The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows

by Brian Castner

  “Did he say where the EFPs are hidden? Or where they are making them?” I asked.

  “He says he knows nothing about EFPs,” said the Kurdish terp in highly accented English. “But you must understand, sir, that he is an Arab, and therefore, a liar. You cannot believe anything he says.”

  I shook my head, and the terp noticed that I was about to leave. He reached out and grabbed my arm as I was turning away.

  “But do not worry, sir,” the Kurd said. “You can not believe him, but we will keep asking him questions anyway.”

  Castleman, Keener, and I leapfrogged from shop to shop, across the street and back again, down alleyways and on rooftops, exposed to a sniper’s whim. The alarm clock in my head was ticking; we had spent too much time on-scene already. I dug through endless mounds of discarded scrap and poorly patched and mismatched power tools. In one shop we spotted a pile of slightly different casings—spun clean, shiny, new, and wrong. These weren’t the casings we had seen on previous EFPs either. Nothing was right.

  In the last shop on the block we found a stack of cylinder sleeves from floor to ceiling, marshaled six deep and twelve high. This was the cache from the grainy picture. The mother lode. What we had been sent to find.

  And they were the same wrong cylinder sleeves we had found everywhere else.

  I stepped outside and considered the scene again, hand on my rifle as gunfire awoke on the edge of town. The more shops we entered, the more the supposedly suspicious EFP casings looked like old rusting cylinder sleeves, waiting to be spun and milled clean to refit fresh piston assemblies, recycled parts for rebuilt engines. The more the nuts and bolts looked like nuts and bolts. The more the tools and dies looked like tools and dies. The more the machine shops looked like machine shops.

  This wasn’t an EFP factory.

  “There’s nothing here,” I yelled over to Castleman in the next greasy stall.

  “I agree,” he responded. “I haven’t seen a single scrap of bang or det cord or anything I’d call a trigger or an initiator. Just a bunch of rusty cylinder sleeves and a pile of shit.”

  “I found a mold for a drill press we can take.” It was at the bottom of a pile of hand tools, with no drill press in sight. But it was flat on the top, non-mold end, and so could take a hammer as well.

  “It’s the only thing remotely suspicious,” I said. “It’s almost the right size. We’ll see if they can randomly match it to anything at headquarters in Baghdad.”

  “What about all these sleeves we came for?” Castleman asked.

  The rattle of incoming small arms echoed, still in the distance but moving steadily closer. I didn’t want to stick around for the mortars.

  “We’re not blowing up four city blocks to get rid of a bunch of rusting engine parts from semi trucks, and we don’t have the room to take them. They stay. This op was a waste.”

  Rounds were plinking off the Humvee by the time we had remounted and rounded up our escort security. We pulled away, leaving broken noses, swollen eyes, sore wrists, sunburns, and a smoldering resentment that seeped into the cracks and crannies of the surrounding neighborhood, a pall that hung like an ill fog.

  When we arrived back at the FOB I went directly to the brigade ops center to provide a report on what we didn’t find. There was little need; word had obviously already made it back. The Battle Captain met me in the hallway, red-faced and livid.

  “I can’t believe you left everything!” he practically screamed. “We had intel that those sleeves were being made into EFPs. We sent you there to seize them. What part didn’t you understand?”

  “What would you have had me do? Call for ten dump trucks and load them with every cylinder sleeve from every shop on the block? They have every right to fix engines in an engine shop! This is their livelihood!”

  The Battle Captain was adamant.

  “You have the blood of soldiers on your hands,” he said, and the conversation was over.

  I am at home, sitting on the landing on the second floor, staring down the narrow, quiet flight of stairs below me. My new son is sleeping in his crib in his blue room behind me. He is three days old. Tiny and pink and perfect. And helpless. Totally helpless. Someone could wring him like a rag and pull him limb from limb. Someone could pinch a little skin on his fat belly, twist and tear, and gut him like a shot duck. They could shake him until his head tore from his neck.

  The Crazy stirs, and shows its spidery head.

  That can’t happen. I won’t let it happen. No one will kill my son.

