Fives and Twenty-Fives (13 page)

“What am I doing at this time?” Dodge asked.

“While they’re working, I need you at the front of the column with the bullhorn telling the Iraqi drivers to be patient. Tell them we’re doing this for their protection and that, you know, we’ll be done in a minute. Oh, most important: tell them not to get close to us.”

Dodge nodded. “Of course. Very simple. I can tell them that.”

Marceau stopped at the edge of the hole and walked the perimeter twice while passing the metal detector slowly over the broken asphalt. Mindful of his feet on the jagged edges, he bent at the knee and tested for soft patches of asphalt, extending the magnet out over the hole.

“Yo, Zahn!” Gomez called out. Her thumb hovered over the transmit button. “Looks at least three feet deep, ten across. Think ten bags, two hundred gallons.”

Just then, Marceau stopped moving. He reeled back his arm, stepped away from the hole, and held his right arm out, parallel to the deck with an open palm.

“Hole is hot,” Gomez called out.

Corporals in charge of the various work details echoed her, instructing their Marines to stay put as the reducing charge came up.

Marceau started back, walking slowly but with purpose.

Dodge nudged me. “Is there a fucking bomb in that hole, man?”

“Yes, there is. Pretty much every time.”

“And you send him out there? Every time?”

“They take turns,” I said.

“Fuck.”

“That’s the job.”

“Fuck, man.”

I stood and pointed at the bomb techs. They nodded and sent the robot scurrying forward with the clearing charge.

Marceau made it out of the standoff zone and chucked the metal detector into the truck. I noticed how he tried to hide the violent shaking of his hands as he unleashed a bit of prepared choreography, quipping to Gomez, “Shuffle, hop, step. Heel change. Paradiddle.”

Zahn walked over, handed him a can of Copehagen, and said, “I just shit my pants for you, asshole. You’re fuckin’ welcome.”

The robot placed a small explosive in the hole, then came squealing back at top speed. After waiting a beat, the bomb techs called fire in the hole and the reducing charge went off with a loud thump. A sharp crack followed as the enemy explosives detonated. Artillery rounds, I could tell, from the shrapnel hissing into the desert, kicking up a thousand little dust plumes.

Only then did the enterprise truly come to life. The two security Humvees moved forward to bring the pothole inside the secured area. Ground guides walked the Humvees through the tight spaces between the seven-tons and the shoulder while the gunners braced themselves against the turrets. Generators and compressors coughed to life and ground their way up to a loud, steady whine. Marceau and his minions worked at the edges of the hole with their asphalt saws while Zahn pushed his lance corporals at the mixer to have cement to pour the moment the hole was ready for a patch.

I stood and pulled Dodge up by his flak. “Let’s get up front.”

Dodge tapped me on the shoulder and yelled in my ear to be heard over the din, “Do they need assistance?” He pointed to the Marines struggling in their full combat load to pass bags of concrete from the truck.

“No. They’re fine. Stay with me.”

“They look like they could do with some assistance. I can carry bags. The people in the cars ahead of us know what to do. They are experienced Iraqi drivers, I assure you. They do not need instructions.”

I opened my mouth to answer, but chose not to yell over the noise of the saws. I just grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him along.

At the front of the cordon, where the noise faded, I reached into the passenger seat of the lead Humvee and grabbed the bullhorn. I pointed emphatically to the line of cars idling a hundred meters down the road and handed the bullhorn to Dodge. “Like we talked about. Tell them we’re here for their protection and we’ll be done in a minute.”

Dodge smiled when he saw the bullhorn, instantly forgetting all his earlier concerns. “Of course,
Mulasim
,” he said, wiping his brow. “I will do this.” He snatched the bullhorn and, walking toward the Humvee’s front fender, pumped it in the air like a prize. Standing up straight, he put the microphone to his lips and called out in Arabic. It was like he’d been waiting all his life for this moment.

