Table of Contents

February 28, 2006

Fallujah, Iraq

I pulled the edge of my hood out an inch, trying to get some air to circulate. It was only February, but Fallujah was already an oven. Wearing my uniform, gloves, body armor, a hood, all my battle gear, and goggles didn’t help, and the Humvee’s small air conditioner couldn’t keep up with the heat.

We were on our orientation convoy, our first in Iraq, getting ready for when the main body started arriving in a week. I really wasn’t too concerned. This was my third pump. My first two were as a grunt, so this one, on glorified convoy duty, should be a breeze. This was just an easy route out the gates, around the open area surrounding the camp, and a quick jaunt into the outskirts of the town itself. We’d done about a million convoys back at Pendleton during weekend drills and again after we mobilized, but the powers that be decided that we still had to get certified in-country before we could perform a real mission.

I glanced down at my watch, trying to make the calculations. I hit LCpl Deke Miller in the leg to get his attention. He looked down at me from his position in the gun turret.

“Hey, Miller, what time’s it back in California?”

He glanced at his watch and without a pause replied, “9:30 PM” before looking back up, scanning for any sign of the enemy.

I felt a twinge of guilt. This wasn’t Pendleton. There were bad guys out there, and I shouldn’t be pulling our gunner’s attention off his mission.

Nine-thirty. Sig would have gotten off work 30 minutes ago. I wondered if she was already home. I hadn’t heard anything from her since the buses left Pendleton for March AFB and the long flight to Kuwait. No e-mails at all. I had tried to call her from the USO at Camp Liberty while getting processed to proceed into Iraq, but she never picked up. I knew she was pissed about this deployment, but this was taking it too far. This was her way of punishing me, just like her refusing one last fuck before I left, and I’d just have to wait for her to cool off.

I tried to put her out of my mind and looked out the window. I was riding in the right rear seat of the Humvee, essentially a passenger with no real mission other than to observe. Outside the window, the mostly featureless desert stretched to the south, and the buildings of Fallujah rose miragelike off to the west. It was a tight fit with all my battle gear, and I didn’t like riding with my knees so high, even higher than my hips. I never did like this aspect of the configuration of a Hummer with the low seat and the high floorboard. It didn’t feel particularly safe to me if we were hit or had an accident.

This Hummer was the up-armored variant, carrying about 1,000 pounds of extra protection, so at least that was an improvement on what we had on my previous two pumps. There were rumors of a new vehicle with a v-shaped bottom coming, but they wouldn’t get in theater until long after we were back in the US and de-mobilized.

Up ahead, I could see the lead vehicle take a right as we turned towards Fallujah. We had six Hummers and a 5-ton in the convoy. I had ridden a 5-ton from Kuwait to Baghdad back in 2003 when I was a grunt with 3/4, the “Thundering Third,” and, frankly, I was glad that I had at least the cushioned seat of the Hummer to sit on. A 5-ton was pretty hard on the body, even if it put a lot of steel between you and any IED.

Dust devils danced across the sand as we all made the turn and headed into Fallujah. We were not going to go very far into the city: just up to near the government compound, then hang a right and come back to camp. This convoy was merely to get our feet wet before we were given a real mission. Conducting a convoy back in Pendleton was one thing. Conducting one where the enemy was a very real threat was something else.

Most of the Marines in the battery were pretty disgusted with our assignment. We would not be firing any tubes during our deployment. We were assigned as a provisional MP company, taking police-type duties. It didn’t bother me none. I was still an 0311, a grunt. I just joined the battery in November, when they were already in their work-ups, and I had never even trained as an artilleryman yet. An active duty battery would be providing all the arty fire support, but as reservists, most of us were on convoy duty, which made sense given all the drivers a battery has. It takes a shitload of trucks to move around a battery’s guns and ammo.

The radio crackled with instructions to keep it tight, but watch our dispersion. Staff Sergeant Rios was our vehicle commander, and he just rolled his head in exaggerated wonder. I’m not sure how we could keep it tight and disbursed at the same time, and he evidently felt the same.

I looked over the hump running down the middle of the Hummer to the passenger in the back left seat. The chaplain had insisted on coming. He looked pretty nervous, but I had to give him credit for coming out with us. You can’t lead a flock from behind. Maybe having him there would give us a little extra protection from the big man upstairs.

As we pulled into the built-up area, I paid more attention to what was around us. It wasn’t as if I could engage anyone if we got hit. Our windows didn’t lower, and we didn’t have any sort of gun port. No, that would be up to Miller on the .50. But this was my first glimpse of Fallujah, and from all reports, the fighting had been pretty fierce here back in 2004. I was in-country at the time of the Battle of Fallujah, but not here.

I was a bit disappointed that it looked like every other dusty Iraqi town I’d seen. There was some damage evident, but not like the photos of destruction in Japan and Germany from back in WWII. I’m not sure what I expected, but certainly something more dramatic than this.

As I was looking out the window, we started to drift a bit to my side of the road. In all our rehearsals, we had it drilled into our heads to keep our vehicle tracks in the ones of the vehicles ahead of us. Not three hours ago, in our convoy brief, the battalion S-3 had stressed the same thing. And here we were starting to make our own way. I looked up at SSgt Rios, wondering if he was going to tell LCpl Morrisey, our driver, to fall back in trace of the Hummer in front of us. I hesitated a moment; I was new to the battery, and Rios was a SNCO. I was just a corporal.

We drifted another foot or so, and I knew I had to say something. I released my seatbelt and leaned forward, head over my knees, just as SSgt Rios seemed to realize that we had drifted. He turned to Morrisey, so I settled back into my seat.

The instant my back touched the back of my seat, the world erupted with a roar. I felt like a giant had hit my seat, throwing the Hummer, and me with it, up in the air. I felt a flash of heat, almost too intense to bear. Stunned, I really didn’t know what had happened for a moment, but then it struck me. We’d been hit by an IED.

The Hummer was airborne, but canted so the right side was above the left, and I hung half in and half out of the vehicle, suspended over the dusty road. We’d been briefed that the Hummer’s doors often got stuck when the vehicle hit an IED, but my door had been torn right off. I glanced over to see the chaplain holding on for dear life while Miller’s legs flailed in the air inside the Hummer, his torso still out of the gun turret hatch.

All of this couldn’t have taken more than two seconds, but time seemed suspended to me. Life had gone into super-slow-mo mode. Up we went, then the Hummer started its unstoppable plunge back down to earth. I braced myself, but it didn’t do much good. The vehicle hit hard on its left side. It stopped cold, but I didn’t. I tumbled over and out to slam on the ground, my breath knocked out of me. I looked up, seeing the remnants of the black smoke from the explosion disburse into the blue sky above me, then the tottering Humvee looking like it was trying to decide which way to fall. I could see this, and I realized that if it fell on me, I was a goner. But this was almost an unemotional acknowledgment. I knew it would crush me, but I didn’t feel a sense of panic. If it crushed me, it crushed me. I certainly could not move out of the way in time.

After an eternity, the Hummer fell over—to the left. I was in the clear. Still dazed, I heard the sound of small arms, the distinctive chatter of AK-47s, but as if through cotton being stuffed in my ears. This registered on me, but without a sense of urgency. The .50s in the other vehicles opened up in reply, and I could see tracers painting lines across the street and into one of the adjacent buildings.

It took an effort, but I managed to sit up. I stared stupidly at the wreck of a Hummer lying upside down next to me. The left hand rear door opened, and out tumbled the chaplain, who then reached back in to help Miller out. LCpl Miller had leaned back in to help Morrisey out when someone took a sledgehammer and hit me in the chest. I fell to my back and struggled to breathe. I knew I had been shot, and the weird complacency I had been feeling vanished. I was going to die here, a million miles away from home, on a hot dusty street in Fallujah. Two tours as a grunt without a scratch, and I buy it as an arty-slash-MP?

I managed to reach to my chest with my left hand, then I brought it up to my line of sight, expecting to see my blood staining it red. The glove on my hand looked scorched, but it was not red. I wondered what that meant, but tunnel vision crept in and all went dark.

Chapter 2

Same Day

Camp Fallujah Hospital

I hurt.

All over.

My butt hurt, my back hurt. My lips hurt. It hurt to breathe, each breath sending stabs of pain through my chest.

“How’re you feeling, son?” a calm voice asked me.

I opened my eyes to see the chaplain sitting on a chair beside me. He was filthy, covered with soot and dust. He looked OK, though. I realized I didn’t even know his name, or what kind of chaplain he was.

“Am I OK?” I asked.

I looked around. How come no doctors were treating me? I’d been shot!

“You’ll be fine, Cpl Xenakis, isn’t it? Can I call you Nicholas? I don’t think we’ve officially met yet. I’m Father Trent.”

“Just Nick’s fine, Father,” I answered.

He held out his hand as if we were casually meeting back at Seal Beach. By instinct, I took it, but that brought another stab of pain in my chest. I had been stripped and somewhat cleaned up, so it was easy to lift up the sheet over me and look at my chest. An angry red welt now adorned my right pec.

“Yes, the doctor said you’re going to have a pretty serious bruise there, but your flak jacket stopped the round itself. You’ll need an x-ray, but he doesn’t think you broke a rib or anything.”

“But, why’d I, I mean why’d I…”

“Pass out? Well, you need to ask the doc, but I think he said you’ve got a concussion. The IED was right underneath you when it went off.”

I looked around, but the other beds were empty.

“Is everyone OK?”

Father Trent’s eyes clouded over a bit before he answered. “LCpl Miller was shot in the arm, and he’s in surgery now. He was pulling you back out of the line of fire when he was hit. He’s going to pull through, they said, but he could lose the arm.”

I felt a pang of guilt. Miller was one of the Marines in the battery that I knew the best. We both lived in Westminster (best known for its “Little Saigon”), and he was a former grunt, too. He was using the GI Bill and his drill pay to support himself while he was taking classes at Coastline Community College.

“I see you’re awake. You feeling OK now?” A corpsman had walked up while I was talking to the chaplain.

“Not too good, to be honest.”

The corpsman gave a rueful laugh. “Yeah, I would imagine so. You’re going to be pretty sore for a few days. None of that’s too serious, but you’ve got a concussion, and we’re going to keep you overnight for observation. If you’re feeling up to it, let’s get you cleaned up, and Doctor Whipple’s ordered a chest x-ray, just to be on the safe side.”

He turned to Father Trent. “You might as well get cleaned up, too, sir. I’ll take care of Xenakis here now.”

Father Trent looked at me, obviously torn.

“You go, sir. Get cleaned up. When LCpl Miller’s out of surgery, he might need you,” I told him.

That seemed to register, because he got up, wished me well, and left, but not before promising to be back to check up on me.

“We kept your first sergeant and the rest out, but the chaplain, he insisted on staying until you woke up. Well, let’s get going,” he said, as he brought a wheelchair up to the bed.

I started to protest, but that didn’t do me any good.

“Sorry there, corporal. But you’ve taken a knock on the head, and regs are regs. You get yours truly as your personal chauffeur. And here, you might want more of this,” he told me, handing me a white tube of cream.

I took it, then looked at him questioningly.

“For your lips. You got burned there, where you weren’t covered up. Your gear saved you from being burnt anywhere else. We kept your gear after we took it off you. Most of it can’t be used anymore, but it might make a good souvenir.”

I eased off the bed and into the chair. I was hurting more than after any football game back at high school. I felt a little conspicuous having a grown man push me in a chair, but it was probably better than me trying to walk to the shower. I’d hate to try it only to fall on my ass and have to get someone to help me up.

Chapter 3

March 21, 2006

Camp Fallujah, Iraq

“Hey Xenakis, get back to the battery. We’ve got a mission.”

I looked up from my burger at Sgt Jones. I had just sat down to chow, and the burgers were really pretty good. All of the food was good, to be honest, and I was eating better than I ate back home. We even got prime rib every Sunday, if you could believe that. Iraq in 2006 was much different from my two previous pumps, and the food was a welcome change for the better.

“Now, Xenakis, and get everyone else together,” Jones said as I hesitated.

“OK, OK, I’m coming.”

I stood up, and as he turned away, I took two huge bites of the burger, ketchup and mayo running out onto my chin. I wiped my chin with my sleeve and hurried out of the DFAC. I wondered what was so important. We didn’t have a convoy scheduled for today. Other MP’s had PTT duty, and that was pretty much a 24/7 assignment, but with the loyalties of the Iraqi police questionable, I was glad we did convoy escorts rather than being on a Police Transition Team. That duty went to the active duty MP company, anyway.

The heat hit me as I left the air conditioning and made my way to the battery office. We were an MP company now, but everyone still referred to us as a battery, so who was I to argue? I entered the hatch, eyes taking a moment to adjust from the bright Iraqi sun.

“Into the briefing room, Xenakis,” Gunny Pancoast told me.

I nodded and went inside the small room and took a seat. Most of the other platoon NCOs were already there. The room was pretty rough. None of the plywood walls or work benches had been finished, and cables snaked every-which-way connecting computers, lights, and what have you. I asked Cpl Kim what was up, but he hadn’t a clue, so I sat back to wait for the lieutenant.

I leaned back and stretched, and a twinge in my chest reminded me of the bruise there that had by now faded to a sickly shade of yellow. For awhile there, the other Marines in the unit had called it my “purple heart,” one the Corps couldn’t take away. I had to admit that despite it being on my right side rather than my left, the bruise did sort of look like a dark purple heart. My ass had also been pretty bruised, but I was glad that no nickname had arisen due to that one. I could just imagine what they might have come up with.

I thought of my uneaten burger. Typical Corps, hurry up and wait. I would’ve had time to eat the burger and even make a trip to the ice cream bar.

Finally, Lieutenant Richmond and Gunny Templeton walked in. We came to attention, then took our seats. The lieutenant was one of the few lieutenants in the battery. Other platoon commander billets, which were T/O’d for lieutenants, were filled by captains who had already served their active duty tours. 1stLt Richmond had done three years on active duty, all at Kaneohe Bay, as a supply officer. Now, as a reservist, he finally made it to the Sandbox. He seemed pretty capable, for all of that.

“Take your seats, gentlemen,” he told us. He was rather fond of the term “gentlemen.” We were Marines, though, not gentlemen. Maybe he was, at least by an act of Congress, but we sure weren’t.

“We’ve got ourselves a little extra mission for the day. Nothing too big, but we take what we can get. As you know, violence has increased as a result of the bombing of the Golden Mosque. Most of this is Shiite/Sunni. We haven’t been too affected by this yet, but the Army has conducted several operations like Swarmer last week.”

Operation Swarmer was a huge airborne operation, suitably covered by CNN and Fox, who called it the biggest airborne operation since Vietnam. Word on the street was that it was pretty much a big dog-and-pony show.

“Well, they also pulled off Operation Swamp Fox , capturing over 100 insurgents, and some of MNF-West’s ITT teams and MPs have gone over to supplement them. With them gone, we’re a little short-handed, and the grunts in town have captured our own insurgents. We’ve been tasked with providing the processing for the EPWs until ITT can do their thing. I want two teams ready to go as soon as they bring in the EPWs from the government compound. SSgt Cordero will be in charge, but I want everyone standing by in case they’re needed.”

Our primary duty was convoy escort, but we’d had training on handling Enemy Prisoners of War, mostly in the collection points and holding areas. We had, though spent a day on a mock processing center. I hoped we’d be doing the former rather than the latter. All those things like fingerprinting, clothing issue, haircuts, photos, and such ran together in my mind. I wasn’t sure that any of us really knew how to set one of those up. It was one thing to designate us as an MP company, but it was another for us to actually know how to do everything a real 5811 did.

The lieutenant left to get more information, and the gunny told SSgt Cordero who he had. I was one of those chosen. As a former grunt, I guess they thought I would be somehow better qualified for tasks that required standing around with my M16. I was used to it, though. Krispen Craig was also selected. Cpl Craig was an active duty 5811, a real military policeman, before he became a reservist and joined the battery. Truth be told, though, I thought most of us knew more about our new duties than “Krispy Kreme.” He wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack.

Like most reserve units, we were a bit heavy in NCOs and lacking in lance corporals and below. We did have some, though, and SSgt Cordero sent us off to get those assigned to the mission. I grabbed LCpl Fowler just as he left the DFAC, ketchup staining the collar of his utilities blouse. At least he had gotten to eat first. I told him to go change and meet us in front of the company office.

By the time we are all gathered there, Gunny Pancoast had more info, and he went with us to the EPW holding area, thank goodness. We were just going to be guarding them, not processing them. We waited around for about 30 minutes when a 5-ton truck, escorted by two gun Hummers, drove up. A PTT sergeant got out of the lead Hummer and sauntered over. Gunny Pancoast was still with us, and the sergeant ignored us to speak to the gunny. To me, he seemed a bit arrogant. I thought the active duty MPs sometimes treated us with a bit of a condescending manner, and even if I was on active duty only a few months ago, I was already feeling a bit sensitive about the “weekend warrior” label. In actuality, I would put any of my fellow battery Marines up against any other Marines, active duty or not.

The PTT MP had gunny sign over some papers, and then the two prisoners were taken out of the truck, blindfolded and hands cuffed in back of them. That’s right. Two fierce insurgents, one looking no more than 16 years old. All of this effort for two Iraqis.

We knew the two had been searched, but the manual said we had to search them again. LCpl Fowler gave me his M16, then he carefully searched them while the other seven of us stood at the ready, watching each and every move. They were clean, and we escorted them inside the wired compound. We sat them down and SSgt Cordero told us to remove their blindfolds.

Eyes blinking in the bright sunlight, they looked fearfully about. One guy was probably about 20 years old. He was a pretty big guy and had a few days stubble on his chin. There was a bruise forming along the side of his face. I wondered if he got that before or after his capture. He looked like he was trying to look tough, but I could see his fear. I could almost smell it.

The other insurgent was a skinny kid; he couldn’t have weighed more than 130 lbs. He wasn’t even trying to look tough—he was scared shitless. Justin Hansen stomped his foot at the kid, and he jumped about a mile.

“That’s enough, Hansen,” SSgt Cordero admonished him. “Check their zip ties and see if they’re too tight or not.”

“I was just messing with them,” the lance corporal grumbled as he surrendered his weapon and checked the ties. With the kid, he just pushed him down on his side before giving the ties a yank. He tried that with the larger guy, but the Iraqi sat solidly and didn’t let him push him all the way down.

The lieutenant came over to check on us, then later an interpreter came to join us. But mostly, we stood there in the hot sun, staring at the two Iraqis. The interpreter didn’t even speak to them. I guess he was just there to listen in case either of the two started spilling out all the vital Al Qaeda super secrets.

As the largest of us, SSgt Cordero had me standing the closest to them. I think they were scared enough that the one inch I had over Hansen didn’t make any difference.

Before I left for Iraq, I was watching a show on Discovery about this place in England where they rescued gorillas and chimps and monkeys. One little chimp had been abandoned, and the staff was trying to introduce it to the other chimps. The little guy was scared out of its wits. It wanted nothing to do with the other chimps. The young prisoner reminded me of that baby chimp. This guy was scared to his core. I’m sure he thought he was going to be killed. I’m pretty sure I would be scared, too, if Al Qaeda captured me, and he was just a kid.

On a hunch, I surrendered my weapon and got a bottle of water. As I approached the kid, he tried to scrunch back, but I merely held the bottle up, ready for him to drink. He hesitated, but finally opened his mouth, and drank, much of the water running down his face and onto his dirty T-shirt. I did the same with the other prisoner.

“Why you bothering with the ragheads?” Krispy Kreme asked.

“You know the regs. We have to provide them with adequate food, water, and shelter.” After Abu Ghraib, the proper handling of prisoners was being stressed.

“Xenakis is right,” SSgt Cordero said. “From now on, every 30 minutes, we give them water.”

We stayed on duty for another four hours. A number of officers and staff made their way over to see the prisoners, but none stayed after satisfying their curiosity. For some of the fobbits, this was undoubtedly the first “enemy” they had seen. If they really were enemy, that is. The young guy didn’t seem able to muster up the courage to fight anyone.

