Brave Deeds

by David Abrams

  Arrow gestures with his arm—chop-chop!—and two of us bring our rifles to our shoulders. We track the sprinter, our fingertips air-kissing the trigger, until he disappears through a doorway.

  Our breath quickens.

  Now what?

  Five of us turn to Arrow. Mr. Large and In Charge.

  For now, we’ll follow Arrow—even when he does the most boneheaded, illegal act of stealing a Humvee from the motor pool and sneaking off the FOB under the noses of gate guards more interested in mashing thumbs across Game Boys than the loss of one three-ton government vehicle.

  What we did this morning was absurd. We still can’t believe we got away with it.

  We all stole that vehicle and if there’s shit to be meted out, we’ll all let ourselves be splattered with muck. We did this for Sergeant Morgan, after all.

  At least most of us did.

  Okay, some of us. We’d like to think we’re all in this together, but we’d be kidding ourselves. Like our opinions of the war itself, we are divided.

  Some of us loved Staff Sergeant Morgan, some thought he was just okay, and some thought he was a total dick.

  Likewise, some of us believe in this war, worship at the First Church of Bush, and have faith we’ll find those weapons of mass destruction sooner or later. To them, Rafe’s death was one of glory: he went out a hero, one more martyr fighting the good fight against evil.

  Others think that’s bullshit. To them, this is a job. Nothing more, nothing less. The starched suits at the Pentagon tell us to go here, we go here; they change their minds and tell us to go there, we go there. As long as we get a paycheck, we could give two shits about history and heroes.

  But now we’re truly out here, off the grid, on this illegal mission and the Pentagon wonks can go fuck themselves sideways. This is our game now—no rules. There’s no telling what will happen before this day is through.

  Arrow air chops with his arm again and, without question or protest, we rise and move, leapfrog fashion, overlapping in teams of two. Arrow says go, we go. We move off the street, out of the sniper’s crosshairs, and make for the shadows, each of us slapping up against the wall of a building in succession. We surround the doorway where we last saw the runner disappear and wait for Arrow’s signal.

  He speaks the sign language of the infantry. He points at us, he points at the door, he counts down on his fingers: three, two, one. We nod, then melt inside to the dark unknown, rifles searching the way, heads on the swivel.

  Drew hisses, “What the hell are we doing? Let’s get out of here.”

  Nobody responds, like he’d never spoken.

  Drew throws out one more: “This is stupid.” But then he gives up and goes along with the rest of us as we begin our sweep and clear.

  There’s an Arabic shout, a door slams two stories above our heads, then the building goes quiet.

  In the Land of Not Good, this is Pretty Fucking Bad, not at all what we bargained for when we stole the Humvee this morning.

  6

  Bad News

  “Men, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.” Grimner’s voice rang off the walls of what used to be Saddam’s palace and was now the hive of our brigade’s military operations. The LT’s words struck the marble floors, spiraled upward, then echoed off the hallways, the dusty gilt furniture, and the wide white staircase. The words “bad news” hung in the air. “Last night, after doing all we could for him, we lost Sergeant Raphael Morgan. At 2200 hours, Sergeant Morgan expired from wounds suffered in an attack on his position while he was pulling security in the vicinity of New Baghdad.”

  Yeah, no shit, Captain Obvious. We were there, remember?

  Lieutenant Grimner, as usual, didn’t know what he was talking about. Rafe had died long before 2200 hours last night. He was gone the instant the bomb carved his body, eight hours earlier: brisket, flank, prime rib. That 2200 hours shit was just the Army’s official medical time stamp. It took us that long to collect all the pieces and bring them back to Taji in a plastic tub.

  Our lieutenant was young—almost as young as us, but that didn’t mean we were friends, no matter how hard he tried (and he tried so hard he nearly herniated on a couple of occasions). He had no idea how much we hated the sight of his face with its rodent eyes and the curled lip, scarred from a childhood accident and frozen into a permanent sneer. Even when Grimner smiled, it looked like he was mocking us. His frat-boy bravado would get somebody killed someday. Back at Fort Drum, one of us had hung a dartboard on the inside of his wall locker with Grimner’s official Army photo taped over the bull’s-eye. After a week, his nose was nothing but a dart-speared hole.

