The sight of American Strykers and the presence of razor concertina wire were norms for locals in this pocket of Iraq.
“Suge, how'd you get so good at bones?” Doc asked, as he lit our terp's cigarette.
“Oh, I have played the dominoes very much,” Suge said, pleased that his victories had not gone unnoticed. “I remember this one game, in youth, when a Syrian tried to knife at me for beating him so good!” He blew smoke from his mouth, retrospectively cursing in Arabic about the stabbing Syrian, and stroked his grey moustache. “Syrians, they are crazy, you know,” he finally said. “Craziest of the Arabs, those fucking Syrians.”
My two section sergeants just stared at Suge, waiting for his rambling to stop, before they interjected. Staff Sergeant Boondock arched an eyebrow my way, as if I were somehow responsible for our interpreter's lunacy.
“I don't know nuthin' about no Syrians, but I do know me and my Iraqi partner here, we's gonna smoke this round of bones for sure,” Staff Sergeant Bulldog said, adding a grunt at the end for emphasis. The teams were me and Staff Sergeant Boondock, Suge and Doc, Staff Sergeant Bulldog and a teenage Sahwa who kept staring at him wide-eyed in wonder, and a duo of thirty-something Sons of Iraq. So far, Suge's team and Staff Sergeant Bulldog's team had alternated winning, mainly due to the domino prowess of those two.
Just as a small Iraqi boy returned to our table with a tray full of chai, my dismounted radio buzzed, coming in as clear as God on Judgment Day. “White 1, this is Bounty Hunter 6.” It was Captain Whiteback.
“Nooooo!” Staff Sergeant Boondock bellowed. “Don't answer it, sir! For the love of God, don't answer it!” He grabbed Staff Sergeant Bulldog's partner by the shoulders and pressed his face next to his own. “Think of the children!”
We all knew what this meantâit meant a frago; more importantly, it meant an abrupt end to our separate peace. I sighed and responded, ignoring Staff Sergeant Boondock's plea. “This is White 1.”
“White 1, Bounty Hunter 6. Frago follows.” Our commander paused. “It's Task Force Cobra related.”
This caused Staff Sergeant Boondock to break into an inaudible wail. Task Force Cobra
1
consisted of special operations personnel and Ranger Regiment soldiers whose sole mission was to conduct raids on high-level enemy targets. Although based in Baghdad proper, they occasionally came up our way, following their targets. They were clearly the best of the best, and their successes were well known and well documented; as a result, most regular army soldiers were awestruck when they saw Task Force Cobra soldiers operating. Like us, Task Force Cobra wore the American urban camouflage uniform. Unlike us, however, they weren't beholden to counterinsurgency doctrine and were infamous across our brigade for destroying houses and terrifying locals, then leaving the mess for the landowning unit to clean up. Back in the winter, they destroyed a house in eastern Saba al-Bor with 105-mm artillery shells dropped from an AC-130 Spectre Gunship. They believed the house was wired to blow up, but it turned out to be abandoned. The Iraqi neighborhood was understandably irate. Task Force Cobra consisted of professionals and experts certainly, but they only had to focus on the raid itself. Nothing else mattered in their line of work.
“Two brothers got detained last night,” Captain Whiteback continued. “IED makers for AQI. They rigged up a suicide vest for their cousin last year that blew up in Ramadi, killing ten people in a market. I need you guys to go check out the damage Task Force Cobra did to the neighborhood during the detainment process.” Anticipating my reaction, or perhaps arguing with himself out loud, he continued, “Their job isn't to worry about second- and third-order effects. As the landowners that's our responsibility.”
“Roger, sir.”
“They're at a farm east of your current location. Oh, and take pictures. Lots. Squadron needs them for the PowerPoint slides. You know how it is, something didn't happen unless there's a PowerPoint slide to prove it.”
“Roger, sir.”
“Sorry to end the game, but duty calls.”
I stared at the radio in disbelief. Everyone else was already heading back to the vehicles. Had he really hinted about knowing about the dominoes game?
“Say again, sir?” I asked.
“Nothing.” I thought I heard a faint trace of amusement in his voice. “Get the grid for the farm from the TOC when you guys are ready. Whiteback out.”
