War of the Encyclopaedists (19 page)

The entrance to the dining facility was inlaid with a tiled picture of George H. W. Bush surrounded by an American flag. The confusion of it all struck Montauk as he stepped on Bush's nose. Nobody had bothered changing the flooring because the insult of walking on your enemy's face was lost in translation. He looked at the Charlie guys and wondered if they knew what it signified. Or did they think the mosaic was installed after the invasion by us? Among the civilian contractors, there might be some who got the insult emotionally, like the Iraqis did, but who happily walked on the flag and Bush. Montauk thought of Corderoy.

Dinner was chicken cordon bleu of the middlebrow Southern-US buffet variety, courtesy of Kellogg, Brown, and Root. The buffet line attendants appeared to be Pakistani. The tableware was high-quality disposable. There were six kinds of dessert. There were paper doilies on the table. The Charlie guys made easy conversation, but a sadness descended over Montauk as he ate, the kind of callow but real sadness he used to experience as a teenager when he saw a person eating alone in a restaurant without even a book. He viewed this scene like a museum diorama, perhaps that dusty and curiously flat scene of the Pilgrims meeting the Indians in the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

“You think they think we're fools?” Montauk said. “The Iraqi staff. For walking in dirty boots on that mosaic out there, tramping on our own flag.”

“Probably,” Watts said.

If that was true, if the Iraqi elevator attendant in the lobby—who had worked around Americans for months now—still thought we were fools, then it meant he didn't really understand the freedom we were trying to give the Iraqis. That's what it felt like, walking on that
mosaic: an exercise of freedom. Though Montauk didn't know if he meant freedom with a hipster wink or some other, earlier kind of freedom. The freedom to burn your own flag.

That evening, Montauk closed his eyes and fell into a not quite dream state full of visions of his parents, and of Mani and Corderoy, and of the light moving across the walls of his childhood bedroom as troops around him woke and took up their arms and left into the night, and as others returned, removed their sweat-stained armor and boots, and lay down to sleep or read or gaze up at the ceiling.

21

Montauk used an elaborate sequence of facial movements to pack the Kodiak more deeply between his gums and teeth, then spit a stream of tangy brown fluid into the dust on 14 July Street. He regarded the end of the checkpoint's exit lane, where the last section in a row of T-wall was knocked askew. It looked like some concrete-eating shark had taken a large bite out of it. Bits of rebar poked out of the wound. Tanks. They tended to leave a trail. Montauk watched when they rolled through his checkpoint with the kind of friendly trepidation a rose gardener would feel toward the neighbor's dog.

“Are they driving like idiots, or is this lane actually difficult to get out of?” Montauk said.

“Both,” Olaf said. “The tanks are pretty wide, but they're also being driven by eighteen-year-olds.”

“Why do they even take tanks out into the city? It's not like they can use the main gun.”

“They're tankers, sir. That's what they do.”

They gazed down 14 July Street like Marlboro Men. On the south side were rows of boarded-up storefronts that betrayed small hints of former prosperity, like the chandeliers hung in the unlit display of the furniture shop. There had been no signs of life from within since Montauk had been at the checkpoint, but no one had looted it, either. A little farther down was a ten-foot-tall replica of the Eiffel Tower affixed to the sidewalk, a piece of flair that a realtor might point to when describing
the neighborhood as funky. Montauk considered asking Aladdin about it when he returned. He'd just left to buy a Mountain Dew, his favorite American soda. The decay of the neighborhood surrounding the checkpoint and the uneasiness of its inhabitants gave Montauk a sense of displaced guilt, like that of a suburban environmentalist regarding a landfill.

He spat again. “How busy was this street? Before the invasion,” he asked rhetorically.

“You could ask those guys,” Olaf said, gesturing to a trio of oldsters seated at a plastic table halfway down the block. They wore keffiyehs and looked like they had a shisha set up on the table. Olaf waved, and one of them waved back. “Wanna go say hi?” he asked.

Montauk saw Aladdin returning. He radioed the west gun tower to tell them that the three of them were going a hundred meters down the road to talk to the locals.

“You know these old dudes?” Montauk asked Aladdin.

“Do not worry about them, sih.” Aladdin took a swig of his Mountain Dew, then made a loud purposeful “Ahhhh” and held the bottle up next to his face with two hands, smiling like an actor in a television commercial from the fifties. The sun filtered through the nuclear-green liquid. Montauk couldn't help but chuckle at the goofy translator.