He leaned back and howled with his eyes closed. Every few sentences, he put the bullhorn down, gestured wildly at the Marines, and laughed. He walked from one side of the road to the other, low to the ground and bobbing his head like a duck. He put his hands in the small of his back and shimmied like Mick Jagger. Iraqis got out of their cars to watch, laughing with him.

I didn’t have time and didn’t care enough to admonish him. I walked back to the massive pothole where the Marines were already awash in dust, covered head to foot in a fine layer of concrete silt. Sweat seeped through their flight suits and mixed with the powder. A stiff mud, always drying in the sun faster than the sweat could get it wet, added to the weight of their combat load and got heavier as the day wore on.

The concrete bags came off the truck. Marines at the mixer poured wet cement into the hole. Batch after batch, the hole got smaller. But even with Gomez and Zahn urging them on, the pace slackened. I looked at my watch. We’d been sitting still too long. I could feel the desert getting closer, the town. Eyes were creeping in on us, I knew. Estimating ranges. Setting up mortars. Sighting in their sniper rifles. Every inch of that place, every grain of sand, wanted desperately to kill us.

Soon, the generators and compressors rumbled to a stop. Marines collapsed the mixer and began moving the unused bags of concrete back to the truck. Gomez and a few of her underlings concentrated on smoothing out the new patch.

In the silence, it occurred to me that something was missing. I didn’t hear Dodge. I squinted through the shimmer and looked for him at the front of the cordon. Failing to find him there, I searched the faces of the Marines walking past me.

I found him a moment later, twenty feet away from me with a bag of concrete on his shoulder. Nearly buckling under the weight, he struggled not to fall over backward. Two Marines brushed past carrying concrete bags of their own, mistaking Dodge for a Marine and urging him on.

“Hey,” I called out, “Dodge!”

He didn’t hear me.

I walked over and grabbed his shoulder, taking some of the weight and helping him lower the bag to the ground. “This is not your job. I need you at the front of the cordon, okay?
That’s
your job. Do you understand?” I saw immediately, in his glassy eyes, that he didn’t.

“Just insane. It’s too hot. Too much.” He was slurring and not even sweating as he had been before.

I called, “Corpsman, up! Heat casualty.”

Doc jogged over and took a knee. “Motherfuckin’ idiot.” He opened his pack. “I tried to tell him, sir. I tried. You hear me, Dodge? Dumb as shit. Just relax, now.
Grown
-ups in charge.”

“Did you see me, man?” Dodge asked. “Back onstage? Looking good, huh?”

“Sure were.”

“I was like David Lee Roth up there. Singing to my people. ‘California Girls’!”

“No kidding?” Doc Pleasant, preparing a fluid bag and tube, turned to me. “I need his core temp real quick, sir. He doesn’t look too bad. Just a little dehydrated. Still have to check, though.”

I left Doc to his work as Gomez walked over with the concrete stamp. “Ready for you, sir.”

The stamp was a length of steel rebar twisted into the shape of a castle, the symbol of the engineers. They were ready for me to mark the wet concrete to show it was the Marines that filled this hole, not the bad guys.

The convoy began to fall back into the original order of march. Marines loaded into their trucks and the security Humvees continued their watch. Zahn pulled up next to the patch with the passenger door open so I could hop in quickly.

I pushed the stamp into the wet cement and handed it to Gomez. Then I knelt and, with the back of my pen, scribbled the date, the time, and our unit abbreviation. I wiped the pen on the leg of my flight suit before I jumped into the Humvee. It was the only visible spot of concrete on me.

Doc Pleasant had Dodge sitting up in the backseat with a bottle of water between his legs and a tube taped to his arm. He looked better.

“I know you feel like it’s the right thing,” I told him, closing the door behind me. “But . . . Just leave that stuff to the Marines, okay? They have a job, and so do you.”

“Of course,
Mulasim
,” he said with his eyes closed. “Next time I will be . . . far more sensible.”

Doc Pleasant tapped Dodge on the knee. “He’s good, sir. Just needed a little pick-me-up.”

Dodge opened his eyes, turned to Doc Pleasant. “
Shukran
, Lester.”

