by Richard Fox
“Don’t mean to rush you, but we’ve taken a few potshots,” Park said.
The blue-clad form was an Iraqi man, his hands bound by a white zip tie, his head buried in his arms. A pair of Soldiers stood guard over him, one with an AK-47 slung over his back.
Shelton motioned to Ritter as the two approached; a half smile cracked his face as he recognized Ritter. “I’ll be damned. They let you out,” Shelton said as he led Ritter away from the detainee. They kept their backs to the wall as they spoke. Ritter fought the urge to drink water; he didn’t want to look soft in front of Shelton and his men.
“Let’s hurry up before my ride turns into a pumpkin. What have you got?” Ritter asked.
“This shit heel saw the convoy and took off running. Caught him in this building and found the AK. Someone took a shot at us when we dragged him out.”
“Nothing out of him?”
“No. The one ’terp I have is with another platoon, trying to get information from a squatter family we found living out here. They haven’t been much help.” Shelton spat and took a drag from the hose leading to his Camelbak.
“Bring him over here and let me talk to him,” Ritter said. He looked back toward Mattingly’s Humvee, idling in the same spot he’d left it.
Shelton snapped his fingers and tilted his head at Ritter. His men frog-marched the detainee in the blue tracksuit to Ritter and leaned him against the wall, pushing down on his shoulder. The detainee tried to protest; a swift kick to the back of his ankles sent him to the ground in short order. His hoary and calloused hands were too old for his youthful and thin face. He looked at Ritter with indifference.
“Shismek?” (Name?). The Arabic word from the American officer hit the Iraqi like a punch. He cocked his head as though Ritter were a curiosity. Ritter knelt down and grasped the Iraqi’s wrist. A softer approach might work after the hostile company of Shelton and his men.
BOOM!
The blast wave slammed him into the wall with the force of a runaway truck. The concussion sent a white flash across his eyes and filled his ears with a tinnitus roar.
Something bounced off the wall next to him with a wet crush. Ritter lay on the ground, his lungs refusing to work.
He pushed himself up, finally sucking in a ragged breath full of moon dust.
He was holding something; he looked down and saw the Iraqi’s severed hands and wrists, still bound by the zip tie. A sizzling hunk of metal was buried in the wall where the Iraqi’s head and shoulders should have been; boiling blood and fat filled the air with an iron stink. The remains of the Iraqi’s body swayed for a moment, then toppled over. Ritter tossed the body parts aside as he stood.
Mattingly’s upside-down Humvee lay in the blast crater; wisps of flame clung to the spinning wheels.
Ritter screamed Mattingly’s name. He kept screaming as he ran to the Humvee, but all he could hear was the ringing in his ears. The sledgehammer blast of the explosion had half crushed the armored portion of the Humvee; the heavy doors were distended like a rib cage. The engine and forward wheels were nowhere to be seen.
The spreading fire covered the exposed underside, which was now topside; black smoke reeking of diesel marked the pyre. Ritter scrambled into the blast crater and looked inside. Mattingly was there, dangling in her seat. Her right arm extended to the ground, her hand cupped. Ritter reached into the arm-wide gap, made by the misshapen door, and grabbed her arm and shook it. He called her name but heard nothing but a monstrous mosquito whine.
He let go of her and grasped the misshapen door. The heat burned through his gloves as he struggled to open the door, but it was sunk into the ground like a tombstone. He grabbed the Humvee frame and tried to augment his strength with a leg, but the door didn’t budge. He fell back on his ass when his grip slipped.
He looked around. Where the hell was everyone?
He crawled back to the gap on his hands and knees and looked inside. Black smoke curdled in the depths. He held Mattingly’s hand and yelled, “Jennifer! Jennifer, I’m right here!” He could finally hear his voice, tiny and weak. Her hand twitched in his grasp.
“Can you hear me? I’m going to get you out of this. Just hold on!” He gave her hand another squeeze and scrambled back to his feet. Black smoke blew into his face as he pulled in a breath to shout for help; the smoke sent him reeling away from the Humvee. He knelt beneath the smoke and tried to breathe.
