Tooth And Nail

by Craig DiLouie

  A Humvee parked near the edge of the runway took a hit from an RPG and was burning, its ammo cooking off and popping. Marine Cobras roared overhead in the darkness, setting up strafing runs. In the middle of a densely populated camp with fires all around, thermal and night vision optics were useless, so the boys sent up flares and took potshots at the shadows. The swacked Humvee exploded, shooting flaming shards of metal fifty feet into the air, making the boys whoop. A SAW gunner in Second Platoon showed up laughing with a bottle of cheap Iraqi gin he’d bought from some kids at the perimeter, and the boys passed it around, savoring the slow burn on their parched throats.

  A firefight broke out in the distance, then another, red tracer flashes bursting along the wire. A single mortar round whistled and burst in the center of the camp, sending pieces of tent flying. A squad of heavily armed MPs jogged by, telling everybody to keep their heads down. Buses packed with soldiers drove onto the runway as if nothing was happening, their headlights playing on the tents and Stryker vehicles lined up in neat rows while a C130 cargo plane touched down dangerously close. The headlights briefly illuminated two soldiers locked in a fist fight, then swerved away, returning them to darkness. Somebody in the quarantine tents was screaming. Shots rang out.

  The boys lay on the ground shivering in their armor, using their helmets to rest their heads, dreaming of forbidden pleasures—hot showers, plates piled high with French fries and, of course, sex. Some were so exhausted they dreamed of sleep, or not at all. In the middle of the night they woke up, Iraqi dust caked in their ears and mouths and nostrils, to the sound of gunfire close by. The air stank of oily smoke and hot diesel fumes.

  At least it’s not like this at home, they thought, and sighed. Soon, it will all be over.

  Green tracer rounds from Russian guns streamed into the cold night sky over Baghdad. The city appeared to be tearing itself apart. Word went around that the militias were shooting Lyssa victims down in the street. People went Mad Dog and roamed the city along with animals who’d also caught it, spreading infection.

  It was a disaster beyond the soldiers’ comprehension.

  “We tried,” PFC Richard Boyd said, watching the distant fireworks, his voice quivering with rage. “We really did. Now they can die for all I care.”

  At dawn, Lieutenant Colonel George Custer Armstrong, silver-haired and looking fierce with his arm in a bloody sling, mustered the battalion and gave everybody a rousing speech just before they boarded chartered United and Air France planes and started the long journey home.

  Operation Iraqi Freedom has been scrubbed, he told them.

  We’re going back to the World.

  The mission has changed. Our new mission is more important. In fact, it is possibly the most important thing the Army has done since the founding of the Republic.

  We’ve got to see America through the Pandemic, he said.

  The boys glanced at each other in formation, exchanging quick, discrete grins. It was actually happening. They were finally going home.

  As Charlie Company boarded the planes, First Platoon found that Private Tyrone Botus, the kid everybody called Rook, had gone Elvis. He had ventured out near the quarantine tents to refill his squad’s canteens the night before. They couldn’t find him anywhere.

  We have bayonets. That should make an impression

  Jake Sherman, the platoon’s radio/telephone operator, hands Lieutenant Bowman the handset attached to the SINCGAR radio pack on his back. “War Dogs Six on the net, LT,” he says, his mouth full of gum.

  War Dogs is Charlie Company’s call sign and War Dogs Six is the commander of Charlie Company, Captain West.

  “This is War Dogs Two actual,” Bowman says into the phone. “I send ‘Metallica,’ over.”

  This is War Dogs actual. I copy “Metallica.” Wait one, over. Um, roger that, over.

  “Request riot control gear, over.”

  Wait one, over. That’s a, uh, no go, over.

  “Request to be relieved by riot control units. How copy? Over.”

  That’s another no go, War Dogs Two. I’ve got nothing to send you. You’ll have to make do, over.

  The LT grinds his teeth and says, “Roger that, sir.”

  Hearts and minds, son. Good luck. Out.

