Princes of War (41 page)

“What the fuck?” Cuebas exclaimed. He went to his knees.

“What? What?” Moose asked urgently.

Cuebas examined something by his feet. Both men turned on their lights.

A long bulky roll of dirty sheeting lay on the floor, extending half the kiln’s diameter.

Both men stared silently.

Both shone their lights. Moose remembered the warehouse. He knew what was on the floor.

“Think there’s a body in that,” he said, wiggling his light on it.

“Ayeee, no fucking welcoming party,” Cuebas cracked.

26

Wynn stood over her body. They’d pulled her out of the kiln and opened the sheets she was wrapped in. He stood over her in the full glare of the daylight now, strong, tall, dominating, like an executioner after an execution. He hadn’t personally killed her, but that didn’t prevent him from feeling a measure of success. The sun warmed rapidly, relentless, shining on the scene around them like a spotlight on a dissection table. A ferocious curiosity simmered in him. He wanted to know the mind of this woman, what had made her who she was. Alive, she might answer a ton of questions. Of course, the answers would be unsatisfactory. He never expected to understand her world. Probably no westerner could.

Her corpse lay on its side, arms crossed and folded over her chest, head tilted forward, knees bent slightly, as if sleeping, lifeless as the brick kilns. A large brown patch of dried blood stained her midsection, evidence of the wound that killed her. She now lay exposed, and fat green flies buzzed her nose and mouth in growing fury, as if repossessing something that was rightfully theirs. Rigor mortis was well advanced. If they turned the corpse upright and sat her on her backside, she would be frozen in a pose not unlike a woman in the middle of a sit-up. Alternatively, if they flipped her over, putting her weight on her arms, face down, she’d almost look as if she’d assumed the position of Islamic prayer. But she lay as she did on the soiled sheets. Her face held a fierce grimace, a look she would take to eternity.

They estimated that she’d been dead for more than a day. Her skin was taut from body thickening, purplish-gray, and drying, but she was not yet grotesquely bloated. Her hands, thin and boney, had long gnarled fingers stuck out like stalks of young bamboo. Wynn was surprised how ordinary she looked, maybe five-foot-three or -four, with small facial features, typical coal-black hair, not unlike someone you could imagine as a nanny or a music tutor. He felt she should look special. She had shot and killed American soldiers and an Iraqi child. Why? Her eyelids were closed. Not being able to see those eyes was somehow unfair, as if there would be no
knowing
without looking into that cavern. Whatever thoughts or vision she’d had were gone forever.

The body was not washed or shrouded. Since among her group she would surely be considered a martyr, Islamic custom required that she be buried uncleaned in the clothes she died in within a day or two of death. The white cloth in which she’d been wrapped was part of the customary burial prep, too. So this was how they found her: as she had died, ready for burial. Islamic extremists rarely bothered to send their dead back to their home countries.

The Wolfhounds had not killed her today. All the men knew it. And they all had the same unanswered questions. How had she died? If the Wolfhounds
had
killed her, it could only have been on the day of the school shooting. But he doubted that was the case. If that were true, her body would have swollen more by now. Nor had the Wolfhounds had an extended firefight at the warehouse. No shots were fired at the checkpoint explosion site, nor did they have any information that PFA was even involved in that attack. Maybe she had been shot by another platoon. Her companions had probably dragged her away and given her rudimentary medical care. He didn’t think she’d lived long after being wounded. She had no padding under the clothing around her belly to indicate any bandaging. Curious, he knelt down and patted the brown stain in her stomach area. The wound area remained a little spongy, but was dry and crinkly, the blood long since coagulated. She’d probably bled out from the wound and been carried here soon after.

Moose and Cuebas stood near Wynn. Wynn looked at them; each man was nearly expressionless, eyes just visible under their helmets, weapons still ready in their hands. Wynn thought he might read disappointment in their eyes, but wasn’t sure.

“You guys all right?” he asked.

Both men nodded, but remained quiet.

They’d be happy about the success, Wynn was sure, but less happy than they would have been had the winning shot been one of theirs. Though they found the sniper, no one could claim credit for having fired the kill shot. But adrenaline still rode high, and other than a hint of weariness in their postures, he was confident each man was ready to go.

