by Roy Scranton
I thought of the woman in heels trailing her complex scent. I ate my Wheat Snack Cracker.
“Adrianna, can you describe the situation there?”
“Well, David, it’s difficult to get close to the scene. US forces have sealed off the compound and are blocking the main roads with battle tanks. Soldiers are patrolling the area and there’s clearly an emergency plan in operation. It seems from here as if one corner of the UN building has collapsed entirely. Military personnel are currently searching the rubble for survivors.”
Sergeant First Class Perry came in the door and glanced at the radio. “What’s up, Wilson?”
“UN got bombed, Sergeant.”
“That so?”
“Suicide truck bomb.”
He grunted and sat on his cot. I ate my Country Captain Chicken.
aline the front and rear sight with the target
and squeeze the trigger
Our days at CAHA Wardog began when the hadji semis arrived. We worked them in pairs. One soldier would sling the other’s rifle and guard the driver. The other would climb into the cab and tear covers off seats, sweep through knickknacks on the dash, pull up floor mats, shout down, “What’s this, huh? What’s this for? What’s in here? You fucking hiding shit, huh? You think you’ll get over, do ya? Hey, look at this guy. He thinks he’s a fucking exception.”
After the cab, we’d search the truck’s exterior, checking the wiring, the engine, and the underside of the trailer bed. We’d check their fuel tanks. Finally we’d search the driver himself, patting him down along his man-dress, turning him around, making him take off his kaffiyeh.
“Do a complete search,” shouted Staff Sergeant Smith. “Check their junk. They could be fucking hiding bombs in their taint.”
The hadjis stank of old sweat. We made fun of them, scowling, shouting, laughing. We pointed at a fat one, mimed his belly, and asked, “Baby? You have baby?” His friends laughed and he blushed, frowning.
At the end of the day, we searched the hadji workers as they left. “What the fuck is this, you little fuckwad?”
I looked over. Burnett, towering over one of the hadjis, held an MRE bag in his fist, shaking it. He shoved the hadji, who stumbled back and put his hands up. “No Mista, no,” he bleated.
“This fucker’s got nine-mil rounds in his MRE bag. Trying to fucking steal from us.”
“Lock ’em down,” shouted Staff Sergeant Smith.
I threw my helmet on and grabbed my rifle.
“Mista,” one of them said. He put his hands out in supplication.
“Shut the fuck up, bitch! Uskut your ass!”
“Mista, Mista,” he said.
“Uskut, bitch!” I shouted, sticking my rifle in his face.
To my left, one of the hadjis got up and Burnett forced him back. There was a clack on my right as Stoat chambered a round, then a series of clacks as we all followed suit. The hadjis got panicky.
“No, Mista,” one said, climbing to his knees.
“Sit the fuck down, bitch!” I shouted, bringing my rifle to the ready. He sat back down.
One of the hadjis on my right whispered something to another and Stoat jumped at him: “No talking!”
Lieutenant Krauss called higher, waited for higher to call back. The shift foreman spoke some English, so they tried to use him to talk to the hadjis. We waited.
“Sit the fuck down!”
“Deep Steel Three November, this is CAHA Wardog.”
“Roger Deep Steel, CAHA Wardog standing by.”
“He say no Ali Baba,” the foreman said. “He say mistake, mistake.”
“Fucking mistake is right. Biggest mistake he ever made.”
“No Ali Baba, Mister.”
“Shut your fucking dirty mouth.”
“Roger Deep Steel, CAHA Wardog standing by.”
“He say for to melt. To make for, eh, car?”
“Bullshit.”
“No Ali Baba, Mister.”
“You fucking Ali Baba if I say you Ali Baba. Now shut your fucking face.”
“Roger Deep Steel, CAHA Wardog still standing by . . . Roger Deep Steel, this is CAHA Wardog. We’ve got a . . . Roger . . . Roger. Roger. Roger. Standing by.”
“No Ali Baba, Mister.”
“This is the last fucking time I’m telling you to shut your goddamned mouth.”
