by David Abrams
On top of that, there was the earlier incident when a suicide bomber in Sadr City had rammed into the ass-end of a tank but failed to detonate. After a tense standoff at a place headquarters had dubbed Quillpen, the would-be terrorist had been shot by either the battalion commander or a platoon sergeant—Gooding was still trying to verify all the facts—but then headquarters started getting calls from the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior telling them the Iraqi police who’d recovered the body reportedly found papers indicating the man was from Switzerland not Syria as originally reported, and wouldn’t that just be the fuck-a-roo to end all fuck-a-roos if this hajji turned out to be a peace-loving Swiss Muslim who’d gone rotten somewhere along the line and decided to quit yodeling with Heidi and jihad his ass on over to Iraq.
Either way, the whole thing was a mess and Gooding’s public affairs cubicle in Task Force Headquarters had turned into Mess Central because, for the last two hours, CNN had been airing footage captured at the scene where someone had put an end to the alleged Swiss terrorist at Intersection Quillpen. The Ministry of the Interior had already called an impromptu press conference in Firdos Square, the Iraqi minister telling reporters that the terrorist was not from Iraq, Syria, or even Iran, but from a European country, yet he refused to confirm which one, sending the press corps off on wild tangents of speculation. Within minutes, Gooding’s office was besieged with phone calls from all the wire services and networks wanting a comment, any comment, even a crumb of a tidbit they could print or air—anything he could give them to confirm the MOI statement would be most helpful and most appreciated because, after all, they were on tight deadline and the story was getting more and more stale every time CNN aired its tape, they just needed something to freshen up the earlier reports.
Then, in the midst of dealing with the assassination of the failed bomber who may or may not be from Switzerland, Gooding learned of the IED in al-Karkh and the probability of high U.S. casualties. As it turned out, only one U.S. soldier was killed—a hot chunk of scrap iron finding that two-inch sweet spot between the helmet and the collar of the flak vest and ripping away half of the kid’s neck, causing him to stumble and trip into a puddle of ignited gasoline. Three others had been wounded with the usual assortment of burns, partial amputations, and concussions. Gooding needed to throw a bone to the news networks with this release about the soldier killed in action—if nothing else, it would distract them from the earlier incident at Intersection Quillpen—but he could do nothing without the official confirmation from Casualty.
Now, still sweat-slicked from his run through the palace, Gooding’s fingers flew across the keyboard like he was playing Mozart’s Piano Sonata no. 11 and only had two minutes to finish the damned thing. In fact, he only had one minute. The division’s public affairs officer Lieutenant Colonel Eustace Harkleroad hovered at Gooding’s elbow, watching every keystroke of the press release unrolling across the computer screen.
Harkleroad was a thick man. Thick in the way a bowl of risen dough is said to be thick. He filled his uniform amply; in truth, there was more flesh than fabric. When he leaned back in his chair, other soldiers flinched, afraid a button would pop off, come flying across the room, and put out an eye.
Furthermore, Eustace Harkleroad—forever shortened by his mother to “Stacie,” which had caused him no end of agony over the past forty-odd years—was a spontaneous nosebleeder. Gooding knew if he didn’t get this killed-in-action press release done quickly and to the exacting standards of the commanding general, the PAO’s nose would start dripping red like a spigot.
Gooding didn’t tell his boss he was writing this release based on the barest, unsubstantiated nod from G-1 Casualty. What Harkleroad didn’t know wouldn’t hurt either him or the rest of the world. Besides, this press release had already been ping-ponging around division headquarters for the past fifty minutes—at least four hours and ten minutes after the charred body had cooled somewhere out there in al-Karkh—and the Task Force Baghdad Public Affairs Office merely needed to tell the media what they thought they already knew. The press release was just another useless, redundant scrap of information in the reporters’ e-mail in-boxes and eight times out of ten would be deleted without being read. But to the majors, lieutenant colonels, colonels, and generals running around division headquarters in a constant state of ass-pucker, the press release was as important as an edict from the pope.