“The bitch,” Wynn heard Moose mumble.

He saw Cooke walking towards them. He expected CPT Baumann shortly. Baumann would be pleased. The operation had been a success. They’d clearly damaged an insurgent cell. The count of enemy dead was seven, including a one-sandaled man near this kiln. At least four were killed by the Wolfhounds. Two bodies lay outside the kilns, two others inside. One was killed by 3
^rd
platoon. Another body—a man with a red Santa Claus beard—looked, strangely, as if he had been dead a couple of days. One wounded insurgent was barely conscious, but alive. He had a bullet hole in the shoulder and a dirty bandage strapped around his head and one eye. Two Americans had been wounded.

A shadow of skepticism passed through Wynn’s mind like a cold draft of air.
What if she wasn’t the sniper?
Nothing identified her. None of the Wolfhounds had actually seen this woman fire a shot. For that matter, no reports had come to the battalion, other than from the information discovered in the warehouse, even confirming the existence of a female sniper. But a few minutes ago a Tabuk Dragunov sniper rifle had been found inside one of the other kilns. That confirmed the likelihood of a sniper being among them. They might never know for sure whether she was, in fact, the sniper. But he felt pretty certain she was. The woman had been wrapped, but not buried. Maybe they hadn’t had time to bury her, or perhaps they were trying to protect her body. To show her to someone? Word had been on the street. The insurgents had been holed up exactly where the egg lady heard they were. Women involved in insurgent groups were rare, yet here she was. All this suggested she was the sniper. Back in America it would be much easier. Fingerprints or other forensic evidence could be used to confirm. She would have had a known past. Investigators back home would be able to determine all that with about a 99 percent probability. None of that was possible here.

Wynn went over to see Tyson. The MEDEVAC bird was expected any minute. Lee and Cruz still worked on Tyson, who was in very serious condition, drifting in and out of consciousness. He’d hardly moved. His whole head was now wrapped in bandages. Wynn took a knee and kissed Tyson on the top of the head. Cruz said the bullet had smashed into his cheek and exited the back of his neck. Tyson had a tube stuck down his nose to keep the airway open, and he hadn’t spoken, but occasionally made gurgling sounds, like a man might make prior to spitting out mouthwash. The wound in this cheek had grotesquely swollen. His mouth was open more than it ought to be. The injury swelled his nose, internal bleeding turned it purple.

Cruz took Wynn aside and said the bullet trajectory took out at least a half dozen of Tyson’s upper teeth, and had speared teeth splinters throughout his mouth. The wound on the back of his neck was slightly off-set from the spine and about the size of a soda bottle opening.

“His face looks like a screaming eagle,” Cruz said. “I hope the bullet missed his spine.”

On the drive back to the FOB, Moose felt vindicated and purified. He didn’t understand why. Some claimed they felt dirty after killing. That killing was something so incomprehensible, so disgusting, and that you could never clear the brutality of the act out of your psyche—from then on dark stains clung to your soul like coal dust on a miner. Moose didn’t think like that. Kale had his trouble—he overthought things. Today, at the brick factory, others had killed. They had achieved something uncommon and momentous, almost beautiful, Moose thought. No, not beautiful. Not in a physical sense. He realized death was an ugly thing, so decisive, so final. Death stole whatever worth life possessed.

Of course violent death wasn’t the only thing that stole worth. Moose thought about Tyson. He’d almost had his face ripped off. Moose hadn’t seen him before the MEDEVAC carried him away, but others had described the severity of his injuries. A couple of the men had cried. Tyson would not be back in the fight anytime soon, if at all. If he survived, the Wolfhounds probably wouldn’t see him again until they got back to the States. Bad things happened to people; Tyson knew that. They all did. Being in Iraq was playing Russian roulette.

Moose, in the trail vehicle of the convoy, leaned back against the back of the turret triumphantly, resting an open palm on the hand grips of the gun, like a trainer’s hand on a boxer’s shoulder, and watched the disappearing world behind them.

“Ayeee. We put a hurt on them,” Cuebas said over the intercom, as if he read Moose’s thinking.

“Damn sure did, buddy.”