It was the first time I’d ever heard Doc’s given name. Dodge knew the kid before I did.

Gomez called out on the radio, “Actual, we’re up.”

“Roger. Oscar Mike.”

“Saw you dancing back there,” Pleasant said to Dodge. “Pretty funny.”

“You liked that, man? Next time you must do it with me.”

“Where’d you learn that, anyway?”

“Baghdad.”

Small-arms fire cracked overhead as we passed the town. Two weak bursts, lacking commitment. The ambush they’d spent thirty minutes planning came together a few minutes late. I called in the contact report and rolled through. We didn’t even stop for it.

“First time you’ve been shot at, Dodge?” I asked.

“No, man. Like I said, Baghdad.”

Crazy big show! At Siberia! This Friday! Featuring!

THE BLOOD ROYALE. Metal/punk crossover from Austin, TX. Members of
Gutbucket, The Drunks, Dixie Witch, Transfixr, Mala Suerte, Sap, Suburban Terror Project, and Bukkake.

WINDHAND. Richmond, VA, female-fronted stoner/doom metal featuring members of
The Might Could, Alabama Thunderpussy, and Facedowninshit.

VERMIN UPRISING. First performance. NOLA-based metal duo.

Lizzy

I park my truck a few blocks from the bar, thinking this has gotta be the wrong place. Down the side streets, I see Ninth Ward shotgun houses, all dark and boarded up. Worse, some of them ain’t boarded up at all. Could be anybody living in there.

And forget about streetlights. It’s a black hole. Any place you turn off St. Claude. But the sign above the door says clear as anything SIBERIA, in big, block letters. And the crowd of white kids, standing outside to smoke, confirms it.

I unbuckle my seat belt, grab the door handle, and stop myself, just to give the potholed street and the trash-strewn sidewalk a good, hard look. Litter. Just an eyesore, right? A quick glance should be all you need.

Look, a bag of chicken bones covered in flies.

Look, an empty forty-ounce beer bottle in a brown paper bag.

I shouldn’t notice that the bag looks a little too heavy, or that for some reason the breeze doesn’t make that empty beer bottle roll around. It shouldn’t take all kinds of science and a full goddamn minute of my life every time I step out this truck.

But it does. I should just go home.

My heart speeds up a little bit as I get out, getting madder at myself with each passing second. I’m about to walk into a heavy-metal show packed with knuckleheads. Not the best idea. I lock my overnight duffel in the truck next to my trauma bag.

Dodge told me about how he and his friends used to put on punk-rock shows in Baghdad. Before the war.

After we made it back from the mission where Dodge went down as a heat casualty before we’d even patched the first hole, Sergeant Gomez put me in charge of watching him. Told me to sit with him in the barracks, next to the air conditioner, and make sure he got hydrated.

“Make this fucker push fluids,” she said, still wearing her flight suit from the road, still covered in sweat and caked with muck. “And don’t let me see him outside until after evening chow. You hear me? Not even to piss. He goes behind that poncho and pisses in bottles, the dumb motherfucker.”

Dodge smiled up at her, sitting on his cot with a bottled water between his thighs. “Much thanks, my sergeant,” he said, slurring a bit. “Most kind.”

She scowled at him, like she was looking for a reason to take offense. But after a few tense seconds, and after she’d pushed some of that black hair behind her ear, she turned to me and snapped, “Doc, save this asshole’s piss bottles. I want proof that he’s pushed at least five liters before morning.”

“Aye, aye, Sergeant,” I said, my back straight until she’d finished storming out.

Dodge’s eyes were wide like saucers when I finally sat down across from him. “Lester, truly, will she examine my urine tomorrow?”

I nodded. “Probably. Not much for exaggeration, that one.”

“Astonishing, Lester. This is the first American woman I have met, and she does not disappoint.”

I laughed, despite having to skip my chance at a shower on account of him. And I guess because he was still woozy, not quite on his game, he started talking about his life in Baghdad before the war. Nothing too coherent. Things he probably wasn’t supposed to tell me.