After the introductory comments, Wynn reviewed the platoon’s actions over the last few days and talked about the progress of the census. Estimates indicated they had visited 15 to 20 percent of the homes in the W14 & W15 areas. He spoke shortly about Iraqi perceptions. The people here are different, Wynn said. The same, but different. How we value or emphasize certain things is heavily influenced by culture and experience. Soon, he believed, they would increasingly work with the new Iraqi Forces as time and situation allowed. Eventually local forces would have to do the heavy lifting, if the mission was to be successful.
Moose listened and remained watchful, attentive, fixed by all that had transpired, spoken and unspoken, between the men in the platoon and their leader. He felt the inspiring warmth that came from being part of a team. And he felt satisfied with his role.
Wynn continued. “OK—now to the last few days. It’s been a damn rollercoaster. You guys have been doing great work. I’m proud of your efforts.”
He shifted hands. Left thumb in left pocket. Right hand on hip. “I know you are tired and beaten up. When you see the things that we’ve seen, day after day, it’s not easy. I know that. Each of you never stops asking the permanent question: why?
“How can someone use an electric drill on another human beings’ legs? Why is it that children cannot even be safe at play?
“I don’t know. I wish I did. But what I do know is there’s evil in the minds of some men here. Our job remains what it has been—not to figure out why, but to stop the bad things we can stop.
“I’m convinced the average Iraqi doesn’t support that kind of behavior. To the average Iraqi, just like an American, that kind of behavior is barbarous. I’m sure of that. Extremist behavior will convince more of the Iraqi population to help us help them.
“And that is what is happening. The calls coming in to HQ with tips are increasing. During the censuses, Iraqis are talking. We’re gaining more informants. Weapons cache discoveries are up. As I’ve told some of you, the tip on the warehouse came to us by cell phone. I feel, as does the CO, that our efforts are paying off.
“Now,” Wynn paused briefly and glanced at his feet. Then, looking at the men, he let another long moment of silence hang, as if judging his audience. “I heard something this evening from the CO about the information we seized from the warehouse. Folks have been going through that stuff, translating it, looking for important information in the documents we found. And guess what they found?”
Wynn let this question penetrate. He watched the men for reactions.
For a second, Moose thought Wynn was preparing a joke. Then he saw something like an apology come up on Wynn’s face. Wynn went down on one knee. Both hands rested on his horizontal thigh.
Wynn continued, “Believe it or not, some of the documents suggest that there is a female sniper from Chechnya operating in the area. And if so, she may be the one who shot that Iraqi boy. Supposedly she’s working with a group known as PFA, short for Purifiers for Allah.”
Heads lifted. Moose heard grunts of disgust, and men exchanged disbelieving glances.
“No shit,” someone said.
“Ayeee!”
“Turning things on its head,” another commented.
“Doesn’t matter whose head,” Cooke said, “we want it.”
Tyson, Moose, Cuebas, and Gung sat talking on the deck of the company orderly room. Now almost midnight, the night air remained warm and stagnant, enduring evidence of the sun’s assault earlier in the day. Stars salted the black sky. Power generators hummed monotonously in the background, oddly reassuringly. A few minutes earlier they’d finished watching a Seinfeld episode on the DVD player inside the orderly room. After getting a dose of comedy, the group agreed to go outside and return to the questioning, blustering, and speculating that filled up most of their idle time.
Intermittently during the Seinfeld episode, and now during the conversation, each man’s mind returned to the female sniper. Incomprehensible events can crush like a python, and no one could shake this off. The idea that a woman had traveled 1,000 miles to kill for a dream was a fundamental violation of rationality somehow.
“You know, they won’t believe this back home,” Tyson said, after a long silence. “They won’t fucking believe it. Don’t make no sense.”
Gung commented: “They don’t believe any of this shit, man. None of it. This is just one more thing.”
“Ayeee, they believe people die,” Cuebas said. “Our people; their people.”
