Sand and Fire (9780698137844)

by Young, Tom

  “I’ll go up topside,” Blount said.

  “Be careful,” Kelley said. “Make them keep their heads down.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The stairwell led to parts of the house Blount could not see. He pointed his M16 up the steps, saw no threat. Charged upstairs. Nobody up there, either. The house remained clear. Just a bare mattress on a filthy floor, some scattered sheets and trash. Plastic soft drink bottles labeled in Arabic.

  A ladder of rough-hewn wood led to a hatchway in the roof. Blount tested the ladder with his boot, hoped it would support his weight. The ladder sagged as he climbed, but the rungs held. Blount slammed the butt of his rifle against the wooden hatch.

  The hatch slapped open. Dusty sunlight streamed in. Blount unsnapped his helmet and placed it over the muzzle of his rifle. Raised the helmet up through the hatchway. When the helmet drew no fire, he brought it back down, put it on, and climbed onto the roof. Moving in a low crouch, Blount took cover behind the low wall that rimmed the roof on all four sides.

  From his elevated position, he had a view of the battle unfolding around him. A pillar of black smoke rose in the distance. Gunfire chattered and cracked both near and far. A pair of Cobra attack helicopters traversed the skyline like two lethal wasps. Several of Blount’s fellow Marines lay prone on nearby rooftops, weapons trained in the direction of the house where the insurgents were barricaded.

  One of the Marines, Cooper, lay next to an M40 sniper rifle. He was alone atop the next building, separated from Blount by a gap of about seven feet. A narrow alleyway ran between the two houses. Blount wondered what was wrong; Cooper should have had a spotter with him. Perhaps Cooper’s spotter, Rossini, had been wounded.

  Blount knew how to help, though. He’d attended Scout Sniper School the year before, along with Lieutenant Kelley. The lieutenant didn’t have to go; sniping wasn’t an officer’s job. But officers up through the rank of captain could take the course to better understand the skills of the Marines they commanded.

  “Cooper,” Blount whispered. “Coming your way, man.”

  The sniper motioned for Blount to approach. Something looked wrong with Cooper’s eyes. He kept blinking and rubbing at them. Blount took a running start, leaped across the alleyway. He landed on the balls of his feet, rifle in his left hand. Dived for the tiles of the roof, tried to make himself as flat as possible. Crawled next to Cooper.

  “Lane’s hit real bad,” Blount said. “The lieutenant’s trying to get weapons platoon up here to take care of those hajjis. What happened to you? And where’s Rossini?”

  Cooper’s reddened eyes streamed with moisture.

  “Fucker shot at us and the bullet hit the edge of the wall right here.” Cooper pointed, his hand covered by a Nomex shooting glove. “Sprayed dust and shit all in my face. I should have been wearing my goggles, but I had just taken ’em off to look through the scope. The next round went right through Rossini’s hand. He wasn’t no more good to me, so I sent him inside to take cover.”

  “Stop rubbing your eyes, bud,” Blount said. “Get downstairs to the corpsman and see if he’s got some eyewash. Leave your stuff up here.”

  “Aye, aye, Staff Sergeant.”

  Blount watched Cooper low-crawl across the roof and descend through a hatch. With Cooper safely down, Blount pressed his talk switch to call Kelley on the radio.

  “Hammer One Actual, Hammer One Bravo,” Blount transmitted.

  “Go ahead,” Kelley answered.

  “I just sent Cooper off the roof. He’s got grit in his eyes. Sir, if you’re done talking to weapons platoon, we got a chance to use what we learned in school.”

  “Be right up.”

  Blount dug into Cooper’s pack and found an observation scope. He uncapped the lenses and set up the optic on tripod legs extended just a few inches. That way, he could stay low while glassing the target. From the pack, he also took Cooper’s DOPE book: Data of Previous Engagements. It recorded the scope settings and weather conditions for every shot Cooper had fired.

  Through the mil-dot reticle of the observation scope, Blount saw the fuzzy outline of the house that shielded the insurgents. He rolled the adjustments for focus and magnification until all the edges came in sharp. Figuring by the dots in the reticle, Blount estimated the house at just under two hundred yards away.