Eight new Marines came to relieve us. I was grateful to get out of the sun, and my stomach was growling for chow. As I left, I glanced back to see the kid staring at me. I wondered what was going on in his thoughts.

By the next morning, the two EPWs were gone, and I put them out of my mind.

Chapter 4

Camp Fallujah

April 5, 2006

Nothing from Sig. I had waited almost 30 minutes to get a computer, and nothing. I had an e-mail from my mom and another from my little sister, but nothing from my wife. I had been in Iraq for over a month, I’d survived an IED, but I’d received only three e-mails from her.

I had called her several times. We had donated calling cards sent to us, so it wasn’t too hard to get one and make the call. She hadn’t answered most times I called, and the one time I reached her, she seemed distracted and said she had to go after only five minutes or so.

I had met Sig back in high school. We weren’t from the same school, though. I was from La Quinta High, and she was from Westminster. We actually met one day at the food court at South Coast Plaza, and I think the idea of dating the “enemy” was alluring to both of us. She was a petite blonde from a well-off, devout Lutheran family. My family was more working class, and I was this big, swarthy Greek-American from an equally devout Orthodox family. I wasn’t surprised that her family thought me beneath her.

Her family expected her to go to USC, but her grades weren’t good enough, so she enrolled at Fullerton. I had a few scholarship offers for football, but I was done with school. I enlisted, and by the time I graduated boot camp and SOI, Sig had already dropped out of school. On a whim, we drove up to Vegas and got married.

Sig actually tried to be a good Marine Corps wife. Money was tight though, and before we really knew what it was like to live with each other, I was in Iraq. She took a job at WhatABurger and did the best she could while I had the adventure of my life. When I came back, she started to settle into married life, but then I went back to the war.

When my enlistment was over, I wanted to re-up, but she was having none of it. It was either her or the Corps. I told her I was required to serve out the remainder of my full enlistment as a reservist. I didn’t tell her I could have done that in the IRR, the Individual Ready Reserve, where I would basically just keep the Marine Corps aware of how they could contact me. I found out that the SMCR battery, that is the drilling reserve battery, at Seal Beach was going to be deployed, and I joined it.

I guess I was less than honest with her. I was mad at her for how she was treating me now, but I also felt guilty for lying to her. I just hoped we could patch things up after I got back.

Brent Cooperage caught my eye as I left the computer shack. I shook my head. Brent was one of my closer friends here. He worked in the battery headquarters and had been stuck here at Camp Fallujah the entire time so far. He took out his frustrations in the gym, and as a gym buddy, you couldn’t really ask for more. He was one of the few people who knew about my problems back at home.

“She’ll come around. Just give her time,” he said. He then tilted his head in the direction of the gym, then mimed doing a military press. “Ready to hit it?” he asked.

I smacked him on the shoulder. “I’m ready enough to lift you into the dirt!”

I was still feeling depressed, but lifting stacks of iron with Brent would go a long ways in sweating out some of my anxiety.

Chapter 5

Camp Fallujah

April 12, 2006

“Stand by to stand by,” SSgt Cordero muttered.

We’d been at the airfield for over an hour, waiting for the VIPs. From Fallujah, we were going to take them down to the government house in Ramadi for some meetings with the governor. Our VIP was the Director of USAID, a civilian, but I guess she was like a three-star general equivalent or something. She was going to travel with General Haskins, one of the two Marine one-stars at Fallujah. We’d escorted him before, and he was OK for a general.

It was brutally hot, and despite being here for going on two months, I wasn’t completely used to the heat. I drank lots of water; good thing we had plenty of bottled water stashed in just about every nook and cranny aboard the camp.

I was just reaching for another bottle of water when two Hummers approached us from the buildings to the south of the airfield.

“OK, looks like game time,” the staff sergeant said. “Let’s get ’im ready.”

The Hummer pulled up and the lieutenant hopped out first, followed almost immediately by the skipper. A more leisurely moment later, the general got out and stretched. He was a tall, well-built guy, but the helmet perched up on his head looked several sizes too small. You would think the Corps would have a helmet big enough for a general so that he didn’t look like a Special Ed kid.

A couple of staff officers stepped out of the second Hummer but simply stood around it. They weren’t going to come over here unless the birds were inbound, but it looked like we still had a few moments. The general’s aide had already been with us waiting, and he hurried up to the general. That was one job I would never want. I’d seen this lieutenant before, as well as the other aides, and they just seemed to be personal servants. I knew it was a good career move, but I’m glad corporals were not in the running for that job.

The general came up to SSgt Cordero and shook his hand, then reached up to LCpl Harris, the gunner on the gun vehicle, to shake his hand as well. It looked like he was going to make the circuit for all of us. General Haskins usually did this, but where for some O’s it seemed fake, I felt that with him, he was sincere.

He was interrupted, though, when one of his staff pointed to the south. I looked up, and sure enough, two Black Hawks were making their way, coming up the east side of the camp to then pull a left to land at the airfield. As the general broke contact with us to get ready, Lieutenant Richmond came to attention as if to salute, old habits being what they were (we didn’t salute here at Fallujah), but then simply nodded at the general before taking his place in the first gun vehicle. This was his preferred place in any convoy.

The Black Hawks landed, one after the other. I’m a Marine and all that, but I thought the Army Black Hawks were pretty mean-looking birds. I’d never been in one, but they looked like schoolyard bullies when compared to our Hueys. Before I left Iraq, I hoped I would get to ride in one.

The lead bird’s crewchief hopped out first, tethered by his headset to the bird. He helped out someone in uniform, then someone short in civilian clothes, probably a woman, but it was hard to tell at this distance with the black vest and helmet she was wearing. On the second bird, however, there was no mistaking the long blonde hair flowing from under the helmet on the woman there.

“Damn!” Krispy Kreme muttered, and for once, I agreed with him.

All the passengers hurried to get out from under the rotors, then milled around a bit while the general strode forward to greet them. I could see him pointing back to us, and I thought we would load right up as per our convoy brief, but the short lady went into the plywood shack that acted as a terminal. It took me a moment to realize why. The heads in the back were a little crude, but full bladders have their own kind of power that brook no arguments.

The skipper and Gunny Pancoast were directing the rest of the passengers to our waiting Hummers. I was in a chase vehicle, so the plan was that I wasn’t going to have any passengers with me, but people in the head shed do what they want, and Gunny brought up an Army major to me, telling me he would ride with us.

“Major Standuski, corporal,” he said, shaking my hand.

“Corporal Xenakis,” I replied. “Our driver is Corporal Meyers.”

“Sir,” Tony chirped, not getting out of the vehicle.

“Where do you want me?”

“Right here, sir,” I told him, moving to hold open the right rear hatch.

We got in and waited for the rest of the convoy to load. The blonde girl walked past us to get into the Hummer in front of us. She looked even better up close, despite her black body armor. Both Tony and I must have been obvious, because there was a laugh in back of us from the major.

“Ah, yes, Brenda. She handles contracts for Al Anbar for USAID, and she is one of the benefits of working there. Not that I’ve noticed of course, being the married man that I am.”

I turned to look back at the major, not knowing how to take that. He was a major, after all, and Army at that. He must have seen the expression on my face because he laughed again, and that brought out the laughs from both Tony and me. Who would’ve thunk it? A comedian major?

“If I wasn’t so happily married, I might mention what she looks like on the stairstepper at the gym, especially if you’re on one of the bikes in back of her, but as I am happily married, I won’t do that.”

Tony held out his fist for a bump, and I obliged. This major was OK.

The short woman finally came out of the terminal, and as the general was waiting for her, it was obvious to me that she was the VIP. She was escorted into the fourth Hummer, and at last, we were given the command to move out. The skipper and the gunny watched us leave. Both of them looked like they wanted to jump on board as well, but neither one of them got out of the camp very often, and that was mostly for meetings at the Fallujah government house. Like Brent, they must have been going a bit stir-crazy.

We made our way out of camp and started on the 40-minute ride to Ramadi. The dirt road and the paved highway to Ramadi were pretty open, but the closer we got to the city, the higher the pucker factor. Ramadi was a bigger city than Fallujah, and the fighting was more constant there. IEDs were a continual problem. The battery had not been hit there yet, knock on wood, but plenty of other Marines had. Army, too. There was an Army brigade taking half of the city, even if it was under Marine command.

Two days earlier, a grunt gunner on a Hummer had taken an RPG right in the chest while driving into the Al Anbar government compound. I never knew him, but I stepped into his memorial service at the Chapel of Hope to pay my respects. That easily could have been someone from the battery.

On my second trip into Ramadi, back in March, we’d taken some AK fire from a bozo near a small market. He was only about 20 yards away when he opened fire, but still he couldn’t hit us. LCpl Dye was our gunner, and he started to swing about on the guy, but the lieutenant was with us on that trip, and he ordered Dye to hold his fire. The gunman had only fired off a burst before turning and running back into the market where other Iraqis were desperately diving for cover. The lieutenant made the right decision. A .50 cal opening up would have wrecked havoc, killing bystanders, and the gunman wasn’t a threat anymore. What the incident impressed on me, though, was that anybody anywhere in this cesspit of a city could be targeting us. Anyone could take us as a target of opportunity.

As we entered the outskirts of the city, the radio chatter picked up a notch. Normally, we would first go to Camp Blue Diamond, but this time, it was straight to the government house. The roads got narrower, and all of us kept our eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary: a dead goat, a bag of trash, a box—anything at the side of the road that could harbor an IED. We skirted several craters that had not yet been filled, reminders of what could happen.

I kept waiting for that something to happen, anything at all. It wasn’t until I saw the walls of the government compound in front of us that I thought we were in scot-free. That thought must have pissed off the gods of the convoys because right then, the radios erupted. I hadn’t heard any explosions or firing, but I could clearly hear Sgt Blount screaming to back up. He was the vehicle commander for the Hummer that was carrying the VIP. I tried to see around the Hummers in front of me, but while I saw two Hummers make the right turn into the compound, I couldn’t see Blount’s Hummer.

The Hummer in front of us shifted to the left, the gunner intent on what was in front. Then it became clear. Somehow, the shit-for-brains Craig had driven straight while every other vehicle was turning right into the compound. He was driving off into Indian country with the VIP inside.

Blount had him stopped, but there wasn’t enough room for him to turn around.

“Tony, move forward on the right,” I told my driver.

We didn’t have a gunner, but with us up forward, abreast of the next Hummer, maybe we could be in position if the shit hit the fan. In front of us, a good 30 or 40 meters out there all alone, Blount’s Hummer started backing up, weaving a bit from side to side. The radios were calling for updates, but we focused on any possible threat. After an eon, Craig finally was back far enough so he could put it back into forward and turn into the compound. He lurched it forward, then sped in, followed immediately by us. We turned into the compound just in time to see Craig take off the open door on one of the Hummers already inside and parked. We moved over further to the left and forward. In the now-doorless Hummer, General Haskins looked out. I don’t know how to describe the look on his face, but it certainly wasn’t good.

We pulled over and parked. I didn’t know what to expect, but it certainly was not our VIP, all five feet of her, laughing when the general rushed up.

“Well, that was interesting. I’m not sure that would have been the meeting I was supposed to attend, but who knows what I could have accomplished out there?”

General Haskins started to apologize, but the woman waved him off.

“Shit happens, general. I’m sure you know that. Let’s just get in to see the governor. I’ll be glad to get out of all this armor.”

By then Lieutenant Richmond was rushing up, but this time it was the general waving someone off, but with an I’ll-take-this-up-with-you-later look on his face. The lieutenant skidded to a halt, then looked around for Krispy Kreme. Gunny Templeton and SSgt Cordero had beat him to it, though, with Cordero bodily pulling the idiot out of the driver’s seat. I didn’t really like the guy very much, but I winced as I considered his fate. I decided to steer as clear of all that as possible.

I got out of my Hummer and stretched. The area around the government house compound was more like what I imagined Fallujah would’ve looked like. The road in from Blue Diamond was not that bad, even if it was referred to as “IED Alley.” But most of the buildings around the compound were down, either torn down or blasted down, I’m not sure. Inside the compound, the signs of violence were evident. Rubble was everywhere, and temporary patches could be seen all over the walls of the three buildings that made up the compound. Up against the side of the government house itself, there was even a black BMW, pretty mangled and looking much worse for wear.

“As I live and breathe, if it isn’t Nick Xenakis! I thought you left our Big Green Machine!”

I turned around to see Derek Butler, one of my old K 3/4 Marines. “Sergeant” Butler, I should say, as I saw his new chevrons on his flak jacket.

“Well, damn, the Corps must be really scraping at the bottom of the barrel,” I said, flicking at the chevrons with my forefinger as he came up. “Looks good there, though, you lifer.”

We’d both been lance coolies and corporals together, and he was a hard-charger, someone you could count on. I still had a photo of him, Bob DeStafney, and me at the airport in Ireland on the way back from our first pump, beers in hand and raised in a toast.

“Ah, you know the Corps; they’ll promote about anyone. Seriously, though, what’re you doing here? I thought you were getting out and going home to make babies with your wife, Sig’s her name, right?”

“I couldn’t stay away, I guess. I joined the reserve battery out of Seal Beach, and now I’m back here as an MP.”

“No shit? I don’t know. If I got out, I think I’d stay out,” he said. “Hey, let me give you the grand tour here. We rotate in and out of here to provide security.”

I knew I wasn’t going anywhere soon, so I figured why not? I told Tony I’d be back, then followed Derek between the main building and a smaller one to the side. Derek was giving me a rundown on his squad and how most of them were newbies when he ducked down and ran in a low crouch across a small open area. I followed suit.

“Oh yeah, I guess I should have mentioned that,” he said as I ran up to where he’d stopped. “One building out there, at maybe 700 meters, gives the ragheads eyes inside, and every day or so, someone takes a shot. Those dipwads couldn’t hit the side of a barn, but even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then.”

We walked into a very rough building that seemed mostly made of plywood, at least from the inside. There were plywood partitions, plywood desks, plywood tables. Marines and civilians seemed busy as they went about their tasks.

“This is where we come in for a break. Civil Affairs is in here, pretty much for the duration, and some of the PRT is in here, too.”

I really didn’t know what a “PRT” was, but I figured by his gesture to two people that civilians were in it. He walked back to a small room, opened a refrigerator, and took out two Mountain Dews. I have to say, the cold soda felt pretty good going down.

There were some makeshift weights in the next room, or maybe the next partitioned area would be more accurate. An old guy was there lifting, but he was in Marine shorts and T-shirt, body armor on the floor beside him, so he must have been a Marine. I tilted my head at him in a question.

“That’s a lieutenant colonel. He’s worse than you. He already retired, but he volunteered to come back to this shithole. In six months, he’ll probably never leave this compound.”

As we walked back out, Derek poked his head into a small room. It was full of comm gear and one Marine. Normally, it would have been quite dark in there but for the hole in the overhead, only partially patched with a piece of plastic.

“A rocket came in last night, messed up some comm gear, but never even touched LCpl Evers here. Right, Evers?”

Evers, who had earphones on, merely lifted one hand, thumbs up, in reply.

“Seriously, though, I don’t know how that guy made it. Not even a scratch,” he told me as we left the building, ready to scrunch down and run back across the open area.

We went into the main building, and while the windows were all sandbagged, there was a semblance of normality inside. It was a pretty big building with high ceilings, and from what I could see, the offices looked like what you would expect pretty much anywhere.

We were walking down the main corridor when a door opened and a number of people came out. The general was there, along with our VIP. A swarthy-looking Iraqi with a scabbed and bruised face was leading them, and they were followed by a small, mousy-looking guy. After them were several colonels, MAJ Standuski, and Brenda, who looked even better out of her body armor. In back of them, I could see a servant picking up teacups in a rather ornate sitting room. They had spent all this time having tea?

“That’s the governor,” Derek told me, pointing out the guy with the beat-up face. “That other guy, he’s the president of the Al Anbar council.”

“He’s the governor? So what happened to him? Cut himself shaving?”

“Did you see that Beemer outside?”

“Yeah, I saw it.”

“He was driving it to work two weeks ago when a suicide bomber tried to get him again. Blew the shit out of himself and killed the governor’s secretary and a bodyguard, but didn’t get the gov. That makes 31 times they’ve tried to knock him off.”

“Thirty-one times? Shit!” That BMW had been pretty much destroyed, and I wasn’t sure how he’d managed to survive that.

“He just got that Beemer a week before. It was armored, so if it hadn’t been, Al Anbar would be looking for a new governor.” He paused for a moment before continuing, this time in a more subdued voice. “They did get his son a few months ago, though. Blew him up as he was coming here to the government house.”

I watched the governor as he stopped by a big set of doors, motioning for our VIP to go inside. Since I’d been here, my mindset had been more of an us versus them, Americans versus Iraqis. But as he followed the Americans into the conference room, I realized that someday we would be leaving. The governor, if he managed to survive, would still be here. He had a lot more at stake than I had, than we had. In five months I’d be back at home watching the ’Niners on the tube, beer in hand, munching on chips and guac. The governor would still be trying to keep from getting blown up on his way to work.

I followed Derek as he climbed a set of wide, sweeping stairs. On the second floor, there were more offices, and Derek led me to a small door and up several sets of stairs until we came out into the sunshine on the roof. There were a number of Marines on the roof with comm gear, automatic weapons, grenade launchers, and M16s. Netting covered boxes and gear and provided just a bit of relief from the sun.

From this vantage point, Ramadi stretched out beneath us. All around the government compound the buildings were mostly rubble. Further out, they rose like abandoned buildings in some sort of end-of-the-world movie. Further still, they seemed more whole, more live, at least in comparison. For a city this size, there seemed very little life out there. There was very little of the hustle and bustle that living cities had.

Derek and I stood out of the way, under one of the nets. Seeing the Marines up there, I felt a pang of missing the grunts. This is what I was used to, not riding around in vehicles every day.

“Lieutenant, we’ve got another looker,” a gunny said, coming up to the lieutenant who commanded the Marines on the roof.

“Where at? Show me.” he said as he got up, binos in hand.

I had a pair of Bushnells with me that I had bought back before my second pump. They weren’t issue, but they were handy to have around. When the gunny was pointing out to the lieutenant, I followed the directions and acquired the “looker” as well. On the roof of a building about 900 meters away, his head just peaking around some sort of wall on top of the roof, I could see him. He had his own glasses out and seemed to be observing us. The lieutenant watched him for a few moments as well.

“OK, get Cpl Lindt,” he told the gunny, then lifted his own binos to take the Iraqi back under observation.

It was immediately obvious what Cpl Lindt’s mission was. He was an odd-looking guy of average build, but his face was decidedly different and slightly out of whack. With half of a ghillie suit and his rifle, though, it was obvious that he was a scout-sniper. I’m not sure how much good a ghillie suit did on the roof of a building, but then again, I never went to sniper school. I respected the guys that did, though.

“We’ve got a looker over there, right on the roof of that building, about 90 mills to the left of the minaret,” he said, holding three fingers up at arms length as he located the Iraqi. I want you to put a round beside him. Don’t hit him, but let him know we’d rather not have him there.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Cpl Lindt responded as he went to get his spotter. The two Marines went over to the side of the roof that faced the Iraqi and got into position. I kept watching, figuring that once the Iraqi saw the sniper get into position, he would boogie out of there. The spotter used the laser range-finder to get the distance (876 meters, I heard him say), then they started discussing windage and minutes. I had to listen again at that one. Minutes? I wasn’t sure how minutes became sniper-targeting adjustments. Meanwhile, the Iraqi stayed put. Finally, Cpl Lindt settled in. From under his blouse, he pulled what looked to be a large sharp tooth on a chain, sticking the tooth between his teeth. He aimed downrange, took a breath, then let out a shot.

I was waiting for it, but I still jumped. I watched the building, and for a split second, thought the sniper had missed. I forgot about the distance, though, and how long it would take the round to travel that far. The stucco a foot or so alongside the Iraqi’s head exploded. The Iraqi disappeared, and there were a few chuckles from the Marines on the roof. Cpl Lindt started to get back up when to everyone’s surprise the Iraqi made a second appearance.

