Paige leaves a note in my letterbox on the last day of finals. I see it waiting for me out of the corner of my eye while passing through the MBA student lounge.
“There’s a group of us meeting at Molly’s each Thursday night during the Christmas break,” it reads. “Just a way to keep up good relations. You should come. I’m inviting you. Also, why don’t you list your phone number or e-mail address in the student directory? And for that matter, why aren’t you on Facebook? Are you a spy or something? Call me.”
She includes her phone number at the bottom, with the postscript, “(My family and I are members at Southern Yacht Club. We’ve had a Catalina 36 since I was a little girl. So, if you feel like setting foot on an actual sailboat sometime . . .)”
I fold the note five times and tuck it into the back of my wallet.
On my streetcar ride home, bouncing along the St. Charles Avenue tracks, I imagine the sailboat Paige’s family keeps at the yacht club—in pristine condition, I’ll bet. Not like the wreck I saw this morning in the West End boneyard, up on blocks, and such a mess that the old harbormaster could hardly muster a nice word to say about it, despite his obvious desire to see it gone.
“Well, it would be . . . a real project” was about the best he could say for the battered hull with Sentimental Journey stenciled across its stern. “But, then, you’re a young guy, right? No wife, no kids. Gonna take on a project like this, now’d be the time.”
I ran my hand along the pitted gel coat. “How did these abrasions get here?”
“The Storm.” He shrugged. “Surge ripped all the boats off their moorings in the municipal harbor, carried them across the street, and left them piled up in the parking lot when the water receded. This gal was lying on her port side at the bottom of the pile. Owner never came back for her.”
After mentally stumbling through a selection of half-remembered nautical terms for an intelligent question to ask, I settled on, “Did you manage to save any of the standing rigging?”
He laughed. “You’re joking right? All that’s left’s what you’re looking at. But you’d want to start over with the rigging, anyway. Gut the interior, too, and rebuild from an empty hull. That’s one thing about these old boats—the hulls are thick. They take a beating, and you can always rebuild.”
If I don’t get back to him by early January, he’s having it chopped up and taken to a landfill. I’m just glad he didn’t ask me about my sailing experience or renovation plans. He probably assumes I’m looking for a party barge to impress girls, and I’m happy to let him.
I get off the streetcar at Washington Avenue and start walking the last few blocks to my apartment. Ahead of me, a funeral procession blocks the way across Coliseum Street as the horse-drawn carriage makes a slow right turn through the Lafayette Cemetery gates. I wait on the corner and shiver while the band and the mourners pass. They have a strange system in this city. A jazz band leads the mourners from the church to the cemetery, playing sad songs along the way so everyone can get their hysterics out. Then, after they put the coffin in its tomb, they play upbeat music so everyone can dance their way back to the church.
It’s free-form and wild, the opposite of a military funeral. But how would I know? It occurs to me with a start that I’ve never attended a military funeral. Never heard a twenty-one-gun salute or seen a widow take her folded flag. We had plenty of back-in-country memorial services, but it wasn’t the same. We always botched it.
I think of Paige and her speech about empathy. She might’ve been onto something with that, and I find myself wishing I’d put up a better fight on her behalf. It’s what Major Leighton missed on the day of Gunny Stout’s memorial. Empathy.
He got up and gave a big speech about getting over it. Heads back in the game. And while that might’ve been the right message from a leadership point of view, it wasn’t effective. It didn’t put anyone’s head back in the game.
No one knew the procedure before Gunny Stout died. He was the company’s first, and we had to learn on the fly. We messed up the family notification message. We messed up his personal effects. We messed up everything.
For starters, we needed a new comment for the personnel status board. We couldn’t just subtract one from the company’s total strength, apparently. We had to keep him on the morning report until after mortuary affairs had prepped his remains for transport. But how to list him? Were we supposed to just scribble the word Dead on the board and put his name next to it? No one knew.
Finally, the admin chief walked over to the status board and made a new box: Outbound Angels—1.
