Read The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit Online
Authors: Richard House
‘Why did they do that?’ At last Maggie was interested.
‘Because they were burning illegal waste. HOSCO have said that they closed the camp. Here it says they walked out.’ Cathy offered the papers to Maggie.
Cathy sat at the kitchen counter and outlined the questions she wanted to ask Rem. Maggie wanted to know what this interest was really about, and the question troubled her. The answer, that this was about making sure that Rem wasn’t messing up his future health, she knew to be only partly true. It’s an occupation, she told herself, a way to organize the day. But this wasn’t quite to the point either.
Nut sat at her feet, satisfaction vibrated through his entire body; he focused completely on her, attentive to every move.
Stacked across the counter, a permanent feature now, were four box folders, each tidily marked: HOSCO/US; HOSCO/Iraq; Burn Pits & Case Examples; ARTICLES. Phyllis, a sharp reader, had made copies of articles from the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, the
New Yorker
; she had transcripts of interviews and CDs of podcasts:
Alive in Baghdad, American Microphone, This American Life, War News Radio
, all of which Cathy now stored.
1. What are you burning? Paper? Plastic? Particle board? Polystyrene? Plywood? Wood? Rubber?
2. What protective clothes do you wear?
3. What type of masks / breathing apparatus do you use?
4. What kind of ash is produced?
5. How large is the particulate matter (PM)?
6. What are the smells? Compare to other smells, e.g., egg, sulphur, rubber, etc.
7. Does the smoke ever fall across the camp?
8. What are the symptoms, long term / short term (inc. shortness of breath, skin problems, asthma, headaches)?
9. What instructions have you received from HOSCO?
Much of this could be discovered through simple questions, nothing too challenging or direct. Below the questions she wrote a second list:
Dioxins
Lead
Cadmium
Formaldehyde
Fungicides
Hydrochloric Acid
Arsenic
If he hesitated she’d get to these, and outline the conditions they caused, to shake out the details.
✩
Kiprowski, Chimeno, Samuels, and Clark worked with Sutler to clear out the Quonset. Rem, a little put out that the men had so readily stepped up to Sutler’s request for assistance (his own response was a curt ‘knock yourself out’). Midway through the morning Samuels found a logbook which he brought to Rem.
Rem sat at his cabin’s door with the logbook open on his lap, and guessed he was supposed to keep some kind of record of the fires: which pits were used, the number of vehicles in each convoy, the contents. He smoked as he read through the book, although smoking lately left a bad taste in his mouth. Tucked into the back page he found a copy of a manifest which listed safety grades with ash measured as Particulate Matter.
Sutler didn’t make sense, seemed out of place:
why this man
, and
why here
? No fan of the British, he found Sutler typically smug and superior. The man’s efficiency also counted against him: who stays fresh and on-message after eighteen hours in transit? Stephen Lawrence Sutler was much too keen.
As the dust threatened to worsen Clark’s cough the men worked carefully, carrying packs of canvas, rolls of tent poles, drums, and boxes, and setting them in front of the Quonset with as little disturbance as they could manage.
Sutler picked through the stores, at what now looked like a HOSCO yard sale, and cut a lanky figure in his tan trousers and white shirt, his hair almost ginger, his skin whiter than crab meat.
Rem watched as Kiprowski and Clark lumbered a large poly-sack out of the garage in a sloppy embrace. Sutler assisted as the men shook the package out of its sleeve, then stepped aside as they opened it out to reveal something like a sail.
Sutler pointed to an area beside the Quonset and said they should set it up here. That way they’d have some shade when they ate.
Between them, over the course of an hour, the men erected the awning. Chimeno supervised, and they stretched the canvas, raised it, secured it, and worked for the first time without argument. One by one the men sloped away, beaten by the heat, leaving Kiprowski and Sutler to drive in the final pegs and tighten the wires.
