Sinclair cleaned his machine gun rather than his rifle. Special Forces would bring their own snipers. Sinclair noticed Logan’s barrel rag was shredded, so he handed over his own. When he finished reassembling his automatic, he sat with the gun on his lap, half listening to Logan’s whispered prayers and the crackle of AK-47 fire in the distance. A soft breeze blew through an open window. Dusk was his favorite time of day. The last trace of desert sunset faded into darkness before he stretched out on his cot. Logan was already snoring overhead. He always slept on the top bunk.
“Closer to God,” Logan liked to say.
“More exposed to air strikes,” Sinclair pointed out.
“I’m not worried,” Logan would say. “He’s got me covered.”
The call came at 2100 hours. The platoon was instructed to report to the staging ground. Their battalion commander, Colonel Denning, was very old school. He always insisted that his troops hear official orders in drill formation. Captain Phipps was also on hand, along with several other company commanders. Colonel Denning approached the podium and adjusted the microphone. He towered over Captain Phipps, who stood by his side, stone-faced. McCarthy called them Mutt and Jeff.
“Central Command has issued the order to invade the city of Fallujah,” Colonel Denning said. “Code name Operation Vigilant Resolve.”
He waited until an almost imperceptible wave of excitement subsided in the ranks.
“Three battalions will coordinate offensives. 2/1, 1/5, and the Thundering Third.”
Colonel Denning turned to Captain Phipps. They exchanged salutes and Colonel Denning left the field. Captain Phipps stepped forward and grabbed the mike, yanking it down to his level with excessive force. Sinclair expected him to brief them on the rationale of the offensive. He was an approachable officer who believed in sharing strategic information with his men. But his presentation was short and sweet and inexplicable.
“Kilo Company will be responsible for clearing and holding the area east of Highway 10,” Captain Phipps said. “Platoon commanders will issue specific directives.”
Captain Phipps seemed to look each of his men in the eye. He paused, on the verge of continuing, and then apparently decided against it.
“Dismissed.”
“Rock and roll,” Trapp said, slapping Wolf on the back.
Sinclair and Logan exchanged furtive glances. This game plan flew in the face of everything they’d learned about warfare in Iraq. Attacking the city to apprehend the Brooklyn Bridge insurgents would be like dynamiting a stream to catch a school of trout.
“Somebody’s in one hell of a hurry to make an example of Fallujah,” Logan said.
Sinclair refused to believe it. Military men were above scapegoating an entire city for the actions of a handful of embedded insurgents. Their objectives were more strategic, less symbolic. The logic of Operation Vigilant Resolve escaped him, but he blamed his own shortsightedness. No one trusted the wisdom of his superiors more than Lance Corporal Sinclair.
The platoon was ordered to prepare for a week’s foray into East Manhattan. Their base was several miles outside of Fallujah. They packed thousands of pounds of ammunition, leaving precious little room for anything else. Stuffed to capacity, their rucksacks held 3,200 cubic inches of whatever they needed to stay alive. Grenades and clean socks were about the same size. Foot rot was smelly and painful but not lethal. You do the math.
At 0800 hours they reported to the northern perimeter of Queens to help evacuate citizens to camps outside of harm’s way. Tanks with loudspeakers were broadcasting warnings of the impending attack. Fallujah’s elders and sheikhs had been asked to spread the word in neighborhoods, and local media outlets had been notified. They were too pressed for time to distribute leaflets promising clemency to allies and death to everyone else. Most of the population had already seen them anyway, the last time Americans blew through town.
Sinclair’s platoon proceeded on foot to Highway 10, which cut straight through the heart of the city. All four lanes were clogged with traffic moving slowly enough to allow inspection of passengers jammed beyond capacity into vehicles ranging from Mercedes-Benzes to patchwork taxis made of cast-off parts. Vast numbers threaded their way through the creeping cars, fleeing on foot. Teams of marines were responsible for patrolling an eighth of a mile of highway. Sinclair paired up with McCarthy. Interpreters were available in case Iraqis had questions or needed to be questioned. The evacuation was primarily humanitarian, but it was also considered an intelligence-gathering opportunity.
“Unbelievable,” McCarthy said.
“All these people?” Sinclair asked.
“All the time we’re wasting. Last I knew, we were marines. Not glorified traffic cops.”
“Damn right.”
Once the offensive was officially announced, even Sinclair was anxious to mobilize. McCarthy kept griping until a car bomb exploded fifty feet from their post. When the smoke cleared, they rushed over to the burning shell.
“Stand back!” Sinclair shouted.
A circle of spectators looked blandly at the approaching Americans. The studied blankness of their expressions conveyed the prevailing myth that no one was responsible for the flames leaping from the car. Feigned indifference on the faces of Fallujans was far more ominous than blatant hatred. You never knew where you stood with them.
“Fucking cowards,” McCarthy said.
Miraculously no one was hurt. The bomb was more a calling card than anything else, a greeting from insurgents camouflaged in the crowd. McCarthy stopped complaining about being a traffic cop. Sinclair adjusted his body armor to calm himself. They started rotating duty, taking turns directing the flow of so-called civilians and covering each other in case someone decided to take potshots at infidel invaders.
