“I’ll send Cengo over to ask them,” Wynn told Cooke on the radio. “Let’s be sure the Iraqis haven’t seen anything. Don’t want to get even further behind on this census work if no one’s identified a possible hostile shooter, break…If the Iraqis’ think it’s anything, we’ll talk. If not, we’ll stay here. Probably just neighborhood nonsense.”
Moose looked back down the alley. Quiet. No sign of the boy. The soccer ball remained in the street.
Hearing erratic gunfire was common. Almost every Iraqi seemed to own an AK47. Moose figured the platoon leader and platoon sergeant suspected that whoever had fired was not firing at the platoon. No way could the Americans chase down every weapon discharge.
Just as Moose realized that few pedestrians had been out, a man wearing glasses came out of a building across the street and dumped a bucket of liquid. Then he went back inside his house.
Moose watched Cengo jog up the street to the Iraqi soldiers.
Moose walked over to the corner of the building and took another look down the alley. Still nothing. About 50 meters down the alley a piece of trash fell away from the wall. Moose looked that way. A scrawny cat darted across the passage.
Moose turned back around. Across the street, Cengo was talking. One Iraqi soldier pointed, bending his arm and pointing upwards, towards where Moose was. Maybe he was explaining where the bullets came from. Or where their bullets went. One Iraqi soldier walked over to Cengo and shook his AK violently, holding it in both hands, as if claiming it was too heavy. Cengo bit at the man about something, then walked away. “Said something stupid, I bet,” Moose muttered to himself about the Iraqi soldier. “Asshole.”
He looked again at the soccer ball. A white ball, normal size, scratched and dirty.
Then he heard talking, and twisted around to see what it was. He faced back in the other direction, southward. Two boys had emerged from another alley, 20 or 30 feet down the street, and started walking in the other direction, their backs to Moose. He watched them carefully. Neither was the boy Moose had seen earlier. Moose thought he heard laughter. One boy carried a loaded plastic bag. Neither appeared to notice the military trucks on the street, and looked unaffected by the recent shooting.
Wynn was back on the radio.
“Cengo said the Iraqis didn’t see any one shoot. They don’t know what happened, but think it was a couple of blocks over—also seems one of the geniuses thought he could scare off any potential threats by firing some rounds in the sky,” Wynn added on the radio, his voice balanced between resignation and ridicule. “Keep a good lookout,” Wynn concluded. “We got about another hour here.”
Cooke acknowledged Wynn’s message.
Moose continued to watch the scene. The two boys who had come out of the second alley disappeared farther down the street. No further sign of the kid who had kicked the soccer ball. The Iraqi soldiers across the street kept chatting amongst themselves unconcernedly. Ensha Allah. God Willing. Everything was fate, they believed. What comes would come.
Moose walked back to the corner of the building and took another look down the alley. It was all about nothing.
Three hours into the census work, Wynn was ready for a change. And it remained too dangerous to stay anywhere long. His men were drained, and so was he. The frustrating and stressful meeting with Jassim and the dead boy’s family eroded his energy. Maybe they should cut things shorter today, and get back to the FOB. He decided to talk things over with Cooke face-to-face and walked the 50 meters to D24.
“What ya thinking, Sir?” Cooke asked, as Wynn stepped up to the door.
“Based on my count, we’ve done close to forty more houses. That’s good progress. I’m thinking of dittimauwing.”
“Headquarters has been quiet,” Cooke said, remarking on the lack of radio traffic on the higher net.
“The men are dogged-out. Maybe we ought to make it an early day,” Wynn said, trying avoid appearing too tired himself, while wanting Cooke’s affirmation that they should finish for the day.
Wynn didn’t want Cooke to think he was tired. He did want his affirmation that they should finish for the day.
Cooke looked at his watch like a man searching time for answers. It was 1540. “That was tough in there with the family, wasn’t it, Sir?”
Wynn didn’t expect that question. Maybe he had accrued respect by sitting down with the family. He nodded, and looked away. Maybe if he didn’t talk about it he wouldn’t think about it too much.
