Read The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit Online
Authors: Richard House
Sutler set the beer on the floor.
‘This whole thing? It doesn’t look like you know anything about cities. Why are you talking with people from HOSCO? What business do you have with Paul Geezler?’
Sutler nodded as if there wasn’t anything to explain. His arrival came down to a simple fact: he had the skills the company needed. Skills and availability. Right place, right time.
‘So how long are you here?’
Sutler didn’t know. ‘If they pick Camp Liberty – and I’m confident they will – I could be here for the duration. I don’t know. If the company has some other notion of what they want me for I could be somewhere else tomorrow. That’s how it works. Until then, I collect the information, work on the timetable and costs, and submit the bids. That, in a nutshell, is what I do.’
‘Why are you talking with Paul Geezler?’
‘I’m talking with HOSCO. He was involved in a minor capacity. You keep mentioning this man. What’s your business with him?’
Rem looked up to the ceiling. ‘Geezler organized some work he had an interest in, and I guess he’s done with it now. I don’t know. We haven’t spoken.’ Rem decided to accept the beer. ‘Next time you have a little chat ask him why I’ve not heard from him.’
Rem opened the beer and drank so that he didn’t have to talk, and gave Sutler the opportunity to leave.
The next morning Rem rose early enough to work on the burn pits. He followed after the trucks and worked side by side with Santo to guide them into place at Burn Pit 3. He asked the drivers if they’d received any instructions about the possible closure and each of them knew nothing. The work orders were coming in, as usual.
Santo worked without talking, seeming to be drowsy or exhausted. Dust washed about them, kicked up as the trucks backed to the pit-edge. The sound, he thought, belonged in a city: the choke of a reversing vehicle, the accompanying steely beep.
Once the trucks were in position, Santo slapped the sides, spoke with the drivers, made sure that they unloaded with care, and it was Santo who set the flare and returned as close as he could to the edge once the fire was burning, a wall of smoke so black and angry it looked like it might suck him in.
He asked Rem if he was all right, and Rem, already walking back, waved a hand over his shoulder. He was all right.
Santo wanted to know what was happening. ‘You believe all this about a city?’
Rem took a weary look at the camp: the tables outside the cabins, the awning straining against the wind, the same dirt that rubbed alongside the Quonset stung his neck and ears. ‘I’ve no opinion.’
‘That’s an opinion.’
Rem stopped walking. ‘OK, you want to know. I think he’s putting us out of work. I think he’s here to shut us down.’
Santo looked up to the cabins, the sky beginning to brighten, the quality of the air becoming thicker. ‘There’s a lot of frustration. Did you speak with your wife?’
Rem started walking again.
‘I’m just asking because she can’t write to everyone like that. You have to speak with her. You have to put everything in order.’ Rem walked a pace or two behind. ‘Fuck, Rem. Sutler isn’t the problem here. He isn’t the problem. Once he has those plans made and those bids in place he’ll be gone. You need to make your own plans and think about what’s best for the people you brought here.’
Rem agreed, Santo had a point. He needed to start making plans so they would know where they were heading.
When he returned to the camp, Rem set about making coffee.
He should contact CIPA. Find out exactly what was going on and confirm these details with HOSCO. Too tired to bother he sat under the awning, put up his feet and refused to move.
With the coffee made a second convoy arrived.
As Pakosta walked past Rem he hissed, ‘I thought we were shut down? Looks like there’s more.’ And he was right, Pakosta counted the trucks as they came through. ‘Twenty-five shit suckers.’
Rem roused Chimeno, Kiprowski, and Samuels.
‘Take them down to Pit 4. We might have to dig 4 out later.’
For a moment Rem thought the men were going to refuse him. Chimeno and Samuels looked to Pakosta, and Pakosta said they wouldn’t work without those masks. Rem waved them toward the Quonset, and told them to go ahead.
Sutler spent a good amount of time at his table writing in a small notebook. Preparation, he said, ensured success, and there were details which had to be sought out and recorded. He hadn’t worked like this since he was a student.
The map, stuck together from separate sheets, took up most of the table, and Sutler hovered carefully over the paper, forefinger tracing the fine lines demarking the existing camp, the shaded areas and zones for development.