“Well, Cpl Lindt, I guess your message didn’t get through. Give him another, this time closer,” the lieutenant ordered.

The sniper shrugged, then got back into position. He already had his dope, so within only a few moments, a second round was on its way downrange. This time, the stucco only inches from the Iraqi’s head exploded into dust. Once again, the man disappeared out of sight.

“That one’s gotta hurt,” the gunny said.

The stucco had to have peppered him, so I agreed with the gunny. Two shots, and he had to know he was being watched. So I was extremely surprised that he made another appearance, right in the same place. Was he a complete idiot? He had the glasses back up, and this time, it looked like he was on a cell phone or radio. Al Qaeda had blown up the main cell phone tower the week before, but it could have been a satellite phone. This was suddenly much more serious.

Several Marines called out to the lieutenant, but he had already seen the man for himself.

“Cpl Lindt, take him out now!”

What before had been slightly humorous was now all business. Cpl Lindt was already in position. I could see the Iraqi rise up a few inches as if to get a better look, phone or whatever still at his ear when the round went off. A long second or two later, it impacted full in the face of the Iraqi, a pink bloody mist blowing back from his head, and he collapsed in a heap. I could see his binos fall onto the rooftop and bounce a few feet away from his outstretched hand. Half of his body was in back of the small wall that he thought would protect him. The top half was out in the open, face up. We all watched to see if he was still alive, but we knew he had died instantly.

Cpl Lindt’s spotter reached over and clapped him on the back. Lindt calmly backed up, then came away from the edge of the roof.

“Good job, Corporal,” the lieutenant told him.

Lindt merely shrugged. I used to be a grunt, infantry. I’ve fired my weapon in combat, and I may have killed someone. I am not some bleeding-heart liberal afraid of doing my job. But Cpl Lindt’s nonchalant attitude was a bit unnerving. I wasn’t sure I would react the same. Thank God we had Marines like him on our side, though.

I glassed the figure on the far roof one more time. He hadn’t moved. I thought I could see blood seeping out under him, but at this distance and angle it could have been my imagination.

I stayed on the roof with Derek for another 10 minutes or so before I told him I needed to get back down to be ready when our VIP was ready to leave. I knew she had a schedule to keep, and even though I knew I had more time, I felt like I should get back down to Tony and our Hummer.

I nodded at Cpl Lindt as I went over to the stairwell going down. He was munching on a Three Musketeers bar; he raised it to his forehead in a sort of salute in response as I left the roof.

Chapter 6

Camp Fallujah

May 16, 2006

“Oh, sorry about that. I had to get a plumber for the sink, so that’s why I took the money,” Sig told me over the phone.

All my pay was going Direct Deposit, and of course, Sig had access to that. But we had agreed on a budget, and when I went to write a check for some cash, it bounced. I was called into the company office and given a lecture on fiscal responsibility from the first sergeant. I really didn’t need too much cash, and the check had only been for $50, but Sig couldn’t even leave that amount in the account for me.

At least we were talking. This was three weeks in a row that we had connected. I wanted that to continue, so I held down what I really wanted to say.

“OK, Sig. I understand. But please try and keep at least $100 in the account. And if you can’t, send me an e-mail. We’re getting charged $35 for a bounced check now.”

“OK, folks, wrap it up. We’re going into blackout,” the civilian who managed the phone center called out.

I felt the familiar lump in my throat. We went into blackout on the phones and on the internet when someone was killed. Some Army wives had been told via e-mails about their husbands being killed before the chaplain and officers could tell them in person, so now, all over Iraq, we were cut off until the next of kin were notified.

“OK, Sig, I gotta go. The phone’s are getting cut off. I’ll call you again on the weekend.”

I hung up, then looked around. No use trying to get online; those would be cut off, too. I still had three hours before I had duty. Hitting the gym seemed as good a bet as anything else. I didn’t know if Brent was on or not, so I wandered over to the company office.

“You free?” I asked him as I entered the office.

“Nah, not for awhile. You going to the gym?”

“Yeah, I’m on at 1200.”

“Better hit it without me.” I turned to go when he added, “Hey, didn’t you tell me you knew a sergeant at Ramadi . . . Butler?”

I felt my heart drop. I simply nodded.

Brent reached over and looked through some papers. “Derek Butler?”

I nodded again.

“Man, he was killed this morning. A sniper got him at the government house. He’s already on the casualty report.”

“A sniper?” I asked stupidly. “But he told me the Iraqis can’t shoot like that. They just ‘inshallah’ it and hope for the best.”

I felt cheated. He told me the Iraqis couldn’t shoot. So how could he have been killed? It was like he broke some sort of contract, and irrationally, I felt he lied and was at fault. I knew this was irrational, but I couldn’t help the feeling.

“Could have been a Chechen,” Brent said.

“Chechen?”

“Yeah, like from Russia. Haven’t you read any of the intel? Some of the Russian ragheads are over here training our ragheads, and they were all trained as Soviet snipers. They might be Muslims, but they don’t hold to that ‘inshallah’ crap. They’re supposed to be pretty good.”

I knew the Russians were fighting in Chechnya. I just hadn’t realized that their rebels were down here. It didn’t really matter anyhow. Derek was dead.

Chapter 7

The Green Zone

July 1, 2006

“As usual, plans have changed,” the colonel said as he came up to us.

Me and Tony had been assigned to this colonel, another reservist working in the Green Zone. He had flown up to Fallujah for a meeting, and this was the result of that meeting. He had flown back, but me and Tony were assigned a cargo Hummer and joined a convoy to the Green Zone. We were going to take school supplies back to Fallujah to give to the Iraqis.

The colonel had met us as we came in, then told us to wait. So we waited. And waited. At least there was a semblance of shade, with all the trees surrounding the parking lot outside the embassy. About three hours later, the colonel came back out.

“The convoy from Kuwait with the supplies is still at Al Asad. It won’t come in until late tonight or early tomorrow morning. So you’re going to overnight it here.”

“What about the convoy back, sir? We’re scheduled at 2300,” I asked.

“No problem. I’ve already contacted your command, and you’re now on a convoy for tomorrow night. I’ll get you the points of contact a little later. Now, the question is: What do we do with you two? Do you have locks for your weapons?”

“No, sir,” we answered in unison.

Normally, we carried flexible cable locks, but this wasn’t our normal Hummer, and both of us had forgotten to transfer them to this vehicle.

“Well, that makes it more difficult. I’ll put it up to you, then. I’ve got one extra lock you can borrow. But you can spend today, tonight, and tomorrow here in the vehicle, or you can go buy an extra lock at the PX, and we’ll get you a rack for the night.”

“We’ll buy one, sir,” I answered immediately.

“Yeah, I thought as much,” he said with a smile on his face. “Let me take you to billeting, and you can ask them there about where to park your vehicle for the night. We’ll get you a temporary pass for the embassy so you can help with the supplies tomorrow, and then you’re on your own until say, 1000 tomorrow, right here? Think you can handle that?”

“Yes, sir,” we almost shouted, again in perfect unison. A whole day and night off? In the Green Zone? We could handle that.

“OK, let’s get you billeted first. Leave your Hummer here for now and follow me.”

I never had an O6 guide before. Maybe there were so many colonels up here at the big head shed that this was normal duty for them. It was different at Fallujah. The regimental commander was a colonel, too, just like this guy. He’d taken a rocket in the arm on the first day of his last pump and almost bought it, but now he was back again for a second shot at command. Somehow, I couldn’t picture him playing guide to two corporals. This colonel, though, was happily pointing out the sights as we walked between the tall walls of the embassy and some smaller buildings and what looked like hundreds of trailers.

We turned in at a large pool. It was around lunchtime, and there were a number of people, both in uniform and civvies lounging around, eating and drinking. Some of the civilians were quite openly drinking beer. I wasn’t a huge drinker, but the sight got my attention.

Two women in bikinis got my attention as well. There were armed soldiers, airmen, and a few Marines and sailors, and there, not five or six feet from them, two women in bikinis were walking by. It was surreal.

The colonel led us into a trailer where he told a civilian that we needed two racks for the night. The civilian, an older guy with a deep Southern accent, tried to say they were pretty full at the moment, but the colonel was having none of that. He insisted, and lo and behold, racks were found. I guess having eagles on your collar does have some advantages.

We were given bedding, two keys, and a map. We found out where to park our Hummer and where to get our passes. The colonel gave us his phone number in case there were any problems and then left. We followed the map through what had to be hundreds of white trailers. If they didn’t all look exactly the same, we could have been in any trailer park back home. With only one wrong turn that took us a bit of time to figure out, we finally found our trailer. There were a few wooden steps leading up into it. The trailer was split into separate apartments. We went into the far-left one. There were two racks, a small desk, and a chair. The racks would also act as rifle racks after we locked our weapons to them.

We dumped the bedding, then locked up and went to move the Hummer and get our passes. First stop would be the PX, but we wanted time to explore a bit after that. Moving the Hummer took only minutes. Getting our passes took longer, but the colonel had already greased the skids, so it wasn’t too bad. We were pretty hungry by then, so it was off to chow. The DFAC was bigger than ours at Fallujah, but it was pretty much the same as far as chow went. Two lines served up the main courses, then there was the salad and fruit bar, some other dishes, and the dessert line. Tony wanted burgers, so he went into another section off to the left for the burger line. The ranks were a little higher here than in Fallujah, and there were more civilians, but chow was chow.

We didn’t hurry, but we didn’t waste time, either. I did get some ice cream, though. I don’t know if it was Coldstone quality, but I have to admit I sure liked it. Without beer in Iraq, ice cream was my biggest vice.

After chow, we walked over to the PX. It was a little small, but it had a good selection. Tony bought the lock (he didn’t have a wife emptying his account). Outside the front doors, there were some Iraqi vendors. I wanted to buy some old Iraqi money one guy was selling, but I decided against it. There was a Subway though, and the smell of fresh bread almost drew me in even if I had just eaten. There was even a car dealer. You could buy your car in Baghdad, then pick it up when you got back home.

I was surprised by the number of foreign uniforms. I knew the Brits were in the fight pretty heavily, and there were Poles and Spaniards and Australians fighting, but I saw people with patches from Georgia, El Salvador, New Zealand, Azerbaijan, Latvia, Fiji, Mongolia, Honduras, and probably more that I didn’t catch. I’m not sure if they really represented fighting forces or if they were just there to show their countries’ support for the Coalition of the Willing.

Camp Fallujah was a huge improvement over my first two tours, but the Green Zone had Fallujah beat to hell. We could almost be back in the US. Almost, but not quite. We didn’t have to wear body armor and walk around armed back in Cali.

“Hey, what d’ya say about that pool back there? You up for it?” Tony asked me.

Nicer than Fallujah or not, the weather here was the same, and the thought of that big pool was inviting.

“Sounds good to me,” I replied.

We went back to our hootch. Both of us had brought our assault packs with us. They couldn’t carry a lot, but when we were on a convoy, it always made sense to have a few necessities, and shorts and shower shoes were par for the course. We changed into the shorts, kept our T-shirts on, then walked over the big pool just outside the embassy. There were a lot of people there, even early in the afternoon when you’d figure they’d be at work, but we found a table under a big tree where we could ground our gear.

“Now don’t you get burned, there,” Tony said with a laugh as I took off my shirt. “You’re looking awfully white.”

I looked down at my chest, and yeah, I was pretty white. I wasn’t sure if I’d had my shirt off in the sun since we arrived. I hadn’t planned on beach ops, so I didn’t have sunscreen. I could smell sunscreen though, so some of the others at the pool must have some.

Tony saw me looking around. “That’s it. You just go up to one of those delectable young ladies and ask them to lay some on you, rub it in good. Hell, I might try that line myself.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious, dude. A brother can burn, too. Just not as fast as you white boys.”

I just rolled my eyes. I was just going to have to watch my exposure. I walked to the edge of the pool, feeling the sun burning into my shoulders. Without hesitating, I dove in. After so many months here in this dustbowl of a country, the feeling of the cool water surrounding me was heaven. I sunk to the bottom of the pool and just lay there until the need for oxygen brought me back up. I could almost feel layers and layers of dust, grit, and sand just roll off me.

I stood there a moment, just relishing the feeling until I had to jump out of the way. About half of the pool was being used by lap swimmers, so I moved over to the edge where I wouldn’t be in the way. Tony dove in, but instead of joining me, he started doing laps.

I passed my swimming tests OK, but I wasn’t a great swimmer. I knew I could use the workout, but I wasn’t in the mood. I just wanted to relax for awhile, forgetting Iraq, forgetting convoys, forgetting Fallujah. I just watched the swimmers go back and forth, my mind wandering. Finally, I notice the first twinge of burn on my shoulders. I ducked down, got wet, then got out of the pool, going back to our table, but not before grabbing a cold bottle of water.

I sat there sipping the water, for once not having anything to do. Tony kept plugging away at the laps. It was a bit mesmerizing just watching him. I finished the water, then looked around. I was under a huge tree, really immense. California had its redwoods and sequoias, and this one was not nearly so tall, but it spread over a huge amount of ground. Hanging from one branch was a swing of some sort. Curious, I got up and walked over to it. It was a pretty simple thing, just a seat suspended by a rope. I reached out and gave it a push.”

“That’s Uday’s swing,” a voice called out.

I looked over to see two soldiers lounging at another table.

“Pardon me?”

“Uday. Saddam’s son. That’s his sex swing.”

“Really?” I said as I stepped back to look at it.

“Yepper. He used to find girls walking on the street or at parties, then bring them back here and fuck them on that swing. He even killed one officer who wouldn’t let him dance with his wife, then brought the widow back right there and fucked her.”

I’d heard lots of stories about Uday, about how he raped people, how he murdered people, how he tortured athletes who didn’t perform well, but I didn’t know how much of that was true. I looked back at the swing. The soldier could be pulling my leg, or he could be just repeating an urban legend. I mean, how practical was a swing for rape? But just the possibility that Uday Hussein had raped girls right there brought a shudder to me. I involuntarily stepped back, as if to distance myself from it. I shook my head and turned to go back to our table.

“Yeah, pretty fucked up, there. At least the bastard got what he deserved, courtesy of the 101st,” the soldier said, as he lifted up his fist for a bump from his buddy.

I sat back down and looked back into the pool. Tony was still going at it, swimming strongly. I figured he had to stop soon, but it was at least another 45 minutes until he quit. He pulled himself out of the water and came over to the table, barely breathing hard.

“What are you, some sort of freaking fish?”

“What, you think a brother can’t swim, right? You forget I’m a SoCal boy, born with a surfboard under my feet. I can outswim anyone in the battery, dude,” he said, drawing out the “dude” into almost a surferboy parody.

I realized that me and Tony had been riding together for a couple of months now, but I didn’t know much about his private life, who he was. I’d pretty much assumed he was from Compton or East LA, but now I felt a little guilty for that. Now that I thought of it, there really was more of a beach and surfer tone than ’hood to his voice.

It still struck me a bit odd that two corporals were assigned together to a vehicle, but that was the reserves for you. Ranks did different jobs than they might do in the active forces. If this were an active duty unit, I would expect a PFC or lance coolie to be the drivers, not corporals.

We hung out at the pool for another hour or so, chatting about nothing much, at least not Marine Corps. I found out that Tony’s father was some sort of big-time aeronautical engineer, that they lived down in San Luis Obispo in a big house overlooking the Pacific. Tony had been a water polo star in school and had enrolled at UC Davis with a scholarship. He joined the reserves after 9/11 while still an undergraduate and stayed in to make this deployment even if that interrupted his grad school plans. I asked him if he had a degree, why wasn’t he an officer. He said he just liked firing the big guns, and officers didn’t get to do that.

I told him about my life: my family, my high school, playing ball, even my problems with Sig. I hadn’t planned on it, but I felt I really got to know Tony better. I was just sorry it had taken four months to do it.

Eventually we got up and went back to our hootch. The heads were communal at the end of each line of trailers, so we showered and cleaned up before chow. We had showers at Fallujah, of course, but somehow, I felt cleaner than I had felt since landing in Kuwait.

Chow was great, as usual. There wasn’t much in the way of salad, though, and I was surprised to hear people bitch about it. A sign on the front hatch informed us that the convoy bringing fresh vegetables had been hit, so why the bitching? That is what the war boiled down to for them? That Shia insurgents kept them from eating fresh salad?

After chow, we wandered over to the gym. I didn’t have my gear, but I wanted to check it out. There had to have been 200 people there, all on a huge number of bikes, stair steppers, treadmills, whatever. The equipment would have put any commercial gym back in Orange County to shame.

As we were leaving, we noticed a crowd of people gathering outside. We wandered over, and to my surprise, they were about to begin a dodgeball tournament, just like in that Ben Stiller movie. The teams had crazy names, and the atmosphere was pretty festive. It wasn’t like we had anything better to do, so me and Tony climbed up the wall around the court and sat down to watch. The announcer—who looked like he might be Air Force, given his blue shorts—was pretty funny, giving commentary as the teams went into battle. I think most of the players must have been civilian, and most had dressed in a pretty crazy fashion with mismatched socks, outrageous shirts, and what have you. At least a third were women. One short, heavyset woman must have been some sort of ringer. She was deadly with the ball, knocking off big, buff-looking guys with ease. Her team won their first round, but on the second, the entire opposing team took her out with a concentrated volley.

As the championship match started, I heard automatic firing off behind us. From the wall, we could see over the river and into Baghdad. The firing picked up, and explosions joined the chorus. Two Apache helos showed up, pouring fire into the buildings below. Over there, not 1,000 meters away, people were in a life-and-death struggle. People were fighting, killing, dying. Meanwhile, 10 feet below me, Americans, Brits, and others were dressed in funny clothes playing a kids’ game as if everything was fine in the world.

Chapter 8

The Green Zone

July 2, 2006

I couldn’t help but to gawk as I carried a box of supplies. The embassy was pretty amazing, like some sort of palace out of 1001 Nights . There was marble everywhere. I had thought Ramadi’s government house was pretty impressive, but this place had it dead to rights. In one rotunda, there were cameras set up and lights ready for some sort of statement. I could see CNN, FOX, BBC, and a host of other signs on the cameras. We nonchalantly walked through them and out the front door.

Me and Tony weren’t the only ones acting like coolies. The colonel and a major were carrying boxes just like us. We had taken two trips so far, and between the four of us, we had another two trips or so after this in order to get the school supplies loaded.

Plans had changed since yesterday. There wasn’t a convoy going to Fallujah tonight, so we were joining one to Al Asad, then we’d make the trip to Fallujah tomorrow morning. Tonight would be with the big rigs with the Army in charge. I wasn’t sure yet about tomorrow.

It was quite a long way from the major’s office up on the second floor all the way out past security and to the Hummer out in the parking lot. The five trips took us well over an hour. I was surprised that the colonel and the major stuck it out and helped. It wasn’t as if me and Tony had anything better to do, and they were both O’s, after all. High O’s, at that.

After the last load, we went back into the embassy. We’d have to have one of us on the vehicle until we left, but the colonel said it would be OK for the moment, what with the guards not 20 meters away. We went back inside where the colonel handed us an inventory sheet. I thought we would have to go out and count each item and then sign the sheet, but he just handed it to us and seemed to forget it. He told us he would fly in on the 5th and that he would contact command to see about delivery. I got the feeling that this was supposed to get media coverage, so there would probably be more people involved than just the three of us.

On the way back to the Hummer, while still in the embassy, Tony pulled me aside. “Look at that! They’ve got paninis here!” he exclaimed, excitement in his voice.

I knew that was some sort of sandwich, but I’d ever had one. We had eaten chow before taking out the boxes, but food was food, and seasoned Marines knew to eat whenever the opportunity arose. There was a sign-in sheet, and I wondered if anyone was going to count signatures to see if we were eating too much, and even if I knew that was a little paranoid, I messed up my signature a bit to make it hard to read.