I put my helmet back on, gave the Sons of Iraq fist pounds, and gave my mounted soldiers the “we're rolling out of here, time now” hand-and-arm signal. Specialist Flashback dropped my vehicle's ramp.
“How was dominoes, sir?” asked my driver, sleep still hanging off his question like an apostrophe.
“Dominoes?” I responded, indignantly. “I was off fighting the fight. Building trust with local leadership, boys, building trust. Heading off the insurgents' offensive before they even got a chance to initiate their charge. Hell, think of the medals we earned today! And it's not even lunchtime yet.”
Private First Class Smitty (recently promoted) and Private Hot Wheels giggled appreciatively from the back, but Sergeant Spade was unimpressed. “Lose again?”
“Sure did. Staff Sergeant Bulldog and Suge smoked us all.”
I felt my gunner smirking above me. “We're redcon-1, sir.”
I put on my headset and conducted a radio check. “Embrace the frago,” SFC Big Country said from his vehicle. “Or it will embrace you.”
“Roger that,” I said.
“Get this, sir,” said SFC Big Country. “I heard muffled excitement coming from my driver's hole, so I asked Specialist Prime, âWhat the hell are you
reading up there,
Playboy
?' He responded with, âNo, Sergeant,
Popular Mechanics
.'”
“What can I say,” Specialist Prime said. “I like
Popular Mechanics.
”
My other Strykers reported their redcon status, and we started moving east. Back into sector and back to the mission and back to Iraq.
Approximately two kilometers laterâa distance we covered in under five minutesâBoss Johnson II waited for us as our Strykers pulled up to the main entrance of his farmlands. He greeted me as I dismounted.
“The other Americans came last night,” he said through Suge. “In helicopters.”
“That is what I understand,” I responded. “Why would they have done that if your area is secure, as you claim?”
Even through Suge's paraphrased Arabic, Boss Johnson II understood my not-so-subtle insinuations, and he stared back at me protractedly. Then he shrugged. “One of the men they took was one of my captains. The other was his brother. He was also Sahwa.”
Of course, I thought. He already knew what they were doing. No wonder he wasn't more disturbed but still felt compelled to make a show of walking us in to assess the damage. I ignored the temptation to remind Boss Johnson II that he now had two openings on his security contract and matched his pace. Suge walked a half step behind us, and a section of Gravediggers, under the strict guidance of Staff Sergeant Boondock and Sergeant Cheech, fanned out around us in a diamond formation. Three minutes later, we reached the crest of a small hill and found the farm in question.
The first thing we noticed was the car. A modest station wagon was parked in the driveway, sharp pieces of glass glinting in the surrounding dirt. Every one of the windows was smashed in. One elderly Iraqi man, four women, and eight young children huddled in a group squat nearby, at the base of the farm's main lodging. I took a few photos of the car, and at Boss Johnson II's urging, the old man stood up and walked over to us.
“Salaam aleichem,” I said, taking off my gloves and sunglasses, remembering the basic lesson of some COIN class conducted long ago.
“Salaam.” The man was quite short, but unlike most Iraqis his age, he did not hunch his back. A red-and-white checkered turban and closely trimmed grey beard framed a rather unnerving face: With one chasm-black eye and one twitching blue eye the shade of a robin's egg, he looked more like a classic jihadist than the affable old farmer with bad bloodlines Boss Johnson II had described.
“What happened last night?”
“It would be easier for me to show you,” he said, gesturing for us to follow him into his house. We did.
As expected, the house was trashed. Furniture lay overturned. Cabinets were unhinged. Clothes had been left in heaps on the ground. A poster of Mecca was torn off the wall, and three pieces of it sat on the ground. No rug was left unturned, no hiding place untouched. There was even the carcass of a small dog left in the backyard that, with the continual advance of the sun, was now completely infested with flies. The dog's frozen scowl from the other side of eternity was still trying to alert the AQI brothers. When I asked the old man if he knew why the other Americans had done this to the house, he claimed he knew nothing of his brothers' extracurricular activities.
“They treat us like sheep,” he said. “They put numbers on our backs and embarrass us in front of our wives and children.”