  So I sit at the top of the stairs, with my rifle, and wait. I have picked a good spot. The narrow staircase has created a funnel, a choke point, where I can kill anyone coming up to the second floor.

  My son is defenseless so I will defend him. I sit, and wait, and finger my rifle, and watch, all night.

  The doctor wasn’t helpful. He looked in the glass jar at the smashed scorpion, three inches long and translucent, and frowned.

  “Well, it’s either the kind that rots your skin off, or the kind that kills you,” he said.

  Twenty minutes earlier, turning off the water to the dribbling shower, I had thrown my towel around my shoulders to dry off. A shooting pain in my elbow. Another along my ribs. I jumped and shook and the scorpion fell out of a fold in the drab brown terry cloth. I smeared that scorpion on the wet plastic shower floor with my flip-flopped foot, grabbed the remains for evidence, and trotted back into the HAS still dripping wet. Pants and a shirt went on in a rush, and Griffin drove me to the FOB medical clinic moments later, the sting wounds growing a swollen red.

  “Well, that sounds bad,” I told the doc. “Can I get some meds?”

  “Oh, we don’t have the antivenom up here in Kirkuk,” the doc replied with a wave of his hand. “And if we medevaced you on a bird now and it’s the kind that kills you, you’ll be dead before you got to Baghdad anyway. Do you know how hard it is to intubate in the back of a Black Hawk? Just go to your room and come back if you feel worse.”

  I told Griffin the verdict as we returned to the HAS. I wandered through the front blast doors, under the shady protective concrete canopy, in a daze.

  “I’m going to go rack out,” I told Griffin. “Please keep an eye on me. Just stop by every so often to see if I’m still breathing.”

  “Don’t worry,” Griffin said. “If you die in your sleep, we won’t tell anyone. We’ll take you out on a call and blow you up. You’ll go out the right way.”

  I walk into my Old Counselor’s office on the first floor of the Buffalo VA Hospital. But she’s not my Old Counselor yet.

  I’ve been in the VA a lot lately. Chest pain, blood draws, stress tests, EKGs, eye twitches, emergency-room runs for irregular heartbeats. Nothing for being Crazy. But I didn’t know I was Crazy yet.

  “Hi, I’m Brian. I’m checking in,” I say to the middle-aged woman at the front counter.

  “And what are you here for?” she asks.

  “I have an appointment here but I don’t know why,” I answer. “It was made for me after my last ER visit a couple weeks ago.”

  “I see. Have a seat.”

  And I do. But the room doesn’t feel right, and the Crazy feeling is gnawing at my heart.

  My Old Counselor comes out to meet me, and beckons me into a closet-sized side room containing a foot in a box, two chairs, and a table. We sit.

  “Do you know why you’re here?” my Old Counselor asks. But she isn’t my Old Counselor yet.

  “I guess I’ve been using the ER too much?” I joke, and finger my rifle, and the Crazy jumps into my throat.

  “Well, Brian, we just want to make sure everything is okay with you,” my Old Counselor responds softly. “It can be really hard to transition back home, and everyone has their own challenges. I wanted to know if there was anything you wanted to talk about.”

  Gurgle. Swell. Twitch.

  “Why would I need to talk about anything?”

  I’ve figured out how I’m going to strap a pistol to th
e center console of our family’s minivan. It can sit at my right knee, a modified old 9-millimeter drop holster bolted to the plastic next to the radio and cup holders. Discreet, out of the way, the grip angled up and ready for my right hand when needed. One thumb flick on a strap and it releases, heavy and comfortable and safe.

  I need to get the pistol ready because I drive the minivan often, the kids to and from school every day, to the grocery store, the VA hospital. It is nearly impossible to shoot a rifle one-handed and drive at the same time. But with a pistol, I can either shoot out the lowered driver’s window or, in an emergency, through the front windshield.