“I don’t get how she got here.” Tyson said, not understanding it. None of them did.
“Ayeee, that’s a different country, ain’t it. Part of Russia or something fucking far away.”
“They all work together,” Moose said. “They want to kill us. So they come from all over the world to take their chances.”
“That’s true,” Gung said. “The bastards want a piece of us.”
Moose adjusted his hand on the butt stock of his M16. The barrel rested, muzzle-down, on the floor. He leaned the rifle back and forth like the stick shift of a manual transmission. He wanted to accelerate.
“Like a terrorist club,” asserted Gung. “Like a god-dammed club!”
Cuebas spoke up again. “Just face it, man, some people around the world definitely don’t like us. Can’t everybody—except me—be liked. Just the way it is. And if you’re on top of the hill, somebody’s trying to knock you down. Not much room on top.” He paused, then, “Suppose it’s always been that way.”
“Mexs are easy to knock down,” Moose swung.
“Puerto Ricans aren’t, fucker.”
“I’d like to meet this woman,” Gung said, imagining her.
They all wondered what she might look like. The flitting image in Cuebas’ mind was of a slender dark-haired woman, moderately attractive. She would not be overweight. That wouldn’t work. As a sniper she would have sharp eyes and steady hands.
“Wynn didn’t say they were sure. Didn’t say it was definite this woman shot that kid,” Moose said, as if he wanted to believe, but couldn’t.
“True. True,” Gung cut him off. “But I got a bad feeling about it, man.”
“That was done professionally, man—ain’t no fucking new shooter make a shot like that,” Tyson said, with a bitterness framed in respect.
“Ayeee. We don’t know for sure it was a good shoot,” asserted Cuebas. “She might just be a lucky bitch or might have missed one of us and hit the kid.”
“Naw man, the closest one of us was too far away from the boy,” Tyson countered.
“I hope we find out,” Moose murmured.
He had killed a man, Moose reminded himself. Would he kill a woman? Yes, he would. Holding his M16 vertical with one had on the hand grip and the other on the butt, he spun the weapon several times, muzzle rotating on the floor like a drill to emphasize the point to himself.
“Don’t matter either way. Both is fucked up!” Tyson exclaimed.
“Ayeee, somebody will talk,” Cuebas spoke louder than he needed to. He had a feeling about this. “You couldn’t hide it long. Too many won’t like it. Ugh, the average Hajji may not like foreigners here, but that don’t mean it’s only Americans they’re talking about. I’m pretty damn sure they don’t like no fucking foreigners shooting their children.”
Wynn sat in the dark at the desk in his trailer. For some reason Clare Baldwin drifted back into his consciousness. Why now? Maybe a smell or an image or a memory had coalesced in his mind. Maybe it was the craziness of a female sniper. Things were difficult enough without constantly reanalyzing past relationships. Sometimes it simply didn’t work. He pondered what Clare might be doing that moment. Had she found the right man? He could write her. But that would be crazy now, wouldn’t it, after all this time? He could ask his mother about her. No, he wouldn’t. Now was not the time to dig around in that. He was due to email his parents, but hadn’t been able. The timing wasn’t right, his mind full of othe
r things. Perhaps later. At times he felt guilty for not communicating home more often. Maybe keeping the homefront distant was another form of self-protection.
The present clamped down on his mind again. The idea of a female sniper from another country operating in Iraq was nearly impossible to let go. It was plain crazy, something twisted beyond recognition. Could a woman really have killed that boy? Still, at some academic level it fascinated him, adding mystery to mystery, another confirmation of the innumerable complexities and irrationalities in this place. Essentially, this was not a question about war, but a question about culture and human psychology.
What was inside this woman’s mind? As a potential mother, a home provider, she should be a giver of life, not a taker. Yet she was one with the fighters, sharing as a dispenser of violence in a man’s world. Not only that. She was a foreigner. This was not her place, nor her people. If she spoke any Arabic, it was probably minimal.
