Weapons of Mass Destruction

by Margaret Vandenburg

  “They act like war is a blood sport,” Johnson said.

  “It is,” McCarthy said.

  “It’s a blood ritual,” Sinclair said.

  “Same difference.”

  “Hardly,” Johnson said. “One of them plays to an audience.”

  “So much the better,” McCarthy said. “Guess what happens when the public isn’t rooting for the home team? You were in Nam. You know goddamn good and well what happens.”

  “This isn’t Nam.”

  “Not yet anyway.”

  Sinclair’s respect for Johnson grew with every passing day of the offensive. No doubt his military training bolstered his professional ethics. He was there to report what was really happening, not some trumped-up version of what this or that government wanted people to believe. Sinclair thought all embedded reporters should be veterans of the armed forces, preferably US Marines. Never mind the fact that even marines had dirty little secrets. Or not so little, as the case may be. Pictures of civilian casualties still lurked in Johnson’s camera, destined never to see the light of day. He wondered if what they were about to witness in the mosque would change his mind about publishing them. The free press commitment to all the news that’s fit to print implied that something somewhere was off-limits. Johnson wanted to believe that fairness rather than censorship was the determining factor. Under the circumstances, the likelihood of maintaining his ethical integrity was roughly equivalent to one of McCarthy’s milder invectives. When pigs fly.

  By the time they gained access to the mosque, there was nothing left to photograph. Unidentified muckety-mucks, probably Sunni clerics, were pulling strings behind the scenes. All the weapons, all the wounded, all the dead had vanished. CNN reporters had to content themselves with shots of Iraqi National Guardsmen, rifles at the ready, fending off the bloodstained rubble. The dome held up to the bombardment, but the minaret had fallen and crashed into a public square, where its mosaic shattered like a broken mirror, still glimmering in shards. Scouring the premises for nonexistent weapons caches, Sinclair and Logan discovered a gate in back that hadn’t been visible from their surveillance perch.

  “They must have evacuated civilians through here,” Sinclair said. “Before the strike.”

  “I’m sure they did,” Logan said.

  Times like this, Sinclair and Logan were relieved to be fighting side-by-side. Articulating what they would have done to avoid collateral damage spared them from imagining what might not have been done in the heat of battle. Sinclair was as devoutly patriotic as Logan was evangelical, an increasingly common coalition that distinguished the Iraq War from previous conflicts. The assumption was that ideological purity would trickle down into actual op plans. Distinguishing between civilians and enemy combatants was difficult, but not impossible. It’s what the American military did and terrorists didn’t do. It’s why God was on our side, not theirs.

  The mosque had been a symbolic as well as military stronghold. When afternoon prayer time rolled around again, imams would no longer broadcast divinely authorized resistance, at least not in this neighborhood. Insurgents were on their own now, engaged one-on-one with coalition forces, not infidels. Sinclair was alternately relieved and disturbed. He certainly wouldn’t miss hearing clerical calls to arms, reverberating from Pakistan to Turkey in the universal language of jihad. But destroying mosques was one hell of a way to shut them up.

  The platoon dispersed and fanned back out across the advancing skirmish line. Banking on the probability that the air strike had flushed resistance out of a wide radius, they moved quickly to make up lost time. Sinclair’s sniper team had to find new perches almost every half hour, just to keep up. Their third nest was a real beauty, commanding a view of the entire city. Tanks and Strykers were lined up on Highway 10, poised and ready for the second half of the offensive. Battalion 1/5 was advancing from the northern front, right on schedule. To the west, smoke billowed from the Jolan Cemetery. Apparently the mosque wasn’t the only aerial target, rules of engagement notwithstanding. Battalion 2/1 must have summoned the Vipers before they even had time to touch down for refueling.

  Sinclair wrenched his attention away from the awesome sight of F-16s pounding the cemetery. Without buildings to absorb the initial impact, guided missiles cratered the killing fields. The temptation to zoom in was almost overwhelming, but the squads below were relying on his vigilance. He had to content himself with imagining the devastation. Bodies in various stages of decay blown from their final resting places, lying side by side with fresh casualties. Wasted generations of a city constantly under siege. There would be hell to pay for bombing a graveyard. Insurgents were playing Russian roulette with public sentiment. Even when they lost battles, they forced American troops to attack targets that threatened to compromise their moral integrity. Mosques. Cemeteries. Home after home after home.

