“You don’t have the right pass to drive in here,” they say, in broken English and Spanish.
I get out of the car and unload my bags. They tell me to move.
“I am getting out here,” I say, my voice rising. “If you have a problem, call the fucking ambassador.”
The Peruvian guards start to circle around me, like they are going to physically restrain me. X moves near me, ready to intervene, ready to tackle the Peruvian who looks like he is ready to tackle me. I pick up my bags and walk inside. The guards watch. I put my bags down in the waiting area inside the LZ. I apologize to the guards for my outburst.
Reps from the embassy, including my friend Lou Fintor, turn up about fifteen minutes later.
“I’ve spent the last twelve hours trying to find a Hungarian flag,” Lou says, when I ask what’s in his hand. “The only one we could find was at the DFAC.” The embassy dining hall has all the flags in the Coalition of the Willing—the thirty-two countries that originally supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq—hanging from the ceiling. Korea, Japan, Estonia, Fiji. Even though Hungary, as Lou points out, is no longer part of the Coalition (they dropped out in 2005), they still kept their flag hanging right above the salad bar, three meters from the Baskin Robbins ice cream counter.
“There is one problem,” Lou says. “The flag smells like French fries and onion rings, all that grease from the chow hall.” The loss of Yonni is front-page news in Hungary, Lou tells me. It’s caused some controversy. Before Yonni was a hired gun, he served in the Hungarian military. Officially, the Hungarians aren’t even supposed to be here, but they’re part of the NATO mission. NATO has representatives stationed in Baghdad to watch the progress of the war. Lou, who speaks Hungarian from his time at the U.S. embassy in Budapest, has been in touch with the Hungarian NATO detachment to arrange their participation in the ceremony at the airport. They didn’t know if they could get a flag in time, and Lou did not want to take any chances.
The wind picks up. I resign myself to the fact that we might be delayed.
No, I’m told, we’re going.
The contingent from NDI arrives. I meet the man who gave me the news, Tom Ramsay. He tells me: “We are cooperating fully with the FBI investigation.”
This statement perplexes me, and I get suspicious. Well, of course you’re cooperating fully with the investigation. Why wouldn’t you be? It is a sentence that reeks to me of legalese and evasiveness and guilt; cooperating fully with the investigation. No shit you are. Perhaps he says this because I’m a journalist. Perhaps he says it because it is stressful and he doesn’t know what else to say. Perhaps he says it because he is not cooperating fully with an investigation that will show many mistakes were made, too many, and the responsibility for those mistakes might fall on his shoulders. Perhaps not. Perhaps I am just angry and tired and paranoid.
I meet Karen. She will be with me all the way to Dover. Karen was the last NDI staffer to see Andi. She is about five feet five, with tan skin and dark hair down to her shoulders. She looks tired and smokes Marb Lights. Do we have enough cigarettes? I ask. I have two packs—so does she. That should keep us until the afternoon, I say.
The two Black Hawks land, blowing wind and dirt against our faces as we follow the ground crew member out to the “birds.” I dressed today in the blue blazer and gray flannels and a white button-down shirt that has light blue stripes in a crisscrossing pattern. I wanted to look respectable for the ceremony. I do the State Department chic thing, and put the body armor on under the navy blazer. I wear my Burberry coat, bought with Andi the year before, and button it to the top. I strap my helmet, pop on the eye protection, and stick in the yellow earplugs. I have the travel down to an art—two bags carried, one on my back. X and I hug before I get on the helicopter.
We lift off over Baghdad. There are heavy winds, winds that would cancel a normal flight. I am being buffeted around like never before. I feel so fucking strange. The city is waking up, three thousand feet below, maybe closer, it seems closer. We follow the river out, the other Black Hawk tailing behind us, whoomp whoomp whoomp, and I can’t help but smile at the unbelievability of it all. I laugh to myself, an absurd, sad laugh. I think very briefly, I can’t wait to tell Andi about this trip, she’ll get a kick out of it—and it hits me again that I will never get the chance.