Yet she came to Iraq, a place a thousand miles from her home. That surely was no easy task, probably following a tenuous ratline strung from her place to this one, guided by fanatics operating on the edge of the world, most likely knowing little of the places she passed through or where she was going. But she had come.
Wynn knew the elementary facts about Chechnya, about the wars fought there, about the Islamic terrorists. There was one thing—an idea of Radical Islam—which these places had in common. Because of that, jihad had found a home. Like all the foreign jihadists, this female would have had to have come to Iraq more for something than to something. This purpose must be her life.
Thinking about it now as objectively as he could, she probably had at least two things working in her favor. One, she would initially be above suspicion, because she was a woman. Two, she had to be an exceptional shooter. These two facts about her, probably combined with an extraordinary mental focus, had caught the eye of someone. Or perhaps she had been picked out as a child, designated early as a future weapon of Islam, and enrolled in a special school and trained as a terrorist. Either way, she had to have had partners, collaborators in this journey, others who accepted and furthered the cause of a very special female.
Still, it didn’t seem possible. Everything he had seen here or read about this place confirmed the secondary role of women in a Muslim country. Not that women weren’t considered important, but they were, by their laws of God, far more subservient than western women were. Rarely did women in Muslim countries play leading roles.
Perhaps she could have been a suicide bomber instead. Women had done that. A talent for delivering death would always find admirers. Wynn didn’t think the American Army allowed female snipers. In fact, other than a few special exceptions like helicopter pilots, the American Army still tried to keep women out of a direct combat role. But as a sniper? No. Finding out your enemy was a woman cheated your pride somehow. If you thought the world was supposed to be a rational, if cruel, place—that things happened for a reason and that reason was discernible to man—this kind of discovery would make you question all internal logic.
Wynn closed his eyes. His mind thirsted for different thoughts and to push away what he didn’t understand. Maybe he should quit trying.
Soon sleep ensnared him, and he drifted into an ephemeral world of wanted and unwanted recollections. Speculations danced within his restless mind. Eventually, after struggling for some time, he descended into the refuge of deep sleep, like a fish down deep between rocks in swift water.
DAY SIX
21
At 0730, Wynn began his morning brief to the platoon.
“Our first mission today is another trip to the school. We’ll talk to the schoolmaster and see if he’ll give us more information. Then we plan to visit the dead boy’s family. Sheikh Jassim will meet us there. Later, we’ll tackle more census work. Probably this afternoon. We also plan to patrol the Houdoud Al’dena market.” He and Cooke had decided to postpone the northwest patrol again. “I don’t have anything new to tell you about what we talked about last night. I’m sure everybody’s been thinking about it.”
Wynn covered other points, then said: “Sergeant Cooke will go over the plan details.”
Cooke put out the truck assignments, dismount teams, and convoy routes.
By 0750, the Wolfhounds were headed back to Bawa Sah. Wynn felt sure Albadi was back at work. They didn’t have an appointment. Wynn didn’t want to forewarn the schoolmaster, as he might decide he didn’t want to see them and skip out. The school didn’t have a phone, and the schoolmaster didn’t have a personal cell phone. This wasn’t unusual. Cell phones became available to the average Iraqi only over the last year or so, after the fall of Saddam. They’d visit unannounced.
He doubted that Albadi was involved in the shooting. He didn’t seem the type and probably wouldn’t risk it. Perhaps after a couple of days to reflect on things and talk, the schoolmaster might tell them something important.
Fifteen minutes after the convoy got underway, CPT Baumann came up on the radio calling all platoon leaders. Wynn and the others answered. All three platoons were out on patrol.
