by David Abrams
Abe leaned back in the inner tube, spread his arms and legs, and let the wintergreen pool water lick his fingers and toes. He was alive, goddamnit, he was alive and he would stay that way for the next two and a half months, even if that meant coming to float in this protective womb of a pool every day, then that’s what he would do. Jolly good.
He stared at the sky and marveled at how empty, how blank it was at that moment. Not a cloud, not a helicopter whisking someone to a combat support hospital, not even a stray bird.
He brought the Foster’s to his lips and heard someone in the poolside crowd whistling at him, making the cartoon sound of a falling bomb, and he saluted with the beer can and called out, “Cheers, mate!”
The mortar had a mind of its own. It knew what it wanted. Flesh, human flesh. And if it couldn’t have that, if it had to settle for the cobblestone of the street or the moist cushion of a farmer’s field, then it would concentrate all its effort into sending fragments into as wide a circumference as possible, the hot shards of shrapnel finding their own incidental stoppages of human flesh, chewing their way through epidermis, muscle, vein, viscera, and organ. The mortar still preferred a direct hit, and if it could start at the crown of a skull and bore down through brain, spine, heart, bowel, and leg, and finish with heel, then it could die knowing it had just eaten the perfect Last Supper. This is what the mortar lived for and, come to think of it, died for. This is why it concentrated so much thought and effort into the parabolas of trajectory and so carefully calculated rate, speed, wind resistance, and curvature of the earth: all for the direct hit. Taking into consideration launch velocity, inclination angle, horizontal distance, and maximum altitude, to hit a target at range x and altitude y when fired from (0,0) and with initial velocity v the required angle(s) of launch q are:
Precise calculation of variables is necessary when attempting direct hits.
The men who launched the mortar couldn’t have cared less about parabolas or direct hits, it didn’t matter one way or another to them if the mortar struck cobblestone or skull, as long as the end result brought maximum death and damage and bought them another day’s headline. The men with their goat-meat breath and tongue-tangling supplications to Allah cared only about quickly setting up the tripod and firing tube from the back of a Toyota pickup truck in some quiet out-of-the-way neighborhood and launching with hasty aim. They cared only about firing blindly, then making a clean getaway, and if the end result was severed limbs in the marketplace, all the better, praise Allah. If they missed—and the mortar landed in a canal or a remote cow pasture—then, oh, well, there was always another day.
But the mortar cared. It cared where it hit, who it struck, how it spent its final moments of life before the death that brought wholesale death to others. It cared about the final target, whether it was rock, soil, water, or flesh. This is all the mortar thought about on the upward flight, the peak of the arc, and the down tilt of final descent. Sometimes, the very thought of opening its maw and gobbling a bellyful of human flesh filled it with such anticipation that it started to whistle a happy tune in its final moments, keening a kind of joy unknown to man.
No one saw it coming, they would all testify later. They heard it, yes, but never saw it. They only witnessed the aftermath: the red jetted spurt erupting from the center of the water—the dead center, you might say—as if the mortar had struck from below, pushing up from the bottom of the pool instead of falling from the sky. By the time the whistle registered on their brains and they realized what that awful sound portended—oh, bloody fuck!—there was no time to react, nothing to shout, only enough time to throw an arm across their eyes, as if that would protect them. And when they finally lowered their arms, all of them in their bikinis and trunks and Speedos-with-a-bulge still standing intact and realizing how lucky they were the mortar had struck dead center in the pool which, thanks to all those gallons of water, had cushioned them from the impact, they could only stare with slow-gathering shock and sadness at the watery smoky hole that had once been their pool. At that point, they were only thinking of how rotten their afternoons would be now that they no longer had a pool. What now? Sit in their trailers and slow roast to death with warm Foster’s?
It was only when Glennice, reclining in tan-collecting bliss only moments before, sat up and started screaming that they looked over and saw the arm in her lap, the fingers still gripping the can of beer. It was only then that it hit them with a punch of nausea: that poor bloke Belmouth was gone. He’d taken a direct hit from the mortar while the rest of them had survived—drenched with the pink rain from the pool, yes, and suffering the unforgivable horror of a severed arm in one’s lap—but alive nonetheless. Alive!