People rolled up their windows as they passed. Never mind the fact that the temperature had already topped eight-five degrees. Roasting in a closed car was presumably preferable to breathing the same air as Americans. This was their first evacuation, but Fallujans had heard plenty of horror stories about Baghdad. When asked to leave home for your own safety, odds were against having a home to return to when the threat subsided. Trunks were bulging with valuables, secured with twine to maximize the load. Refugees on foot labored under the weight of backpacks and suitcases. Anyone empty-handed was probably up to no good.
Usually only men and emboldened teens gave Americans dirty looks. Now mothers with crying children glared at them as they rushed by. Their burqas covered everything but their malice. Extended families followed wizened patriarchs, more abled generations supporting the enfeebled and carrying the very young. Men in the prime of life were conspicuously absent from the throng. Teenagers roamed in packs, pretending to evacuate. Two young boys pushed an old woman in a wheelbarrow, a rangy dog yapping at their heels. She alone seemed oblivious to the sweltering stream of hostility.
A few hours into evacuation patrol, Sinclair started noticing a pattern. Car doors opened, and no one climbed in or out. Shortly thereafter, gangs of teenagers carried things away from the site, disappearing down side streets. Insurgents were evidently taking advantage of the exodus to disguise ammunition drop-offs. Sinclair signaled McCarthy.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Time to teach those punks a lesson.”
Sinclair radioed Lieutenant Radetzky for permission to pursue.
“Request denied,” Radetzky said. “The offensive isn’t scheduled to begin until 0500 hours.”
“By then they’ll be armed to the teeth,” McCarthy said. “Let’s take them out now. Before they dig in.”
“Sit tight, gentlemen,” Radetzky said. “You’ll see plenty of action tomorrow. And then some.”
Identifying insurgents was particularly tricky in Fallujah. If they were out there, they were adept at blending in. Or not. To the extent that they expressed the collective ill will of the evacuees, they would be indistinguishable from them. Sinclair had learned to be wary of people with cell pho
nes, especially if they kept glancing in his direction. Looking back, he wished boot camp had taught him to read body language. Military training still lagged behind innovations in the War on Terror. Marines were accustomed to fighting armies, not jihadists playing the part of civilians. He wondered if monitoring body language figured into their training in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He imagined hooded men indoctrinating bearded acolytes.
“Avoid direct eye contact with American soldiers.”
“If they accost you, act like you’re glad to see them.”
“Pretend you’re escorting a group of women and children.”
“Trim your beards. Dress inconspicuously.”
Many of the older men wore dishdashas, but T-shirts and trousers were more common overall. Those engaged in suspicious activities were just as likely to be wearing tennis shoes as sandals. Someone in a police officer’s uniform lugged away what looked like a carton of AK-47 cartridges. It was impossible to tell whether he was confiscating or stockpiling them. Uniforms were a fickle sign of affiliation in Iraq. They had a tendency to stray into the wrong hands. In Ramadi, marines had even encountered insurgents fighting in army fatigues. Such blatant violations of the most basic rules of engagement were what separated terrorists from soldiers.
Police and National Guard uniforms were hot items on the black market. Most of them came from Anbar Province where desertions were rampant. Even when they didn’t decamp, Iraqi security forces were notoriously unreliable. The American military was well aware that their involvement in strategic offensives was cosmetic, at best. The Pentagon was committed to the political imperative of joint efforts, which gave the impression that Iraqis were beginning to take charge of their destiny. In places like Fallujah, where Ba’athist militias sided with Saddam Hussein, entirely new security forces had to be trained. The United States poured money into recruitment and training.
“They might as well pour it down the drain,” Wolf said. Staff Sergeant Wolf was second in command in the platoon. But he was always first to pipe up when official policy threatened the safety of his men.
“Marines can barely afford body armor,” Wolf said. “Meanwhile Iraqi soldiers have brand new equipment. Compliments of Uncle Sam. What’s wrong with this picture?”
Lieutenant Radetzky seldom openly criticized military policy. He was a commissioned officer, not an NCO like Wolf, more circumspect by necessity as well as training. But when Wolf started ragging on coalition security forces, Radetzky couldn’t resist chiming in. The Second Battalion of the Iraqi National Guard was slated to participate in Operation Vigilant Resolve. He was afraid their involvement might be counterproductive, putting his platoon at risk.
“Don’t hold your breath, men,” Radetzky said. “Even if they show up, watch your backs. When the going gets tough, they’re usually long gone.”
Iraqi National Guard retention rates were miniscule. Often as not, their officers had clandestine connections with deposed Ba’athist party leaders intent on recovering control of Anbar Province. The more ardent their expression of allegiance to the coalition cause, the less likely they were sincere. In Sunni strongholds like Fallujah, suspicion was prudent. Loyalty often masked an insidious intent to use American resources to subvert American interests. Sinclair’s platoon had learned this the hard way.
