Stutts glances at the babies in the room like he’d forgotten about them until he said the word.
“That night Gates was killed, he’d left his cell phone in the tent where we bunked, and it rang all night long. Caller ID said Home. We knew we couldn’t answer. His family had to be notified officially through channels—and if we turned it off, it’d be like telling them. None of us slept at all, listening to that damn phone just ringing and ringing.
“So we were already tired when we headed out. Our platoon leader said we had a pretty good idea of where the attack came from, so about thirty of us rolled out just after midnight. The late night surprise factor gives us the advantage—plus, when it’s 110 during the day, you work at night. In our vehicle, it was me and Tucker, a guy named Pitts, and a guy named William P. Jones we called Wimpy.”
Stutts is speaking almost normally. It’s like he’s traveled backward in time to a saner version of himself.
“What makes the heat so bad is you’re wearing seventy pounds of gear—body armor with front and rear ceramic plates, 210 rounds of ammo, first aid kit, strap cutter, radio, a seventy-ounce camel pack of water, food, spare batteries, you name it. It’s like wearin’ a goddamn minivan. Add knee pads and boots, and you don’t go anywhere without your weapon; it becomes another appendage. And believe me, once you see a guy lose a chunk of his skull, you’re gonna wear that ACH—advanced combat helmet—which is also hot as hell. Tucker used to get his wife to send those girlie minipads to stick inside his helmet for sweat guards.”
He smiles at the image, and I smile, too.
“We secured the area that night—about a half a city block—and moved in. Our search of the first two houses turned up nothing but a bunch of scared, angry Iraqis in their pj’s.” His tone becomes defensive. “Don’t look at me like that. I don’t like bustin’ in people’s homes in the middle of the night, but it’s the price they pay for freedom. If we want to flush out insurgents, we have to go in where they’re hiding, and sometimes that means people gotta lose a little sleep. People besides me.”
I wait for him to continue.
“You learn pretty quick not to trust anybody. Old man in the market, kid with a soccer ball—anybody can be hiding a weapon. They’ll smile in your face one minute and fire on you the next. I tried to tell Tucker that. He was buddies with all the kids—they came around all the time to see him. I kept tellin’ him one of them was going to lob a grenade in the mess hall one day while they were shootin’ baskets in that ghetto goal he rigged up.”
He runs his hand across his short hair.
“Third house we got to was dark and shadowy, with a small courtyard in front of it. Wimpy said he didn’t like the look of it.
“‘C’mon, boys, gotta go out on a limb,’ Tucker told us, ‘’cause that’s where the fruit is.’ Tucker’s always saying crazy stuff, like if a bug hit the windshield of the jeep, he’d say, ‘Bet he doesn’t have the guts to do that again.’ If he caught some guy picking his nose, that was ‘digging for gold.’ He loved the dumb joke about being stuck between Iraq and a hard place.”
Stutts leans forward, focused on his story.
“There were eight in our squad; the other four were in the vehicle ahead of us. Two guys headed around the house to check out the perimeter, and Wimpy, Tucker, Pitts, and I waited for the other two to create the opening. There were some pop shots nearby, so we were jittery—that and no sleep. When they busted down the door, we entered the house.
“Tucker and Pitts took the kitchen, and Wimpy and I moved in fast to the other rooms and rounded up five people—an old man, a teenage boy, a woman, a little kid, and a baby.
“We brought the family in the living room with their hands on their heads. The old man and boy didn’t make a sound, but the woman was crying and jabbering at us, and the baby she was holding was screaming. I asked them if they spoke English but got no response.
“Most Iraqis in the villages don’t speak it, but even if they do, it’s almost impossible to get information, because they know what’ll happen if they talk. The insurgents need to hide in the villages, so they run their own night raids. They’ll go in and kill a family member—sometimes even a child or grandmother—to show their brutality and insure cooperation.
“We shoved them all in the bathroom so we could search the house for weapons. We’ve done so many of these raids, we can wrap them up pretty quick. You move fast, but the whole time you’re ransacking the house, you know that any place you search could be booby-trapped.
