Fives and Twenty-Fives (36 page)
They pulled me to my feet and I understood, for the first time, how good my father and brother had become at their war. The marines gave me a tour as they hauled me toward their Humvees.
I saw the Iraqi army truck to the south, smoking and ruined, with the dead pieces of men all around it.
I saw Haji Fasil’s limp figure in a pile near the farmhouse, a jagged hole in his forehead and a splay of blood and gore against the wall behind him. Who had fired the bullet that killed him? An American? A
jundi
? My brother? Who could say?
I saw Hani scrambling to get away from the marines who wanted to cuff him like they had cuffed me. He wanted to reach Mundhir, who was swimming away from the stricken
kitr
, returned from its morning fishing excursion a few minutes too soon. I saw Hani break free and reach Mundhir in time to help him drag ashore Abu Abdul’s broken corpse.
They put me in a vehicle with Pederson, who told his marines to remove the cuffs. “Get those off him, right now,” he screamed, before turning back to me, suddenly gentle again. “Sorry there, bud. We put the cuffs to guard against the chance that someone is still watching. We’re waiting for a postblast team, and then we’re bringing you back to Government Center for a debrief with our intel guys . . .”
I stopped listening to him then. I watched from my window as Mundhir cradled Hani’s head in his powerful hands and smoothed our friend’s hair as they both wept.
“Of course,” I said to Pederson. “Take me wherever. I do not care.”
I acknowledge this nonpunitive letter of caution.
Though not directed at a military superior, and therefore not governed by the Uniform Code of
Military Justice, my disrespectful remarks toward a member of
the U.S. Foreign Service brought discredit on the Marine Corps and the United States naval service. My actions showed a lack of
judgment and were unbecoming of
a gentleman and officer of
Marines.
This letter, though nonpunitive in nature, will nonetheless be taken as a corrective measure. I will exercise greater care in the performance of
my duties, both in garrison and in combat.
Respectfully submitted,
P. E. Donovan
I hail a cab on St. Charles Avenue at eleven thirty on New Year’s Eve and ask the driver to take me to the French Quarter. He’s justifiably annoyed, but eventually agrees. I’ve decided on a whim to drift into Molly’s on the off chance that I’ll find Paige there. Without the courage to call her, it’s the best I can do.
The crowds become impassable when the cab reaches Canal Street, so I throw the driver a big tip to compensate for leaving him stuck without a ready fare or an easy way out. Molly’s is on the far side of the Quarter, almost to Esplanade. It’s a mile to walk, down streets packed with drunks, meandering en masse toward the river in an effort to catch the last of the fireworks.
I pass through Jackson Square as the fireworks reach their crescendo, and trudging through the crowd with my hands in my pockets, I try not to notice the couples gliding off into dark corners.
A sense of embarrassment catches me off guard, as I become suddenly aware that I’m underdressed in my jeans and boots. Everywhere I look, young revelers are dressed to the nines. Women brave the cold night in their shiny party dresses by cozying up to men in slacks and high-collared sweaters. I bow my head and try to hide inside my canvas bomber jacket. I worry about running into a classmate, alone as I am on New Year’s Eve, lacking the self-respect to even dress for the occasion.
I miss Paige in a way I didn’t expect. I feel the urge to call her, but at midnight on New Year’s Eve? After I’ve stood her up five days running? I can’t. It would be worse than desperate. It would be desperately selfish.
Even if Paige isn’t working, even if she happens to be at Molly’s, it’s hard to imagine how she’d have an interest in seeing me. Maybe I’m looking for Paige so she can tell me to my face that I’m an idiot. I need to grow up, and a midnight phone call isn’t the place to start. I should bear things for what they are. I should take responsibility.
The brass buttons had hurried back to Ramadi to spread the story of our dustup. He must have told anyone who would listen because it became the talk of the Ramadi chow hall that night. The lieutenant with the nerve to tell off a diplomat. A decidedly junior diplomat, but still. All the regimental staff officers had a good laugh, I’m sure. But not the commander.
We pulled into the marshaling yard just after dark and I stood aside while Gomez and Zahn supervised the breakdown of the convoy and the cleaning of the vehicles. They pushed the Marines to hurry so they could get some chow before the dinner line closed.
Cobb, in the marshaling yard to prep his platoon for an overnight construction mission, pulled me aside. He’d been on watch in the operations center when Major Leighton got the late-afternoon call. Because I hadn’t reached Taqaddum in time to warn him, Major Leighton was blindsided. Regiment learned about the dustup before he did, which was unforgivable. I’d made it look like he couldn’t control his lieutenants or even stay up-to-date on their antics.
My stomach dropped. I imagined him bursting into the company offices in the morning, wheezing fury and letting it spill over the plywood walls so everyone in the company could know how incompetent and clueless I’d made him look. I decided that hiding from him wouldn’t help me. I wanted to get it over with first thing, so I went over to the operations center and volunteered to take Gunny Dole’s overnight watch shift. Gunny Dole smiled, thanked me, and hustled out before I had time to change my mind.
I didn’t even bother to shower or change out of my stinking flight suit. The overnight shift would keep me awake, as would the quickly healing but still painful blisters under my eyes. I’d stand up from the watch officer’s chair around six o’clock the next morning, set myself by his office door, and present myself for a dressing-down as he came in from breakfast.
I collapsed into the watch officer’s rolling chair and pulled myself up to the desk, drawing a line in the logbook and writing in block letters, “I, Second Lieutenant P. E. Donovan, have relieved the watch. I have nothing significant to report at this time.”
The sergeants stood, looking confused by my filthy uniform and wafting stench. They took turns briefing me. Intelligence. Movement control. Logistics tasking. They each issued a crisp, well-prepared update on the operational picture.