  Bowman turns to face his squad leaders. His rifle platoon is divided into three rifle squads of nine men plus what’s left of Weapons Squad, decimated by Lyssa infection back in Iraq, leaving a single gun team. Each of the rifle squads, in turn, is led by a staff sergeant easy to pick out because, like Bowman, they are the only ones wearing patrol caps instead of Kevlar helmets. The men lean into the conference.

  To the east, across the river somewhere in Brooklyn, a splash of small arms fire.

  “Gentlemen, our position here is changing,” says the LT.

  The platoon occupied the block in front of the hospital, where the City parked a bus in front of the emergency room doors. Double strands of concertina wire were laid across both ends of the block, weighted down by sandbags, with nests for the platoon’s thirty-caliber machine gun. In the intersections beyond, concrete barriers blocked off the adjoining streets, but people simply drove around them using the sidewalks and abandoned their cars in the intersections. Beyond the roadblocks, the streets are jammed with cars in slowly moving traffic, drivers yelling at each other and leaning on their horns. Looking at the bumper-to-bumper traffic only a block away, you could almost believe things are still normal here. At least normal for New York.

  “Until now, our mission has been to protect the hospital and ensure the orderly flow of cases through the triage process,” Bowman adds. “Now the hospital is full up, as I’ve just informed Captain West using the mission code. This means the orderly flow of cases is about to hit a dam. We’re shutting off both entrances in thirty minutes.”

  “The good citizens of New York are not going to like that one bit,” Sergeant Ruiz points out. “Could get ugly fast.”

  “Any word on the non-lethals, sir?” asks Sergeant McGraw in his heavy South Carolina drawl.

  “The Captain says that’s a November Golf, Pete.”

  In other words, a “no go.”

  McGraw rubs his nose. With his barrel chest, handlebar mustache bristling on his upper lip, and heavily tattooed forearms, he has an intimidating appearance. When not soldiering, he is usually riding a Harley across the Bible Belt with his young biker girlfriend, hammering down on the big slab. “Kind of hard to do crowd control with what we got, LT,” he says. “We’re armed to the teeth and can’t use any of it. You know that.”

  “We have bayonets. That should make an impression. Hopefully, it will be enough.”

  “And if it ain’t, sir?”

  Bowman looks into his non-coms’ eyes. He knows what they are thinking. Back in Iraq, they’re thinking, the streets are still littered with American good intentions, blood and bodies and undetonated munitions. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died there, many as a result of stray American ordinance. You simply can’t use the kind of firepower that American infantry carries around and not expect civilians to get killed, especially in built-up areas. Accidents happen and they cannot afford accidents now that the civilians are their fellow citizens. To do this mission properly, the soldiers need batons, shields, riot control dispensers, snipers on the roof and birds in the air. But they have none of these. There are Army units all over the country needing the same equipment and there is simply not enough to go around. Due to the usual logistical foul-up, they do not even have CS gas grenades commonly issued to infantry in urban deployments.

  Instead, they are packing heavy firepower and plenty of bullets.

  “We stick with the ROE,” Bowman answers. “Remember that we’re in somebody’s house here.” The rules of engagement for this mission in urban terrain: Return fire only if you are fired upon directly by a hostile force that is clearly visible. Which should be almost never.

  He adds: “And we keep our force concentrated. Between Lyssa and everyth
ing else, we’re down to seventy-five percent strength. I don’t want to see any part of this platoon peeled off and overrun by a mob of pissed-off civilians looking for medicine.”

  They know they are basically in a no-win situation, a “bag of dicks” in Army lingo. Ruiz whistles through his nose. Lewis mutters, “Man, this is jacked up.” Kemper smiles and says: “Embrace the suck, gentlemen.”

  Bowman raises his eyebrows. “OK. If the crowd gets out of hand, we’ll put on respirators, fire some smoke grenades and maybe the civs will think it’s tear gas and run for it. It’s a long shot, I know—”

  McGraw is grinning. “Satisfactory, sir. It’s worth a try, sir.”

  “All right, then. Get your men ready to muster in thirty minutes.”

