, mainly due to his self-designated nickname, which translated to either Mohammed the Ghost or Mohammed the Shadow, depending which terp had been asked. Nevertheless, Higher had longed after this JAM insurgent in a manner that bordered on Brokeback. Capturing him was a public relations dream, if not a key strategic blow for Shia extremism in our area. The Gravediggers had already been on a few boondoggles going after him, but we were always a room away, ten minutes late, or finding his grandfather with a full piss bag but without a grandson. When Mohammed Shaba missions came down, it usually felt like we were hunting a black dog in the night. These experiences weren’t isolated to just our platoon; they encapsulated all of Bravo Troop’s bouts with the Ghost. And now the Iraqi army had him. Sure, I was shocked, but good for the IA, I thought. That was what we were aiming for, after all—a self-sustaining Iraqi security force.

  Yawning noisily, I strolled out of our room and into the main foyer of the combat outpost. Captain Whiteback and a few of the soldiers from Headquarters platoon were heading out the front door, en route to the IA compound to tactically question the Ghost and his fellow detainees. I bumped into Lieutenant Virginia Slim, who was coming up the stairs and taking off his helmet; he had just been over with the IAs.

  (from left to right) Specialist Big Ern, Corporal Spot, Staff Sergeant Boondock, PFC Van Wilder, and Specialist Prime show off their respective moustaches and sneers. Scout platoons were smaller than most other combat units, and the relationship between NCOs and soldiers tended to be less rigid and more instruction-oriented as a result.

  “Dude,” he said, “you should head over and check these guys out.”

  “Why?” I didn’t really feel compelled to put on my gear. I was more interested in grabbing a few banana nut muffins and seeing if there were any pieces of bacon left. “Did the
CO [commanding officer] say he needed me?”

  “Naw, I just thought you’d appreciate the scene. They’re just a couple of scared, punk teenagers. We probably could’ve had them months ago if we had set up a trap with XBoxes, a few porn mags, and some pounds of weed.”

  We laughed, and I sauntered toward the pantry. I rubbed the stubble of my face. I should probably shave too, I thought. It had been a few days.

  After breakfast and a quick dry shave, curiosity got a hold of me, and I walked across the street to the IA compound. I poked my head around the fence line and spotted a crowd of IA soldiers—commonly referred to by their Arabic name, jundis—interlaced with a group of American soldiers sent over to ensure the detention process stayed peaceful. There was a post-prize fight feeling in the air. The soldiers of both countries were joking with one another incessantly, crowing like young bantams at a cockfight. They crowded around three grubby, emaciated shapes in handcuffs and wrapped in blankets that were stacked against the building. The three shapes were separated along the wall so they could not communicate; they were crouched in the traditional Arab squat, and only nervous darting glances from downcast heads confirmed them to be human beings and not teenage scarecrows made of dirt.

  As I walked closer, I recognized Mohammed Shaba from the mug shots we’d used for countless previous missions: same scar across the right cheek, same long chin, same mop of black hair jetting out. In the photograph, he snarled toward the camera, menacingly challenging the viewer to dare to venture into Saba al-Bor’s alleys to hunt him. Here, at the IA compound, though, he did not snarl, or challenge, or dare. He sniffled like a bullied child, trying desperately to hold back tears, cradling his swollen nose, which dripped with blood. It had been broken by the IA when he bit one of them and tried to escape. The teenager handcuffed next to him—who I later learned was another top target of ours known as Ali the Prince—wept far more openly and reeked of feces. Wait a minute. Had he really—

  “Yes, sir, he actually shit himself,” one of our Headquarters platoon NCOs said to me, apparently provoked by my sniffing of the air and subsequent grimace. “Gives new meaning to the term scared shitless, don’t it?”

  I nodded, hoping I appeared aloof and knowing to my enemies, who now had faces. Why I cared in the first place, I still don’t know. “How’d the IA find them?” I asked.

  The Headquarters platoon NCO chuckled. “They got set up by Sheik Banana-Hands,” he said. Sheik Achmed, better known as Banana-Hands to Coalition forces for his obnoxiously long fingers, had JAM connections in Saba al-Bor longer than the Tigris, but he had recently warmed to the concept of reconciliation—and the financial benefits it wrought. “I’ll give you the details later. We gotta bring ’em inside now. Captain Whiteback and the IA colonel have some questions to ask before these guys get hauled back to Taji.”

  Some of the jundis snatched the Ghost up by his elbows. He began to shake uncontrollably and dragged his feet in an attempt to stall his pending interview. He had no idea what awaited him inside the IA headquarters, and I was certain his imagination had created a far worse and far more graphic fate than was actually going to occur. As they lugged him through the front door, fear of the unknown struck again, this time in liquid form. A trickle of urine quickly swelled into a pool at the base of Mohammed the Ghost’s frayed pants. Both the Iraqi jundis and the American soldiers pointed and laughed.

  There were no heroes of battle or delusions of war this day. Mohammed Shaba, a local legend prone to baiting Coalition forces with written taunts and verbal proclamations, a ghost brutal enough to kill people with point-blank AK-47 shots to the skull, a shadow guerilla who blew up American soldiers with crescent bombs (local terminology for EFPs) and then bragged about it, had literally pissed his pants at the prospect of consequences. He did not have my sympathies; nor did he deserve them.