Most of our convoys went out at night. The watch officer represented the company while Major Leighton slept, responsible for all vehicles and personnel on the road, and ready at any time to update higher headquarters on the company’s current operations.
The sergeants finished briefing me and returned to their routine. They’d been forced by Gunny Dole’s empty uniform to run the overnight shift on their own and had consequently developed a tight system. Information packaged in clipped speech moved around the room in choreographed bursts. I didn’t have much to contribute, so I leaned back in the tall chair and listened to the hum.
Computer screens, scattered at watch stations around the room, burned out my night vision. I rubbed my eyes, avoiding the sore patches where the blisters had been, and blinked away the spots. Printed banners came into focus. Over the intelligence desk, a banner read WHAT DO I KNOW
? WHO NEEDS TO KNOW IT? HAVE I TOLD THEM?
And over the door: COMPLACENCY KILLS
.
Field telephones with ringers more grinding and caustic than any in the civilian world rattled folding tables against stone floors. Sketchy rumors of enemy activity flowed through the intelligence clerk to the movement-control sergeant, who used the information to alter convoy routes over the radio. Notations appeared in grease pencil on the laminated wall map.
A stack of radios, mounted to a table in the corner, squealed with transmissions from convoys and dismounted patrols moving under cover of night. Reports of small-arms fire and suspicious vehicles came through the speakers in snippets, breathy and rushed. A lance corporal from the communications section struggled to write it all down on yellow slips. Each slip had a box for the date and time, the sender’s call sign, and the message description.
The lance corporal sweated over the details. The kid didn’t understand friction, yet. How chaos in the field distorted everything. How it made every message irrelevant before it ever went out over the air. Still, he tried to understand it all. He massaged scratchy transmissions into coherent, if contradictory, exchanges and meekly offered me a stack of yellow slips every hour or so.
I’d thank him and give each message a glance, but only because he had worked so hard. The real story always came through the computer. We had a chat room set up on the classified network. Watch officers from around the battle space used it to coordinate operations in real time. The watch officer in Ramadi, a nameless major responsible for all of western Iraq, demanded status updates at random intervals. He used the same, easily overlooked message each time: “MNF-W_Watch Officer: All stations, update status.” He did it that way, subtly, to ensure that the junior watch officers didn’t fall asleep. If a subordinate station didn’t reply inside thirty seconds with a curt “NSTR”— nothing significant to report—the next grinding ring on the tactical line would be an unpleasant, accusative call from regimental headquarters in Ramadi.
On the other side of the desk, a blue force-tracker terminal showed convoys and dismounted patrols as icons moving along the highways, or stationary at intersections. When a blue force tracker somewhere outside the wire reported an IED attack or a snap vehicle checkpoint, the terminal gave a beep and the icon flashed.
I selected the icon representing Cobb’s platoon and checked how long he’d been sitting still. He and his Marines had set a cordon at an intersection north of Fallujah and were working through the night to build a vehicle checkpoint for the Iraqi Army. They arranged Hesco baskets in defensive positions on either side of the road and used front-end loaders to fill them with dirt. They set steel traffic barriers in the asphalt and strung them with razor wire.
When finished, the barriers would force approaching cars and trucks into slow, serpentine turns, making it harder to charge the checkpoint with a vehicle bomb. But until then, Cobb’s platoon was a target, ripening with each passing hour they remained stationary.
Three times, Cobb’s Marines sent up flares to warn off traffic. Kinetic events, like flares and escalations of force, triggered official reports to regimental headquarters, due within an hour of the event. So, each time it happened, Cobb called on the satellite phone to walk me through the sequence of events. The type of car. The provocative behavior. We called the assembled details “the word picture.”
Most on-scene commanders used the radio to pass reports, but Cobb liked the satellite phone. It made him feel like a world traveler, a young adventurer. On the radio, he would have to speak in short bursts while the whole battle space listened in. Cobb didn’t have the patience for that. He liked to tell stories and infuse each narrative with stock characters and surprise endings. Somehow, he always managed to make the story about himself.
Cobb’s Marines finished their work around five o’clock, and their blue force-tracker icon started moving half an hour later, just as the watch shift changed. Wong took my chair and made a note in the logbook. The outgoing shift briefed him as they’d briefed me the night before.
Properly relieved, the sergeants shuffled off to the chow hall, but I spent thirty minutes sitting next to Wong. When it became palpably awkward, I ambled to the back of the room and hung around Major Leighton’s office door.
The adrenaline of the watch drained away. My legs and eyelids went soft and I struggled to stay alert. I stopped myself from leaning against the plywood wall, afraid I might fall asleep standing up. My cheeks felt rough, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t shaved in two days. The flaw in my plan came into focus. Not only had I humiliated him in front of the entire command, I now had the gall to appear before him unshaven while wearing a soiled uniform. I wanted to run, shower, and shave and come back in half an hour looking refreshed. But Major Leighton stepped into the operations center before I had a chance. He looked anxious and distracted, clutching his coffee mug and classified briefing folder.
I summoned my nerve and stood up straight.
He stopped midstride and raised his eyebrows, looking puzzled as to why a lieutenant would stand at attention by his office door at six in the morning. He waited for me to say something.
I searched his face for clues, having failed to anticipate this turn of events. I’d imagined the moment many times and prepared for a dozen unpleasant scenarios, but never planned to initiate my own reprimand. Finally, Major Leighton’s face showed some recognition, like the memory of a root canal. He closed his eyes, pulled a slow, sour breath through his gritted teeth, and pointed at his office.
I followed him and came to attention six inches in front of his desk.
He didn’t raise his voice or lose his temper. He just glanced at a typed document, formatted in flawless naval correspondence, and pushed it across his desk. “Sign it.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” I leaned forward at modified parade rest, bent over with one hand tucked in the small of my back, and signed it without reading. I knew what it said.