Youngblood (11 page)

“Keep a scorpion as a pet?” Chambers yelled behind him. “Do I look crazy?”

He tossed the scorpion, cup and all, over the gate and into the desert. Some of the men kept grumbling, but it'd been done. There was nothing left to do but search for a new contender, if they cared to.

I lingered at the burn pit for an hour. Soldiers drifted into the outpost two or three at a time, calling each other youngbloods, telling one another to “be the scorpion.” Only Alphabet remained. Perhaps sensing my mood, he stayed quiet. I coughed my way through the first cigarette and then asked for another. As I watched the fire smolder into loose petals of ash, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd just lost something important, something that mattered, even if it was just a pretense of that something.

I pulled an assault glove from a cargo pocket and picked up the spider from the ring, holding it in front of me. A thick, green jelly oozed from the hole in its eye.

“It thought it was tougher than it was,” Alphabet said, walking close to study the carcass himself. “Tricked us into thinking that, too.”

I tossed the camel spider into the burn pit.

The desert seemed still, placid. I spat onto the ground and tried to sound ironic.

“Insha'Allah,” I said.

“Yeah,” Alphabet said. “Something like that.”

S
noop, I want to meet with Alia. How much for thirty minutes?”

“I thought you didn't do that.” He looked at me like I'd disappointed him in some profound way.

I dismissed him with a wave of the hand. “Don't worry about that. How much?”

He tapped at his knee, seemingly hesitant to upset the delicate laws of the outpost's ecosystem. He was right, of course. Officers weren't supposed to ask for the cleaning woman.

“Just this once,” I said. “No one will know.”

“Forty dollars. No dinars.”

“Set it up. And Snoop? I'm going to need you there.”

He tilted his head to the side, then shrugged. “If you want. That costs double. But no gay freaky-freaky, okay?”

Two hours later, after explaining to Snoop exactly why he was needed there, we stood face-to-face with Alia in a town council office downstairs. Everything was taupe-colored, the carpet marred by a deep stain the shape of Wisconsin, the walls adorned by a small portrait of a long-dead mayor. Three electric lamps in need of dusting hung from the ceiling, giving the room a bright golden glow.

Alia didn't present herself as an exotic jezebel selling her body for profit; short, chubby, and dressed in a black
abaya
and head scarf, she just looked like someone trying to get by. She removed her veil, and I recognized the bags and wrinkles of a hard life. There was a coldness to her face. She was wearing perfume that smelled like a mixture of honeysuckle and kerosene. I gestured for her to join us at the rickety conference table, and, after some coaxing by Snoop, she did.

“Snoop, explain to her that she's not here for . . . sex.” I took a deep
breath and looked at the locked door. I'd never spoken to a prostitute before. “Tell her we need to discuss something.”

“She wants to know if you still pay for time.”

“Of course.” I slid across two American twenties I'd gotten from a Camp Independence ATM. “Tell her she'll get more if she answers thoroughly.”

Snoop crinkled his eyebrows in confusion.

“Good. She gets more money if she answers good.”

“Ah.”

Snooped conveyed the message and then signaled to me that she understood.

“I want to know about an American soldier named Rios,” I said. “The Shaba.”

She raised her chin, curious chestnut eyes meeting mine. I dropped my gaze to the concrete floor, my cheeks flushing from the intensity of her stare. When I looked back up, she wore a sad smile.

“He was a wonderful man,” Snoop translated, matching the soft tone of her voice. “The best American to come to Ashuriyah.”

“Why? What was so great about him?”

Snoop gave me her answer. “He was a true
habibi
to Iraqis. He wanted to help and gave all good people moneys, like teachers and storekeepers. Other Americans cared about certain Iraqis, but he cared for all of them. She say it's because he wanted to be one of them.”

“How's that?”

“She say this is a dangerous topic, LT. She say she needs more to talk about Shaba.”

I slid a ten across the table. It stayed there for a few seconds before she grabbed it with long, elegant fingers that seemed to belong to another body. Her eyes remained on the table.

“He wanted to be one of who?” I asked. “The Sunnis? Shi'as?”

