He slid around the wall of the kiln, hugging the surface with his back as if he was edging around the rim of a cliff. Pauls moved ahead of him. Follow Pauls. Follow Pauls. The kiln entrance was to his left.
“Grenade!”
The word hit him like a passing train. He dropped, face down, closing his eyes so hard it hurt. Every sinew in his body tried to burrow into the dirt.
TEECACCKKK!!
The explosion screamed past him. He hugged the ground as if he was spinning, clawing the dirt like a frantic dog.
Whose grenade? Had Pauls thrown it? Had it come from inside the kiln?
Then close M4 fire split the air.
He opened his eyes. The concussion of the grenade still echoed inside him, disorienting him.
Pauls, now on his knees beside him, held his rifle in one hand inside the kiln and sprayed bullets. “Take that, fuckerrrrrrrrsssss!” he yelled, mouth open, teeth exposed like fangs, his face like a beast’s.
Sprinkles of debris still rained down from the grenade explosion. It must have exploded outside. Must have come from inside. Kale tried to stand, but couldn’t. Was he hurt? He felt unhinged, as if he’d fallen irretrievably into an impossible chasm, the walls around him shouting inexplicable accusations. He saw Pauls standing firm, still firing. Kale watched, still on the ground, fixated on Pauls’ open mouth as he screamed.
Pauls dropped to his knees, on all fours. Then he was gone through the kiln door. Not right. Can’t be alone. He can’t leave me. I can’t leave him. Kale got to his feet and slid rapidly around the rest of the kiln to the entrance, as if pulled a magnet.
Pauls’ boot soles extended outside the entrance. The rest of his body was inside. Kale knelt again, hesitating to lean down. He must peer inside the kiln, inside to where Pauls was. Then Pauls’ boots slithered inside, disappearing like an animal’s tail. His turn now. He must go in. For a second, Kale observed the scene as if it was all a paused movie, a tense scene in which a main character had gone through a door that the audience knew he shouldn’t have. Everything waited on what would follow.
TEECACKKK!!
Another rattling explosion, not quite as close. Grenade near another kiln? The blast broke Kale from a trance. He bent forward, low enough that he thought he could go through the door, and charged in. Inside he expected he’d see a chaotic scene, the flashing of muzzle shots, angry expressions on the faces of men facing death, but it was pitch dark, and he saw nothing. He stumbled, catching his balance by dropping to a knee. His breathing was stressed, as if he were deep in a mine. Then he made out indistinct lumps against walls. He knew they were bodies, crashed on the floor from their wounds.
“You motherfuckerrrrrrrs!” Pauls screamed again.
Cuebas and Moose rushed up to the last target kiln, number five, alone. The rest of Wolf One and Two remained in overwatch, some behind other kilns, some in prone positions nearby. To Moose, the 25 meters he had to cross was a magnificent space: the distance between steel and power and money, and insignificance. The war in Iraq had brought him and the others to this place. Every day he felt as if he understood it less, but that whether or not he understood it mattered less, too. What mattered was how it made him feel. And he felt good. The thrill kept coming back and made him reach farther than ever before. He looked at the kiln with a mixture of pity and voracity. No way would whatever was in there survive.
They arrived in a full run, his body starved for oxygen. He noticed a freshly bloody sandal lying outside the kiln. He listened, trying to determine whether anyone was inside. No sound. Could it be empty? The kiln was no more than an 18-foot diameter blister of earth: a manmade place, where struggling men had gone to work and produced bricks, to feed and shelter and rest and dream. Cuebas waited across from Moose, on the other side of the kiln. The two of them spoke with their eyes. Cuebas had seen the bloody sandal too. The kiln door was on the other side. They needed to slide around to it. Like the other kilns, this entrance was low, no more than four feet high, like the opening to an igloo.
Moose saw Cuebas’ eyes awash with anxiety. What did his own eyes show? He wanted to project firmness and fearlessness. Gunfire had ceased again. Everything waited on clearing this kiln. He could no longer smell the rancid smoke from the grenades and gunfire, nor the dry chalky desert. They circled slowly around to the kiln door. To call it a door would be too much. No door left. No hinges. A roughed-out rectangular hole with a sheet covering it. A sheet? That wasn’t normal. Someone must be using the kiln. Moose inched closer to the entrance. His hand held a grenade. Cuebas followed.