“I'm not worried about them,” he said. “I just want to ask them some questions.”

Aladdin screwed the cap back on with twitchy fingers. “What questions?”

“You know, the kind of questions you ask old-timers. Like what was this neighborhood like thirty years ago?”

Aladdin laughed. “I think you are too late, sih. They are too old to remember yesterday!”

Olaf gave Montauk a skeptical eyebrow.

“Let's find out.” He started walking down the street.

Aladdin's smirk congealed. He hurried after Montauk. “I don't think it is best idea, sih.”

“Aww, c'mon. They look friendly,” Montauk said. They walked the rest of the way in silence, Aladdin at the rear.

Montauk removed his helmet and lifted his ballistic eye protection onto his forehead. This was in direct violation of brigade policy, but
Olaf followed suit. The old-timers sat around a small plastic table; they wore loose white dishdashas and sandals and had steel-wool beards and crazy teeth. A slight breeze made a moving mosaic of the shade cast by the date palm above them. Montauk asked if anyone spoke English and was met with grave head rotations. Olaf cracked an amused smile.

“That's why we've got Aladdin here,” Montauk said. “Can you tell them we'd like to ask a few questions. About this neighborhood. What it was like when they were growing up?”

Aladdin translated, and the oldster with the shortest beard, sitting on the right, said something that had the word
Iraqi
in it, and the other two chortled. The one on the left had the longest beard, which meant he was likely the Chief Oldster. It took all of Montauk's concentration to stay on top of these cultural cues.

“Well, what'd he say?” Montauk asked Aladdin.

“He makes a stupid joke. That's all,” Aladdin said.

The Chief Oldster squinted at Aladdin and muttered a string of phlegmy syllables. Whatever Aladdin said back, it couldn't have been nice, for the Oldster shook his head disapprovingly.

“I'm sorry, sih. I should have said before. I know this man. He is like uncle to me. He says I try to be American. He does not like my job.”

“Why's that?” Montauk asked.

“If it is okay, sih, I meet you at the CP?”

“Sure,” Montauk said. “Just give us a few minutes.”

Montauk watched Aladdin give the oldsters a curt good-bye and walk off.

“Sir,” Olaf said. He nodded toward the oldsters. “They want us to smoke with them.”

The Chief Oldster was offering Olaf the hookah pipe. Why wasn't he offering it to Montauk? “Go ahead,” Montauk said. Olaf took a drag, said, “
Shukran,
” and passed it to Montauk. He inhaled, causing the glass to bubble gently, which sent vibrations back up the hose to the brass mouthpiece. “
Shukran,
” Montauk said, handing the hose back.

The short-bearded wiseacre bent down to a pewter tray on the ground and produced three glasses. He set one in front of the Chief Oldster and placed the two others on the table in front of Montauk and Olaf. Gunshots. A rapid burst. Montauk swung his head in their
direction like a startled bird. Olaf remained impassive, as did the Iraqis, except for Wiseacre, who opened into a yellowed grin. Montauk sensed that he'd somehow made a fool of himself. The black plastic radio handset clipped to his vest broadcast the estimated distance and direction of the small arms fire in the bored voice of Staff Sergeant Jackson. Some jerk shooting the sky with his AK.

The tea was poured slowly, with an anachronistic elegance that somehow did not seem out of place at the small plastic table. Olaf's was filled first, and it was now obvious to Montauk that Wiseacre had gotten their ranks backward. But he didn't understand why.
I

The Chief Oldster gestured invitingly to them, and Montauk lifted his glass. “Cheers,” he said.

“
Allah Boucher,
” said the oldsters.

Wiseacre broke the silence by pointing at Montauk's vest and making a remark. The middle guy said something that made Wiseacre guffaw again. Olaf looked at Montauk, who just shrugged and smiled politely. Were they making fun of him jumping at the gunfire earlier, for wearing Kevlar? How the hell was he supposed to connect with these people?

Montauk looked at his tea glass and marveled at how dainty it seemed compared to the one-and-a-half-liter plastic bottles he was accustomed to drinking from. A small chorus of car horns rose up from beneath the underpass, then quickly died away. Urritia's voice piped up through Montauk's radio, informing him that a vehicle had popped hot on a swab for explosive residue. Montauk and Olaf said polite good-byes, then made their way back to the search lane.