Mattingly’s Humvee lurched off the ground as a muffled explosion burst within, as if someone had given a dead dog a good kick. Ritter’s mind scrambled to make sense of this new horror. He came to a quick and terrible answer; the fire had set off one of the grenades.
“No no no no no…” He lunged for the door but was stopped in midair. He struggled forward, but the Humvee moved away from his grasp. He flailed his arms in panic and hit something; he looked over his shoulder. Shelton was there, grasping the carry handle on Ritter’s armor. He was dragging Ritter away from the fire as another explosion rocked the Humvee.
“They’re gone!” Shelton screamed. He pulled Ritter another dozen meters from their Humvee, then dropped Ritter to the ground. Ritter watched as flames engulfed the Humvee until there was nothing to see but flames.
Shelton pulled Ritter to his feet and asked a question Ritter couldn’t hear. Ritter stared at the flames, his whole world there.
Shelton smacked a palm against Ritter’s helmet. “I said, are you hurt? Focus, damn you!”
Ritter looked at Shelton. He thought he’d see the angry face of a commander, struggling to manage chaos. Instead, he saw his friend. His friend who was just as scared and hurt as he was. Ritter put a hand on Shelton’s shoulder.
“I’m all right. Fine, fine…I’ll be fine,” Ritter said.
“Fuck you—you’re all right,” Shelton said.
Ritter tightened his grip on Shelton; he suddenly needed help standing up. His vision swam as his words slurred. “Told you…I’m…” His knees buckled as he stumbled into Shelton. Shelton hooked an arm under Ritter to keep him on his feet.
“Medic!” Shelton shouted.
“Do you think the commander was near that?” Nesbitt said in a whisper. Channing shrugged in response as he switched his radio between channels, scanning for news or orders.
“Nesbitt, if you don’t shut your goddamn mouth, I will shoot you in your tiny dick,” Kilo said. He was prone behind his sniper rifle, scanning the power plant through his high-powered scope. Kovalenko knelt beside him, binoculars glued to his face.
The explosion had sent a ripple of overpressure through the date palm trees, loosening overripe dates from their bulbous cradles. Dates sprinkled into the dirt, landing with the sound of muffled footsteps.
Sergeant First Class Young rushed from a knot of bushes to Kovalenko’s side. “Anything?” he asked.
“Nothing on the company frequency,” Kovalenko said.
“Should we move in?” Young asked with no pretext.
Kovalenko rapped the top of the binoculars with a forefinger, a nervous tick he chastised himself for. He knew the only thing worse than an idiot lieutenant was a lieutenant who couldn’t make a decision. His orders were to stop the enemy from escaping through his little piece of the battlefield, not race face-first into danger. How many Soldiers had been hurt in that explosion? Did they need his help?
This is lose-lose, he thought. “Here’s what we’ll do—”
“Contact,” Kilo hissed. Kovalenko froze, then slowly lowered himself to the ground.
“Three dismounts. Ten o’clock. Warehouse with the black roof,” Kilo said.
Abu Ahmet crouched next to Samir as the bomb maker spliced two electric cords together. He adjusted his black ski mask for the hundredth time, trying to breathe through any part that didn’t stink from the previous wearer’s halitosis. He vowed to burn all their masks when they made it home. He and his three men wore the masks to protect themselves from recognition by al-Qaeda’s men and the Americans. Trust wasn’t something Abu Ahmet extend
ed beyond his tribe.
Samir rolled his mask up over his eyes and mumbled, “Now I know why Mukhtar’s bomb maker died. He had no idea what he was doing.” He stripped the plastic from a wire with his teeth.
Theeb pulled a hand mirror from his back pocket, careful to keep the reflective side against his body. “Samir, tell me when you’re done so I can send the signal,” he said.
“Why is this connection outside where we can get shot? Why didn’t you run it into the building where we can work in the shade?”
“Samir…”
“Why not run another meter of wire? Or put the connection box closer to this side of the building?”
“Samir!” Theeb yelled.
Samir shook an impatient hand at Theeb, then gave the exposed copper strands a final twist. Samir’s eyes followed the wire up the side of the warehouse and across the narrow road behind the warehouse. The wire went straight to Mukhtar’s perch, deep inside the ruined power plant. “It should work now, inshallah.” God willing.
