Youngblood (15 page)

Desperate to initiate the assault, Chiu picked up a large stick at his side and stood up, rifle in his other hand. Before the Vein could snatch him back down, Chiu pointed the stick in the direction of the prisoners' march and unleashed a raw scream, not a semblance of hesitation in his voice:

“CHAARRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEE!”

Chiu ran north, fireteams following, unsure of what else to do. Some began yelling themselves, and a bizarre mix of Rebel yells and howling filled the woods. First dismayed, then frightened by the voices and bodies coming their way, enemy and prisoner alike fled, eager to return to a world of power naps and stale beer. We followed, running with a child's delight we believed long ago shed, only to find that the advances of puberty and irony hadn't killed it off after all.

Chiu's Charge, though never again attempted and often derided, went down in the annals of university history. Sergeant Miller made no mention of it at physical training the next day. In the years after, though, Chiu swore the Vein flashed him another toothy sneer that morning. “Even he,” Chiu told us, “recognized my tactical genius.”

A week after his unit arrived to Afghanistan, Chiu was nearly killed in a mortar attack south of Kandahar. A round crashed through the roof of a housing trailer, carving a master sergeant in half. Shrapnel from the explosion cut through Chiu's upper leg, almost severing a major artery. Medics stabilized him, but not quickly enough to save the leg. A smaller piece of shrapnel cut off a chunk of his left ear, leaving him partially deaf.

In my stead, my brother visited Chiu at the hospital. A general had already come by and awarded Chiu his Purple Heart, something he'd taken to using as a bookmark for his robot romance novels. He seemed in good spirits, given the circumstances, and Will asked about old college stories to keep the mood light. One of the first tales my brother heard was Chiu's Charge.

“I never figured out what the right answer to that situation was,” Chiu said after finishing the story, shaking his head. “Guess it doesn't matter now, does it?”

T
he joint part of the joint security station arrived the morning after Ortiz's service: twenty
jundi
s, all wearing the baked chocolate chip uniform of the Iraqi Army. The change had to be done to maintain a permanent armed presence in Ashuriyah, something the town council had requested from Captain Vrettos, who had to clear it with the Big Man, who had to clear it with the brigade commander, who had to clear it with the division commander, who had to clear it with the Multi-National Force–Iraq commander, who had said yes.

They moved into the stale, dusty rooms of the first floor, to the fury of nearly everyone.

“Everyone in my fireteam is sleeping with one eye fucking open,” Dominguez said.

“I'm gonna smell like camel jockey now,” Batule said.

“I can't believe they're making us live with sand niggers,” Snoop said.

“My men are as bothered as yours,” Saif, their platoon leader, said. “As officers, we must lead by example.”

I patted Dominguez on the back and told Batule to keep his mouth shut and had some of the black soldiers explain to Snoop the irony of his slur, but I hadn't known how to respond to the Iraqi platoon leader. During previous interactions, Saif hadn't revealed any hint of his fluency in English, the result of twelve years of tutoring with an uncle who'd once lived in Toronto.

“Before, I watched and learned,” he said. He was nearly as tall as me and twice as wide. Though he was only in his late twenties, the stresses of war, combat helmets, and a young daughter had left his hair a black horseshoe. He maintained a trim mustache and couldn't understand why American infantry officers weren't supposed to grow one, since
every culture but ours knew that mustaches and masculinity were intrinsically linked. “I've seen many Americans come and go. Your units all work differently from each other.”

I asked what else he'd learned.

“For one, there is a difference between allies and partners. Allies do their own thing. Partners work together. For two, Americans have good hearts, but get impatient when they don't sleep enough.” An eddy of cigarette smoke and yellow molars whirled up at me. “Especially young
molazim
s far from home for the first time.”

I laughed and accepted his invitation for a planning session over chai the following evening.

The two people whom I'd believed would be most distressed by the
jundi
s in the outpost didn't react the way I thought they would. Alia refused to answer Snoop's questions about how it affected her side business. And Chambers stressed to our soldiers that it meant progress in the greater mission.

“Appreciate you pretending for the guys,” I said, after walking into his lecture in the joes' room. “Them bitching about it isn't going to change anything.”

“I meant it, Lieutenant,” he said. “Every word. I don't plan on coming back here. Anything that brings that closer to reality is fucking worth it.”