• • •

There were no explosives in that vehicle, though. Nor in the next one that popped hot on the vapor tracer. Nor the next one. It seemed to
Montauk over the next week that about one in twenty vehicles had some kind of explosive residue, and yet so far, none of them had been carrying any kind of explosives. Either the vapor tracer was a piece of shit, or maybe cars just got explosive residue on them by driving around in a bombed-out city like Baghdad. That or Al-Qaeda was rubbing acetone peroxide on the bottoms of random cars. Just to fuck with us.

22

After his deployment was over, when he would have plenty of time to think about it, Montauk would remember urban bomb-attack scenes as a particular kind of tableau. He would see the aftermath of several during his time in Baghdad, and while they were all slightly different, they shared certain characteristics. There was the aroma, which varied depending on what kind of explosive was used and on whether there was any human flesh cooking, but which always had as its main ingredient the scent of burning oil and rubber. There was always broken glass—everywhere. There was always a variety of liquids on the pavement—those soldiers with more gruesome imaginations might think these to be one hundred percent blood and body fluids, but they couldn't possibly, one hoped, all come from people. There was always a crater. There was always steel twisted into aesthetically interesting shapes that were too jagged and complex to be called beautiful. There were usually a few bodies visible, depending on the QRF's reaction time, although Montauk would notice that the bodies remained there longer once people started getting wise to the Anti-Iraqi Forces' tactic of detonating a second bomb after the first one filled the street with emergency vehicles and keening relatives. Finally, there was always an interesting flourish, a little icing on the cake of the bomb scene, something to remember it by. Usually, it consisted of a corpse or body part, like a little baby shoe with a little baby foot still in it. He would later, in bed, imagine for himself a
war-porn video montage of blown-off baby feet, some bare but most encased in a variety of shoe styles, a few buckled-up Mary Janes with frilly socks, the rest in sandals or cheap sneakers.

• • •

Montauk was lying in his cot when the shock wave passed through the walls of the Iraqi Convention Center and over the bunks of his platoon, which was currently designated the Quick Reaction Force for Bravo Company. This meant that if anything major happened in Bravo's AO in the next twenty-four hours, it would be Montauk's men leaping out of their cots. They'd been in Baghdad a few weeks, and it was their third rotation as the Company QRF. Nothing had happened the first two times. That shock wave he'd just felt wasn't nothing. A few feet away in the Tactical Operations Center, the net sprang to life.

Bushmaster Main, OP South, over.
It was Ant radioing from Observation Post South, which was at the top of the Al Rasheed and the highest point in the Green Zone.

The radio squawked as Bravo Company's radio nerd keyed the handset. “Wooo, dude, I heard
that
one. OP South, Bushmaster Main, go ahead.”

Main, South. Smoke plume observed in the vicinity of Palestine Way in Ka
rada. Grid square to follow. Break. Golf Zulu 10498852. Probable VBIED. How copy, over?

Montauk was lacing up his boots and buttoning his uniform blouse in the controlled panic associated with waking up late on the morning of a final exam. He turned to Fields, who was in his cot a few feet away, doing the same. “Fields,” he said, “tell the squad leaders to get their guys moving and report to me. Looks like we're rolling out.”

“Yes, sir.” Fields jolted out of his cot and moved down the row of bunks.

Montauk entered the TOC. The radio monitoring the battalion net came awake. Information was traveling up the chain of command.
OP South, Warhorse Main. Give us a BDA on that VBIED, over
.

Warhorse Main, OP South,
Ant responded.
Looks like it's in one of the larger intersections on Palestine. Lots of black smoke. Too far away
to see much other than that, but I would expect some casualties based on the location and size of blast, over.

Sergeant Jackson found Montauk in the TOC, looking at the satellite map of downtown Baghdad. “Where is it?” he asked, tucking his laces into his boots.

Montauk jabbed a finger at the laminated map on the wall. “10498852, in Karada. VBIED in an intersection. Palestine Way and whatever that street is.”

Staff Sergeant Nguyen strode into the TOC pop-eyed. “Well, that one was either small and close or big and far away.”

“What's at that intersection?” said Jackson. “Some police station or something? Some Shi'ite mosque?”

