Fire in the Blood

by Perry O'Brien

  At dusk the convoy chugged down a narrow mountain pass, slowing to ease around a series of switchbacks.

  “Ahoy,” said Greely, pointing to a cluster of flat-roofed buildings huddled beneath a hogback ridge. Coop heard a whump of displaced air and looked up to see three black Kiowas taking the lead. Coop leaned on the accelerator, speeding them toward the enemy.

  “Easy,” said Anaya, patting the air with a cautionary glove. “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”

  The convoy snaked toward a gap in the village wall. By the time Coop brought their truck to a halt, teams of infantry had already dismounted. Anaya gave the radio a “hooah” and an “over-out,” then presented Greely and Coop each with a gloved fist.

  “All right, engineers, let’s bump it. C’mon Coop, bump it!”

  Coop dropped from the humvee. Using the door as cover he squatted down to take up a firing position, cushioning his cheek against the plastic stock of his M4.

  The village was made up of about forty buildings, each an angular mound of clay. There wasn’t a body in sight: no one in the tapered alleys, nothing moving in the square. Engines idled. Radios scoffed with tactical gossip. Outside the perimeter Coop heard the intermittent shouts of infantry across the dusty courtyard, and over their heads, the steady hum of the Kiowas.

  From the top hatch of the command vehicle Coop saw Bill pop out with a megaphone. Bill was the unit’s hired interpreter, a stumpy Afghan wearing glasses and an oversized helmet. He lifted the megaphone to his mouth, cleared his throat, and coughed out a tirade of back-throated Pashto, the voice echoing off the clay walls. Coop understood the gist of it: Come out with your hands up. For added effect one of the Kiowas performed a low buzz, tracing the dusty architecture with its spotlight.

  As if they had been waiting for this courtesy, men began to emerge from the village huts. They came a few at a time, palms raised, robes blowing around them, squinting into the weapon lights. Their mouths moved emphatically, as if trying to reason with Bill and his megaphone, the soldiers, helicopters, and all their millions of rounds of ammunition, held in suspense.

  As the men began to show themselves, grunt teams swept forward to clear the village. Raids were conducted in three stages. First came the infantry, bounding like a pack of pit bulls, sizing up the villagers for signs of a fight and then happily and viciously barking off. After the infantry came the MP shepherds, pulling everyone from their homes, separating men from women, corralling them in the village square. Finally, Coop and the other sappers, bloodhounds with their snouts to the ground.

  The buildings of the village were of the usual construction; flat-roofed huts of mud and clay, with doors framed by raw timber or pallet wood. Standing in Coop’s first hut was a woman he recognized: Corporal McKenzie, an admin clerk he knew from Airborne School. McKenzie had been drafted for door busting by the Military Police, who never had sufficient female recruits to search all the Afghan women they detained. She stood over a blue ghost crouched on the floor of the hut, a woman in a burqa, struggling to pull clothes on a shivering little boy. The boy’s eyes jumped between soldier and veiled mother, and in the flashlight Coop saw the kid’s snot-crusted nose, his turquoise pajamas with cheap gold embroidery, and the outline of murmuring lips as the woman made shushing sounds from behind the ornate screen.

  “I know, I know,” McKenzie was saying, “but you gotta hurry it up, Mama.” Then she saw Coop and grinned, punching him playfully on the arm.

  “Hey there, jump buddy,” she said. “I’ll be clear in a sec.”

  McKenzie cracked and shook a chemlight before dropping it on the clay floor, signifying the hut had been cleared of civilians. Her freckles glowed in the blue light. “All yours,” she said, and gave Coop a wink.

  “Okay, Mama, gzi gzi,” she said to the woman, ushering her out of her tiny home.

  There wasn’t much to search. Two dusty rugs lay on the ground, the weaving undone and dangling. Coop lifted the rugs, tossed over a lumpy sleeping mat, shook dust from a mound of bedding. Besides the rugs and the mat, the entire contents of the hut were the following: two handmade pots, three food cans with Arabic labels, a single blackened onion, two cloth bags of long-grain rice, one aluminum can containing rusty nails, a roll of tape, and a single ink pen decorated with glued-on fragments of indigo glass. Coop stood in the small, cold room, letting his weapon hang from the sling. One hut down and he could already feel it: There was nothing in the village. No Taliban chief, no arms cache, nothing but dust.

