Youngblood

by Matt Gallagher

  The terp proved too groggy to be confused or bothered. When I explained we had a visitor, he just shrugged and stuck a clump of sunflower seeds into his mouth.

  “Arabs,” he said.

  I asked if they’d speak slowly so I could pick out words and phrases; I was getting better at understanding Arabic, though getting people to understand mine was something else altogether. Snoop obliged, but Haitham was in no mood to play tutor.

  “He asks about Ismail,” Snoop said. “The townspeople say the Iraqi Police are hitting him.”

  “Who?” I didn’t know an Ismail.

  “His nephew,” Snoop said. “The Barbie Kid.”

  “Of course.” I’d heard the same rumor, and had been meaning to check on the teen, though I didn’t have the same pull with the Iraqi Police that I did with the jundis. I promised Haitham I’d look into it and make sure his nephew was being treated well, though it might be a while until he was released. Through the fence screen, the little man nodded.

  I turned to Snoop. “Tell Haitham the mukhtar asked about him,” I said. “Has a gift or something.”

  At Snoop’s translation, Haitham’s voice became even faster and rose in pitch. The terp said to slow down, and then just cut him off.

  “He say the gift the mukhtar has is a bullet. Then he speaks of the bad days in Ashuriyah again,” Snoop said. “He will tell us important things. But only if you promise him Camp Bucca. He wants jail, LT. Still.”

  “For the love of Allah,” I muttered. None of the insurgents we wanted in jail could ever be found, while this guy, one of our sources, was begging to be locked up. “I’ll do what I can,” I said. “But he’ll probably have to cop to plotting against Coalition forces, or something.”

  The little man nodded again, cleared his throat, and tried to straighten out the hunch in his back. Then he spoke, slow and deliberate, stopping occasionally so Snoop could translate.

  “He’s stayed away from us because he must hide from everyone. The sheiks of Ashuriyah hunt him because of the mistakes of the past, which must be explained. Some years ago, he served a sheik named Ahmed. He served the sheik and his family loyally.

  “He brings up Shaba again. He say Shaba and Sheik Ahmed were very close. He say—he say Ahmed promised his only daughter to him. They were to be father and son.”

  Snoop turned to me with an arched eyebrow and spat out a few shells. “This is bullshit. No Iraqi father would marry his daughter to an American soldier. No offenses.”

  I laughed. “Remember what Alia said about that woman Shaba wanted to marry? Maybe it’s not bullshit. Let’s hear him out.”

  Snoop shrugged and kept translating through a mouthful of seeds, his voice soaked in doubt.

  “The sheik’s true son was al-Qaeda. Karim. He hated Americans and swore to kill his father for working with them, and Shaba for violating his sister. So Karim recruited al-Qaeda in Ashuriyah. Every Sunni boy who could hold a gun heard his speech. ‘No foreign invaders!’ he said. ‘No Shi’a scum on our land!’ he said. ‘We will make a government of Islam!’ he said. Many ali babas joined him. They sneak-attacked Shaba at night, dogs with no honor.

  “The sheik suffered over the betrayal for many nights. His blood son had killed his oath son. It was the saddest of houses during those days.”

  I realized I was gripping the holes in the chain-link fence as I listened, getting as close to Haitham’s words as I could. I wanted to hear more about Rana, and about Shaba and Rana. Snoop had his face in one of his hands and yawned widely as he waited.

  “The sheik still loved Karim, but he’d loved Shaba, too. And he loved Iraq. Not this place, the country he knew, but the dream. Iraq the idea. So, after many nights, he decided to help the Americans capture his son. His spies knew where Karim’s hideout was. Then the sheik told Haitham to lead the Americans there.

  “Haitham wants us to know he is no traitor. He told the Horse soldier lieutenant that Karim was to be captured, not killed. Sheik Ahmed knew a life in Camp Bucca was still a life. But the kill team shaytan did not care. He only cared about making Iraqis dead.” Snoop paused in his translation, then grunted. “That’s not true, LT Jack. Sergeant Chambers is a good sergeant. I know this.”

  I was tired of Snoop’s interjections. “Let. Him. Finish,” I said.

