by David Abrams
“What was that?”
“I said, ‘He’s right, this is a combat zone.’”
“Right. Well, it seems he’s got MWR in his sights these days. Things like the Hispanic Heritage Month salsa-dance competition, and the All-Brigade Pinewood Derby, and the talent show, and the women’s basketball tournament. By the way, I had no idea there were organized leagues here—when do these people find the time?”
Some people like to do things on their downtime other than grazing at the pastry table, Colonel Lardass.
“Anyway,” the PAO said, leaning back and straining the threads on his buttons. The gravy Italy shifted and expanded to the size of Africa. “All this extracurricular activity is a thorn in the CG’s craw because, as he puts it, these kind of sanctioned MWR events distract soldiers from their combat mission and lead to potential cases of misconduct and violations of General Orders Numbers One and Two.”
“But, sir, they allow soldiers to dance up at Camp Taji, so why not down here at Triumph? It’s like they’re American Baptists and we’re Southern Baptists.”
“No, no, that’s not it,” Harkleroad interjected. “It’s a matter of perception. And that’s where we come in. The CG wants us to put a tight lid on our coverage of noncombat-related activities in the Lucky Times. And I can see his point.”
Of course you can. Try not to choke on the lint in the CG’s pocket, you old ass kisser.
Harkleroad continued: “For instance, let’s say you’re a spouse sitting at home back in Hinesville and you turn on the NBC Nightly News and there’s your husband doing the John Travolta with some other female on Disco Night, how will that look?”
“It’ll look like they’re blowing off steam. I say they’re entitled to that.”
“And I say it’s a battle we’re going to lose, Sergeant Gooding. And frankly, it’s a battle where I’m willing to raise the white flag. I’m not about to go toe-to-toe with the CG over something like this.”
“But—”
“But nothing. This is not something I’m going to back down on. We need to keep a tight rein on what our journalists are covering, and, especially, what we’re allowing external media to see. Remember, we control the agenda and it’s up to us to steer them in the right direction.”
Chance said nothing, just stared straight ahead at the continental gravy stain on Harkleroad’s belly.
“So, are we singing on the same sheet of music here, Staff Sergeant Gooding?”
Gooding sighed. “Roger that, sir. I’ll tell the brigade journalists to steer away from anything that looks like soldiers are having the least little bit of fun.”
“No need to get sarcastic with me, Sergeant.”
“Sorry, sir.” You fat fuck, you. “I meant no disrespect.”
“None taken.”
“If there’s nothing more, sir . . . ?”
“No, nothing more. That’s all. Just wanted to give you a heads-up about which way the CG’s wind was blowing.” He paused. “Wait a minute, that didn’t sound right, did it? But you know what I mean.”
“Loud and clear, sir.” Gooding all but clicked his heels and gave a snappy salute before he walked out.
Harkleroad opened his e-mail. It was from one of the brigade PAOs who’d submitted a batch of photos to Specialist Carnicle for the Lucky Times. Eustace had been cc’ed in the e-mail; what’s worse, so had Corps PAO. The e-mail’s subject line: MWR Fun Events.
Even before he opened the attachments, Harkleroad knew he’d be calling down to brigade to give the PAO a what-for and advising him not to be wasting his journalists’ time like that in the future, then calling up to Corps to apologize for letting one slip through that didn’t adhere to Recruit, Rebuild, Restore.
He clicked on the first photo. The photographer had caught a male and female, both dressed in PT uniforms, doing the salsa, standing at intimate proximity. Their fingers were curled, so it was hard to tell if they were wearing wedding rings. Harkleroad clicked the magnifying glass icon several times to bring the hands in closer. Sure enough, there was the wink of gold coming off the male’s hand.
Eustace Harkleroad leaned back in his chair, knowing that by deleting this photo he was probably saving a soldier’s marriage. And that’s when the last thread on the middle button gave up the fight and flung itself off his uniform, clicking twice against the floor before coming to rest in the dust beneath his desk. Eustace looked down and saw—for the first time—the gravy stain, which now had a cleft running across the northern half of Italy.
