Youngblood (20 page)

I followed Batule's finger to the square hole where a dark round had lodged into a concrete block—head level, right behind where I'd been standing.

I exposed myself, I thought. Made myself a target.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” The voice came from the front side of the Stryker. It was assured and singed, like the desert itself.

“Washington, take the two fireteams and clear that building. I doubt anything's alive in there, but make fucking sure,” Chambers continued.

The gunfire had tapered off to scattered shots in the far distance, and two tanks rolled back south like a pair of cantering steeds. One of their gunners stood out of his hatch and waved at us. I moved around the back side of the Stryker and stood next to Chambers. His breaths were deep, but nothing else suggested unease. His back was straight, his shoulders cocked, his bearing pleased. He tapped my helmet.

“All right, Lieutenant? Gotta be smarter about grabbing the radio. Marks you as an officer. They know our procedures better than we do.”

“Sergeant, I . . .” I took off my right glove and put out my hand. “Thank you.”

I thought for sure he was going to say,
I got you, youngblood.
But he didn't, and I was thankful for that. He just smiled, all tobacco-stained overbite, and took my hand. Then he winked.

After the guys cleared the building, I walked upstairs to look at the enemy. There were four of them, teenage scarecrows made of dirt, all torn to bloody straw. The one we decided was my sniper had brain
matter spilling out of his skull, a white, slick jelly. Another cradled an AK-47 in his arms.

Hog came up, too, and vomited in a corner. Leaders have to deal with things like this later, I told myself. So I put those thoughts into a compartment of the mind and shut it tight and tapped at the floor and asked how long it would take the owners to mop up the jelly. Not long, came the reply. It's not very sticky.

The next hour was spent piecing together why and how. The Iraqi Army said a group of Sahwa started firing at them while they were responding to the mortars. A tribal dispute, they claimed. The Sahwa said the Iraqi Army started firing at them while they were responding to the same mortars. A Shi'a-Sunni dispute, they claimed. Both groups said men dressed in black who appeared in the middle of the firefight were the ones who shot at us. “Jaish al-Rashideen,” the IA said. “Jaish al-Mahdi,” the Sahwa said.

“You know how they are.”

“You know how they are.”

I knew how they were. But still, I thought. None of the dead boys had been wearing black.

W
ashington got a medal for valor under enemy fire. Dominguez got a medal for valor under enemy fire. I got a medal for valor under enemy fire that was really for being an officer under enemy fire. Chambers got a medal for saving the life of an officer under enemy fire.

We drove to Camp Independence for the ceremony. It was held in a quad of yellow grass behind headquarters. Old Glory and the battalion flag hung from a pole in the quad center, flapping indolently under light clouds. Battalion staff walked through the ranks, shaking the men's hands. The soldiers saluted their faces and laughed at their backs, calling them fobbits and rear-echelon motherfuckers, holding the ethical high ground of the grunt because it was all they had.

Meanwhile, I watched Sergeant Chambers and his intel girlfriend, Sergeant Griffin, talk in excited whispers. They'd snuck behind a storage trailer where they thought no one could see them. She smiled and squeezed his hand, and while he didn't smile, he did squeeze her hand back.

The ceremony was short and mundane. The Big Man called us to attention and told us we'd lived up to the scorpion name. “This is what Clear-Hold-Build is all about,” he said. Then he gave a speech about honor and freedom and wished us a happy Fourth of July. He concluded by reading a passage from the Bible, Numbers 31:

Every thing that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the fire, and it shall be clean: nevertheless it shall be purified with the water of separation: and all that abideth not the fire ye shall make go through the water.

And ye shall wash your clothes on the seventh day, and ye shall be clean, and afterward ye shall come into the camp.

Being a Gospels man, I wasn't sure what to make of that. The Yahweh of the Old Testament always seemed like a petulant maniac to me, though the selected passage didn't sound so bad. It sure fired up the Big Man, who finished the reading by pounding a fist into his palm and saying, “Now you're in camp! And you're staying here, for the night at least.”

He expected the soldiers to cheer, and when they didn't, he stopped talking and started pinning on medals. He should've known the last thing my men wanted was to stay at Camp Independence. We'd gone feral. It was no place for us.

