"Hold your fire!" cried a voice both men recognized. A moment later, Captain Horwith jumped down from the Bradley and ran towards them. The whole way, he kept shouting, "You dummies! You dummies! You dummies!" He seemed to be trying to get something out of his system.
He stopped in front of them, met their eyes, and repeated:
"You dummies!"
"I believe you have hit the wooden head on the head," said Ghaith. "Yes, I believe we are mindless mannequins."
"I knew something like this would happen, I knew—" Then he saw the look on Gates' face and stopped himself. "You've got KIA?"
Gates nodded.
"Wounded?"
Gates nodded again.
"You have transportation?"
"Don't know, mate."
"Right," said Horwith, looking beyond them. "Where are your Toyotas?"
A white truck squealed out of the side street. Horwith pinched his mike. "Don't fire at the truck! It belongs to Gates." He frowned. "They can't hear me. Someone's got their fucking bomb jammer on." He turned and arm-signaled his men to hold their fire.
"The truck is hardly mine, Captain," Gates smirked.
"And this was hardly company business. What the hell blew up out here? They felt it all the way back at Rusty."
"A barge. Probably belonged to Halliburton. I think they were using it to repair that bridge upriver."
"I doubt they'll just write it off," said Horwith.
Another truck appeared, then another, then more. Five minutes later, there were ten of them lined up in front of the restaurant. They were shot to hell, but still serviceable. It was a miracle.
"Ratu!" Gates called out happily. As the Fijian ran towards them several shots rang out. They all fell flat as the Bradley's gunner flattened a residence with his cannon.
"Thank God he didn't use the TOW," said Horwith, brushing off the debris.
Gates rushed over to Ratu and gave him a hug, then tearfully told him about Gurung. The Fijian burst into tears.
"Ratu, you used the bomb jammer? We heard explosions."
"Some RPG's—and there must have been a half a dozen IED's," said Ratu, raising a tear-stained look of puzzlement. "Our flankers saw them. None of them exploded. We would not be here without the jammer."
"OK, OK, thank God, OK. You might want to leg it back to the truck and switch it off, now. We're miffing the Yanks."
"Mr. Gates," said Ghaith, coming up. "That bomb that killed our friends. I'm afraid the water..."
He did not add that, had he fired sooner, killed Chadrichi before he hit the speed dial…perhaps as little as a second earlier…the barge would not have exploded. But Ghaith, though sometimes tormented by past deeds, was not one to tear his soul apart over missed opportunities. He had given his utmost effort. Had he not looked away from the nightscope for a few seconds, had he not wasted time gauging the wind but pushed for the lucky shot…but no, what was done was done. The hurt was due to the freshness of the wound. It would fade.
"The water jammed the jammer," Gates nodded. "Too bad it didn't jam the phone signal, too."
Once again, in the distance, they heard a rocket. Horwith cocked his head, listening to his radio. "Good, a clear signal. I'm glad…shit! Gates!"
The mercenary turned.
"I was going to make room for your dead and wounded in one of my Humvees, but I've got another Q-36 to track down. Can you make it back to Rusty on your own?"
"Well, now, there's not much choice about that, is there?" said Gates. "Besides, I have a vested interest in returning to a base that is free of lob bombs."
"We'll provide cover while you load up your trucks."
"You are most kind."
An hour later, they were less than halfway to Rusty. Occasionally, a Cobra flew over to greet them, but they were for the most part on their own. They were slowed down by the fact that over half of the trucks were riding on rims, their tires having been shot out by the insurgents. Otherwise, remarkably, there was no opposition to their retreat. Explosions and gunfire on the other side of Sindabad suggested the enemy was otherwise engaged.