21
DURET
With the demotion of Abe Shrinkle, life in Bravo Company had taken a left turn onto a downhill street. They’d been pulling longer days and more Quick Reaction Force missions. No more “ghost patrols” off the brigade’s books, no more biding their time until the plane ride home, no more delivering lollipops and soccer balls to Shiite schools. It was the real deal now and, as Zeildorf had said on more than one occasion, “It sucked the dust off my granddaddy’s balls.”
The new commander assigned to fill Shrinkle’s vacancy was a West Point grad called First Lieutenant (Promotable) Matthew Fledger who came to them from Echo Company. Lieutenant Colonel Duret knew he was scraping the bottom of the barrel but this was the best G-1 could find for him. His only other option, the major in Personnel told him, was a Presbyterian chaplain who, due to an overstaffing bungle back at Fort Stewart, was temporarily working as a motor pool officer in Third Brigade.
At Echo Company, Lieutenant Fledger had been the executive officer whose primary duties involved operations at the dining facility and the mail room, tasks that tapped into his natural inclination toward logic, order, and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. This is what he told Duret when the colonel paid a scouting visit to Echo.
“I’m big on organization, sir,” Fledger said. “I’m what you might call married to my day planner.” He held up his leather-bound binder, neatly zippered and sheened with an oil that could only be palm sweat, Duret guessed.
Fledger was horribly disproportioned—skull too big for the stalk of his neck, arms foreshortened like a dinosaur. You took one look at that lightbulb-shaped head of his and one word came to mind: thalidomide.
That bulbous, knotty head, however, seemed to be filled with all the tactics, techniques, and procedures his professors had stuffed into it back at West Point. Fledger looked like a man who vigorously highlighted his textbooks.
“It’s not like the men are undisciplined,” Duret told Fledger as they stood outside the Echo Company ops tent. “It’s just that Captain Shrinkle had his own unique way of taking charge. Not one that fit into Brigade standards of conduct.”
“I see, sir.”
“You would be inheriting a morale mess, but otherwise things are okay with the men.”
“That sounds like a pretty big otherwise, if you don’t mind my saying, sir.”
Duret realized his assessment of Bravo Company must have sounded like a weak endorsement, so he tried to get back on course. “I’m just trying to undersell the job so you won’t be surprised when you show up on your first day of work.”
“Roger that, sir.”
But when First Lieutenant (Promotable) Matthew Fledger, accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel Duret, did arrive at Bravo Company on the very afternoon Captain Shrinkle was banished to Towel Land, he seemed to be overselling himself as the savior of the unit. Fledger radiated a ballsy confidence that only came from someone working really hard at it. The young officer thought a lot of himself and his untested ability to lead a company of men into battle. If there had been some water handy, he would have walked on it.
Sergeant Lumley and the other platoon sergeants watched with wary, cautious looks as Fledger and Duret threaded their way through the coils of concertina wire surrounding the company headquarters trailer. A heavy backpack strapped across Fledger’s shoulders bent him nearly double. The straps and buckles on the backpack jingled as he mounted the steps of the wooden porch and looked up at the NCO welcoming part
y. Fledger tried to smile but it came across as a trembling mess on his lips.
The lieutenant shook hands with his NCOs and said, “You can call me Fledge.” Lumley and the others nodded and said, “Okay, sir,” but Duret knew they would never ever call him that, not even if someone held the muzzle of an M4 to their heads and rotated the selector switch from safe to semi. It would always be “Sir,” the one syllable drawn out and dripping with thinly disguised contempt. He himself had been on the receiving end of this kind of acceptable disrespect back when he was a young, striving lieutenant—a time in his life that now seemed like something seen at the wrong end of a telescope.
As Duret led Fledger inside his new company headquarters, he could see the NCOs giving each other wordless looks.
Fledge walked into the orderly room and shrugged off the burden of his backpack (filled with Army regulations, field manuals, a stapler, two dozen choco-chip energy bars, and, yes, a box of yellow highlighter pens). The backpack hit the floor with a sound like a harness of bells on a horse-drawn sleigh traveling through snowy woods.
Duret cleared his throat. “Well, lieutenant,” he said. “Now that I’ve delivered you into the capable hands of your NCOs, I’ll be making my exit so you can settle in without me looking over your shoulder.”