In its life cycle, the press release went through several layers of approval and sometimes contradictory editing by the various staff officers along the way. From Staff Sergeant Gooding it went to Lieutenant Colonel Harkleroad, who would red-pen the sentences, give it back to Gooding for corrections, then distribute it to several other staff officers—Intelligence and Security, Plans and Operations, staff judge advocate, provost marshal, sometimes even the chaplain got a say-so—before hand carrying it upstairs to the command group, where Harkleroad would give it to the chief of staff’s secretary—fingers trembling, nose already tingling with the threat of blood—and wait outside the chief’s office door while the secretary ventured inside to place the press release on the colonel’s desk. He would be blasted with either a bark of, “What the fuck is it now?!” or a battle-weary, “All right, let me have it. And for God’s sake, tell Harkleroad to stop sniffing out there.”
Lieutenant Colonel Harkleroad did his best to suck the beginning drips of blood back into his nostrils and prayed the chief read the press release before he couldn’t snuffle it up anymore and he had to walk in there to retrieve the paper with a tissue wad sticking out of his nose.
The chief of staff, a colonel named Belcher, had lost his temper right around the time he lost all of his hair—age thirty. He was known (and feared) on Army staffs as the man whose bald head perpetually glowed like an overheated thermometer.
While he waited, Harkleroad kept the left side of his body angled toward the chief’s office door. Stacie’s right eardrum had been punctured when he’d stepped too close to a howitzer during artillery training eleven years ago. Then-Captain Harkleroad had been thinking about his mother’s church group in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and how at their Wednesday Bible study meetings Eulalie Constance Harkleroad (“Connie” at her insistence) would announce to the other ladies fanning themselves with Our Daily Bread the latest accomplishments of her son Stacie as he made a name for himself in the United States Army. Most of what his mother relayed to the First Church of Redemption ladies were half-truths Stacie Harkleroad kneaded and pulled like Silly Putty for her benefit.
“Well, Mother, today I led my men on a twelve-mile road march in the pouring rain.” (He’d stopped to tie his bootlaces at the three-mile mark, telling his first sergeant to continue on with the rest of the company and he’d catch up, then surreptitiously slipped back to headquarters.)
“Next month, I’m taking my company on a joint training exercise to Italy.” (The three-day command post exercise had taken place right there at Fort Knox, Kentucky; the staff officers sat at a bank of computers and moved icons around a map of the Italian Alps, while a group of Air Force officers at Warren AFB in Wyoming and Marines at Twenty-Nine Palms in California did the same thing—each of them trying to outmaneuver the other until the exercise observer-controllers called “game over.”)
“Yes, Mother, yes, the brigade commander is certain I’ll be promoted this year, it’s just a matter of checking the right blocks on my annual evaluation form.” (The colonel barely knew Stacie existed—called him Harrison every time he saw him, despite the fact Harkleroad was embroidered above the breast pocket of his uniform.)
Eustace had gotten so deep into the habit of lying to his mother to fuel her Wednesday evening Bible studies that he wasn’t sure how to stop, except to one day actually do something that, if not exactly brave or significant, would at least have the truth as its foundation.
This is what he had been thinking as the gun crew prepared the artillery round for deployment on that day eleven years ago. The idea entered Harkleroad’s head
that if he was the one to pull the lanyard and fire the howitzer, he could actually give his mother something to bust her buttons over.
He started walking toward the gun crew with his great idea, but he was half an idea too late. He was three paces away and in the midst of saying, “Here, Sergeant, let me—” when the squad leader gave a huge tug on the lanyard, the rest of the crew having already bent over, plugging their ears. There was a belch of smoke, the howitzer recoiled, and Harkleroad’s right ear popped like a hot tomato. He was thrown to the ground in inky silence.
Since then, he was forced to cock his head in order to catch the mumbled words that fell off his superiors’ lips, hoping he could fake his way through the conversation with a nod or a grimace, as seemed appropriate from his best guess of what had been said.
And so, three-quarters of the way through the life cycle of a typical press release, he would wait outside the division chief of staff’s office, straining to catch a meaningful cough, sigh, or an outright “what the fuck is this shit?”