A door leading into the warehouse burst open; Khalil came in, holding an AK in each hand. He handed one to Abu Ahmet and kept the other. Theeb held up the mirror, bouncing the sun’s rays toward the distant superstructure.
“Get ready. We run, and we don’t stop until we get to our truck,” Abu Ahmet said.
A glint flashed from the distant building.
“Let’s go!” Abu Ahmet stood and rushed across the street, Theeb and Khalil close behind. They stopped behind a roofless building, waiting for Samir. Samir fumbled with his mask as he scampered across the road. He made it halfway, then dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. Abu Ahmet opened his mouth to scream at Samir; then he heard the crack of the distant rifle.
“Samir!” Abu Ahmet yelled.
Theeb turned and saw his friend facedown in the street. He took a step toward him, but Abu Ahmet pulled him back, shaking his head. “No. Sniper.”
“We can’t leave him!” Khalil yelled. He held his AK-47 around the corner and let loose a burst.
“Too dangerous! The Americans never miss,” Abu Ahmet said. Samir hadn’t moved; a pool of blood crept from his body, fighting the thirsty dust for purchase.
“He has the camera,” Theeb said.
Abu Ahmet’s tactical opinion changed immediately. Without that camera, they wouldn’t get paid. Abu Ahmet reached out and shoved Theeb toward Samir’s body. Theeb stumbled forward and grabbed Samir’s wrists. Abu Ahmet fired his rifle at the Americans he couldn’t see, hoping to buy Theeb the seconds he needed.
Theeb dragged Samir from the road, his sandaled feet struggling for traction. A bullet snapped past his face a full second before he heard the rifle’s crack. Theeb pulled Samir behind the wall. He lifted Samir’s head and looked into the corpse’s half-open eyes. Theeb gave the face a pat. “Samir, are you a martyr?”
Theeb gently lowered Samir’s head and grabbed his wrists again as Abu Ahmet and Khalil grabbed Samir’s legs. As they lifted the body into the air, a glut of deep, red blood spilled from Samir’s chest, leaving a red drop trail as they carried him deep into the complex.
Mukhtar watched the Americans race across the palm grove, licking his lips in anticipation. Abu Ahmet and his band of peasants were the perfect bait. The dozen Americans would surely investigate the warehouse where Abu Ahmet hid inside. The loss of the bomb maker was a shame, but such sacrifice was necessary to win this jihad.
“A dozen Americans; should I wait for more?” he asked Hamsa. He reached out and stroked the brass trigger of the electrical box resting on a windowsill.
Hamsa, dressed in black from head to toe with a white-lettered headband proclaiming his allegiance to al-Qaeda, lowered a walkie-talkie from his ear and nodded. “The rest of the Americans are dealing with the last bomb. These crusaders are a gift from Allah.”
Mukhtar fondled the trigger, smiling, as an American kicked open the door to the warehouse. His heart raced as half of the Americans stacked up outside the door. They’d rush in any second, and then he would end them.
Young ached to follow the blood trail and finish off the insurgents. He kept his rifle pointed down the alleyway, searching for whoever the insurgents had signaled with their mirror. That signal nagged at him. Why had the insurgents run off after sending it? He’d fought Iraqis through three combat tours, and this aberrant tactic had set his combat instincts buzzing.
He examined the distant power plant through a commercial hunting scope dummy-corded to his armor. He looked at each darkened window, hoping the enemy would betray himself through movement. A tangle of wires ran from one of the windows across the street and onto the roof of a lower building. That was odd.
“What’s in there?” Kovalenko asked from the combat stack at the open door.
Young followed the mass of wires across another alleyway to another building.
Sergeant Morales stole a lightning-fast glance into the building, pulling back around the doorframe before anyone inside could shoot. Morales glanced over his shoulder. “There’s a big, black sheet on the floor on top of something…I think they’re bodies.”
Kovalenko’s heart shuddered. This wasn’t the news he wanted to hear. This wasn’t what anyone wanted, but it was what they’d expected.
