by Roy David
‘At ease, Lieutenant, take a seat.’
McDermott gulped, licked his lips, his mind at once in turmoil. Was he hearing correctly? He took a faltering step backwards as the major approached.
Smiling, the major extended his hand. McDermott shook it limply. ‘I… I don’t understand, sir.’
Gesturing McDermott to sit, the major pulled up a chair beside him.
‘I bumped into your staff sergeant in the corridor earlier – a damn good result, Lieutenant.’
The words hit him like a Force 10. For a moment, they took his breath away. His jaw dropped, rendering him speechless.
‘Lost for something to say, Lieutenant?’
McDermott puffed out his cheeks, ran a hand over his cropped head. ‘Well, I just don’t know. A good result, sir? But the dead civilians – a baby, women, old men. Intelligence said…’
The major waved his hand dismissively and leant forward, elbows on his knees. He studied McDermott, this tall, lean figure, the hair cut so close he could hardly tell its colour. Rarely had he seen a smile on the boyish features. Come to that, many of his men were still only boys. McDermott was another of those thoughtful, serious young guys the Academy seemed to be turning out these days. Maybe a touch too sensitive for this job. Sometimes it didn’t do to think too deeply.
‘Never mind intel – they don’t always get it right. We don’t live in a perfect world.’ The major stood up, walked towards his desk. ‘How old are you, Lieutenant?’
‘Twenty-five, sir.’
‘First real action?’
‘Kind of.’
‘Look, son. The units under your command took out a bagful of terrorists – fifteen less insurgents to worry about. Who knows how many of us they might have killed if you hadn’t gone in there. Sure, it’s mighty upsetting to see the innocents caught up in this – but this is war, Lieutenant. I’ve seen it all; Kuwait, Afghanistan, now Iraq, and I can tell you it’ll only get dirtier and uglier no matter what they say back home in Washington. They wouldn’t know shit from gold. You struck gold tonight – I’ll be informing divisional HQ.’
‘I… I just can’t get that baby’s eyes out of my mind, just staring at me, helpless.’
The major pulled out a half bottle of bourbon from a drawer, poured them both a slug. Alcohol, taken by any of the troops, was strictly off-limits. Even so, an illicit market flourished in the locally-produced whisky and the clear moonshine the soldiers called ‘Hajii juice’.
‘Knock this back, son – purely medicinal.’
McDermott downed it with a grimace.
‘Trooper, you go and get some chow. It’s just collateral damage, that’s all. It happens. Tomorrow it’ll be different. I’ll speak to every member of the team personally – we all say nothing about the side damage.’
McDermott stood up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He managed a half-hearted salute, wheeled about, and left the office.
His appetite non-existent, he went straight to his room, taking great care not to disturb his sleeping fellow officers. Without bothering to undress, he took his Bible from the top drawer of his bedside cabinet, and began reading by the light of a small torch, searching frantically for solace.
It was open at the Old Testament, Leviticus, chapter five. His eyes came to rest at verse 17: ‘And if anyone doth sin and does any of the things the Lord has commanded not to be done, though he was unaware, still he is guilty and shall bear his punishment.’
He read the verse repeatedly, staring vacantly at the ceiling. Unable to sob, unable to sleep.
A pair of brown eyes haunting him.
2
Just after sunrise in Baghdad. And on the type of cloudless morning that greeted Matt McDermott, it wasn’t hard to forget there was a war going on.
A few moments of peace before the construction contractors started up, before the night patrols came rumbling in, before the next rota moved out after only six hours off. Relaxation? Forget it.
Now the sun peeped tantalisingly over the skyline, merely temperate before its 100-degree heat of early spring.
For the next hour or so it would be what his folks back home in Parkersburg, West Virginia called ‘fair weather’. McDermott lifted his head to the warmth and tried hard to capture the boyhood essence of mornings such as this with Pop; a fishing spot up the Ohio River where they would stop with the camper and clamber down a steep slope through the trees to the water’s edge.