Once the chief had read and initialed the press release, it went one of two places: back into Harkleroad’s hands for more corrections and a subsequent review or to the commanding general’s desk for his approval. Harkleroad would then have to position himself outside the CG’s door and pray he was a mercifully fast reader, too. Stacie Harkleroad had, on too many occasions, stood in front of the CG’s desk with one nostril plugged and a dried delta of blood on his upper lip, the general trying not to look at his pathetic face because it would only make him scowl and want to kick his PAO’s ass from here to Ankara. The majority of Harkleroad’s time in Baghdad had been spent anxiously dabbing at his nostrils while waiting for pieces of paper to be initialed and approved.
On every Army division staff there is always at least one officer who is the object of pity and/or ridicule. He is the one who sits stranded around the polished mahogany table before the briefings to the CG while the others from G-1 Personnel, G-2 Intelligence, G-3 Operations, G-4 Logistics, and G-5 Civil Affairs (the Gee-Whiz Gang) scoot their chairs closer together and talk with blustery guffaws and manly winks and conspiratorial nods; he is the one who sits there fiddling with the clicker on his ballpoint pen and pretending to find something of great interest in the sheaf of PowerPoint slides he printed and brought to the meeting; he is the one who begins his daily update to the CG with a choked, squeaky wheeze before clearing his throat and trying again while the commanding general stares hot impatience at him, chewing his spleen and wondering how in the good goddamn he ever ended up with this doofus on his staff.
In Task Force Baghdad, Lieutenant Colonel Eustace Harkleroad was that designated staffer—even the chaplain was held in higher esteem—but there was little Harkleroad could do to penetrate the burly, hairy-chest circle of colonels ringed around the commanding general, except to try harder—flap his wings and hope he flew.
Which is exactly what he’d done earlier that day when news of the al-Karkh explosion crackled over the loudspeakers in division headquarters: he’d flown from his office to Staff Sergeant Gooding’s desk, rounding the corner of the cubicle so fast he almost skidded out and landed on his fat ass in front of his PAO staff. He recovered with a half-skip worthy of Fred Astaire, albeit a 250-pound Fred Astaire, and walked up to Gooding, jabbing a fresh-printed copy of the Significant Activity report at his chest. “We need to start drafting a press release, now! We need to beat CNN to the punch.”
Gooding grabbed the Sig Act and spun around in his chair to his computer, pulling up the already written press release template he used whenever a division soldier died, which lately was at least twice a day.
His fingers stabbed the keyboard, pecking the letters of what would surely be a brilliant six-sentence press release destined for the Press Release Hall of Fame. He punched the PRINT button then put the finished product in Lieutenant Colonel Harkleroad’s hands.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 6, 2005
RELEASE 20050606-04a
Soldier killed in al-Karkh suicide car bomb blast
BAGHDAD — A Task Force Baghdad soldier was killed when a suicide car bomber detonated his payload in an al-Karkh neighborhood around 11 a.m. on June 6.
Three Iraqi bystanders were also killed in the blast, which ripped through a shopping district, destroying a tea shop and fruit seller’s stall.
The soldier’s unit was assisting Iraqi security forces on a patrol of the area when it came under attack from terrorists. The soldier was evacuated to the 86th Combat Support Hospital where he later died of his injuries.
The name of the soldier is being held pending notification of next of kin. The incident is under investigation.
Harkleroad hunched over the press release. The tiny hairs in his ears were bristling where they sprouted around the hearing aid he claimed cost him—or, rather, cost the Army—$6,000. Gooding wasn’t sure how well the government’s money was spent since the man still had selective hearing.
“Hm. Okay. Uh. Do we know for a fact it was a suicide car bomber?”
“It was on the Sig Act, sir.”
“But confirmed by anyone on the ground?”
“No, not that I’m aware, sir. I don’t think any of our men actually saw a crazed, wild-eyed terrorist sitting behind the steering wheel, if that’s what you mean.” Normally, Gooding wasn’t this sarcastic with his boss but sleep deprivation, the idiocy of those dingleberries in G-1, and last night’s licorice had put him on edge.