  Radetzky’s squad emerged from a four-story apartment complex. Wolf’s team was spending an inordinate amount of time clearing a single-family house. Sinclair wanted to radio Wolf, to find out what was going on. But Radetzky forbade nonessential chatter in his platoon. Something fluttered in Sinclair’s peripheral vision. Without moving his sights he scanned across a courtyard with the naked eye. A white flag poked through the back door of a neighboring compound. Then a head appeared. Sinclair swung his rifle around. A man emerged and walked tentatively onto a patio. Sinclair sighted him and dialed the distance into his scope. He was accompanied by three other men, all dressed in dishdashas. The leader waved the flag back and forth. The rest followed in single file, heads down with hands raised over their heads.

  “Alert,” Sinclair said into his headset. “Insurgents signaling surrender. Just south of Wolf’s location.”

  “How many?” barked Radetzky.

  “Four.”

  White flags were a notoriously dangerous weapon, especially in Iraq. Not unlike suicide bombers, sectarian militias were trained to use the act of surrendering as a decoy. Why save your ass when getting it blown off was a ticket to heaven? Radetzky’s first priority was to defend his men against potential attacks waiting in the wings. His squad was at risk, midway between two compounds with nothing but a garden shed for cover. He scanned the immediate vicinity, searching for more viable defensive positions. Their only real option was the building they had just vacated. Within seconds, several members of his squad regained access to windows overlooking the patio. Their gun barrels kept emerging and withdrawing, trying to get a bead on the clowns with the white flag. Sinclair could see that their angle was hopeless.

  “Don’t worry,” Sinclair said. “I’ve got them.”

  “Where’s the terp?” Radetzky asked.

  The question surprised Sinclair. As far as he was concerned, interpreters were a waste of time. Body language was far more reliable than Arabic, which tended to conceal more than it revealed. Sinclair had learned to trust his instincts. Something about the leader’s demeanor didn’t ring true, like he was spoiling for a fight rather than trying to avoid one. Whether Radetzky agreed with this assessment of the immediate threat was irrelevant. His job as an officer was to keep one eye on his men, the other on the objectives of the overall mission. Centcom insisted on gathering intelligence even in accelerated combat mode. Interrogating prisoners of war could yield the kind of information they needed to pinpoint enemy cells. The trick was distinguishing between ringleaders and lackeys who had nothing to hide.

  The interpreter was usually readily available. Very few platoons had the grit and discipline necessary to produce prisoners. It was much safer and expeditious to produce corpses. Their latest interpreter, Sajad, had been embedded in the company for almost three months, an unprecedented length of time in Anbar Province. Terps usually only hired themselves out as a last resort. The war had crippled local economies, and their families risked starving to death if they didn’t join forces with Americans. Sooner or later, death threats altered the calculus of survival. Their families risked being murdered in their beds if they contin
ued to collaborate with infidel invaders. Choose your poison.

  Sajad publicly attributed his resilience to bravery and commitment to the coalition cause. Much more to the point, he had nothing left to lose. His mother and seven siblings had fled to Syria when Saddam executed his father, forcing the family to cover the cost of the bullet lodged in his skull. Sajad was the eldest son. Someone had to stay behind to even the score.

  Sajad’s facility with languages was astonishing. He mimicked idiomatic phrases and even gestures with far more nuance than previous interpreters. He had a wonderful sense of humor in five out of his six languages, a sure sign that he negotiated cultural differences with a sharp tongue. The English language’s penchant for euphemisms never ceased to amuse him. He made liberal use of air quotations to underscore his mastery of evasive terminology.

  “As you know, I am particularly eager to interrogate Ba’athist officials,” Sajad liked to say, flourishing his forefingers around the word interrogate.

