Traffic checkpoints were the kind of missions we’d trained a lot for stateside, but didn’t do much of anymore. The Iraqi army and police handled them. But on a late April morning in his airless office, Captain Vrettos said our platoon needed to complete one more joint mission to meet the month’s quota.
“And,” he said, “Bravo Company doesn’t fudge quotas.” He had the wide shine in the eyes that came with severe sleep deprivation, so I didn’t fight it.
We went that afternoon. It was hot, but the sky was gray and cloudy. Chambers organized things while I conducted a radio check with the outpost.
“Dominguez! You got security from your twelve to your four o’clock. No son, your four.
“Fucking hell, Doc, have you ever unraveled razor wire before? Use your boots. Like this.
“Where your gloves at, Hog? Your pocket. Is that where they belong? Right is right, wrong is wrong, and you’re a soup sandwich.”
I had to admit, Chambers was instilling discipline in the guys. They’d need it when we got back to garrison life in Hawaii. He didn’t like the way we parked our four armored Strykers, either, and reorganized them into a diamond position.
A rusty station wagon drove down the paved road and stopped at an orange cone fifteen feet short of the checkpoint. Chambers pulled the driver out of the car and showed one of the cherries how to pat down a local, twisting the man’s clothes into bunches while searching. Wearing a gray dishdasha and a turban, the driver—an old man with a large lip sore and a salt-and-pepper beard—looked bored, moving only when a jundi from the Iraqi army asked him to open the trunk. The old man waved at me like we knew one another. He was on his way a few minutes later, the silence of the desert replacing the sound of his car’s motor.
I pictured myself calling Hog a soup sandwich. Even in my head it sounded contrived.
I walked over to the stone guard shack on the roadside. It was the only piece of shade for miles on the bleak stretch between Ashuriyah and Camp Independence, the base to our east that served as a northern border for Baghdad proper and as a logistical hub. Chambers joined me a couple of minutes later.
Our new squad leader looked out at the road, still critiquing our positioning. Low and broad, he swung his shoulders side to side, stretching his back. Deep lines slit his face, creases that gave him a rugged sort of dignity.
“How old are you, Sergeant?” I asked.
Chambers spat out a wad of dip. “Thirty last month. Don’t tell the youngbloods, though. Don’t want them thinking their papa bear is too old to whip their ass.”
I’d thought him older. A pocket of acne scars on his temples somehow aged him too, as did stained teeth and his gray, pallid eyes.
“Got a wife or girlfriend back home? Kids?”
“Two ex-wives, four kids that I claim.” He waited for me to laugh. “Two in Texas, the others, not sure. Last I heard, they were moving back to Rochester.”
“Huh.” Though it was common enough, I hated hearing about young children having to deal with divorce. My mom and dad had managed to stay friends, but that tended not to be the norm. “Lady back home?”
He snorted. “Learned that lesson. Hope you’re smarter than that, Lieutenant. Jody is a dishonorable son of a bitch, and he got your woman months ago. When they say there’s no one else, just know there always is. Part of a soldier’s life.”
Good thing Marissa and I broke things off before we left, I thought. Though she had stressed that there was no one else. A lot.
“Jody can’t get a girl that don’t exist.”
I had no idea why I’d said “don’t” instead of “doesn’t.”
“Been banging a new piece of ass at Independence, when we’re there,” he continued. “Intel sergeant from battalion. A choker.”
There was only one intel sergeant from battalion he could be talking about, a quiet woman with milk chocolate skin who somehow filled out the shape-repressing uniform with curves and angles. I’d talked to Sergeant Griffin a few times. She was kind. Every enlisted man in Hawaii had been trying to get with her for years. None had been successful, as far as I knew.
I whistled. “How’d you do that?”
“Power of persuasion,” he said, his voice slurring past the tobacco nestled deep in his cheeks.
I fumbled about for a change of topic. Talking about women I didn’t know was one thing, but Sergeant Griffin was a fellow soldier.
“Rumor has it you’ve walked this strip of paradise before,” I eventually said.
“Fuck, Lieutenant.” He considered his answer, longer than seemed natural. “I’ve spent more time in the desert than I can remember.”
“Oh yeah? With who?”
“Once to the ’Stan with Tenth Mountain. Two times here, with Fourth Infantry right after the Invasion, the other with First Cav. Now back with the Electric Strawberry.”