So far the platoon had done well. Right by the book. No way would he lower the standard.
He and Cuebas continued to edge around the kiln.
An arm’s reach from the entrance now, Moose looked for any signs of booby traps, for wires on the ground or across the entrance, or roughed-up dirt. He saw none. No signs of digging. No wires. No signs of anything in the ground. Just the sandal.
The sheet was slightly ajar but hadn’t moved. Bright sunlight now illuminated the entrance like a stage. He couldn’t see inside enough to see anything. He reached back and tapped Cuebas. Cuebas dashed to the other side of the door. Weapons were up. Both men crouched slightly and leaned forward toward the kiln entrance. An eye signal decided it. Moose had the grenade in his hand.
“Come out!” Moose yelled.
No answer. One second. Two seconds.
“Last chance, come out!” Nothing.
More eye talk. Moose stowed his grenade.
Without further hesitation, they went in, Moose first. He had the left side wall. Snap: he took a mental picture of the inside of the structure, hoping to instantaneously detect any suspicious object or person. His eyes blazed. Nothing. Too dark. Keep moving. By then Moose had lunged across most of the width of the kiln. His eyes swept the walls and the ceiling. Cuebas did the same with the other side and the floor. Clear. Nothing on the walls. Nothing there. Too fucking dark. The place was remarkably quiet, insultingly quiet. Empty? An underground passage?
“What the fuck?” Cuebas exclaimed. He went to his knees.
“What? What?” Moose asked urgently.
Cuebas examined something by his feet. Both men turned on their lights.
A long bulky roll of dirty sheeting lay on the floor, extending half the kiln’s diameter.
Both men stared silently.
Both shone their lights. Moose remembered the warehouse. He knew what was on the floor.
“Think there’s a body in that,” he said, wiggling his light on it.
“Ayeee, no fucking welcoming party,” Cuebas cracked.
26
Wynn stood over her body. They’d pulled her out of the kiln and opened the sheets she was wrapped in. He stood over her in the full glare of the daylight now, strong, tall, dominating, like an executioner after an execution. He hadn’t personally killed her, but that didn’t prevent him from feeling a measure of success. The sun warmed rapidly, relentless, shining on the scene around them like a spotlight on a dissection table. A ferocious curiosity simmered in him. He wanted to know the mind of this woman, what had made her who she was. Alive, she might answer a ton of questions. Of course, the answers would be unsatisfactory. He never expected to understand her world. Probably no westerner could.
Her corpse lay on its side, arms crossed and folded over her chest, head tilted forward, knees bent slightly, as if sleeping, lifeless as the brick kilns. A large brown patch of dried blood stained her midsection, evidence of the wound that killed her. She now lay exposed, and fat green flies buzzed her nose and mouth in growing fury, as if repossessing something that was rightfully theirs. Rigor mortis was well advanced. If they turned the corpse upright and sat her on her backside, she would be frozen in a pose not unlike a woman in the middle of a sit-up. Alternatively, if they flipped her over, putting her weight on her arms, face down, she’d almost look as if she’d assumed the position of Islamic prayer. But she lay as she
did on the soiled sheets. Her face held a fierce grimace, a look she would take to eternity.
They estimated that she’d been dead for more than a day. Her skin was taut from body thickening, purplish-gray, and drying, but she was not yet grotesquely bloated. Her hands, thin and boney, had long gnarled fingers stuck out like stalks of young bamboo. Wynn was surprised how ordinary she looked, maybe five-foot-three or -four, with small facial features, typical coal-black hair, not unlike someone you could imagine as a nanny or a music tutor. He felt she should look special. She had shot and killed American soldiers and an Iraqi child. Why? Her eyelids were closed. Not being able to see those eyes was somehow unfair, as if there would be no knowing without looking into that cavern. Whatever thoughts or vision she’d had were gone forever.