One hadji jumped up and ran for it. Duernbacher tackled him. They twisted his arms behind his back and zip-stripped his thumbs together and left him face down in the sand. Duernbacher slapped him in the back of the head. “Silly fucking hadji. Trix are for kids.”
Eventually Battalion sent instructions, and we picked five hadjis to take with us back to BIAP: the one who’d tried to steal the rounds; his brother, slightly younger; the guy who’d made a run for it, a badass in a Def Leppard t-shirt; another, in a man-dress, who seemed to be trying to ignore us; and lastly the crew foreman. We lined them up, except the one we’d already tied, twisted their arms behind their backs, and zip-tied their thumbs together as tightly as possible. We blindfolded them with abdominal bandages and tape. We loaded the thief and his brother in the back of a humvee and the other three in the bed of a hemmet. We sent the other hadjis home and told them not to be late to work tomorrow.
At Battalion we stood in the parking lot half-watching the hadjis, joking and fucking around while they were taken in one by one to be interrogated by S-2. We untied their blindfolds and cut their zip-ties. There were dark circles around their thumbs and blood where the plastic had cut into their skin. Burnett and Stoat took an order for Burger King and got us all dinner. I sat on a Jersey barrier with my gun in my lap, chowing on my Whopper, watching the hadjis in our humvee.
The light faded and the sky darkened to purple. The temperature dropped and BIAP’s streetlights buzzed on.
“Mista,” one of the hadjis said, “Mista.” He made a gesture like he had to pee. I waved him out, he climbed down, and I walked him to the porta-john.
“You try anything, I’ll shoot you in your face,” I said.
He went in and came out a few minutes later. I walked him back to the truck.
It was dark now and hard to see in the back of the humvee, so I cracked a chemlight and tried to hand it to the hadji. He wouldn’t take it. I shoved it at him. “Take it,” I said. He shook his head and waved his hands.
I tossed the chemlight in his lap and he shouted and jumped back, brushing it away with the back of his hand. We all laughed. He crouched back and brought his palms gingerly up to the chemlight, as if it gave off heat.
Lieutenant Krauss came out later. We blindfolded and zip-tied all the hadjis again and took off. We tried to take them to Camp Cropper, BIAP’s prison complex, but the MP said we didn’t have authorization.
“We have authorization from the mayor’s cell,” said Lieutenant Krauss.
“That doesn’t matter, sir,” the MP at the gate told him. “I need paperwork from Division.”
“Okay, stand by.” Krauss got on the radio to Battalion. After a few minutes he came back to the MP.
“Alright, I talked to our S-2 and he said we’re supposed to bring these prisoners here to Camp Cropper.”
“Sorry, sir. I need authorization from Division.”
“But we’re supposed to bring them here.”
“No can do, sir. I need paperwork.”
“Well, what are we supposed to do with them?”
“Play duck-duck-goose for all I care, sir. There’s a POW processing station down the road. Why don’t you take ’em down there.”
“We were told to bring them here.”
“Like I said, sir, I need authorization from Division. High-value prisoners only.”
“But these aren’t POWs.”
“POWs, enemy combatants, civilians, doesn’t matter. Just take ’em do
wn the road to the MP station and they’ll help you out.”
“Where’s this station?”
“It’s just down the road on the right. Before the airfield.”
We drove down the road and went past the airfield, then turned around came back the other way took the first left and wound up driving down this alley though a cluster of deserted buildings. Then we came back out to the main road and turned right and drove past the airfield and down the road until we came to 123rd MSB, which was the first right after the airfield but clearly not where we were going, so we turned around again and this time took the next left after the left we’d taken before, which led to a guarded compound with a locked gate which the guard wouldn’t even tell us what it was much less let us in, but he did give us directions to the MP station, so we drove back down the road and found the right turn and pulled into a brightly lit compound, the largest section of which was surrounded by nested chain-link fences topped with triple-strand razor wire. Hadjis in orange jumpsuits and ankle cuffs shuffled chained in trios through the yard inside the fence.
