The desert was empty and brown on the ride back to the outpost. From the Ashuriyah back roads, it seemed boundless, stretching every which way in a sea of chapped earth. I’d avoided Chambers the rest of the time at the checkpoint, keeping near the radio. But doing that hadn’t gotten rid of a strange prickling in the back of my mind.
Standing out of a rear hatch, between gulps of baked air, I considered Haitham’s phone call to Snoop. Then I asked the soldiers for their thoughts on the Iraqi.
“Never trust an alkie, sir,” Hog said from the driver’s hole, causing me to turn down the volume dial of my headset. “All they care about is booze. That’s how it works in Pine Bluff, at least.”
I looked to my right, where another one of the joes stood, a sulky kid from Ohio named Specialist Kucharczyk. His wide shoulders barely cleared the hatch.
“Agree with that, Alphabet?” I asked.
He shook his head, readjusted his goggles, and went back to watching the roadside.
“That’s our Alphabet,” Hog said. “Man of few words.”
The sky had cleared somewhat. The sun slid across it, leaving crayon streaks of orange and red. Sand berms gave way to shacks made of tin. At a stone arch bearing the image of a bespectacled, snow-bearded cleric, our Stryker turned left. An eight-wheeled armored fighting vehicle the shade of caterpillar green and shaped like a parallelogram, the Stryker was called “the Cadillac of Mesopotamia” by the men. General Dynamics had designed it for urban assaults, meaning it could go eighty miles per hour with an infantry squad in the back or be retrofitted with a 105-millimeter tank gun, depending on the mission. I preferred the more luxurious features of the vehicle, like the iPod dock.
Once the turn was complete, Dominguez spoke through his headset from the machine gun turret.
“Hog.”
“Sergeant?”
“You could learn something from Alphabet. It’s good for a soldier to be quiet.”
With the sun in slow retreat, Ashuriyah had begun to stir. My platoon’s four vehicles were lined up in a row like ducklings and staggered to minimize the effects of an IED blast. The smell of hot trash filled the air. We crept through the town marketplace, pretending to scan for suicide bombers, hoping instead to spot a pretty teenage girl.
Young men in jeans glared at our armored vehicles and kicked at the newly laid asphalt under them. Women dressed in black burqas shuffled from shop to shop, keeping their heads bowed. Middle-aged men hawked fake cans of Pepsi and real blocks of ice, waving at us with one hand and stroking their mustaches with the other. Children threw rocks off the Strykers’ tires and yelled phrases of random, broken English. Old men played dominoes on the side of the road, so used to foreign soldiers they didn’t bother to acknowledge the war machines rolling by.
Some of us waved back, some of us didn’t. Some of us smiled, most of us didn’t. Someone in the trailing Stryker tossed candy to the children. We weren’t supposed to do that anymore, not after a unit across the canal ran over a kid and turned him to flesh pudding.
That’s Chambers’ vehicle, I thought. I kept picturing the look on his face when I’d asked about Shaba. What had that been about?
“You should talk to Alia,” Dominguez said. “She grew up here. I bet she could give you the lowdown.”
“That’s my girl!” Hog said. “For an Iraqi, she sure can slob the knob.” A few seconds passed. “That’s what someone said, anyway.”
“I didn’t hear that,” I said. “Play the damn game.” It was an open secret the outpost’s cleaning lady doubled as a hooker for the enlisted guys, and if whispers counted for anything, business was booming for the forty-something. The other platoon leaders and I had adopted an informal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy on the matter. We were well aware there were worse pastimes to pursue for soldiers at a far edge of the world.
We turned right, the outpost rising above the slums like a desert acropolis. With the afternoon siesta over, the area teemed with activity, from the sheiks at the front gate dressed in fine white dishdashas to the snipers prowling the roof behind drooping camo nets.
“Why the man-dresses here?” Alphabet asked, pointing to the sheiks.
“Sahwa contracts, probably,” I said. I had deep misgivings about our alliance with the local militias, but tried to keep them to myself. “Always a negotiation.”
“Fucking Sahwa,” Alphabet said, spitting into the wind. “They killed Americans before we paid them off. I know they did. It’s just, I don’t know. Dishonorable.”
“Yeah, they got paid,” I said. “And maybe it was dishonorable.” Our Stryker stopped in front of the main entrance, and its back ramp lowered. Inside the vehicle, sitting on long cushioned benches, Snoop and Doc Cork woke up. The terp hopped out. “It was also smart.”
I took off my headset and followed Snoop’s gangly steps through the entrance and into the outpost, clearing my rifle and stripping off my body armor. I felt another headache coming on and couldn’t stop thinking about Chambers calling me Jackie. In the air-conditioned office upstairs, I filed the patrol report while the platoon refueled before heading in themselves. Outside, the heat endured.