While Snoop questioned Alia, I studied her face. She wasn't beautiful by any stretch of the imagination, but under the worn skin was a round, intelligent face made up with dabs of green eye shadow and a
subtle blush. You could also tell she plucked her eyebrows—not a common practice for women in Ashuriyah. Also, she had pouty, bulging lips that could certainly do what Hog had said they did.

A whiff of perfume filled my nose, and to my dismay, the humblest beginnings of an erection stirred in my groin. My eyes opened wide and my cheeks flushed again and I scrunched my legs together, which made things worse. I looked at my boots and thought about cold water and basketball statistics and medical reports of soldiers coming down with the clap and—

“LT Jack? You hear me?”

“Sorry, man. Say that again.”

“She say if Shaba didn't die, he would've desert-ed the American army and moved to Iraq. Is that possible? Or just crazy bitch talk?”

I wasn't yet sure, but it was something.

I continued, and began thumbing the beads on my bracelet. “I understand that Shaba was a great soldier, that he spoke Arabic and caught bad guys and brought peace here,” I said. “But what can you tell me about the murder of a local when he was here? By American soldiers.”

Snoop translated. She spoke. Snoop groaned. “Any talk of murder costs more, LT. She is running a swindle! I do not think you should give her more.”

I slapped a five on the table. She didn't respond. I slapped a second five on the table. Snoop cursed under his breath. Alia nodded this time and slid the two bills off the table and into her chest. Something about her just then, the combination of an arched eyebrow and the faintest trace of a smile, suggested a guile I hadn't recognized before. A second later, it was gone, and she was just a cleaning woman with a sordid side business again.

“Who was murdered?” I asked.

She answered, but Snoop shot back in Arabic, his voice assuming a sharper edge than usual. She replied in turn, her voice measured. Then he barked a laugh and shook his head in disgust. “Lots of people, she say.
This was a bad place a couple years ago. She needs more details from you, then maybe she can remember.” Snoop faced me, lowering his voice. “LT, I don't know if she knows what you want, but it will take too much moneys to find out. Just my opine-ion.”

We turned back to Alia, who watched us with her forehead slanted down, eyes straight and hawk-like. I decided I agreed with Snoop.

I cupped a palm and whispered to him: “Think she understands English?”

“Maybe,” he whispered back. “She's smarter than I think before.”

I took a swig of Rip It, and my right leg began to twitch. I tried to hold it in place with my hand, which only resulted in it slowing its tempo. What a world, I thought, turning the beads of my bracelet again. So much for the hooker with a heart of gold.

“Want to know why Shaba wished to move here?” Snoop asked. “That sounded important, maybe.”

“Ask away.” Perhaps I just need to get fired, I thought. Or quit. Let Chambers win. The staff lieutenants had a pretty nice life on Camp Independence. Hot showers. Steady meals. Air force females at the swimming pool. That was one of the good things about the military: they kept paying you whether you worked hard for it or not.

And leave my men in the charge of a fucking psychopath? I thought. Or leave Iraq without my Combat Infantryman Badge? Fuck that.

“LT? She say Shaba wished to stay for a beautiful woman. Rana, the only daughter of a powerful Sunni sheik. Shaba was supposed to marry her.”

“How
Romeo and Juliet
of them,” I said. “How does Alia know that?”

“She won't say. Which means more moneys. She did say that Shaba and Rana was a big Ashuriyah secret, even after he died.” He sighed deeply. “That's how Arabs are. All feelings.”

“How
did
Shaba die?” I asked. “And did it have anything to do with that murder I mentioned?”

Before Snoop could translate back to me, Alia raised her hands up and pantomimed a rifle, squeezing the trigger with her back fingers.

“Like anyone else in Iraq,” Snoop said. “By the gun.”

“You are one cunning lady,” I said. She stared back vacantly. “She remember Chambers?”

“No. All American army men look the same to her, except the black ones. For more moneys, she will tell the whole story of Shaba and Rana. She thinks you would like to hear it. But it's a long one.”

“I'm sure it is.” A twitch in my temple started up, complementing the one in my leg. I had only five dollars left, and I remembered what Will had taught me about gambling once: know when to walk away. I slid over the last bill and told her to stay quiet about our meeting.