This little cafeteria was seemingly just thrown into an available space. On one side of the main passage, they had a small selection of dishes. I picked my bread, then loaded up on the sliced meats, especially the roast beef. I stuck on some mayo, then had to decide between no less than five types of mustard. I ended up putting one on one half, then another on the other half. We walked across the passage, dodging people hurrying back and forth, then to another area where tables were set up. There were four rather large machines there. I watched Tony lift up the top half of the machine, then put his sandwich on the hot plate before closing the lid back down. I reluctantly followed suit. This was going to smash my sandwich.

After about two minutes, Tony opened his press up and took his sandwich out. Again, I copied him, took out my sandwich, and followed him to a seat. My sandwich was pretty flat with large grill marks running across the bread. Food was food, though, so I took a bite . . . and was pretty impressed. This was good!

“Do you hear that?” Tony asked me quietly.

“What?” I asked, my mouth full of sandwich.

“Just listen. That table in back of us. That guy talking, he just said he’s gay.”

I turned around, hopefully not too obviously. There were eight people at the table, mostly civilians. There were two soldiers, but with their backs to me, I couldn’t see their ranks. They were older, though, so they were probably up there. Three were what looked like American women, one looking surprisingly young. One pretty fat guy with a beard sat there in rapt attention. The final two were probably Iraqis, an older woman and the guy Tony said was gay.

Gay or straight, I didn’t care much one way or the other. Don’t ask, don’t tell seemed to work for me. But now with Tony pointing him out, I was drawn in to listen.

“. . . couldn’t figure out who they were, so I had to guess which ID card to use.”

Even I could see the fat guy pull back in puzzlement.

“You don’t know, George?” the Iraqi guy asked. “Well, most of us now carry two ID cards. A card will tell others immediately if you are Sunni or Shia. So we carry two. If we’re stopped by Sunnis, we show the one that makes us look like a Sunni. If we’re stopped by Shia, we use the other one.”

I hadn’t heard that, but it made its own kind of sense.

“Unfortunately for me, I chose the wrong one. I was pulled out of the bus along with 10 other men.”

I couldn’t imagine being grabbed like that, being held by gunmen. I think I’d fight to the death before I allowed that to happen to me.

“They lined us up kneeling on the side of the road. We had our hand over our heads. I knew it was bad, and I tried to make my peace with Allah. I knew what would happen. All I could think of was that my family might never know, that they might never find my body.”

All of the people were spellbound. Even I was, sitting at the next table. The man’s English was fluent, if accented, but I barely noticed that.

“The leader gave his speech, then they went to the first man. They pulled his hands down and in back of him, then pulled his shirt down halfway to act as handcuffs,” he said, using his hands to mimic the motion. “Then one of the gunmen shot him in the head.”

Two of the women gasped, hands covering their mouths.

“They went to the next man, or boy, really. He couldn’t have been much more than 14. He was killed in the same way. They kept moving down the line. You have to imagine it. The voices praying, pleading for mercy. The loud report of the gun, the thud of the falling body. The smell of gunpowder. I tried to blank it all out. I was sixth in line. The fifth man fell against me when they shot him. I could feel his blood as it splattered me. I felt arms pulling my hands down, then my shirt was yanked down. I waited for the end, but it didn’t come. I told you that gays are considered against Allah, against the Qur’an. Fundamentalists think we should be executed. So we’re not open about our lives. That is why the one thing we do is shave our chests, our one way of saying who we are, but where no one else can normally see it.

“Well, they saw my chest, then they started shouting that I was Satan’s spawn, I was evil and damned to hell. Someone hit me with a rifle stock, and I fell. I kept waiting for the bullet to end it when they started shouting I should be punished. So for my punishment, they raped me. All eight of them took turns, raping me, yelling at me while they did it that I’m going to hell.

“When they were done, the left me there, bloody and lying in the dust. Like nothing happened, they went to the next man and killed him, and they killed all the rest.”

I was in disbelief while he talked. It didn’t make sense. But I could see the man, hear the truth in this voice.

“I laid there for at least 30 minutes, unable to move. I don’t know if that was shock or if I was just afraid if I moved, they’d come back and kill me. I know people saw us, but no one came forward. Finally, I got up and left, ignoring the dead men, just grateful to be alive.”

There was silence at the table for a moment. The Iraqi woman reached over to put a hand on one of the man’s, then looked at one of the soldiers.

“That’s why we need your help, colonel. We’ve talked about women’s rights, about gay rights, but unless we get you Americans to pressure the new government, nothing will happen,” she said.

As their conversation got into politics, I turned back to look at Tony.

“That’s messed up,” he simply said.

That was an understatement. I just couldn’t get my mind around what I had heard. They thought he was Satan because he was gay, then “punished” him by raping him? It just didn’t make sense. What did that make them? I began to wonder just how we could bring peace to Iraq if we were so fundamentally different. I didn’t mean what they thought about gays. Some Americans think that is a sin, too. But their punishment? How could a supposedly straight man physically perform that? And if being gay was such a sin, they let him live and finished killing the rest of the guys?

This country was certifiable crazy, la-la land.

It wasn’t just this country. The Green Zone itself was surreal. In Fallujah, we were a combat camp. It made sense. I understood it. Here, it was a different story.

I looked around at the other tables at people with laptops, in earnest conversations, sipping their Green Bean coffee or munching on paninis. Take off the uniforms, get rid of the weapons, and we could be back in Anytown, USA. Just like the night before at the dodgeball tournament, I felt the disconnect. We were in Oz, far removed from the war. I wonder how many people here, the ones calling the shots, even knew what we went through out there in the field, out there in the sand, the heat, and most of all, the fighting.

I took another bite of my sandwich. I was in Oz at the moment, our own version of the Emerald City. Soon enough, though, I would be expelled and back out in the real world, or at least, what was our real world. I just hoped that whoever the wizard was here, he had some sort of plan and we were not out there fighting flying monkeys and evil witches on our own.

Chapter 9

Outside of Fallujah

July 3, 2006

“Almost there,” I muttered, reaching over to punch Tony in the shoulder, waking him. Technically, he shouldn’t have been asleep, but we’d been up for almost 30 hours and counting.

The convoy to Al Asad had been a goat rope. Well, maybe that wasn’t accurate. The Army had it pretty well organized. But we had waited and waited in the staging area. The big semis just couldn’t seem to get ready. I had been pretty frustrated as the hours crept by.

I didn’t envy the truck drivers, despite their good pay. They took their rigs from Kuwait to all over Iraq. Sometimes they had Americans providing security, sometimes not. Sometimes, security was even from Iraqi forces. It was a dangerous job, and more than a few drivers had been killed. Still, I wanted to get out and start kicking some ass to get the show on the road.

Finally, we pulled out, and even with one stop out there in the middle of nowhere, we made it to the base. There, we had to try and hook up with our ride back to Fallujah. No one seemed to know where we could make contact, and by the time we did, it was already light. We had breakfast in the DFAC, then stood by the Hummer and waited. Tony looked pretty beat, so I told him I’d take over.

Tony liked to joke that I was his A-driver. Actually, I was the vehicle commander, but for this leg, I guess I was the A-driver. We pulled out around 0830, and after about 30 minutes, Tony started to drift off. We were in a convoy with plenty of security, so I just let him catch some z’s.

We were not going directly into camp first. We were going into the government compound. From there, some of us would then break off and return to base. Then it would be time for a shower and hitting the rack for a couple of hours, at least.

Tony yawned, then wiped some drool that had dried on his chin. “You OK?” he asked.

“Yeah, no problem. We’ll be pulling in in a couple of minutes.”

I was always a little hyped when we were driving around, especially in a built-up area. I’d been hit twice already, even if one of those times, that gunman in Ramadi, wasn’t much of an incident, but I hoped the Gods of Ambushes thought that was enough for one tour. With our destination almost in sight, though, I could begin to relax. Just another 500 meters, turn right, and the last 200, and we’d be home free.

“You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you, what . . .”

I never did hear what Tony was going to ask as a huge explosion rocked the Hummer and threw us to the left. All I could see was flames as we spun around several times before slamming to a halt up against a wall.

Good Lord, not again!

The Hummer was flooded with light. I turned around, and most of the back of the vehicle was mangled and gone. Something had blown right through us, shearing a huge portion of the Hummer away.

The sounds of gunfire began to register, even if, like the first time I was hit back in February, my ears were ringing something fierce. More than a few rounds hit us, one striking the back of my seat an inch from me.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” I shouted at Tony. We had to get out of the line of fire.

The Hummer had spun around so that the front was now pointed back towards the way we came, but canted a bit so that there was room between the passenger door and the wall of the building so that Tony had room to get out. I was now on the street side of the road, open to incoming fire. I grabbed my M16 and rolled out, landing hard. I scrambled up and started sprinting to one of our gun Hummers, anxious to get under its protection. I reached it and looked back for Tony. I would have sworn that he was right behind me, but as I looked, I could see he hadn’t moved from his seat. He was still there, and I could see rounds impacting on what was left of the wreck.

Above me, the .50 cal was opening up, responding to the incoming fire. I was about to ask the driver to take me back to my Hummer, but the crew was heavily engaged. I knew this was on me.

I slung my M16, took a deep breath, and ran back to the Hummer, diving behind it where it gave me at least a bit of cover. I reached up for Tony and blanched. I felt my gorge rise. Whatever hit us had taken out part of his seat, and with it, a good portion of his back. His flak jacket was a mangled mess, and part of his right shoulder was simply gone.

I grabbed the left side of his harness, which was still intact, then pulled him up and over the gearbox, out of the driver’s door, and to the ground.

“Tony, you OK, bud? You with me?” I asked, searching his face for any signs of life.

He was breathing, but labored and with a raspy sound to it. This wasn’t good. I’d have to carry him back to the other Hummer.

More rounds started impacting around us. I peeked around the wreck. Up on the roofs opposite us, I could see shadowing figures popping up, drawing the fire from our vehicles. This was a pretty big ambush. We were close to the government compound, so a reaction force would get here soon. The ambushers would melt away then, but they wanted to do as much damage as they could in the meantime. I just had to keep Tony alive for a few more minutes.

More by instinct than by conscious thought, I raised my M16 and fired off a few rounds at the rooftop opposite us. I doubt if I hit anyone, but I thought it might help keep their heads down. I ducked back down behind the hulk when a burning lance of fire went shooting through my right leg. I fell back, grabbing it. Blood pooled out between my fingers. A round had come under the wreck and hit my shin just below my knee and exited my calf. I thought shock was supposed to deaden the pain, but this hurt like a mother fucker!

Another round came zipping under, but missing us. I don’t know if they were purposely aiming that way, or if these were stray rounds. I didn’t think the Iraqis on the roofs had the angle to get the rounds that low. When a third round came in and hit the front tire, I knew I had to get Tony out of there. I looked around. I wasn’t sure how my leg would hold up carrying him to the gun Hummer. Just to my right, though, whatever had taken out the back of my Hummer had put a hole in the wall, not five meters away. It was plenty big enough for me to drag him in and out of the line of fire.

Although his flak jacket was mangled, the harness I used to pull him out of the Hummer still looked secure on his left side, so I took ahold of it and got ready. I almost fell as I stood up, but I knew I just had to gut it out. Normally, I could lift him with ease, but now I knew I was going to have to drag him.

I took a deep breath, then tried to run, pulling Tony behind me. It was more of a lurch instead of a run, but it would only take me a few moments to get him there. I was halfway when I was slammed in the back and knocked down. I knew I had taken another round, but I didn’t have time to check if my flak jacket had stopped it or not. I got back up and pulled Tony another step, then two more. One more step, and we were inside, into the darkness and safety.

I started to look around to get my bearings. I only briefly caught the AK butt coming at my face before it smashed into me and all went dark.

Chapter 10

Fallujah

July 3, 2006

As my eyes focused, I saw concrete swaying. It took me a moment to realize that I was being carried, face down. The concrete wasn’t swaying—I was. Someone had my arms and legs, and I was being bodily carried face down through a narrow hallway as harsh, guttural Arabic surrounded me. As soon as the realization hit me, the pain hit me as well. My leg was on fire, and someone was gripping it tightly.

We came to a doorway or something and hesitated; sunlight lit the floor a foot beneath my nose. A drop of crimson splattered, making a flower on the dusty concrete floor. Despite the pain, I was momentarily fascinated by it, that splash of color in a world of grey. Only peripherally did I realize I was bleeding from my face.

There was more shouting. I don’t speak Arabic, but even in my muddled, pain-filled consciousness, I could tell that they were arguing. I could hear panic in some of their voices. Someone evidently won the argument, because we rushed out the door. The men carrying me were not in unison, and each step brought jolts of pain to my battered body.

“Where’s Tony?” I asked, trying to twist my body to look back.

No one answered or made any indication that they had heard me. I tried to look ahead to see if he was being carried as well, but with the running and jerking, I couldn’t really hold my head up. I just hoped he was still alive.

We jerked to a stop, and the guy holding my right leg kept going forward to get up against the wall, nearly tearing it off in the process. I screamed in agony. In response, someone hit me upside the head. Even dazed as I was, I got the message to keep quiet, but wanting to keep quiet and keeping quiet when your leg was being ripped off were two different things.

I wasn’t really scared at the time. I should have been. I was hurt and being carried out of the battle, away from my fellow Marines, by insurgents. We’d all seen the videos of what Al Qaeda in Iraq and Shia insurgents did to their prisoners. But in the fog that muddled my brain, broken by the lances of pain that wracked my body, and my concern for Tony, I think fear was crowded out. There just wasn’t room for it.

I was carried into another building just as the whup-whup of a helo flew overhead. For a moment, I thought maybe my rescue had arrived. The men holding me froze, as if the helo’s crew could hear them if they spoke. When the sounds of the helo faded, they started moving again. I was taken to a corner and unceremoniously dropped.

I screamed again, but this time I was ignored. Face planted on the concrete floor, I could smell my blood as it pooled around my cheek and mouth. The metallic tang that I smelled was the last sense I retained as I fell back into unconsciousness.

Chapter 11

????

July 3? July 4?

I slowly came to. I was lying on the floor, my hands behind me. I couldn’t see anything but a diffused light. I realized I had a hood over my head. I tried to bring my arms around in front of me, but they were tied together at the wrist. The effort drew some pain from my back, but it wasn’t too bad. My leg, though, ached something fierce, and my nose was swollen, making breathing difficult, especially with the hood over my head.

I could hear the sounds of talking going on but none of the sounds of battle. Either the fight was long over or I was pretty far removed from it. I was thirsty, but I had no idea how long I had been out. My left arm was numb from being underneath me, so I tried to shift a bit to take the pressure off.

I must have made a sound because the talking around me ceased. Footsteps approached me, then the hood was ripped off my head, tearing the scabs where it had gotten stuck in the congealed blood on my nose, bringing a new burst of pain and starting the bleeding once again. I blinked in the light and looked up at a rather large Iraqi. At least I assumed he was Iraqi. I knew there were foreigners fighting here. Al Qaeda in Iraq was mostly foreigners, and while we didn’t face them much in Al Anbar, Iranians were supposedly fighting for the Shia. But I sure couldn’t tell a foreigner from an Iraqi. All I knew was this guy looked like trouble.

He gave me a light kick on the side, more of a nudge, then turned back to the others, saying something that got them to laugh. He knelt then, putting his AK on the deck, staring at me. He didn’t look like he was angry. His face was a blank.

With his left hand, he grabbed the front of my utility blouse and hauled me up about a foot or so, so my face was closer to his. I stared back at him, trying not to show fear. Without warning, he brought his right hand around in a roundhouse slap, knocking me across the face. My nose exploded again, and the shock nearly put me back down. The pain was incredible, and the blood, which had been flowing again, became a gush that ran into my mouth. I started choking, unable to breathe through my nose and now having my throat full of blood.

Despite this, despite my panic to draw in air, I couldn’t help but notice his face filling my vision. He still looked calm and detached. It was like he didn’t even hold me in enough regard to be concerned. Slowly, he reached up and placed his hand over my mouth, cutting off my air.

In high school, I was taught about Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. We had had discussed it in class, and at the time, it seemed too simplistic to me. Just another academic dance to justify the academic lifestyle. But when you can’t breathe, all else fades away into being inconsequential. I didn’t care that I was thirsty, that I hurt all over, that I was a prisoner, that I wanted to put on a brave face to them. I just wanted to breathe. I had to breathe. I started to struggle, to push against him the best I could with my hands and feet tied.

He was a big strong guy, but I was fairly big myself, and I had the added motivation of trying to get air. I twisted away from him, then twisted back as hard and as fast as I could. I managed to get my mouth past his hand and took a gulp of air, but I got blood down my windpipe and started to choke and cough. He pulled me back up and stared at me again while I coughed and tried to get in some air.

I think someone must have said something to him because he looked back over his shoulder and shrugged before letting go. I fell back, bouncing my head on the hard concrete. He stood up over me, then almost casually, kicked me hard in the side, making me curl in a ball. I really didn’t notice him walking away. I was concentrating on getting air. On my side, at least the blood wasn’t flowing into my mouth. I was able to cough up most of what had gone down my windpipe, and while still wracking with coughs, at least I was able to fill my lungs again.

Almost by force of will, I was able to calm down and simply breathe. I was not doing well. I hurt all over, and any movement brought more pain. But I was almost able to ignore the pain while I concentrated on slow, steady breaths. Eventually, I caught my breath and could just lie there, trying to catalogue where I was hurt and to what extent. From our training, I knew that the best time to escape was as soon as possible after being captured, and I needed to know what limitations I had. I knew my leg had a hole in it, and I knew my face was banged up pretty bad. But what else did I have going on?

Being tied up, though, made it difficult to figure that out. If I had my hands free, I could feel and probe. But as I was, it was almost as if I had to feel from the inside out. Pulling and flexing against the bonds around my wrists, I could feel a sharp pain in my chest. I knew my ribs were hurt, maybe broken.

While I was trying to figure out what else might be wrong with me, footsteps approached again. I felt a surge of panic and looked up. A young guy, vaguely familiar, reached down and picked up the hood that was lying beside me. He looked back at the others for a moment while they shouted at him, then bent down to put it back over my head. Just as the hood covered my eyes, it dawned on me where I had seen him before. He was the young Iraqi prisoner I had guarded just a couple of months ago back in camp.

Chapter 12

Somewhere in Iraq

Evening of July 3? Early morning of July 4, 2006?

We moved twice during the night. Each time, I had duct tape placed over my mouth. The first time I almost died, as my swollen nose was too smashed up for air to get through. As soon as they taped my mouth, they threw the hood back on and picked me up to carry me, but my panic and writhing were so violent that they couldn’t hold me and dropped me to the ground. Just before I passed out, someone must have realized what the problem was because the hood was taken off and a knife used to cut a slit in the tape over my mouth. The fact that my lips were cut as well was inconsequential. I could breathe.

“No talk,” one Iraqi whispered to me, holding the knife to my throat before putting the hood back on.

I got the message. I didn’t make a sound as they carried me out and threw me into the trunk of a car. They shoved my knees up almost to my chin to get me to fit, and all sorts of things dug into my back and side as we lurched to wherever we were going. The pain in my face had dulled to a continual ache, the position I was in made my back spasm several times, and I was afraid my leg was in bad shape as well.

We drove for about 30 minutes. In the movies, the hero can count time and turns to have an idea of where he was being taken; in real life, that was beyond me. I could hear other traffic, and once when we stopped, I could hear voices outside.

Part of me wanted to try and yell out through the duct tape, to make some sort of noise. But I remembered the threat, and I didn’t even know who would have heard me. I felt somewhat ashamed, though, for not trying. Was I a coward?

When we arrived at our destination, I was hauled out of the trunk, my bad leg banging on the edge of it, bringing out an involuntary gasp. That earned me a backhand to the side of my face. For once, my nose didn’t take the brunt of it, and compared to what I’d already experienced, this one wasn’t much.

I was still hooded, but I could tell I was taken up some steps and into a building. I was dropped on the floor while my captors started talking to someone there. The tone of the conversation got more and more strident. Whoever’s house this was evidently was not happy with our presence. The yelling got louder and more pointed, but finally, the homeowner evidently won. There were more shouts that sounded like orders, and I was picked up again and taken back down to the trunk and thrown inside.