  Coop cracked a red chemlight and left the hut. The far sky had deepened to a purple band on the horizon, and through a wide alley between the huts Coop could see the main square, brightened by spotlights to an unnatural clarity that reminded Coop of night construction. The captive Afghan men lay facedown and spread-eagled while military police patted them down. At the periphery the women and kids were cordoned together, a brightly colored band of blowing veils and crying children. Coop looked for the child in the turquoise pajamas but couldn’t pick him out from the crowd.

  Turning from the square, Coop drifted back to the village periphery. Under the mountain’s shadow it had turned to complete night, with just the glow of red and blue chemlights emanating from the mouths of old clay huts, and the occasional flashlight beam swimming through the dark. Absently Coop wandered into another hut, giving the sparse quarters just a few quick glances under his flashlight before he threw down one of the red chemlights from his cargo pocket. When he came out he saw Greely leaving a nearby hut, the private’s weapon slung low as he drifted toward the darkened cluster of ruins at the back end of the village.

  Coop was working on his third hut when Greely came running up, pale-faced, his mouth working silently before he coughed out the words.

  “I found some crazy shit.”

  * * *

  —

  Lying in the shadows with its dented fins, the bomb seemed ready to swim away. Eight feet long, and easily a five-hundred-pounder, Coop estimated. An old Russian blockbuster. And tattooed across every inch of the shell were running tigers, a huge mystical eye, oasis scenes, beautiful flowing script.

  Sergeant Anaya came in shortly after Coop. He crouched, took off his helmet, and stroked one hand across the painted bomb.

  “Look at you,” he said in a low, intimate voice. “You could kill us all.”

  The sergeant stood and wiped off his palms. “All right, I’m going to find the commander, see if the terp can hook me up with an old-timer, maybe figure out what the deal is with this monster. You two set up the lights and gear, hooah?”

  “Hooah,” Greely practically yelled, manic with the importance of his discovery.

  Anaya headed out, turned back at the door. “And Coop, you wanna get me a collateral estimate? Probably want to round up.”

  Coop went outside to take the measurements. On his waterproof green notebook he did some field-expedient math, adding the approximate explosive weight of the aerial bomb to the initiating C4, plus some guesswork to get a sense of the blast damage. From the edge of the hut he performed a pace count, walking out to where he guessed the initial detonation would reach. He whistled. Checked the pad again. Felt a small tic in his heart. Remeasured, looked up, used his arm to indicate the blast angle. Even in the best scenario, there were seven homes he could figure being vaporized by the explosion. One of them was the first hut he’d searched, home of the kid in the turquoise pajamas.

  Back inside, the hut was filled with buzzing light. Greely had finished angling the tripods, big battery-powered bulbs that made the bomb seem even more enormous in the cramped clay dwelling. Dust spilled through the hot white air and over the unrolled wire reel with fifty feet of detonation cord, the MDI kit, a galvanometer, and a pair of lineman’s pliers. Then Greely came up licking his lips. Looking weirdly anxious.

  “What is it?” said Coop.

  “Specialist,” said Greely,
out of breath. “You have to let me put my dick on this bomb.”

  Coop stared at him.

  “You’re fucking with me.”

  “Please, Coop.”

  Ever since they invaded Afghanistan, photos had been circulating within engineer units. Grainy shots of guys exposing themselves to unexploded ordnance, dicks hovering over mortars and piles of grenades, and though Coop hadn’t seen it, there was an alleged photo of their first sergeant with a grenade hanging off his cock.

  “I’ll give you three minutes,” Coop said, turning away to study the rubble that had been piled against the opposite wall.

  “Coop? One more thing. Like, a big favor.”

  “Not a chance.”

  The private lifted his arms toward the smashed-in roof. “But who’s gonna take the picture?”

  As Coop walked out of the hut, he heard Greely mutter “Okay, Jesus” and unbuckle his gear. He put his eyes back on the notepad, hoping somehow to magic the calculations. Change it so the kid’s house would get spared.