“Tucker yelled for me to come in the kitchen. Pitts was holding a plastic food container he’d pulled out of the refrigerator full of wires and plastic pieces. I took the container over to the bathroom, where Wimpy was watching the family from the doorway. ‘Who does this belong to?’ I yelled at them.
“The teenage boy looked away, and the mother started crying hysterically, dropping to her knees and hanging on Wimpy’s pants leg. ‘Tie the kid up,’ I said. ‘We’re taking him in.’
“When I got back to the kitchen, Tucker was digging through the trash. He looked up at me to say something, and all of a sudden he wheeled around and aimed his weapon at the open door.
“‘Shit!’ he yelled, lowering his gun when the red dot of his sight landed on the forehead of a young girl in the doorway. She smiled this big toothy grin and said, ‘Hello . . . Tucka . . . USA.’
“‘Nahlah, what the hell? You can’t just show up like that. You’re gonna get killed.’
“‘Put your hands on your head,’ I yelled at her.
“‘It’s okay,’ Tucker said. ‘I know her.’
“‘You know all of ’em,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t mean shit.’
“Tucker ignored me and said to the girl, ‘Do you live here?’
“‘I am living this house,’ she said, pointing next door. ‘I hear sound while I am sleeping.’
“‘Well, go back home,’ Tucker told her. ‘You don’t need to be in the middle of this.’
“‘You know the boy who lives here?’ I asked. ‘About fifteen. Little guy.’
“‘Farid, he is my cousin. Farid is good boy,’ Nahlah said. ‘We are peaceful family. Go USA.’
“‘Yeah, well, your peaceful cousin’s been building some bad stuff.’ Tucker held out the wires.
“‘No. These are good people,’ she insisted. ‘We are peaceful family.’
“Then suddenly the living room erupted in gunfire. And then we were under fire from outside the house. Tucker threw himself on the girl and I hit the floor. He pulled her out of the doorway as I crawled toward it, aiming my rifle around the corner of the frame.
“‘Aw, Jesus, she’s hit,’ I heard Tucker say. I could see people running outside, and there was shouting.
“We heard Pitts yell ‘Fuck’ from the other room, and Tucker left the girl to crawl toward them. I fired on an attacker fleeing the scene, but he got away. I looked over at the girl. Her eyes were closed, and a dark stain was spreading across her shirt. I thought that she was gone, but then I heard her groan.
“When I got to the main room, Pitts was standing beside Tucker, who was crouched over Wimpy, lifting the upper half of his body and saying, ‘Aw man, aw man, no,’ over and over again. A dead Iraqi man was lying near the door.
“The bathroom door was open. All of them were dead—most of them shot in the head, execution style. I turned away from the baby, and I felt the vomit rise in my throat. I moved to Tucker’s side. He was talking to Wimpy nonstop. ‘Come on, buddy, stay with us. You can do it. Hang in there, Wimpy. I got you, man. You’re gonna be okay.’
“‘Tucker.’ I tried to make him hear me. ‘Tucker!’ He kept on. ‘Tucker, he’s gone!’ Tucker finally looked up at me, then back at the piece of Wimpy’s head that was missing.
“‘Come on, Tuck. Pitts, help me carry him out,’ I said.
“I could hear gunfire farther down the street where the rest of our platoon had gone, but things had gone quiet on our end, which could be a good sign or a
bad one. They carried Wimpy while I covered them. The rest of our squad appeared, and I motioned for them to load Wimpy in their vehicle. I told them I was going back in for the girl and sent Pitts to go find our platoon leader to request permission to take her to a hospital.
“‘Nahlah,’ Tucker said and turned to go with me.
“‘No, man, you stay here. I need you guys to cover me while I bring her out.’
“I crouched low and reentered the house. The girl opened her eyes and looked up at me as I lifted her. She weighed almost nothing, even though she was probably nine or ten years old.
“‘It’s okay, we’re gonna get you some help,’ I told her. I’d made it out the front door and was halfway to the vehicle when Tucker opened fire, aiming at something behind me. I wheeled around just in time to see a woman crumple to the ground. Nahlah saw her, too.
