Kaboom (20 page)

I fell asleep eventually, despite myself.

Captain Whiteback's bellow echoed through the combat outpost. I was in my room sometime around midnight and, in perfect army asymmetry, had just finished briefing my platoon sergeant and section sergeants on the tentative schedule for the next three days. The key word was tentative, of course.
I slumped my shoulders and shook my head. “Why does Allah hate the Irish man?” I asked Staff Sergeant Bulldog, who just snorted in response.

“Better go see what he wants,” SFC Big Country advised, while Staff Sergeant Boondock sneered wickedly. “It's fragolicious!”

It certainly was. Twenty minutes later, we Gravediggers sat in our Strykers at redcon-1, waiting for our terp. The night-blind Suge stumbled down for the mission, helmet in hand, and staggered face-first into the side of the Stryker, falling over. He bounced up, rubbing his head, and yelled at the driver “to turn on Stryker lights, crazy man! It is night out here!” Then our platoon peeled out of the motor pool, set to investigate a reported cache of Katyusha rockets spotted by a group of Iraqi children playing soccer.

When we drove up onto the objective, however, my senior scout reported that a group of IP vehicles was already on the scene. I dismounted with Sergeant Cheech, Corporal Spot, PFC Smitty, Private Hot Wheels, and Suge and told the rest of the platoon to stay mounted and stand by. As I dismounted, Specialist Big Ern played the “Jack Sparrow Anthem” from the
Pirates of the Caribbean
movie soundtrack over his Stryker's external loudspeakers.

“I know you love this song, sir,” he shouted down to me.

I laughed and gave him a thumbs-up. He was right. I did love that song.

I strode up to the cluster of Iraqi police standing next to their trucks, while my soldiers established a security perimeter. I started rattling off questions at the IPs, but they just gazed back at me quizzically. A few more seconds of vulgar silence passed until Suge, being the old African lion that he was, lumbered up to our position, all smiles and apologies, and began to translate.

“What are you guys doing here?” I asked.

The first IP spoke. “Yes, we arrested a drunk tonight!”

I turned to Suge. “No, man, ask them why they are here.” I pointed at the ground below me. “Right here.”

Suge clucked at himself and nodded in understanding. He translated again.

“Because there are rockets over there!” the second IP said, pointing directly to our north.

I shook my head in frustration. I don't get paid enough for this, I thought. “Yes . . . yes, I know that.” I decided that asking how they found out about the rockets was a fruitless endeavor and settled on a less Machiavellian approach to tonight's matters. “Have you guys found the rocket cache yet?”

Suge looked at me, confused. He was having a tough time tonight. I pointed to the north. “Where exactly are the rockets?” I said, trying to contain my grimace.

The second IP spoke again. “Over there!” pointing directly to our north.

I rubbed my temples and said, “Fuck it. Follow us. Sergeant Cheech, Spot, let's bust out the metal detector and—”

A third IP came running up out of the darkness. “Mistah, come, come. We find rockets!”

We followed, and sure enough, we found a small cache of Katyusha rockets in the middle of the field north of the road, buried snugly in a small, man-made cavity at midfield. One of the Iraqi police had marked the position by sticking one of the aforementioned rockets straight into the ground, angling it vertically out of the mud. I turned to Suge, bamboozled at this incredibly foolish marking method.

“Fucking Arabs,” mustered my terp.

My soldiers, who wisely refused to go within ten feet of the cache upon seeing the obviously toyed-with rocket, asked if they could return to their Stryker before an IP accidentally killed everyone.

I pursed my lips thoughtfully. “I'll race you there,” I responded.

For the next twenty minutes until EOD arrived, we overwatched the IPs from the safety of our Strykers, ensuring that they didn't snatch a rocket for their own personal stashes—something I was aware may have occurred before our arrival.

In the meantime, the men in our 3 vehicle roared in hysterics as PFC Das Boot attempted to piss into a bottle to avoid dismounting to relieve himself.

“But Sergeant . . . I do not mean to brag, but my dick, it will not fit into the hole.”

“Das Boot,” Specialist Big Ern asked from the gunner's cupola, “did you use an air pocket or did ya try and stick the whole thing into the bottle?”

Private First Class Van Wilder (recently promoted) did not stop laughing for ten minutes. Staff Sergeant Boondock pulled out his whiteboard and drew a sketch for PFC Das Boot, explaining the importance of leaving a small pocket of air at the rim to improve flow when urinating in a bottle. I was told later that PFC Das Boot eventually achieved mission success in this endeavor.

EOD pulled up, and I briefed their lieutenant on the situation. Fifteen minutes later, all of the Gravediggers had buttoned up in their respective Strykers and listened on the radio as SFC Big Country and the EOD platoon sergeant ensured that everyone was safe before the controlled detonation.

“White, this is White 4. Report when all personnel are secure in vehicles.”

I looked over at PFC Smitty, whose face peeked out of the other rear hatch, and winked. I had ensured that Specialist Flashback parked our Stryker parallel with the detonation area, so we had an ideal view for the detonation. Fuck it, I thought. This is war. Everything we do is a combat risk. What's a little fireworks show?

“This is 1. We're good!” I exclaimed with just enough fervor that an awkward silence followed on the radio.

“Hah, hah, this is gonna be so awesome, sir,” PFC Smitty said.

“I hope so. Remember, I'm only allowing this because I conducted a thorough risk assessment,” I said with just enough dry inflection in my voice to let my guys know I was kidding. “You got the camera on record, Sergeant Spade?”