A small battery-powered radio played music inside Cooke’s truck. Wynn didn’t recognize the female artist. Cooke reached over and turned the radio volume down, then he stepped out of the truck and walked with Wynn a few feet away. When they stopped, they looked at each other, both assessing.
“We’d planned to do the market. I say we do it. Been a week at least since we’ve been,” Cooke proposed.
Wynn looked at Cooke, expecting another comment.
He must have read Wynn’s thinking, because he said, “I ain’t heard no grumbling. And even if I had, fuck it. I think we should walk the market. The men will hang tough.” Cooke paused, adding, “Anyways, I need to stretch my legs. You been the one out.”
Wynn smiled. Cooke did likewise. Wynn hadn’t seen another smile all day. He said nothing.
“Sir, once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.”
Wynn’s smile faded as Cooke’s words sunk in. He stared at his own reflection in Cooke’s protective glasses and saw what looked like a sea creature.
“I like that quote,” Wynn answered, compressing his lips in confirmation. “Good way of putting it.”
“Coach Lombardi.” Cooke replied.
23
Six Wolfhound soldiers walked slowly through the Houdoud Al’dena market, which stretched roughly 300 meters, meandered roughly parallel with Route Strawberry, and intersected with several side streets. D21 and D22 were positioned on the north end of the street over-watching Route Strawberry, preventing further vehicle access into the market area. D23 and D24 slowly followed behind the dismounted soldiers, driving in as far as they could from the southeast entrance.
Cooke led the foot patrol, and kept contact with the security vehicles by radio.
Kale was on Cooke’s team. Before departing on foot, the platoon sergeant had brushed up against Kale and mouthed a message: “Rock steady, soldier.” Then he winked in lieu of a shoulder smack.
Kale tightened his stomach. Circulation, he told himself, in order to get his mind on the mission, was what headquarters officially called these walkabouts, whether it was in a neighborhood, along a street, in a market, any place where they might be seen by Iraqis. The leaders were always saying that keeping the American forces visible in the community would somehow help the Iraqi government gain credibility. So they circulated. Kale didn’t think equating the presence of American soldiers with an acceptable Iraqi political system was straightforward rational thinking. Then again, was rational thinking possible during war? How, without being out in the shit, could you ever know what was going on? Being there gave them a chance to influence the situation, or “shape” the battlefield, as headquarters often called it.
Kale noticed a large woman dressed head-to-toe in a black burka at the edge of the market. She sauntered, her cloak-like garment sweeping around her, the fabric rolling open and closed, buffeted by her movement, as if the changing shape of the burka illustrated a woman’s uncertain place in Arabic society. She appeared to greet a familiar vendor, then continued walking. Other civilians, mostly male, young and old, noisily made deals at the various vendor stalls, all parts and pieces of Iraqi mercantile culture.
The market looked busy today. Still, each of the many small businesses were entirely portable, provisional—no permanent stores had been opened. The vendors set up their tables and wares, some separating themselves with partitions, others rolling their merchandise in on carts. Some of these vendors had been helped in the past by the Wolfhounds. The plato
on had once helped a farmer by arranging for an Army Engineer unit to repair a dirt road that provided access to a grove of date palms. Now the man sold the dates in this market. The egg ladies were probably here, the ones the Wolfhounds had given chickens. Cooke called these women the hardest workers in the market. By organizing the concrete barriers that now shielded parts of the marketplace, the Wolfhounds had made the vendors more secure. Activity in the market had steadily increased. No reasonable person could claim the Americans didn’t try to help.
As the team walked slowly, Kale’s painted the roof lines with his eyes. He thought about the sniper in Bawa Sah. A sniper here would probably be on the roof, or behind windows, in an alley, or even the trunk of a car. One case he’d heard about involved a sniper shooting out of a flap in a closed car trunk. The other major threat was, of course, bombs. Bombs had destroyed markets in other parts of Iraq. So far, this market hadn’t been bombed.