  Joking aside, Sajad heartily approved of enhanced interrogation techniques, especially in Sunni regions. They dovetailed with his vendetta. His best friend worked as a security guard at Abu Ghraib. This was his dream job. Getting paid to waterboard Saddam’s cronies was almost too good to be true, the best possible way to avenge his father. Harassing dethroned Ba’athists was a close second.

  Sajad was due to arrive in five minutes, accompanied by an armed escort. In the meantime, Wolf’s squad was ordered to intercept the white flag, which was still cautiously traversing the patio. Trapp’s pidgin Arabic would have to suffice until the terp showed up. He kept his distance, flanked by Wolf, Logan, and McCarthy. Their four guns were trained on the four insurgents, who stopped dead in their tracks, frantically pointing at what looked like a kitchen towel fastened to a broomstick.

  “Marines, we’re not armed,” the leader said in broken English.

  “Stay where you are,” Trapp said in Arabic.

  “It is safe,” the leader said. “Let us talk.”

  “Raise your hands over your heads,” Trapp shouted.

  Everyone except the leader obeyed.

  “Idiot,” Trapp said under his breath. “Drop the flag and put your hands up,” he shouted in English. His dictionary of stock military phrases had failed to mention anything about dropping flags.

  “Cuff them,” Wolf ordered. “He can’t shoot while he’s showing off his dirty laundry.”

  Wolf and Logan covered while Trapp and McCarthy advanced. Sinclair was poised and ready to open fire at the slightest provocation. Everyone was annoyed. Taking prisoners was more trouble than it was worth. For one thing, you had to waste personnel guarding them until shuttle teams took them off your hands. The platoon had processed their fair share of detainees en route to Baghdad. During the first few days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the desert looked more like a refugee camp than a battlefield. They had been warned to be on the alert for ambushes masquerading as surrenders. But everyone except Saddam’s Republican Guard was intimidated. Disappointingly so. Nothing was more depressing than the sight of soldiers too demoralized to put up a fight.

  A sudden barrage of AK-47 fire propelled Trapp’s team into the dirt. Sinclair saw tracers streaming from the windows of an adjacent compound. Wolf must have spotted them even before they opened fire. He and Logan let loose. Their M249s overpowered the 47s, forcing the enemy gunners to duck back out of range. Trapp’s men scrambled for cover. It was impossible to tell whether the four surrendering men were in cahoots with the gunners. Then one of them lifted the hem of his robe. Sinclair waited until he saw the barrel of a rifle and then squeezed his trigger. Bingo. The impact sent the rifle skittering across the courtyard. The leader was still waving the flag. Shooting unarmed men was against the rules of engagement. Logan plugged him without bothering to confirm malicious intent. Delay and you get blown away. McCarthy picked off the remaining two men while Sinclair was still scoping the folds of their robes.

  Sinclair turned his attention to the gunners pinned behind the window frames. He measured the distance and dialed it in. The angle was possible but not probable. RPGs had a far better chance of breaking up the ambush. Wolf and Logan sprayed the windows with automatic fire while the others tried to thread the needle with grenades. Most of them bounced off the walls and detonated in the courtyard below. When one of them laced through a window, the squad cheered. Resistance tapered off and then stopped altogether.

  A less seasoned squad might have assumed the enemy had been dispatched. There was no telling how many were left or where they might be hiding. The fact that nobody was seen evacuating the building didn’t mean they were still trapped inside. Underground tunnels were especially common in Ba’athist neighborhoods, where party officials had been prepared for the worst since the Iran-Iraq War. Wolf suspected they were actually playing possum. The only sure way to find out was to rush the compound. It was the kind of last resort the insurgency counted on to nullify superior American firepower.

  Radetzky was an aggressive but prudent commander. He virtually never forced his platoon to resort to the last resort. Several of his men appeared on the roof of a neighboring compound, carrying a metal ladder. He had already determined that the distance between the two concrete structures was too wide to jump. The ladder was just long enough to bridge the gap. One by one his squad crossed, arms slicing the air as they struggled to keep their balance. Radetzky hurled his automatic to a spotter to avoid falling. He ended up crawling, rung by rung, to the other side. The squad tried not to laugh until Radetzky himself cracked up.