The body was not washed or shrouded. Since among her group she would surely be considered a martyr, Islamic custom required that she be buried uncleaned in the clothes she died in within a day or two of death. The white cloth in which she’d been wrapped was part of the customary burial prep, too. So this was how they found her: as she had died, ready for burial. Islamic extremists rarely bothered to send their dead back to their home countries.
The Wolfhounds had not killed her today. All the men knew it. And they all had the same unanswered questions. How had she died? If the Wolfhounds had killed her, it could only have been on the day of the school shooting. But he doubted that was the case. If that were true, her body would have swollen more by now. Nor had the Wolfhounds had an extended firefight at the warehouse. No shots were fired at the checkpoint explosion site, nor did they have any information that PFA was even involved in that attack. Maybe she had been shot by another platoon. Her companions had probably dragged her away and given her rudimentary medical care. He didn’t think she’d lived long after being wounded. She had no padding under the clothing around her belly to indicate any bandaging. Curious, he knelt down and patted the brown stain in her stomach area. The wound area remained a little spongy, but was dry and crinkly, the blood long since coagulated. She’d probably bled out from the wound and been carried here soon after.
Moose and Cuebas stood near Wynn. Wynn looked at them; each man was nearly expressionless, eyes just visible under their helmets, weapons still ready in their hands. Wynn thought he might read disappointment in their eyes, but wasn’t sure.
“You guys all right?” he asked.
Both men nodded, but remained quiet.
They’d be happy about the success, Wynn was sure, but less happy than they would have been had the winning shot been one of theirs. Though they found the sniper, no one could claim credit for having fired the kill shot. But adrenaline still rode high, and other than a hint of weariness in their postures, he was confident each man was ready to go.
“The bitch,” Wynn heard Moose mumble.
He saw Cooke walking towards them. He expected CPT Baumann shortly. Baumann would be pleased. The operation had been a success. They’d clearly damaged an insurgent cell. The count of enemy dead was seven, including a one-sandaled man near this kiln. At least four were killed by the Wolfhounds. Two bodies lay outside the kilns, two others inside. One was killed by 3rd platoon. Another body—a man with a red Santa Claus beard—looked, strangely, as if he had been dead a couple of days. One wounded insurgent was barely conscious, but alive. He had a bullet hole in the shoulder and a dirty bandage strapped around his head and one eye. Two Americans had been wounded.
A shadow of skepticism passed through Wynn’s mind like a cold draft of air. What if she wasn’t the sniper? Nothing identified her. None of the Wolfhounds had actually seen this woman fire a shot. For that matter, no reports had come to the battalion, other than from the information discovered in the warehouse, even confirming the existence of a female sniper. But a few minutes ago a Tabuk Dragunov sniper rifle had been found inside one of the other kilns. That confirmed the likelihood of a sniper being among them. They might never know for sure whether she was, in fact, the sniper. But he felt pretty certain she was. The woman had been wrapped, but not buried. Maybe they hadn’t had time to bury her, or perhaps they were trying to protect her body. To show her to someone? Word had been on the street. The insurgents had been holed up exactly where the egg lady heard they were. Women involved in insurgent groups were rare, yet here she was. All this suggested she was the sniper. Back in America it would be much easier. Fingerprints or other forensic evidence could be used to confirm. She would have had a known past. Investigators back home would be able to determine all that with about a 99 percent probability. None of that was possible here.
Wynn went over to see Tyson. The MEDEVAC bird was expected any minute. Lee and Cruz still worked on Tyson, who was in very serious condition, drifting in and out of consciousness. He’d hardly moved. His whole head was now wrapped in bandages. Wynn took a knee and kissed Tyson on the top of the head. Cruz said the bullet had smashed into his cheek and exited the back of his neck. Tyson had a tube stuck down his nose to keep the airway open, and he hadn’t spoken, but occasionally made gurgling sounds, like a man might make prior to spitting out mouthwash. The wound in this cheek had grotesquely swollen. His mouth was open more than it ought to be. The injury swelled his nose, internal bleeding turned it purple.
Cruz took Wynn aside and said the bullet trajectory took out at least a half dozen of Tyson’s upper teeth, and had speared teeth splinters throughout his mouth. The wound on the back of his neck was slightly off-set from the spine and about the size of a soda bottle opening.