We land at Sather Airfield, or the Glass House, the military terminal at the Baghdad Airport where the C-130 is scheduled to meet us that morning. The Glass House was once the building where Saddam met VIPs arriving in Baghdad. There is not much glass anymore, most of it replaced by plywood to board up the windows. I can see the civilian air terminal across a large airfield, where the Royal Jordanian flights take off. We are informed that the C-130 is late and won’t arrive until the afternoon, about eight or nine hours from now. They want to do the ceremony as the two coffins are loaded onto the plane, so we have to wait.
An army chaplain comes in, along with Lieutenant Colonel John Franks of Mortuary Affairs and the ambassador’s speechwriter. They start to talk, going over the details of the ceremony—the honor guard, where the soldiers will stand, who will speak first. The ambassador’s speechwriter shows her talking points to the chaplain so he can get a sense of what the ambassador is going to say. It is too much for me, and I go outside to smoke and look at the airplanes.
Lou joins me.
“This place is a fucking nightmare,” I tell him.
He agrees.
“When I leave here, I won’t look back,” he says. “Afghanistan I could go back to, but this place is so fucked up.”
Lieutenant Colonel Franks rounds us up for a trip to the morgue. There are two such Mortuary Affairs companies in the army, he explains, or about three hundred people in total. It is all volunteer; the men and women in Mortuary Affairs serve only six-month tours, due to the stress and psychological trauma of their military occupation specialty, or MOS. There are eight collection posts for bodies throughout the country. This spot at Camp Victory is the main depot for the dead. The Iraqis are being trained how to take the lead in mortuary affairs, building their own facilities with help from the Coalition, so they don’t have to rely on local hospitals or the Americans to process their dead.
We drive out in SUVs to a small white building. Lieutenant Colonel Franks points to an even smaller, rundown building where they had worked until they recently upgraded to the new facility. The Mortuary Affairs group is isolated, Franks explains, away from the rest of the base, hidden in the corner, out of the way.
We walk inside. A group of soldiers is hanging out in a small office. I am introduced to Staff Sergeant Cruz, the young man who worked on Andi. We get a tour. “Everyone is treated with dignity and respect,” he says. They bring us out back, where there is a white morgue truck and a stack of silver metal caskets. The caskets are temperature controlled and identical, with a slip of white paper containing the personal details of the contents on the side. Andi is already in one, but they don’t tell me which one.
I ask Lieutenant Colonel Franks if I can see her remains; he shakes his head no. He moves closer to me and says we will have a talk, man-to-man. The rest of the group leaves.
“I know who you are,” he says. “I know aboutNewsweek and the trip to Paris”—he’d read about it in theL.A. Times —“I know you’re the media. I’ve done my research. I’ve Googled you. You know, the media is always reporting the negative news. I’m glad this is finally a positive story.”
I am slightly stunned. I am amused that the colonel, meeting a representative of the press, takes a shot at the liberal media, then suggests that Andi’s death is a good news story. I don’t say anything, but I assume he means the fact that she died for something she believed in, she died for her ideals, and that she was being treated as a hero.
He gives me the details.
Her body was found in the backseat. The body of the Hungarian security guard was found on top of hers. It appears he was trying to protect her from the flames, from the bull
ets and the explosions. The front seat was broken, knocked back, so he must have jumped in the backseat to cover her up.
“Twenty-five hundred degrees Fahrenheit, fire burns down,” he says.
I don’t know what this means.
“There has been comingling of the remains,” he says.
It dawns on me why the Hungarian has to go back to Dover—so the morticians with better equipment in the States can separate what is Andi from what is her security guard.
“Can I see her?” I ask.
“There is no body,” he says. “She is not what you think. What is left is not recognizable as man or woman. It is ugly. It is not her. Trust me, you don’t want to see.”
“Was the driver found in the car? I was told he may have run away,” I say.
There were only two found in the car, he says.
I thank him and go back to the SUV.
