“Oh, right,” I said.
My stomach went into freefalclass="underline" Had I made a factual error?
“Beans, bullets, and Band-Aids in short supply,” quoted Hotspur, spitting out the words as though each one were an insult against his mother. “This is a force of Marines that has run out of energy.”
“That’s my story,” I confirmed.
“You broke the ground rules, Chris,” said Hotspur unexpectedly. “You think it’s okay to give our position away? ‘From Chris Ayres near al-Diwaniyah ’? You know what, Chris, I’m glad you’re leaving, because otherwise I’d be kicking your sorry ass out of here. You’re a pisspoor journalist, Chris.”
“What?” I exclaimed. “Captain Rick Rogers gave me permi—”
“Morale was at an all-time low,” quoted Hotspur. “I don’t understand, Chris. I don’t see what you see. Your story’s bullshit.”
I started to mouth silent objections. How could I have broken the ground rules when Buck was the one who’d told me to say we were near al-Diwaniyah? Besides, my front-page tank ambush story on Friday had also been datelined al-Diwaniyah, and no one had said anything about that. What’s more, my account of the supply line jams had all come from the lieutenant colonel. I felt more depressed than angry. I’d been shocked by the openness of the Marines during the invasion, in spite of Buck’s tendency to ignore my annoying questions. Sometimes I’d even wondered if the openness was in the Marines’ best interest. Perhaps Hotspur had come to the same conclusion. Perhaps the Marines were thinking twice about embedding.
Hotspur curled his lip with disgust and walked away.
I felt something tug at my back. I looked around to see the Marine who’d lent me his chair. His neck was taut with anger.
“Gimme my fuckin’ chair back,” he said, pulling the chair harder. This time I fell onto the mud. I couldn’t believe this was happening. “You can sit in the fuckin’ dirt,” he muttered. “I ought to shoot you in the head.”
What could I say? I just sat there, feeling tired and miserable. This made everything so much worse.
After dinner, as dusk turned the sand an unmanly shade of pink, Hotspur returned. I was sitting in the same spot, staring into the disappearing sun, and willing Monday morning to arrive. The captain crouched down and looked me dead in the eyes. “I was pretty hard on you earlier, Chris,” he said. “You’re a good guy. I’ve been reading your stuff. I shouldn’t have gone at you like that.”
“It’s okay,” I said, and I meant it. “It’s been pretty tense around here.”
Hotspur gave a quiet laugh and nodded.
“So are we cool?” he asked, offering a raw, blistered hand.
“Yeah, we’re cool,” I said, shaking it.
“Good,” said Hotspur, slapping my blue shoulder. “I’m gonna try and get you a ride outta here ASAP. Hold tight. I’ll be back.”
At 3:00 A.M. on Monday, March 31—day twelve of the war—Hotspur, my unlikely savior, delivered on his promise. “We got you a helicopter,” he said, shaking me awake in my Beverly Hills sleeping bag. “Get your shit together. You’re leaving in five mikes.” I almost didn’t want to believe it was true, after what had happened the last time with my promised flight back to Kuwait. Still, I knelt on the floor and rolled up my ground mat and sleeping bag as fast as I could, hands shaking with anticipation.
By the time Hotspur returned, I was ready. I prepared myself for another physical ordeal. “Follow me,” said the captain, picking up my laptop case. I jogged on numb legs after him, leaning forward to spread the weight of my flak jacket and rucksack. I kept thinking my knees would give out, throwing me down into the mud. But they held fast, using some secret reserve of strength. When we finally reached the takeoff site, I realized that my ride wasn’t just a helicopter: It was a massive, twin-rotor CH-46 Sea Knight, the kind that used to send American teenagers to their death in Vietnam. The twin turbines shrieked as the blades created their own extreme weather system. “Holy shit,” I shouted, looking up at the enormous blacked-out war machine, almost invisible against the night sky.
“This is the package,” shouted Hotspur to one of the Sea Knight’s copilots, who was wearing a green flight suit, helmet, and night-vision goggles. “He’s going to Kuwait. Take him as far south as you can tonight.”
The copilot handed me a pair of black earmuffs, then used his M-16 to usher me to the back of the helicopter, where there was an open metal hatch. Still wearing my rucksack, I hiked up the ramp, flinging the rest of my bags in front of me. I sat on one of the wooden benches that ran down either side of the cargo area and pulled the earmuffs over my head. I felt as though I was watching a television newsreel with the sound turned down and an industrial-size vacuum cleaner next to my head. My eardrums were buzzing so violently I almost expected them to bleed.
It was dark in the helicopter, with only a fuzzy green glow coming from the cockpit. I could see the outlines of the pilots, backlit by the instruments. My only fellow passenger was a major, who sat on the bench opposite. He said something, but I couldn’t hear. So I just smiled and nodded dumbly.
Eventually the pitch of the turbines changed and I felt the strange vertical thrust of the rotors. The rear hatch, I noticed, was still open. I thought about how much easier this was than the twenty-hour convoy from Basra into the marshlands. I also thought about Fletcher, who was probably in bed somewhere in London. I hoped he wouldn’t be too angry about me leaving Iraq. He would probably regret ever asking me if I wanted to go to war. And then I pictured Kilo Battery, still taking mortar fire somewhere near al-Diwaniyah. Should I have stayed? For now, I didn’t care. I just wanted to get home. I wanted my parents and grandparents to see me alive. I wanted the fear to be over. We gathered speed. I remembered reading that Sea Knight helicopters were vulnerable to attack because they flew lower than ten thousand feet, with a relatively slow top speed of 166 miles per hour—not to mention the noise. I looked out of the open hatch at the infinity of darkness below. There were no streetlamps, no car headlights, no stars, and no moon. Just a terrible, empty blackness. If you see light after sundown in Iraq you’re about to either kill or be killed. I thought about all the pain and death of the past twelve days. How could this wrecked and tortured country ever recover? Would the Americans ever leave? I wondered how many Marines would be flown out of Mesopotamia in plastic bags, and how many Iraqis would be killed by their liberators. Was the war right? I wished I had a stronger opinion. I just wanted to go home. I looked at the major in front of me. His head was slumped back and his eyes were shut.
I can’t remember what came first: the orange flash on the ground, the popping sound, or the stink of cordite carried over the cold night breeze. But I remember a delay before the fear and the sickness took hold.
“What the hell was that?” I shouted silently to the sleeping major. The turbines thrummed inside my head. I looked right, through the glass screen of the cockpit, and saw cyborg outlines against a green background. The aircraft shook and banked. I wondered if I was already dead. An orange flash. The Iraqis must have aimed at the noise coming out of the clouds. A popping sound. The bastards must have fired a rocket-propelled grenade. I imagined the fate I avoided by a few lucky yards: the mangled blades, the fiery hulk, the blackened human shapes. War is so random, I thought. In war, no one is special. In war, you always die for someone else’s cause.