  Reloading is tricky, as I drive with my left hand, but I have developed a work-around. In the back of my armored Humvee I kept a magazine pouch—six pistol mags and six rifle—strapped to the crossbar behind the driver’s seat directly in front of me. Reaching forward to reload is already ingrained in my training. So if I find some heavy-duty Velcro tape I can put strips of the furry part on the very top of the dashboard, just to the right of the speedometer display. I’ll then attach the bristly partner tape to the bottom of each pistol magazine. Then I can line up a couple of pistol mags, standing straight up, right in front of me and ready to go. When I need to reload, while still driving with my left hand, I can release the spent magazine with my right thumb, let it drop away into my lap, and slam the open grip of the pistol on the awaiting fresh magazine on the dashboard. With another thumb reach to the slider-release lever, the upper rail of the pistol slams forward, locks in the mag, round in the chamber, hammer back, and I’ll be ready to fire again.

  I’ve practiced a couple of times in my basement at home, and I can change magazines now without looking. The trick is to make sure the new magazine is fully seated in the pistol and clicks, so when you lift and pull it from its heavy Velcro latch, it doesn’t fall out.

  “You need to talk, Brian, because everyone needs to talk,” my Old Counselor says.

  She smiles weakly at me, her face lined and motherly, graying black hair and a soothing slump to her shoulders. The Crazy is boiling in my chest, and my hands shake, and I look down to see my foot bouncing on the floor.

  “I have this feeling,” I start. I don’t tell her it’s the Crazy feeling. Not yet. “It feels like my chest is swollen and my heart is going to burst. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what causes it. But I can’t stop it. And I can’t control it. It’s intolerable, and it’s the only thing I can think about.”

  “Are you nervous? Or stressed?” my Old Counselor asks.

  “No, that doesn’t sound right. I’m not worried, and no deadline at work ever compares with combat.”

  “So why are you afraid?” she asks.

  I laugh a stifled, uncomfortable laugh. My eye twitches. My heart gurgles.

  “I don’t spend a lot of time being afraid.” Don’t be scared of the soft sand. I chose this. I got to go back. I got everything I wanted. Don’t be scared of the soft sand.

  “What are you afraid of?” my Old Counselor presses.

  I run up the hill, through the dust cloud, through the helicopter rotor wash, past the screaming women, through the piles of bodies discarded from countless car bombs, vest on, rifle in hand, ready, ready. But I can’t run far enough away. I can’t run fast enough to escape her question. Still I sit, in my Old Counselor’s tiny office for the first time, the helium balloon in my rib cage about to explode.

  “I’m scared of ending up like Ricky.”

  After that I tell her about Ricky. How we usually run together, and how he visits when he can. I go back the next week, and do the same thing all over again. And the week after that. And the week after that. Appointments pile on top of each other in a blur. Weeks become months, the winter becomes summer, the Crazy feeling endures, and still I cry in my Old Counselor’s office until my grief and fear and detachment from the world has a name and a face.

  Everyone poses with their rifles. Go online and search for it, or open any hardcover book on a recent conflict to the center section where they keep the photos, and you’ll see. A line of young men, in vests and gear, helmets on or off, posing in front of a helicopter, or a statue of the disposed leader, or a blast wall, or a mountainside. The backgrounds vary. The faces are nearly identical; dirty smiles and short hair, average builds and day-old stubble. But one thing never changes. They always have their rifles. Hands on the grip, wrists bent, barrels down, cinched and tight on a sling or a retention strap.

  You see the same pose struck in the background of photos of heads of state from the Third World. As the president-for-life moves from helicopter to armored car, or makes a speech in front of a blown-up building, they are there. Men with rifles, sunglasses, armored vests, short-sleeved shirts, khaki cargo pants, baseball caps. It’s the uniform of the American mercenary force of the twenty-first century, a group in which I now unexpectedly find myself. I conduct training, others still do the job. No matter. We call ourselves—active military and former alike—by various names: operators, trigger-pullers, door-kickers, knuckle-draggers. All have the same rifle, in the same position, gloved hand on the grip, bent wrist, barrel down. All have the same look. The look of men who are willing to do things, have done things, are planning to do things, violent or extreme things that most do not contemplate. It is the willingness, the attitude, the consideration that matters. That is the important part.

