Yet the campaign to eliminate our vermin neighbors is hindered by my own personal idiosyncrasies. I dislike snakes, and even though the best cure for a case of mouse infestation is the presence of slithering reptiles I still resolve to kill them any time I see them. We know from our multitudes of predeployment briefings that Iraq is home to a host of poisonous serpents, several of which produce venom that will kill you within hours of your being bitten. I never remember seeing a snake the last time I was in this country, and so I initially convince myself that no snakes will come near our human dwelling. But then one day Master Sergeant Deleon announces that he has found one near the COC, and despite my dread I come running with entrenching tool in hand. Soon the snake is in two pieces, and as it snaps at us and tries to rejoin its two severed halves we strain to determine what kind of snake it is. It is a baby, and although its markings resemble those of a Levantine viper we are unsure, so we play it safe anyway and burn what’s left of the snake. I know that where there is one there are more, and the next day another snake is found next to the COC. The Marines kill it too, bifurcating it and tossing its remains in the burn bin. No one wants to get bitten, because everyone knows it is painful and that it is a long way to the nearest Coalition base. And no one wants to die, especially from, of all things, a snakebite.
The snakes become only a passing concern. We know that if we watch where we step and where we put our hands we will be fine, and after a while I begin to forget about them. But it is impossible to forget about the flies. They are everywhere, and while I dislike snakes, I despise flies. They swarm in black masses near our garbage cans, and they exploit every opportunity to invade our living and cooking spaces. Doc Rabor attempts to limit their breeding and gathering places by crafting heavy, wooden lids for the refuse cans that dot our camp, but his efforts are in vain, and so we hang fly traps in every room. The fly tape curls down from the ceilings in long, adhesive streamers, the corpses of flies and other small insects frozen into statues on the sticky surface. Occasionally Marines bump into the fly tape and it sticks to their faces, and as they peel it off their skin they must also peel off the blackened husks of fly cadavers that have made the migration from tape to flesh. We throw foul-smelling blue crystals of bait around areas we think to be congregation sites for the flies, but it does little to solve the problem. Nor does the clear plastic bag of water suspended from a HESCO barrier near the chow hall that Captain Hanna swears will ward off the winged insects with its ability to refract light.
I react with disgust when I see flies crawling on our food, and while it is acceptable for me to curse and shoo them away when I am in the presence of my fellow fly-hating Marines, it is perhaps not acceptable to react that way when I am eating with the Iraqis. The flies seem only a casual nuisance to them, and the Iraqis are less bothered than I am by flies alighting on the food and staking out their claim with feet that moments ago were likely frolicking in garbage and human shit. But I am unable to hide my revulsion when a fly lands in my mouth, or on my eyeball. I angrily swat at the pests, and for the thousandth time I long for a world without flies.
Winter ends, and as our brief spring quickly heats up into summer the mosquitoes arrive at our camp. At first I don’t understand it; there shouldn’t be mosquitoes here in the dry, arid desert. But then I think about how close we are to the Euphrates River, and I remember the heavily irrigated plantation that sits adjacent to our camp. The mosquitoes thrive in this environment, and for them COP South has become a giant restaurant with human blood as the special of the day. They come in ones and twos at first, testing our reaction to their presence, and once they determine that we have let down our defenses they move in for the kill.
I awake in my hut one evening, itching with the swollen bites of the tiny, invisible vampires, and as I turn on my headlamp I see them for the first time. They have found their way into my living quarters, and they buzz in circles over my head, waiting patiently for me to fall asleep so they can resume their feast. The Marine supply system—from which we can order refrigerators and satellite dishes and flat-screen televisions—is unable to provide us with mosquito netting, so each night I slather all exposed flesh with insect repellent and crawl into my sleeping bag and wait once again for the nightly feeding. The Outlanders suffer the same aerial assault each evening, and each morning a new Marine appears with red welts marring his face and arms. We search for mosquito coils to ward them off, but they aren’t available either. The Iraqis offer us pungent incense sticks they claim will drive away the pests, but we choose to gut it out instead. The tang of burning garbage aboard the camp every day is enough, and we are tired of foul-smelling odors filling our nostrils. We brave the mosquitoes and keep applying bug juice—and wait to see what new critters will join us.
Chapter 29
A Change of Plans
Late in the evening of 10 July I was aroused from my slumber by chatter on the team’s radio net. I first heard Lieutenant Bates.
“Nine, this is Three.” After a moment with no response he repeated his radio call to Doc Rabor. “Nine, this is Three,” he said, impatience rising in his voice. “This is Three . . . does anyone have eyes on Nine?”
A rumbling outside my hut caught my attention, and as I walked out into the darkened camp I saw a crowd of soldiers circled around an ambulance next to the motor pool. I poked my head in the COC and found Corporal Fry manning the radios.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked.
“Another jundi shot himself, sir,” he replied emotionlessly. His bland response was indicative of how immune the Marines had become to such tragic occurrences around the battalion. The incident in which the soldier had shot his friend our first week at COP South had been shocking. Now accidents and mishaps among the soldiers bothered the Marines not at all.