When the First Marine Expeditionary Force arrived in the city, they were committed to changing the dynamic between civilians and military personnel, the first step toward reconstruction. Locals complained that the army had imposed martial law. To reverse this impression, Radetzky’s men paired up with Sunni police officers for joint patrols. Like so many initiatives in Fallujah, the plan looked good on paper and fell flat in the field. Their Iraqi counterparts showed up once or twice before succumbing to pressure to quit. Nobody outside of Washington was operating under the illusion that they had enlisted out of love for the coalition interim government. The paycheck was hard to resist in an economy devastated by war. But there was no use putting food on your family’s table when no one was around to eat it. Journalists weren’t the only ones being abducted, or worse. Under Saddam, Iraqis had become accustomed to being caught between a rock and a hard place. Nothing much changed when the Americans showed up.
The army may have had the right idea after all. There were telltale signs that martial law was the only real option even before the mob scene on Brooklyn Bridge. Security force defections were the tip of the iceberg, if such an intrinsically American expression made sense in the broiling sands of the Syro-Arabian Desert. So many things were lost in translation. As a result, even civilians turned on them. If you extended a helping hand, chances were someone would bite it.
The worst was the soccer fiasco. Sinclair’s platoon spent a week constructing a playing field out of a wasteland just north of the industrial quarter. Neighborhood kids were thrilled. Their parents seemed pleased, if a little subdued. Trapp orchestrated a ribbon-cutting ceremony. He and Wolf officiated the first game, an epic contest between the Jolan Giants and the Askari Argonauts. They even supplied official uniforms, red and black T-shirts with Nike logos on the sleeves. The Argonauts prevailed in overtime.
The next morning Wolf’s squad swung by en route to patrol duty in Queens. The goal nets had been torn down and garbage was strewn over the recently graded surface. No one claimed responsibility, but the motive was unmistakable.
“Talk about kicking a gift horse in the mouth,” Wolf said.
“More like kicking kids in the teeth,” Trapp said.
Trapp was visibly upset. His buddies looked the other way while he recovered his composure. Nobody loved kids more than he did. He had four of his own and had a hard time accepting how war robbed children of their childhoods. Every warrior has a chink in his armor. Trapp could twist a knife blade in a fedayee’s gut without flinching. But the thought of disappointing the Jolan Giants was too much for him.
“Let’s rebuild it,” Sinclair said. “We can probably salvage these nets.”
“Good idea,” Wolf said. “What do you say, Trapp?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Trapp said. “Operation Kill ’Em with Kindness.”
“There’s more than one way to fight a war.”
“In your dreams,” McCarthy said under his breath. He didn’t want to add to Trapp’s disappointment. But as far as he was concerned, winning hearts and minds was a slogan, not an op plan. This wasn’t the first or last time Iraqis would sabotage the peace process.
Sinclair was also shaken by the incident, though he would never admit it. He understood war and retribution, but not gratuitous violence. Vandalism was one thing. At least it followed a kind of sick logic. If you couldn’t keep up with the Joneses, the next best thing was to trash their property. But wrecking your own stuff was like turning the knife against yourself. Or the gun, as the case may be. The worst were suicide bombers. People always said it was an Arab thing. But Sinclair witnessed the same willful self-destruction back home in Montana. His best friend, Pete, had ruined his high school graduation present from Grandpa, a brand new calf-leather saddle. He hacked it to pieces with a hatchet and threw it in a pile of manure behind the stables. A week later they found him dead in the mountains. He blew his head off with his favorite shotgun.
Sinclair had traveled halfway around the world, thinking he could make a fresh start. But everything reminded him of Pete, especially the bond he shared with his buddies. They were brothers in ways that far exceeded the mere accident of birth. They shed blood together. With Pete, it had been the blood of animals. When Sinclair killed his first deer, Grandpa plunged his hands into the carcass and smeared the steaming blood on his face. They inherited the ritual from Pete’s great-great-grandfather, a Sioux scout who corralled the first wild horses bearing the Sinclair brand. Grandpa repeated the ritual when Pete killed his first buck, washing his face with blood as though he were his own son. That’s why it was so awful when things went south. They were like family.
It seemed to happen
overnight. One day they were boys roaming the hills with their rifles. The next Pete was busting things up. He played hooky and started hanging around with dropouts on the reservation. He disappeared for days at a time. Even Sinclair couldn’t find him.
“He’ll end up in the slammer if he doesn’t watch out,” Sinclair’s father said.
Almost every night over dinner, they tried to figure out what went wrong. Sinclair’s sister, Candace, was uncharacteristically quiet during these conversations.
“Must be a guy thing,” Candace said, excusing herself from the table.
In hindsight Sinclair wondered whether his sister withheld information that might have saved Pete’s life. Nothing at the time made sense. Grandpa tried to explain that Pete struggled with things Sinclair took for granted. The Swan family had seen better days. They lived in one of the migrant-worker trailers down by the river. But Pete spent most of his time with Sinclair, eating meals in the big ranch house when his dad was on a bender. Grandpa had all but adopted him, even offering to pay his way through college. Sinclair assumed they’d ultimately run the ranch together.
“Pete’s proud,” Grandpa said. “Too proud to accept handouts.”
“Takes after his dad,” Sinclair’s father said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sinclair asked.
“He’d sooner shoot himself in the foot than take a step forward.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not true,” Grandpa said.
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