The interview was over: I had my story.
After filing the seven hundred words, Fletcher didn’t call me back. So on Saturday morning I hitched another lift south. Regardless of whether Buck had been lying about the phone ban, it was too late to turn around now. I’d made my decision. Besides, the 1st Marine Division didn’t seem to be going anywhere. This was clearly affecting the morale of some Marines, who’d expected Operation Iraqi Freedom to be as quick and decisive as Stormin’ Norman’s walkover in 1991. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re the only people in shock and awe,” one of the men confided.
I used my recently liberated Thuraya to call Alana and my mother. They both sounded pleased, but nervous, that I was on my way out of Iraq. I didn’t blame them: I was pretty nervous, too. My mother was worried that even Kuwait wouldn’t be safe: An Iraqi Seersucker missile had apparently hit Souq Sharq, the luxury shopping mall on the Persian Gulf that I’d visited before the war.
The journey down the supply lines was made in short, terrifying bursts, usually via the backseat of canvas-covered Humvees. Each Marine camp seemed bigger than the last. Eventually I reached a base of perhaps one hundred hooches surrounded by tanks and UH-1 Huey helicopters. One of the pilots offered me a lift back to Kuwait. It sounded too good to be true: It was. In an agonizing hundred-yard sprint, I managed to haul my rucksack, tent bag, and laptop to the takeoff site while still wearing my flak jacket and helmet. Then I found out that a colonel had taken my seat.
“Sorry,” said the pilot, giving me thumbs down.
I stood in the dirt, sweating and exhausted, as the downdraft from the Huey’s blades sandblasted my face. I was devastated.
By late afternoon I’d resigned myself to spending the night at the camp and resuming my journey south on Sunday. I was surprised, therefore, when Capt. Jim Hotspur turned up in a Humvee and offered to take me further down the supply line. I’d never felt pleased to see him before. We sat together in the back of the vehicle with Hotspur pointing his M-16 out the window. “We’ve got the package!” he yelled into his radio. I felt as though I’d been kidnapped.
“Why are you leaving?” asked Hotspur as we drove.
“My editor wants me back in Kuwait,” I lied.
“Interesting,” he said.
Hotspur was aware of the real reason. He knew that I was BS’ing him.
“By the way,” said Hotspur. “Do you have a Thuraya phone?”
I couldn’t help smiling. I knew what was coming. It was almost a relief: Buck Rogers hadn’t been lying to me after all.
“Yeah,” I said.
“We’re gonna have to take it,” he said. “It’s an order, I’m afraid. The phones have been compromised: The Iraqis are using ’em to track our positions. You’re gonna have to give me the phone and the battery. Some sneaky bastards have been giving us their goddamn spare batteries. Write your name, media organization, and address on the handset and we’ll get it back to you whenever we can.”
Yeah, right, I thought. But I wasn’t going to object: It was pointless. And at least my excuse for leaving Iraq was genuine.
I reached into my bag for the phone.
“It’s okay,” said Hotspur. “Give it to me at the camp.”
It was nearly dusk when we reached 1st Marine Division headquarters, a familiar desert metropolis of hooches, trailers, and military vehicles. It seemed as though there were enough Marines at the camp to fill Baghdad. I ended up in a semicovered press area, where an older American reporter, raw from the sun, was talking loudly into an Iridium phone. A few other embeds were hanging around, smoking cigarettes and taking notes in bored longhand. After I surrendered my Thuraya to one of Hotspur’s men, a Marine offered me his camping chair. I gratefully took it. I couldn’t help wishing, however, that I’d managed to get on the damn helicopter. After all, I guessed that I was still 170 miles north of Kuwait City. And although I was scared of flying over the southern war zone, I wanted to get home so badly I didn’t care.
“Who d’you write for?” asked the older American when he was finished dictating a story update to his Washington bureau chief.
“London Times,”I said.
“Did you hear about the Swede?” he asked with gleeful eyes.
“No. I didn’t.”
“He was a unilateral,” said the embed, who sounded like a New Yorker. “Thought he could get into Iraq by driving over the border in a Hertz rental. He ended up being stopped by a couple of Republican Guard at a checkpoint somewhere near Basra. They took his car, stripped him of all his clothes, pointed him in the direction of Kuwait City, and told him to walk back.”
The embed gave a staccato laugh.
“Christ,” I said.
“Apparently the only thing that saved him was his Swedish passport. The Iraqis told him that if he’d been an American, or a Brit, they would have shot him in the head. Gotta love the Swedes, right?”
I imagined the horror of having to walk, naked, back to Kuwait.
“Perhaps the passport was fake,” I said.
“Whatever,” said the embed, laughing. “Now he’s got to put a Ford Taurus on his expenses sheet. Somewhere in Sweden, there’s gonna be one unhappy sonofabitch of an editor. But at least he’s still alive.”
“Did he survive the walk?” I asked.
“I assume from the fact I heard the story that he survived. The army probably picked him up near the DMZ. They must have been laughing their asses off when they saw a naked Swedish unilateral approaching them.”
I looked around me. If I’d been assigned to the 1st Marine Division’s headquarters, I thought, I probably would have lasted the whole war. Then again, the embeds there looked like caged animals. That’s the military’s big secret: It makes you so sick with boredom that fear comes as a relief.
The rest of the day passed slowly, one second at a time.
That night, after managing to eat my first MRE since leaving the front lines, I sat in one of the hooches and watched a DVD of Dr. Strangelove, starring Peter Sellers, on a sergeant’s laptop. I fell asleep before the end.
For the first time since Camp Grizzly, I didn’t dream of anything.
“YOU! AYRES!”
This wasn’t a good way to start Sunday morning. I was sitting on the borrowed camping chair, snoozing, with The Quiet American on my lap. Somewhere behind me, a chaplain in a camouflaged cassock was giving communion. I felt exhausted and depressed. The war was catching up to me.
I opened my eyes to see Hotspur. He was gripping a clipboard and fizzing with barely controlled rage.
“Hi,” I said optimistically.
“I read your story on the Early Bird, Chris,” announced Hotspur. The Early Bird, I vaguely remembered, was the Pentagon’s news clippings service. A daily edition was faxed to senior officers in the field.