And just as quickly, with just as much certainty, Belmouth was gone, evaporated in the afternoon heat. It was almost too much for their minds to take in. Blink, he’s here, blink, he’s gone. Only a smoking, half-empty pool and an arm in a lap remained as evidence that their newest friend—such a likable chap—had ever walked the earth.
Someone suggested calling the British embassy but none of them moved. In the blistering Baghdad heat, they were all frozen as they stared at Glennice’s lap.
Poor bloody bloke.
28
LUMLEY
Lieutenant Fledger, clad in full battle armor as if he’d already been prepared for the onslaught of grief his men were about to feel, burst through the door of the shower trailer and announced, “Men! He’s dead!”
And so that’s how they heard—three short, barked words. In the hiss and humidity of the water, Lumley and his men looked at Lieutenant Fledger, barely comprehending what he’d said. All they knew was that the company commander stood in their midst and they were naked.
The narrow trailer had been reconfigured with two rows of ten shower stalls and a long wooden bench running down the length of the trailer in the middle. The stalls had no curtains, so one was forced to keep his back turned to the room if one was modest; if not, if one was unabashedly proud of his manhood’s length and girth, then the soap down was done in full view for all to see. Those in the opposite stalls and those waiting their turn on the bench had nowhere else to put their eyes—especially those on the bench who were, unfortunately, dick-level to their comrades.
Because there were no shower curtains, water streamed freely out onto the floor, where it swirled in a grayish mix of shampoos, soaps, and body washes—not to mention the clots of pubic hair, urine (courtesy of those who thought of the shower stall as a free standing toilet), and snot-oysters (courtesy of those who thought of the shower stall as their personal Kleenex). The wicked-looking lake of shower water and detritus forced those soldiers waiting their turn to keep their change of clothes stacked in precarious piles along the bench. At any given time, upon entering the shower trailer, you’d see half a dozen half-naked soldiers perched on the bench, feet tucked under them like birds, anxiously keeping a mound of clothes in check, constantly patting and restacking the trousers and T-shirts. Waiting for the next stall to open up was always a tense game of balance and shepherding clothes. Pity the soldier whose fresh-laundered underwear took a tumble off the bench into the foul water below. They all wore flip-flops (dubbed “shower shoes” by the military) and no one but no one went barefoot in here—they sure as shit weren’t going to put their feet down in that, oh, hell no!
Long-handled squeegees were supplied in each shower trailer and a soldier, upon finishing his shower, was expected to do his part by pushing the water to the drain in the center of the trailer. The drain grates clogged easily and remained that way until the Twee maintenance crew from Thailand came at lunchtime to hand scoop the American filth into a plastic bag. And so sweeping with the squeegee had little effect on the water other than to create a system of ripples and waves that sloshed from one end of the trailer to the other.
When Lieutenant Fledger walked through the door and announced the bad news to those seventeen naked men of his, Specialist Zeildorf was in the midst of pushing a ti
de of water toward the drain. Gray soup splashed over Fledger’s boots and left a few dark curlies as it receded. Hardly the reception he, an officer in the United States Army, had been expecting. He lifted first one foot, then the other. This was like something out of a cartoon, but he—a reasonable officer in the United States Army—would choose to ignore it . . . for the time being. There were other pressing matters at hand. As a company commander of two months, he was untested in the task of delivering death notices to his men. Since Captain Shrinkle’s departure, Bravo Company had gone through a charmed period of zero KIAs.
Before coming to the shower trailer, Fledger had looked through his West Point textbooks and his class notes but there was nothing to properly prepare him for such heartrending moments as this. He was a Polar explorer, all alone on this ice cap of grief.
He cleared his throat and tried again. “Men! Listen up! I’ve got some bad news and I think you need to sit down for what I’m about to tell you.”
