Surprisingly, Abu Ahmed took his dispossession cheerfully enough. Of course, the U.S. would certainly compensate him generously. Some of his neighbors showed up with flat-bedded bongo trucks, and the Americans helped load the family’s few possession onto them. The departure was cordial enough. Ahmed, his son Nezham, and all the neighbors with trucks insisted on shaking hands with every American.
While this was going on, the man with the crazy legs stalked past. Scrape, Thunk! He stopped and looked, then kept on going. Scrape, Thunk! Ahmed made a screwing motion with his finger against his temple.
“He is not right,” he said through Sabah Barak, the interpreter. “He was once shot in the head.
By Americans or by insurgents? Mayhem wondered.
War is such that just when you begin to forget you’re in one, it comes back to bite you in the ass. Mayhem’s squad and several of the Iraqis, including Ahmed and his son, were gathered in the road saying last farewells when, suddenly, the air filled with the bloodcurdling whistle of an incoming mortar round.
“Holy shit! Incoming!”
Corporal Mayhem and Pitcher the new SAW gunner were standing next to their humvee with skinny little Nezham when the first round impacted only a few yards away, erupting in a fireball. The blast knocked Mayhem off his feet. As he slammed to the road, he heard shrapnel and road debris ricocheting off the truck. From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the Iraqi boy being lifted off his feet and flying through the air like a foul ball until he landed on the other side of the road.
Soldiers scrambled for cover, some running for their armored chariots, other diving underneath them as mortar rounds exploded in a concentrated area around the vehicles, filling the air with sound and fury, smoke, fire, and shrapnel.
A shelling could be a terrifying event, especially if you were out in the open and explosions were walking all around and over you and there was nothing between them and you except God. Mayhem thought he might dig a hole with his fingernails right into the concrete.
He lifted his helmeted head an inch off the blistering blacktop. What he saw only a few feet away filled him with shock. Pitcher lay face down on the road, bloodstains on his back, his legs and arms working like an insect pinned down with a needle through its torso. Casting aside concerns for his own safety, seeing only a fellow soldier in trouble, Mayhem crawled to him as shells continued to stomp around in terrible eruptions all over the road.
“Medic! Medic!”
Doc Bryan Brown, the platoon’s African-American medic and, at twenty, one of the youngest soldiers in the platoon, appeared magically at Mayhem’s side. Cool and composed as he was, no one would ever have suspected he was under fire for the first time. Together, the two soldiers dragged the wounded SAW gunner to the cover of the nearest hummer. Blood dribbled from his nose and ears and his vest and trousers were ripped, exposing more injuries. Flying shrapnel had caught him in full flight and did a job on him. He was still alive and conscious.
“Mayhem . . . Mayhem . . . ?”
“Hang in there, dude. You’re going to be all right.”
“Am I going to die, Doc? Am I dying?”
“Easy there, Pitcher,” Doc Brown cooed, ripping open field dressings while still lying on his belly. “Your plates took most of it. You won’t die, do you hear me, man? I won’t let you die.”
It ended almost as quickly and unexpectedly as it began. Smoke hung heavy in the air among the trucks, swirling. The air tasted bitter from burnt cordite. Men called out to each other. Questions, reassurances.
A 60mm mortar was a relatively short-range weapon, which meant the fire had to originate from somewhere nearby, either from in the woods along the river, probably on the far side, or from among the scattering of huts down the road. Whichever, the perpetrators were already gone, fading away into the countryside like barracuda into the sea. No one had gotten so much as a shot at them. And, of course, it wouldn’t do any good to call in artillery or mortars; there were no firm targets, and Americans never indiscriminately dropped hell into built-up areas.
Abu Ahmed discovered his fallen son. His wailing penetrated the ringing in Mayhem’s ears. It was enough to make angels cringe.
Neither Pitcher nor Ahmed’s boy were mortally injured, although both would be in recovery for quite some time. A QRF (quick reaction force) from Battalion rushed in and evacuated them to the Green Zone in Baghdad. Fourth Platoon never saw Pitcher again. He had a million-dollar wound. But for his armor, he would probably have gone home in a box.
The smoke laid, the sun shone bright again, and Iraqis down the road came out of their houses to stare. Mayhem stood in the road, blinking and filled with helpless rage. Delta Company had suffered its first casualty on Malibu Road. Insurgents had drawn first blood—and there wasn’t a damned thing the platoon could do about it. The fuckers down there standing in the road must have known what was coming down, who the attackers were—but they were too frightened to say anything. None of them trusted the Americans to stay and protect them.
“That,” Lieutenant Tomasello commented drily, referring to the mortars, “was the official welcoming committee. Does it make everyone feel at home?”