‘I’ll be speaking with HOSCO tomorrow,’ Sutler said without looking up. ‘If there’s anything you want me to pass on.’
‘The only thing I need to know is when they intend to shut us down.’
Sutler appeared to hold back from saying something and Rem asked him to speak his mind.
‘Isn’t that a moot point at this stage? Don’t you know that already?’ Sutler leaned against the table. ‘The idea is – they will work for me.’
Rem stood in the dust with his hands on his hips.
‘Once you close the pits they will work for me on the Massive.’
‘I need to hear this from HOSCO.’
‘You are. I’m telling you. I’ve sent requests for money and supplies. I’m waiting on HOSCO and Howell for the final word on budgets.’
‘Perhaps today.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘You’ll let me know?’
‘You’ll be the first.’
✩
The choice: contrive an excuse for missing work – being ill, fainting, anything – and make up her shifts later.
I’m pregnant
, she could say.
I need to see a specialist
. That’s right, start using an unborn child for leverage. Alternatively she could speak honestly with Maggie about her plan to drive to Cleveland.
Maggie would see through her, whatever reason she gave: you’re over-reacting, you should wait, you shouldn’t interfere. Wait and see what happens? A sensible perspective was exactly what she didn’t need.
She called Phyllis at the library and found a sympathetic ear. ‘Ask yourself why they agreed to see you. If everything is normal, if they have nothing to hide, why would they agree to speak with one of their employees’ wives? They’re a business. About as big as it gets. It’s not like they need to be nice. Besides, you want to look them in the eye when you show them what you have.’ Cathy checked through the documents forwarded by
boston_adams
.
‘Have you heard any more from him?’
‘I get about three emails a day now.’
‘More documents?’
‘Mostly HOSCO manifests about shipments, a report yesterday from the EPA.’
‘Why don’t you take him with you? Might be useful to have him along.’
‘I asked, but he’s not –’ she wasn’t sure of the word,
personable
? ‘He’s not big on the chit-chat. He just forwards the documents.’
‘Sounds like you have a whistle-blower.’
‘His son was at Bravo. I think he just wants justice.’
Despite herself Cathy called Maggie and started to explain with an apology, ‘I know how this sounds.’
The office overlooked a parking lot, an unbending canal, a modelled lawn with gravel paths, all new, and beyond it the greased slip of a highway. The office didn’t impress her: stained carpet tiles and mismatched furniture that looked borrowed, an empty feel as if this were somehow a sham, a movie set, although the tiredness of the atmosphere, the piles of paper proved otherwise. She sat opposite Sue Williams,
overseas personnel
on her door, not the title she’d used in her correspondence. Three windows offered a solid block of sky and Cathy thought only about how hard she’d have to push to get that woman, that chair, that self-assembly desk through a plate-glass window.
Sue
had her answers practised: ‘While HOSCO coordinate the projects the responsibility for the health and safety of sub-contracted workers belongs to their employers.’
And: ‘There are no functioning burn pits in Iraq now. All waste is handled through monitored sites and controlled incinerators.’
And: ‘Authority over the monitoring of illegal dumping and burning has been passed on to the Iraqi authorities.’
Cathy sat with her arms folded, happy to inform Sue Williams that whatever nonsense she came up with made no difference to what she knew to be a fact. Her husband and seven other men were out in the desert in southern Iraq burning waste which arrived in trucks marked HOSCO, and their uniforms and protective gear were also marked HOSCO. Which wouldn’t look good in any court or newspaper.
‘Don’t make the mistake,’ she said, leaning forward, ‘of thinking this is about you and me.’ Cathy laid out the manifests sent by
boston_adams
, one by one. SB Alpha. Camp Bravo. ‘You might want to look at the dates. The most recent is from two weeks ago.’
Sue Williams ran her tongue over her teeth, then asked as an aside where Cathy had obtained the documents.
Cathy slid the papers forward. ‘I think a more interesting question would be: how come there are manifests in the first place, when, according to my husband, there are trucks arriving at Camp Liberty without any kind of documentation. You’ll see the waste they were taking to Camp Bravo is now being taken to Camp Liberty. Medical. Plastics. Paint. Batteries containing lead, cadmium, zinc.’