“I think we’ll stand, if it’s all the same to you, sir,” said Brock Lumley from over his shoulder. He’d already had his back turned and his hands cupped over his crotch before Fledger finished speaking.
“What’s going on?” Jacovich shouted over the static of his shower. “Who is that out there? I can’t see a fucking thing!” Jacovich, shampoo in his eyes, blindly groped for a towel.
“It’s okay, men. I know you’re upset. But trust me, time will heal all your wounds.”
“What the fuck’s he saying?” Harris whispered to Snelling, but none too softly.
“Beats me,” said Snelling from his crouch on the bench, wishing Harris would step back into his shower stall and take his hairy dick with him.
As the highest-ranking enlisted soldier in the shower trailer, Lumley spoke for the group. “Sir, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but as you can see, we’re a little preoccupied right now. Is there something you needed?”
“Men, I don’t know how to break it to you any other way. He’s dead.”
“Who’s dead, sir?” asked Lumley, still hoping this crotch-cupping nightmare would end soon.
“Ah! Ah! My eyes, my eyes!” screamed Jacovich, still unable to find his towel.
“Captain Shrinkle,” said Lieutenant Fledger, barely controlling the tremor in his voice. “Your former company commander.” (As if they’d forgotten already, as if they could ever forget Shrinkle and his Bad Night in Adhamiya.) “He’s dead. Gone. Obliterated, actually. A terrible, terrible attack at the Australian pool.”
As if on cue, the hot water supply to the trailer ran out and twelve men started gasping and cursing at the shock of icy showers. “OhGodohGodohGod!” This was more like it, Lieutenant Fledger thought to himself. This was the reaction he’d been expecting.
Twelve men immediately started grabbing at the faucet handles, yanking them counterclockwise. “Holy shit!” “Goddamn!” “Ah! Ah! Aiieee!” “My eyes! My fucking eyes are burning!”
“I know, men, I know. I was devastated by the news, too.”
Lumley, his nuts shriveled by frigid water, knew he still had to speak for the group because this dingleberry standing in the doorway just wasn’t getting it. “Sir? If you could just give us a moment?”
“Certainly, Sergeant Lumley.”
“A private moment, sir—if you know what I mean?”
“Of course, of course. You all knew Captain Shrinkle longer than I—heck, I don’t even know the man, only his legend—and there are undoubtedly some strong feelings running through this company right now. I’ll be at HQ. You know where to find me when you need me.” He started backing out of the trailer as his soldiers reached for their towels.
“Oh, and men?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I’ve asked the chaplain to address the company this afternoon at the sixteen-hundred hours formation. I’m sure whatever he has to say will bring comfort to the group as a whole.”
The trailer door pulled shut behind him and Lumley held up his hand. “Shh! Wait for it. Let him get out of hearing distance.” They waited five, six beats. Lumley lowered his hand. “Okay, go ahead.”
Their voices came in an overlapping chatter.
“What in fuckin’ hell?!”
“Who does he think we are? ‘Overcome by grief,’ my ass!”
“Did I hear him say ‘Australian pool’? I thought that place was off-limits.”
“Shrinkle gone? Wow. Never thought I’d see the day.”
“Hey, does anybody have any Visine? My fucking eyes are still burning!”
And so they blustered and bluffed their hidden grief with hard, impervious comments as they tiptoed through the murky water and dressed themselves for another day’s patrol. They talked tough but there were, among those seventeen men, at least three or four who were genuinely shocked and saddened by the sudden loss of Captain Abe Shrinkle. They kept their heads down and contributed little to the macho talk pinballing around the shower trailer. These were the soldiers of the company who had once shared a kind moment with the late Captain Shrinkle—perhaps he gave them a smile and a thumbs-up when they were feeling down; or maybe there had been something about the way he handed their mail to them, treating the letters from home with the respect they deserved; or maybe he’d once sat down next to them, uninvited, at the dining facility and agreed, yes, the meatloaf here was pretty damn good. Yes, these few men in the shower trailer would miss their old commander. He may have been a doofus who made a lot of bad decisions but it still sucked that something like this had to happen to him. No one deserved to be “obliterated.” Not even the worst officer in the United States Army.