A further investigation is being conducted by the CID, or the criminal investigation division of the military. What will the forensics say about the last moments? Will the body of her driver show burn marks—will there even be a body?—like he was escaping from the fire, or will it be full of bullets, like he just stopped the car and tried to run away? Or did he stagger out in a daze after something hit him, a bullet, shrapnel? How many bullet holes in the car will there be?
At least one of her guards did his job, I tell myself, tried to cover her, tried to protect her from the heat, from the flames, from the grenades rolled under the vehicle, under the gas tank, the dense smoke, 2500 degrees Fahrenheit, fire burns down. I hope her guard covered her five-foot-three frame. I hope she was comforted by this. I wish I had been the one to die on top of her. I wish I had been there to protect her.
There are still a few hours left before the ceremony. Lieutenant Colonel Franks offers to show us around. He suggests going to the PX on Camp Liberty, another base on the airport compound. On the drive over, I ask where the Crisp is located. The Crisp is the name of the yard at Liberty where destroyed vehicles are brought—vehicles that are burned up, burned out, burned to a crisp. The Crisp is where Andi’s car was taken. It is the Crisp that gives me images of scraping scorched bones off the melted carcass of the car she was in.
It’s over there, he says. From a distance, it looks like a junkyard or parking lot.
The PX on Liberty is one of the nicest in Iraq, due to its proximity to the airport. There is a Taco Bell and Green Bean, and the PX itself is the size of a Wal-Mart. Franks, Lou, Karen, the speechwriter, and I enter the store. Bright lights shine on row after row of Doritos, Tostitos, Right Guard, Crest toothpaste, Marlboro Lights and Reds, magazines,Car and Driver, Ebony, Maxim, new DVDs, new video games for the Xbox and PlayStation and even the handheld PSPs. There is a back room with televisions and air conditioners, satellite dishes. There is combat gear, holsters, boots, socks, sanitary napkins; there is a counter for ballistic eye protection. I pick up a pack of Marb Reds, and I also decide I need a new pair of sunglasses for the upcoming funeral and plane ride. The sunglasses I have been wearing are slightly bent. I ask to look at a pair of Ray-Bans, a black pair that I press to my face. I buy them. There is a fifteen-minute wait in the checkout line, which stretches back to the refrigerated pizzas, customer after customer, some in uniform, some in the jeans and tight T-shirts or push-up bras of contractors.
Outside on a small cement sidewalk surrounded by the gravel that covers up the mud on the base, I ask Lieutenant Colonel Franks and Karen which pair of sunglasses looks better, my old ones or my new ones. Karen declines to answer; Lieutenant Colonel Franks says the Ray-Bans, definitely, they fit your face.
CHAPTER23
January 21, 2007
BAGHDAD, KUWAIT
There is no blue in the sky. Dark gray clouds press down on the long runway, rolling in to stay for the afternoon. The cargo bay door on the C-130 drops to the ground; a white van pulls up about 150 feet away. Two rows of men and women, most in desert fatigues, others in blazers and dresses, form a line from the tail of the aircraft to the van. There must be at least thirty of them. I am standing second in line on the left side of the plane’s ramp. Ambassador Khalilzad stands to my left. I take off the Ray-Bans.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he says.
“Thank you, Mr. Ambassador, and thank you for coming out here today, I know Andi would have appreciated it. It means a lot.”
I try to say something else, and he does as well, but it is lost in the wind, and we stand in silence.
The first casket is removed from the van. It is the Hungarian’s casket, wrapped in a Hungarian flag. It is a new flag—Lou finally convinced the Hungarian NATO attaché to provide a flag that didn’t smell like French fries. The soldiers carry the casket onto the plane.
There are salutes, military commands are yelled out, the van’s ramp is lowered to the ground again, and there she is, covered in an American flag.
Six soldiers step forward, one foot measured in front of the other, carrying her silver casket. She moves slowly. I see tears in the eyes of a number of people standing across from me, her friends from the State Department.
Lieutenant Colonel Franks discreetly takes pictures, pictures that will have to be approved by CENTCOM before they are released. I see Karen with her camera, videotaping, following the casket as it makes its way to the plane.