  The rear of the house gave onto an open area hemmed by a stone fence. A little urban goat pen or chicken yard, maybe. No animals in sight, though. No insurgents, either, at least for now. Blount took his eye off the scope for a moment, flipped open the DOPE book.

  On the Zero Summary Chart, Blount found a row for the distance—two hundred—and a column for the temperature. The weather had been cool, typical for November in Iraq. But the sun shining on the rooftops this day probably raised the local temp to nearly seventy. He cross-referenced where the row and column met, and noted the elevation setting for the rifle scope.

  Blount heard boot steps behind him. He turned to see Kelley leap over the alley and land on the rooftop. The lieutenant slid low next to Blount.

  “If you want to shoot, sir, I’ll spot for you,” Blount said.

  “That’ll work.” Kelley lifted Cooper’s rifle, examined the scope’s turrets.

  “I checked his DOPE book,” Blount said. “Gimme two plus one.”

  Kelley adjusted the elevation turret. He dialed in a two-hundred-yard setting, with one more click to fine-tune. “Set,” he said.

  Blount peered through the observation scope again. A door opened at the back of the house. A man crouched within the doorway. Through the lens, Blount noticed a scrap of trash, maybe the wrapper from a cigarette pack, rolling in the breeze. The drifting cellophane suggested wind at about five miles per hour.

  “See that guy?” Blount asked.

  “Affirm.”

  Kelley appeared ready to fire. He held his body straight in line with the weapon, heels down for the lowest possible profile.

  But did he have a target? Blount could not see if the man in the doorway carried a weapon. What if he was just some poor, scared Iraqi?

  The man eased out of the doorway. He held an AK. Propped the barrel on the stone fence. Gotcha, Blount thought.

  “Spotter ready,” he whispered.

  “Shooter ready.”

  Blount felt the breeze on his face.

  “Hold left lung,” he said. “Send it.”

  Kelley fired.

  Using 10X magnification, Blount saw dust fly from the insurgent’s shirt. The 7.62-millimeter bullet slammed into the man’s torso and exited through his back. His AK clattered to the ground. The target fell facedown, and a pool of red spread beneath him.

  “Good hit,” Blount said.

  Kelley ejected his spent brass and chambered a fresh round. A rifle barrel appeared at the edge of the doorway where the last insurgent had come from. Whoever held that rifle remained cloaked in shadow. The weapon fired a blast, but all the rounds flew wild.

  “Let’s put a round in that door,” Blount said. “Spotter ready.”

  “Shooter ready.”

  “Send it.”

  The bullet smacked into the wood. Chips flew. The rifle barrel disappeared inside the house. Blount could not tell if the gunman was hit.

  Kelley worked the bolt of the M40 again. In his role as the lieutenant’s spotter, Blount watched to make sure the next cartridge fed smoothly into the chamber. Blount actually preferred spotting to shooting: You glassed the target, observed the wind, checked the DOPE, fed the shooter with information. You got to think more. Talk that bullet right where it needed to go.

  Blount placed his eye back to the observation scope. Nobody at the door, now punctured by a match-grade slug. But he saw movement behind a shattered upstairs window. Someone inside held a rifle, though not an AK. Blount zoomed in to 15X. The long-barreled weapon looked a little like t
he M40, but the forend and bipod were different. Maybe a Blaser R93, a German-made weapon. Good Lord, Blount thought, where did they get that? Must be the guy who shot Lane. All right, dude. Just come a little closer to that window.

  “See that guy upstairs?” Blount asked.

  Kelley shifted his rifle, peered through the scope.

  “Ooooh, yeah. You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “I think he hurt a Marine.”

  “Then talk to me, Staff Sergeant.”

  The gunman crouched beneath the window. No fool, he exposed little of himself. This would require more precision than a center-mass shot. Not a problem. Aim small, miss small, Blount’s instructors had taught him.

  The wind picked up, swirled dust across the rooftops. The gunman slid the barrel farther over the windowsill, and his face became visible.

  “Spotter ready. Hold left ear.”

  Kelley exhaled and spoke as he dumped his lungs.

  “Shooter ready.”