  Anaya returned from the square wearing a slightly stunned expression. “What the fuck?” he said, looking into the hut, then jumped back out.

  “Jesus Goddam Christ,” he said. “Fucking new guy.”

  “Fucking new guy,” Coop agreed. “What say the council of elders?”

  Anaya shook his head. “Total goatfuck. Afghans are telling Bill and the CIA guy that we were just here last week.”

  “Wait, our guys already raided this town?”

  “Not us, I don’t think. But the old hajji says the soldiers wore our camo,” said Anaya. He tugged on Coop’s sleeve in monkeyish imitation. “Like this, they were saying. Same uniform.”

  “That’s fucked,” said Coop.

  “Captain White was confused as hell, he went out to radio with HQ. Thing is, they said these other soldiers took some people.”

  “What do you mean they took people?”

  “Arrested them, supposedly. Bill said it was probably a local warlord looking for ransoms, but the CIA guy says no way, all the chiefs in this region are on the payroll.”

  “Wait,” said Greely, coming out of the hut. “What’s up with the CIA? Did you tell them about the bomb we found?”

  “So what are we gonna do?” said Coop. Anaya shrugged.

  “Mr. CIA says we give these folks money and destroy any weapons we find. So let’s boom this bitch.”

  “Listen, Sergeant,” said Coop. “I’m wondering, any way we can try moving this thing instead?”

  Anaya looked at him incredulously. “Sure, I’ll just put it on my back, hump it back to the FOB.”

  “The collateral is bad,” said Coop.

  “Sucks to be hajji,” said Anaya with a shrug. “First Sergeant says twenty minutes until rollout. Maybe you want to go in there, play red wire, blue wire?”

  They began to lay the explosives. While they worked, a few MPs showed up with an assortment of other confiscated weapons: a handful of curved daggers, some cans of gasoline-smelling sludge, and a bolt-action hunting rifle with a busted stock. These were arranged around the bomb like offerings, all wound together with loops of det-cord.

  “Hell of an arms cache,” said Greely.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Greely drove for the return trip, leaving Coop in the backseat, alone with his misgivings. He kept thinking about the upturned faces of the Afghans, watching as fireworks replaced the sky over their village.

  They were almost back to FOB Snakebite when a call came in over the radio.

  “Pyro Two, this is Black Cat Three-Three, over.”

  “Roger, this is Pyro Two,” said Anaya.

  “Once you guys arrive, have Specialist Cooper report to the TOC. Captain wants to see him, over? It’s urgent.”

  Coop sat up. The sweat went cold on his neck. “What was that, Sergeant?”

  “Roger,” said Anaya, into the radio. “We’ll be there, maybe twenty mikes. Pyro Two out.”

  * * *

  —

  “Why’s the captain want to see me?” said Coop, coming forward between the seats.

  The sergeant yawned and patted his face. “How should I know?”

  Greely revved the humvee up a steep incline, and Coop slid back into the rear compartment, the engine rumbling in his guts. Wants to see me urgently, he thought. Coop looked to the dusty road ahead, where shadows jumped away from the light, and his mind traveled back to October. He saw an ancient chimney rising up from the sand, surrounded by rubble and red-painted rocks.

  Coop rubbed at his eyes and looked around the humvee. In the rearview mirror he caught sight of a pale, stricken face; his own reflection. They caught me, he thought. Somehow they caught me.

  Once inside the FOB they left Coop at the edge of tent city. He watched the humvee putter away, imagining the mission’s conclusion: Anaya would circle up with the noncoms while Greely ghosted the motor pool, trying to steal a drip pan so he could log out the vehicle. Then Coop’s teammates would be free. They’d hit the DFAC for hot chow, possibly grab a shower, then head off to the sleep tent, where, swaddled in Gore-Tex cloaks, they’d finally get to rack out while the rest of camp began its morning. Staring down the crooked path of sand that led to the TOC, Coop feared he was facing a different kind of day.

