Sunrise Over Fallujah (22 page)

We waited in full gear until nearly 1200 when a young-looking Brit lieutenant asked Captain Coles if we were ready to go. Coles said no, that we wanted to eat first, and the lieutenant said we could eat when we landed.

“Lieutenant, my soldiers need to eat first,” Coles said slowly, deliberately.

“Captain, you have about fifteen minutes to get your people on your transport,” the lieutenant said. “If they're not on, you're going to be quite sorry.”

Captain Miller, who curses better than anyone I have ever heard, said some wonderful things about the lieutenant's parents that I wish I had had the time to write down even though I didn't really believe that a human being could be conceived by sand crabs under a flat rock.

1230 hours. According to the chopper pilot we were landing five miles southeast of Al Amarah. “Good luck!” he chirped.

The place looked desolate. To our left there were huge patches of dark green soil. To the right there was fog. We had been dropped with our gear and two crates of medical supplies in a clearing. Coles was on the radio asking the pilot if he was sure that this was where we were supposed to be when the choppers took off.

I could hear the pilot's voice in Coles's headset as the wind from the rotors blew dust in my face.

“Company,” Marla announced.

There were three vehicles coming toward us. I couldn't see the drivers and I didn't recognize the trucks.

“Easy! Easy!” Coles said.

I felt the weight of my piece and toyed lightly with the trigger.

As they drew near we saw one guy standing on the sideboard waving. He was wearing camouflage gear, and a bandana around his head. We were all frozen in our spots when they reached us.

“You guys bring any beer?” the first guy out of what looked like an up-armored SUV asked.

“ ‘Fraid not,” Coles said.

“Man, we've been waiting for the beer run for six months,” the guy said, extending his hand. “Pile into that second wagon and we'll take you to the camp.”

We loaded the medical supplies in the second vehicle and tried not to stare too hard at the men—we could only guess that they were soldiers—who were staring at us. They were a motley crew. Big,
muscled, in a variety of uniforms. Some wore bandanas around their heads, others wore earrings.

“Who are you guys?” Coles asked.

“Fifth Group,” one guy said. “We work with the local tribes.”

These were the guys that Marla had called “Hoodlums” back in Kuwait. They had left camp back then before us and nobody knew where they had been headed.

We got into the trucks and headed to their camp at a speed that I was sure was gong to kill us all. I looked at Marla across from me and she looked tense.

When we arrived at the camp it wasn't what I expected. It was a small village. There were dark tents huddled together on one end of a field and small round huts made out of sticks and mud at the other.

But most of all, there were people that I knew were not soldiers. We were in a tribal camp and I was hoping that I hadn't misread the guys who picked us up. I was hoping that they were really American soldiers. We trailed the guys who had picked us up into the camp. I stopped once to see a dark woman, dressed all in black, staring at me with eyes that looked a thousand years old.

I smiled. She didn't.

We were led into a slightly larger tent where a bare-chested white guy sat in front of a low fire. A woman, slight with quick, nervous movements, sat next to him.

“Make yourself at home,” the white man drawled. “Y'all eat?”

“I'm Captain Coles. My people could use something to eat.”

“Colonel Roberts” was the reply. “We'll get you some food and you can lay up until it gets dark. We got some work to do tonight so you need to be rested. Sorry our hospitality couldn't be more considerate but we got us a situation, so to speak. People working before you—including us—haven't got the job done. That's why you folks are here. We understand you're pretty good.”

“We're trying, the same as you,” Captain Coles replied.

“Yeah, well, that's good, Captain,” Roberts said. “So, what we're going to do is to have you meet the locals this evening.”

“They're coming here?” Captain Coles asked.

“No, we'll send in all of your people to their camp with four of ours for security,” Roberts said. “I don't think they'll try anything rough with your people, and with ours there they won't try to intimidate you. They've been told that you're a crack negotiating team from CENTCOM and that you're willing to spend our government's money to ransom the kids from a rival tribe. These are the kids of one of their religious leaders. So it's important for the chief to get the kids back to show he's still got juice.”

“If it's that important to him, why do we have to convince him?” Coles asked.

“Because they don't trust anybody who isn't a blood cousin. They've been betrayed by the Iraqis, by the Iranians, by anyone who has anything to gain in this area,” Roberts said. “The only difference between this place and everywhere else in this country is this place doesn't make the news.”

Roberts gave us a map and pointed out a place that we would meet after dark to make the exchange. “We'll give you one kid to take with you to show we can get them out,” Roberts said.

“You already have one of them?” Marla asked.

“We have all of them,” Roberts said, glancing toward Miller. “They were kidnapped as a favor to us.”

“So it's true, we can't be trusted?” Miller asked.

“After the war we can sit down and have a drink someplace,” Roberts said. “We get a good enough buzz on, we'll talk about the philosophy of war. Until then we'll do what we have to do to keep our people alive.”

We were fed. The food was good. I thought it was lamb with carrots and couscous. The stick-and-mud hut we were in looked something like old pictures of American Indian homes.

“The funny thing is…” Captain Coles was holding a piece of meat on the end of a stick. “In a way we are getting closer to the people we're dealing with. I don't trust Roberts, either.”

“What are we going to do?” Miller asked.

“What we're told and hope he gets us out of here alive,” he said. “And I hope he's right about the detonators and that we're actually going to be doing some good.”

Roberts came in with a young man dressed in black. He moved into the shadows against the wall and almost disappeared. Roberts had a dark green sack with him which he tossed down in front of us. We shut down the conversation as he sat.

“The food's good, huh?”

“It's okay,” Marla said.

“If we thought we could pull this off without you guys, you wouldn't be here,” Roberts said. “But we think you're going to do just fine. Fadel here is going to translate for you. He was a student at Basra College.”