“Thank you, sir. As I think I’ve already expressed to you numerous times, I appreciate this opportunity.”
“That’s all right,” Duret said. “I’ll leave you with just four words of advice.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Don’t. Fuck. It. Up.”
Fledger reddened to the tip of his lightbulb head and Duret, in the corner of his eye, caught Sergeant Lumley smirking.
“I-I’ll try not to, sir. I won’t, sir. You can depend on that.”
“Okay,” Duret said. “But, just to let you know, I heard the same thing from Captain Shrinkle’s own lips on more than one occasion.” He nodded at the group. “Good day, men.”
“Good day, sir,” the NCOs echoed.
Duret strode out the door of the headquarters and loudly crunched through the gravel. When he’d gone twenty paces, he stopped and then silently made his way back to the side of the building where he stopped beneath an open window. This was always the best part of orienting a new commander to his unit, the secret eavesdrop.
As he cocked an ear to the window, Duret could hear Fledger already in midsermon: “Men, I know you’ve gone through some hard times with your former commander, times that may have tried your very souls—” (who was this guy? Ralph Waldo Emerson?) “—but I can assure you I will do everything in my power to turn things around for Bravo Company. Standing here today I make a pledge to you—call it the Fledge Pledge, if you want—” (they didn’t and they wouldn’t) “—to reverse the negative energy generated by the moral turpitude of one individual—an individual we will no longer discuss, unless of course you want to discuss him—and to instill a sense of pride in Bravo Company, using Army Ethics as our very foundation.” He paused to let his words ring through the orderly room. A couple of the NCOs coughed lightly. “I would like to begin with a company formation tonight at seventeen-thirty hours, at which time I will present my commander’s philosophy to all the soldiers and I will have them fill out an Excel spreadsheet with all their vital information. This is the way I like to operate as a company commander.” (A work ethic developed during his eleven minutes of job experience.) “We will get through this together, gentlemen. And when we emerge on the other side, we will all be the better for it.”
As he tiptoed away through the gravel, Duret found himself wondering if that Presbyterian chaplain wouldn’t have been such a bad idea after all.
22
GOODING
Staff Sergeant Chance Gooding Jr. sat at his desk, clicking through e-mails at the start of another brain-blurring fourteen-hour shift. A few cubicles away, laughter bubbled up and floated near the ceiling for a few seconds. An officer in an adjoining cubicle started grinding coffee beans and it brought them all one sniff closer to their local Starbucks.
This particular officer had gone online and ordered an espresso machine at the beginning of the deployment and he began every day with this same ritual. Soon, they would hear the whistling officer getting his foam to peak at just the right consistency. Just the very sound of java slurp and hiss could make some Fobbits get all misty with homesickness.
Gooding clicked his mouse, someone made another joke that provoked louder and longer laughter, a voice came over the SMOG loudspeaker—“Test, test,” as the Ops staff prepped for the CG’s morning briefing—a female clerk walked past Gooding’s cubicle bitching about a paper cut, and then
ka-WHAM!!
All voices in the palace stopped midsyllable.
Later, Chance would write about it in his diary: You could feel the explosion more than you could hear it. It was like a great in-suck, out-suck of air that made the walls creak as nails shifted in their holes a quarter inch. Then you felt it under your feet—a tremendous jarring of the earth. Then, finally, it reached your ears: a dozen simultaneous thunder booms. I swear I could also hear china teacups rattling on a shelf somewhere in Headquarters but I know that’s impossible.
The fillings in Gooding’s teeth buzzed and he dove under his desk. The words “Duck and cover! Duck and cover!” rebounded through his head. Then came another explosion and this wasn’t fun anymore, dammit. Gooding wedged himself under the desk, computer wires slapping his forehead and getting tangled around his ears. He would curl into a tight, fetal ball and stay out of sight from the Sunni terrorists when they burst into the palace with their AK-47s blazing fire. Surely the explosions had punched a hole in the palace roof and bearded men were already rappelling from the ceiling on hissing ropes. Gooding thought he felt smoke watering his eyes. It was like he was in a movie where soldiers are screaming and running on a battlefield as great clods of dirt go skyward like fireworks behind them. He expected to see a severed arm come cartwheeling past his head any minute now.