  His next stop was Camp Bucca, the national prison that had replaced Abu Ghraib. He would not be there as long as he should be.

  When I walked back to the Gravediggers’ corner of the combat outpost, SFC Big Country had already torn the Ghost’s mug shot off the target wall. It lay crumpled up in the trash can. I thought about pulling it out and saving it for posterity. If nothing else, it was one more thug off the streets, and I knew the locals would be relieved to hear the news of his detainment. I decided to leave the mug shot in the trash though. I already had my lasting snapshot of Mohammed the Ghost, and it certainly wasn’t the snarling menace captured in that photograph.

  MOVEMENT TO CONTACT

  I was literally boots up in the back of my Stryker when Lieutenant Virginia Slim’s breezy accent sizzled over the net.

  “X-ray [the radio call sign for the TOC], this is Steel 1! We got contact with enemy rifle fire on Route Swords, to the north, from dismounted personnel. We’re developing the situation! Steel 1 out!”

  Located on the complete opposite side of town from Lieutenant Virginia Slim and his platoon, the Gravediggers had spent a quiet day in OP overwatch. Half of my platoon was on duty with the Iraqi police; the other half were racked out in the vehicles, trying not to drool on one another. After Steel platoon’s radio call, though, I loaded everyone up in anticipation of the radio call I knew would follow, as we were the only other maneuver element in sector: “White 1”—it was Captain Whiteback using our platoon’s official color designation for radio traffic purposes—“move to far end of Route Swords to support Steel. Cordon off the northern section of the route.”

  Briefing the Gravediggers scout platoon on their tasks and purposes for an upcoming patrol. Either the platoon leader or the platoon sergeant gave such a brief before every platoon operation, no matter how commonplace or routine.

  I responded just as rapidly. “This is White 1. Will comply.” I switched over to the platoon net and, trying not to sound too anxious, gave the order to move out. “Gravediggers, let’s roll. Route Swords. Time now.” Three minutes after the contact call had stirred me from my day-dozing, my platoon screamed through the streets of Saba al-Bor, riding toward the sound of the guns.

  Planning while on the move was not something recommended in any army leadership manual or officers’ guidebook I had ever read, but it was something we all learned to do early and often in Iraq. SFC Big Country and I identified cordon locations for each of our Strykers, and I told the platoon to kick out all of the dismounts we had to provide local security.

  “Make sure you dismount to your right and take cover behind our vehicles,” I said. “The contact Steel is reporting will be to our south. Let them flush the shooters out to our positions, and do not engage unless you positively identify your target.” I didn’t necessarily need to repeat the rules of engagement (ROE) that had been hammered into us in the previous weeks, usually by fobbit brass, but it felt like the sort of thing a lieutenant was supposed to say in these kinds of situations.

  I double-checked to ensure my rifle was locked and loaded, told Suge Knight to follow me onto the ground, and prepared to dismount with my platoon. Then I felt my vehicle come to a screeching halt, heard Sergeant Spade give the order from his gunner’s cupola to drop ramp over the humming engine, and began to move out of the back. As my first boot hit the Stryker’s ramp though, while Suge pushed up behind me, I heard SFC Big Country’s voice roar over the radio speakers: “Contact to the north! I repeat, to the north!”

  To the north? What the fuck? I knew that I had heard Steel’s radio transmissions correctly, so how was the contact coming from the north? I didn’t have much time to analyze the situation though, as directly in front of me an Iraqi army T-72 rolled by—heading north—machine gun blazing away, while rounds steadily ricocheted off of it. I couldn’t help but gawk at how empty the streets were. I still stood on the Stryker’s back ramp when SFC Big Country’s vehicle launched a smoke grenade directly to my front, masking the movement of our dismounts team with a wispy grey cloud. It hissed like a snake.

  Whistle. Whistle. Crack.

  Close. Close. Very close.
r />   Only now, when the rounds fired from the north began to ricochet off of my Stryker, did some fusion of training and survival instinct kick in. I grabbed Suge, who was more disoriented than I was, and we ran to our right, stacking up on a building behind Staff Sergeant Boondock’s dismount team.

  I took a deep breath, bit down on my lip, and tried to assess the situation. Staff Sergeant Boondock and his team—consisting of Sergeant Cheech, Private Van Wilder, and Private Das Boot—were directly in front of me, trying to communicate through hand-and-arm signals with dismounted IA personnel across the way, stacked up on another building. Sergeant Axel’s dismount team—consisting of Corporal Spot, Specialist Haitian Sensation, and Private Smitty—was across from that building, also stacked up. There were IA tanks operating to our front and to our rear, both rattling with automatic fire. I grabbed my radio and asked SFC Big Country, who was now in charge of our mounted personnel, if any of our gunners could positively identify what the IA’s were shooting at.

  “That’s a negative, White 1! Cannot positively identify!”

  Just as my platoon sergeant finished his radio transmission, two bullets whistled by the dismounted IA soldiers across from us, thudding into the building some seven feet from our position. The IAs responded by spraying their AK-47s wildly over their shoulders, not bothering to look where they were shooting.

  Shit had hit the proverbial fan. I desperately tried to recall the book answer to this situation, but all I could come up with was using our Stryker as a shield while we actioned on the objective, like I had seen paratroopers do with tanks in an episode of Band of Brothers. I looked back up to see Staff Sergeant Boondock already directing my vehicle to do just that.