Kaboom

by Matthew Gallagher

  “Wha . . . huh?” The unmistakable smacking of lips confirmed PFC Smitty’s assessment.

  “Dude, wake up and get redcon-1. We need to patrol Tampa again.”

  Specialist Cold-Cuts started to stammer out an excuse, thought better of it, and then giggled. “Sorry, LT. Really. Last thing I remember I was awake. I promise. I thought my eyes were still open.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sure. Just rotate out next time, okay? There are four of us down here, including myself. Suge’s the only one on this vehicle who doesn’t pull security. The gunner is pretty much the only person who can’t fall asleep when we’re stationary.”

  “Roger, sir, it won’t happen again. I’m redcon-1.” He paused. “Hey, I drooled all over myself! There’s a huge puddle of it up here!”

  I looked back at Sergeant Axel, who wore a headset in the back of the vehicle, and we shook our heads at one another. It wasn’t really Specialist Cold-Cuts’s fault; someone should have been up with him. And we’d all fallen asleep on security before, I sheepishly admitted, including myself. After you’d pulled this mission for the 3,000th time, things like this happened.

  “Want me to play the Spice Girls?” PFC Smitty asked me. “I know how that song always cheers you up.”

  I laughed. “Maybe later, man. We can’t overplay our go-to song.”

  Minutes after midnight, our four Strykers rolled out of the alleyways surrounding Nour’s estate and turned south onto Route Tampa. “Still no sight of Nour’s niece,” Staff Sergeant Boondock reported from his vehicle. “Where is that little hottie? She’s the whole fucking reason I park my vehicle close to the swimming pool.”

  “How old is she again?” I asked. No American knew for sure, and most didn’t want to ask the question, for fear of getting an answer they didn’t want to hear.

  “Fuck that statutory shit, she’s old enough,” PFC Van Wilder replied. “If she’s old enough to be prancing in front of American soldiers like she does, she’s definitely old enough for us to watch her.”

  Fair enough, I thought. PFC Van Wilder’s statement reminded me and my Stryker crew of his conversation with Specialist Big Ern a few weeks back, when the former returned to the combat outpost from leave and greeted the latter: “Admit it, you missed me,” PFC Van Wilder had said, grinning ear to ear.

  “Naw, I didn’t,” Specialist Big Ern replied.

  “Really?”

  “Oh, alright. Come here and give me a hug. How was leave?”

  “Wild. A crazy chick asked me to choke her out during sex. It was awesome.”

  “That sounds awesome. Can we stop hugging now?”

  My vehicle howled in delight recalling that story. The radio soon disrupted our joviality.

  “White 1, this is Strykehorse X-ray.”

  I groaned. Radio calls at this time of night from the squadron TOC rarely brought good news. When they had radioed us some four hours before, they told us to look out for a man named Ali driving a white pickup truck. Finding that description slightly vague, I asked for more details. Like whether or not he was Arab. They told me they weren’t sure.

  “This is White 1.”

  “Roger, move south to Checkpoint 55. There’s a convoy there that has come to a halt on the far side of that checkpoint. They’re reporting there’s a box there with some wires coming out of it. They need someone to check it out.”

  “They can’t check it out themselves?” I responded, stating the obvious. “If it’s bad enough for them to stop, why haven’t they called EOD?”

  The radio man on the other end of our transmission just snickered. “It’s a large convoy of fobbits, making their once-a-year run between FOBs. So no, they can’t check it out themselves.”

  I just shook my head and relayed the frago to my platoon. Flabbergasted, Staff Sergeant Boondock spat out, “Good Christ, this is disgusting. You know it’s bad when a TOC roach is making fun of these ass-clowns.”

  As we drove up to the near side of Checkpoint 55, our senior scout spotted the convoy. “Those mutha fuckas, they on the other side of the checkpoint,” Staff Sergeant Bulldog reported. “They keep beaming us and shit with their lights, but none of ’em are on the ground. How the fuck can they even see anything from where they’re at? They’re too far away!”

  “That’s why we’re here,” I said. “We’ll check it out for them.”