Gooding gave a tiny whimper and thought about wills and powers of attorney and he regretted not designating Yolanda as his beneficiary after their divorce. He thought of her tear-streaked face and realized he still loved her and wished he could see her one more time before another rocket crashed into the palace and he was killed in action. He vowed he would die a noble death, Fobbit or no Fobbit. He would not beg for mercy or cry like a weenie, no matter how many swords the bearded men pressed against his throat.
Silence spread across the cubicles as the officers and NCOs held their collective breath, listening for the next shoe to drop. Or, in this case, missile. For a full thirty seconds, the only sounds were the airy hiss of the ventilating system and the sputter of an unattended espresso machine.
Then the SMOG speakers crackled and a voice, still a little crinkly around the edges, announced: “Attention! Attention in Headquarters! All personnel are advised to continue with the morning’s business. We’ve just received reports that the preceding explosions were caused by Division howitzers going off near the Life Support Area. Artillery was draining water in that vicinity to dry up the mud and improve living conditions. Headquarters is not under attack. I repeat, we are not under attack. That is all. Carry on.”
Someone yelled, “I knew it, motherfucker! Didn’t I tell you it was our own goddamned engineers giving us a wake-up call?!” The regular stream of chatter flooded back through the room, peppered with relieved laughter.
Gooding remained where he was, huddled under the desk. Fear kept him curled among the wires and cords. When Major Filipovich arrived to begin his shift five minutes later, Gooding didn’t move, hoping Filipovich wouldn’t see him cowering behind the chair. He had nothing to worry about. Apparently, Filipovich couldn’t see around the sleepy scowl on his face and he went immediately to his cubicle, crossed his arms on the desk, and tried to grab a power nap before the morning briefing began and Harkleroad showed up with his nervous chatter.
When the coast wa
s clear, Gooding silently unfolded himself from under his desk and resumed browsing through his e-mails. When he gave a muffled cough, Major Filipovich poked his head out of his cubicle. “Gooding? That you?”
“Yes, sir, it’s me.”
“When the fuck did you get here?”
“Been here all along, sir. You didn’t see me when you came in?”
“Nope.” Filipovich gaped his mouth in a face-consuming yawn. “Can’t see past the cobwebs. Fucking sleep deprivation.”
“You missed all the excitement, sir.”
“Oh yeah? Whazzat?”
“Engineers tried to scare the shit out of us this morning. They blew off a couple of howitzers so they could drain the swamp over at Trailer City.”
“I thought I heard something when I was walking over here from the chow hall. Engineers, huh?” He laughed. “I’ll bet you guys thought it was Al-Fucking-Qaeda, huh?”
Gooding kept his eyes on his computer screen. “Actually, sir, we barely noticed. I guess we were all too busy getting ready for another day at the war factory.”
“Another day, another dollar,” Filipovich said. “Another hundred and ninety-five million dollars, to be precise.” He yawned again, molar fillings winking in the fluorescent light, and retreated to the nest of his cubicle. “Wake me when the war’s over.”
That afternoon, division headquarters experienced its second fake attack of the day as the staff conducted a previously scheduled “training exercise” (though Gooding still opined the word training was a misnomer on the battlefield). For weeks, the Operations sergeant major had been planning for a simulated attack that would result in multiple simulated casualties. The exercise stemmed from the CG’s concern that—in his words, spoken privately to his staff—“the pussies here at Camp Cupcake are not prepared for an all-out, balls-to-the-walls disaster.” No one wanted to be the one caught with his pants down by the CG, so the pucker factor started ramping up and eventually they came up with the plan for a simulated attack, the brainchild of G-3 Operations. To pull it off required five bottles of Karo syrup, three letters requesting coordination with security forces, eight smoke grenades, and soldiers willing to resurrect thespian talents not seen since Our Town in high school. Staffers in the palace were randomly selected to participate and, just before the attack began, were handed index cards that outlined their roles in the scenario, complete with cues and lines of dialogue.