They laughed and pushed each other toward me.
The team manager turned back to Captain Yarrow. “He say no bomb. Bomb bad. No bomb. He say Saddam bad, no bomb. He say al-Ameriki come, go bomb.”
“Go bomb?”
“Go bomb, bomb.” The team manager mimed hauling something off.
“Take bomb?”
“Yes, take bomb! No problem!”
“What about the tanks? Is there anything over by the tanks?”
“Tank?”
“The tanks.” Captain Yarrow hunched his shoulders and rocked his body back and forth. “Brrrrrrrrrum,” he growled, swinging his head side to side.
“Ah, tank, yes. No. Yes. No problem.”
The kids edged forward and I waved my rifle at them. They shrieked and scattered, then reformed in a mass. They laughed and pointed.
“Mista, you give me.”
“Mista, MRE.”
“Ishta,” I said.
“Ishta, ishta!” they shouted back.
“He say yes, bomb and tank, yes. There, there. No problem.”
“Great,” said Captain Yarrow. “Tell him thank you, and to keep his people back while we’re working. Tell him it’s very dangerous.”
We drove back up the road, where we found a small cache of tank and mortar rounds in the palms, hidden behind a berm. It took about two hours to clear everything. The kids kept running over and we had to keep chasing them off.
Driving down the road something exploded behind us, shaking our truck, then something else exploded and the radio squawked: “GRENADE GRENADE CRUSADER TWO-ZERO-THREE WHAT’S YOUR STATUS?”
“STATUS GREEN OVER.”
Captain Yarrow stuck his head out the window, trying to see the convoy behind us. He told me pull over.
“Sir?”
“Pull the fuck over, Wilson!”
I eased off the gas and slid to the shoulder. Shots to the right, AKs, close.
“FIRE RIGHT SIDE! RIGHT SIDE!”
Healds’s rifle went off pop-pop-pop.
“I can’t see,” Lieutenant Krauss shouted.
“Keep going, keep going!” the BC yelled.
I swung back onto the road and took the convoy up to fifty. The shooting kept on, mostly us, then petered out.
Captain Yarrow got on the radio and called for a status report. Everyone responded except Two-zero-two. Yarrow screamed into the hand mike: “Crusader Two-zero-two, Crusader Two-zero-two, what’s your status, over? Respond! Respond!”
No answer. I exhaled, staring at the road. The world was clearer now, numinous, drenched in light.
“Crusader Two-zero-two!” Captain Yarrow shouted. “What’s your status, over? Respond!”
My armor plate lay on my chest like a lover’s head. I needed a cigarette.
“Any Crusader element, this is Crusader Six, does somebody have eyes on Two-zero-two?”
“CRUSADER SIX, THIS IS CRUSADER TWO-ZERO-FIVE NOVEMBER. WE HAVE EYES ON TWO-ZERO-TWO, STATUS GREEN, BREAK. THEY DON’T HAVE A RADIO. OVER.”
“Well make sure they get a goddamned radio,” Captain Yarrow shouted into his mike. “Somebody give me a sitrep.”
“SIX, THIS IS ONE-SIX NOVEMBER. TWO GRENADES FROM THE OVERPASS, BREAK. ONE FELL WIDE AND THE OTHER BOUNCED OFF THE BACK OF TWO-ZERO-THREE.”
“All Crusader elements, this is Crusader Six. Keep a tight eye on your twelve. Watch those overpasses and don’t take any chances. Let’s get this load of ammo to Wardog.”
“You see who was shooting at us, Healds?” Lieutenant Krauss asked.
“Uh… honestly, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Not really.”
At the next overpass I saw two hadjis crossing above so I swung wide right to keep the convoy from passing beneath them. As we drove into the shadows under the arch, I heard the trucks behind open fire.
desiring democracy and modernization immediately
is a good example of what
a westerner might view as an arab’s “wish vs. reality”
Sergeant Chandler read Maxim. Lieutenant Krauss and Captain Yarrow watched Braveheart in the captain’s room. I sat listening to this mix CD a girl had made me and rereading the letter she’d sent. Rifle fire popped off close. Sergeant Chandler flipped a page of his magazine.
Lieutenant Krauss stomped in, weapon in hand. “What was that?”
Sergeant Chandler shrugged.
The LT went downstairs, then returned a few minutes later and went back to Braveheart. Healds came in and asked me if I wanted to smoke and I told him I’d just had one.
I read the girl’s letter again, amazed at how far away it came from, how ignorant she was of my world. I picked up a pen and paper to reply but found myself struck dumb, washed in a frustration humming like great engines.
The next day we got a late start and by the time we hit the streets, the shooting was heavy. A shot every few seconds, every minute or so a long clatter of fire. Some close, some farther away. Sometimes we’d hear the ping of nearby ricochet, though it didn’t seem like we were being targeted.
We pulled off onto a frontage road, searching for the first cache. Captain Yarrow peered at the map, at his GPS, then back at the map, sometimes giving directions. For myself, I watched the tree line, the buildings in the distance, the earth and sky, eyes wide for the spray of impact or a muzzle flash. I felt preternaturally alert and also numb. Shots cracked out all around us.
Captain Yarrow directed us into a wide, vacant lot, about a block off Canal Road.
“Fuck this,” Healds hissed.
“You guys nervous?” Lieutenant Krauss asked.
Loud zing of ricochet.
“Fuck no, sir. This is bread and butter. I love it when the world goes batshit and everybody’s shooting all over the goddamned place.”
“You worry too much,” the LT said.
There was an overpass to the west and a cluster of half-built three-story homes to the north. Beyond that, northwest, lay Sadr City.
“Stop here,” Captain Yarrow said. He and Krauss got out and Healds and I stayed in the truck.
“You see anything?” Yarrow yelled as he and the LT stomped around searching for shells.
“No, sir.”
“Follow me,” he said. We circled the field, shots popping all around us, then the two officers got back in the truck. Another zing, another ricochet.
Captain Yarrow had me drive northwest toward Sadr City. As we neared the ghetto, the shooting got louder and louder until we swam in the noise of it. Shots and echoes and ricochets wrapped us in a cacophony like industrial dance. I waited for the first rounds to puncture the windshield or the canvas roof.
The next site was a larger lot, five blocks long and two blocks wide, full of stagnant pools and blackened muck. Driving in circles through the filth we eventually found several hundred mortar and light artillery rounds scattered in and around a stinking puddle. Fins stuck out of the oily water like dead metal sharks. Most of the rounds were scattered, black, and misshapen, the obvious remains of an explosion. Captain Yarrow marked the site on his map and had me drive the corners. The shooting let up for about half an hour then redoubled, manic, the sky raucous with metal.
The BC had us drive to the UN compound at the Canal Hotel. We parked our trucks around back and went in for lunch. Weapons and armor were prohibited, so we left everything with Foster, who volunteered to stand guard if we brought him a plate. On the way in, we passed fleets of bright blue, brand-new SUVs marked in day-glo orange: UNHIOC, UNHCR, UN, UNESCO. We’d seen them driving the streets, clean and shining, stunning colors blazing against the city skelter.
“Remember,” Captain Yarrow said, “we’re representatives of the United States of America. Be on your best behavior.”
The doors opened to beatitude: clean and quiet, chilled, orderly, bureaucratic assurance washed in light and AC hum. A woman wafted by in a skirt, trailing eddies of designer scent, and our heads turned together following her gold earrings, her swinging curves and lean calves, her high heels clipping along the stone. A man in a jacket and tie passed the other way, carrying thick files in soft pink hands.