Carrying me face down like that, someone on each arm and leg, was not only uncomfortable, but it was painful. Walking or hobbling might have hurt less. I wondered if I could get them to let me at least hop, but on the other hand, the more of an invalid they thought me, the better chance I would have if any opportunity presented itself.

While in the car for the second time, another issue came up. I wasn’t sure just what day it was or how long I’d been held captive. I figured I’d been moved at least once while I was unconscious, but at a minimum, it was at least 10 or 12 hours since the ambush. I hadn’t eaten nor had anything to drink during that time, but now, my bladder was making noises of its own. I had to piss. The bouncing around in the trunk of the shockless car was not helping. We drove for another 20 or 30 minutes, then stopped. I heard the doors open, then shut, then nothing. Outside, there were the faint sounds of a city at night, but I was still in the trunk, my bladder getting more and more insistent on relief. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I tried to shift my body a bit so at least I was sort of pointing down, then I let go.

Whatever had slowed down my bodily functions for the last 12 hours disappeared with a vengeance. I let loose like a racehorse. I felt relief, but also shame, as my trou kept the hot wetness against my body. I couldn’t tell with just my hip and leg, but I imagined a pool of piss surrounding me. I was almost glad that my nose was beyond smelling anything at the moment.

It took awhile, but finally, the trunk was opened, and hands reached in to grab me. One man grabbed my leg, then recoiled with a shout of disgust. I could hear people jostling around the trunk, then shouts of anger. I thought I heard the sound of someone getting hit, then hands grabbed me and pulled me out. This time, instead of a person on each arm and leg, I only had someone on each of my arms. They dragged me, face up, into a building, down some stairs, and dropped me on the ground. A few minutes later, I was pulled to the sitting position. My hands were freed and the hood taken off. My hands had been tied in back of me for at least a number of hours, and as I tried to bring them forward, they didn’t respond so well to my intentions. The duct tape was ripped off my mouth and the young guy, the teenager who had been our prisoner, stood by with a bucket of water.

The first guy said something in Arabic, then motioned at my crotch, then at the bucket. I got it. I nodded my understanding while trying to rub some life back into my arms. The teen placed the bucket beside me.

I finally got some motion back into my arms. I took the bucket and poured some water into my lap, then did the best I could to wash myself. My utilities had been soaked with piss as well, and I did the best I could to rinse them. I didn’t use all the water for that, though. I took some of it to gingerly wash my face, trying to feel how much damage there was.

It was pretty dark in the room, and while I could hear talking on the floor above me and people walking about, only three Iraqis were in the small room with me. All three watched me wash, their faces nearly expressionless. As I washed my face, I tried to drink some of the water, but the head honcho slapped my hands away, motioning for me to continue washing. I really needed to drink, but he was the one with the weapon, not me.

When I finished, the teenager brought me a bottle of water. This was the exact same bottle as we used on base, filled by our own water plants. I wondered if that was a coincidence or was this really USMC water. I gulped the entire thing down.

After finishing it, the third Iraqi motioned for me to unbutton my trou.

What the fuck was he going to do?

Hesitantly, I unbuttoned, but I was not going to take my dick out no matter what. He didn’t press the issue, but he placed a cracked but serviceable bowl beside my hip. He pantomimed turning over on his side and taking his dick out to piss. I guess they weren’t too happy with me pissing my pants. I nodded my understanding.

The first guy then pushed my head forward, exposing my back. I wanted to resist, but my resolution to look more of an invalid that I was kept me complacent. He pulled my arms in back of me, then tied them. The hood came back on.

I wondered how they expected me to use that bowl if I was tied and hooded. And what about if I had to take a shit? What would I do then? I hoped to God that my fellow Marines would come to my rescue before that happened.

I heard the three move off to the back of the room. I knew I probably still reeked. I tried to get at least somewhat comfortable, and much to my surprise, I nodded off to sleep.

Chapter 13

Iraq

July 4, 2006

I woke up to the smell of coffee. For a moment, I thought I was back home, Sig having gotten up to fix my breakfast. I even smiled before my senses caught up with my reality. I was on my side, arms tied behind me and numb, my leg, back, and face aching. The hood over my head couldn’t keep all the light out; some came right through the fabric. It was probably late morning.

Subdued voices spoke in Arabic from several meters away. I decided to just lay still. I wasn’t sure what I could glean by listening. We’d had rudimentary classes in Arabic before we deployed, but to be frank, I had pretty much forgotten all of it. I couldn’t pick out anything, even the name of a city. With the amount of time I was out, I could be anywhere in the country by now.

I shifted my position slightly and that must have alerted my guards as they stopped talking. I froze, but footsteps approached, then my hood was taken off. I blinked and tried to focus on the man standing over me.

He said something to me, but of course I didn’t understand. I shook my head.

He was an unremarkable-looking guy. Take away the AK slung over his back and put him in a pair of Levis and a T-shirt, he wouldn’t have looked out of place at any Starbucks back at home. Clean-shaven, about 5’10” or so, I would guess, he didn’t look like what I pictured an Al Qaeda terrorist would look like.

He turned to the others and said something before walking back. The young teen, the same one I’d stood guard over, was still one of my guards. He came over with a bottle of water and what looked like a piece of bread in his hands. Suddenly, my stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten for at least a day, maybe more.

He stared at me stupidly, then looked back to the others and shouted out something in a questioning voice. One of the others shouted back at him, annoyance obvious even to me. The young boy turned back, then knelt in front of me. He held out the bread to my mouth, and I eagerly took a bite. This wasn’t soft white loaf—this was some sort of hard, stale-tasting bread. I was starving, but I couldn’t wolf it down. My mouth was too dry. I swallowed what I could, then used my chin to point at the water bottle in his other hand. He jerked back a few inches like I was attacking him, then looked at me without comprehension. Another voice yelled out, catching his attention. He looked back as he got his instructions, then nodded. Putting the bread down on the ground, he unscrewed the cap of the water bottle, then lifted it up to my lips. I think half of the water failed to make it in my mouth and instead dribbled down my chin, but I did manage to swallow a good bit.

After the bottle was empty, I tried to use my chin again to point at the bread. This time he understood, and he picked it up and pushed it into my mouth. I got a few bits of dirt or something along with it, but I didn’t care. I needed the calories. The fact that they were feeding me was also a relief in and of itself. They wouldn’t be feeding me if they planned on killing me, right?

I looked up at the boy. He seemed pretty nervous to me. I had previously thought he might be 16 years old or so, and that still seemed about right. I’d seen tough teenage kids back in Orange County and LA, so it wasn’t just his age that made him look out-of-place. I thought he just didn’t have it in him to be a fighter. The way he kept looking back at the others only reinforced my assumption. I wondered what he was doing here with the others, with an AK strapped to his back.

Of course, with me trussed up like a hog, I’m not sure what he expected me to do. If this was Hollywood, then John Rambo or John McClane would figure out something, but this was Iraq. I was hurt and tied up. I may have outweighed the kid by a hundred pounds, but there really wasn’t much I could do at that moment.

He got up and left me there. I tried to pull against the bonds that held my wrists together. I didn’t expect to really break them, but I needed to get some blood flowing. I knew about things like gangrene, and I was afraid that too long like this could bring it on. I wasn’t sure just how long was too long.

Having something to occupy my mind was good, though. I could feel an undercurrent of fear, of panic, just roiling around under the surface of my thoughts. I knew my fellow Marines were out there looking for me, but I also knew that these Iraqis here held all the right cards. Even if a platoon of infantry assaulted this place to get me back, a simple knife across the throat would take care of my momma’s favorite son. I needed to keep this fear at bay. I needed to push it down deep inside and encapsulate it, keep if from boiling out to the surface. I had to keep calm, so focusing on my arms gave me a point of reference. It gave me something other to think about.

For the next hour or so, I pulled against my bonds, both those around my wrists and those around my ankles. I tried to feel where I was hurt and to what extent. If the opportunity arose for me to make a break for it, I had to know what worked and what didn’t.

My calf responded to my movements. It hurt, and I was afraid of infection, but it seemed to move OK as near as I could tell. I hoped the bullet just passed through and didn’t nick the bone or tendons.

My back and side ached considerably, both from getting shot and from getting kicked. I think my flak jacket had saved me from the round itself, but when I took a deep breath, I don’t know if I felt my ribs grating or if that was just my worst-case scenario imagination. Each breath hurt, but I couldn’t exactly tell why.

There wasn’t much I could do about my face. My nose was swollen and very sore. I could feel my pulse as it tried to push blood through the damaged tissue. I had one obviously chipped tooth. As far as anything else like a concussion, I really didn’t have a clue. I thought my mind was functioning fine, but if it wasn’t, would I even recognize that?

It wasn’t until then that I realized the date; that is, unless I had been out an entire 24 hours earlier. It was July 4th. This was a hell of a way to spend our nation’s birthday.

Chapter 14

Iraq

July 5, 2006

I had been basically lying in the same spot for a day-and-a-half. I’d been fed twice and given water three times. They had untied my hands twice so I could piss when they realized that me just rolling over to my side would mean piss soaking all over the concrete floor. No one came in to relieve my three guards, but several times, other Iraqis came in to check out the captive American. My stress level was rising the more I was ignored. I didn’t know their plans for me, and my imagination was running rampant. I’d seen the videos of what they’d done to other prisoners, and those images kept running through my brain.

With no one to talk to, I named my three guards in my mind. “Gomer” was the young kid. He was constantly at the beck and call of the others, and he was the one given my bowl of piss to throw out. The second time he picked up the bowl, his AK slid off his shoulder as he stooped to clatter on the floor. He reached for it, too late by a mile, and spilled some of my piss. “Buttface” took exception to that and slapped Gomer across the back of the head, sending his AK clattering to the floor again and spilling more of the piss on his hand.

Buttface never seemed to overtly pay attention to me, but I could see that he was aware of me 24/7. I got the feeling that he was waiting for me to make a break for it. Maybe he’d seen the Rambo or Die Hard movies, too. He was quiet, but he moved with a feral efficiency that made me wonder just how dangerous he was. He was much bigger than Gomer, but I still outweighed him by a good 40 pounds at least. That didn’t mean I was underestimating him if it came down to it. Of the three, something told me he was the brawler among them.

“Joe” was the third man, the one in charge of the small group. “Joe” wasn’t the most creative name in the book, and it wasn’t like I didn’t have time to come up with something better, but to me, he seemed like an average Joe. I wondered if he had kids and a family. If he wasn’t here all the time with me, I could see him putting up his weapon, then going home to a simple family dinner, his wife asking him how work was today.

Thinking of that made me think of Sig. I wondered if she knew I was MIA yet. I figured it must be the night of the 4th back there. She might be out watching the fireworks somewhere. Last year, we’d gone outside Disneyland to watch, not paying for entry, but just to park and watch the show. It was only the second time we’d spent July 4th together since we got married.

Gomer had just given me some water, and I was lying back on the ground when footsteps sounded coming down the stairs into what was mostly likely a basement. I could occasionally hear the sounds of people moving around upstairs, so the building wasn’t abandoned. I guess my captors believed in hiding in plain sight.

The approaching footsteps were nothing new. So far, at least 10 Iraqis had trooped down to look at me. One guy had even tried to talk to me in broken English, but other than his name and “Boston Red Sox,” I really didn’t catch much else.

Four guys entered the room. Two came up to me while the other two went to talk to Joe. There was some wild gesturing and shouting. My heart was already pounding when one of the other guys cut the rope binding my legs and the two jerked me to my feet. I would have fallen had they not held me up. The first two, followed by my three guards, came up to stand in front of me. One man, an older guy with a white beard and traditional Arab robes held up a piece of paper in front of my face and read from it.

I felt my panic rising. I tried to push it back down, but I couldn’t. I really didn’t like the looks of this. It got worse when one of the others picked up the hood and put it over my head. I tried to crane my head back and forth in a futile attempt to keep the hood off of me, but that didn’t even slow him down. Then two men holding me dragged me backwards until I felt the wall up against my back. They let go of my arms, and I started to fall. One guy grabbed me again and pulled me upright, punching me in the side of the head. He let go, and I managed to keep on my feet.

I felt nauseous, the bile rising in my throat. I knew I should make a run for it; I should try something. I didn’t do anything, though, praying that something else was going to happen than what I feared. Maybe I was just going to be moved again.

I heard the steps as the men shuffled in front of me. When the butts of weapons hit the deck, I felt my panic grow.

This couldn’t be it, could it? I was worth more as a hostage, right?

A voice called out in Arabic, and I could almost hear the rustle of men standing at attention.

When I heard the heavily accented English word “ready” get called out, I almost didn’t recognize it. The leader was already at “aim” when I realized what was happening. They weren’t going to use me as a hostage, for propaganda. They were going to get rid of me.

I took a faltering step forward when I heard “fire!” I fell to the ground, legs unable to keep me standing as I heard the clicks of firing pins falling on empty chambers.

There was a moment of silence before the basement erupted with laughter. I lay there, gasping for air, still not quite sure what had happened. I just knew I was still alive.

Chapter 15

Iraq

July 6, 2006

He had a wicked smile as he slowly put his foot on my leg and stepped down. When I screamed, his smile only grew.

After my “execution” the day before, I had been mostly left alone. Gomer had given me water and spoon-fed me some rice, food I really wasn’t sure I could keep down, but ate knowing I needed my strength. I had slept fitfully all night, my mind reliving the moment that I thought my life was over.

Before the execution, I really hadn’t been that openly scared. I know this is pretty ridiculous: I was being held captive by insurgents who had a history of cutting off their captives’ heads and putting the video of that online. That isn’t to say I wasn’t concerned, but deep in my heart, I expected something to happen—the Marines charging in, a ransom being paid, anything. But that charade they pulled yesterday, well, that changed me. In a way, it broke me. I was truly, deep-down, afraid. For the first time, I felt like I probably wouldn’t make it out of this alive. Intellectually, I knew I had to keep positive. But knowing that and feeling that were two different things.

In the morning, after Gomer had fed me again and let me piss, the same big guy who had choked me on the first day came in. He talked with Joe and Butthead for a few moments, glancing over at me with a predatory look in his eyes. As I’d already made his acquaintance, I was wary of him. More than wary, I was afraid. I knew what he was capable of, and I didn’t want anything to do with him.

After a few minutes, he very casually walked over to me. He squatted, then pulled me into a sitting position, his face inches from mine.

“ Ali Jaffer !” he said, thumb hitting his chest. “ Ali Jaffer !”

I didn’t know what to say, so I kept quiet. That earned me a slap across my face, which made me see stars as my nose exploded in pain.

“ Ali Jaffer !”

I realized he was telling me his name. He wanted me to know who it was who held the power over me. He wanted me to know my tormentor.

“OK, OK, Ali Jaffer. You’re him,” I managed to blurt. “Ali Jaffer.”

He nodded, looking pleased, then let me fall back down. He stood up, said something to me in Arabic, then almost casually stepped on my right leg. While I had been lying there, my leg was more of a constant ache than a pain, but when he ground down on it, the paid was unbearable. He eased up, and I stopped screaming, my breath coming in gasps. I looked up at him, trying to defy him, but not doing too good of a job at it.

He lifted his foot again, and held it over my leg, watching me as I couldn’t help but to look down at it, just waiting for it to grind back into my calf. He just started to slowly lower it when a new voice shouted out with the sound of authority. Ali, whirled around, looking ready to snarl out at whoever was interrupting his fun, but when he saw who it was, his expression changed. He gave a guilty-looking nod and stepped away from me.

I leaned back with relief, closing my eyes, not caring for a moment just who had saved me. When footsteps approached me, though, I opened my eyes and looked up. A very filthy man, barefoot and with tattered robes that did little to cover him, stood over me. Even his eyes seemed rheumy and barely functional. Only his erect and alert posture gave a sign that this man was not some beaten-down offal of mankind.

The man, who was followed by three streetwise-looking thugs, turned and walked over to Joe and Buttface. Both showed him deference, and despite my position, curiosity hit me.

Just who was this guy?

After a few minutes of quiet discussion, the new arrivals went to the stairs and climbed out of the basement. Joe said something to Gomer who then tucked in his shirt. I couldn’t understand anything they were saying, but it was obvious that they were concerned and more than a little uncomfortable. What this meant for me, I didn’t know.

After 30 minutes or so, a new group of people came down the stairs. In the lead was a slight man who looked like he was in his mid-30s. He was in white, traditional robes with a dagger at his side. Other than that, he wasn’t armed. His goons were, though. It took me a moment to recognize them; they were the same bodyguards who had come down with the old beggar.

The new guy pulled a chair from the corner, placed it in front of me, then sat down. I looked closely at him.

Could he be . . .?

“You’re the beggar, aren’t you?” I blurted out, forgetting my situation.

That got a smile from him and he put his right hand to his forehead, then lowered it with a flourish. “Kaseem al-Gharsi,” he told me.

He seemed to wait for some sort of acknowledgement. Was I supposed to know him?

When I didn’t respond, he asked, “And you are?”

His English was perfect. I would have mistaken him for an American had I met him back home. He raised his eyebrows in a question as he waited for me to answer. I didn’t want to answer, but name and rank were what they always gave in the movies. I thought the Marine Corps expected a captured Marine to give that out as well.

“Uh, Corporal Nicholas Xenakis, United States Marine Corps.”

He held out his hand to the side, and one of his goons placed an ID card in his hand. He looked at it, then looked at me and nodded.

“See, that wasn’t so hard. So, Nicholas, or do they call you Nick?”

I was wary. So far, no one had asked me anything. Not my name, not how many Marines were in Fallujah, what our weapons were. Nothing. I had seen enough movies to know the questions would come. I had been steeling myself to withhold any information.

Before each pump, we had been given classes on what to do if we were captured. I was surprised to learn that the Marine Corps expected you to break. There were no cyanide capsules and all that spy stuff. We were basically told to hold out as long as possible and just not voluntarily offer up information.

I was on my guard, then, waiting for the inevitable interrogation, waiting for more of the abuse I’d already experienced. But this guy, with his American accent, calmly asking my name: well, that threw me for a loop. My nickname? Was that allowed? If my name was supposed to be given, I guessed my nickname would be OK. How could that help the insurgents?

“Uh, yeah, they call me Nick.”

“Nick it is then. Are you OK? Given your circumstances, I mean.”

I hesitated. Was this some sort of trick question? I glanced towards the stairs where Ali had climbed out of the basement.

“Ah, yes. I should probably apologize for that,” he said, obviously figuring out my thoughts. “The Prophet is clear that we cannot abuse prisoners or those under our control. There was no reason for any of that.”

What was that?

I’d seen the videos of prisoners getting their heads cut off. I knew the Sunnis and Shia were killing each other every night, sometimes using electric drills to drill men to death. They cut off hands for stealing, right?

“But, . . .” I started before I could help myself.

“But all Muslims are barbarians, right? That is what you are thinking. If you weren’t so brainwashed by your government and media, you could see that Islam is the religion of peace. We are waging a holy war, true, against the West, but that is because of your own actions. We don’t bomb cities into rubble. We don’t strangle the economies of other nations. It is you, the . . . .” He paused for a second before composing himself. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to lecture you here. You came to this country because your Bush ordered you here.”

I thought of the suicide bombers blowing up markets, killing women and children, and that didn’t seem to civilized to me. These so-called “soldiers” rarely even met us in combat. IEDs were the way they fought. I figured I shouldn’t bring any of that up.

“Despite your crusaders, we are really brothers under the same god, Allah-be-praised. It is the Jew who is trying to subvert both of our peoples.”

I could see that this guy couldn’t help himself from lecturing. But if that kept me from getting interrogated, all the better. I would listen to him spout his propaganda all day long if it kept him busy. I wasn’t on my school debate team, but even I could pick holes in his views. If Christians and Muslims shared the same god, well, didn’t the Jews have the same god, too? Even my priest back home acknowledged that us, the Protestants, the Roman Catholics, the Muslims, the Jews, they all had the same god. Just some people have perverted the Word.

