Lucy passed round a packet of salt tablets. They knocked them back with a swig of mineral water.
She took a tube of high-factor sun cream from her pack and smoothed lotion on her face and neck. She threw the tube to Toon. He squeezed a white worm of cream down each arm and massaged it into tattooed skin.
Toon had tattoos down both arms, Yakuza-style. Lucy asked him about it one night as they sat drinking in the Riviera Bar.
‘Momento mori,’ explained Toon, pointing at his arm. ‘The lion. Leo Fowler. Blackhawk developed gear trouble over Kuwait City. He was the only guy to walk away. Dropped dead of an embolism three months later. The thistle. Jimmy McDougal. Immigrant from Scotland. His wife left him. Locked himself in a barrack toilet cubicle and blew his brains out. My personal memorial wall. Nobody else remembers these guys. They aren’t listed among the fallen. But they were my friends.’
Lucy had no friends, no family, beyond the team. Better that way. During her days in Special Recon, she spent tense pre-mission hours slamming her knife into a dartboard while other squad members filled out next-of-kin and wrote goodbye letters to wives and kids. Every soldier she met could tell the story of some Dear John suicide, some beloved buddy that ate a bullet or drove into an abutment. She knew one guy with ‘Linda Forever’ tattooed on his forearm. Linda ran off with his brother so one night he sat in the barracks, poured caustic soda on his arm and sweated through the pain as flesh blistered and burned.
Better to travel light.
The Riv.
A low-ceiling dive favoured by security contractors. Part of the old presidential palace. A social club for the secret police converted to a coalition drinking den as a big Fuck You to the Ba’ath Party.
Blackwater guys considered themselves elite and stayed at the Rasheed, content to drink malted Astra near-beer with CPA staffers and Agency analysts. Everyone else, mercenaries from Fiji, Indonesia, El Salvador, the rootless Ronin of the world’s war zones, found their way to the Riv.
Jukebox. Constant cigar fug. A guy with a biker beard manned the doorway metal detector.
There was usually grief.
Toon rolled down his sleeves and hid his tattoos. Amanda fed coins into the jukebox. Sheryl Crow. She and Lucy slow-danced while barstool drunks threw insults and beer caps.
A couple of Air Cav officers entered the club. They shouldered a space at the bar and ordered orange juice. The barman served them, looking doubtful, wondering if they were trouble. No reason regular troops should hang out at the Riv unless they wanted to pick a fight.
The soldiers smacked gum and stared down any privateer that looked their way.
‘Cruising for a bruising,’ muttered Voss.
They tripped a six-six contractor with Maori tattoos as he walked to the bar. He took a swing. Friends grabbed his arms and pulled him away. The Maori sat in the corner, sipping Blue Ribbon, waiting for Air Cav to step outside.
One of the officers tried to block Amanda as she headed to the bathroom.
‘Hey, babe.’
She squirmed past him.
The guy sat at the bar and ordered triple bourbon. The barman said something as he poured. The officer told him to shut the fuck up. He threw dollars, snatched the bottle and headed for an empty table.
Toon headed to the bar for a fresh round of beers. Lucy and Amanda sat in a booth with the rest of her crew. The girls sat with arms round each other’s shoulders.
Air Cav and his buddy kept looking at the girls. He kept drinking. Lucy watched him in the periphery of her vision.
Air Cav made his move at midnight. He slid off his chair. He swayed like the dance floor was the tilting deck of storm-tossed ship.
‘Fucking bitch.’
Lucy stood to meet him. He took a swing. She ducked the blow. He staggered, balance thrown, and fell across a table shattering beer bottles.
‘Motherfucker.’
He sat on the floor and pulled green bottle glass from his bleeding hand. His buddy crouched by his side and helped bandage the wound with napkins.
They staggered out the bar and into the street.
Three big Maori waiting, cracking their knuckles.
Back in the bar, Amanda drank chardonnay and got maudlin. This was their last war. Voss was thirty-eight. Toon was forty-three. Old-timers.
Amanda took out her phone and asked the barman to take a group shot. They clustered round the portrait of Saddam that hung at the back of the bar near the jukebox. Beret, shades, big rip down his face. An inscription in English: ‘Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti, the Anointed One, the Glorious Leader, direct descendant of the Prophet, president of Iraq, chairman of the revolutionary Command Council, field marshal of its armies, doctor of its laws, and great uncle to all its peoples.’ Someone had taped a newsprint picture to the portrait to obscure the man’s sash and braids: Saddam in his underpants in an interrogation cell looking haggard and frightened.
Lucy and her crew grinned and threw gang signs. They toasted the camera. They shouted ‘money’ as the bartender pressed the shutter release.
Pop. Flash. A frozen moment.
Lucy watched dunes blur beneath them.
Toon drained his mineral water dry. He turned in his seat, unzipped and pissed in the bottle. He tossed the bottle out the open side door.
‘All right there, Kaffir?’ said Voss.’ Trouble with your prostate?’
‘Burnt any good crosses lately, Nazi motherfucker?’
Jabril watched the men, unsure if they were joking around.
Voss took a packet of biltong from his pocket. He threw it across the compartment. Toon folded a strip into his mouth.
Lucy tugged Jabril’s sleeve. They had dressed him in combat gear. Coyote tan. Boots and field jacket from the Victory PX. She helped him with shirt buttons. He didn’t object to US uniform. ‘I’m a pragmatist. That’s how I survive.’
She pointed at the desert ahead.
‘What’s that?’
Something in the sand. A long black line, cutting through the dunes.
‘The fence.’ Jabril shouted to be heard over rotor noise. ‘Two hundred miles long.’ He pointed with the metal hook at the end of his right arm. ‘Skull and crossbones. Warns off Bedouin. It means we are entering the contamination zone.’
Amber cabin light. Twenty minutes from target. Cue to suit up.
They checked laces, checked belts and knee-pads, tightened the straps of their ballistic vests.
They checked mag pockets. Each of them carried eight clips of green-tip tungsten carbine penetrators.
They unholstered Glock 17s and press-checked for brass.
They pulled their rifles from vinyl dust sleeves. The barrel and muzzle vents of each weapon were patched with duct tape to seal them from sand. They slapped home STANAG magazines and chambered a round.
They each carried two M67 frag grenades hooked to their webbing, rings taped down.
They each wore a quart canteen on their belt and a three-litre Camelbak hydration bladder strapped to their backs.
Voss slotted shells into his shotgun.
Toon hefted a SAW from the floor and held it in his lap. Squad Automatic Weapon: a compact belt-feed machine gun. He attached a two-hundred-round box magazine. He fed the belt into the receiver and slapped it closed.
They strapped on sand goggles.
Lucy leant close to Jabril. She held out a Glock.
‘You should carry a pistol,’ she shouted. ‘Just in case.’
Jabril shook his head.
Red light. One minute.
A quick descent.
Gaunt lowered the collective and eased the cyclic forward.
Combat landing. They came in fast. Heavy touchdown. Rotor-wash kicked up a dust storm.