Moose thought about death. When a man kills, an act that society proclaims men can’t or shouldn’t do, and he gets away with it, it’s weirdly liberating—a matchless defiance of civil restrictions that’s so slap-face bold, that he thinks himself some kind of superman. He had met a soldier once, a guy in another company, who joked about wearing a Superman shirt under his army-issued brown T-shirt. Now Moose felt as if he had Superman tattooed on his soul.
      

Kale—what was he thinking? How did he do at the brick factory? They would talk later this evening.

The sniper was interesting. Moose believed that girl had to be the sniper. The Dragunov rifle was proof. He hadn’t had an expectation of what she might look like, and now he wasn’t sure if how they found her was relevant in any way. He agreed she had been dead for at least a day.

The Wolfhounds now carried her body back to the FOB, her corpse loosely wrapped in three or four black plastic trash bags, secured with 100 mile-per-hour tape, and tied on the hood of D23. They’d decided against the honor of placing her in an American body bag.

A mature sun pressed relentless heat and light against the almond-colored landscape. The ground around them responded with blinking silver sparkles and shimmering reflections, the protest of billions of atoms in billions of separate places. Light didn’t always illuminate.

The Wolfhounds brought Mongrel to the Aid Station. Grenade fragments had lightly peppered his hand. Because his wounds were superficial, he had insisted he wouldn’t be left behind, and wanted the platoon to wait for him so he could go out for the afternoon’s mission. Wynn had agreed to wait if the Doc said Mongrel would be ready in an hour. The Doc did. So the platoon went to lunch and then came back. Halliburton, his mouth white with paper pulp, brought Mongrel a plate from the DFAC. The Aid Station had no further info on Tyson’s condition because the MEDEVAC aircraft had bypassed FOB Apache and taken Tyson to a FOB with a larger hospital.

After picking up Mongrel, the Wolfhounds had to continue with census work. Any victory celebration would have to wait, CPT Baumann said. Higher headquarters was giving him flack about the census. Some Wolfhounds questioned the brevity of brick factory operation. After all, they’d taken fire from the village going in, and it might be worth investigating that route and area further, visiting with the residents in the area to try to find out who might have cooperated with the insurgents. But Baumann had concluded that an insurgent lookout had seen them coming. Since the brick factory was located outside the battalion’s area, headquarters wouldn’t approve more time for searching. The insurgent cell was smashed; the kilns thoroughly searched. Little was found. Further investigation might be undertaken by other agencies—after interrogations of the three captured men. For now, the Dog Platoons would return to their respective battlespaces to continue operations.

During the trip back downtown, the men were quiet. Quieter than usual. The few hours at the brick factory had seemed like days. Each man was absorbed by thoughts of the morning’s activities and his convoy responsibilities. Despite weariness, most of the men’s minds hummed with contentment.

Kale ruminated about the brick factory operation. During the next few days, the men would talk about their individual experiences, where they had been in the fight and what they thought of the outcome. He would listen, but mostly remain silent. The topic of the female sniper would feature prominently in the conversations. Most of the men would be the thinking about the next mission, or what Cooke sometimes called the platoon’s business. That business—the urgent real time work required of them—put each man back in a state of mind where most thoughts remain private, and the questions and what-ifs submerge fast and deep into that place where the questioning never ends, and the answers found are never entirely satisfactory. Work and duty made them go on. Should there be something more? Something was still missing, but he didn’t know what. He sensed the new satisfaction present in the men. He felt it too, and he liked that feeling, wondering how long it would last. Tyson being badly wounded took away from it and Kale wondered how much the others thought about Tyson.

“Think that fucking sniper lady had ever had a dude?” Randall asked abruptly.

“Knock the shit, pretty boy,” reprimanded Pauls. “Get your mind right. Watch your zone.”

Pauls’ sharp words made Kale scan the surroundings again. The grim brown landscape offered no revelations. Something important had happened today, that was sure; the Wolfhounds had participated in an operation that netted several insurgents and found the sniper that had killed the boy. She was dead. The brick factory had been cleared out. Even if the war was far from over, this was progress, wasn’t it? He could claim to have been part of that progress. Sure, he’d been scared. And he hadn’t fired a shot. But he was there, was part of the team, the effort, and could claim some of the result. That would be part of his story, too.