“Well, no matter now. What we need to decide at the moment is what to do with you. Allah, praise-be-his-name, has seen fit to deliver you into our hands. You will be a tool for his glory, but your personal conditions and your future will depend on you, not us.”

“I can’t cooperate with you,” I mustered up as much bravado as I could. “I’m a US Marine, and I won’t betray my country.”

He actually laughed. “You think I’m going to torture you to find out how many toilets you have at your base? We have loyal men and women working there. We know everything there is to know about it. I don’t care about all of that. What I do care about is how to use you. At the moment, that does not include physical abuse.”

I couldn’t help but to look down at my leg, bloody and swollen.

“That brute is an Iraqi,” he told me with a shrug as he caught the focus of my gaze. “Most of them do not understand the cause, and they don’t understand how a Muslim man acts. You can blame that on the infidel Hussein. But with our guidance, they will be brought back into the arms of the Prophet.”

That took me aback. I knew that Al Qaeda in Iraq had foreigners running it, but I just assumed this guy, this Kaseem whatever-he-said-his-name-was, was Iraqi, too.

He took that moment to lean over and lightly touch my leg. I jerked back the best I could, still being tied up, but he merely seemed to be checking it out.

“I will get a doctor in to take a look at that. We don’t need you dying from an infection,” he said matter-of-factly.

He stood up, and I sensed our little chat was over. I decided to take a chance.

“Um, can I ask you something?”

I could see his eyes harden for a moment, but he seemed to push that aside and nodded.

“When I was, uh, when I was captured, there was another Marine with me. Is he OK?”

He shrugged his shoulders as if my question was inconsequential. “The Iraqis killed six of your soldiers, and probably him, too. I will ask if you really want to know.”

With that, he turned and left, his bodyguards, I guess they were, joining him and walking up the stairs. My heart fell as I watched him leave. I knew Tony had been pretty bad off, but to have it confirmed just broke my heart.

Chapter 16

Iraq

July 7, 2006

Kaseem was as good as his word. After he left, Joe, Buttface, and Gomer milled about, studiously ignoring me. An hour or so later, a doctor, or at least I assumed he was a real doctor and not a nurse or a vet or something, was escorted in by one of Kaseem’s bodyguards, a quiet, hulking man who never said a word in my presence.

The doctor was an older guy, and he checked out my leg first. He shook his head, then got some forceps and some gauze and proceeded to clean the wound. When I say clean, I mean, he stuck that thing inside the bullet hole. That was as bad as any of the beatings I had taken so far. At one point, I must have twisted, and he angrily jerked my leg back out straight.

Despite my agony, I was surprised at his attitude. I thought doctors were full of compassion and shit like that. But he seemed angry at being there. I wondered if he was forced to come, and if he thought that put him in danger.

He finally finished my leg, then checked my ribs and my face. He cleaned up the latter, ignored my still-swollen nose, then put a thin Band-Aid on the gash. I would have expected I would have needed stitches. He gave me a shot, which I hoped was antibiotics.

He stepped back and said something to Joe, who was hovering over his shoulder while he worked. Without even looking back at me, he picked up his small black leather case and walked out.

Joe tied me back up. Whatever Kaseem had wanted changed, I guess that didn’t include more freedom of movement. It seemed that he wanted his prize in good condition but not to have a chance at escape. I’m not sure how I could have managed that even if I wasn’t tied. I had three full-time guards, and my leg was not only swollen and infected, it now ached even more from the good doctor’s administration.

Buttface had to untie my hands 30 minutes later when they brought my food. I think they realized it would be easier for all concerned for me to feed myself than being spoon-fed like a baby. I had the same rice as before, but there was also a small ground-meat thing, like a long meatball. I wondered if that was Kaseem’s doing. Probably. Buttface stood over me with his AK, then tied me back up when I was done. While I was eating, he had his weapon at the ready, but to tie me back up, he slung the rifle over his shoulder. Neither Joe nor Gomer were covering him. I wasn’t in any condition to try and take him, but knowing that none of the three seemed to have any real training was something to store in the back of my mind.

An hour or so later, Kaseem came back. He spoke to Joe first, then came back over as one of his bodyguards brought a chair over for his use. He sat, looked down at me and started to say something before he quit and told one of his hovering posse something. One of them, the one with the big long beard, went upstairs, then came down a few moments later with another chair. He handed his rifle to one of the other guys, then came forward, placing the chair beside me. He untied my hands and motioned me to sit. The fact that he gave his weapon up before coming to me showed me that these guys, at least, were better trained than the Three Stooges. I may have been bigger than Kaseem, but I was pretty obviously in bad shape, and my feet were tied. He had the big bodyguard with him, a guy who probably outweighed me by 25 pounds, none of it looking like fat, another guy, this one who just oozed with lethality, and an older guy who stared at me with frank hate-filled eyes: his little group of thugs looked pretty capable. Still, he was taking no chances.

“The doctor says your leg is infected, but you should start to see an improvement in a day or so,” Kaseem told me once I was seated and looking at him. I didn’t reply, and he went on, “If it doesn’t get better, I have asked Hammad to let me know and we’ll bring the doctor back.”

He must have seen the question in my eyes, because he added, “Hammad. Your keeper here.”

“Oh, you mean Joe,” I blurted out without thinking.

“Joe? Who’s Joe?”

I could tell he was confused. I sheepishly pointed over to Joe where he was hovering by the table in the corner of the room with the other two.

Kaseem was still puzzled, but then he tilted his head back and laughed. This was the first time I had heard any laughter in several days, and it echoed in the concrete basement.

“‘Joe?’ Why did you pick ‘Joe?’” he asked.

I felt embarrassed. Which, given my situation, seemed odd.

“Uh, well, ‘Joe Average’ is how he seemed to me.”

He gave a sort of harrumph and said, “Hammad, or Joe, if you want, is decidedly not ‘average.’ He is quite well educated and was a high-ranking civil servant in Hussein’s regime. Now he is showing his loyalty by serving where we need him.” He paused, before leaning forward and going on. “What about the other two?” he asked in almost a conspiratorial tone.

“Well, uh, . . . ,” I hesitated not wanting to give any offense. I gulped and continued, “The other one is ‘Buttface,’ and the kid is ‘Gomer.’”

His eyes widened, and I thought I might have pissed him off, but then he laughed even louder and longer. He had actual tears in his eyes when he stopped and looked back down at me.

“Well, you probably got ‘Buttface’ about right. I might have called him ‘Asshole’ myself. But why ‘Gomer?’”

“You know, like he’s a Gomer. I don’t know how to describe it.”

He shrugged and said, “I may have lived in the US, but I guess I couldn’t learned everything. No matter.” He paused for a few moments before going on. “What about me? Have you given me a name?”

Actually, I hadn’t. He spoke English, and it never occurred to me.

“You gave me your name,” I told him. “Kaseem.”

“Eh, just as well, I guess. I would have hoped for something heroic like ‘Lion of Allah’ or something, and I doubt you would go in that direction.”

As I sat there, I realized how surreal things had become. I was a prisoner of war, one not protected by the Geneva Convention. I had been tortured and abused. I had three very efficient-looking guards watching over me, and then the Three Stooges trying to look useful, too. Yet here I was, with some sort of high insurgent muckety-muck, chatting about nicknames as if nothing was wrong.

“If your leg doesn’t get better, tell Hammad. We don’t want gangrene to set in, now do we?” He seemed to collect his thoughts before continuing. “Now, I need to ask you a few questions.”

I stiffened up when I heard that.

Here it comes!

He didn’t seem to notice my reaction as he simply asked me, “So Nick, are you married?”

Am I married? That’s what he wants to ask?

I hesitated. I gave him my name and service. What else was I required to give? If I gave him an answer, would that giving in to the enemy?

When I didn’t say anything, frozen by indecision, he looked up at me from where he had been examining his left hand and said, “I assume you know we need to report your capture to the Red Crescent. Your family needs to know that you are alive.”

That threw me for a loop. We reported all our prisoners to the Red Cross, but I didn’t think that the insurgents followed the same rules. They were supposed to, sure, but I had been led to believe that they paid no attention to that. On the other hand, what could it hurt? He’d probably already Googled me and knew I was married. If I told him the truth now, maybe I could get him to believe any lies I might want to tell later. I made my decision.

“Yes, I’m married,” I told him.

Did I see a quick flash of triumph in his eyes?

“Any children?”

“No, me and Sig, we . . .” I started, before he held up a hand and interrupted.

“Sig and I,” he said.

“What?”

“Sig and I. Not ‘me and sig.’ Go on,” he said.

I looked at him in confusion. An Arab is telling me how to speak English? What the fuck did it matter?

I shook my head, then went on. “Sig and I,” I said with emphasis, “haven’t had the right time to have kids yet.”

“Too bad. A man is not a man until he has sons to carry on. But no matter. Your wife’s name is Sig. So is that short for Sigfried?”

“No, Sigrun. That’s Norwegian.”

“So, Sigrun Xenakis?”

“She just goes by Sig,” I answered.

“OK,” he said, pausing to write that down. “She’ll know soon that you’re alive and well.”

He’d put me off-balance, that was for sure. To say I was confused would be an understatement. Here I was, a prisoner, a beat-up prisoner, but he acted like my buddy, my protector. He laughed at my nicknames. He acted like he cared if I was well. But he also came across as some sort of asshole and corrected my English. Was he just so sure of himself that he had to correct the way I spoke, and from before, what I thought of Muslims? Or was he playing some sort of mind-game with me?

For the next 30 minutes or so, he sat and asked me questions, but not about the war, the Marines, or anything like that. It was all things like how I met Sig; how good was I in sports; if LA would finally get an NFL team; was In-and-Out really that good. None of it made any sense to me. I thought he might be trying to trick me, but he never asked me anything of any importance, the best I could tell.

He finally sighed, got up, and took his leave. Two of his bodyguards left first, going up the stairs, and the third followed, but not before looking back into the room, sweeping his weapon around. I am not sure if he really thought someone could have snuck in through the solid walls intent on taking out Kaseem.

Buttface came over and tied up my hands again, but he left me sitting in the chair. At least that was better than lying on my side. I just sat there and wondered what the fuck had just taken place. I don’t know what I thought being a prisoner might be like, but I know it wasn’t this.

Chapter 17

Iraq

July 7 or 8, 2006

I was drifting off when Gomer shook me awake. I came to with a start, and that caused Gomer to jump back. Only one of the two lights in the basement was on, but as there were no windows to the outside, I had to guess that it still must be nighttime.

I almost laughed at Gomer’s typical jumpiness, but then I saw Joe, Buttface, and two other Iraqis standing by. Anything out of the ordinary was enough to get my heart pounding. Then I saw Buttface holding a roll of duct tape. I pushed back with my still-tied feet until my back was up against the wall.

Buttface followed me, pulling out one edge of the tape until he had some free. I started to squirm when he reached forward, but with the wall in back of me, there was nowhere for me to go. He slapped the tape over my mouth and nose as I turned my head. With both covered, I froze, not able to drawn in a breath. Buttface continued to wrap the tape around my head until someone shouted out and he stopped, then took the tape back off until my face was uncovered. Relief swept over me.

He put his hand on my head and turned it so I was facing him, giving it a shake and saying something sharply to me. He held the tape up in front of me, showing me it was coming back on. I got the message. He was going to tape me up no matter what, and if I wanted my nose free, I had better keep still.

The swelling in my nose had gone down some. I just hoped it was enough for me to get enough air in. It wasn’t like I had any choice though, so I held still as he wrapped the tape around my head several times.

I tried to calm myself down, knowing it would help me breathe. I found out that if I controlled my breathing, I could in fact get air through my nose. The swelling had gone down enough for that.

After the tape, Joe came up and put a hood over my head. That almost brought the panic back. I hoped the hood wouldn’t cut off the oxygen.

Hands grabbed me under my arms and got me to my feet. They started to pull me forward, but as my feet were still tied, I fell on my face. This seemed to surprise them, although I don’t know what they expected me to do while bound like that. After a long discussion, I felt myself being bodily picked up and carried to the stairs. We clumped up it with them half-dropping me twice. I just concentrated on staying calm.

I could hear the difference in the footsteps as we got upstairs. We walked over tile or something, then what had to be carpets and the sound of the steps became subdued. I realized that we were probably inside someone’s house. What family wanted a prisoner kept in their basement, I wondered.

When I could feel a breeze against me, I knew we were outside. It wasn’t a cool breeze. No light came in through the hood, so that confirmed it was night, but this was July, and even the desert night still retained heat. Still, it was the first breath of air I had felt since I had been brought here.

I heard the sound of a sliding door open, like on a van. I momentarily contemplated trying to squirm to the ground, but I realized that would do me no good at all, so I meekly kept limp as they pushed me into the van. I was pushed along the floor until I fell into a depression and someone reached in to fold my legs up against my chest. Something was then put on top of me, holding me down. I realized they must have put me into some sort of secret compartment. I tried pushing up to get a feel of my small prison, but as I was on my side, I couldn’t get much leverage. Then I felt a small but very sharp prick in my side. I froze. It was a knife, I knew. Above me, there was one of my captors, and he was holding a knife through a slot or something, holding it against me. They wanted me to know that any trouble from me, and the knife would be pushed home.

The van started, and we drove off. I still had no idea where I was. I guessed I could still be in Fallujah, but more likely, I was already pretty far from there. Fallujah was generally in US hands, so someplace like Ramadi or some of the smaller villages would be a better guess.

We drove for about 10 minutes until we came to a stop. I could hear voices outside, then others answering from inside the van. The door pulled open, and several people in the van spoke. I tried to figure out if this was a checkpoint or more insurgents. Suddenly, I thought I heard a voice in English. I couldn’t be sure, but the cadence and sound of it, even as muffled as it was, didn’t sound like Arabic.

Even with the tape, I knew I could make some noise, I could draw some attention. I had just about made up my mind to try when the knife point went in a little deeper. In my excitement, I had forgotten about that, as hard as that might seem to fathom. But the message was received. If I made any noise at all, my life would end right here in this van. For another moment, I wondered if that would be worth it, though. Maybe I should end it. But I wasn’t ready to die, so I just remained quiet. The van door closed, and we drove off again. Another five minutes, ten minutes, I don’t know, we stopped. The panel above me was removed, and hands dragged me out. I was carried once more into a building, then down some steps. I could hear the guys carrying me grunting and groaning, gasping for air as they lugged me. I was dropped unceremoniously on the floor where I lay quiet until someone took off my hood. Buttface took out a knife to cut off the tape on my mouth.

Actually, he had held the knife in front of my face, slowly turning it. I knew he was trying to get a rise out of me, but they didn’t move me in the middle of the night just to find someplace else to kill me. I paid him no attention until he cut off the tape.

I looked around. Just another basement, slightly more narrow than the last, but pretty much the same. I might have been in a new place, but nothing had really changed.

Chapter 18

Iraq

July 11, 2006

When I heard the footsteps coming down the stairs, I didn’t think much about it. Kaseem had come the last three days to chat and see how I was. I had begun to relax around him. He never brought up anything about the military. We just talked about life and things, even good-naturedly arguing on whether football or soccer was a better sport. Just typical guy things. He didn’t seem to be trying to change my mind about anything. Well, he hinted about converting, I think. He told me that during the wars with the Barbary pirates, captured sailors in Tripoli could get their freedom if they converted to Islam, as Muslims couldn’t keep other Muslims prisoner. He told me that one Scottish guy converted and became their high admiral.

I didn’t buy any of that, though. I knew Sunnis and Shia were killing each other every night, so what difference would it make if I converted? Not that I would, of course. I could never leave the Church.

For the last two days, he even brought me iced tea. I don’t know what I appreciated more, the cold liquid flowing down my throat or the mint aftertaste. I hoped he was bringing more today.

I looked up, expecting to see Kaseem, but some new guys came into the basement, carrying some black cases. Joe went over to meet them, and after some discussion and pointing around the basement, the newcomers went to the inside wall and put the cases down.

This basement was about 20 feet long and about 15 feet wide. The stairway came down in one corner, and the short wall next to that was featureless. The long wall up against where they kept me had one very small boarded-up opening near the top that let in a tiny bit of light, and the far short wall also had the same kind of opening, but this one was boarded up more effectively, and no light came in. These were the outside walls. The wall opposite from me had no openings other than the stairwell coming down. I assumed that this was an inside wall with the other side being either dirt or another room.

The four men opened up the cases, ignoring me. My heart sank, though, when I saw what they were unpacking. First, out came industrial lights, four sets. I was puzzled by this for a moment until one of the men set up a tripod and put a video camera on it.

I’d seen videos of prisoners before. I think all men and women going to Iraq had searched for them on the internet before we came. We’d seen the horrific beheadings.

I looked at my guards. Gomer and Joe looked nervous. I’d been with the three men basically 24/7 for the last six days. They only left to go upstairs for a few minutes at a time, probably to take a piss or whatever. They ate and slept in the basement. No one relieved them so they could go home. As such, I was beginning to be able to read them, I thought. And I didn’t like what I saw in those two. Gomer, in particular, looked upset, and he kept looking over at me.

Once the lights and the camera were set up, two of the new men left, and the others just hung out for a good half an hour. All ignored me. Finally, one looked at his watch, then took a chair and set it up against the inside wall. The other guy turned on the lights, making me squint. These were industrial work lights, not klieg lights or anything like that, but after a couple of days in semi-darkness, they were plenty bright. I was pulled to my feet and crow-hopped over to the chair. My leg infection was in fact getting better, and most of the pain was surprisingly gone, but I acted like it hurt much more than it really did.

I was sat down where I waited. I couldn’t help but to look around to see if anyone had a large sword or knife. They didn’t need anything large, though. I’d seen the video proof of that. Once again, I started wondering if this was finally it. Was I destined to die today, fodder for some propaganda video? Would my friends see it? My family? Would Sig see it, and would she even care?

I heard the footsteps coming back down, and when I saw Kaseem, relief flooded me. He wouldn’t let anything happen to me, I knew. I even broke out into a smile.

“Kaseem, what’s going on? What’s happening?” I asked him as he came up.

His eyes hardened ever so slightly, but I didn’t care. I was just happy to see him.

“Nothing much, Nick. We just need to prove that you are alive. We need to video you and send that out. There have been reports that you were executed, which is all propaganda gamesmanship. You don’t look executed to me, right?” he asked as a smile took over his face.

I obviously knew that they were going to tape me, and I was relieved that it wasn’t going to be something more final. I really didn’t want to make any video, but I guessed it would be OK just to show I was alive. If nothing else, it would keep my fellow Marines looking for me. They wouldn’t give up the search.

“That’s probably OK, then,” I said.

He spent the next few minutes putting people into position. I was sitting on the chair, of course. The Three Stooges were in back of me. One of the new guys was on the camera with the other one beside him. Kaseem’s posse was in back of those two. As far as Kaseem, he had on a new type of robe, more like what the Iraqis wore, but his face covered up. None of the Three Stooges had his face covered.

Joe had a piece of paper in his hands. After Kaseem told the cameraman to roll them or whatever you say in Arabic, Joe started reading from the paper. I was surprised at that. I wondered why Kaseem didn’t read it instead of just standing there in complete anonymity. When Joe stopped, there seemed to be an expectant air about the rest. Everyone just stood around for a few moments before Kaseem got flustered and shouted at one of his goons. The big guy came forward fumbling at his pocket before bringing out another sheet of paper. Kaseem snatched it out of his hands and gave it to me.

“Put that down for now, then after Hammad finishes, lift it up and read from it.”

I wanted to take a look at it first, but Kaseem was already getting the camera rolling again. I held it in my hands, which were still tied, and looked up into the camera while Joe did his thing. When he finished, I almost looked back at him, but I kept looking forward and raised the paper up—and couldn’t read a thing. The lights were in my eyes, and my hands were tied. I could see some writing, but it was scrawled rather poorly, and with the lights, I just couldn’t see anything.