“Okay, then,” Harkleroad said. “Let’s take out ‘when a suicide car bomber detonated his payload’ and replace it with ‘when a car bomb exploded.’ Make that change, then print it out again for me to see.”
Gooding’s fingers went back to work. Peck-peck-peckity-peck. Save. Print.
Harkleroad bent over the edited release, his lips moving as he silently read Gooding’s work.
“Hm. Okay. Uh-oh. Look, you’ve got ‘suicide’ in the headline.
“Aw, shit.”
“That’s okay because I’ve got another change. Let’s take out the part about the shopping district and the fruit and tea. It tends toward humanization of the Local Nationals—you know, blurs the line of our neutrality here. Looks like we’re sensationalizing the deaths of these three poor Iraqis.”
“Okay, sir.”
Harkleroad continued to stare at the press release, his index finger curled beneath his nose as he pondered the significance of each and every word, weighing the verbs against the nouns before he had to make the long walk upstairs to the chief’s office.
“On second thought . . .”
“Yes, sir?”
“Let’s take out all reference to the dead Iraqis. We’ll let the Ministry of Interior make that announcement. Besides, I’m a little reluctant to play up the fact that only one of our guys was killed, versus the three on the home team. Collateral deaths are always a tricky thing, Sergeant Gooding.”
“Yes, sir, they are.” The licorice rumbled in Gooding’s gut.
“It sort of plays into the ‘if you weren’t here, this would never have happened’ mentality,” Harkleroad said. “Let’s not draw attention to the Local National deaths if we don’t have to.”
“Roger, sir.”
“Good. Go ahead and make those changes, then print that draft.”
Gooding pivoted and returned to his desk. His fingers were like Liberace in his finest moment.
Back into Harkleroad’s hands. Another ponderous finger perched beneath the imminently bloody nose. “Hm. Okay. But . . . ehhh . . . I don’t know. I think we need to put the reference to multinational forces after the Iraqi security forces. Right now, it looks like we’re trying to hog the spotlight from our Iraqi friends.”
“Ooo-kay, sir.”
Gooding glanced at the clock. More than forty-five minutes had elapsed. By now, the tow truck was already hauling the wrecked Humvee from the scene and the CNN reporter was calling in a report on her cell phone.
“Go ahead and do the flip-flop, then let me
see another draft before we send it up to corps PAO for approval. I’ll be in my office.”
Gooding bent over his keyboard. He could hear his Timex ticking like a stopwatch at the Olympic trials. His fingers were like Bruce Jenner’s feet, running around the keys until they got blisters and started to bleed.
Gooding sprinted to the PAO’s office, a room no bigger than a closet (in fact, it had been a janitor’s closet when Saddam ran the place) just off the main cubicle area. The boss, Gooding noted, had been hunched over his desk lining up paper clips when he arrived panting in the doorway.
Harkleroad gave a startled flinch, then held out his hand. “All right, let me see it.” He read the release, tapped his chin, caressed his upper lip, and thought like a chess player trying to anticipate the chief of staff’s first move. “What do you think about calling the ISF heroic?”
“I think that’s a great idea, sir.”
Peckity-peck-peck, tappity-tap-tap. Zing! Back to Harkleroad’s desk, front and center.
“Okay, let’s see what you got.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 6, 2005
RELEASE 20050606-04e
Iraqi Security Forces attacked in al-Karkh
BAGHDAD — Heroic Iraqi security forces, with minimal assistance from Task Force Baghdad soldiers, were patrolling al-Karkh around 11 a.m. on June 6 when they came under attack from terrorists.
One U.S. soldier was killed when a car bomb exploded in the neighborhood.
The soldier was evacuated to the 86th Combat Support Hospital where he later died of his injuries.
The name of the soldier is being held pending notification of next of kin. The incident is under investigation.
Harkleroad read the gutted-and-thrashed release twice, thrice, then once more, holding a hand over one eye for a slightly different perspective. “Okay. Looks good. I’ll take it to the chief.”
Staff Sergeant Gooding collapsed against the door frame of the PAO’s office, his fingers throbbing, but sweet relief coursing his veins.