  As PFC Smitty dropped the Stryker’s back ramp, Sergeant Axel asked if we should wake up Suge. Our terp slept in his seat, sprawled out like a rape victim. He hated the long missions at Nour’s but refused to allow any of the younger terps go with us on them, insisting that we were his platoon and our missions were his missions.

  “It’s cool,” I said. “We won’t need him for this. Let the old man sleep.”

  I met our dismount teams on the ground, and we strode south in a wedge formation on the other side of the road from the convoy. One of the convoy soldiers laser-beamed the area of concern. SFC Big Country took out his flashlight, turned it on, and surveyed the spot.

  “Broken banana crates,” he said calmly, picking up a large piece and tossing it off the road. “They stopped all the traffic on Tampa for broken banana crates.”

  Some of the Gravediggers laughed. Others cursed. I stayed silent. I felt numb to these types of moments by now. They happened often enough.

  While SFC Big Country took a fire team to inform the convoy that all was clear, Staff Sergeant Boondock picked up the remaining pieces of the crate and started pelting Specialist Tunnel, using every colorful epithet for “pogue” imaginable. We still hadn’t found the reported wires though, and I knew that we would inevitably be asked whether anything had blown up or not. I retraced our steps to the north and, through the darkness, spotted a long, dangling cord connected to a small, squarish piece of plastic.

  Instinctively, I reached for my radio, but before I keyed the hand mic, I caught an odd glint in the moonlight. I walked up to the long cord and kneeled down. Instead of finding wire, I stared at five inches of spool. I yanked on the spool, and a cassette tape flew into my hands.

  I flipped the tape over to find it was Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet, a classic relic from the 1980s. After asking the soldiers if any of them wanted a vintage tape of 1980s glam rock, I tossed it to the side of the road. I told everyone to mount back up and found my platoon sergeant returning from the far side of the checkpoint.

  “They have anything to say?” I asked.

  SFC Big Country laughed. “Yeah. They said, ‘Thanks.’”

  “What, those mutha fuckas’ don’t own no flashlights?” Staff Sergeant Bulldog asked. “What the fuck?”

  “It could be worse,” Staff Sergeant Boondock offered as we traipsed back to our vehicles. “We could’ve called in EOD for a banana crate and a cassette tape. That would have been pretty fucking embarrassing.”

  As we walked back north in our wedge, Private Hot Wheels busted out the chorus to Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive,” and the rest of the platoon either joined in or started booing. We got back on our respective Strykers, and I called for redcon statuses.

  “This, uhh, White 2,” Staff Sergeant Bulldog drawled. “We redcon-1.”

  “White 1, this is White 3. We’re redcon-1!” Staff Sergeant Boondock burst. “Hate fists are up!”

  “This is 4,” SFC Big Country thundered. “Let’s roll.”

  “On your move, 2,” I said, watching the wheels of my senior scout’s vehicle begin to churn forward.

  The patrol continued.

  A STAR-CROSSED RECONCILIATION

  Evenings spent at Sheik Banana-Hands’s manor rarely failed to entertain. The old sheik brimmed with melodrama and fatalism, traits that made it easy for me to overlook his JAM ties and questionable loyalties. In addition to his Thighmaster fetish, he loved all things caramel, regaled us with old soldier tales from the Iran-Iraq War, and blamed all violence in the history of civilization on feminine wiles. Even Staff Sergeant Boondock eventually warmed up to our impromptu discussions
with the sheik, under the pretense of providing lethal muscle to balance out my baby face on the local counterinsurgency approach.

  With the purpose of discussing rumored weapons traffickers working in the sheik’s Sahwa, we stopped by his place on a dry summer evening. Staff Sergeant Boondock, PFC Smitty, Private Hot Wheels, and Suge Knight joined me and the sheik inside, while the rest of the platoon established a security perimeter. Usually, we bantered for a few minutes, easing into the uncomfortable specifics that spawned the meeting in the first place. Tonight though, the sheik skipped over such niceties.