When the Big Man got to me, he said he'd always known I had it in me and that I'd lived up to my brother's name. He thanked me for my service to country, and I saluted. I'd never hated another man more.

Afterward, soldiers milled around in groups. I spotted Sergeant Griffin standing underneath a building ledge, and walked over to her. “We're all really excited for you guys,” she said, beads of clear sweat rolling down her face. “Everyone thinks you're one of the best platoon leaders in the whole battalion, even the brigade now. You did great out there.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Couldn't have done it without my platoon sergeant. Wouldn't even be here without him.”

She nodded knowingly. We spent the next five minutes talking about her son, who'd just graduated kindergarten back in Hawaii. She was very proud of him.

In the middle of the yellow grass, the Big Man yelled at Captain Vrettos for not making the violence go away in Ashuriyah. It was fucking things up all over, from Baghdad to DC. It was awkward, considering everyone in the quad could hear, so I dismissed the platoon and told them to behave themselves and not get used to the luxuries of base life.

The confusion on their faces said I didn't need to worry about that.

We'd been assigned to the temporary living quarters on the other side of the base, a large tent with cots. I began walking that way, not sure what I wanted to do with my freedom, but certain I wanted to be somewhere else while doing it.

Ibrahim caught me at the edge of the yellow grass and said the intel officer wanted to see me. I asked what he had planned for the day.

“They got Skype here, so I'll call my parents,” he said. “And tonight is Salsa Night at the club—all the fobbits go, it's supposed to be crazy. Me and the guys are gonna give the females some scorpion dick!”

I wasn't sure what that meant exactly, but wished him luck.

•  •  •

I walked across the quad to the intelligence office, a long, low-roofed building made of concrete. It was topped with a row of satellite dishes and barricaded with wire mesh. Like all the headquarters buildings, chipping paint of crossed rifles and infantry blue trim adorned its walls. A dull American flag sticker marked the doorway like a heliograph, though the stripes had been blanched pink and gray in the sun. A corner of the blue peeled out, and I ripped at it, taking a handful of stars inside with me.

The din of keyboards and laser printers came from every direction, multicolored PowerPoint slides and diagrams of insurgent cells covering the walls. Despite the yellow sunshine coming through the windows, every light in the room blasted bright. I posted myself in front of a corner air conditioner, lifting my uniform top to bathe in air. I heard voices complaining, but didn't move.

The battalion's wanted list lay on a corkboard above, ten insurgents who operated as far south as the Baghdad gate, as far east as the Tigris, as far north as the canal, and as far west as Anbar. Most of the names and faces were unfamiliar, other companies' banes, but the gaping face of Dead Tooth had been pinned on the top row with the words
WHEREABOUTS: UNKNOWN
written underneath. Scanning the rest of the list, I double-taked near the bottom. A black-and-white mug shot of Haitham, his straw hair pushed back and sticking up like an electrocuted cartoon, sat above an index card with the word
CLERIC
written on it. Stupid fobbits, I thought. How could they mistake a source for the sniper?

“Happy America Day, Lieutenant Porter.” I looked across the office. The intelligence officer, a captain, stood at his cubicle, arms crossed and lips pursed.

“Sir. You wanted to see me?”

He pointed to his cubicle. I took a seat on a metal foldout perpendicular to it. Wayward stacks of PowerPoint slides and maps covered his desk. A framed Duke degree hung on a cubicle wall.

So it's true, I thought. He'd brought his diploma to war.

“Thanks for coming to my office, Jack.” I'd thought offices required doors, so I waited for him to smile, but one never came. “Wanted to talk to you about the targets you can't find.”

Something sour laced his words. I didn't like it and I didn't like how he looked down from his padded spinny chair and I especially didn't like the way he'd inflected the words “you” and “can't.”

I pointed to the chair's wheels. “Cool lifts.”

“Why the hell can't you find one teenage kid?” he asked, leaning toward me. He'd kept his words measured and low, but flaring nostrils betrayed him. “Brigade is busting my balls while your platoon is gallivanting around like a bunch of amateurs.”