Ghaith was again monitoring his radio. With Chadrichi gone, there was no one to order the insurgents off the air. As was to be expected, chaos reigned. The Americans had a near-monopoly on night vision devices, as well as massive firepower and organizational advantages, but the insurgents held on to the bitter end. Ghaith heard their cries, their prayers, their feeble attempts to refit their battle-plan. Listening to one Iraqi, a local by his accent, Ghaith eavesdropped on his death, the gas-rush of air rushing out of his pierced lungs all-too familiar to the veteran of lost battles. And then, a few minutes later, an American picked up the radio and spoke.
"Hello, you fucking muj. We're coming to rip out your guts."
"Your sentiment is returned in its entirety, but I hope you live to see the sun rise," Ghaith responded in English. With Ropp sitting next to him, he could say no more.
"Of course I'll live, Ali Baba. I'll live to see my hand reaching down your throat to—"
"How rude," said Ghaith, blocking the channel.
They were about to leave Sindabad behind when Gates spotted a truck by the road and ordered Ratu to stop.
"Cut the engine."
When Ratu obeyed, Gates leaned out the empty Hilux doorway to listen.
"Hear that?"
"It's a generator, Boss."
"But don't you recognize it?"
Ratu listened a little more. A grin spread across his face. "It's Mr. Moussa Ice Cream Man!"
"Ghaith…come up here with me."
Ghaith pulled out the earbuds and jumped out of the truck to join Gates as he strode for the truck. Taking out his pistol, Gates took hold of the ice cream truck's sliding door and jerked it open.
"No! Please! No!"
"No need to translate," Gates told his translator as he holstered his gun and made placating gestures to the middle-aged man cowering in the cab. "Mr. Moussa! What are you doing out here on this dangerous night?"
Mr. Moussa was enormously popular among the Americans. After to submitting to his daily search, he would set up his truck near Camp Rustamiyah's main gate. The Yanks could not know that Moussa was not the man's real name, that he had stolen it from a famous Lebanese ice cream maker renowned throughout the Levant. Or that the cones, drumsticks, ices, sticks, cups and other Nestles varieties had little or nothing in common with the Moussa originals. They just knew that, in this overheated environment, ice cream really hit the spot.
"I…I…" Moussa sat up slowly, a crowbar in hand. "My truck broke down. My generator is almost out of gas."
"You're going to lose your inventory?" Gates showed such genuine concern that the ice cream man melted in appreciative despair.
"I will be ruined! No truck! No ice cream!"
When Ghaith finished translating, Gates nodded sympathetically.
"How about we give you a tow home?"
At that moment, the puttering generator died. Mr. Moussa broke out in lamentation.
"Right," said Gates. "What good is that if your product melts?"
"No good at all! I'm finished!"
"That's no good," said Gates with a shake of his head. He turned to his comm truck. "Private Ropp! Can you bring one of those cases of beer over here? I believe that, by an act of God—everyone's God—they survived the trip through Sindabad."
Ropp brought over one of the cases and placed it in front of the truck door.
"Mr. Moussa, I have a proposal. In return for a case of Heineken—that's 'Heineken', spelled with a 'k'—and a tow home, we dispose of your entire allotment of ice cream."
Taking Mr. Moussa's crowbar, Ropp opened the case, then flipped open the Igloo inside.
"Ahhhhhhhhh…" said Mr. Moussa.
Gates decided it would be safer if he and Ropp and Ghaith handed out the ice cream to the men in the Hiluxes rather than have them queue up at Moussa's truck. The Gurkhas, the Fijians, Rostmeyer, Buffett, Slim and finally Ropp and Ghaith and
Gates himself wore vanilla and chocolate and strawberry moustaches. After consulting with Carlos Slim, who advised him there were no gut shots among the wounded, he handed out ice cream to them, too. They gobbled down the creamy treats, expressing their delight in moans and pained laughter.
No one shot at them. There was no need to shoot back.
They hitched up Mr. Moussa's truck to one of the Toyotas and towed him home. By the time they reached the base, the Q-36 sirens had stopped.
The Shelter for Buttered Women Page 46