“Is there a chance they'll try to reneg on the deal and just off our people and take the kids?” Jonesy asked.

“That's what I would do if I was them,” Roberts said.

I was scared out of my freaking mind. These Special Ops guys were physically and mentally as tough as they came, but there were stories about some of them not being wrapped too tight. From what I had seen of them, I believed it. Roberts opened the sack and showed us the money we were going to be using.

“You'll tell them that you're going to be using the money to buy the kids' safety,” he said. “And try to hang on to it.”

2030. Was an hour after sunset when we mounted up. The stink from the marshes was mixed with sewer smells and cooking. My stomach was queasy and the aftertaste from the meal didn't help any.

Two of Roberts's people were in the first SUV. Me, Jonesy, Coles, and Marla were in the second, with a driver chewing on an unlit cigar. Miller and Owens and the translator were in the last vehicle with the fourth security guy and a kid. They had put a sack
over the kid's head. I felt sorry for him, or her, I didn't know which.

What I was wondering was whether the security guys were there to protect us or to watch us. The guy driving our vehicle—he said his name was Gambarelli—was short and wide, with a big head that seemed to come out of his chest. His teeth were perfectly lined up so when he smiled—or
maybe
he was smiling, it was hard to tell—they lined up like teeth in a kid's drawing.

“I ever tell you about doing stuff you don't want to tell your mama about?” Jonesy asked.

“That what we doing?” Marla asked.

“That's what we doing,” Jonesy said.

Gambarelli got a big kick out of that. “That's good! That's real good! I'm going to tell all the guys about that!”

I thought about my father. An image of him sitting on his chair near our front room window came to mind. He didn't know how much I wanted things to be okay between us. What I wanted was for him to look at me and see me in the moment, and not worry about what I was going to do or how I was going to kick it ten years down the line. I hoped if anything happened to me he would be all right with it. I knew Mama would be sad, but she wouldn't feel mad. Mama wasn't like that.

We drove west for a while and then made a right turn toward the east. We were on the road longer than I thought we would be, maybe twenty-five minutes, maybe a half hour. I knew that Al Amarah was only thirty miles from the Iranian border, but I didn't know how we
had traveled to get to the tribal camp. After a while I saw the flicker of lights ahead in the darkness. Torches. I thought I could see figures. I felt my testicles shrivel.

“I think they know we're coming,” I said.

“Yeah, you don't want to surprise anybody out here unless you plan on killing them,” our driver said. “Don't get spooked. Everything's cool, just don't get spooked.”

He was spooking me out all by himself.

A string of clouds drifted across the three-quarter moon, sending shadows everywhere. The driver slowed the vehicle down and then we stopped in front of two guys who pointed their AK-47s in our direction. They said something and Fadel told us all to get out.

The air was still and there was a swarm of tiny bugs flying in front of my face. I saw Owens taking the hood off of the kid. He was wide-eyed, and slight, but good-looking.

We were led through a maze of tents and small groups of men, huddled together in the darkness. I knew I was walking stiff-leggedly, but I couldn't help myself. My mouth was dry and I wondered if I would be able to speak when the time came.

We were led into a tent that was up against a hill. We went through the tent into a one-story semi-square building. For some reason I expected Osama bin Laden or somebody to be sitting inside of it.

They had electric lights set up and it was fairly bright. There was a rug on the ground and rugs along the wall. We stopped inside and
the men who had brought us in, two older guys dressed in caftans and sandals, pointed to the ground. We started to sit. I saw Miller with her arm around the shoulders of the child we had brought along. The Iraqis didn't even glance in the kid's direction and I wondered if there had been some mistake.

We waited nearly ten minutes in silence until four more men came into the cave from the same way that we had entered. They were followed by a man carrying pillows. The pillows were put down and the four new guys sat on them.

They looked us over and spoke among themselves. They looked at the boy and one of the men nodded. That was a relief. He said something and one of the men with a gun took the boy by the hand and led him out of the cave. Then they continued talking among themselves.

Fadel leaned toward us. “They are saying that the women are probably prostitutes,” he said softly. “Remember that they probably understand English, too. So you tell me what you want.”

Coles sniffed twice and started talking. He spoke in a low voice and I thought it was probably because we were all so close together. He said we were willing to talk to the people who had taken the children.

“We believe we can get them back without any harm coming to them,” he said.

“And what do you want?” The guy speaking was my complexion, at least he looked brownish in the dim light, and maybe a hundred years old.

“We understand you have some detonators that interest us,” Coles said.

The old man shrugged, and spoke to the others. They all shrugged. It reminded me of hanging out in the barbershop on Saturday and the old dudes wanted to mess with the young bloods. He spoke to Fadel, who turned to us slowly.

“He says he doesn't know what the American is talking about,” Fadel said. “What are detonators?”

Coles shook his head slowly, then stood. We all stood and watched as Coles extended his hand to the elder Afghani. The two men shook hands briefly and we started out of the cave.

“Wait!” Fadel stopped us just as we reached the flap that covered the entrance. “The chief has something else to say.”

We stood for what seemed forever. My right leg was aching. I had never noticed that before.

The old man I thought might have been a chief spoke very softly to the man on his left. He was also ancient-looking and wore a kind of half turban the same silver-white color of his beard. The fire reflected in his beard and eyes and gave him a mystical look. The chief went on for a while but the other man didn't speak. Occasionally he would raise his hands, then turn the palms up and out, as if he weren't sure of himself. My stomach was hurting now. Then I realized that if we were suddenly attacked, I wouldn't even be nearly ready. I looked at Jonesy and Miller and they were just as absorbed in the conversation between the two men still seated on the floor as I was.

Finally the chief spoke to Fadel, who in turn asked Coles for the map. Fadel got down on his knees and showed the old man the meeting place.

“Show them the money,” Coles said to me.