The phone call over, I got back inside the Humvee and wished for sleep. There was nothing else I could do. Sleep, I had discovered, was the only way I could relax. It was almost worth the sadness of the dreams. Since Kuwait, I had developed an almost Zenlike ability to fall into a meditative doze.
You’ll probably recall what happened next: the darkest night in Iraq’s history; the trucks overturning in the wind; the lightning that was confused with a chemical alert, forcing us to clamp gas masks to our mud-drenched faces; and, worst of all, the bass monotone on the radio informing us that we had “contact.” This time the attack was serious. The dark shapes moving toward us weren’t customized pickup trucks; they were Republican Guard tanks. A dozen of them had been spotted by an artillery unit to the south, which had fired a few rounds of white phosphorus over us so the forward observers could see what was ahead.
The shapes were grunting south with only one purpose: to kill. Behind us, the artillery started firing, hopelessly off target. There was no way they could have surveyed their position, I thought, never mind used their GPS for targeting. I pictured the Marines aiming the howitzers manually, like rifles. I hoped they knew what they were doing, otherwise we would end up suffering the fate of Iraq’s dismembered 51st Mechanized Division. Then, finally, came the impossible news: The air force, making a belated entrance, was sending some F-15s to the marshlands. There was, however, a horrible catch. It would take them thirty “mikes” to get there.
There was no doubt about it: We were dead.
So what do you do when you think you have thirty minutes to live? In ideal circumstances, I’d pour myself a large vodka martini, put on a favorite record, and write down some final thoughts. Perhaps I’d make a few phone calls: thank yous, good-byes, good-riddances, that kind of thing. If drunk-dialing is bad, imagine death-dialing. That could really get you into some trouble in the morning—if you were unlucky enough to survive whatever it was you thought was going to kill you. But here was my problem: I was with three Marines in the back of a Humvee, in a mudstorm so thick I could barely see my hand in front of my face. There was no booze. And I couldn’t use my phone. Death, it seemed, was not going to happen on my terms.
I’d expected death to feel profound, or at least cinematic. But this felt strangely underwhelming. For a start, I was more angry than scared. What’s the point of dying at the age of twenty-seven? It’s like walking out of a play after the first act. It’s meaningless. It’s a waste. So that’s it then, I thought. I wished I’d done more. I wished I’d tried harder at everything. I wished I hadn’t spent so much of the past decade worrying. I thought about all my visits to Dr. Ruth’s clinic. I wished I’d known then what I knew now: You’re stronger than you think. Then again, I’d been right to be anxious. I’d always thought the 1990s were a scam and that the war virgins’ dot-com lifestyles would end in violence and tears. Now I’d proved myself right.
I thought about the consequences of my death. My grandparents’ final years would be ruined, as would most of the rest of my parents’ lives. My father would blame himself for giving me permission to go to war. Perhaps my parents would divorce, as married couples who lose a son or daughter often do. As for Alana, who knows how my death would affect her? She’d at least become richer. I’d felt so rotten about leaving her alone in Los Angeles that I’d made her the biggest beneficiary of my News International life insurance policy. Perhaps I should have married Alana. Perhaps I should never have dragged her to California in the first place.
I looked at the timer on my glowing digital watch, which I’d set to count down from thirty minutes. There were seventeen more to go.
So did I still consider myself a coward as I sat there waiting to die? Hemingway neatly defined cowardice as “a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.” But how are you supposed to turn off the imagination when you’re trapped in the dark, waiting to find out what it feels like to be dissected and burned by a round from a Soviet-built tank? I’ll be honest: I didn’t feel like a coward for being scared of war. I felt like a coward for agreeing to go to war. I felt like a coward for letting my journalist’s ego get the better of me. I felt like a coward for being so selfish. Because there was more at stake here than my life.
With less than ten minutes remaining on the stopwatch, the howitzers were thumping out rounds of DPICM almost indiscriminately. I wondered if it was a good idea to hose down such a large area: After all, the rounds from the big guns had a “dud rate” of up to 14 percent, and we’d have to drive through our own unexploded munitions if we advanced any further north toward Baghdad.
On the other hand, that wouldn’t be a problem if we all died tonight.
I couldn’t bear to listen to the World Service. If I had, I would have learned that American aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf were having to ground flights because of the weather conditions. I would also have learned that some 2,000 Iraqi troops plus 1,000 irregulars were managing to keep the Coalition forces out of Basra. Other reports, meanwhile, were claiming that Iraq’s Special Republican Guard was advancing south from the Iraqi capital, toward the marshlands.
“Contact in five mikes,” said the radio.
“What are you gonna do when this shit is over?” asked Murphy, who had been sitting in silence, staring at the steering wheel.
“Sit in my backyard and have a fuckin’ beer, probably,” said Hustler, who was standing rigid in the Humvee’s gun turret.
“Maybe I’ll go back to Trinidad and see my folks,” suggested Buck. “My old man can’t fly. We ain’t seen each other in a while.”
“What are you gonna do, Murphy?” I asked.
“I’m gonna get the fuck out of this shithole swamp and go snowboardin’,” he said. “I’m gonna get my truck from my parents’ house, put some Bob Marley on the radio, and drive up to Vermont. It’s gonna be sweet.”
I’d never thought of Murphy as the Bob Marley type.
I looked at my watch: three minutes now.
The fear was making me cold. I pulled my sleeping bag around me.
I closed my eyes.
Then it started. There was a low boom, followed by what sounded like a machine stripping the threads off a bolt. The boom came from ahead of us; the ripped screech came from somewhere above. The noise that followed was so loud I thought it would shake the flesh off my bones. I imagined a steel trapdoor being slammed shut, amplified by Wembley Stadium’s PA system and played back through the echo chamber of the Grand Canyon. The mud banks shook to the rhythm of unconditional annihilation. Someone was gettin’ some, as the Marines would say. I found myself shouting involuntary expletives. Then another trap-door was shut. The noises kept coming until I felt as though someone had torn the membrane out of my eardrums.
The F-15s, I later learned, had arrived just in time. They’d turned off their GPS guidance systems, swung low into the orange fog, and used manual overrides to target the tanks, which had started to flee up Highway 8. The tank drivers mustn’t have been expecting the air force on a night like this.