It offended me. I assumed that the admin chief, a religious guy known to proselytize, had made it up and tried to sneak in a preachy remark. I went to have a word with him, but Cobb stopped me. He told me the admin chief took the words right from the personnel manual. So I looked it up. Sure enough. Outbound angels. That’s what we called them officially.
I didn’t like it. No one who saw that vinyl bag, limp like feed, hefted into the helicopter would’ve thought to call it an angel. Even Doc Pleasant, usually pretty good about gore, shut down. He skipped the memorial service. There wasn’t an angel in sight for Doc Pleasant, and he was the type who’d look.
After the memorial service, the other lieutenants, Cobb, Wong, and the rest of them, slapped me on the shoulder and talked tough.
“You made the call, man. Not easy. No shame.”
“Nothing you could do. That’s a lieutenant’s job. Why we make the big bucks.”
“Drive on. New day, brother.”
But underneath, I heard them asking, “Are you sure he died instantly? Are you sure? Weren’t you in charge? Where were you when he walked out there? Why didn’t you tell him no? Why didn’t you make him wear his bomb suit at least? Muscled by a gunny again, weren’t you. Talked out of your rank. Yeah. That figures, runt.”
I imagined them at chow, the whole pack of lieutenants mulling it over at social hour. Cobb, with his square jaw and broad shoulders, leading the discussion. Softly posing the question to my assembled peers: “Who’ll run the platoon for him now?”
Even Gunny Dole attempted, for once, to step up. He ambled over after the memorial service and asked, “Sir, can you use me down at the platoon? Anything I can do?”
I took the opportunity to scold him. It was pointless, but satisfying. “Sure could, Gunny. In fact, I could really use you out on the road.”
He winced and shook his head. “Yeah. I’m sorry, sir. Really sorry. Medical says I can’t go out on the road with the bum knee. Wish I could. I hate missing it. Anyway, I need to run over to the phone center real quick. My wife has a question about the mortgage.” He walked away, the glow of a twenty-year pension around him like an aura.
Major Leighton didn’t bother with any of that. He called me into his office a day later and asked me straightaway, “How many potholes has your platoon cleared so far, Lieutenant Donovan?”
“One hundred and fifty-seven, sir.”
“Out of those, how many have had an explosive device, in some stage of emplacement and arming, buried in the hole?”
“One hundred and fifty-seven, sir.”
“So, it’s safe to assume that your Marines will encounter these explosive devices again.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well then, you need to get back on the road as soon as possible. Best thing for the platoon.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Given time to dwell on this, your Marines will lose all fighting spirit. They will lose the ability to face these devices. They will hesitate. They will spend hours at every hole, poking around endlessly with those damn robots. They will lose the initiative. They will surrender momentum to the enemy, who will find a new way to kill them. While your Marines are stalled by fear, cowering on the same patch of highway for hours, the enemy will have time to maneuver on you with small arms, machine guns, and rockets. Maybe even indirect fire.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The dangers out there are sort of like the ocean.” He chuckled. “You’d never swim if you knew how many sharks there really were.”
“Yes, sir.” There wasn’t much else I could say, staying within military decorum.
“So, we keep the momentum. Here’s the mission.” He rubbed his bald head, sending flakes of peeling, sunburned skin cascading onto the map. “Route Long Island, from the Newport intersection north, all the way to Hit.”
He walked the length of his map table to trace the route. Red dots marked the site of every enemy attack in the previous six months. As he dragged his finger along a major highway over fifty miles of open desert, red dots slipped under his finger like braille. He smiled. “Every pothole wider than a meter across. You fill it, you mark it, you make it safe.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Take the new terp along. What’s his name? Dodge? Get him oriented.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Oh, and one more thing. The bomb technicians are an attachment from now on. None of this split command business. No ambiguity. The bomb techs work for you, and that’s it.” He put his hands on his hips and nodded at me.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
We used that naval phrase by tradition. The Marines. The infantry of the sea. But it wasn’t just traditional. The words had meaning.