“ ‘Gallivanting.' ” I arched my eyebrows and smirked my smirkiest smirk. “Didn't hear that word in the quad today. Sir.”

The captain didn't respond for many seconds. I concentrated on not blinking and listened to the shuffling papers and typing from surrounding cubicles. I thought of Sergeant Griffin in one of those cubicles, working so she could get home and walk her son to school. They were soldiers, too, I remembered. They'd volunteered, the same as us.

“Look, you have your job to do,” he eventually said, leaning back in his chair. “I have mine.”

“I apologize, sir,” I said. “We have the same goals. Which is why you should know that photo for the Cleric is wrong.” I pointed toward the corkboard. “That's a source named Haitham.”

It was his turn to smirk. “That's why I called you in here, Lieutenant. I don't know how you gather intel, but it's not being done correctly. Haitham
is
the Cleric. Verified it with spec ops yesterday.”

I fidgeted, causing my slung rifle to strike the metal legs of my chair. It gonged through the office.

“That doesn't make any sense. He was there when Alphabet got shot. Right there. Even if he was in on it, someone else pulled the trigger.”

The captain rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. He'd regained whatever cerebral authority sustained him. “Doesn't matter who pulled the trigger. We're after big fish, because we're almost done here. Let me repeat that: America. Is. Almost. Done. Here. Spec ops says Haitham is the big fish. You know better than them?”

“Spec ops isn't stationed there.
I'm
stationed there.
I'm
the landowner. And Haitham is not the Cleric. Hell, he wants to go to Camp Bucca.”

“Then bring him in. He's not a ghost. Go kick down some doors.” He shrugged. “Wish I could join you.”

I was too confused to respond. There's no way Haitham is the Cleric, I thought. Then I thought about his ghoulish tendency to arrive just before tragedy, and his gift for disappearing just after tragedy, and decided maybe there
was
a way. Maybe this was why he'd shown up the other morning, filling my brain with a crazy Shakespearean tale from the past.

I thanked the intel captain and rose, turning a half step and considering. Since the firefight, I hadn't thought much about the kill team or First Cav. And despite his throbbing, insatiable douchebaggery, he was probably the right man to ask about that.

“Something on your mind?” he asked.

I closed my eyes. Shaba and Rana seemed like fragments from a morning dream floating away. I thumbed the Hawaiian bracelet on my wrist. The past doesn't matter the way the present does, I decided. Not right now, at least.

“Nope,” I said. “All good.” Then I walked out, flipping off the black-and-white photograph of Haitham, a man who'd lied about the kill team, and lied about Chambers, and helped kill one of my soldiers.

I decided to shower, stopping first at the base exchange for shampoo and a bar of soap. It was a hot walk, the afternoon sun banking low, miles of military might spread across rolling dust lands. At a water station in front of a graveyard of Saddam-era tanks, I stopped and watched a pair of air force females run by in shorts and tees. They looked up as they passed. My eyes dropped to the ground like loose change.

I drank a bottled water and kept moving. The tank graveyard simmered
behind me, the skeletons and bones of vehicles long ago destroyed, long ago scavenged for parts, serving no purpose now but to sit in the sun and melt.

The base's shopping center was located in the core of Camp Independence, in a dry gulch. Big-screen televisions blared from shops' front windows. Signs displayed pictures of new trucks, and instructions on how to ship vehicles home, tax-free. Vendors hawked local antiques and pirated DVDs with fervor. If I hadn't been concentrating so much on the people bumping my back and scanning the crowd for suicide vests, I'd have appreciated the surreality of it all.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY
! The base exchange greeted me with a scrolling digital sign, above automatic doors that ushered me into chilled aisles of surplus goods. I found soap and shampoo quickly, but lingered in the refrigerated section, grabbing a Coke and sticking my head between two bags of frozen green peas.

The peas kept an emerging headache at bay, so I stood like that for ten minutes, shopping items at my feet, rifle slung, leg twitching from the crowd outside. I put the bags back only when the stares of strangers mattered more than the relief. Then I added a bottle of painkillers to my haul, paid, and left.