The wind picks up, the worst wind all day, sweeping across the runway, strong enough to knock me off balance.
It would not have been right for there to be sun on such a day. It has been sunny since she was killed, but as she gets closer to leaving this place, this evil place, there are thick clouds, threats of rain in the desert, the sky dark. The coffin passes me, the closest I have been to Andi since I kissed her goodbye nine days earlier, her head resting on my shoulder, fitting there, perfectly, such a rare thing.
The six men set the casket down inside the C-130’s cargo bay.
Another military command is shouted, and the two lines of men and women move into the plane. There is no light inside the cargo bay; words fade without echoes. Ambassador Khalilzad speaks; the head of NDI’s Baghdad Program speaks; the head of Unity Resources Group speaks; then I speak.
“When things like this happen, the first question one asks is why…In this case, the second question is why would she want to be with a jerk like me?”
I don’t think the joke works.
“What I’m saying, what I’m trying to get at, is what an amazing person she is…Yesterday, when I was going through her personal effects, I found a piece of paper…”
Dear Angels dear God dear Universe
Please let me get the job at NDI.
The NDI job will work out fine.
I am protected by light and love
I am protected by light and love
My hand shakes as I put the paper back in my pocket.
The army chaplain says a prayer.
A series of hugs, handshakes, goodbyes, be strong, and the people file out of the plane.
“You’re gonna get these guys who did this,” I say to the ambassador as he walks away. “No doubt about it,” he responds.
I sit down in the seat closest to her casket at the back of the cargo bay, pulling on my body armor, putting on my sunglasses, and strapping myself in. Karen sits across from me. About fifteen other passengers come in the front entrance of the plane, so as not to walk past the two caskets strapped in the back. The ramp on the cargo bay closes; it’s chilly in here.
The aircrew gives instructions—the bathroom, air sickness bags, what to do in case of emergency. They recommend we keep our body armor on. A Black Hawk helicopter was shot out of the sky the day before, killing thirteen, and there was speculation in the press and among the military about whether the insurgents had a supply of new missiles.
The plane starts to move, its engines roaring. There are no windows on the C-130, and you quickly lose sense of what altitude you are at, or even if you’re still on the ground. I lean back in my seat and feel an
urge to reach out and touch her casket, to touch the flag. Maybe I think it will be warm to the touch, maybe I think it will bring me closer to her. But I worry that if it is cold to my touch, I will not like that. I am wearing my sunglasses, tearing up so much there is now a layer of dried salt on the inside of the lenses. The other passengers are not looking or talking; they are staring straight ahead. Finally, I reach out and touch the corner of the casket, caressing her and the flag.
It is neither warm nor cold.
The plane lands, a faster flight than expected. We are in Kuwait.
A master sergeant enters the plane.
“We have two angels on board today, so please join me for a prayer.”
Angels, I think, angels, not knowing at that point that the U.S. military calls all the fallen “angels.” Planes with the dead are called “angel flights.”
Another honor guard comes on; a sergeant is giving instructions. I stand next to him. I have a picture of Andi in my blazer pocket, a crumpled picture, and he talks in what seems to me like a casual manner. It isn’t his fault he is doing his job. I say to him: “This is Andi, this is who is in that casket.” He says, “Really, I’m sorry,” and they carry her off into another white van, to hold her in the morgue while we wait for the next flight to Germany.
In Kuwait, we wait at another PAX terminal. I watch CNN until three other soldiers show up, “escorts” as they call them. “Escort” is the word for friends who are allowed to accompany the dead on flights out of Baghdad. I am an escort, but I am a rarity because I have permission to travel with the casket all the way back to Dover. These three escorts just arrived on a flight from Baghdad; they are friends with the pilots who were killed in the Black Hawk crash yesterday. I talk to the soldiers. They tell me they were granted permission to escort their friends’ bodies to Kuwait, but then they have to go back to Baghdad. I ask one if what I heard was true—if they think the Black Hawk was shot down by a missile. One of the soldiers tells me he thinks that is what happened.
I Lost My Love in Baghdad Page 24