“Not that I remember,” Montauk said. “I think that's where the big department store is.”

“Shit, AQI nuked the department store? Are we rolling out, sir?” Nguyen asked.

Bushmaster Main, this is Warhorse Six, put your QRF on the radio.
Rad Rod Houston's voice was fat with Texan. Montauk imagined the battalion commander with an unlit cigar in his mouth.
The company radio nerd raised his eyebrows and held the receiver toward Montauk.

Shit, here we go.

“Warhorse Six, Bushmaster QRF, over,” Montauk said.

Listen up, QRF. I need you to get over there and secure that intersection. Wire it off in all directions, take up blocking positions, and facilitate traffic so we can start the medevacs. I've got an engineer platoon heading out there after you, so be prepared to pull your trucks to the east side of that intersection to let them in, over.

“Six, QRF, roger, over.”

QRF, Six . . . have you done this kind of operation before?

“Six, QRF, negative, over.”

QRF, Six, try not to fuck this up.

Montauk turned to Nguyen. “Go spin 'em up.”

“Hooah, sir,” Nguyen said, stomping out of the TOC just as Olaf and the other squad leaders were coming in. Montauk briefed them while Nguyen barked out orders to Rise and Shine and Get It On, and 2nd Platoon came alive like the inside of a shaken wasps' nest.

Montauk pulled the small map of Karada out of his thigh pocket and compared it to the laminated satellite map on the wall. He would lead the convoy in the Millennium Falcon, his preferred Humvee; it wasn't uparmored like the other Humvees—it had just a few scraps of welded-on sheet metal—but it was fast. Should they converge on the intersection from different directions? Or drive straight in as a platoon and disperse from there? Splitting up the platoon made it more vulnerable. But if the intersection was impassable, it might turn the platoon into a clusterfuck-ish parking lot.
Six, QRF, try not to fuck this up.

Montauk looped his Kevlar over his head, gave his vest a quick pat-down, then ran out into the lobby of the Convention Center, his armor and full magazines rubbing rhythmically on his body like some cheap percussion instrument. He threw open the door and burst out into the dry morning heat. All six trucks were lined up and idling, their turret gunners working the bolt carriers back and forth. Montauk yelled for his squad leaders and platoon sergeant, and they fell in around him.

“Okay, listen up,” he yelled at the huddle. “Everybody know where the bomb hit?” They all nodded. “The front three vehicles will follow me east down Palestine directly to the blast site. Nguyen and Arroyo will break off and hold at the traffic circle. It might be difficult to maneuver in the intersection, and I might need you to circle around and join us from the south. We're going to secure the area and block off all entrances with concertina wire. There's probably going to be a shit-ton of onlookers and wailing mothers and shit, and we need to clear them out and get standoff so we can make the intersection safe for EMTs, cops, and the engineer platoon—they're coming behind us to clean up the mess. The enemy's deal is to bomb someplace and then wait till everybody rushes in to help and then hit it again, so make sure your gunners are looking at the roofs and windows for snipers or anyone walking up with a bomb strapped to their chest. Platoon Sergeant, you got anything?”

Olaf shook his head.

“Okay, then, any questions?” A moment of silence. “We did a radio check and everything?”

“Yeah, we're up, sir,” Nguyen said, breaking into a wide grin.

“What? What's so funny?” Montauk turned around to find that Aladdin had snuck up behind him and was standing there giving him a pair of bunny ears, statuesque, waiting to be discovered. Montauk laughed, shaking off his anxiety. It was just a mop-up operation. They'd be fine. “You're with me, Prince Ali. Get in the Falcon.” Aladdin popped a goofy salute, then climbed into the Humvee. Montauk turned back to the huddle. “Okay. Mount up and roll out.”

• • •

The traffic started to snarl up on Palestine Way about five blocks from the smoke plume, and the Millennium Falcon came to a stop. A Volvo in front of them was failing to do a three-point turn between the car in front of it and an abandoned shawarma cart to the right. Thomas was sweating under his Kevlar and laying on the horn. Montauk sat in the commander's seat; Aladdin sat directly behind him. Fields was up top on the fifty, screaming at the poor guy to get the Fuck Out Of The Way. Which seemed overly aggressive for Fields, but he was probably just feeling what Montauk was feeling. They were fucked. They shouldn't have taken Palestine Way.