‘I can’t comment on these documents, and I can’t comment on Camp Bravo.’ Sue Williams, to her credit, held Cathy’s gaze. ‘I can show you the papers that record that there are no functioning burn pits in southern Iraq. The facilities that
were
in use are now closed.’
Cathy shook her head. ‘They are in use.’
‘I can assure you that all waste processing in southern Iraq is currently managed by Iraqi firms and businesses. Our facilities are being converted for other use or are in the process of being shut down. If burnings are happening, it’s without our authority or consent.’
‘What about the health concerns?’
‘We’re awaiting rulings on this,’ Sue continued through Cathy’s objection, ‘we have excellent medical facilities in Austin; when these individuals return they will be offered a full screening. We will honour our responsibilities.’
Cathy stopped at a bar. Sat outside with a Diet Pepsi too flat to drink. She’d learned nothing, and failed to profit from the journey. She looked out at the farmland and knew this wasn’t quite the case.
Nut sat in the driver’s seat. Smudges greased the passenger window, and when she came close his expression, a little dumb, a little guilty, reminded her of Rem.
She waited for Roscoe to return from the restroom. In some regards a bad idea to bring him, but he sat in the back with the dog, and kept to himself.
He was eighteen, she couldn’t believe it, just as he’d said. And he worked, on occasion, with the Park District. His aunt was sick and couldn’t be bothered with him, and Cathy had driven by the house intending to have a word with her. Aunt Bea had stood on the porch and looked at the scrubby front yard like she detested it. A woman with emphysema who smoked. Cathy drove on. One look at the house and Aunt Bea and she knew enough about the boy’s life not to ask any questions.
Roscoe. Another detail she would not share with Rem.
✩
Watts woke Rem with a communication from Southern-CIPA.
‘This is from Tom Markland. Some instructions about the security team.’ He held the paper out. ‘He wants to hear that the pits are shut down. He wants confirmation. He thinks we’re working for Sutler now.’
Rem dressed quickly and took the paper outside to read it.
Pakosta, Clark, Chimeno, Santo
, it read, four of the men recently qualified with C3-5 firearm training, were to be picked up at 14:00 and brought to Amrah City where they would accompany the Deputy Administrator to a conference in Amman to work as his security detail.
News had filtered through and Pakosta, Clark, Chimeno, and Santo ambled conspicuously between the Quonset and the cabins.
Chimeno punched the air as Santo read the list out loud.
‘Pakosta said there were two cars stopped on Route 567. We have company. A couple of cars with Kuwaiti plates.’
Santo suggested that they both take a look, and Rem signalled that this wasn’t a problem, his hands smoothly cutting through the air.
‘Tell them Watts is sick or something. He clearly isn’t interested in going.’
Rem stood on the spot long after the vehicles had pulled out, their lights furred and faded along the curve of the road.
Once the security team were dispatched, Watts drove to the camp entrance and found two cars pulled off the road, shabby and dust-caked – a small group sat in them looking hot and quarrelsome like any family that needed a break during a long drive.
‘They had a tarp laid out,’ he reported back. ‘Four men, three women, a girl of four or five. Kuwaiti plates.’
Wanting to know how much of a threat these visitors might be, Rem decided to check them out.
‘Call Amrah,’ Watts suggested, ‘have one of those Chinooks blow them back to the Gulf.’
Rem asked Sutler if he’d brought protective gear.
‘I’ve a jacket with panels, a helmet, it’s pretty standard.’
‘I’d like to borrow it.’
‘I was hoping I could come with you.’
They dressed in their cabins then met outside Watts’. Rem helped Kiprowski tie the straps that held together the chest and back flaps. Kiprowski shook a little, an edge of nervousness or too much coffee, and Rem regretted not properly considering this jaunt: he didn’t want Kiprowski along. Kiprowski, and Rem, dressed in an odd assemblage of worn kit, looked end-of-credit, the characters left standing, and Rem badly wanted to tell Kiprowski that his family had a specific word for ill-advised ventures such as this: ‘
jammer
’. Sutler wore new kit with shiny black shoulder pads, a smart jacket with quilted pleats, more suited for fencing than blast and bullet protection.