  “Send it.”

  The bullet struck the bridge of the insurgent’s nose. Red spray jetted from the back of his head. The force of the round threw him into the shadows, and he seemed to disappear altogether.

  “Fuck you, you fucking fuck,” Kelley said.

  Blount smiled. His fellow devil dogs had raised profanity to a high art. Any idiot could use “fuck” as a noun or a verb. But a Marine could make it a verb, an adjective, and a noun all in the same sentence. Blount, however, seldom cursed.

  “Good shot, sir.”

  Kelley chambered another round. Behind the two men, a hatch opened and two Marines climbed onto the roof. One carried something that looked like a large dark green tube, flared at one end.

  “There’s the present I ordered for them,” Kelley said.

  Kelley and Blount put another shot into the door, just to remind the insurgents that venturing outside was a really bad idea. The terrorists fired bursts into the street from their AKs. The fusillade hit nothing except dirt and concrete, but stopped Blount’s comrades from getting beyond that house.

  The two Marines with the rocket launcher pointed and talked. One of them rose up on a knee and held the launcher across his shoulder. Their chatter fell into the cadence of a well-rehearsed drill.

  “Prep rocket.”

  The Marine holding the weapon smacked at a cocking lever.

  “Rocket ready. Back-blast area secure.”

  “Fire when ready.”

  “Rocket!”

  A white dart shot from the tube. Behind the Marine who’d just fired, dust spewed into the air and curled over the roof. The dart cut a straight line to the house where the insurgents hid.

  Smoke and dust boiled from the doors and windows. Fire followed the smoke. The explosion created splashes of flame in almost liquid form; yellow and orange globules rolled within the dust. The rocket didn’t just burn the house; it blew away part of the supporting structure. One corner sank as if made of wet cardboard.

  Blount’s comrades cheered. Marine riflemen emerged from behind cover, dashed from walls and ledges, descended from roofs to press forward up the street. Not a single shot came from the insurgents’ former hideout.

  Kelley raised his gloved palm above his head. Blount high-fived him. In the lore of fighting men, the bond between an infantry platoon commander and his platoon sergeant bordered on the mythical. At that moment, Kelley became not just Blount’s commander, but also his brother.

  A helo came in to pick up Lane and take him to Bravo Surgical. Lane survived, but he needed six operations to rebuild his face. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi managed to slip away from the American forces in Fallujah. Didn’t live much longer, though. Karma and laser-guided bombs caught up with him less than two years later.

  Fallujah had been Blount’s last op with Kelley. And now Kelley was dead, killed by an enemy he never had a chance to fight.

  Blount hoped his mind would settle on some final thought, a concluding coda that would bring perspective. But all the memories and images remained a disordered jumble, like checking the index of a training manual and finding nothing in alphabetical order.

  He leaned his head on the window and looked down at the ocean below. The blue-rippled Atlantic stretched wide and bright. Blount liked to imagine those waves holding their form across thousands of miles of water until they broke on the shores of home.

  CHAPTER 3

  At the UN camp near the Libyan town of Ghat, a woman brought a child into the medical tent where Sophia Gold worked as a translator and coordinator. Gold did her best to communicate; in the U.S. Army she had built a career on speaking Pashto, not Arabic. Recent courses funded by her new employer, the United Nations, had improved her smattering of Arabic. But the modern standard Arabic of her studies differed from the Libyan Arabic spoken by these tired, wounded, and sick refugees. Gold had trouble understanding the woman.

  “Hal beemkanek mosá adati?” the woman asked.

  She wore a purple-and-white hijab and maroon robes dusty from her trek. Raw burns pocked her cheeks, and blisters bulged her skin. The sight reminded Gold of women she’d seen in Afghanistan, attacked by vengeful men throwing acid. These injuries looked a little different, though. Acid tended to eat away flesh and dig furrows rather than raise blisters.

  “Takalam bebot men fadleki?” Gold asked. Can you speak slowly?

  The woman repeated herself, enunciating each word. This time, Gold took her meaning. The woman needed help. She picked up her crying child, a boy of about five. The mother slid back his sleeve to reveal burns like her own.