  The best way to take down a police helicopter with an RPG

  while playing Grand Theft Auto

  The boys of Third Squad are the night shift, and this being day, they are enjoying some rack time, sprawled on their bunks in a large room in the cool basement of the hospital, where Second Platoon has been billeted. Three of the boys are sleeping soundly after a debate on the best way to take down a police helicopter with an RPG while playing Grand Theft Auto. Corporal Hicks, sweating bullets, does push-ups on the floor. Grunting, he switches to sit-ups. Boyd smokes quietly and reads a letter from home, idly running one hand over his bristling skull and mouthing the words oh, man repeatedly, while McLeod, the platoon ne’er-do-well, leafs through a copy of Playboy, calling out, for anybody caring to listen, names, hobbies, measurements and, assuming unlimited funds, how much he would pay to have sex with them. The Newb sews a rip in his uniform, cursing steadily at having to perform yet another goddamn mind-numbing Army chore when he could be dreaming, while Williams cleans and oils his M203A1 carbine and grenade launcher and at that moment is pretty sure he’d shoot somebody in the face for a hot fajita burrito with sour cream and extra corn salsa. A good soldier can break down a rifle in fewer than thirty seconds and reassemble it in less, and Williams knows his business. He grew up in Oakland hustling and gang banging, and he is a long way from that world, even though he feels right at home with the big, dumb, earnest kids of his platoon, this melting pot Army. He shakes his head, smiling and remembering. He has some stories to tell when he gets back. He is still alive to tell them. A boom box stolen from an upstairs nurse’s station plays a loud, steady stream of music. Today it is hip hop, yesterday it was rock and roll, tomorrow who knows. As long as it’s loud.

  “Man oh man, at least a million dollars,” says McLeod, checking out the centerfold. “At least. I mean, Jeezus. Hey guys, what’ll you give me for a quick look at these hooters? Do I hear a buck? I swear they’re real. Any takers?”

  Williams shakes his head. It’s all they ever talk about—that special Suzie Rottencrotch back home, their mythical sexual prowess, the hot nurses upstairs and what they are going to do to the world’s women when they get out of the Army. He looks up as Sergeant Ruiz enters the room and says, “Hey, Sergeant. What’s the word?”

  “The word is you morons aren’t sleeping when you’re supposed to be getting your Zs,” Ruiz barks back at him, glaring with his intense eyes. “And not wearing your masks when you’re supposed to, either.”

  “We didn’t wear the masks in Iraq, Sarge,” McLeod says. “How come we have to wear them here?

  “Because in Iraq, we weren’t living in a hospital filled with people dying from the Black Death, shit-for-brains.”

  McLeod grins, racking his wit for a good retort, but Ruiz has already moved on. “Get out of your fartsacks and get your shit on, ladies. LT has some work for us and we’re on the move in ten minutes.”

  Boyd looks up, his eyes gleaming. “My sister’s got Lyssa. I got this letter from home.”

  The boys stop and stare at him.

  “My mom says they’re burning bodies outside town. She even told me how they do it. They dig a trench to make an air vent, right, and then they build the pyre with wood. They put the bodies on top and burn them up. The town council got totally freaked and started doing this. This is all the way on the other side of the country. The letter took over a week to get to me.”

  “Sorry about your sister, Boyd,” Ruiz offers.

  “This was over a week ago,” Boyd says, staring at the letter in disbelief. “She could be dead by now.”

  “Did somebody say they were burning up bodies?” says Ross, whom everybody calls Hawkeye because of his uncanny accuracy with an M4 carbine. He has just woken up and is still bleary from sleep. “Man, that is extreme.”

  “It’s got to be bullshit,” says McLeod. “Some cities are digging mass graves to store the bodies temporarily, but they’re not burning them up, for Chrissakes.”

  “If they were paranoid enough, they might,” Williams says.

  “What I’m saying is: What am I doing here in New York?” Boyd wonders. “Why aren’t we guarding a hospital in Idaho, like in Boise? I should be there. I should be home with them. I could at least be in the same lousy state. I have to call my mom.”

  “I’ll bet we got guys in Boise and the towns around it just like we’re here in New York,” Ruiz tells him. “Some of them are probably New Yorkers and wishing they were here. And they’re watching over your family just like we’re watching over theirs. The same way that everybody in this platoon has each other’s backs. All right?”