  Snoop sighed, but continued. “Haitham say he always trusted Americans. Allah charges Muslims with protecting all People of the Book. But then he saw the Horse soldier lieutenant shoot Karim, and saw Sergeant Chambers put a rifle next to his body to make it look like a battle. He say he saw black skulls on his arm that night and knew he is a shaytan. He knew they all were.

  “Haitham ran from the hideout. He wouldn’t return to the sheik’s, because he thought he’d be blamed for what happened. He went south, to the Euphrates, where he heard Sheik Ahmed had put a death fatwa on him. He believed Haitham told the Americans to murder his son. So Haitham stayed away from Ashuriyah for many years, only returning to help his family, he say. He hoped people had forgotten. But they hadn’t. The other tribal leaders keep the death fatwa on him, to honor Sheik Ahmed.

  “This is why he hides and the only job he could find was as a source for us. This is why he wants Camp Bucca now. But he will only turn himself in to you.”

  Haitham kept speaking, his silhouette trembling through the screen. I may not have been able to understand him, but I could still hear the terror in his words. Snoop shook his head and ran his fingers through his gums to get rid of any remaining shells. “Now he kisses your ass,” the terp said. “You are his friend, a good American who cares about Iraqis blah blah blah. Which, yeah, is true. But he say it because he needs you.”

  I patted Snoop on the shoulder. “A wise man once said that Haitham drinks too much but he’s not a liar.” Snoop grimaced at the reference to his own advice. “I know you’re tired, man. But bullshit or not, Haitham risked his life getting here, and—” Before I finished my sentence, something ferocious flipped my stomach. “Wait,” I said. “He’s the one the sniper was after that night. Not us. Not Alphabet. Him.”

  I didn’t need to wait for Snoop. I could tell by the hesitation before Haitham’s reply. I pictured myself climbing the fence and choking the Iraqi to death, but all I could do was stand there, dumbstruck and feeling ill.

  “He’s very sorry, LT,” Snoop said. “He didn’t know for sure until that night. As a show of trust—whoa. He will tell us where Shaba’s bones are.”

  I took a deep breath, the importance of recovering an American soldier’s full remains only beginning to seep through the cracks of my mind. Alphabet was dead, yes. But at least we’d been able to send him home.

  “Go on,” I said.

  That was when a popping like a champagne cork echoed through Ashuriyah. We watched scattered fireballs tumble over the market blocks. Thud. Thud. Thud. The muezzin’s chants had ended and the sky was gray and smoked.

  “Mortars!” my walkie-talkie said. “Mortar fire in town!”

  Rifle in hand, I pushed away from the fence and ran into the outpost, a thought still dangling from above, a thought that had nothing to do with ghosts or bones or mortars.

  When we were children? When my brother and I had talked to God on our own terms? Maybe we hadn’t been right to do that, yelling into His ear. But we hadn’t exactly been wrong to do it, either.

  23

  * * *

  We rode to the sound of the guns.

  Four Strykers screamed east, bowels packed full of grunts ready for a fucking fight. The champagne popping of mortars had been replaced by the cracking of rifles. “Just go,” Captain Vrettos had said, so we went.

  “Dismount to your right and take cover behind the vehicles,” I said over the platoon net. “The contact is to the south. Don’t engage unless you positively identify a target.”

  “That means they’re holding a weapon,” Chambers said from his vehicle. “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Nobody be a fucking hero. Heroes get people killed.”

 
; The Stryker came to a stop. The ramp dropped like an anvil and angry air rushed in. Bodies piled out in front of me. I felt Snoop’s hot sunflower-seed breath on my neck, and as my first boot hit packed dirt, Dominguez’s voice shot over the radio speakers: “Contact to the north! To the north!”

  I stopped moving and watched the vehicle behind us launch a smoke grenade, masking us in a wispy cloud.

  What did he mean, the north?

  I heard a whistle. Then another whistle. Then a snap. Bullets ripped at my head, pinging off the Stryker cage behind me.

  Close. Close. Very close.

  I swung around to the other side of the vehicle for cover, grabbing Snoop from the ramp.

  So, I thought. That’s what he meant by north.