Young lost the wires in a tangle near a malformed power line. He snorted in disgust and turned around to help the lieutenant. He opened his mouth to speak, then froze. A thick wire ran alongside the building, held up by bent nails every few yards. Kilo, who’d been a foot behind him until now, had blocked his view.
“Fuck it. We’re going,” Kovalenko said as he slapped the shoulder of the Soldier in front of him, who slapped Nesbitt’s shoulder, who slapped Morales. Morales gave a thumbs-up.
“Go!” Kovalenko barked. The stack of Soldiers spilled into the warehouse.
Young unsnapped the lock on his combat knife and unsheathed the blade. He slid the knife between the wire and the wall, and used the serrated edge to cut the wire.
“What did you just do, Sergeant?” Kilo asked.
“I’m not sure,” Young said.
“Allah akbar!” (God is great!) Mukhtar screamed as he flipped the trigger. Nothing happened. His countenance shifted from rage to shock in a heartbeat. He flipped the trigger back and forth again. Still nothing. A low whine of frustration escaped his lips as he tore open the plastic box hosting the trigger and checked the battery connection.
Kovalenko approached the black flag in the middle of the empty warehouse; white, cursive Arabic letters proclaiming the shahada, that there was no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet; this was an al-Qaeda flag. The profile of two men lay beneath the flag. Army-gray, digital-pattern camouflage peeked out from an edge. He didn’t want to do this. The last time Soldiers were kidnapped, their bodies were mutilated, the horrible details classified secret for the sake of the victims’ families.
Kovalenko forced himself farther. Whatever was beneath that flag would haunt him to the end of his days, but such was the price of leadership. He grabbed a corner of the flag and lifted it gingerly. Two empty helmets tumbled back onto the floor, one spinning like a top.
“What the hell?” Kovalenko said as looked down at what should have been Brown’s and O’Neal’s faces. Instead, there were two pillows. He pulled the flag back farther, then ripped the whole thing off.
Artillery shells lay in the form of men, their oblong shapes laid out to approximate limbs and torsos. An electrical wire ran from the shells up into the rafters. His eyes followed the wire; more artillery shells were in the rafters. The entire building was rigged to explode.
Kovalenko looked around their deathtrap, unable to form words.
“Sir, is it them?” Nesbitt asked from the entryway.
“Out!” Kovalenko screamed.
Mukhtar smashed the trigger with the butt of his pistol as every single American sprinted back across the palm grove. He smashed the pistol again and again until the trigger assembly was reduced to fragments. He railed at this fai
lure with a final roar. His prize was gone, and he knew who to blame.
He holstered his pistol and spun around to face Hamsa, who had almost crept from the room during Mukhtar’s fit of rage. Hamsa froze like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“Abu Ahmet did this,” Mukhtar said, low and even. “He ran before his task was complete. He. Will. Pay.”
Hamsa nodded emphatically.
Mukhtar strode past Hamsa and down a corrugated steel staircase to their waiting sedan.
Ritter sat on a gurney next to a field ambulance, subject to the ministrations of a medic. He was inside a corral of field ambulances and MRAPs, armored vehicles more akin to an armored bus than a Humvee.
“Sir, did you lose consciousness?” the medic—Porter, according to his name tape—asked as he shined a penlight into one eye, then the other. This must have been the fifth time one of the many medics had asked the exact same question.
“Yes, I’m sure. I was thirty yards from the explosion, and I haven’t puked.” Ritter telegraphed the next two questions.
Porter shined the light in his eyes again. “But your eyes aren’t dilating normally. How’s the headache?” He took a Q-tip from between gloved fingers and gently wiggled them in Ritter’s ears. The white cotton came back dry and clean, to the medic’s satisfaction.
The headache wasn’t something Ritter could ignore; his head felt like constricting wire ran between his temples. Honesty about his pain might earn him an evacuation to an actual hospital in the Green Zone, the giant American and Coalition base in the center of Baghdad. He’d fought through worse injuries before; he wasn’t going to skip out when he was still needed.
His mind swam from the concussion. Did he know this Soldier? Porter seemed familiar, like an old classmate he’d never spoken to, but one he’d run into years after graduation.