We parked and downloaded the prisoners and took off their blindfolds. Lieutenant Krauss went in to talk to the Sergeant of the Guard. Our hadjis shivered in the chill.
“Probably fucking insurgents and shit.”
“Even if they sold the rounds, they’d get used on us anyway.”
“Fucking hadjis.”
Burnett spit on the ground in front of the one in the Def Leppard t-shirt. The hadji glared up at him. “You want some?” Burnett barked. “Eyes on the ground!” Burnett pointed. “Put your eyes on the ground!”
The hadji glared up.
“Get your eyes down, shithead.” Burnett grabbed the man by the back of the neck and pushed his head toward the ground. “Watch the dirt.”
Lieutenant Krauss came out and asked Staff Sergeant Gooley and me to follow him inside to help with the paperwork. He had a list of the hadjis’ names along with the info that came up in interrogation, and we filled out two double-sided forms for each one, going over address of suspect and identifying marks/tattoos. Mostly we filled in unk and n/a.
Eventually we finished and handed the forms to the SOG, who stacked them in the corner with a pile of other forms then turned to a lanky, dark-haired corporal. “Hey, Sto, go grab some guys and process these EPWs, would you?” We stood outside watching the first two get processed—screamed at, kicked, manhandled, handcuffed, then led away to get their very own orange jumpsuits. Burnett and some of the others clapped.
“I wonder what’s gonna happen to those guys,” I said.
“They’ll be processed. There’ll be an investigation,” Lieutenant Krauss said.
“What the fuck do you care?” Burnett glared at me.
He was right. What the fuck did I care?
wars are not won by machines and weapons
but by the soldiers who use them
As the fall wore on, the weather got colder. Gray clouds swept in, obscuring the sun. Porkchop regaled us with tales of going home on leave, how much he drank, how hard he fucked his wife. Most of all, he talked about his ’Vette and its mods. He got nitro, new tires, fat rims. He got a new tattoo, too, on his calf, an eagle wrapped in the stars and stripes, clutching bloody rags in its talons. A single tear fell from the eagle’s eye; behind the bird rose the smoking silhouettes of the Twin Towers.
“You like that, huh?”
“Nice,” I told him. “Real classy.”
“The rags are like ragheads.”
“Yeah, I get that. Very multicultural.”
Porkchop squinted at me and tucked his trouser leg back in his boot. “Why you such a faggot, Wilson?”
“’Cuz I hate freedom, Porkchop.”
He told me to go fuck myself.
•••
We took our work team to the stables. CAHA Wardog had been one of Saddam’s equestrian clubs before he’d decided to turn it into an ammo dump. There was hay and horseshit and garbage everywhere, which we had hadjis clean up with shovels and brooms.
The hadjis worked slow, taking long breaks and half-assing everything, so I’d go through the stables and shout at them: “Work harder! Get back to work! Shovel that shit! Git ’er done!” They glared at me and my rifle and I glared back, praying for an excuse. “Fucking get to work!”
“Man”— Sergeant Chandler shook his head—“you gotta relax.”
“Somebody’s gotta make sure they keep working,” I said.
“You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack.”
“Yeah,” Porkchop said. “Why you such a slave driver?”
“I told you, Porkchop, I hate freedom.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, fuck you, Porkchop. Really. Anytime.”
I headed back through the stables. I found a hadji squatting in one of the side rooms, resting against a wall. I shouted at him to get the fuck back to work and he glared at me like he’d cut my throat if he could. I shouted again and stared him down till he picked up his shovel and got back to the horseshit.
“You give me cigarette,” one said to Bullwinkle one day while we stood around watching them work.
“You give me blowjob?” Bullwinkle said back.
The hadji smiled.
“Blowjob?” Bullwinkle said, making an O with this mouth and jerking his head back and forth over his rifle barrel.
The hadji kept smiling. “No, Mista. No mota. You give me cigarette?”
“You ficky-ficky?” Porkchop asked him.