  A tank rolled by, machine gun blazing away atop its blocky beige frame. Rounds ricocheted off it steadily. A long, arched barrel pointed out its turret, the apocalypse’s very own compass marking the way north. The flag on its side identified it as Iraqi Army, and I recognized one of Saif’s sergeants standing out of the hatch. The streets were empty aside from war machines and hunched silhouettes of soldiers, forsaken by all who called the neighborhood home.

  “Lieutenant Porter! Over here!”

  Through thick, powdery dust, I saw uniforms and hand waves and I moved north again, head and back down. Snoop followed. We joined Washington and his fireteam behind a square building made of clay, huddling low behind it.

  More IA tanks drove into the Shi’a neighborhood on both sides of us, rattling with automatic fire. A bald white soccer ball sat at my feet, an artifact of a game that would never pick up again. I grabbed the hand mic on Batule’s back.

  “Anyone see what the IAs are shooting at?”

  “Negative!”

  A squad of jundis ran between buildings to join us, bunched together like a spring. A spray of rounds tore into them. One fell, but found his way back to his knees and kept moving. Another fell forward and didn’t get back up, a lake of crimson staining the yellow dirt underneath his chest. The remaining IAs responded by shooting their rifles from their hips and bounding to our position. Washington ran out and grabbed the fallen Iraqi by the armpits, dragging him to cover. His gloves ran red with blood and he took them off and tossed them to the ground with a look of disgust.

  Doc Cork turned the jundi over and said, “Already gone,” before going to the other jundi and applying a pressure dressing to a hemorrhaging shoulder.

  “Sir, what are we doing?”

  “Lieutenant Porter, we need to move. Now.”

  “Sir!”

  Voices swirled and my thoughts boiled and I heard myself breathing too loud. I took a sip of water from my CamelBak, but all I tasted was dust. The air was dry and coiling. Searching my mind, I couldn’t remember anything tactical from the manuals, so I concentrated on a soft ache on the top of my ribs where our body armor was held together by a thick Velcro strap. Then I remembered something else.

  “Washington,” I said. “Ever see Band of Brothers? When they advance on the Nazis from behind a tank?”

  He grinned, and I reached for the radio to order Hog to maneuver the Stryker between buildings. Life imitating art imitating life, I thought. I’m a fucking postmodern boss.

  Behind the creeping vehicle, we moved forward like a needle into a vein. Chambers and a fireteam from fourth squad ran to join our staggered column. Twelve rifles wedged tightly into shoulders swept over every window and every corner in quick, anxious scans. Chambers said “Nice” about using the Stryker as a moving shield, and I nodded, proud. The radio squawked. Batule said Captain Vrettos needed to talk to me, but I said to relay that we were busy getting shot at. A neighborhood of rectangular wheat-colored houses surrounded us. Packed dirt turned into runny black sludge, and I stroked the safety trigger on my rifle and noticed a couple of the men had already flipped theirs to semiautomatic or burst. I didn’t correct them but instead looked up at the sun and realized it was now morning. Fat beads of sweat ran from the padding underneath my helmet down my face and into my mouth. We came upon a small depression with ruined concrete blocks stacked like a midget Stonehenge, and I exhaled.

  “Quick halt here, guys. Need to update the commander.”

  I went to grab the hand mic on Batule’s back, and when I got there, the world turned to mud.

  •  •  •

  I couldn’t see anything or hear anything, but I knew I was still alive because my mouth tasted like sewer. I lifted my head, heavy with helmet and sludge, and wiped my eyes clean, and then my ears, which filled with the staccato humming of machine gun fire. It was Dominguez, unloading the machine gun into the second floor of a sandstone house fifty meters west. I pulled myself to my knees.

  “Sir! You okay!” It was Batule, leaning on one knee, firing into the same house as Dominguez. Over cloth, I grabbed my dick, my balls, my face, and my calves.

  “I—I—th-think so!” I spat out runny mud. “The fuck happened?”

  The words came back in fragments.

  “Sniper!”—RAT-A-TAT-TAT. “Sergeant Chambers”—RAT-A-TAT-TAT. “Tackled you”—RAT-A-TAT-TAT.

  I followed Batule’s finger to the square hole where a dark round had lodged into a concrete block—head level, right behind where I’d been standing.