“I got some new information from headquarters a short while ago that I thought was important enough to put out right away,” Baumann began. “First, additional documents seized at the warehouse raid were translated overnight. Those docs confirm that the PFA group and their female sniper are targeting family members of anyone cooperating with the Coalition. The Intel analysts are concluding that a number of the recent sniper killings are the responsibility of this group. Make sure you emphasize these concerns with any prominent Iraqis you engage. However, a separate report came in saying credit for the checkpoint bombing that Wolfhounds responded to yesterday belongs to a different group. Supposedly that group focuses on attacking Iraqi security forces. Given the serious sniper threat, and the obvious IED threat, make extra sure all your countermeasures are in place, especially when engaging with Iraqis.”
The platoon leaders acknowledged the information, and Baumann signed off. Wynn put both hands behind his neck and massaged himself. He again reviewed what he knew. The PFA group was operating in the warehouse. That group and their sniper were killing Iraqis, but nothing they had so far proved one way or the other that that sniper had shot the boy. Maybe more documents would reveal that or maybe new information will come out. He had second thoughts on how the warehouse operation had been handled. Perhaps if they had handled it differently more insurgents could have been killed or captured, perhaps even the female. But he couldn’t turn the clock back. He had to find a new opportunity.
Wynn got on the platoon net and put out a short report of what he had just heard.
It wasn’t yet 0830 and the angry sun already breathed down with open fangs, turning the surroundings a hazy, pale mustard, and intimidating all living things. Moose felt hot metal all around as the heat and stench of cooked air washed over the moving Humvee. But he cared little about physical sensations, and as the platoon neared the school and moved past the usual activities and places, he noticed the typical struggling businesses, the ramshackle homes, the wary people. He stayed largely oblivious to it all—his mind was insulated by an idea: the idea of revenge. Wynn’s latest radio traffic powered that idea.
Prospects for revenge exited Moose. Why? A primeval urge to make something broken whole? Or was it about tearing down, about destroying? To him the idea of revenge was sweet. Would they get it from this bumbling Schoolmaster? Or would he claim, as Moose believed all Iraqis did, to know nothing? Even if they knew something, they admitted nothing. No knowledge. No culpability. No help. Fuck them.
Ahead, two Iraqi men used shovels to clear a sewer. A small curly-headed boy sat on a concrete block watching them. The boy turned and watched the Wolfhound convoy suspiciously. An older man said something to the boy and the boy looked away. Fuck them. Passing, Moose stuck out his tongue.
When the convoy pulled up to the school this time, no children were outside. Maybe it was still c
losed. Some of the brick stacks were now gone. It was unclear whether anyone was inside.
“Take all four corners,” Wynn directed over the radio as the platoon pulled in, “maintain three-sixty security. Security team meet me at D21.”
The platoon positioned. Three personnel, Moose one of them, would dismount to go inside the school, providing security for Wynn and Cengo. Moose was glad to get out of the truck. The revenge idea was sweetening. The Wolfhounds remaining outside had orders to stay in their trucks, even if school kids came back outside.
D22 stayed at the entrance of the school compound. Turnbeck’s crew was tasked to keep a close watch on the houses where they’d searched for the sniper.
The security team assembled at Wynn’s truck.
At 0910, Wynn and team walked inside the school. Once inside, Moose glanced around like a hungry dog looking for food. The children were back, but this time they remained in their classrooms. Albadi met the group at the door. He was alone, looking like he hadn’t slept and was clearly nervous, his long gray dishdasha blending with his placid pastel skin. Sunlight from a window shone on the man’s bald head, illuminating shiny tiny drops of perspiration. His clasped hands rested submissively on his abdomen. He acted as if he waited on a court verdict.
Albadi and Wynn exchanged perfunctory greetings.
“Ask him about the other children.” Wynn instructed Cengo
“Sir?”
“Ask if the rest of the kids are OK.”
Cengo translated, repeating a couple of Arabic words, presumably for greater emphasis. They were OK, Albadi answered. The school had closed for two days. Everyone was worried. As in other Iraqi schools, due to the shortage of them, some children came in the morning and others in the afternoon. This old school had continued to operate with no electricity, no water, and war damages unrepaired.
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