Aye, aye didn’t just mean “Yes.” It meant, “I understand the order. I will carry out the order.” And I understood him perfectly. It was my responsibility, from that point on, not just for the pothole but for the bomb inside it, too.
We rolled the next morning, before curfew lifted and Iraqi trucks and donkey carts choked the streets solid. We took Route Michigan east toward Fallujah, turned south onto Route Long Island, and watched the city slip away on the far side of the river. It was still dark. Generator exhaust shimmered in the green sodium light above the mosques. The shops along Phase Line Fran were all sealed up with corrugated-metal sheets. The radios crackled as infantry patrols came on and off the net with sporadic reports of rifle fire.
We sped up in the empty desert just south of the river, reaching the intersection of Route Long Island and Route Newport, at the southern tip of Lake Habbaniyah, thirty minutes later.
We negotiated the dark intersection and turned north. Gomez came on the net a moment later and announced that a massive hole, three meters across and a meter deep, blocked the road ahead. We stopped and assumed a security posture, still fifty miles from Hit. A crater so soon after the intersection didn’t bode well for the rest of the day.
We parked in the middle of the highway, straddled the white line, and stopped traffic in both directions while we waited for daylight. Zahn tapped the gas pedal every few minutes to keep the engine warm. I sat next to him and worked the radios. Marceau manned the turret, and Doc Pleasant sat in the backseat with Dodge.
Our empty seven-ton truck, running point, was the nearest vehicle to the crater. An empty truck always led the way, as we’d learned by then not to keep anything of value on the first vehicle. No one said it out loud, but the lead truck was a mine roller. Simple as that. A corporal always rode in the lead truck to reassure the junior Marine behind the wheel. The corporals took turns; Gomez kept a list.
Gomez was always second in the order of march, right behind the mine roller in a standard gun-truck, a security Humvee with a turret-mounted machine gun. A long-bed utility truck followed her with generators and compressors, jackhammers and asphalt saws, pallets of concrete in fifty-pound bags, and a ten-thousand-gallon water tank. I always rolled last in the order of march, in a four-vehicle section with three gun-trucks protecting the bomb-disposal vehicle.
We made sure the bomb-disposal vehicle looked just like the others, and we varied its place in line. It was an endless game of three-card monte with the enemy triggermen, for whom killing bomb-disposal technicians was a top priority. According to intelligence reports, killing an American bomb tech could make a triggerman rich, satisfy his desire for revenge, or bring him great rewards in heaven. Plenty of incentive, whatever his motivation.
Dodge sat in the backseat of the command Humvee, looking brand-new in his gear. His crisp flight suit still sported the sheen from its flame-resistant fabric treatment, and the folds on his flak had yet to accumulate a single grain of sand.
Pleasant reached across the seat to adjust Dodge’s flak. “You look like a goddamn soup sandwich over here. We’ll tape up all these slides when we get home. Seriously, you look like some kind of traveling Gypsy.” Pleasant pulled hard on a strap to tighten the fit. “Too tight? Can you still breathe?”
“Yes, man.” Dodge sighed. “I can breathe.”
“Seriously, though—tell me if you can’t. I can loosen it.”
“No, it’s good. Really, man. It’s fine.” Dodge nodded and put a hand over his heart.
Behind the wheel, Zahn spit into his dip bottle and asked, “Light enough, sir?”
“Give it five minutes.”
“Yo, Zahn,” Marceau called out from the turret. “Pass me a can of Copenhagen. I’m falling the fuck asleep.”
Zahn scoffed. “I look like Santa Claus to you? Should’ve fucking thought about that before we rolled out.”
I watched Marceau settle back behind his gun and sigh. He let his black hair, prematurely flecked with gray, grow a few centimeters longer than regulation, and had an oddly flattering gap in his front teeth.
Marceau had a genuinely charming emotional blind spot. Perception didn’t much matter to him. He cared only for reality. As long as he knew he was doing his job, and keeping his friends safe, he was immune to peer pressure. Free to be a Marine without having to act like one. Free to make light of our national follies and remind us all that in the scope of wars that had come before, our war was silly. Worth a laugh or two.