  I exposed myself, I thought. Made myself a target.

  “Cease fire! Cease fire!” The voice came from the front side of the Stryker. It was assured and singed, like the desert itself.

  “Washington, take the two fireteams and clear that building. I doubt anything’s alive in there, but make fucking sure,” Chambers continued.

  The gunfire had tapered off to scattered shots in the far distance, and two tanks rolled back south like a pair of cantering steeds. One of their gunners stood out of his hatch and waved at us. I moved around the back side of the Stryker and stood next to Chambers. His breaths were deep, but nothing else suggested unease. His back was straight, his shoulders cocked, his bearing pleased. He tapped my helmet.

  “All right, Lieutenant? Gotta be smarter about grabbing the radio. Marks you as an officer. They know our procedures better than we do.”

  “Sergeant, I . . .” I took off my right glove and put out my hand. “Thank you.”

  I thought for sure he was going to say, I got you, youngblood. But he didn’t, and I was thankful for that. He just smiled, all tobacco-stained overbite, and took my hand. Then he winked.

  After the guys cleared the building, I walked upstairs to look at the enemy. There were four of them, teenage scarecrows made of dirt, all torn to bloody straw. The one we decided was my sniper had brain matter spilling out of his skull, a white, slick jelly. Another cradled an AK-47 in his arms.

  Hog came up, too, and vomited in a corner. Leaders have to deal with things like this later, I told myself. So I put those thoughts into a compartment of the mind and shut it tight and tapped at the floor and asked how long it would take the owners to mop up the jelly. Not long, came the reply. It’s not very sticky.

  The next hour was spent piecing together why and how. The Iraqi Army said a group of Sahwa started firing at them while they were responding to the mortars. A tribal dispute, they claimed. The Sahwa said the Iraqi Army started firing at them while they were responding to the same mortars. A Shi’a-Sunni dispute, they claimed. Both groups said men dressed in black who appeared in the middle of the firefight were the ones who shot at us. “Jaish al-Rashideen,” the IA said. “Jaish al-Mahdi,” the Sahwa said.

  “You know how they are.”

  “You know how they are.”

  I knew how they were. But still, I thought. None of the dead boys had been wearing black.

  24

  * * *

  Washington got a medal for valor under enemy fire. Dominguez got a medal for valor under enemy fire. I got a medal for valor under enemy fire that was really for being an officer under enemy fire. Chambers got a medal for saving the life of an officer under enemy fire.

  We drove to Camp
Independence for the ceremony. It was held in a quad of yellow grass behind headquarters. Old Glory and the battalion flag hung from a pole in the quad center, flapping indolently under light clouds. Battalion staff walked through the ranks, shaking the men’s hands. The soldiers saluted their faces and laughed at their backs, calling them fobbits and rear-echelon motherfuckers, holding the ethical high ground of the grunt because it was all they had.

  Meanwhile, I watched Sergeant Chambers and his intel girlfriend, Sergeant Griffin, talk in excited whispers. They’d snuck behind a storage trailer where they thought no one could see them. She smiled and squeezed his hand, and while he didn’t smile, he did squeeze her hand back.

  The ceremony was short and mundane. The Big Man called us to attention and told us we’d lived up to the scorpion name. “This is what Clear-Hold-Build is all about,” he said. Then he gave a speech about honor and freedom and wished us a happy Fourth of July. He concluded by reading a passage from the Bible, Numbers 31:

  Every thing that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the fire, and it shall be clean: nevertheless it shall be purified with the water of separation: and all that abideth not the fire ye shall make go through the water.

  And ye shall wash your clothes on the seventh day, and ye shall be clean, and afterward ye shall come into the camp.

  Being a Gospels man, I wasn’t sure what to make of that. The Yahweh of the Old Testament always seemed like a petulant maniac to me, though the selected passage didn’t sound so bad. It sure fired up the Big Man, who finished the reading by pounding a fist into his palm and saying, “Now you’re in camp! And you’re staying here, for the night at least.”

  He expected the soldiers to cheer, and when they didn’t, he stopped talking and started pinning on medals. He should’ve known the last thing my men wanted was to stay at Camp Independence. We’d gone feral. It was no place for us.