  Lieutenant Grimner coughed into his fist. “Sergeant Morgan was a—” He coughed again. Was he starting to cry? Was that it? Was our platoon leader crying? What a pussy. “He was one of the good guys. I don’t have to tell you that. You saw it every day.” Yes, he was crying; the corner of his left eye was twinkling. “And now the Army is going to honor his leadership with a memorial service. Thursday, 1500 hours, at the chapel on FOB Saro.”

  We rustled. Gathered in a loose formation around Grimner, we shifted from leg to leg, scratched our necks, stared at a spot floating two feet off the floor of the palace. Someone spat.

  “That’s the good news,” Grimner said.

  Good news? What was he talking about? Sergeant Morgan was dead—nothing good about that.

  “The bad news,” he continued, “is that, sadly, none of us will be able to attend. Well, uh, uh—I mean none of you. The commander and I will represent the company at FOB Saro day after tomorrow. The rest of the company, I’m sorry to say, is still pulling Quick Reaction Force duty. Third Herd is on mission to Basra—no way we can get them back in time. And most of First Platoon, as you know, is down in Qatar on R and R. That leaves us.” Grimner coughed again, a bark to clear his throat. “This isn’t coming from us, by the way. Blame Corps. In their infinite wisdom, they have seen fit to screw you guys over. The captain and I are sensitive to how you must feel …” He trailed off like a radio station going out of range.

  Now someone said it out loud: “What the fuck? I mean, what the fucking fuck?”

  Grimner held up his hands. “Don’t shoot the messenger. I voted against the idea.”

  “Sure you did,” someone muttered sotto voce.

  “But Corps had more votes,” Grimner continued. “Corps will always have more votes.” He paused and his voice shifted to that just-trying-to-be-your-best-bud tone we hated. “Hey, I promise we’ll make this up to you. Captain Bangor and I were talking and we’re going to hold our own memorial service here in the company area as soon as we can. We’ll honor Sergeant Morgan in our own way. You have my word.”

  Arrow shook his head. He looked at O, who looked at Drew and Park, who turned and looked at Fish, who glanced over at Savarola. Cheever looked at everyone else looking at each other and wanted in on whatever plot was brewing. Because, at that moment, an idea was percolating: dangerous, reckless, and born in the blistering heat of our mood. The hell with Corps. Who were they to tell us when we could and couldn’t honor our dead? Did they not know who Rafe was? Fuck them and their fucking fucked-up rules. Bunch of headquarters-bound support soldiers—fat fobbits—sitting at air-conditioned desks in the Green Zone with Cheetos-dust fingerprints on their starched

  uniforms. They probably jacked off at their computers while they thought of new ways to screw us over. We bet we could go to the Green Zone right now and find a bunch of cum stains on the undersides of their desks. Well. Fuck. Them.

  None of us spared any love for those fobbits and their bureaucracy. The Department of Departments. That was O’s way of summing up everything wrong about the Army—like the Ministry of Silly Walks (O is a die-hard Monty Python fan), only worse because those fobbits controlled our lives, in their own cheese-dusted, fat-fingered way. Now they were screwing us out of paying our respects to the one guy we—most of us—truly loved.

  Grimner was done talking and had
dismissed us for the rest of the day, what little was left of it at that point. We went off to clean our weapons, eat chow, pleasure ourselves in shower stalls, take out our fury by killing Elites in our ongoing Halo tournament, read our books, write to our wives, and—for some of us—prep for Thursday.

  We already had a plan. There, in the rolling boil of our anger at Corps, we six (seven, if you include that chickenshit Savarola) plotted our escape into Baghdad, our AWOL sneak-off into adventure.

  And so, we cross Baghdad, passing through the chaotic center of terrorism—al-Qaeda, Mahdi, Ba’ath, and Badr clashing their ideologies and ambitions of evil—and we try to maintain composure. Straight-faced, even-keeled. That’s how Sergeant Morgan would do it, given this FUBAR situation, this impetuous decision to risk court-martial (if not death on the streets before we can even get to trial). We stopped caring about our Army “careers”—whatever that means—four hours ago. It’s us against the law. We’re outside the law now. We’re outlaws.