By the time I made my way to the motor pool the IAs had loaded the jundi into the ambulance and begun racing toward the center of the camp. Catching up to Captain Hanna, Lieutenant Bates, and Doc Rabor as they briskly followed the ambulance on foot, I breathlessly called out to them.
“Hey, hold up,” I said. “What the hell is going on?”
“Another ND,” Bates explained. “One of the junood shot himself in the foot as he was coming off duty.”
“Well, why the hell are they taking him deeper into the camp?” I asked. “Why aren’t they taking him to the hospital?”
“It’s not serious,” Hanna said, referring to the soldier’s injury. “They’re taking him to the camp clinic first.”
We arrived at the clinic to find what in India I had called a “rent-a-crowd” surrounding the ambulance. In New Delhi it seemed that any time an incident occurred—whether it was an automobile accident or some other public spectacle—there was always one rabble-rouser who would instigate a near riot among the masses of curious onlookers, who would then immediately form into a raging crowd. The same kind of sideshow was now developing at the clinic, where a throng of partially clad soldiers swarmed the ambulance. The soldier who had shot himself cowered in the back of the ambulance, terrified by his injury and the excitement generated by the mob. I turned to Hanna.
“We need to get these fucking people away from here,” I said, pointing to the jabbering soldiers. “That dude is petrified.”
Hanna nodded and grabbed our interpreter.
“Hey!” he yelled over the commotion. “Tell everyone to back the fuck away from the ambulance!”
The sea of soldiers slowly parted, and we got a good look at the jundi lying on the stretcher. He was truly freaking out, but as I looked down at his injury I saw that Hanna’s assessment had been correct. The soldier’s foot had already been bandaged, and only one small dot of blood colored the cloth wrapping.
The ambulance accelerated into gear and raced out of the camp, and as we returned to the team’s compound we began to hear rumors that the jundi had shot himself on purpose. We would later hear that it had something to do with an upsetting call he had received from his girlfriend. A
nother version of the story was simpler and, in light of recent events, more believable: the jundi wanted to go on mujaas. The die had truly been cast in 3rd Battalion; the average jundi now knew that shooting himself in the foot would be a one-way ticket home for leave. But a greater concern for us grew out of the chaos of that evening. Hanna noted that the IAs’ casualty-handling process had been so haphazard and disorganized that he wondered what would happen if something serious actually were to occur. What would they do if and when they eventually took casualties while they were outside the wire?
That same evening a patrol from 3rd Battalion set up a “snap” vehicle checkpoint (VCP) along the main route that ran south from Al Qa’im toward the border town of Akashat. During the course of the surprise checkpoint the soldiers stopped a lorry filled to the roof with smuggled cigarettes. After being stopped by the soldiers the truck’s driver dismounted and fled into the darkness on foot. As he escaped into the night the soldiers reportedly fired nearly a hundred rounds of ammunition from their AK-47s, PKM medium machine guns, and DshK heavy machine guns. They then detained the truck’s second passenger and brought him and the lorry back to camp.
The next morning I was skeptical as I read the report.
“A hundred rounds?” I said, looking at Bates. “That’s a little overkill, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I’m gonna go see Al’aa and get to the bottom of it,” he replied.
It wasn’t long before he returned.
“You aren’t gonna believe this, sir,” he said, frowning.
“Probably not,” I replied.
“They didn’t fire their weapons at all,” he said. “Al’aa tried some bullshit on me, but he finally admitted that they filed a false report so they could get extra ammo for the battalion.”
“Jesus, why?” Hanna asked. “They won’t even shoot the ammo they already have.”
That night I asked Ayad about the patrol.
“Sadie, I heard you nabbed a smuggler last night.”
“Yes, and we will catch more with the random checkpoints,” he said proudly.
“What about all the rounds your men fired?” I asked.
“The driver escaped,” he explained. “And the junood were trying to light up the area to see where he went.”
Okay, I thought, rolling my eyes. Now that’s just stupid.
“Well, sadie,” I said, staring intently at him. “I heard that your soldiers didn’t fire a single round.”
He paused, and then continued without missing a beat. “Yes, we reported that we fired at the smuggler so that we could get additional ammunition.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said, unable to believe that he had just freely admitted to filing a false report. “You told them you expended ammunition even when you didn’t? What happens if Brigade finds out?”
“It’s okay,” he explained. “Colonel Ra’ed told me it was all right.”
“The brigade commander told you it was okay to file a false report?” I asked, not believing my ears.
“Yes.”
I sat there speechless, not knowing what to say. I had always guessed that Ayad was involved in a certain degree of corruption, but I hadn’t expected him to openly admit it, nor had I thought the brigade commander would be involved as well.
My straightforward questioning seemed to have unnerved him, and he also appeared embarrassed that I had caught him in a lie. He quickly changed the subject and asked me for my thoughts about the battalion and what my concerns were. I didn’t hesitate to answer.