I had Gomez assign him to my turret whenever possible. I was selfish like that.
I watched as daylight crept through the palm trees off to our right and draped Marceau’s face in an orange sheen. The same sunbeam drifted in through the armored window and came to rest on my cheek. I keyed the radio when my skin began to prickle from the heat.
“This is Actual. Execute twenty-five-meter sweep, over.”
I watched the passenger door of Gomez’s Humvee pop open, fifty meters down the road. Gomez leaped out as though she’d been held inside by a spring, and after checking the safety, draped her rifle across her back by passing the sling under her arm and over her helmet. Fighting six hundred pounds of rough steel, she pressed her shoulder into the Humvee door. Sand boiled over the toes of her boots. The door bounced back twice. She took a breath, pushed again, and almost slipped to her knees before the latch finally caught.
Then she stood up straight and wrestled her flak jacket back into place. The weight of her ill-fitting body armor sat so far forward that she had to force herself not to slouch. The ballistic plates, six full magazines, and her radio all pulled straight down. She rolled her shoulders, came off her feet and set her heels, coaxed the tan monster into place, and took a long step onto the road. Marines swarmed around her, doing their twenty-fives.
I glanced over my shoulder to check on Doc Pleasant and Dodge, and caught Doc Pleasant watching Gomez, too.
He looked away and seemed to take a moment to try to conjure a valid reason for staring. “We jump out, too, sir?”
“No. Same rules. Corpsmen don’t dismount until it’s clear.”
I looked over at Dodge, fidgeting with the straps on his helmet. “You, too, Dodge. Stay in the vehicle. And when we get out, stay close to me.”
“I understand you, man.” He nodded. “I will stay close.”
Doc Pleasant elaborated helpfully, “See, we can’t replace you. Me neither. I’m the only medic and you’re the only terp. So, we wait. Okay?”
“Yes. Understood.”
“No. Look at me. Repeat what I said.”
“I speak English, man.” Dodge’s voice got testy. “And I heard you.”
I jumped in to defend Doc and insisted, “Say it back to him, Dodge. It’s how we do things.”
“Fine. I stay in the vehicle. And when I get out, I stay next to the mulasim.”
“Mulasim?” I asked. “Is that how you say lieutenant in Arabic?”
“Yes.”
“What’s it mean exactly? Like, what’s it translate to?”
“It means ‘not necessary.’”
Zahn stifled a laugh. “For real?”
Marceau didn’t even try. He let out a howl of laughter. “You got an extra set of bars down there, sir? Guess you should promote me on the spot!”
Dodge seemed puzzled by our reactions. “It means the same thing in English, does it not? Like the actual French word. Instead of the real guy, it means like a place-keeper. Yes?”
“Sure,” I said. “Just not accustomed to, uh, hearing it put so plain.”
Up ahead, Gomez reached for her radio. I heard her in my ear a moment later. “Copy, Actual. Twenty-fives complete. I’m en route.”
“Copy all. Set security.” I took my thumb off the transmit button and turned to Zahn. “Roll up. Get Marceau a good line of sight behind the water truck and I’ll catch up.”
I jumped out as the Humvee rolled forward slowly, stood still, and let Gomez come to me. She marched through the cordon judging the merits of our perimeter, our movable fortress. Like Napoleon, I thought, and in the same dimensions.
Our trucks and Humvees parked at angles sharp to the side of the road to give the turret gunners good, overlapping fields of fire. An ambush could come from anywhere. From the road behind us, and the Iraqi cars stranded at the intersection. From the long, sloping desert with its rocks and shrubs on either side. From snipers hiding in the twisted remains of abandoned cars and burned-out tanks, waiting for a shot at someone’s face. From triggermen waiting in the little town on the horizon, talking about us in square houses painted two-tone brown and screwing up their courage for a coordinated attack. From the innocent-looking kids slipping in and out of the alleys, stepping through the shimmer, ducking behind cars and through metal gates into courtyards, always watching.