  “Ahtaju tabeeban.” She wanted a doctor.

  Gold got the woman and boy to lie down on a cot under a fan powered by generators humming outside in the sand. She called over Danielle Lambrechts, a Belgian physician. As Lambrechts examined the two patients, Gold retrieved a pair of water bottles from a cooler, twisted off the caps, and gave the water to her new charges. The boy upended his bottle and gulped so quickly that water ran down both sides of his mouth. He did not stop to take a breath until he’d half emptied the bottle.

  “These are chemical burns,” Lambrechts said.

  “That’s what I thought,” Gold said. Not lye burns from making soap, either.

  “She came in with fifteen other people who arrived on foot. They walked from a village between here and Ghat. Ask her how it happened.”

  Gold formed the question in her mind and considered the Arabic words. She did not yet think in Arabic the way she could think in Pashto. As simply as possible, she asked the woman to describe what she’d experienced.

  The answer came in a torrent. Gold regretted having to stop the woman and ask her to slow down and repeat herself. Eventually the story emerged—one of pure malevolence, violence for its own sake.

  “Bandits moved into the old fort overlooking our village,” the woman said. “In the night, booms awakened us. Two or three explosions.”

  As the woman spoke, Lambrechts began to treat the burns on the boy’s arms. She tore open a green packet and pulled out a fabric pad impregnated with charcoal powder. The label was in French, but the pad looked a lot like the M291 skin decontamination kits Gold knew from the Army. When Lambrechts touched the pad to the boy’s skin, he howled and tried to pull his arm away.

  “Tell him this will help the burning stop,” Lambrechts said.

  Gold started to translate. When the mother caught on, she spoke quickly to her child, and the boy held his arm still. Lambrechts patted the decon pad along the length of the boy’s arm.

  “When the booms started,” the woman said, “I hid with my child in a corner of the house.” They took cover, she explained, until the danger seemed to pass. Once quiet returned, they went outside to check on neighbors.

  She described how people had emerged into the night breezes. The scirocco winds had abated a little, though dust still painted the
moon and dulled the stars. The villagers discovered little damage, just some shallow scarring against the mud walls of a few houses.

  Then the booms began again.

  This time they came endlessly; the woman had no idea how many. Her neighbors shrieked in terror, ran for whatever protection they could find. Strange odors filled the air. The woman described the stench of rotting fish floating through the village. Rotting fish mixed with gasoline, perhaps; she had never smelled such a foul and bizarre odor.

  “Blister agents delivered by mortar,” Gold told Lambrechts.

  “Mon Dieu,” the doctor said.

  People began to cough and choke, the woman explained. Their eyes and noses streamed. Some appeared to drown on dry land, mouths frothing as they struggled to breathe.

  “I covered my boy’s mouth and nose with my veil,” the woman said. “I held my breath. We hurried back inside.”

  In their home, they hacked and vomited. But Allah’s wind showed enough mercy, she said, that they had not inhaled a fatal dose. Their skin, however, began to burn as if sprayed with scalding water. The burning came on slowly, at first barely noticeable. It worsened until painful blisters began to disfigure skin that had been exposed to the caustic mist.

  “The bandits poisoned us the way one kills rats,” the woman said. “We feared to leave our home, but we could not stay in our poisoned village.”

  She went on to tell how she tore her veil in half. One half she tied tightly over her child’s nose and mouth; the other she tied across her own face.

  “Some of us began to leave,” she said. “Allah forgive us, we did not stop to help the dying. We wanted only to get our children out of the poison. We walked through the night to get here.”

  “You saved your boy’s life,” Gold said.

  “He is all that I have left. His father died in the civil war.”

  The attack on civilians did not surprise Gold. Militant factions ran riot all over North Africa under banners such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and the Signers With Blood Brigade. Some of the raids seemed to serve no purpose but to mark territory, and the tactic wasn’t new. As far back as the 1990s, the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria carried out indiscriminate massacres. Fighters, some with henna-dyed beards to signify they’d completed a pilgrimage to Mecca, swept into Algerian towns and mowed down anything that moved. The men with orange beards deemed the villages insufficiently pious, and determined that everyone in those villages had to die.