  “Hooah, Sergeant,” says Boyd, without enthusiasm.

  The boys quietly begin to pull their gear on: battle dress uniform, boots, kneepads, body armor, harness, watch, ammo, knife, gloves, primary weapons and Kevlar.

  “Okay, so we’ve reached the point where we’re setting people on fire, but if you look at this whole global plague of death in a glass-half-full kind of way, there are some things we could actually be pretty happy about,” McLeod says to break the ice after a few moments. “For example, we’re getting three squares a day, eight hours of rack time a night, and we even got running water. Plus we don’t have to go out on patrol in neighborhoods that all look like Tijuana after it’s been cluster-bombed, getting our balls blown off by elevated IEDs and crazy Hajjis.”

  “Shut up, McLeod,” growls Ruiz.

  “I’m just trying to cheer everybody up by pointing out it may be true that two hundred million people are going to die and the world is probably ending, but at least we got out of that Arab Hell with our butts and balls intact and we don’t have to shit in an oven covered in flies, so mission accomplished, am I right or am I right?”

  Most of the boys are laughing, but Ruiz is now standing in front of McLeod, who snaps to attention, staring straight ahead into the void, his mouth carefully zipped and primly holding back a smile. Ruiz takes a step forward until their eyes are inches away, Ruiz’s probing, searching for an excuse, McLeod’s respectfully vacant. Finally, the sergeant shakes his head in exaggerated disgust and walks away. “Vamos, ladies!”

  Williams slaps McLeod on the back after Ruiz leaves the room. Their friendship goes back to basic training, where they were battle buddies and McLeod often got them both smoked with pushups and barracks maintenance—usually scrubbing toilets—by falling asleep in class and otherwise pissing off the drill instructors.

  “You go on being a buster and Magilla is gonna chunk your ass good, dawg,” Williams warns. He means it: Ruiz is an articulate and thoughtful NCO but has a short temper and, thanks to constant exercise, a thickly muscled body, making him resemble a bulldog. The boys call him Magilla behind his back, short for Magilla Gorilla.

  McLeod replies with a cartoonish shrug.

  Corporal Hicks, watching Boyd slowly pull on his gear while muttering to himself, says, “Get yourself squared away, Rick. Almost everybody in this platoon has somebody on the outside who’s got the bug.”

  “I should be there with them,” Boyd says. “They’re all I’ve got in this world.”

  “If we stay focused, we’ll all get through this and I mean everybody. If we start falling apart, with everybody going off
his own way, well, then God help us all because we are surely jacked. Because this thing is going to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets better. Until then, make the pain your friend and it will make you stronger.”

  McLeod grins and says, “Wouldn’t it be cool if the Sergeant got Lyssa in his brain and turned into a Mad Dog? ‘Get out of your fartsacks and get your shit on, ladies!’ Snarl, snarl!”

  The boys burst into laughter.

  I’m going to kill you dead

  Sergeant McGraw roars, “Squad as skirmishers, move!” and watches his squad deploy in a line, weapons held at safe port so the friendly citizens of New York can clearly observe their bayonets. Beyond the concertina wire and the sandbags, people keep on streaming through the cars. They break into a run after seeing the soldiers begin to close the checkpoint, and when they finally reach the wire and confirm their dashed hopes, they try to shout or beg their way in.

  Help me, they say. I think my kids have it and I don’t know what to do. Their faces are turning blue.

  Corporal Eckhardt hands them the yellow sheets, but the people do not want to leave. Many of them brought a sick loved one with them, and the prospect of walking ten blocks to a Lyssa clinic set up in some school or bowling alley does not seem promising. They scream, they shout, they beg. They fall to the ground and sit, numbly clutching their yellow pieces of paper. The air fills with that sickly sour smell people give off when they’ve got Lyssa—the stench that keeps on giving.

  A woman is crying, I can’t do it by myself, I can’t, I just can’t.

  “Couldn’t we let in just a few more people?” Mooney hisses.

  “Shut up,” says Finnegan, standing next to him. “You know the answer to that.”

  “This is horrible.”

  Sergeant McGraw says into his handheld, “We’re good at this end, sir.”