29
GOODING
From the Diary of Chance Gooding Jr.
1,996.
For those of you marking your scorecards at home, that’s the tally of Operation Iraqi Freedom as of right now, this instant, this nanosecond before the next bomb is detonated, before the next grubby thumb presses the remote-controlled cell phone trigger or the next zealous Muslim chanting “Allahu Akbar!” steers his car bomb toward a U.S. convoy and some unlucky soldier bites the bullet, dubiously privileged with his fifteen minutes of fame as Number 2,000.
But that’s four bodies down the road.
For now, the score hovers at 1,996.
Better mark it in pencil, though. And have an eraser handy.
The media are drawn like jackals to a watering hole by the number 2,000. These sharp-fanged saliva-lipped members of the Fourth Estate claim it’s a milestone—one to be marked with a top-of-the-fold story.They love the sensuous curve of the two and the plump satisfaction of those triple zeroes, lined up like perfect bullet holes—BAM! BAM! BAM!
2,000 is a number most Americans can hold in their minds and use it to remember the awful waste of this war, this overlong field trip to the desert where we got ourselves tangled in a briar patch and stuck to the tar baby of terrorism.
30
HARKLEROAD
The number 2,000 had plagued Eustace Harkleroad for weeks. Each day brought a fresh round of tick marks, inching closer and closer to that grand total score of two thousand American bodies killed since 2003—bullet-riddled, beheaded, and bomb-blown to smithereens.
Months ago—what now seemed like years—he had opened the latest issue of USA Today to read that fifty-eight American troops had died in Iraq in February, the fewest fatalities since fifty-four had died the previous July, according to the Pentagon. Translating the death count into a daily rate, February’s losses were down sharply from January and less than half those in November. The February figures now raised the total U.S. death toll in the war to 1,490.
Even as he had folded the newspaper, bent his head, and tucked into his sausage and eggs that long-ago February morning, the body-o-meter was clicking over to 1,500, thanks to a suicide bomber who rammed his truck into a U.S. checkpoint twenty miles south of Salman Pak.
When Harkleroad got to his office that day in February, booted up his computer, and read the e-mail from G-3
Ops, he stared at that figure—the one standing at attention, the slouching five, the zeros with their empty, shot-out innards. It was such a nice, perfectly shaped number—deceptively pretty, falsely clean. Then he thought about trying to count 1,500 people (heck, let’s not even make it people—say, Popsicle sticks, instead) and he realized how hard it would be to count, how exhausting to tally that volume of Popsicle sticks. He was sure he’d lose track halfway through—distracted by the image of sitting on the back porch with his mother, slurping a Fudgsicle evaporating in the Tennessee heat—and he’d have to start over from the beginning. One thousand, five hundred. That was nearly half the number of soldiers in the entire division.
Now the figure seemed quaint, already antiquated.
An additional 496 bodies—plus another three unlucky souls this morning—had been added to the pile since February and this was rapidly becoming a problem, a whopper of a problem that lay across his shoulders like an iron harness.
For the last two weeks, the Public Affairs Office had been besieged by phone calls from reporters, begging to be embedded with task force units that had suffered an unusually high body count. This, the reporters said, would give them a greater chance of being on the scene when number 2,000 meets his (or her) fate.
The reporters are deplorable, yes, but who can blame them? Harkleroad thought. They are merely fueled by ratings, which, in turn, are stoked by the American public, who, in turn, self-righteously lament the media’s obsession with this grim milestone.
When, during a recent staff meeting, Lieutenant Colonel Harkleroad proposed embedding the Associated Press with a particularly unlucky battalion so the reporter would be there to capture firsthand the two thousandth instance of death in theater, the chief of staff went bright as a fire engine. “Not only no, but HELL no! I’m not embedding those goddamn jackals just for that reason. That’s just sick, plain and simple!” Other officers looked at Harkleroad and softly tsk-tsked. “Jesus, get your head out of your ass, PAO.”