Mom would always tell them to ‘watch for those bears’ before they set off. But the boy, to his great disappointment, never once clapped eyes on a black bear, although Pop often enchanted him with tales of their habits. Now, he knew that throughout their long winter hibernation, the black bear never eats, drinks, urinates or defecates.
The snarling growl of a nearby bulldozer starting up broke his concentration. He closed his eyes tighter, desperate to remain wrapped in his memory’s comforting embrace. But thick acrid diesel fumes assailed him from all directions, forcing him back to the stark reality of a country in chaos.
His shoulders were stiff from last night’s concentration at the Bradley’s monitor screen. Flexing his head from side to side, little clicks cracked from his neck as he crossed the parade square to the officers’ mess. The baby’s face peered at him. Several times he shook his head sharply to rid himself of the vision.
A mass of feelings fooled with his mind. Was the major right, that it was just collateral damage? Innocents were bound to die, he knew. They’d talked about it at the Academy. But had they ever seen the repercussions? Had any of them picked up a dead baby and seen those blissful eyes?
And what would Mom and Pop say if they ever found out? It would destroy them, then he in turn.
Right now, he felt hibernation would be a wonderful gift from God.
As he neared the mess, he could see a newly-arrived detachment being put through its paces before it got too hot. He glanced their way. Kids, most of them. Blameless so far. Clean hands. Would they soon have blood on them? Like him? So engrossed in his thoughts, he almost missed their sergeant’s salute, recovering just in time to return it.
The door to the mess was closed when he reached it. With a trembling hand, he turned the handle, taking a deep breath before going inside.
The place was packed. The clatter of cutlery on plates sounded its own discordant symphony. Soldiers eating was always a noisy affair. Panic immediately rose in his stomach as he glanced around. Any second now he felt their eyes would be upon him. It would go deathly quiet. Someone would shout out. What would they say? Murderer. No, child murderer. They’d point his way; accusatory fingers like darts at his soul. All hell would let loose. They were bound to know what happened by now. Someone would have talked.
But, as he stood transfixed, the only reaction was a gentle chiding to ‘move along the line’. A sudden feeling of relief swept over him.
Scouring the breakfast menu and surprising himself, he chose a huge rib-eye steak, mashed potatoes, and gravy. A fellow lieutenant beckoned him to join his table. They had been at the Academy together.
‘Hey, Matt. You outside the wire today?’
‘Later. Me and the boys got ourselves a stand-down for the morning – had a late night.’
‘Yeah, I heard something. Sounds like a top result, congratulations. I’d like to hear about it.’
McDermott shot him a suspicious look. Deducing the remark held no trace of the sarcasm, the derision, he felt would have been justified, McDermott simply said, ‘Maybe… we’ll have a coffee sometime.’
Then his fellow officer shook his friend by the hand and saluted him, striding off purposefully into the unbearable heat and the dust.
McDermott idled over his coffee. Would the major be able to keep a lid on it, like he said? If so, for how long? And how would McDermott be able to recount the raid to anyone without lying? And with God as his witness? His heart grew heavy at the very thought.
Closing his eyes, he said a silent prayer for himself and hi
s men for later when he would be out commanding a foot patrol, dodging the bullets and the rats in the raw-sewage-filled gutters, piled high with mountains of stinking garbage in every hell-hole of a street.
And, all the time, not knowing which pile hid the bomb.
* * *
The heavily fortified Green Zone covered some four square miles, a vast area of tree-lined grand boulevards housing the private villas of Saddam’s Ba’athist cohorts and his half dozen bombed-out palaces.
McDermott’s unit had been hurriedly installed within this myriad of avenues, primarily as part of the protection force guarding the hundreds of civilians arriving daily to help set up the headquarters of the new Coalition Provisional Authority which would run the country.
Leaving the mess hall and turning left into a road that had not yet been cleared, McDermott made his way along a pathway between the rusting wrecks of two Mercedes cars. His gunner, Joe Herman and driver, Bobby-Jo, appeared from the opposite direction.