Just because he said he meant it didn't mean I believed him. We donned our body armor together in silence, me groaning as the armor pressed down on my shoulder blades, him grunting as he velcroed his torso straps. He caught me staring at his strange, wristless hands, though he probably thought I'd been looking at the skull tattoos.

Downstairs, we passed Alia mopping the red-and-white tiles of the foyer. She kept her head bowed, serene as a church bell.

•  •  •

The June heat was grave. First and second squad stood near the clearing barrels, as did three of Saif's men. Snoop played Game Boy to the side,
a black ski mask pulled over his face and bunched under his helmet. The brigade had mandated that terps weren't allowed to wear masks on patrols, but Captain Vrettos had turned a blind eye to it, leaving it up to the translators themselves. Since the sniper attack, Snoop hadn't gone outside without the mask. He said Jaish al-Mahdi was hunting him, in both Ashuriyah and the Sudanese neighborhood in Baghdad where his family lived. Without Captain Vrettos' relaxed policy, he swore he would already have quit.

I studied the crater-eyed faces in American uniforms. A few wore unauthorized patches of a dark scorpion where the Twenty-Fifth's lightning bolt should've been. Everyone called us the scorpion platoon now, even the commander, though I'd insisted on keeping the Hotspur call sign. Many of the soldiers were familiar, but some were not, a result of Chambers' platoon trades.

We had . . . six new soldiers? I wondered. Maybe seven. I needed to ask for an updated platoon roster. I thought of Ortiz and Alphabet and tried to form their faces out of the scattered shards of memory but could put together only parts of their portraits, which were different and wrong somehow.

“Gather 'round, killers. Snoop, turn off the game and translate for the
jundi
s.”

“Okay, LT.”

“Today we're collecting info on Azhar, better known as Dead Tooth.” I looked for a familiar face and found Washington, fresh from explaining sand niggers to Snoop. “Corporal W, what can you tell us about Dead Tooth?”

“He's got a dead tooth,” Washington said, earning a few laughs. Satisfied, he continued. “Youngblood punk using his daddy's rifle.”

Chambers' pet phrase coming out of my soldier's mouth irritated me, but I kept it to myself. I asked who Dead Tooth was aligned with.

“Al-Qaeda,” Washington said. “At least he says that. Probably just a pretender.”

As soon as battalion had sent a photograph of the new insurgent leader, I'd
recognized the younger cousin who'd picked up his family's
fasil
payment in the spring. Same long face, same thin mustache, same brown, crooked teeth filling his mouth. Captain Vrettos had sighed deeply when I'd mentioned the history, then charged our platoon with capturing him because of my “superb diplomatic skills.”

“Reports say he's been hiding around the Sunni Strip, in the northwest. Write this down, guys.” I stopped for a beat before continuing. “That's where we're going. The mosque blocks.”

“Fobbits got nothing else?” Chambers asked from the back. His voice had acid in it. “Why have an intel shop if they're only gonna tell us what we already know?”

“Above my pay grade,” I said. “Let's focus on what we can control.” I finished the patrol brief, reminding them that Dead Tooth was wanted in connection with the increase in IED attacks. After asking if there were any questions, I paused. I hated this part of the combat ritual. “Hotspur, you know the deal. Be the scorpion,” I said.

“Be the scorpion!” they echoed.

We locked and loaded and filed to the front gate, Dominguez walking point yet again, zip cuffs dangling from his vest like a necklace of plastic ears. Another platoon's soldiers occupied the Humvee and sentry shack, a wigwam of ammo crates and sandbags. Some of the guys had wanted to name the shack after Alphabet, but it hadn't taken.

American soldiers pushed into the unknown once more. We moved with edge, adrenaline juicing our blood, a hyperconsciousness the civilized world could never replicate. If hajj was going to get any of us, he'd have to earn it. There would be no more shots in the dark on the unsuspecting. Over the past few weeks I'd grown proud of what we'd once considered routine. A platoon of infantrymen, young, silly, fierce men from the country and the ghettos, marching into the outposts of hell because no one else would. And I went with them. They'd proven themselves now that things mattered. More than anything, I needed to prove myself worthy of being their lieutenant. Their LT.