Civilian traffic was the primary concern. Because of our cordon, a gaggle of beat-up cargo trucks had stacked up behind us, while a line of cars, a half mile long and growing, idled in front of us. The Iraqis in the cars nearest us kept their hands where the Marines could see and spared only the occasional sideways glance through their windshields.
Marines stepped from the staged security vehicles and shouted at each other.
“Set up on the right! Off to the right!”
“Hey! Turret! That’s your sector. Down the road. Farmhouse on the left. Flat roof, blue stripe.”
“Where? The fuck you say?”
“Yeah. Off the road a little more. Leave room for the compressor. Mixer after that. Water bull after that.”
Always, they made sure to clear a lane for Gomez, stepping aside when they heard the rifle bouncing against her armor plate. It had a cadence all its own, with steps too long for a body so small.
I saw Marceau headed for the front of the column. He’d passed off his turret to a junior Marine to help heft the heavy asphalt saw up front. He was stooped over as he passed by Gomez, sucking wind.
She stopped short and squared her shoulders on him, staring him down like a third-grade teacher. She looked through his sweat, ignored his dark eyes, and let him know that she expected more.
Marceau passed her, said something to the Marine next to him, and they both stood up straight.
Gomez kept walking. “Yeah,” she yelled over her shoulder. “You fucking know it, too. On the clock.”
Then she stood in front of me, unwittingly doing exactly the same thing. “Look good, sir?”
“No complaints.”
“Then let’s knock this fucker out.” She pointed. “Too much traffic here. Too many buildings over there.”
We walked together, weaving through the cordon to the edge of the standoff zone where the trucks idled with the repair equipment and waited for the bomb techs to declare the crater safe.
Gomez and I took a knee behind the rear fender of the lead seven-ton, and I saw the crater for the first time. It was a hundred meters away and difficult to assess with any detail through the flickering heat, but I found myself searching for some clue, some reason to hope that this pothole might be the first one without a buried artillery shell rigged to explode.
The two bomb techs, combat replacements fresh into country, had no illusions. They started prepping a reducing charge in the cargo compartment of their Humvee, without waiting for word.
I turned to Gomez. “Who’s next on the list?”
Gomez pulled out a list of names, laminated between two contact sheets to keep it from disintegrating in her sweat-soaked pocket. “Marceau,” she said, plucking an alcohol pen from a gear loop on her flak jacket and drawing a line through his name. “Help me up, sir?”
“Sure.”
I interlocked my fingers and Gomez stepped into my hands. I lifted her waist-level to the truck bed, where she put her forearms and palms on the steel decking and dragged up a knee. I let go as I felt the Marines in the truck take her weight.
She started her interrogation of the two privates in the truck bed before she was even upright. “You have it ready?” she barked.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Yeah? The fuck you waiting for, then?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Aye, Sergeant.”
She sat near the tailgate and took off her helmet. The sweatband on her radio headset kept her jet-black hair tight against her scalp, dripping with sweat. She peeled off the headset and let it hang from her flak for a moment, ran her fingers through her hair in a vain attempt to push out all the sweat.
When she took a rubber band from her wrist to tie the hair back into a tight bun at the top of her neck, the sleeves of her flight suit slid down to reveal her tattoos. A snake wound down her right forearm until a forked tongue sniffed at her wrist. On her left forearm, a flight of songbirds fled.
A voice called from above me, Doc Pleasant’s. Dodge was standing next to him. I’d forgotten. “Corporal Zahn said we should come up here,” Doc said almost bashfully. “Should we have waited in the vehicle?”
“No. No, you’re fine. My fault. Sorry about that. Got caught up. Here—get down next to me.”
They each took a knee.
“You calibrate it?” I heard Gomez ask from the bed of the truck.
The junior Marines answered quickly.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Aye, Sergeant.”
“Well,” she mused. “We’ll see. Switch that fucker on.”