A motor cavalcade passed by, a Bradley front and rear.
‘And still they come,’ said McDermott, nodding at the new arrivals.
‘They say there’s going to be five thousand of them, sir,’ Bobby-Jo chimed in.
Joe Herman spat out a piece of gum he’d been chewing. ‘From the White House to the shite house, if you’ll pardon the expression, sir. These pencil pushers will have to shit in buckets – all the bathrooms have been looted.’
McDermott frowned. ‘Yeah, well, let them squabble among themselves as to who gets billeted in which palace. We got a modified shipping container if they’re not happy with a villa.’
For a second McDermott sensed an awkwardness between the three of them. Bobby-Jo stared at the ground. Herman was about to speak when a Black Hawk helicopter passed overhead drowning out any attempt.
The lieutenant eased their misery, saluting them both, and marching off. He was sure they’d wanted to talk about last night but he would have discouraged it. Better for him to discuss things with his sergeant, get a feel for the atmosphere, inform the men of his feelings via the sergeant.
He reflected on the mission, his unit’s first ‘kill’. Sure, they’d let loose with plenty of ammo from their M16s on their big drive north from Kuwait a month ago after the countless waves of precision bombing had softened their way into Baghdad.
The antics of some guys had troubled him, though. So hyped up they shot at anything that moved; dogs, cats, the odd donkey or goat, even their own shadows as the convoy trundled through the Baghdad slums.
‘Let them know we’re coming, boys,’ the major had said. And so they fired, and fired some more. But, when they set up camp in the chaotic days that followed, no one threatened so much as a warning shot at the looters as they ransacked palaces, schools, and hospitals. It was not their concern, they were told. So they stood by, pitifully, and watched.
Like many others, McDermott was amazed no one appeared to have planned for such an event.
* * *
He was relieved to find his room empty when he returned. He closed the door to the muffled 7 a.m. call to prayer from the nearby mosque. Its chants fought a daily losing battle with the lion’s roar from the bulldozers and earth movers outside, constantly hungry for more detritus.
A copy of the Washington Post lay on a table. The war coverage was front page, several more inside. His eye caught a latest poll showing forty-five per cent of Americans believed Saddam was behind the 911 attack on New York. They also believed his regime was a base for al-Qaeda.
McDermott pondered the findings. Surely it should have been ninety per cent – give or take the doubters. Wasn’t this why they were all here? That, and Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction which, they’d been told, were just waiting to be found.
A loud rap on the door made him jump. Staff sergeant Dan Rath saluted crisply when McDermott swung open the heavy metal door with a clang. ‘Sir!’
‘At ease, Sergeant. I thought for a minute it was Saddam come to give himself up.’
‘Now that would be a result and a half.’
‘Pull up a chair – what’s the skinny?’
McDermott had the utmost respect for this man; his honesty, his experience, the discipline he commanded among the men. He knew they feared a tongue-lashing if they fouled up. ‘The wrath of God’ was how he’d heard it called.
Wide-shouldered and a few inches shorter than McDermott, Rath was a solid family man, dependable. Just what a young lieutenant not long out of West Point leaned on.
‘About last night, sir. We never really got chance to talk about the civilian casualties…’
‘Yeah, well. It happens. We gotta keep sight of the main game.’ McDermott heard the words tumble from his mouth almost like an out-of-body experience. At the same time, a voice in his head asked him if he was really saying this. ‘You did well, Sergeant. The whole unit’s happy, the major’s happy…’
‘Yeah… maybe,’ Rath said, hesitant, rubbing his chin. ‘You heard the major sent word up the line?’
‘So he said.’
‘I wanted to say… well, it was your command, Lieutenant. You know I’m no glory seeker.’
McDermott smiled, a melancholy look. If he had been able to see his expression, he would hardly have recognised himself from only a few weeks ago.
The sudden brutal hard-ball of this conflict had already created a stranger within him.