“I’m concerned about the individual training and discipline of the junood,” I said. “And I’m concerned about the lack of initiative and supervision by the officers.”
He nodded, and I continued.
“I’m worried about the mistrust that exists between you and your staff.”
He listened intently, agreeing with everything I had to say. We talked about my observations for over two hours, and I was genuinely surprised at how receptive he was to my critique. But I knew that anyone could listen; the real test would be whether he took my observations and recommendations to heart and acted on them. To date he had largely ignored what I had offered. Why should he do any different now?
A gaggle of rumors began circulating back and forth on e-mails and message traffic that claimed our MiTT team would “decouple” from 3rd Battalion early, and that there would be no advisor team replacing us. We had first heard about the possibility months before, and although we had no hard facts to back us up we had begun laying the groundwork for terminating the mission with the 3rd Battalion staff. Each time they came to us with a problem we would remind them that our team might be the last MiTT to be partnered with their battalion. And on each occasion they dismissed our warning, insisting that the Americans would not be leaving.
But now the buzz appeared to be true, and on 12 July Lieutenant Colonel Gridley and his MiTT staff convened a meeting at Camp Al Qa’im for all of the brigade’s advisor teams. Gridley confirmed that the rumors were now fact, and he announced that the Outlanders would indeed decouple from 3rd Battalion as soon as possible. The MiTT from 2nd Battalion would likewise decouple and would not be replaced by another team. My team would turn over its equipment to an incoming MiTT that would be designated as an “overwatch” transition team, and once established the overwatch team would augment the brigade team by providing general advisor support to the two battalions that were not partnered with advisors. It was a complicated plan and a heavy task for our team. I wondered how we would get it all done in time.
The battalion had been planning an operation south of our AO, and what was initially supposed to be an intelligence-based search operation evolved into planning for a combined reconnaissance mission with a company from 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR) Battalion. But as the 3rd Battalion S-2 and S-3 sections continued to plan the operation the target area began to encroach deeper and deeper into 2nd LAR’s AO. On 13 July I pulled Bates, Ski, and Hanna aside and polled them.
“What do you think?”
“I’d like us to do one last op with them,” Bates said. “Especially since we have finally gotten them to do some real fucking planning. But . . .”
“But what?”
“Well, like I said, I want to do it, but it’s gotten a little too complicated.”
I turned to Ski.
“Agree, sir,” he said. “They don’t have enough intel. I think it will be another wild goose chase.”
“Yep, concur,” I said. “I think it’s a bridge too far, especially with all the work we have to do to get out of here.” I turned back to Bates. “Tell them we can’t play.”
It was a disappointing decision to make. As Bates had noted, we would miss our last chance to go on a mission with the battalion. More important, we had pushed 3rd Battalion hard over the preceding months to put more work and detail into their planning efforts, and now that they had finally taken our advice and done so, we ended up recommending to them that they cancel the operation. It was not a good way to end our time with the IAs.
Unconcerned about the reconnaissance mission to the south that had been canceled, Ayad was instead excited about conducting antismuggling operations in 3rd Battalion’s AO. The capture of the cigarette truck had been a political victory for him among his Iraqi colleagues and had helped to dispel the rumor that 3rd Battalion had gone to ground at COP South, either unable or unwilling to venture outside the wire on operations.
When I visited Ayad on the afternoon of 13 July he was excited about a car one of his patrols had snagged early that morning. At 0400 Lieutenant Ski had awakened me and summoned me to the COC. The Marine task force had been tracking an automobile from the Syrian border as it made its way down into 3rd Battalion’s AO, and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had filmed the car transferring something to another vehicle at the border.
“The border forts need to go check that out,” I had said irritably. “That’s their job.”
“I know, sir,” Ski had replied.
“They won’t do it, so the task force has asked Third Battalion to do it.”
We had alerted 3rd Battalion’s QRF and relayed the coordinates provided to us by the UAV, and thirty minutes later it was speeding outside the wire and into the open desert in hot pursuit of the suspicious vehicle. In the end the QRF had detained the car and driver, but all it found was two cartons of cigarettes.
But it had been a minor victory in synchronization between the task force, the MiTT, and the IAs, and Ayad was more than happy to take the credit for the arrest. I didn’t bother to remind him of the role the Marines had played in coordinating the mission. Sometimes the best way to encourage success in someone is to allow him to think everything was his idea.
As we discussed the details of that morning’s mission, it occurred to me that Ayad had begun sitting next to me during our daily meetings since his return from leave several days earlier. He had normally sat across the office and behind his desk. It seemed that he was growing closer to me in more ways than one. Barriers were crumbling, but I feared it was too late. Lunch was served, and I broke the news to him about the MiTT leaving 3rd Battalion. He was visibly crushed.
“I don’t know what we’ll do without the Americans here,” he said, slowly shaking his head. “You have done a lot for us. It won’t be the same without your help.”
In the Gray Area Page 21