I turned to Dodge, drops of sweat cutting rivers across his face. “Getting the feel for this, yet?”
Dodge looked at me. “Of course. Fine.”
“Hold up your rifle,” Gomez called out, extending a pole toward the junior Marines with a metal disk on the end. She passed the disk in front of the rifle, up close, then a few feet back. The pair of headphones sitting on her lap sang, an urgent bleat to a low hum. She reeled it in. “Looks good to go.”
I turned to Doc Pleasant. “You know what happens next? Where you’re supposed to be?”
Doc looked at me, mouth open, while Dodge hung on every word and sucked wind like he’d just run a mile. He wasn’t yet accustomed to the weight of his body armor, how it trapped heat against his chest and made every step strenuous.
“Immediate actions,” I said. “Look at your immediate actions, Doc.”
He reached into his cargo pocket and pulled out a laminated index card. He flipped it over twice, looking for the right set of procedures. Dodge watched over Doc’s shoulder and tried to read along.
“We’ve done our fives and twenty-fives, right?” I coaxed. “Set the cordon?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Corporal Marceau is about to head up,” I hinted. “What’ll he need?”
“Cover, sir?”
“He’ll get that from the trucks and the dismounted Marines. What’ll he need from you?”
Doc swallowed. “He’ll need me to be ready, sir.”
“Right. So, get ready.”
Gomez jumped off the tailgate with the battery bag on her shoulder and the metal detector in her right hand. “Yo, Marceau!” she called out. “Corporal Marceau!”
Marceau approached with his rifle slung over his back. Someone had already told him.
Gomez hung the battery bag on his shoulder. “Here we go, meat-eater. You ready?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Okay, then. Let’s rig this shit.” She tried to sound excited and smiled for him, too. That was a rarity.
Marceau took off his helmet. Gomez clapped the headphones over his ears while he slipped his hand through the metal detector’s arm brace and wrapped his fingers around the handle.
“Traffic sees the cordon and doesn’t stop,” she said. “Accelerates at you. What do you do?”
“I drop and prepare for overhead fire from the fifty.”
“You get to the hole, and it’s clear?”
“One hand up in a fist. I wait. The repair team rolls to me.”
“And what if there’s something in the hole. What then?”
“I turn around. I come back. Right arm out, parallel to the deck. Open palm.”
“Do you run?”
Marceau was distracted, looking down the highway at the pothole.
She slapped him on the helmet. “Hey. Do you run?”
“No, Sergeant.”
“All right then. Get it done.”
And then Marceau started walking.
Gomez keyed her radio. “Scout’s out.”
The net went quiet. Gomez followed close behind Marceau until he passed the front fender, then took a knee when he stepped into the standoff zone. After he’d walked about ten meters, she cursed under her breath and reached for her radio. Stopping herself, she looked over her shoulder at me, waved, and whispered, “Sir. Sir. Doc.” She raised her eyebrows and cocked her head at Marceau, fifty meters out and walking briskly with the metal detector out in front.
“Doc, get up there with Sergeant Gomez,” I said.
He scrambled to his feet, dragging his medical bag and backboard behind him.
“I shouldn’t have to call you up here, Doc,” Gomez lectured him. “Shouldn’t have to bother the sir, neither.”
Then it was just me and Dodge. He dropped flat onto his ass and sat with his legs straight out, leaning back against the fender.
“Dodge. Not a good idea,” I said. “Stay on one knee. Easier to get up and move.”
“All right, man,” he groaned as he picked himself up.
“Has anyone bothered explaining this to you yet? How this works?”
He shook his head and pushed the brand-new sunglasses back onto his face, the palms of his awkward, gloved hands maneuvering under the rim of his helmet.
“Okay—well, see, Marceau’s up there to check if there’s a bomb in the pothole. Right? Which there probably is. When we know for sure, we send up the robot with the clearing charge and . . . blow it up.”
“And then?”
“Then we cut away the jagged edges, fill the hole with gravel, and patch over the top with concrete.”
“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.”