  Others have the look. I can see their rifles now too. Faded black-and-white plates from the days of Antarctic exploration. A line of men: dirty, sunburned, and frost-bitten faces; long beards and sunken eyes from months on the trail; a line of mushing sled dogs; a flag for their country; a sea of white behind them. And on each chest, a rifle hung, barrel down, stock to the shoulder. A photo mural of our local hockey team, writ large on the side of the arena downtown, a line of young men, jerseys half on, clad in armor and helmeted, each with a rifle, hands on the grips. On an Olympic podium, three competitors, three rifles.

  It’s in their eyes. They know. They feel the weight of the rifle as well.

  Those were the three days that broke me. The three days that took my egg of innocence, precious and fragile, and crushed it under booted foot. On Monday we raided the EFP Factory That Wasn’t. On Tuesday we survived the Day of Six VBIEDs. On Wednesday, Trey killed our first civilian, and I told him to do it.

  The call came in like all the others. A truck bomb tried to ram a U.S. convoy in the giant traffic circle on the southern edge of Kirkuk, where the highways branch to Hawija to the west and Baghdad, ultimately, to the south. We had had the six car bombs the day before. To have only one truck bomb that day seemed easy. Trey took his team and, exhausted, I stayed in the ops center in the HAS, covered in coffee and reports.

  But as the news trickled in it eventually became clear that the call was far from routine. A huge cordoned scene, the roundabout almost half a kilometer wide itself, and three highways’ worth of traffic stopped and stewing. Multiple security teams—the U.S. convoy that got hit, special embedded units that the convoy was escorting, and Trey’s security—only partially able to coordinate or communicate with each other. Small-arms fire that ranged from the usual sporadic to the periodically intense. And stuck in the middle, Trey, his EOD team, and a truck bomb that wasn’t right from the start.

  It was a white pickup, an innocuous small Toyota, no load in the open bed, slumped on the side of the road where it had crashed after being riddled with bullets. The driver was also shot, draped against the dashboard, steering wheel pushing into his midsection. He just lay. And bled. And moaned. He wasn’t dead. He might have been trapped. And he refused to even try to leave the truck, despite the gunfire. Despite the security. Despite the pleas and threats from U.S. terps over loudspeakers and bullhorns. He refused to talk or move or die.

  Trey was a confident team leader, a southern good ole boy with a dip and a drawl and hound dog at home, a reservist who was a cop in civilian life, fearless and self-assured and independent; I rarely heard from Tre
y while he was on a call, and I rarely had reason to. There was little he couldn’t handle. But this call was different. He checked back regularly to provide status updates. The tone of his voice changed, a slight quiver, an opening of ambiguity. He knew something wasn’t right. Soon I was locked in the ops center and attached to the radio.

  “This guy won’t fucking get out,” Trey crackled over the multiband radio.

  “Can he get out?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, I’m sending in the robot now to check,” Trey said.

  A pause. A split second on scene, an eternity in the ops center, in the HAS, behind the blast walls and security cameras and armed guards.

  “Captain, I can’t tell if he’s trapped, but there is another problem,” Trey said. “I can’t find the bomb.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the bed is empty,” Trey replied, “and I don’t see anything through the robot camera in the cab either. There is no crush switch or suicide switch anywhere. So unless he stuffed it in the engine compartment that is crumpled in half, there is no bomb.”

  No bomb. We don’t do traffic accidents, we do bombs. Still, you must be sure.

  “So what do you want to do?” I asked Trey over the radio.

  “The only way I can be sure there is no bomb in the cab is to explosively open it up. So he needs to get out of the truck, and I can’t tell with the robot whether he even can. I need to go look. I’m going down,” Trey said.

  A solo approach to an IED, the tactic of last resort. We call it the Long Walk.

  Trey’s walk would be a run, in the open street and traffic circle, dodging the gunfire I heard continuously in the background. A run to the truck to pull a man out, a man that rammed a U.S. convoy an hour earlier and was shot for his trouble, to check for a bomb that might not exist.