“For the rest of my life, I’ll hear that scream: ‘Ma-maaaa!’
“And then she went limp in my arms.
“I laid the girl on the backseat and ran over to the woman on the ground. I rolled her over and slipped off her head scarf. Sightless eyes stared straight ahead—a beautiful young Iraqi woman. Tucker’d shot her through the neck. I reached for her hand under her skirt to check her pulse and something fell out—a candlestick.
“She was holding a goddamn candlestick. The flame had gone out. All Tucker saw was the glint of moonlight on metal.
“And then Tucker was there beside me, staring at the candlestick. ‘She had a gun! She woulda killed you! I saw it! I swear to God, it was a gun . . .’
“I just looked at him. There was nothing I could say. I reached down and closed the dead woman’s eyes. Tucker dropped to the ground beside her, with his hands over his head, rocking back and forth and crying, ‘Oh God, I killed her. I killed Nahlah’s mother.’
“‘Tucker, we have to go,’ I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘You didn’t know, man. I would have done the same thing. You couldn’t take a chance. You were covering me just like I woulda covered you.’
“It was like he didn’t hear me at all.
“‘Come on, man,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to get the kid to a medic.’ There was a US hospital not far away.
“Pitts came around the corner just then with our platoon leader and about a dozen others. ‘Nahlah,’ I said, trying to get Tucker’s attention. ‘We’ve got to help Nahlah.’
“Tucker got up and stumbled, glassy-eyed, to the Humvee and climbed in beside the girl. When he moved next to her, she opened her eyes and started screaming hysterically. As our four vehicle convoy moved out, the yelling turned to whimpering, and at some point she lost consciousness.
“When we got to the hospital, the others carried Wimpy to the morgue and Tucker carried Nahlah’s limp body in. The blood had seeped through, covering most of her shirt. Her face was grayish. The doctor took her back. Tucker was a wreck. The doc came out after just a few minutes, shaking his head, to tell us she was gone.”
Stutts looks back at the windows, but I know he’s seeing Wimpy and Nahlah and Nahlah’s mom.
“The hell of it is, I still see that scene every time I lie down to sleep—that little girl in her bloody shirt screaming for her mother, dead because she lit a candle in the dark.
“Tucker never got over it. He felt like he’d killed Nahlah, too.”
Stutts turns to me suddenly with an abrupt change of tone.
“Yeah, they train us on our weapons, but there’s no training for killing a human being. And when you’ve taken away the life of a peaceful civilian who turns out to be unarmed, how do you get over that?”
Stutts’s voice drops so that I have to lean forward to hear.
“Soldiers make mistakes. Bad shit happens when you put high-powered weapons in the hands of eighteen-year-olds. Killing civilians is part of war. But how do you stop feeling like a murderer?
“Tucker turned to me one night when we were out on patrol, and he asked me what we were doing there—in Iraq.
“I said we came to protect the people from tyranny—and he said no.
“I said we came to honor our beliefs and protect our country—and he said no.
“I said we came to help some rich people get richer, ’cause Tucker was always sayin’ it was a rich man’s battle but a poor man’s fight.
“He said no.
“‘What we’re doing here,’ he said, ‘is just trying to stay alive. Our only goal is to make it home.’”
CHAPTER 22
JAKE
I CAN’T HEAR MOST OF THE STORY STUTTS IS TELLING EMERY, but it seems like he really needs to talk it out, so I try to stay out of it. If anybody can get him to open up, it’s Emery. Whether it will help us or not, I just don’t know.
I definitely don’t like the way he gets so serious, and the way Emery is so caught up in what he’s saying. Just when I’ve had enough of it and I’m about ready to go up there to rescue Emery, Stutts stops talking and drops his head. He wipes his face with the sleeve of his shirt—like the kids do.
And then Emery reaches over and puts a hand on his shoulder. What is she thinking? I stand up and cross the room in three seconds flat.
Stutts looks up at me and says in a low voice, “I’ve seen the way you look at me, the two of you. You want to know if I’d hurt kids? There’s your answer. We’ve killed children. Both sides have killed children. I’m a baby killer.