A storm brewed as we pushed west. The trash-strewn streets were
empty save for dust cyclones spinning at corners like little orange pinwheels. Most Iraqis stayed in the shade during the cruel afternoons, but the storekeepers and porch denizens usually remained firm. Even they had fled the elements today. As we walked, Ashuriyah turned into a biblical van Gogh, the wind painting everything it touched in dizzy strokes of churning earth.

“Simoom season,” Snoop said.

“What's that?” I asked, wiping dirt from my lenses.

“The poison wind.”

As difficult a time as I was having staying vertical, our interpreter found it impossible. He had one of those angular, bony bodies that only looked natural leaning on something. Wobbling around with his crooked mask and a plastic rifle tucked under an elbow, he resembled a hungover bank robber. Batule, now the radioman, shook his head at our terp and laughed. I smiled and tapped Snoop lightly on the helmet.

We shifted north into the mosque blocks. A small high school building made of granite lay at the intersection. Closed for the summer, chains wrapped around its gate like a metal python, rust gnawing away at the padlock. Big blocks of spray paint covered the gate and parallel walls.

“Jaish al-Mahdi graffiti,” Snoop said. “Telling young Shi'as to defend their homes and families.”

We crossed through a long thistle meadow. The houses to the east were dilapidated clay mounds, but the ones to our west, nearer to the great mosque, were made of sun-dried brick and sported tall, spiked gates. Dark bullet scars marked the walls of both neighborhoods.

Halfway through the meadow, I stepped into a puddle of mud hidden by weeds, turning my tan boots the color of ground coffee.

“Watch your step,” I told the soldier behind me. It was Ibrahim, one of the new guys Chambers had traded for. He had a reputation as a kiss-ass, but he'd been quiet and dependable with us, if not entirely self-motivated.

“How are things?” I asked. “Must be weird switching.”

“Good, sir.”
He pushed a pair of army-issued glasses up the bridge of his nose, the type of chunky, plastic-rimmed lenses worn by hipsters in Brooklyn. “I'm enjoying the new start.”

He walked tall but with the type of shiftlessness large men had when they'd never gotten used to their size. He seemed soft but considerate, and asked about my feet. I said they didn't blister anymore, they'd finally hardened, though I left out my daily moleskin and baby powder treatment. I remembered a conversation from months before, in a leadership meeting, and asked if he'd had trouble with his old platoon because of his religion.

“Kind of. But it wasn't because I'm Muslim. Some of the guys were always trying to get me to translate, but I don't speak Arabic. I mean, I'm from Buffalo.”

There went my next question. It would've been nice to have another fluent speaker to practice with. I asked how he felt about Hotspur. He said things were fine. His team leader was Dominguez, so I trusted they were. Then he said he was thankful Staff Sergeant Chambers had intervened on his behalf. I wasn't so sure about that part. I told him to come see me if anything came up, and pushed forward in the formation.

We emerged from the meadow onto a yellow wedged avenue known as the Sunni Strip, running east–west and connecting two larger roads. Even the Iraqis didn't know how a pocket of Sunnis had come to settle in this part of Ashuriyah, so near the Shi'a mosque, so far from their larger enclaves in the south of town and the villages out west. During the sectarian wars, the area had been ground zero for local terror, complete with kidnappings, gang rapes, and a torture house where a medieval rack was recovered. Somehow, some way, the Sunni Strip had held. To the northwest, a mile away, the minaret tower loomed through the orange haze, spirals of stone crested by an Ottoman dome older than the flag on my shoulder. To the northeast, I could just make out the stone arch that served as both entry and exit to Ashuriyah.

Cypress trees scattered around the courtyards swayed to nature's will.
All three dozen adobe homes on the Sunni Strip were new, a gift from the powerful Tamimi tribe and supposedly subsidized by the Iraqi parliament. Sahwa checkpoints marked both sides of the Strip, and I walked to the nearer one, where a black Land Rover with tinted windows was parked. My soldiers and the
jundi
s found security positions, taking knees next to cars and lying down in small depressions. Batule loped behind me, a radio strapped to his back like a green bullseye. Before I reached the checkpoint, a rear door of the Land Rover opened and there was Fat Mukhtar, arms wide, hands formed into plump peace signs.