Marketplace noises of all sorts clattered and screeched: raised voices, metal on metal, wood scraping, living things and dead things being moved around. Shoppers came in and out between the stands. Most of the stands could disappear in a matter of minutes if they had to. The whole market lived a precarious existence. It reminded Kale of local realities. Daily life lacked safe harbors; any stability was fragile.
The Wolfhounds had walked through this market perhaps ten or twelve times. They drove by approximately twice a week. Every third or fourth time they passed through the area, the Wolfhounds dismounted a patrol and walked the market.
As Cooke’s team worked its way into the market, Kale recognized other vendors from previous visits. The one-eyed, one-legged tennis shoe salesman was there. He had a stand with three folding tables near the south entrance, his tables arranged like a horseshoe. From left to right around the horseshoe the shoe sizes went from smaller to larger.
Now Cooke led the team down a side alley no wider than a medieval city’s. Several vendors had stands inside this alley, the furthest about 100 feet from the main street.
“Let’s check a few of these out,” Cooke ordered.
Kale hoped the team wouldn’t go too far down the alley, which was too narrow for Humvees, so their trucks couldn’t follow. The first stalls included vendors selling clothes. From a distance, the multi-colored clothing on display made the stand look like a flower shop. Mostly clothes for children and teenagers. Some dresses were stored inside thin plastic sleeves, like clothing in a dry cleaner. Kale touched one. The plastic was stiff and crinkly, like the plastic covering of frozen foods. Tables below the clothing displayed jewelry. Farther down the alley a perfume stand hugged the building wall. A vendor displayed little bottles of perfume on top of boxes covered with carpets.
Then Kale noticed a tall thin man standing in the shadows beside larger boxes. Kale couldn’t see his face, so he was unsure whether the man watched the Americans. One of the man’s hands was hidden behind his back. Something about the way the man stood looked wrong. Kale’s senses alerted like a dog’s ears going erect. Cooke noticed the man too, raking him hard with a stare. The other Americans hadn’t noticed. Cooke moved sideways to get closer to the man. Then Cooke feigned a glance elsewhere, trying to look indifferent. The Iraqi took a tentative half-step back, dropping the edge of the shadow down from his face to his chest. That triggered Cooke. Kale saw him pivot and bound two steps between the tables to get in front of the man, moving like a cat going after a toy. Cooke’s move surprised the Iraqi, and he stepped abruptly out into the light. He looked as if he’d been caught stealing. He was a tall young man with a pocked face and thin mustache. A thin line of smoke rose out of the shadow—the previously hidden hand held a cigarette. The man had merely been smoking.
Cooke beamed at the man, exposing his white teeth as if he were auditioning for toothpaste commercials. He offered a handshake and the man took it.
Kale felt like he got out of race car and into a sauna.
“Perfume?” Cooke asked.
“The best,” said the man in scratchy English.
“Do you sell for men and women?”
“Yes, of course.”
Cooke made a show of sniffing several bottles. He grinned widely, when encountering one he favored.
“Where from?” Cooke asked him.
“Best places.”
“I need to send some of this back to Nada,” Cooke commented to Kale, but put the small bottle back on the table. “Very nice,” he told the vendor. “Best of luck in your business, Sadi.”
“Thank you, Sir,” said the Iraqi.
The team turned around and went back out to the main street. The Wolfhounds passed spice dealers with their wares displayed in sacks inside wicker baskets. Next, a heavyset guy worked a couple of wicker baskets full of used cell phones, and a smaller basket of SIM cards. A little further down, on the other side of the street, a man with white-poddle hair displayed 15 or 20 blankets packed in transparent plastic suitcases.
After a few more minutes of walking, the team arrived at the Egg Ladies’ stand. The two sisters acknowledged the Americans with modest familiarity. Cooke picked up an egg and playfully tossed it from hand to hand like a ball. The more elderly and assertive of the two ladies reached half-heartedly to snatch it back from him. She missed. Kale suspected she’d missed intentionally.