“Al-ways,” she said in strained English, clasping her hands and bowing her head.

I was already in the doorway when Snoop called after me.

“LT? She wishes to know why you kept playing with your bracelet during the meeting. She asks if it's special.”

I spun around quickly, like a dancer. The two of them had risen from the table, and while Snoop's face was lit with interest, Alia's remained fixed on the ground.

“Nothing like that,” I said. “Just something to do.”

It took a lot of resolve not to slam the door behind me.

C
aptain Vrettos went to Camp Independence that evening for a meeting. His patrol left a little after dusk. I forced myself to wait ten minutes and then walked across the outpost to dig through the files in his room.

I looked in at the command post first. The TV was on, a ragtag, rebellious police squad discussing how to bring down a mighty drug ring. The pulse in my neck felt like a giant's steps, but none of the guys on duty seemed to notice. All they cared about was the television screen. I backed across the empty hallway to the commander's room, trying to look natural.

A Master Lock held the door fast. Captain Vrettos was a bit of a paranoiac, always demanding the corner seat, asking if his name had been mentioned in gatherings he missed. I figured it had something to do with the brutality of his first deployment to Samarra, or the whispers about his “alternative lifestyle” back home. Regardless, he'd shared the number combo with the company officers in case of emergency.

I doubted this met his definition, but it met mine.

Dank and cluttered, the room resembled an opium den as much as it did the headquarters of a military commander. Maps of Iraq and Ashuriyah covered part of the gray Sheetrock walls; the rest was swathed in dirty uniforms, undershirts, and two woodland camo ponchos on hooks. A Rod Stewart poster from a 1992 concert in Berlin hung over the corner bed, a green cot with an orthopedic pillow and a poncho liner bunched together. The sandbagged window let nothing in; the only light came from a desk lamp that made Rod's feathered yellow mullet gleam.

“Christ, sir,” I said. “No wonder you're grumpy all the time.”

I turned to the steel desk at the foot of Captain Vrettos' cot. During
planning sessions, he'd pointed to the filing cabinets and complained about the backlog. Our outpost had been established in 2004 and every unit rotating home left junk for its replacement to sift through: intel reports, promotion and award packets, vehicle manifests, et cetera. After seven years, that junk had piled up. Some of us had suggested destroying it all, but Captain Vrettos had said no, for fear of throwing away something higher might request. So the backlog remained, our own company adding to its annals daily.

In one of the cabinets, somewhere in the paper mines, I hoped to find a nugget about Rios or the dead local or something—anything—that would rid me of Chambers. His sermon after the goat roast had stuck with me, and though I didn't understand the dark thoughts it'd filled me with, I knew I didn't like them.

It was slow going, especially when I got to the spreadsheets. I'd never been mistaken for a patient man, and avoiding file cabinets was one of the reasons I'd joined the army to begin with. My pulse eased, but the nerves stayed. What if the commander came back early? What if one of the soldiers noticed the open lock? What if Chambers went looking for me?

Two and a half hours after breaking in, I checked my watch. The commander's patrol would be back in an hour or so. My eyes ached and my head swam slowly, like a goldfish. Hundreds of folders and papers surrounded me in haphazard piles I'd failed to keep organized. Other than a 2008 investigation into a lieutenant pocketing funds intended for local business grants, I'd found nothing of note.

I fought off quitting one more time and reached into the back of a new cabinet pocket, pulling out a stack of manila folders. Most were filled with equipment inventories stamped with First Cav unit designators. Near the bottom of the stack was a thin, cream-colored folder labeled “Fumble Recovery.” Three typed sworn statements slid out, all from the spring of 2006. Two were xeroxed copies, while the third was smudged with dirt and had been folded in half. Rios' name was sprinkled throughout each.

“Here we go,” I said.

“Hotspur Six.” My body went rigid. I hadn't expected a response.

I was fucked. Done for. Caught red-handed snooping through my commander's room. How hadn't I heard Captain Vrettos come in? I put my hands up like I'd seen meth addicts do on television, stood up, and turned around to face my fate.