  “I just receive a call from my men!” he said as soon as we sat down on his immaculate gold couches. “They say they capture someone trying to run over here from Sunni side of town in the dark. Maybe they trying to plant IED!” He pointed at his map of Saba al-Bor, prominently displayed underneath a hilariously austere portrait of himself floating in a background of orange clouds. He pointed at the road that bisected the Sunni and Shia areas of our little Iraq microcosm—known as Route Flames by Coalition forces. “They are bringing the person here so I can question him.”

  “Interrogate away!” I told him with a sly smile. “We’ll be here drinking chai if you decide he’s worth keeping.”

  Staff Sergeant Boondock radioed the rest of the platoon, updating them on the situation, and after five more minutes of Suzanne Somers exercise videos, we heard a car pull up outside. Sheik Banana-Hands sprang up from his chair, and we followed him out the front door.

  Two Sons of Iraq exited the front of a sedan, and while one pulled security with his AK-47, the other opened the rear door to bring out their captive. I half expected the reincarnation of Saddam Hussein to appear. Instead, a small girl with darting black eyes and tears streaming down her face skulked out of the back of the car. I estimated her age to be thirteen, and she couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds.

  “What the fuck?” Staff Sergeant Boondock asked behind me. “This night is getting fucking bizarre.”

  Sheik Banana-Hands’s men frisked the young girl and, having determined she was weapons-of-mass-destruction free, turned her over to their leader. He grabbed her by the shoulder and led her back inside. I looked at my men, shrugged my shoulders, and followed. It wasn’t like we had anything better to do.

  The girl’s rags contrasted sharply with the sheik’s material prosperity, and she quickly became fascinated with an encased jewel collection in the back corner of the room. After being instructed to sit down on the golden couches—something she clearly found uncomfortable—Sheik Banana-Hands spoke to her in Arabic. She stared at the ground in shame and occasionally whispered back in response. Suge leaned over and translated for me.

  “He ask her what she is doing running from Sunni side. She say she live near here and was going home. She say she is Shia. She say please don’t tell my father. She is crying again.”

  “I can see that, Suge.”

  “Oh, of course! He ask her if she put the IED in the ground. She says no, no, nothing like that. He say then why do you violate curfew? Only Ali Babas violate curfew. She say that she is no Ali Baba, but she is scared to tell him why because he is powerful sheik. He say that he will take her to jail now and her father can get her there if she does not tell truth. She say she will tell truth, but not in front of Americans. They scare her.”

  I looked around the room. I knew that how she saw us differed from how I saw us, but still, we were hardly in our most intimidating form. Staff Sergeant Boondock had his helmet cocked back, grinning widely, and PFC Smitty and Private Hot Wheels leaned against the back wall, pulling security casually with big wads of dip in their mouths. I myself was more interested at the moment in a mosquito I couldn’t seem to swat than channeling raw American fury; coming to terms with my own boogeyman status proved a didactic experience. Subsequently, the sheik led the girl into a side room, returning some forty seconds later. His deep belly laugh filled the room like a balloon filled with hot air.

  “She has Sunni boyfriend she visits at night!” he said between wheezes. “She say her father would beat her if he knew she had a boyfriend, especially a Sunni boyfriend!” The girl reemerged behind him, still petrified and unsure how to react to the old man’s hysterics. I bit my lip to suppress a smile in light of the girl’s embarrassment. “You understand why I laugh?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “My grandma was horrified when my mom told her she was marrying a Catholic. Same concept, right?”

  My own family tale sent the sheik into a new fit of laughter. “Hah! Yes, yes! Catholics are like Sunnis! Ha ha!”

  “Kind of like that Romeo and Juliet story, ain’t it, sir?” PFC Smitty shook his head from the other side of the room. “Her daddy prolly would kill her if he found out.”

  Suge stood up, patted the girl on the shoulder, and barked orders at the sheik’s men. He turned back to me. “I tell them to take her home and not to tell father. She has suffered enough tonight. I do not think she will try to sneak over to Sunni side for long time. That is okay with you, LT? I thought it is what you would want.”

  I nodded.

  Sheik Banana-Hands clapped his hands, ensuring his men followed Suge’s instructions. After the sedan pulled away, girl in tow, he couldn’t stop chuckling to himself. He turned back over to me and Suge, intertwining his long, long fingers into the Arab hand-and-arm signal for working together. “Maybe there is hope for future,” he quipped. “The younger generation have their own reconciliation!”