  It was almost 0500 Zulu, twenty hours since Coop and the others had left the base. Lone grunts were starting to slip from their sleep tents, and from the blue-dark morning came the first formations of runners, each gang led by a private carrying their unit’s guidon, the pennants bobbing over the shoe-kicked dust. The soldiers sang cadence as they ran, and Coop caught snatches from the nearest group:

  Mama mama can’t you see,

  what this Army’s done to me?

  Continuing down the path, he tried to keep his mind on the soreness of his sleep-starved joints. Overhead the camp lights were seething in a fury of insects.

  Every step carried Coop closer to the unavoidable conclusion that his lie from October had been uncovered. He knew what would happen next. They’d take him off Anaya’s team to spend the rest of deployment washing dishes with the crazies. Like Private Linklater from construction platoon, who’d gotten bad news from his wife and tried swigging a canteen full of ammonia. Or that grunt Figueroa, busted for locking and loading on a fellow soldier after accusing him of stealing a Sex and the City DVD. Rather than sending these lunatics home, Command threw them on kitchen patrol, and Coop expected he’d end up there, too, at least until he was court-martialed.

  He eyed the glinting razor-wire fence, felt the immense presence of the Conex storage containers. The sun had set and Coop began to smell the reek of smoke from the burn pit, where hajji contractors worked all night feeding refuse to the fire.

  The Tactical Operations Center was a collection of three newly fabricated B-huts shrouded under a tent of camouflage netting. A long ramp led to the swinging double doors of the main building, and muraled over this threshold was a big-chested woman in robes. Saint Barbara, the patron mother of demolitionists. In one hand she held a cartoon bomb, and in the other a fistful of jagged lightning. Rather than trespass under her image, Coop instead chose to circle around the perimeter of the TOC. At the rear of the complex was a smoking pit—currently occupied. Coop watched from under the meshwork canopy. A figure was perched in one of the lawn chairs arranged around the ash pail, a smoldering cherry poised between two fingers. Coop sniffed; the air was spiced with the smell of clove cigarettes. Then the ember brightened, and Coop recognized the freckled cheeks of his jump buddy, Corporal McKenzie. She was already cleaned up from the mission, wearing a fresh uniform and good boots, her hair still wet from a shower. But something was wrong. Her eyes were wet and she shuddered a little between drags.

  It occurred to Coop that McKenzie, being a clerk, might know something about his summons, and more t
han anyone else, she might be willing to help.

  “Coop!” McKenzie said, wiping her eyes as he stepped from behind the camo net.

  Abruptly she was hugging him. “Oh Jesus Coop, I am so fucking sorry.”

  Coop went rigid. His heart hit an irregular pulse as she cried against the dusty shoulder of his gear, and he watched in surprise as his own arms floated up to return the embrace. He felt a slackening of his nerves. Since October the guilt had coiled and grown in his intestines. But now the secret had been taken from him. McKenzie knew.

  “It’s fucking unfair,” McKenzie said.

  Coop pulled her closer, getting dust all over her clean clothes and showered skin. He shivered with the notion that somehow, even knowing what he’d done, McKenzie was still able to like him.

  “They told you everything?” he said.

  “Just that it happened yesterday. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Coop fell back from her, shook his head. “Yesterday? Wait.”

  They looked at each other for a moment, and McKenzie’s tear-streaked face assumed a sudden panic.

  “Oh, god…oh god,” she said, and looked around the tented yard as if seeking cover.

  “Hey,” Coop said, his fingers tightening on her arms. “McKenzie.”

  “I can’t, I can’t…” She shook her head. “Oh, fuck, Coop, you need to talk to the chaplain. Go inside, please.”

  “What did you hear? Are they here for me?”

  A creak. Both of them turned toward the unhinging of the TOC’s back door. Standing on the deck was one of the junior clerks, taking in the scene with a raised eyebrow. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry to interrupt.”

  “Wait,” said McKenzie. “Private, go back inside.” She turned her eyes back to Coop, said again with a frantic whisper: “The chaplain. Talk to him.”

  “Corporal,” the clerk continued, impatiently, “Captain told me to give you the heads-up. That engineer whose wife got killed, he’s on his way over.”