“You know what?” He jabs his finger at Emery and I reach out to pull her away from him. “You just gotta learn to deal with it, when your ideals and principles get in the way of some little kid’s right to live. Grenades can’t always be aimed. Rockets miss their mark sometimes.”
He looks over at Patrick, then at the kids on the carpet. “That’s why they can’t trust you with your own kids anymore. That’s why Tucker’s only allowed to visit his kid with a social worker in the room. You believe that shit? A goddamn stranger has to watch him with his own kid. That’s what happens when you ask for help. A few weeks in the psych ward, and you’re an unfit parent for life. You tell ’em what you’re really thinking and they’ll take your whole family away from you. Forget trying to get help. You’ll wind up with nothing!”
He pauses, chest heaving, then looks over at the television. Suddenly, he’s yelling, “Turn it up, turn it up!” He jumps up and runs toward the TV, punching buttons in a panic. “How do you turn this thing up?”
I follow him across the room. On the screen there’s a man’s face I’ve never seen.
“Who is it?” I ask.
“I said turn it up!” Stutts yells.
A caption appears below the photo. It says TUCKER BRADEN.
“His friend,” Emery says to me.
“. . . and we’re told that Braden was a friend of Brian Stutts, the gunman who is holding first grade students hostage at Lincoln Elementary. The two of them apparently served together in Iraq.”
Stutts’s face goes still. None of us missed the reporter’s use of past tense.
“Again, we’ve just received word that Tucker Braden was found dead minutes ago by his ex-wife, Julia Braden, in his car in front of her house, shortly after being questioned by police in conjunction with the taking of hostages at Lincoln Elementary by Brian Stutts, who served with Braden in Iraq. Braden, who was under psychiatric care since returning from Iraq, was apparently a victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Police are investigating his suicide and looking for any possible connection with events unfolding at . . .”
The rest is drowned out by the awful sound that Stutts makes. It’s like the howl of a wounded animal, terrible to hear. “No, no, noooo,” he says, both hands covering his head like he’s fending off a blow. “Tucker, noooooo!”
The shit has hit the fan now.
“Tucker! Oh God, no!” he yells, bending over and gripping his gut like he’s been punched.
For the first time, his grip on the gun is loosened. I step toward it, but Emery reaches out to stop me and I realize it’s too dangerous wit
h him in this state.
“I didn’t answer,” Stutts moans, sinking into a chair, his face all twisted. “I didn’t answer the phone.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” Emery says. “I’m sure—”
“Then who should I blame?” he screams at her in a rage. “Whose fault is it if it’s not mine? That’s what’s wrong with this country. Everybody always blames somebody else!”
Emery moves toward Patrick, who’s awake and crying, terrified.
“I didn’t do shit for him! No! By God, I’m owning this! I’m the one who turned my back on him. Tucker was my friend and I walked away.”
And before anyone can move to stop him, he lifts his arm in one swift motion—and points the gun at his own head.
With every ounce of power I can muster, I dive for Stutts and the gun, my head filled with the picture of Patrick watching his dad blow his brains out in front of his eyes. I can’t let that happen.
I charge into Stutts full bore, using all my weight to tackle him, my arm reaching up to try to knock his hand away. His chair flies backward with the force of my attack, and I land on top of him. Both of us are rolling on the floor.
I’ve got to get to the gun. Keep it pointed away from Emery. From the kids. Stop him from pulling the trigger.
He tries to push me off with his left arm, but I cling to his right biceps, pulling myself upward, fighting to grab the gun as he holds it out of my reach. He locks his arm around my neck, but I hang on with everything I’ve got.
I’m vaguely conscious of Emery moving closer to us, reaching toward Stutts, and I shout at her to get back.
I fight to stay attached, stretching my arms toward Stutts’s hand. I get both hands around his wrist and hang on. I twist it so that the nose of the pistol points at the ceiling.
And then, miraculously, I feel my fingertips touch it. Both of us grapple for the weapon. My hand closes around his fist, and I can feel him losing ground as I pull it toward me.
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