We rode to the sound of the guns.
Four Strykers screamed east, bowels packed full of grunts ready for a fucking fight. The champagne popping of mortars had been replaced by the cracking of rifles. “Just go,” Captain Vrettos had said, so we went.
“Dismount to your right and take cover behind the vehicles,” I said over the platoon net. “The contact is to the south. Don’t engage unless you positively identify a target.”
“That means they’re holding a weapon,” Chambers said from his vehicle. “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Nobody be a fucking hero. Heroes get people killed.”
The Stryker came to a stop. The ramp dropped like an anvil and angry air rushed in. Bodies piled out in front of me. I felt Snoop’s hot sunflower-seed breath on my neck, and as my first boot hit packed dirt, Dominguez’s voice shot over the radio speakers: “Contact to the north! To the north!”
I stopped moving and watched the vehicle behind us launch a smoke grenade, masking us in a wispy cloud.
What did he mean, the north?
I heard a whistle. Then another whistle. Then a snap. Bullets ripped at my head, pinging off the Stryker cage behind me.
Close. Close. Very close.
I swung around to the other side of the vehicle for cover, grabbing Snoop from the ramp.
So, I thought. That’s what he meant by north.
A tank rolled by, machine gun blazing away atop its blocky beige frame. Rounds ricocheted off it steadily. A long, arched barrel pointed out its turret, the apocalypse’s very own compass marking the way north. The flag on its side identified it as Iraqi Army, and I recognized one of Saif’s sergeants standing out of the hatch. The streets were empty aside from war machines and hunched silhouettes of soldiers, forsaken by all who called the neighborhood home.
“Lieutenant Porter! Over here!”
Through thick, powdery dust, I saw uniforms and hand waves and I moved north again, head and back down. Snoop followed. We joined Washington and his fireteam behind a square building made of clay, huddling low behind it.
More IA tanks drove into the Shi’a neighborhood on both sides of us, rattling with automatic fire. A bald white soccer ball sat at my feet, an artifact of a game that would never pick up again. I grabbed the hand mic on Batule’s back.
“Anyone see what the IAs are shooting at?”
“Negative!”
A squad of jundis ran between buildings to join us, bunched together like a spring. A spray of rounds tore into them. One fell, but found his way back to his knees and kept moving. Another fell forward and didn’t get back up, a lake of crimson staining the yellow dirt underneath his chest. The remaining IAs responded by shooting their rifles from their hips and bounding to our position. Washington ran out and grabbed the fallen Iraqi by the armpits, dragging him to cover. His gloves ran red with blood and he took them off and tossed them to the ground with a look of disgust.
Doc Cork turned the jundi over and said, “Already gone,” before going to the other jundi and applying a pressure dressing to a hemorrhaging shoulder.
“Sir, what are we doing?”
“Lieutenant Porter, we need to move. Now.”
“Sir!”
Voices swirled and my thoughts boiled and I heard myself breathing too loud. I took a sip of water from my CamelBak, but all I tasted was dust. The air was dry and coiling. Searching my mind, I couldn’t remember anything tactical from the manuals, so I concentrated on a soft ache on the top of my ribs where our body armor was held together by a thick Velcro strap. Then I remembered something else.
“Washington,” I said. “Ever see Band of Brothers? When they advance on the Nazis from behind a tank?”
He grinned, and I reached for the radio to order Hog to maneuver the Stryker between buildings. Life imitating art imitating life, I thought. I’m a fucking postmodern boss.
Behind the creeping vehicle, we moved forward like a needle into a vein. Chambers and a fireteam from fourth squad ran to join our staggered column. Twelve rifles wedged tightly into shoulders swept over every window and every corner in quick, anxious scans. Chambers said “Nice” about using the Stryker as a moving shield, and I nodded, proud. The radio squawked. Batule said Captain Vrettos needed to talk to me, but I said to relay that we were busy getting shot at. A neighborhood of rectangular wheat-colored houses surrounded us. Packed dirt turned into runny black sludge, and I stroked the safety trigger on my rifle and noticed a couple of the men had already flipped theirs to semiautomatic or burst. I didn’t correct them but instead looked up at the sun and realized it was now morning. Fat beads of sweat ran from the padding underneath my helmet down my face and into my mouth. We came upon a small depression with ruined concrete blocks stacked like a midget Stonehenge, and I exhaled.
“Quick halt here, guys. Need to update the commander.”
I went to grab the hand mic on Batule’s back, and when I got there, the world turned to mud.
• • •
I couldn’t see anything or hear anything, but I knew I was still alive because my mouth tasted like sewer. I lifted my head, heavy with helmet and sludge, and wiped my eyes clean, and then my ears, which filled with the staccato humming of machine gun fire. It was Dominguez, unloading the machine gun into the second floor of a sandstone house fifty meters west. I pulled myself to my knees.
“Sir! You okay!” It was Batule, leaning on one knee, firing into the same house as Dominguez. Over cloth, I grabbed my dick, my balls, my face, and my calves.
“I—I—th-think so!” I spat out runny mud. “The fuck happened?”
The words came back in fragments.
“Sniper!”—RAT-A-TAT-TAT. “Sergeant Chambers”—RAT-A-TAT-TAT. “Tackled you”—RAT-A-TAT-TAT.
I followed Batule’s finger to the square hole where a dark round had lodged into a concrete block—head level, right behind where I’d been standing.
I exposed myself, I thought. Made myself a target.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” The voice came from the front side of the Stryker. It was assured and singed, like the desert itself.
“Washington, take the two fireteams and clear that building. I doubt anything’s alive in there, but make fucking sure,” Chambers continued.
The gunfire had tapered off to scattered shots in the far distance, and two tanks rolled back south like a pair of cantering steeds. One of their gunners stood out of his hatch and waved at us. I moved around the back side of the Stryker and stood next to Chambers. His breaths were deep, but nothing else suggested unease. His back was straight, his shoulders cocked, his bearing pleased. He tapped my helmet.
“All right, Lieutenant? Gotta be smarter about grabbing the radio. Marks you as an officer. They know our procedures better than we do.”
“Sergeant, I . . .” I took off my right glove and put out my hand. “Thank you.”
I thought for sure he was going to say, I got you, youngblood. But he didn’t, and I was thankful for that. He just smiled, all tobacco-stained overbite, and took my hand. Then he winked.
After the guys cleared the building, I walked upstairs to look at the enemy. There were four of them, teenage scarecrows made of dirt, all torn to bloody straw. The one we decided was my sniper had brain matter spilling out of his skull, a white, slick jelly. Another cradled an AK-47 in his arms.
Hog came up, too, and vomited in a corner. Leaders have to deal with things like this later, I told myself. So I put those thoughts into a compartment of the mind and shut it tight and tapped at the floor and asked how long it would take the owners to mop up the jelly. Not long, came the reply. It’s not very sticky.
The next hour was spent piecing together why and how. The Iraqi Army said a group of Sahwa started firing at them while they were responding to the mortars. A tribal dispute, they claimed. The Sahwa said the Iraqi Army started firing at them while they were responding to the same mortars. A Shi’a-Sunni dispute, they claimed. Both groups said men dressed in black who appeared in the middle of the firefight were the ones who shot at us. “Jaish al-Rashideen,” the IA said. “Jaish al-Mahdi,” the Sahwa said.
“You know how they are.”
“You know how they are.”
I knew how they were. But still, I thought. None of the dead boys had been wearing black.