I bristled at his use of the derisive nickname for the Twenty-Fifth Infantry, though I wasn’t sure why—I myself had used it often enough. I leaned against the shack and stuck my hands in my pockets, looking far into the brown sands. Lasik-sharpened eyes might’ve spotted a lone mud hut, but besides the large berm to the north that hid the canal, there was nothing. This was our no-man’s-land.
I heard laughing and looked over at the checkpoint. Doc Cork and three other soldiers were watching something on a cell phone. Two jundis with them began air humping, one with his rifle, the other with a metal detector. Dominguez, up in the Stryker’s gun turret, flung a water bottle at one of the gyrating Iraqis, hitting him in the back.
“Savages,” I said, trying to impress Chambers, belatedly realizing he might have thought I meant our own soldiers. He didn’t appear to care either way.
“So,” he said. “It true our commander’s a fag?”
“I guess.” I’d met Captain Vrettos’ purported boyfriend many times before we left. A CrossFit coach, he’d come in and led physical training once, and could bench more than anyone, even Sipe. That’d stopped most of the gay jokes.
Chambers shook his head. “What the fuck has happened to my army.”
“He’s a really good leader,” I said. “Everyone’s a little gay, right?”
There was no response. A minute or so passed. A gust rose up, spraying our faces with sand pebbles. I shielded my eyes with an arm. Then it was over, and the stillness returned.
“What you all call this place again?” Chambers asked.
“Checkpoint Thirty-Eight.”
“That’s right.” He paused. “Used to be Sayonara Station.”
“Why’s that?”
He looked at me in a way that made me understand. “Oh,” I said.
His blistered lips thinned into a smile. “You know why we have the checkpoint here, Lieutenant Porter?”
I sucked down some warm water from my CamelBak tube. Petty alpha male games with the sheiks were one thing, but playing them with our own noncoms irritated me.
“I don’t.”
He pointed north to south, perpendicular to the road. “A big smugglers’ trail back in the day. The ravines give cover all the way to Baghdad. Totally drivable, even in shitty third world cars. Checkpoint Thirty-Eight”—his voice rang with disgust—“wasn’t established to search vehicles on the road. It was to dismantle a Shi’a insurgent logistical route.”
I looked north and then south. “Interesting. Shi’a?”
“Yeah. Mainly Jaish al-Mahdi. Back when the Mahdi Army had balls.”
“Oh.” Whenever a guy had deployed before, it always had been rougher and tougher, more of a crucible than his current deployment. “I’ve read about that.” That it was the clear truth in this case only irritated me further. “The Sadr uprisings.”
“Yes, sir. Real combat. None of this counterinsurgency handholding bullshit. Just kill or be killed.” He paused again and spat out another wad of dip. “It made sense.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said something else. “I’m going to make sure the joes are drinking water. Hog almost had heatstroke last month.” I started walking toward the checkpoint, but turned around after a few steps. “Hey. The name Shaba mean anything to you?”
Still leaning against the shack, Chambers took off his right glove and wiped away thick beads of sweat that had gathered under his sunglasses at the bridge of his nose.
“Ahh-shu-riyah,” he said, sounding out the syllables. “Still coughing up sand from the last time.”
Something about his voice, both flippant and mocking, triggered a switch. I tilted my head and smirked. “What about any civilian killings around here?” I asked. “Local gossip.”
We stared at one another, cloudy green meeting pale slate. I stopped smirking and held my breath and my pulse thumped and thumped. He put his sunglasses back on.
“Been in the army for almost ten years now,” he said. “First squad leader taught me it’s better to be tried by twelve than carried by six. He’s dead now. Turned to pink mist trying to save a hajji kid. But he was right. I don’t question any soldier’s decisions in combat. We all made judgment calls, and made them in split seconds. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t wrong. Just part of the job description.”
“And Shaba?”
“No disrespect. But don’t go asking questions about things you don’t want answers to, Jackie. That’s my advice as a professional military man.”
I was too shocked to react. I’d been challenged before, but not like this. Not this direct. I didn’t know what to do. Worse, he knew that.
I turned back around and walked to the checkpoint. The heat loomed over us for the rest of the afternoon like holy venom, pushing into triple digits despite the overcast. Two more cars drove through while we were there. Nothing of interest was found.