“His face looks like a screaming eagle,” Cruz said. “I hope the bullet missed his spine.”
On the drive back to the FOB, Moose felt vindicated and purified. He didn’t understand why. Some claimed they felt dirty after killing. That killing was something so incomprehensible, so disgusting, and that you could never clear the brutality of the act out of your psyche—from then on dark stains clung to your soul like coal dust on a miner. Moose didn’t think like that. Kale had his trouble—he overthought things. Today, at the brick factory, others had killed. They had achieved something uncommon and momentous, almost beautiful, Moose thought. No, not beautiful. Not in a physical sense. He realized death was an ugly thing, so decisive, so final. Death stole whatever worth life possessed.
Of course violent death wasn’t the only thing that stole worth. Moose thought about Tyson. He’d almost had his face ripped off. Moose hadn’t seen him before the MEDEVAC carried him away, but others had described the severity of his injuries. A couple of the men had cried. Tyson would not be back in the fight anytime soon, if at all. If he survived, the Wolfhounds probably wouldn’t see him again until they got back to the States. Bad things happened to people; Tyson knew that. They all did. Being in Iraq was playing Russian roulette.
Moose, in the trail vehicle of the convoy, leaned back against the back of the turret triumphantly, resting an open palm on the hand grips of the gun, like a trainer’s hand on a boxer’s shoulder, and watched the disappearing world behind them.
“Ayeee. We put a hurt on them,” Cuebas said over the intercom, as if he read Moose’s thinking.
“Damn sure did, buddy.”
Moose thought about death. When a man kills, an act that society proclaims men can’t or shouldn’t do, and he gets away with it, it’s weirdly liberating—a matchless defiance of civil restrictions that’s so slap-face bold, that he thinks himself some kind of superman. He had met a soldier once, a guy in another company, who joked about wearing a Superman shirt under his army-issued brown T-shirt. Now Moose felt as if he had Superman tattooed on his soul.
Kale—what was he thinking? How did he do at the brick factory? They would talk later this evening.
The sniper was interesting. Moose believed that girl had to be the sniper. The Dragunov rifle was proof. He hadn’t had an expectation of what she might look like, and now he wasn’t sure if how they found her was relevant in any way. He agreed she had been dead for at least a day.
The Wolfhounds now carried her body back to the FOB, her corpse loosely wrapped in three or four black plastic trash bags, secured with 100 mile-per-hour tape, and tied on the hood of D23. They’d decided against the honor of placing her in an American body bag.
A mature sun pressed relentless heat and light against the almond-colored landscape. The ground around them responded with blinking silver sparkles and shimmering reflections, the protest of billions of atoms in billions of separate places. Light didn’t always illuminate.
The Wolfhounds brought Mongrel to the Aid Station. Grenade fragments had lightly peppered his hand. Because his wounds were superficial, he had insisted he wouldn’t be left behind, and wanted the platoon to wait for him so he could go out for the afternoon’s mission. Wynn had agreed to wait if the Doc said Mongrel would be ready in an hour. The Doc did. So the platoon went to lunch and then came back. Halliburton, his mouth white with paper pulp, brought Mongrel a plate from the DFAC. The Aid Station had no further info on Tyson’s condition because the MEDEVAC aircraft had bypassed FOB Apache and taken Tyson to a FOB with a larger hospital.
After picking up Mongrel, the Wolfhounds had to continue with census work. Any victory celebration would have to wait, CPT Baumann said. Higher headquarters was giving him flack about the census. Some Wolfhounds questioned the brevity of brick factory operation. After all, they’d taken fire from the village going in, and it might be worth investigating that route and area further, visiting with the residents in the area to try to find out who might have cooperated with the insurgents. But Baumann had concluded that an insurgent lookout had seen them coming. Since the brick factory was located outside the battalion’s area, headquarters wouldn’t approve more time for searching. The insurgent cell was smashed; the kilns thoroughly searched. Little was found. Further investigation might be undertaken by other agencies—after interrogations of the three captured men. For now, the Dog Platoons would return to their respective battlespaces to continue operations.
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