“I can’t see what I’m supposed to say,” I said, turning to Kaseem. “The lights are too bright, and I can’t read this.”

I held up my tied hands with the paper flopping over them. I thought he was going to explode, but he gave out some orders, and the lights were shifted and my hands freed.

In the two previous takes, he had been on the end of the four of them with Buttface on one end and Gomer and Joe in the middle. Both Buttface and Gomer were armed with their AKs. Evidently, Kaseem thought he could control things better if he was in the middle, because he reached over to pull Gomer back.

The explosion seemed louder due to the confined space in the basement. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but several people ducked to the ground while plaster and cement dust rained down on us. My ears were ringing.

Slowly, the others got up. Gomer was scared shitless, I could tell. He had accidentally fired his weapon when Kaseem grabbed him. He looked at Kaseem, his mouth open, as he tried to stutter something out. Kaseem took the weapon from his nerveless hands, then in a sudden move, buttstroked the boy alongside his head. Gomer went down in a heap while Kaseem calmly took out the magazine, removed the rounds, then put the empty magazine back in the rifle. He kicked Gomer in the side to get him up. The buttstroke he had given was at an angle to Gomer’s head; it wasn’t intended to take him out, just hurt. Gomer got up, eyes wide in fear. Blood trickled from the side of his head.

Kaseem gave him back his now unloaded rifle. He had one of his posse bring a rag and wipe the blood, then told him to change sides with Buttface, obviously so that the blood would not show if it started oozing again.

I was in a mild state of shock. That buttstroke did not fit the Kaseem I’d come to know. I guessed every man has a breaking point, and his had been reached. He was evidently over it, though, as he calmly turned to the others to get this thing taped again.

Once again, Joe went through his spiel, and this time, when it was my turn, I held up the paper and could see.

“My name is Corporal Nicholas Xenakis, United States Marine Corps. I was captured in Fallujah on July 3, 2006 by Iraqi freedom fighters.”

The “freedom fighters” almost gave me pause, but I went on.

“Since my capture, I have been treated well.”

Again, “well” was hardly an accurate description.

“I have received medical treatment for my wounds. As a US citizen, I am opposed to the policy of my government that . . . .”

I stopped reading and looked up at Kaseem.

“I can’t say this,” I told him.

I could see him trying to retain control.

“No, you’re wrong, and you will say it. You know it’s the truth, and your testament is Allah’s will, praise-be-his-name.”

“But Kaseem, I can’t say this, and you know the Geneva Convention says I don’t have to.”

I don’t know what la-la-land I was living in. I don’t know what I thought. But I was not prepared for Kaseem motioning to one of his goons, the lethal-looking guy. He sauntered over and reached down to me. I thought he was going to take the paper, but instead, he grabbed my right forefinger, and with one twist, broke it.

The surprise as much as anything else made me scream. I looked down at my finger, which now stood upright between the knuckle and the first joint. I felt faint. I looked up at Kaseem, and he just stood there, no expression on his face. He didn’t look angry; he didn’t look sorry. It was then that I realized I meant nothing to him. This was no more than someone stepping on an ant.

“You will read it,” was all he said.

I felt my anger rise. I would not give in to him.

“Fuck you!”

He remained expressionless and merely nodded at his goon again. The man reached down and took my middle finger, snapping it as well. I was expecting it, but the pain almost overwhelmed me. I didn’t want to look at it, but some sort of morbid curiosity overcame me. My middle finger now stood up, but with my hand flat. With all the pain, all I could think of was that I could not flip him the bird now.

I looked up at him, trembling with pain and rage, determined to not give him the satisfaction of winning. He must have seen it in my eyes because he shrugged, motioning his henchman back.

I had won!

“Farid” was all he said.

I wondered what that meant, but then the big bodyguard came forward, holding something rolled like the tool cases that come with a new car. He put it on the ground in front of me and unrolled it, revealing things that shook me to my core.

“No more fingers. I need those to look whole in front of the camera, but we can pan it up so that anything below the waist isn’t seen,” he said in English, although he seemed to be addressing Farid. Then he turned to look into my face. “You will find that Farid is quite skilled at what he does.”

I tried to swallow, but my throat was seizing up. I watched in horror as Farid seemed to contemplate his tools. Almost daintily for such a big man, he pulled out a small electric drill. He motioned to his two compatriots who came forward and undid the bindings on my feet, then took off my pants. All the time, he stood in front of me, turning on and off the drill. I could feel my utilities being taken off, but the drill was all I could see.

Without any expression, he leaned forward and let the turning drill bit gently kiss the skin on my left thigh, not breaking the surface. He looked up at Kaseem, but I was just staring at him. Kaseem must have given him the OK because he pushed forward, and the drill dug into me. I screamed again while the pain lanced through me, racing from my leg up to my brain. Everything in front of me whited out.

When I collected my thoughts again, I could hear retching. I thought it might be me at first, but almost as if I was floating over my body, I knew it was Gomer. I even felt sorry for him. That lasted all of a few seconds as Farid ran the drill into my thigh once more. This time, he hit bone and the drill bit skittered to the side to chew up more of my muscle. I was screaming now at the top of my lungs, trying to cope with the agony.

I wasn’t really aware of when he stopped. I was panting for air, my leg was on fire. I could hear the drill being turned on and off, taunting me, and the sound made my blood run cold. I didn’t know if I could take much more. I should just read the stupid thing and get it over with. Everyone would understand, right?

The drill stopped and I could hear it being put away. I opened my eyes, not realizing I had had them closed. Farid was looking at Kaseem, but my eyes were firmly locked on him. Whatever Kaseem told him must have made an impact, because I could see him flinch. For the first time, something had broken his reserve. He gathered himself up and reached down. When he came up, he had a pair of pliers, one with a large gripping surface in his hands. The drill looked worse, but I knew he could crush my fingers with the pliers. I steeled myself for what was coming.

He moved closer to me. I stared into his eyes, and for a moment, I thought I saw something in there, something almost human. Then it went away, and his hand reached between my legs and grabbed one of my balls. My mind went crazy. I was thinking my fingers again, or maybe my teeth. This took me by surprise. I tried to squirm away, but the other two men were holding me tight. Still, I managed to throw the bearded guy to the ground, freeing my arm. Even in the sitting position, my punch knocked Farid on his ass, breaking the hold he had on my balls.

I started to struggle to get up, but Kaseem called out and the other three guards rushed in to hold me. The bearded guy had already jumped up and had grabbed my arm, wrenching it almost out of the socket. Farid stood up, rubbing his jaw. He didn’t seem angry, but he moved forward with a new purpose.

Once again, a hand closed on my left ball. I was in a panic. I had four men holding me down, and although I could shift them, I couldn’t get up. Then, my world came apart. From my groin came a volcano of fire. I stopped struggling and just melted into a slag of featureless agony. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t exist. Nothing I have ever experienced could come close to what I just felt.

I don’t know how much time passed. I finally started regaining what it meant to be a human being, to have thoughts of self. I slowly became aware of the others around me. As my eyes could focus, I recognized them. Gomer looked like he was going to pass out, and Joe was not much better. Buttface was on my right arm, a look of, well, of almost excitement on his face. Bearded guy was angry, and he had my left arm in a vise grip. One of the camera crew guys was holding my right leg, but he didn’t look too enthused. Someone had their arm around my neck, probably the lethal guard. And Farid stood in front of me, expressionless once again.

It was Kaseem who scared me, though. I was conscious again, but the pain in my left ball had taken over all else. I could not imagine what was done to it, what it looked like. Through the pain, though, Kaseem took my attention. For once, his expression had changed, and like Buttface, there was a sense of excitement in him. Or maybe it was a sense of power.

He held out his hand, and Farid handed him the pliers. I could see the blood on them, my blood. Farid stepped back and let Kaseem move in front of me.

“Nick, Nick, see what you’ve done to yourself? None of this was necessary, you know. This is all your fault,” he said, fake concern dripping from his voice.

“Fuck you,” I tried to say, but pretty much all that came out was a mumbled gurgle.

Kaseem knew what I was saying, though. “I’m afraid, if we go on, that is one thing you’ll never do again. Your Sig won’t ever be satisfied with someone who is not a man, someone who cannot do his duty.”

I knew I should just give in. I should just agree. But I couldn’t let the bastard win. This had gone beyond my country, beyond the Corps. This was between him and me.

“Last chance, Nick,” he said, opening and shutting the pliers in front of me.

I felt a rush of strength. I said nothing.

“Very well. As you wish.”

He reached down and grabbed my remaining ball. He gave it a tug, sending shocks of pain from my destroyed one. That strength I felt a moment ago fled like rats on a sinking ship.

“With no children, no man is whole. His life is wasted. But maybe not every man deserves to breed, so I guess it’s OK.”

As I felt more than saw the pliers go in, I broke. I utterly, totally broke.

“OK, OK! I’ll say whatever you want me to say! For the love of God, just stop!” I cried out.

“Ah, excellent, Nick. Good decision,” he said with what had to be satisfaction at having won, but maybe with bit of regret coloring his voice.

I was sobbing for my inner manhood lost, even as I had saved my physical manhood.

Chapter 19

Iraq

July 12, 2006

I am opposed to the policy of my government that has sent me here to invade Iraq.

The words kept running through my head.

I, and my fellow soldiers, have killed women and children, under orders from George Bush.

I am a war criminal.

I had read more, but all along the same lines. I had broken so completely that I read the words put in front of me, not caring, only wanting the agony to end. Now, though, shame washed over me. What kind of man was I to admit to lies like that?

The last 24 hours had to be about the worst of my life. The pain I suffered was almost unbearable, but breaking my spirit like that: well, that was unbearable. That was worse than the torture.

After the taping, everyone packed up and left, leaving me with my three guards. Joe and Gomer helped me up and basically carried me over to my place against the wall. They laid me down, then Gomer came back with some water. I tried to drink, but I retched it right back up, each spasm sending jolts of pain from my balls to my brain. I wasn’t sure how long I lay there, but at some point—an hour, three hours, five hours, I don’t know—the doctor came back.

Once again, he didn’t say anything to me, he didn’t look me in the eye. I was just a broken piece of meat to him. He looked at my fingers first, then with a quick move, wrenched them straight. That was worse than the breaking, but I didn’t have the energy to scream out with much force. He taped the two fingers together.

When he shifted his attention to my balls, spreading my legs, Gomer suddenly puked, some of it splashing on me. He turned and ran back to the far side of the basement.

For once, I saw an expression on the doc’s face. It wasn’t pity, though. It was more like annoyance. He pursed his lips and his eyebrows scrunched together. He reached down and touched the swollen mass that my nutsack had become, but without trying to cause more pain, I think. He shook his head, then reached into his bag and brought out a scalpel.

I started to panic again. I tried to get up, and he called out for Joe and Buttface to hold me down. Before, I had been able to throw Kaseem’s men around somewhat, but now, I was as weak as a kitten. They had no trouble immobilizing me.

The doctor reached down with the scalpel and made a quick incision. It hurt, to be sure, but not nearly as bad as I expected. I didn’t even shout out, only gasped. When he reached in with his hand, though, it was worse. He didn’t seem to be trying to hurt me, but a hand inside your nutsack, maneuvering a ruined ball, well, no way that can be done gently. He was quick, though, I’ll give him that. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but in five or ten seconds, seconds of pretty severe pain, he leaned back, something bloody in his hand. My mind didn’t want to acknowledge what he held. I knew what it was, of course, but I refused to think about it.

He wrapped it up in a piece of paper, then moved back forward with a bottle from which he poured liquid right into the hole he’d made. It hurt like hell, but not with the same sharp intensity. Even when he took out a needle and thread, it hurt, yeah, but not that bad. Maybe that was just in comparison to what I been suffering before.

He made me take a pill, then gave the rest to Joe. They couldn’t have their prize package die of infection, now, could they?

For the rest of the evening and night, I drifted back and forth, half conscious, half out of it. The words I’d spoken would not leave me. I’d been a POW for over week, and despite all that had happened to me, this was the first time I felt real despair.

Gomer got a little water down me, but I couldn’t eat until morning when I was able to down a bit of rice. I didn’t want it, but I knew I had to get some calories in me.

Much to my surprise, I wasn’t in tremendous agony by morning. Whatever the doctor had done seemed to have had some effect. I could feel that the swelling between my legs had gone down, and while I still had a pretty serious ache there, the shooting pain that any movement had brought the day before had mostly faded. It was the same with my fingers and leg. They ached, but it was bearable. I had the feeling that if I tried to use my hand, or if I tried to bear any weight on my leg, it might be different. But just lying there, well, it somehow wasn’t too bad. On the other hand, maybe I was just getting used to it.

Gomer was pretty attentive during the morning. He didn’t look the worse-for-wear. Kaseem had hit him more of a glancing blow above the ear, so not much showed. He had a tiny bit of dried blood showing at his hairline, but that was about it. He kept coming up to me, offering me water. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he felt sorry for me.

It had to have been late morning sometime when Kaseem came back down into the basement. He was back in his fancy white robes and rhino horn dagger in his belt. Farid was missing, and for a moment, I hoped it was because he was suffering from when I punched him. I realized this was probably wishful thinking, though.

Kaseem nodded to me as he walked by to talk to Joe. Joe gave his report, then Kaseem came back, pulling the chair around so he could sit and face me. I involuntarily pulled back, then felt ashamed for doing that. If Kaseem noticed my flinch, he didn’t give any indication of it.

“So, how goes it, Nick? You OK?”

What the fuck? I wondered. How does he think I feel?

When I didn’t say anything, he sighed and went on, “OK, you’re probably a little angry now. No matter. It wasn’t personal.”

“Not personal?” I stammered out, my surprise overcoming my desire to ignore the man.

“Of course not. I thought you were smarter than that. Yesterday, as unfortunate as it was, was merely a game being played. You were just a tool to serve Allah, praise-be-his-name, even as all of us, infidels included, are tools for him. As a friend . . .”

I almost gagged when he said “friend.”

“. . . I personally hated to see that. But we all have to suffer on this earth to enter Paradise.”

I didn’t say anything, but I just wasn’t buying it. I’d seen the pleasure flash on his face after he had Farid crush my nut. I saw the look of excitement on his face when he had the pliers in his hands. I never saw any regret.

“Now, it’s over. Over and done. The doctor says you’ll be fine, so now just relax the best you can.”

He must have seen that I was not convinced of his BS because he went on, “Look, do you know what the Qur’an says about suicide?”

I shook my head.

He who commits suicide by throttling shall keep on throttling himself in the Hell-Fire forever and he who commits suicide by stabbing himself shall keep on stabbing himself in the Hell-Fire .

I couldn’t help myself. I looked up and asked, “So why do you guys blow yourselves up all the time?”

“The Qur’an also says:”

And reckon not those who are killed in Allah’s way as dead; nay, they are alive (and) are provided sustenance from their Lord.

I didn’t see the connection. Who said suicide was Allah’s way when it sounded to me like it wasn’t in his way?

“You see, sometimes we need to do what we don’t want in order to serve Allah, praise-be-his-name. No man wants to kill himself, right? Yet he does it because that is how he can best serve, how he can ensure his place in Paradise. We are just tools in his name, all of us.”

I could hear the sincerity in his voice. He really believed this.

“My point is because our earth is a sinful place, we sometimes have to commit sin for the greater good. We do things that would seem to be wrong, but when it is in the service of Allah, praise-be-his-name, it is no longer a sin. That part is out of our hands. We do what we have to do, and in the end, we get what we want.”

“Did you get what you wanted with that video? Am I all over the internet now?” I asked bitterly.

“That video? Well, no, we didn’t release that to the world. I decided to hold it for now. You were not in very good shape, as you recall, and I just thought that maybe we could wait on releasing it until it becomes necessary.”

I knew then that the whole thing had been a sham. He may have sounded sincere for the last minute or so, and maybe he was, but yesterday’s little event was solely to make me break, just like my fake execution. If I’d given in immediately, well, maybe they would have used the tape. But he knew I wouldn’t; that’s why the wording was so harsh and extreme. He wanted me to refuse so he could break me. He couldn’t use the video if I was tortured, after all. A video like that had to look voluntary. I’m positive he knew about the Vietnam POWs blinking Morse code and things like that to say they were tortured. He knew videos like that were discounted. The video was not what he wanted. He wanted me. He wanted to control me. And all of this, from the moment I was captured, was part of his plan.

I couldn’t believe I had been taken in by him. We were arguing football versus soccer, for fuck’s sake. I was a prisoner, a tortured prisoner, and I thought he was my protector? What a friggin’ idiot I was.

At that moment, I knew I had to fight back. I knew it before, but more as an abstract. Now I felt it in my heart. It infused my very being. To start with, I had to put on a false face, to let them think I was broken. I let a huge breath out, as if I had been hoping against hope to hear what he had just said.

“Oh, thank God! I—I didn’t want my friends to see that. Thank you,” I said, trying not to go overboard.

I was looking down at my feet, not meeting his eyes. I could almost hear him thinking, wondering if I was sincere.

“Well, we still have it,” he said, hesitantly, “and if we need it, I can’t promise that we won’t release it.”

Ah, the carrot and the stick. He was holding that over me. I had let that video, let what I’d said, haunt me all night. But as things became clear to me, I didn’t care anymore. Release the stupid thing. I wasn’t proud of it by any means, but I wasn’t going to let him have another tool to use against me. I had to convince myself that it didn’t matter, that I didn’t care.

“Here,” he told me, holding out a water bottle full of iced tea.

I knew he was my sworn enemy, but I wasn’t going to turn down the tea. I settled in for what I knew was going to be an hour of inconsequential chatting about nothing important. He had to reinforce that he was my friend, my buddy, until the next time he brought the hammer down.

Chapter 20

Iraq

July 13, 2006

Gomer sat down in front of me, a plate of rice and a couple of sections of orange in his hand. He held them out to me.

“ Farouk ,” he said as I took the plate.

Rice was my staple, but I hadn’t had fruit during my time in captivity. I eagerly took it.

“ Shakran ,” I told him, one of the few Arabic words I remembered.

I hadn’t been tied since the video, I’m guessing since they probably figured I wasn’t in any shape to make a break for it. I might not have been, to be honest, but I wasn’t as bad off as I would have expected.

“ Farouk ,” he said again, this time pointing at himself.

Ah, he was telling me his name. Well, no matter what his real name was, he was Gomer to me.

“ Shakrun, Farouk ,” I told him, watching the smile spread across his face. “Nick,” I told him, shifting the plate to my right hand and pointing with my thumb to my chest.

“Nick,” he parroted without too much trouble.

Buttface yelled out something at him, but Gomer flipped his hand back over his shoulder as if he was brushing off a fly. Buttface had taken off the night before. When morning came around, he was nowhere in sight, and as the morning dragged on, Joe and Gomer were getting more and more nervous. Finally, a disheveled Buttface came rushing down the stairs. Joe read him the riot act, and not five minutes later, Kaseem came by for his daily visit. I guessed Buttface got back by the skin of his teeth, and now he seemed to have lost some status among the other two. I don’t think Gomer would have stood up to him before.

Gomer’s whole attitude seemed to have changed. He had never been cruel to me, but now, he seemed much more considerate. He also had cooled off towards Kaseem. He still feared him, I could tell, but I also caught him stealing glances at his leader when he thought no one was looking. Those glances seemed chock-full of malice to me.

As he squatted there, watching me eat, I wondered what I could do with that. How could I use Gomer to escape from here?

Chapter 21

Iraq

July 18, 2006

A couple of hours after I could hear the unmistakably sound of a Cobra opening up somewhere near and the sounds of small arms fire, they decided to move me again. I had heard the sounds of war several times since I’d been captured, but this was the closest. I got a little excited when I thought they could be coming for me, but when the fighting died off, I knew it was just another firefight. If the Marines knew I was here, nothing would have stopped them from reaching me.

By now, I was almost an old salt about moving. My hands were tied again, my feet hobbled. My mouth was taped and a hood was placed over my head, and with a man on each arm, I walked/hopped into a vehicle and down into a hidden compartment. My nose had healed by now, so breathing wasn’t really a problem.

