Klew was hit in the chest and staggered backward, holding onto the SAW. His body armor stopped that one, but the next round took him in the throat. Taco looked up at the sunbeams, then grabbed for the SAW. A bullet hit him in the shoulder. Two more pinged off the wall. The fourth hit him in the lower face. His jaw turned as if on a hinge. He spun toward us spraying out a fan of blood, waving us back, and then the top of his head came off.
Someone thumped me and for just a second I thought I’d been shot from behind and then Pill ran past, his medical pack now off his back and dangling from his hand by one strap.
‘No, no, they’re up top!’ Bigfoot shouted. He grabbed the pack’s other strap and yanked our corpsman back, which is the only reason Clayton ‘Pillroller’ Briggs is still in the land of the living.
Bullets hit the big room’s floor, sending chips of tile flying. Bullets hit the rugs, raising puffs of dust and fiber. A bullet hole appeared in the tapestry, taking one of the running horses in the chest. A bullet hit the coffee table and sent it spinning. The mujahedeen on the balcony were firing steadily now. I saw the bodies of Taco and Klew jerk again and again as they shot them some more, maybe to make sure, maybe venting their rage, probably both. But they stayed away from Johnny, who lay in the middle of the floor in a spreading pool of blood. And screaming his head off. They could have taken him out easily, but that wasn’t what they wanted. Johnny was their staked goat.
All of this, from Foot blowing the door to the muj on the balcony pouring fire into the bodies of Tac and Klew, happened in a minute and a half. Maybe less. When things go wrong, they don’t waste time.
‘We have to get Cappsie,’ Donk said.
‘That’s what they want,’ Din-Din said. ‘They ain’t stupid, don’t you be.’
‘He’ll bleed to death if we leave him,’ Pill said.
‘I got him,’ Foot said, and ran in the door, bent almost double. He grabbed the back-hook on Johnny’s body armor and started dragging, bullets hitting all around him. He made it as far as the body of the dead muj, then he took one in the face and that was the end of Pablo Lopez of El Paso, Texas. He went over on his back and the insurgents above switched to him for their target practice. Johnny continued to scream.
‘I can reach him,’ Din-Din said.
‘That’s what Foot thought,’ Donk said. ‘Those assholes can shoot.’ He turned to me. ‘What do we do, Billy? Call for air?’
We all knew that a Hellfire missile could take care of the hajis on the balcony, but it would end Johnny Capps in the process.
I said, ‘I’m going to take them out.’
I didn’t wait for any discussion. We were way past that. I ran back across the courtyard, dropping my M4 on the cobbles. ‘You guys pull back now, boss?’ Fareed asked.
I didn’t answer, just ran across the street to the unfinished apartment building. There was no door. Inside it was shadowy and smelled of wet cement. The lobby was a treasure trove of canned goods, snack packs, and Hershey bars. There was a pallet of Coca-Cola and a pile of magazines with a Field & Stream on top. Some enterprising Iraqi tajir had been using this as his trading post.
I started running up the stairs. There was a lot of trash scattered on the first flight. On the second landing someone had spray painted YANKEE GO HOME, an old favorite that never loses its charm. I could still hear fusillades of gunfire from across the street and Johnny Capps screaming. I didn’t hear Pete Cashman get it, but he surely did. Din-Din said Donk’s last words were ‘I can get him no problem, he’s so close now.’
The walls stopped on the fourth floor and sunlight hit me like a fist. I dodged around a wheelbarrow filled with hardened cement, shoved aside a pile of boards, and kept going up. I was panting like a dog and sweat was pouring off of me. The stairs ended at the sixth floor and that was okay because I was even with the top of the dome across the street and able to look down on the balcony.
There were three of them. They were on their knees with their backs to me. I looped the strap of the M24 over my right shoulder nice and tight and laid the barrel on a handy piece of rebar jutting out of an unfinished wall. All three were laughing and cheering each other on like it was a soccer match and their side was winning. I aimed for the middle guy’s head. It wasn’t as big as a Halloween pumpkin, but it was plenty big enough. I squeezed the trigger and presto, the head was gone. Nothing but blood and brains running down the curved side of the dome where it had been. The other two looked at each other, bewildered – what just happened?
I took out the second one and the third threw himself against the cement railing, maybe thinking it would give him cover. It didn’t. It was too low. I shot him in the back. He lay still. No body armor. He probably believed that Allah had his six but Allah was busy elsewhere that day.
I ran back down the stairs and across the street. Fareed was still standing there. Din-Din and Pill were in the Funhouse, Pill on his knees beside Johnny. He had already cut away the legs of Johnny’s pants. Bone fragments were stuck to the fabric and poking out of Johnny’s skin. Din-Din was yelling into Pill’s walkie, telling someone that we had casualties, many casualties, Block Lima, big domed house, evac, evac, need a dustoff, etc.
‘Hurts!’ Johnny screamed. ‘Oh Christ it hurts SO FUCKING BAD!’
‘Take these,’ Pill said. He had the morphine tablets.
‘Oh God I wish I was dead I wish they killed me OH MY GOD MAKE IT STOP!’
Pill two-fingered Johnny’s mouth open and dumped in the tabs. ‘Chew those and you’re gonna see God.’
‘What happened here, Marines?’
I looked around and saw Hurst. Still standing spread-legged, trying his best to do the General Patton thing, but he looked pretty fucking green around the gills.
‘What does it look like?’ Din-Din said. ‘Fallujah happened. Sir.’
Pill said, ‘If he doesn’t get some blood ASAP, he’s going to
5
What brings Billy back from Iraq could have been in Iraq, part of Lalafallujah’s endless soundtrack: Angus Young’s guitar snarling its way through ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.’ Bucky and Alice must be back from their shopping trip. Billy looks at his watch and sees it’s quarter past three in the afternoon. He’s been here for hours, with no sense of passing time at all.
He finishes that dangling last sentence, saves his work, cases up his lappie, and is about to leave when he happens to glance at the picture he took down, not neglecting to turn it to the wall so he wouldn’t be distracted by those bright primitive colors. He puts it back up on its hook, maybe (probably) because he’s still in Marine mode and remembering Sergeant ‘Up Yours’ Uppington’s dictum: leave no trace when you leave the space.
He studies the painting, frowning. The hedge dog is on the right, the hedge rabbits on the left. Weren’t they the other way around before? And aren’t the lions closer?
I got it wrong, that’s all, he thinks, but before leaving the summerhouse he takes the picture down again. Not neglecting to turn it so it faces the wall.
6
The music gets louder as he approaches the house. With no neighbors, Bucky can really crank it if he wants to. It must be a mixtape, because as Billy approaches the house AC/DC gives way to Metallica.
They’ve brought back a new vehicle – new to them, at least – and Billy pauses before going up the steps to look it over. There not being any more space under the porch, they’ve parked it at the end of the driveway. It’s a Dodge Ram, the Quad Cab model from early in the twenty-first century, once blue, now mostly gray. There’s no Bondo around the headlights, but the bench seat has been mended with a strip of black tape and the rocker panels are mighty rusty. So is the bed of the pickup, which contains a Lawn-Boy mower maybe older than the truck itself. There’s a trailer hooked up behind, a two-wheeler, pretty battered, nothing in it.