I felt for the guy; really, I did. He seemed harmless enoughâand certainly clueless enough. But even though I hadn't heard the full storyâyetâI trusted that my countrymen didn't tornado random houses without justification. Not now. Not five years into the war. Not after Abu Ghraib. Even they had to abide by certain rules. I asked the twitching blue eye if he was familiar with our repercussion funds program.
“I do not want money,” he replied matter-of-factly. “I want to know what my brothers did wrong, and I want my respect back.”
To color me shocked would have done a disservice to the power of crayons everywhere. I had never met an Iraqi who didn't want to talk about money or the potential for financial imbursement. I certainly empathized with his hints about lost pride and internalized anger. That probably didn't matter to him, though, and he had already made his needs and wants very clear. There was nothing left to do. I spoke a few more pretty, hollow words, took a few more notes, and snapped a few more photographs. Then I told the Gravediggers we were leaving. Private Das Boot still stared at the dead dog in the backyard. Corporal Spot's bright blue eyes blinked continuously in bafflement, and even Staff Sergeant Boondock walked like a man eager to return to a part of the war zone that made sense.
As we came out of the house, the women and children remained squatting to our immediate left. Most of the women stared at the ground, but the youngest of them followed my soldiers' brisk movements with the stareâsomething the children massed around her soon mimicked. I wasn't the only one in our group who noticed this development.
“This is very bad situation, LT,” Suge said. “The kids do not know their fathers were Ali Babas. They do not know that Americans bring peace to their country. They only know that their dog is dead and their fathers are gone.”
I groaned. “I know, Suge,” I said. “I know.”
The elderly man, noticing the glares of his brothers' wives and his nephews and nieces, began clucking and yelling at them in Arabic. They scattered behind us, disappearing to various corners of the farm. Boss Johnson II shook my hand, saying he'd come to the combat outpost later in the day to see us, and walked the other way to where he had parked his car.
Suge's mind was still with the children as we moved to our Strykers. “They will grow up hating America!” he said, restating his point more clearly. “And they will be wrong, but that will not change anything.”
“Yeah.” I needed a Rip-It and some of Doc's little white pills. “We call it the domino effect back home. This probably will be the defining moment of every one of those kid's lives, and they don't even know the facts. What a fucking travesty.”
My anticipatory musings didn't impact my terp the way I hoped. “Dominoes, Lieutenant? What do dominoes have to do with this?”
To my front, Staff Sergeant Boondock heard his cue. “Did I hear our crazy-ass terp mention something about . . . bones?” I started laughing while he pressed the issue. “I sincerely recommend you make that happen, LT. Das Boot needs something to cheer him up after seeing that dead dog. That goofy German still looks like he's going to cry. And it's not like we got anything else going on. Let's chai it up.”
We went back to the Sahwa checkpoint for another game of dominoes and another round of chai. Soon, the events of this day were just another page of chicken scratch in my notepad. There they rested, festooned permanently with the smudged dirt of the desert, earmarked in case I ever needed to care again about that farm and those people and this day.
Into the notepad. It wasn't like there was any other place for it to go.
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
Over the course of our deployment,
only a few events continually stuck with me, keeping me up at night, weighing me down as mental anchors. The Sahwa firefight was one; almost losing Private Hot Wheels in
June was another. Most everything else felt too surreal in memory, and those I buried away to be dealt with at a later date, at a time when I could afford to get lost in reflection and deliberation. The events of this night, though, I couldn't bury, or even pretend to, temporarily or otherwise. They were that fucked up.
We spent the day pulling security on Route Maples for General Petraeus and his entourage so that the Pegasus himself could buy a falafel at the Saba al-Bor market. Immediately after the general left, flying by helicopter back to Baghdad, we moved straight into a night escort for an engineer unit tasked to fill the potholes on Route Lincoln, a key highway that led to Anbar to the west and Camp Taji to the east. The mission was straightforward enoughâwe would surround the engineers in a Stryker diamond and chill out while the concrete dried. The initial set of potholes was at the intersection of Routes Lincoln and Islanders, just south of the Grand Canal, on the northwestern corner of Saba al-Bor. We established our outer cordon security positions, the engineers went to work, and I prepared for a long, quiet night of waiting.