“No ficky-ficky,” the hadji said, still smiling.
“Fuck off,” I shouted, waving the hadji away. “Get back to work.”
“No ficky, Mista,” he said, ducking and grinning.
“You ficky good, huh?” Porkchop asked him.
“Get the fuck back to work.”
The hadji glared at me and slunk off.
I knew better.
This wasn’t who I was, who I was meant to be. I was sensitive. I’d been a poet. The solution seemed obvious: if I just shot a hadji, it’d all be okay. If I just killed one hadji, anyone, someone, then all the black bile, hatred, and fear would flow out of me like blood and water pouring from the wounds of Christ. I’d be transformed, transfigured. Please Jesus, I prayed, let me fucking kill somebody.
We came back each night and spent a couple hours relaxing, drinking vodka and Gatorade and watching Sex and the City. Samantha fucked a fireman, Charlotte got married, Carrie dumped Mr. Big and went out with Aidan, then got back with Mr. Big.
We downloaded crates of water and crates of MREs. We swept the barracks, swept the compound. We watched hadji bootlegs of The Matrix Revolutions and the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Some guys redeployed back, some other new guys showed up. Staff Sergeant Reynolds, Cheese, and Reading played Halo. Cheese begged us to quit calling him Cheese, and Burnett said he’d punch him in his fucking face if he didn’t shut his goddamn cockholster.
I was driving and Staff Sergeant Gooley was saying to me how all of us who’d been out last night clearing the CAHA shouldn’t have to be going out there again today because none of us had gotten enough sleep, then there was some shooting close behind the convoy, and the truck radio crackled: “Fire Fire. Shooters on the buildings.”
“Stop!” Staff Sergeant Gooley shouted. We heard M16s and SAWs answering AK fire, then the low thump of our .50s.
“Crusader Three-seven, we’re taking fire.”
“Turn the truck around!”
I started to pull a three-point turn and as we swung the other way the trucks behind us started turning too, so we had to wait. There was more shooting from the highway. All the trucks turning around at once in the alley made a slow chaos of bumps and shouts. One of the trucks tried to drive out in reverse, its driver screaming, “Just back up! Back up!”
Staff Sergeant Gooley grabbed
the hand mike. “This is Crusader Three-seven, gimme a sitrep!”
“All Crusader elements converge on the northeast building,” Staff Sergeant Smith barked.
“This is Crusader Three-seven, somebody tell me what’s going on, over,” Staff Sergeant Gooley shouted into the radio.
“All Crusader elements return fire on your targets.”
More shooting, the tock-tock of our .50s. As we rolled slowly behind the other trucks back to the highway, we could see the rest of the convoy scattered between the alley’s mouth and the nearest overpass. Crusader 5 sped down the highway on the other side, through a gap in the guardrail onto the shoulder toward a three-story building, Staff Sergeant Smith leaning out his window shooting wild with his M16. Figures ducked behind the wall up on the roof of the building and others ran along the overpass. One .50 traced a slow arc along the road, lobbing fat gobs of metal through the air, knocking chunks out of concrete. Porkchop rode the second .50, firing at the top of the building, his body shaking at one with the gun: “Yeah, get some! Get some! Fuck yeah! How you like it? Get some!”
“Over there,” Gooley pointed, and I drove to the cluster of trucks by the building where Staff Sergeant Smith stood shouting.
“You three secure the rear of the structure, everyone else come with me.” Staff Sergeant Smith rammed his shoulder through the front door. Men followed. Staff Sergeant Gooley told me to stay with the radio, then ran in after.
More shots came from the overpass and I swung open my door and slid sideways in my seat, pulling up my rifle and taking aim at the shadows ducking between the concrete supports. I hissed, exhaling, squeezing my trigger. I was surprised by the ease of it: just pull. My hadji ducked behind a support then dashed for the next, making his way toward the trees at the edge of the overpass. I fired again, aiming higher this time, the top of my iron sight to his right, above his head, leading but missing again and gritting my teeth and firing. Breathing.