  We’ll admit this is foolhardy. It’s just a memorial service and our AWOL adventure could lead to another six memorial services, but the ceremony isn’t the point. It’s beside the point. The point is—if we were to get this far in our shit-for-brains reasoning—the point is that we want to tell the command group to take their QRF roster and shove it up their air-conditioned fobbity asses. We’ll show you! You can’t keep us from honoring our beloved dead leader!

  (Not that any of us would ever use a pussy-ass word like “beloved.”)

  We can’t wait to see the expressions on their faces—Lieutenant Grimner, Captain Bangor, and all those colonels from Corps whose names we don’t know. Bangor, what a joke. No one respects him. He’s in love with himself, and that’s the worst kind of commander to have. He says he loves us, cares about us, makes decisions in our best interest. But that’s false-camaraderie rah-rah bullshit talk. He’s too busy looking out for numero uno. Him and his always-with-him coffee go mug. When he drinks from the scratched and dented stainless-steel mug, air escapes from the pinhole in the lid and tweets like a songbird. When he raises the mug to his lips—which he does even when standing in front of us at morning formation—it sounds like he’s trying to suck a terrified canary into his mouth. If we were betting men, we’d lay odds he’ll bring that coffee mug to Sergeant Morgan’s memorial.

  We picture ourselves walking into the chapel on FOB Saro, maybe even in the middle of the service if we get there late, all of them turning in their seats at the sound of the door and the sudden splash of sunshine.

  We’ll be like a bride standing at the back of a church, all heads swiveling and all eyes focused on her as the organ stops playing, takes a breath through its pipes, then plunges loud into a fanfare. We’ll sling our rifles to our shoulders, remove our helmets, and march down the aisle, smelling of dust, sweat, and broken blisters (Cheever). There will be gasps of surprise, of admiration, of anger. We will march forward, strong and proud at the end of this mission, our boots scraping the floor and our flashlights and compasses and carabineers clinking like we were walking Christmas trees.

  Here we are. We did it. Y’all can go fuck yourselves six ways to Sunday.

  Then we’ll kneel at the front of the chapel, a six-man huddle around Sergeant Morgan’s boots, his down-turned rifle, his photo. And some of us—okay, all of us—will let it all out. Not that we’d ever admit to a pussy-ass thing like crying.

  From the front pew, Captain Bangor will sip-tweet his coffee, speechless and shocked.

  7

  What We Found

  It’s dark inside the three-story building so it’s NVG time. The lightless stairwell calls for us to flick on the night-vision goggles, but we hate going green. When we walk through pea soup, reaction time slows and vision narrows to a tunnel. It’s like being in a KROK 104.5 haunted house. Shit pops out in the jade dark and there you are, fumbling with the selector switch, the charging handle, the trigger.

  That door slam is still echoing above our heads when Arrow chops his arm, sending Olijandro to the stairwell. Lead the way, O. We’ll follow. We’ve got your six. We’ll back you up.

  One foot at a time. First one step, then the next, rising seven inches at a time. O’s mouth clicks. His tongue has sponged out all the saliva. One foot, one step, half a foot higher into the unknown.

  O thinks of that show he used to watch with his sister every Christmas: Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town. He remembers the tall, icy Winter Warlock who’d been living at the North Pole so long his legs were practically paralyzed beneath his white robe—ice freezing his veins, cramping his muscles. Then Kris Kringle started singing that song about how you put one foot in front of the other and in no time you found yourself walking across the floor. Even the penguins started dancing.

  That’s how O feels. He has to force each leg to lift seven inches to find the stair tread, then flex and pull the other leg up from behind and swing it another seven inches in ascent. O has to make himself believe he’s the Winter Warlock breaking the ice from his calves.

  He’s point man. The job no one ever wants.

  We get it. We totally get it. After all, we’re doing the same thing right behind him. We’re spread out in a line along the stone staircase, snaking up into the hot green dark of the building. We’re walking, but toward what? Our breath is short and shallow.