  “This guy,” Staff Sergeant Boondock muttered under his breath, “is seriously fucking demented.”

  SHOOT-OUT ON MAIN STREET

  I walked in an old-world dream when the gunfire started. I sat straight up in the back of my Stryker and, according to my vehicle crew, yelled into the internal radio, “Burn it all down, you fuckers. Burn it all down!” I didn’t remember that part.

  While manning a late-night OP on Route Islanders, the platoon pulled security, slept, or discussed Captain Whiteback’s upcoming change-of-command ceremony with Captain Ten Bears. Having worked with the affable Captain Ten Bears on the squadron staff in my pre-platoon leader days, I knew the troop would be in capable hands—hands that claimed to contain the strength of ten bears, always with a sly laugh.

  In the meantime, a single gunshot echoed to the east, toward the town center of Saba al-Bor. A few seconds passed, and then a small burst of rounds erupted. Silence followed.

  “1, this is 3,” Staff Sergeant Boondock reported through a bored yawn. “Gunplay in town again. One shot followed by a burst.”

  “Roger,” I said, fully awake by this point. What we had heard was a nightly occurrence, and nothing to get too excited about. What we heard next was different.

  A barrage of AK-47 output erupted just to the north of the original volley of gunfire, succeeded by the unrestrained chattering of automatic weapons. Sporadic bursts of both continued, and the black swirl of the sky lit up with tracer rounds. By the time Captain Whiteback told us to head that way over the radio, our Strykers were already barreling in that direction.

  The firefight continued as we got closer. “Be ready to dismount,” I said. “If you haven’t already locked and loaded, do so now. Gunners, let us know what you see. Ensure your night-vision devices are on, and for Christ’s sake, listen to the NCOs.”

  As soon as our Strykers came within sight of the entrance into town—Route Maples, home of Saba al-Bor’s largest market and its main artery—all of the gunfire so prevalent moments before crashed off with the alacrity of a cliff-jumping lemming.

  “White 2, does your gunner have contact with anything? Either audio or visual?”

  “Negative. Neither.”

  “What about the dismounts in the rear air-guard hatches?”

  “Negative. Neither do dey.”

  “Roger. Same here. 3, 4, you all see anything different?”

  “Nope,” and, “That’s a negative.”

  “What. The. Fuck. Over.”

  Our St
rykers crept forward, machine guns scanning for any sign of movement, until we came to the northern reach of Route Maples. In theory, a Sons of Iraq checkpoint existed here, although none currently manned their posts. Specialist Cold-Cuts spotted a group of crouching silhouettes off the street and in the adjacent field, all oriented southward. With the arrival of our ghost tanks, the Sahwa scurried over to us, and we met them on the ground. Super Mario provided the translation, although most of it wasn’t necessary. Frantic, panicked pointing transcended the language barrier.

  “Ali Baba shoot us! From down there!”

  “Yes! Yes! Ali Baba! Shoot! We shoot back!”

  “We shoot back lots!”

  “Okay,” I said. My temples began to throb; I already knew it was going to be one of those nights. “Did you actually see who was firing at you?”

  “Ehh . . . no.”

  “Okay . . . did any of their bullets actually hit anything around here? Like damage something?”

  “Ehh . . . no.”

  “Okay . . . did any of you do anything but fire indiscriminately in the general vicinity that you heard the gun shots come from?”

  “Ehh . . .”

  I told the Sons of Iraq to resume their posts on the street, while we pressed south on Route Maples. I issued a silent prayer to God asking that somewhere in this hellhole, someone stupid would present himself as a known enemy and a viable target.

  Not a soul stirred as we pressed south—not surprising considering the time of night and the minutes-old violence. We eventually made our way to the very southern intersection of Route Maples, finding a near-identical reflection of the scene we had just left in the north. Here though, a group of Iraqi police and Sahwa huddled in doorways instead of lying in a field. They ran up to us, and frantic, panicked pointing followed.

  “Ali Baba shoot us! From up there!”

  “Yes! Yes! Ali Baba! Shoot! We shoot back!”