* * *
In his office at the Pentagon overlooking the Potomac River, Gene Kowolski opened the file that had landed on his desk from Command Headquarters in Qatar. It was marked ‘highly confidential’.
Richard Northwood, the new director of the CIA’s Iraq Bureau, had instructed him to search for a hero, someone who could become the President’s golden boy. He hoped the contents he was about to read could provide one.
He took out a pair of reading glasses from his desk. They were new and he still felt ill at ease putting them on. But, since using them, the blinding headaches that often drove him to distraction had mercifully stopped.
At the age of forty-two, he told himself he had done well to get this far without them. It wasn’t as if he really needed them, either. They just helped magnify the words enough to lessen the strain. And that was the way he liked to operate these days. No more beating himself up over some issue or another. Stress was what gave guys his age a heart attack.
His doctor had told him a couple of years ago that working at the frantic pace at which he did would end in a one-way street. ‘Anyway, you should be married with kids, snot and chicken-pox to worry about – it’s a great counterbalance.’
‘God forbid,’ he’d replied with a shudder.
Ostensibly known as Senior Special Advisor at the Pentagon, his talents reached much further. Some people believed he commanded the ear of the President himself, though no one dared ask him if it were true.
As architect of the media’s strict rules of reporting on the invasion and its aftermath, an office and staff awaited him in Baghdad. From there he would monitor events at first hand – a loaded broadside on hand for anyone transgressing his stringent controls.
He opened the thick folder, a profile of Cavalry Officer Matthew John McDermott, Second Lieutenant, attached to US Army Infantry.
Starting with McDermott’s early education, Kowolski noted it ticked all the right boxes; reports from each of his years in elementary school, ‘a serious, thoughtful boy who applied himself diligently’. That was a theme that ran through junior high and high school. The definitive clincher for what Kowolski had in mind came later.
It was a real gem; three years at the Joshua William Christian Brotherhood College in Pennsylvania, culminating in a general degree. ‘Hallelujah,’ he exclaimed.
Privately, Kowolski found it loathingly irksome that most of the present White House administration came from such places. But the Joshua William ethos was perfect for this scheme: ‘From where Christian men and women will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless bibl
ical values and all due deference to our Lord’s decree.’
McDermott was another product of the boom of the last decade of religious zealotry throughout the country. Rightist colleges like the Joshua William, Virginia’s Patrick Henry, Boston’s Gordon College and many others, had been encouraged by the present government in word, deed, and financial aid.
The place was full of them. Fundamentalists to the fore, Kowolski called them.
It reminded him of when he’d first become aware of the growing influence of such religious fervour. At a White House meeting several years earlier, to his astonishment, the group was invited to pray and ‘seek the Lord’s guidance’ in what they were about to commence.
He had stood with his eyes open, watching to see if anyone else in the assembly of bowed heads was of the same persuasion as himself. He had caught the eye of a particularly curvaceous brunette secretary who, he noted enthusiastically, was smiling at him.
Later, in bed with her after an afternoon of energetic sex, she admitted that working with a heap of ‘geeks’ and ‘Bible freaks’ was getting her down. Though she did not know it, a word from Kowolski to her boss got her transferred out of state and he never saw her again.
Kowolski might not have held the same beliefs as many of his fellow workers but he never let his own personal beliefs obstruct his work. He was a professional, unconcerned with the ideology, the policies, the foibles, of his masters. The irony of his life so far; the more he learned of politics, the more of a turn-off it became.
The cynicism was now almost complete; he simply followed orders with disregard for the morality of it all.
McDermott, he read, then applied to join West Point. Four years at the esteemed military academy, before joining his battalion less than six months ago after finishing among the top of his intake. In Iraq only a few weeks and he had already led a unit that took out fifteen of the enemy. Kowolski almost smacked his lips when he got to the company CO’s description of the action and the recommendation for honours.
‘You’re a hero, son. A goddam hero,’ he muttered to himself, closing the file.