  Wait a minute, wait a minute! What the fuck are we doing? Drew was right. Are we obligated to investigate and pursue this runner? Couldn’t we just shrug, pass him off as another nervous Local National, and continue on mission? We have a funeral to catch. Can’t we blind-eye this one?

  No. No, we can’t. We’re here to rid the world of terror. Find and destroy. Hell, yeah! If you see something, do something. This, after all, could be the scumbag hajji who hired the suicide bomber to drive himself into Sergeant Morgan and those kids.

  Thinking this, our legs turn to coiled springs and we move with purpose up that stairwell.

  O stops on the second-floor landing, holds up a hand, cups his ear, points to a closed door. He’s heard something. We take our positions: O and Fish on one side, Park and Drew on the other, Arrow in the center kick spot, Cheever guarding our rear. We listen and try to control our breath so it saws back and forth over our dry tongues with the softest of whispers.

  Voices—one male, one female, one indeterminate—come from behind the door.

  In that moment before we nod the go-ahead to Arrow, we imagine scenarios for what’s on the other side.

  One of us thinks we’ll find dirty, dark-faced men and women gathered around a table holding screwdrivers and box cutters in their hands, tinkering with wires, timers, plastique.

  Another pictures a firing squad of zealots with rifles, grenade launchers, and flamethrowers pointed at the door, waiting for us to show ourselves. There might even be a pissed-off female ninja, like in Kill Bill, hiding to one side with a sword, arms cocked and ready to chop off our heads as we move forward into the room.

  At least one of us imagines they’re making a porn movie and that we’ll burst in on an orgy of jackhammering flesh.

  As it turns out, it’s none of those things.

  Arrow leans back, raises his leg, and sends his boot crashing into the wood. The door flies open. We flow in, rifles raised. Cheever stays in the stairwell. He’ll pull security while the rest of us do God’s work.

  A man, a woman, and a boy—faces lime green in our NVGs—cower in the center of the room, arms raised, empty palms turned to us.

  We send them to their knees.

  The man is our runner. He is still panting, but whether from fear or exertion, we can’t tell.

  We shout commands back and forth between ourselves.

  “Left room!”

  “Clear!”

  “Stay down! Stay down!” we tell the man, woman, and child.

  “Right room!”

  “Watch our backs! Watch our backs!”

  “Cheever’s got it.”

  “There is no right r
oom. This is it.”

  “The bathroom, then. Somebody check the fuckin’ shitter.” “I’m on it.”

  “Cheever, how’s it looking out there?”

  “Stay down, I said. Down! Do you understand?”

  “We’re good out here, Arrow. Some lady down the hall poked her head out, but she popped back in real quick.”

  “Cuz we’re Rambo Squad, that’s why. You don’t mess with Rambo Squad.”

  “There is no shitter.”

  “Whaddaya mean, there’s no shitter?”

  “I mean: There’s. No. Shitter.”

  That’s when we see a large stained bucket in a corner of the room. A couple of us lower our rifles. The rest keep them up and at the ready. It isn’t certain which way this will go. We think of Staff Sergeant Morgan. What would he do if he were here?

  The family stays where they are. Their arms must hurt at this point, but they keep them up like obedient little hajjis. The woman cries, soft as a prayer.

  Park steps forward, makes them stand, then frisks them, moving the back of his hand discreetly, politely across the woman’s body, just like we’d been taught. “We’re good,” he says.

  Arrow tells them they can lower their arms. The man and boy do so. Then the man says something to the wife and she lowers hers, too.

  We motion for them not to move and they stay where they are, frozen as if posing for a Sears family portrait.

  We search the apartment for bomb-making materials, a weapons cache, Sunni leaflets—anything to explain why this dude (still panting and sweaty) would run away from us like he had something to hide. We find nothing. What a goddamn disappointment this door kick has turned out to be.

  We taste the adrenaline in our mouths. It will go to waste. All for nothing and all because this asshole decided it would be a good idea to draw attention to himself in front of what Arrow has just dubbed Rambo Squad. We have to put all this nervous energy somewhere. Otherwise, this is the worst anticlimax in the history of anticlimaxes.