The hadji glared up.
“Get your eyes down, shithead.” Burnett grabbed the man by the back of the neck and pushed his head toward the ground. “Watch the dirt.”
Lieutenant Krauss came out and asked Staff Sergeant Gooley and me to follow him inside to help with the paperwork. He had a list of the hadjis’ names along with the info that came up in interrogation, and we filled out two double-sided forms for each one, going over address of suspect and identifying marks/tattoos. Mostly we filled in unk and n/a.
Eventually we finished and handed the forms to the SOG, who stacked them in the corner with a pile of other forms then turned to a lanky, dark-haired corporal. “Hey, Sto, go grab some guys and process these EPWs, would you?” We stood outside watching the first two get processed—screamed at, kicked, manhandled, handcuffed, then led away to get their very own orange jumpsuits. Burnett and some of the others clapped.
“I wonder what’s gonna happen to those guys,” I said.
“They’ll be processed. There’ll be an investigation,” Lieutenant Krauss said.
“What the fuck do you care?” Burnett glared at me.
He was right. What the fuck did I care?
wars are not won by machines and weapons
but by the soldiers who use them
As the fall wore on, the weather got colder. Gray clouds swept in, obscuring the sun. Porkchop regaled us with tales of going home on leave, how much he drank, how hard he fucked his wife. Most of all, he talked about his ’Vette and its mods. He got nitro, new tires, fat rims. He got a new tattoo, too, on his calf, an eagle wrapped in the stars and stripes, clutching bloody rags in its talons. A single tear fell from the eagle’s eye; behind the bird rose the smoking silhouettes of the Twin Towers.
“You like that, huh?”
“Nice,” I told him. “Real classy.”
“The rags are like ragheads.”
“Yeah, I get that. Very multicultural.”
Porkchop squinted at me and tucked his trouser leg back in his boot. “Why you such a faggot, Wilson?”
“’Cuz I hate freedom, Porkchop.”
He told me to go fuck myself.
We took our work team to the stables. CAHA Wardog had been one of Saddam’s equestrian clubs before he’d decided to turn it into an ammo dump. There was hay and horseshit and garbage everywhere, which we had hadjis clean up with shovels and brooms.
The hadjis worked slow, taking long breaks and half-assing everything, so I’d go through the stables and shout at them: “Work harder! Get back to work! Shovel that shit! Git ’er done!” They glared at me and my rifle and I glared back, praying for an excuse. “Fucking get to work!”
“Man”—Sergeant Chandler shook his head—“you gotta relax.”
“Somebody’s gotta make sure they keep working,” I said.
“You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack.”
“Yeah,” Porkchop said. “Why you such a slave driver?”
“I told you, Porkchop, I hate freedom.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, fuck you, Porkchop. Really. Anytime.”
I headed back through the stables. I found a hadji squatting in one of the side rooms, resting against a wall. I shouted at him to get the fuck back to work and he glared at me like he’d cut my throat if he could. I shouted again and stared him down till he picked up his shovel and got back to the horseshit.
“You give me cigarette,” one said to Bullwinkle one day while we stood around watching them work.
“You give me blowjob?” Bullwinkle said back.
The hadji smiled.
“Blowjob?” Bullwinkle said, making an O with this mouth and jerking his head back and forth over his rifle barrel.
The hadji kept smiling. “No, Mista. No mota. You give me cigarette?”
“You ficky-ficky?” Porkchop asked him.
“No ficky-ficky,” the hadji said, still smiling.
“Fuck off,” I shouted, waving the hadji away. “Get back to work.”
“No ficky, Mista,” he said, ducking and grinning.
“You ficky good, huh?” Porkchop asked him.
“Get the fuck back to work.”
The hadji glared at me and slunk off.
I knew better.
This wasn’t who I was, who I was meant to be. I was sensitive. I’d been a poet. The solution seemed obvious: if I just shot a hadji, it’d all be okay. If I just killed one hadji, anyone, someone, then all the black bile, hatred, and fear would flow out of me like blood and water pouring from the wounds of Christ. I’d be transformed, transfigured. Please Jesus, I prayed, let me fucking kill somebody.
We came back each night and spent a couple hours relaxing, drinking vodka and Gatorade and watching Sex and the City. Samantha fucked a fireman, Charlotte got married, Carrie dumped Mr. Big and went out with Aidan, then got back with Mr. Big.
We downloaded crates of water and crates of MREs. We swept the barracks, swept the compound. We watched hadji bootlegs of The Matrix Revolutions and the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Some guys redeployed back, some other new guys showed up. Staff Sergeant Reynolds, Cheese, and Reading played Halo. Cheese begged us to quit calling him Cheese, and Burnett said he’d punch him in his fucking face if he didn’t shut his goddamn cockholster.
I was driving and Staff Sergeant Gooley was saying to me how all of us who’d been out last night clearing the CAHA shouldn’t have to be going out there again today because none of us had gotten enough sleep, then there was some shooting close behind the convoy, and the truck radio crackled: “Fire Fire. Shooters on the buildings.”
“Stop!” Staff Sergeant Gooley shouted. We heard M16s and SAWs answering AK fire, then the low thump of our .50s.
“CRUSADER THREE-SEVEN, WE’RE TAKING FIRE.”
“Turn the truck around!”
I started to pull a three-point turn and as we swung the other way the trucks behind us started turning too, so we had to wait. There was more shooting from the highway. All the trucks turning around at once in the alley made a slow chaos of bumps and shouts. One of the trucks tried to drive out in reverse, its driver screaming, “Just back up! Back up!”
Staff Sergeant Gooley grabbed the hand mike. “This is Crusader Three-seven, gimme a sitrep!”
“ALL CRUSADER ELEMENTS CONVERGE ON THE NORTHEAST BUILDING,” Staff Sergeant Smith barked.
“This is Crusader Three-seven, somebody tell me what’s going on, over,” Staff Sergeant Gooley shouted into the radio.
“ALL CRUSADER ELEMENTS RETURN FIRE ON YOUR TARGETS.”
More shooting, the tock-tock of our .50s. As we rolled slowly behind the other trucks back to the highway, we could see the rest of the convoy scattered between the alley’s mouth and the nearest overpass. Crusader 5 sped down the highway on the other side, through a gap in the guardrail onto the shoulder toward a three-story building, Staff Sergeant Smith leaning out his window shooting wild with his M16. Figures ducked behind the wall up on the roof of the building and others ran along the overpass. One .50 traced a slow arc along the road, lobbing fat gobs of metal through the air, knocking chunks out of concrete. Porkchop rode the second .50, firing at the top of the building, his body shaking at one with the gun: “Yeah, get some! Get some! Fuck yeah! How you like it? Get some!”
“Over there,” Gooley pointed, and I drove to the cluster of trucks by the building where Staff Sergeant Smith stood shouting.
“You three secure the rear of the structure, everyone else come with me.” Staff Sergeant Smith rammed his shoulder through the front door. Men followed. Staff Sergeant Gooley told me to stay with the radio, then ran in after.
More shots came from the overpass and I swung open my door and slid sideways in my seat, pulling up my rifle and taking aim at the shadows ducking between the concrete supports. I hissed, exhaling, squeezing my trigger. I was surprised by the ease of it: just pull. My hadji ducked behind a support then dashed for the next, making his way toward the trees at the edge of the overpass. I fired again, aiming higher this time, the top of my iron sight to his right, above his head, leading but missing again and gritting my teeth and firing. Breathing.