“Thomas, Jesus. Give the guy some room,” Montauk said.

“Trying to get him to move along, sir,” Thomas said in the kind of overtly calm voice that meant his rage was already blowing gauges. Montauk tried to scan over his left shoulder, but his body armor made anything beyond a forty-five-degree turn impossible. He thought of Keaton's Batman. The heat was an airless blanket. He opened the door and stuck his head out to peer behind him. Debris everywhere. He keyed his hand mike but stopped himself before saying something pissy and nervous. There were probably wounded at site, and they couldn't fucking get there! Montauk took a deep breath. He had to sound collected, even if it was a lie.

“All trucks in my column, this is Two-Six. We're stuck in traffic here, and we need some room to maneuver. Everyone back up and keep enough space between you so we can turn around if we have to. Break. Two-Two, Two-Six.”

Six, Two,
answered Nguyen, who was standing outside of his Hum
vee back at the traffic circle, stretching out the hand set's cord as he strained to see the column.

“Two, Six. Come east on Kaditha and see if we can get to the intersection from the south. Don't get stuck in traffic and stop before you get to the intersection, over.”

• • •

“Shit, man,” Monkey muttered in English as he walked along the part of Palestine Way that could still pass as a sidewalk. He had been a block ahead of Montauk's column when it got stuck in traffic. Oily smoke was beginning to get into his lungs, and he coughed, but he did not stop walking or turn back, the enormous black smoke beckoning with what promised to be a display of awesome devastation; the unpleasantness of the smell itself was a novelty, like the reek of a carton of milk gone incredibly sour, passed around a group of school kids so no one would get out of making a disgusted face.

“Mohammed!” Monkey looked up and saw his uncle Omar holding open a door next to the large glass storefront that advertised Wali's Hair Cuts and Styles. The glass was complexly spidered from the blast. Inside, the jangle of a Khaled music video played on a small TV, a line of Algerian girls in head scarves and tight jeans, the singer lip-­syncing straight into the camera with a prop microphone and a jazz hand. “What are you doing out here?” his uncle asked.

Monkey raised his dark eyebrows and shrugged.

Omar looked up the street toward the smoke plume, then back to the column of American military vehicles snaking slowly toward them though traffic. “Get in here.”

Monkey was distracted by the sight of some American soldiers walking past the storefront; the leader looked like the new LT from the traffic circle checkpoint. Monkey began to holler at them but was almost immediately dragged inside by his uncle.

“You should stay away from the Americans, Mohammed. They don't care about you.”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“A carnival of problems,” muttered the barber, reaching for the clippers.

• • •

Montauk had grabbed three soldiers from his column, plus Aladdin, then set out on foot after Fields had, from his gunner's perch, clued him in to what turned out to be the major source of their mobility problems: two black sedans, a BMW—they were curiously popular in Baghdad—and a cheaper version of a BMW known as an Opel, stopped in the middle of the intersection and blocking the cars behind them from taking a right off Palestine Way. The Opel driver stood next to his car, cell phone to his ear, studiously ignoring the BMW driver, who was yelling into his face. Montauk waved to get the Opel driver's attention, then walked in front of the guy and banged his palm on the Opel's hood. The guy held up his hand and said something that Montauk took to mean “Just a second.”

“No, you gotta go. You have to move your car right now. Right now.” The BMW driver had stopped yelling and had his hands on his hips, looking at Montauk to see if he would make the Opel driver move his car.

“Aladdin, can you talk to him?”

Aladdin spoke to the Opel driver. The guy shook his head, then went back to his phone. “He says he waits for police to fill out accident report,” Aladdin said. “Maybe he thinks Saddam is still in charge. Hah!”

“Fuck this,” Montauk said. He drew his sidearm and aimed it at the guy's head. “You need to move your car. Now.” Apparently, what he'd heard was true: pistols scared Iraqis more than rifles; something about how, in the old regime, Ba'athist officers carried pistols and only officers had the authority to shoot people who pissed them off. The Opel driver hopped back in his car, took a right, and limped down the side street on a flat tire. The traffic started to unsnarl.

“Jesus Christ,” Montauk said as he got back into the Falcon. “Nobody does anything around here unless you shove a gun in their face. Pretty soon I'll have to start shooting people.”

“It's called
menacing,
sir,” Thomas said as he started to move the Falcon forward again.