  “So much for officer training.”

  Radetzky knew the break in decorum would loosen them up. Like ballplayers, they performed best when oblivious to pressure. Jokes at his own expense were particularly hilarious, a surefire way to bond with his men. It was a delicate balance, being one of them without compromising his authority. He was well aware that his success as a commanding officer relied on loyalty, not just obedience, their willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty. By the time the spotter returned his automatic, Radetzky was back to business as usual. Focused and in control. They followed him down the stairwell, weapons at the ready.

  Within a minute it was all over. A handful of enemy fighters hadn’t decamped after all. They were lying low, waiting for Wolf’s team to make the fatal mistake of storming the front door. All but one never knew what hit them, a ballistic testament to Radetzky’s superior strategy. Swift, silent, and deadly. The last of the six was hiding under a bed. He was technically unarmed, having left his rifle at his post in the window. Details, details. Telltale evidence indicated that the compound had been crawling with insurgents. The rest had, in fact, escaped through tunnels.

  The two squads converged in the courtyard. Radetzky barked orders, already mentally engaged in the next attack. Wolf spit on the blood-spattered white flag, an emblem of the unworthiness of their enemy. He usually left fist pumping and foul-mouthed bravado to men like McCarthy. But when things got too psychologically complicated to express in four-letter words, Wolf stepped in to provide the catharsis everyone needed to keep PTSD at bay. Radetzky, who trusted him implicitly, turned a blind eye. Commissioned officers were required to make dispassionate decisions, calculating risk and reward with unflinching resolve. Noncommissioned officers picked up the emotional slack. Radetzky was the head, Wolf the heart of the platoon. They were a perfect team.

  Wolf spit on dirty towels fastened to the ends of broomsticks, to restore the sanctity of real white flags protecting real civilians. He flipped the bird behind the backs of imperious commanders so his men wouldn’t have to. When rules of engagement endangered the platoon, he broke them. Once he had even shot a dead insurgent in the groin. Desecrating enemy corpses was strictly forbidden. But the bastard had simulated death until Lance Corporal Rodriguez was close enough to get his balls blown off. Trapp tried to stanch the wound, but Roddy died before the evac unit showed up. It was the company’s first casualty in Iraq, a specter of their
most visceral anxieties. Killing Roddy’s murderer wasn’t good enough. They needed a graphic illustration that nobody mutilated marines with impunity, and they got one. Everyone felt better after Wolf wasted the prick’s crotch. When he used up one magazine, he loaded another.

  Word of the white flag slaughter must have spread through the neighborhood. Foreign fighters, especially Pakistanis, were equipped with state-of-the-art communication devices. This level of technological sophistication debunked claims that Fallujans were mounting a homegrown insurgency. They were caught in the crosshairs of jihad, a global army that transformed guerilla warfare into terrorism. This kind of conflict had no boundaries, national or otherwise, no front lines or even combat zones. The fact that the platoon cleared two blocks without firing a shot didn’t mean the enemy had been vanquished. They were biding their time, playing the long game. Having less powerful weaponry didn’t guarantee that they were at a disadvantage. They just had to be more unpredictable, equal parts moving target and booby trap, masters of the unfair fight.

  Radetzky was eager to give chase. The sooner the platoon tracked them down, the less time the enemy would have to regroup in the wake of the white flag debacle. A West Point-trained officer, he never let his training get in the way of adapting to conditions on the ground. At the same time, he never tried to beat jihadis at their own game. The only way to prevail against terrorists was to force them to engage in more conventional forms of warfare, the kind American troops were trained to win. Neighboring platoons were also encountering less resistance, corroborating his theory that a trap was imminent. He radioed Colonel Denning, requesting permission to launch another coordinated offensive. Almost unbelievably, they were ordered to retreat.

  “We’re on a roll,” Radetzky told Colonel Denning.

  “You’re about to roll right into a mortar field. Salinger’s platoon just got hammered.”

  “They’re two quadrants to the south.”