“You know it,” my gunner said.

“You set, Specialist Flashback?” I asked my driver.

Silence followed.

“You set, Flashback?” I repeated.

More silence.

“Yo, Flashback.”

Snore. Snore. Followed by a deep exhale. And then more snoring. I decided to let the detonation wake him up. He could watch the whole event later on the recording.

The EOD platoon sergeant's voice came back on the net. “Ten seconds until detonation.”

“Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .” I bit down on my lip and braced for the explosion.

“Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!”

KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM.

A small mushroom cloud composed of bright orange smolders and fireball bits pierced the darkness in a flash. Sergeant Spade said later he had seen larger explosions during his first deployment, and was thus a bit underwhelmed, but given that my explosion experience up to this point had been limited to Fourth of July picnics, I certainly was not. A moment of panic had nipped at my brain when I felt a wave of transitory heat brush past my face. Bits of metallic shrapnel did not arrive with it though, thus ensuring that my oral risk assessment conducted earlier could remain a punch line and not a talking point in front of endless field-grade officers' desks.

I looked across from me. I knew my visage matched PFC Smitty's, which glowed through the moonlight—hanging jaw, arched eyebrows deep-fried in
wow, and a slight tightness around the temple area that served as visible evidence that men sometimes did recognize the evaded consequences of their stupidity, if only after the fact.

EOD collected their equipment, thanked us for our patience, and moved out. There was now a large hole in the middle of the soccer field, but at least there weren't any rockets. I woke up Specialist Flashback, and after the other vehicles had woken up their drivers, we rolled back to the combat outpost. We were all asleep within the hour. Another day of missions and patrolling and fragos and counterinsurgency tedium awaited.

“We got nothing, LT.”
Staff Sergeant Boondock's voice ricocheted off the thin walls of the Iraqi hut we had raided in the dead of the night. “No males, military age or otherwise. Our guys must've bounced already. Nothing here but the mom, the teenage daughter, a younger kid, a baby, and a crazy-ass grandma who won't stop giving me the evil eye. Easy, lady! Put down the broom and come outside.”

I stood with the terp Super Mario in the main room of the house, explaining to the mother why we were there. Yes, of course, you can pick up the crying baby. No, we are not here to talk about your eldest daughter being so sick that she's in the hospital, although that is awful. Yes, I want everyone in the house outside. Now. No, you cannot talk to each other. I want to talk to each of you separately. Yeah, including the grandmother.

An hour before, I had been sitting in Sheik Banana-Hands's living room, drinking chai and watching Suzanne Somers's workout videos on very expensive and very golden Arabic couches. My soldiers pulling inner security—Sergeant Cheech and PFC Smitty—were slightly confused by the sight, but I had keyed in on the sheik's dirty-old-man status months ago. Finding him in his pajamas at night learning about the wonders of the Thighmaster only confirmed my suspicions. To his credit though, he hadn't appeared the least bit embarrassed when he found us on his front porch, checking up on him due to a recent assassination threat put out by a JAM cell. He simply invited us in and lectured me about the benefits of “a woman with experience who still exercise. Heh heh heh. You must become habibi [lover] to an older woman as a young man. It is very important.”

Sheik Banana-Hands was in the process of bestowing upon me a brand-new chai set when my dismount radio buzzed with want. “White 1, this is White 4.” SFC Big Country had the unmistakable “I-am-relaying-a-frago-from-Higher-would-a-plan-every-now-and-then-seriously-kill-these-bastards?” crispness to his voice.

“This is 1.”

“Frago.”

“But I'm getting my chai set! Can't it wait?”

“Not for a raid, unfortunately.”

“Raid? Fine. At least it's not another market assessment. I'll be right there.”

Two minutes and a chai set bequeathal later, I received the full rundown from Bounty Hunter X-ray. Fadl, a local thug for a Mahdi Army splinter group, had been spotted at a local female shop owner's house in the northern Shia portion of town with another unknown man. Our source said that Fadl routinely came to this house at night to pay the mother money to freaky-freaky with her teenage daughter.

A family without a man of the house and unable to sustain themselves financially was not a rarity in Saba al-Bor. Unfortunately, neither was the
solution utilized by this particular family. After a quick radio rehearsal and confirmation of the house's location, our ghost tanks raced off into the darkness, grateful for this unscheduled variation in the nightly patrol grind.

The vehicle cordon called set. The dismount teams were stacked. I gave Staff Sergeant Boondock the Aloha shaka', and in they swooped, a silent, efficient testament to hours spent training under the rigid specificity of my NCOs. The raid itself lasted no more than two minutes, yielding no Fadl and no unknown man either.

“Time to tactically question,” I said, mouth racing after one too many Rip-Its. “One at a time on the patio with me, everyone else in the main room, where you can watch and verify that I am not committing horrible infidel acts to your family members. No talking though. My men are going to search your house. Don't worry, they won't break anything. You don't have any weapons? Not even an AK? No banana-clip magazines? Okay. You first, grandma.”

I found two chairs in the main room and pulled them out to the patio. I took off my helmet, set my rifle to the side, and instructed the elderly woman to sit down next to me.

“Hello, ma'am,” I said, completely certain that the manners so carefully ingrained into me by my Southern mother would be lost in translation. “My name is Lieutenant Matt, and I need your help.”

“I know nothing,” she responded to Super Mario's translation automatically. “I am an old woman. I am tired. Let me go back to bed.”

“I will,” I promised. “Just help me first. We're trying to find bad men we know are causing harm to your family.”