Rem came to the Quonset in the early afternoon, freshly showered, a towel draped across his head and shoulders to protect from the sun. The fires needed restarting, as sometimes happened; whatever the trucks were bringing this week wouldn’t burn, not even with jet fuel. Sutler had cleared an area to work and set out a table laden with maps, unrolled and weighted with pebbles, along with a shoulder bag, a small black notebook, four books, a selection of pencils, a separate roll of papers, none of which he’d noticed that morning when Sutler had arrived. In five hours the man had laid out his patch. Rem examined the maps but found nothing of interest and was surprised by Kiprowski who sat by himself, half-dozing, snug at the back beside the stack of water bottles. Sunlight from a small window sparked through the plastic containers and cast a webbed path.
‘Not exactly a whole lot to look at.’ Rem leaned over the maps, ducked close. ‘Is this us? Right? I can’t tell.’ Conscious that he’d been caught prying, Rem made conversation for the sake of it. He nosed through the black notebook, no point being shy now. ‘Has he spoken to you about any of this?’
Kiprowski shook his head.
Rem flattened the pages, pointed at a diagram. ‘Any of this make sense to you?’
Kiprowski reluctantly came forward.
The diagram could be the camp, although the details appeared wrong – a group of seven cabins, not eight, with names pencilled beside them in the wrong order. It disturbed Rem to see that the man was collecting information on them. Rem attempted to read Sutler’s slanting script. ‘Any idea what this says?’
‘It’s a list of the buildings in the camp.’
‘So, what’s the map for? He must have drawn this before he arrived?’
Kiprowski didn’t like to guess and couldn’t help, but was pretty sure he’d just drawn it.
‘He hasn’t said anything about what he’s doing?’
Nothing on the desk gave away Sutler’s job. One book of tables marked ‘Quantifying Densities’ and a HOSCO account tablet gave little information. Dissatisfied, Rem stepped away from the table. ‘You’ll let me know when he says something.’
Rem drew the towel back over his head and stood at the open door. Everyone asleep in their cabins. The air vibrated with the drone of air-conditioners; silence, even here, couldn’t be held. One man coughing, the miss-stroke of the generators, the wind catching on wires and buffeting the sides of the cabins; a general restlessness of people lying low.
Sutler walked from the showers in a wayward arc, clearly at ease, a towel and washbag tucked under one arm. He offered an unsmiling hello as he approached.
‘There isn’t anything like a fan, is there?’
‘No, and the power will go off in an hour. We have to conserve fuel.’
Sutler looked about, a little startled. His hair damp. ‘I’ll need to see the camp perimeter. If I can do that today?’
‘Later,’ Rem promised. ‘When it isn’t so hot.’
Sutler nodded without thanks. ‘You took a look?’ He drew Rem back inside the Quonset, pointed to the table and the maps.
‘You draw that?’
‘No. It’s eight years out of date. These maps go back to when Camp Liberty was first set up. See. There used to be a village. Kitrun. When the burn pits were dug what remained of the village was levelled.’ He opened his notebook and tapped his finger on one of his sketches. ‘The marshes started a little east of here. And the land was irrigated, it wasn’t always desert.’ Sutler closed the book and began to roll up the maps. ‘You all seem to be managing with the news?’
Rem thought the statement underhand. ‘News?’
‘HOSCO.’ Sutler half-turned, the drawings gathered in his hand. ‘This.’
‘This?’ Rem didn’t like playing the stooge and he allowed his irritation to show.
‘You’ve come all this way to work at the burn pits and now they’re shutting them down.’
‘And you heard this where?’
‘I read it in the paper coming over. It’s probably why they chose this place.’
‘Chose it for what?’
‘As one of the four potential sites for the Massive.’
Now the man wasn’t making sense.
Done, Sutler excused himself and returned to his cabin, leaving Rem with the notion that he had been lectured and dismissed.
Geezler, again, could not be reached.
✩
Back home, Cathy sat herself at the kitchen table and began writing, by hand, a letter she would later type and send by email from the library.