Kale took this woman’s measure. She looked distinguished. Deep eyes, delicate nose, a certain sad grace earned by survival, perhaps. What a mature Janet Jackson might look like. All he could see was her face. She wore a brown burka with a dark green headscarf and was unmistakably a woman whom life had ridden hard, but she had survived and even staged a recovery of sorts. Survival was now probably her proudest claim. Although the Wolfhounds had known her for months, they knew little about her.
She said something to Cooke in Arabic.
“This is your baq-shish,” Cooke explained, shrugging her off, using the Arabic word for “payment.” He still held the egg in his hand and a sly grin on his face. His expression made it clear that he was teasing her, and that he wasn’t stealing an egg. Her eyes sparkled with complicity.
She didn’t know what Cooke said. She spoke no English, but understood what he meant.
He had taken an egg from her before—the empty egg shell he kept on his desk.
She warmed as she interacted with Cooke, her mouth relaxing to expose a set of teeth colored like crackerjack candy. Her eyes softened into an appreciative gaze. Kale sensed, too, the never far distant self-protective tendencies that must reside in her, the constant worry about the present, and she must be hoping that her conversation in the market with the Americans would go largely unnoticed.
Cooke wouldn’t tease her long. He knew Iraqis didn’t want attention, especially not in a public place. The egg lady now spoke directly to Cengo, more quietly. Her face suddenly became serious and drawn, with what Kale read as sadness. Cooke and Kale looked on as the two Iraqis spoke confidentially for a few seconds. Then, as if forced to convey bad news, her eyes clouded and she lowered her voice. Had she told Cengo about a personal matter, unrelated to the Americans? Her eyes blinked rapidly. She looked from side to side, worried about something. Then she nodded her head towards Cooke as a conspirator might finger a co-conspirator. A wave of urgency rushing over his face, Cengo turned towards Cooke.
“She tell me about talk about some foreigners hiding brick factory,” the terp spit out.
“What?” questioned Cooke, confused.
“Terrorists, maybe. She say she hear talk about hiding in dead part brick factory.”
“What?” snapped Cooke, still unsure he understood Cengo.
“She say some people talking they hiding there.”
“What people? Hiding where?”
Understanding Cengo was difficult. He had taken on the woman’s attitude, wanting to avoid drawing attention.
“Who say? How she hear that?”
The egg lady looked down, alarmed by Cooke’s agitated voice. They
had been there too long. She clinched her bony hands like an old woman at an accident scene. The egg ladies were now anxious for the Wolfhounds to leave.
“Egg Lady say this,” Cengo continued
“What factory?” Cooke asked.
Cengo asked the egg lady another question. Though he was speaking Arabic, Kale could tell Cengo was entreating her.
She answered quietly, looking as if she’d entered a place she wanted no part of.
Shoppers continued walking through the area. A few eyed the soldiers the way patients look at cancer doctors. At the far end of the stand, a young woman carrying a baby strapped to her chest stopped to look at the eggs, then moved on.
Kale felt his hands starting to twitch. He had to breathe harder to get the same oxygen.
Cengo translated the egg lady’s reply. “She say she hear this from someone she talk to here. Somebody talking. That person angry. Other people angry from the killing of boy. That person say they hear terrorist that kill schoolboy hiding in old brick factory area. She trust person gave her this information.”
Cooke spoke, authority in this voice. “Tell her thank you very much for the information. Tell her to contact us if she hears anything else—and, of course, she shouldn’t tell anyone she told us.”
The team walked away from the egg stand. Kale could see that Cooke had become highly focused, restless to move on, like a basketball player waiting for the jump. Nevertheless, on Cooke’s direction, the team lingered three or four more minutes at other stands. Kale interpreted this to mean the platoon sergeant didn’t want to draw too much attention to the egg stand by an abrupt departure.
Kale scanned constantly, trying to notice anyone watching them. Dozens of people were nearby. He sensed strange eyes inspecting him, but he tried not to worry too much. Hopefully none had been within earshot of their conversations with the sisters. He looked back at Cooke. Cooke’s eyes were lit. Could these be the people behind the sniper? Surely that’s what he was hoping. The excitement of discovery burned inside them and they were silent walking out of the market. The brick factory was several kilometers to the west.
Princes of War Page 27