Dear All,
Please excuse my writing to you all like this. Before you read this I should caution you, and I apologize for any alarm or worry that this email might cause, but I have become aware of some problems to do with the burn pits – I’m sure some of you will know about this already – and some of this information will be difficult and worrying for you to read.
The problem I have is that I need to share information which is going to cause you a great deal of alarm. I have thought hard about what to do, but I can’t in good conscience not notify you now that I know.
So I’ll ask you to read through this – and to take time to consider the content. I’ve copied in web-links (I think I’ve done this right) so that you can look up the information for yourselves, and also, among these, are some other resources that should be able to help. I’d be happy to talk with anyone, although I don’t know much more than what’s included here.
First: there are a number of health risks associated with the burn pits. Some of these are very serious and are currently being documented by Peter Strauss, a lawyer based in Tucson on behalf of a number of returning servicemen and contractors. According to their website, Sue Williams (HOSCO director of personnel and head of human resources) states that the burn pits at Camp Liberty are no longer in use. (If you know otherwise, please let me know as it’s important to document this and get the facts right.)
Second: it is possible that the effects of inhaling and being in close proximity to the fires and smoke will cause damage – just because they have stopped doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem (also if you have information about how the pits are being cleared and how the materials are now being handled, I’d be grateful for it).
Third: and this is by no means a definitive list, the pits have been used to incinerate plastic, polystyrene, metals, hospital waste, army waste, metals, oil-based products, oil and gasoline and jet fuel, mattresses containing treated plastics and rubber (as a point of interest, it’s illegal to burn these here).
Fourth: this is the frightening part. These items, when burned, produce toxic gases and particles. Particles are measured in PM (Particulate Matter). Anything that is smaller than PM2.5 (this would be a regular flake of ash – comparable to a snowflake) can be ingested very easily. The smaller the particle, the more dangerous it is, as it can be breathed in deeper. The chemicals are scary, and include: PCPs (banned), hydrochlorine, benzene, dioxins, cadmium, arsenic. Alongside heavy metals: lead and mercury (from batteries). It’s a serious list.
Five: To some degree the health problems help to indicate what has been burnt. Throat, mouth, and nose problems can be caused by exposure to smoke over any period of time. Dry coughing, numbness anywhere (chest, arms, legs), heart problems (palpitations), headaches, migraines, problems with sight, passing out – all indicate a smaller PM and a bigger problem. This is a crude outline, but if you can look back over your correspondence and see if there is any mention (nosebleeds, headaches, passing out) give me the dates, as far as you know, and the length of time that this lasted.
Please. If you know anything different, or have any information, please send it to me at this address: [email protected]
I hate to send you news which can only make things harder. Remember that most times a headache is simply a headache. But if you are hearing of other problems, then we have to think carefully about what our men have been exposed to, and we need to consider what kind of action to take.
If you have any questions, please use the above email.
Cathy
✩
In the late afternoon Rem drove Sutler around the compound perimeter, and they found most of the fencing gone or in poor condition, the posts leaning forward so that the fence could be easily straddled. In some places there were no signs, or wire, or posts to delimit the camp. On the map the compound ran roughly three miles by one, a panhandle cut by the Beach into the top left corner gave it the same outline as Utah.
While Rem drove with care, the ground changed from pockets of sand to hard shale and the drive took longer than he wanted. Beyond the Beach the land dropped and Sutler agreed that the view was missing something. A strong wind pulled toward them and the horizon gave out to an itchy pink fuzz. Every half-mile Sutler told Rem to stop and he hopped out to hold up a piece of equipment, a compass, as far as Rem could tell, which he kept in a small worn leather pouch. Rem cautioned him about the sun. If the vehicle broke down they’d face a hot walk. It might be late in the day but the sun could still cause trouble.
Sutler’s paleness distressed him, the man wasn’t covered up, and skin that delicate would sear in no time at all. He explained how the sun here cooked you, how you wouldn’t feel it until it was too late, and in that thin shirt the man didn’t stand a chance, but Sutler seemed not to listen.