This time, we drove for only about five minutes, so I knew we hadn’t changed towns. I just didn’t know which town that was. I was taken out of the van, but instead of walking down into a basement, I was helped as we climbed three sets of stairs. The building did not have the feel of a private residence. There was too much of a feeling of emptiness, of a slight echo to our movements.

We entered what sounded like a more enclosed space. My captors asked something, and I heard Joe’s voice respond. I could hear another door open as I was guided over. Suddenly, I was given a pretty forceful push, and with my legs tied, I went down hard, hitting my face on the hard ground. For once, I was grateful for the hood which had maybe saved me from a concrete road rash. My hood came off, the tape removed from my mouth, and my legs untied, but my hands were kept tied. At least they were in front of me, not behind me like when I was first captured.

I looked around at my new jail cell. This was a small room, about eight feet by eight feet. There was one window high up, but like in the last basement, it was covered over. It was nighttime, so I couldn’t tell if it would let any light in during the day. The floor was concrete, and in the corner was my familiar piss bucket. That was pretty much all I could see before the door was closed, leaving me in total darkness. Unlike before, no guards were watching me. I was on my own.

At first, I reveled a bit to be alone. But after awhile sitting in the dark, I almost wished I was back in one of my other prisons. At least there, I had something to look at.

I couldn’t fall asleep, so my thoughts tended to drift. I wondered what my family was going through. Did they think I was alive? Were they pressuring our congressman to do something? I wished there was some way to contact them, just to let them know. And Sig? My biggest fear was that maybe she was relieved. Our marriage was in trouble, not that I wanted to admit it. I didn’t think Sig hated me or would wish me harm, but what if she welcomed the circumstances as a way out, and a way out that would garner her pity and a nice SGLI payment?

I didn’t know anymore what I thought of her. I wanted our marriage to work out, but I had to admit that that could be because I didn’t want to admit failure, not because of love. I thought I still loved her, but how could I know for sure sitting here in some Godforsaken Iraqi city, cut off from my entire world?

I was wallowing in self-pity when the door opened up. I blinked in the light as two Iraqis threw another bound man into the room. They unbound his feet, the removed his hood and tape, then left, shutting the door again. I don’t think he saw me when he was thrown in because when I cleared my throat to speak, he called out.

“Who’s there?”

He was speaking English, although not with an American accent. English was good enough for me, though.

“Corporal Nicholas Xenakis, United States Marine Corps.”

“Oh, just brilliant, a bloody septic,” his disembodied voice reached me through the darkness. “Sergeant Dennis Coxen, Second Battalion, the Royal Anglian Regiment, at your service.”

Chapter 22

Iraq

July 19, 2006

“And then the bloody house came down on me. I didn’t know anything else until I woke up in a spider hole out in the desert somewhere.”

We’d been exchanging stories on how we’d been captured. Dennis was a sergeant in the Royal Anglians, a light infantry regiment. On May 3, he’d been out on a routine patrol in Basra when they taken some fire from some Fedayeen, and he called them, who then fled the scene through an abandoned building. In hot pursuit, he’d led his squad into the building when it exploded. The whole thing had been a trap.

“I don’t know what happened to my lads. When I came to, I was banged up alone.”

“How’d they treat you?” I asked. As daylight broke outside, a few rays of light made it past the window covering, giving us a bit of visibility. He didn’t look much worse for wear.

“Ah, the first few weeks were a mite rough. They pulled me out of that hole to beat me about and ask their questions. Most was strictly amateur. Only the Iranian bloke knew what he was doing,” he told me.

“How do you know he was Iranian?” I asked.

“By his accent and his poor Arabic. I guess I didn’t tell you, I speak Arabic. I worked in an Egyptian restaurant back in Leicester, and because I knew a few words, the Army sent me to school after I enlisted,” he said. “I never let on to these camel jockeys, though, that I could understand them. No use giving that up.”

“Poor Arabic? But you said he was Iranian.”

“And Iranians speak, what . . .?” he asked.

I shrugged, then realized that he probably couldn’t see me do that. “Arabic?”

I could almost hear him rolling eyes as he said, “What kind of schools do you have in the States? Iranians speak Persian.”

Persian, Arabic, couldn’t be much difference, I thought.

“OK, Persian. So you’ve got a lot of Arabs back home?” I asked, wanting to change the subject from my lack of knowledge.

“No, mostly Pakis. We’ve got more of them than anyplace in Blighty. But we’ve got our few Arabs, too.

“Where are we now, anyway? No one mentioned the city on the drive over here,” he asked.

“I don’t really know,” I answered. “I mean, I was taken in Fallujah, but I was out pretty hard when they took me to the first place, so we could be anywhere. I think we might be in Ramadi or Haditha, though, not in some small village. Ramadi’s still pretty much Indian country.”

Dennis merely grunted. I’d seen Brits around and about before, but I’d never worked with them, and Dennis was the first guy I’d had a chance to talk to. Except for his accent, he could have been any other Marine. His story was pretty much the same as any of ours.

As the light had penetrated the room, something about him seemed familiar. It took awhile until it came to me. Almost every every Marine I knew had seen the old movie Zulu , where the British company at Rorke’s Drift held off about a million Zulus. Dennis looked like the actor who played Private Harry Hook, a shitbird who earned the Victoria Cross in the battle. When I told Dennis that, he laughed.

“That guy just died last year. James Booth was his name. But you must be blind, ’ cause in all modesty, I’m much better looking.”

I was taking a liking to this guy. “As long as we’re stuck here together, I just hope you’re not the fuck-up the real Private Hook was.”

“Ah, you bloody septics don’t know the truth. The Zulu Hook was all Elstree, all Hollywood as you would call it. In real life, Hook was a teetotaler, a model soldier, and I hate to break it to you, but I’m no Harry Hook. I like my pints, I do.”

“What the hell’s a ‘septic?’ You keep saying that,” I asked.

“A Yank. You know, ‘septic tank, yank.’ Rhyming slang. You’ve heard of ‘apples and pears’ for stairs, right?” he asked.

“No, and I don’t get it.”

“That’s the most famous one, but we don’t really use it much, not even the bloody Cockneys who invented rhyming slang. Well, you being a ‘septic,’” he went on, putting emphasis on the word—if his hands weren’t tied, I would have expected him to make the quote marks with his fingers as he said it— “how about ‘Britney Spears’ for beers. Like ‘pour me a Britney Spears there, barman.’”

“That’s all pretty friggin’ stupid, if you ask me,” I grumbled, still not entirely getting it. Britney Spears?

“That’s ’cause you colonials are too dense to understand the finer nuances of the Queen’s English,” he said in jest.

“Ah, we may be dense, but we’re tough sons-of-bitches,” I said.

“You’re a big one, I’ll give you that. What sports do you play?”

“Football. I was on my all-conference team in high school. Even got a few scholarship offers.”

“American football? See, you got to get all armored up for that. A real man plays rugby. No poofy helmets and pads. What position did you play?’ he asked me.

“Left tackle,” I told him.

“You mean, you tackle the guy with the ball?”

“No, I was on offense. I kept the defense away from our quarterback. I played both ways, though, sometimes as a defensive end, but my main position was on offense.”

“I thought those blocking blokes were all big fat guys, like sumo wrestlers. You’re a big guy, but you don’t have a gut hanging over your belt. What do you go? A hundred, hundred and ten?”

It took me a moment to figure out that he was asking my weight. “In pounds, I played at 225. What’s that in kilos, a little over a hundred?”

“Yeah, thereabouts, I think,” he said.

“Not everyone on the line is fat,” I told him. “This was high school ball, and I was plenty big enough for that. I might have had to change positions if I played college ball, though. Maybe move to center, maybe switch to the defense. What about you? What sports did you play?”

“I played football, soccer to you, as a schoolboy. But I got into MMA as soon as I left school, and I’ve been training and competing while in the Army. I’m seven and three so far,” he told me, pride evident in his voice.

“You’ve fought in the UFC?” I asked, impressed.

I’d started watching UFC on pay-for-view for a couple of years now. Those were some tough dudes.

“No, no UFC yet. I did fight in Cage Wars and Pride and Glory, though. I’ll get to the UFC, though, right enough,” he told me.

I looked at him in a new light. He was an infantry sergeant, and that meant he had to be pretty tough right there. Add in MMA? It was hard to say, but he might tip the scales at 170 or so. I was pretty sure I could out lift him, if it came to that, but in a fight? I was bigger and probably stronger, but could I take him? I don’t know. When I’d watch UFC on pay-per-view, I was like every other man wondering how I would fare in the octagon. Here was someone who’d been there.

Rising voices outside our door stopped our conversation short for a moment, reminding us just where we were. We’d been talking about sports and some sort of Brit slang, but the reality was that we were prisoners with an undetermined fate. It was great to have someone there with me, but the bottom line was that we were both in a shit sandwich.

Dennis listened in, then shook his head. “I can’t hear everything, but it sounds like one of them is tired of this. He wants to go home. The other one is trying to shush him down.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “I don’t think anyone wants Kaseem to come back and hear that.”

We both went quiet for awhile. I couldn’t help but wonder what Kaseem had in store for us.

“So who won the World Cup?” Dennis suddenly asked. “Did we do it?”

I grasped at the opportunity to escape my dark thoughts. “I don’t know. I was captured before the finals. The US didn’t even win one match, but England made it through. I think they played again while I was in the Green Zone, but I don’t remember who won.”

“That wanker! One of my screws told me that Sweden and Trinidad and Tobago made it through, not us. I should’ve known he was fucking with me! I mean, Trinidad and Tobago?”

We kept on talking in that vein. I don’t think either one of us really wanted to dwell on our situation, so anything to keep our minds occupied was a welcome respite.

Chapter 23

Iraq

July 19, 2006

Gomer looked down at us, then back out the door to the others. I couldn’t tell what his reaction was, but at least he wasn’t running out. He stood there, two plates of rice in hand, mouth open in confusion. Finally, he placed the plates down and slowly backed away before turning and rushing out the door. It closed with a slam, and Dennis scooched over and put his ear against it to listen.

“I don’t hear anything,” he told me after a minute or so. “I don’t think he’s going to bring it up.”

I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. I had given Dennis the lowdown on our captors, “screws,” he called them. I told him I thought Gomer might be at least a little sympathetic to me. We decided to try and put an offer to him.

Dennis dumbed down his Arabic so as not to give away that he was pretty fluent and basically said to Gomer “freedom us, money you” in what he said was improper and horribly accented Arabic. Gomer didn’t seem too bright, but he should be able understand that. The fact that he didn’t report that to the others gave us hope. We needed that idea to percolate in his brain. It would be even better if Kaseem smacked him about again, anything to alienate him.

Kaseem hadn’t come by today, though. Maybe whatever caused my move and the bringing of Dennis made things a bit too hot for him. From how I described him, Dennis thought he must be Yemeni. He said the rhino horn dagger was the tell on that. Evidently, a Yemeni wasn’t a man unless he had one. With all the demand, the rhinos were almost hunted out, and poachers charged an arm and a leg for the horns, so only rich Yemenis could afford a new one. Dennis called it a “penis dagger.”

When I told him about how he had at first befriended me, Dennis told me that that was a typical method of handling prisoners. I’d seen things about Stockholm Syndrome on television, and our instructors for our work-ups had told us about it, of course, but when I was living it, I never really considered it. In retrospect, though, it looked like Kaseem was trying to set me up for that. His temper and his hubris (I never thought I would use that word again after studying The Odyssey back in high school), though, kept him from totally playing good cop.

While I told him about Kaseem and the others, while I told him about the mock execution, and while I told him about the video, I never told him that I had broke. In my mind, I had come to terms with that, but I was not proud of what I had done.

Now, though, we’d taken our first proactive step in fighting back. Whether anything would come of it was something only time would tell.

Chapter 24

Iraq

July 20, 2006

Kaseem finally made his appearance again. He asked us how we were doing, did we need anything—the good cop again. He told us he had brought us together to make it easier to release us back once the US and the UK met his demands, which he assured us were very reasonable ones. He gave each of us some cold tea, which I had begun to view as the fish offered to Shamu down at Sea World in San Diego. I just didn’t know what sort of trick he expected us to perform.

“He’s dangerous, that one,” Dennis said, after Kaseem had left and we were alone again.

I didn’t need Dennis to tell me that, though. I had experienced it in reality.

“I’ve got a feeling that our time’s running out,” he said.

I didn’t want to hear that, even if my gut had told me the same thing. But with Dennis giving voice to that, it seemed more real somehow. Kaseem was just a little too nice today, almost oozing with insincerity. Then there was the whole matter of bringing Dennis here, all the way from Basra. Moving a POW around the country was not without risks to his captors, and Kaseem’s explanation was just so much BS. Something was up.

“I think I need to tell you something,” I said, getting my nerve up. Dennis merely looked at me, waiting. “I told you that I had to make a video giving my name as a proof of life. Well . . . I . . . I did more than that, more . . . worse, I mean. Kaseem, he broke me. I said on tape everything he told me to. He crushed one of my balls, for God’s sake, he . . .”

“Stop,” he calmly said, “just stop. It doesn’t matter. Whatever he did to you, he did to the shell of you, to your body. It means nothing.”

“But I broke. I gave in!”

“We all have our breaking point, all of us.”

“But you didn’t,” I protested.

“Fuck I didn’t. They broke me, too. If they’d had a camera, I would have trashed God, Queen, and country on it without a second thought. I would’ve done anything to stop them. But they kept on, just because they could. They didn’t want anything from me. I was ready to end it all. Bite off my tongue and drown in the blood. I don’t even know if that would really work, but I was willing to give it a try. I tell you, I was done with it all. But then it stopped for the most part. And I knew I couldn’t let them win. I could not give up. I was not going to be a victim.”

I had been on the verge of a breakdown. I had been held for almost three weeks without someone else there for support. Now I had someone, and I was going to lay it all on him, let him absorb some of my despair. But when he told me he had been about to kill himself, that gave me pause. I wasn’t alone. He had gone through the same thing. He understood. Now, here he was, refusing to be a victim. I had that in me, too. I know I did.

“The question is now what do we are going to do about it. If they’ve got plans for us, what can we do to interrupt those plans? Let me ask you, you’re a pretty big bloke, but they’ve had at you. How’re you holding up? They crushed one of your balls; can you still function?”

“The crushed one is gone, and the one I’ve got left is fine. I can’t believe it, but my balls, or should I say ball, is not bad. My fingers aren’t too good,” I told him, raising my bound hands and slightly wiggling the fingers of my right. “They’re pretty stiff and swollen, and I can’t put any pressure on them. My legs have been shot and drilled, but I can stand, and if I have to, I can run. I can do whatever I need to do,” I said, and as I said it, I knew that was the truth. I would do whatever I had to do.

“I think I’m at about 95 percent,” Dennis said. “I’ve been left mostly alone for the last month. Physically, we’re at where we’re at. What we have to do now is figure out how to get into a position where we can do something.”

We huddled together and started going over plans, any plans. Some would have made James Bond shake his head as to their incredibility, but at least we were doing something instead of wallowing around in passive acceptance to defeat.

Chapter 25

Iraq

July 21, 2006

“Well, something’s up for tomorrow, but I’m not sure these three yobs know what it is,” Dennis said from his customary position by the door.

Today was Friday, the Muslim Sabbath, and Kaseem hadn’t come. We had faintly heard the call to the main Friday prayer, the Jumu’ah , so we figured most of the men would be there. But even after the prayer, other than the Three Stooges bringing us our food and water and taking our bucket out to be emptied, we had been left alone again.

“Joe is making the other two clean up, and he’s talking about running a wire for power. All of them seem agitated.”

“Another video?” I wondered aloud. If they needed lights and such, they would need power. They had some sort of light in the other room, but it didn’t seem to be that powerful, and we didn’t know what powered it.

“Could be,” Dennis agreed. “Or it could be something else,” he added quietly.

Dennis had confided to me what they’d done to him when he was captured. He was beaten, to be sure. But where they crushed one of my balls, they had hooked up his to a car battery. Not just once, not twice, but time after time. I really don’t know which one of us had it worse. I might be missing one, but his might not even work anymore.

“Whatever they’ve planned for us, they don’t want to do it on a Friday. That doesn’t sound good to me,” he said.

“Don’t get too wrapped up around that. I might not be the Friday thing, but maybe they just need to wait for Kaseem to get here,” I told him.

He didn’t seem too mollified, though. For the first time since we had been thrown together, he was looking nervous. He put his ear up against the door again to listen. I just leaned back against the wall and waited. I knew the sounds would be muffled through the heavy door, so any noise I made would make it harder for him to make out what was being said.

“Someone else just got here,” he told me. A few minutes later, he added, “It’s tomorrow. Whatever they have planned is for tomorrow. I heard one bloke tell the others they had until morning to get ready. Blast! There is bugger all we can do about it now, I think, but we’ve got to give it a go.”

“Want to work on our hands again?” I asked. We’d tried to untie each other’s bindings the night before, but he hadn’t made much progress. With my two broken fingers, I could only work with one hand, and even with two hands, Dennis hadn’t been able to do much, either. The metal cable they now used to bind us wasn’t locked with a padlock, but they had a clasp holding the ends that needed a set of pliers or something to open. The cables themselves weren’t that tight, and we had a small degree of movement, but we could not slide our hands out of the first loop around the wrists.

“Might as well,” he said. “I swear, though, if it comes to that I’ll pull my bloody hands right off and beat them all to death with my stumps.”

Chapter 26

Iraq

July 22, 2006

Neither of us had slept well. Dennis being nervous made me nervous, and that fed back to him making him more nervous in a continuous loop. When the door opened in the morning, we both jumped, but it was only Buttface with rice and water. I tried to look out the door, but I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

“If it’s another video, so what? They don’t even release them,” I said.

“They didn’t last time for you, but who’s to say that wasn’t to lull you into a sense of complacency?” he responded. “If you think about it, you were pretty ballsed-up when you made yours, and that doesn’t look too good on Al-Jazeera.”

“I’ll be honest with you, Dennis. I don’t know if I can go through all of that again. I can try, but, well, . . . .”

“Just do what you can. It might not even be a video. We don’t know.”

I didn’t want to dwell on it. We would find out soon enough. If it wasn’t a video, what would it be? There were too many options that were just too unthinkable to contemplate. I could kill myself with a heart attack from stressing too much and save them the trouble.

We just sat there, backs against the wall. We didn’t even try to make small talk. What was the use?

When the door finally opened, it was almost a relief. Buttface came into the room and motioned us to get up. He had his rifle ready and was not getting too close. We stood up and walked out of the room. Gomer, Joe, and another Arab were there, waiting, weapons trained on us. There were four of them and two of us, not too horrible odds, but they were all armed and we still had our hands bound. I was stiff, too, from sitting in that room for four days.

I looked around. We were in a large commercial-type building, possibly a factory. We were now in an office, abandoned and empty now. Looking back at our “cell,” I realized that we had been being kept in some sort of supply closet.

Joe motioned us to hold out our hands. One at a time, simple handcuffs were put on us, then the cables taken off. That as a little strange, I thought. If they had handcuffs all this time, what was with the medieval-looking crap?

Once the handcuffs were on, Gomer brought forward a bucket of water. Joe motioned for us to clean ourselves. I was grateful to get some of the grime off of us, but I wondered what that meant. If they meant to execute us, then we wouldn’t have to be cleaned up, right? We finished, then stood there for several minutes doing nothing.

Joe looked at his watch, then said something in Arabic, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dennis flinch, as if he was starting to move. He froze, and for a moment, I saw a hint of suspicion cross Joe’s eyes. He said the same thing in Arabic again, but this time, Dennis just stood there. Joe motioned with this rifle for us to move, so we started to walk out of the office, down several flights of rickety stairs, then out onto what had been a factory floor. It was mostly empty, but there were scattered pieces of machinery parts, some loose pieces of paper, and lots and lots of dust. The high windows let in quite a bit of sunlight, more light than I had seen in several days. I had to squint to keep from being blinded.

The factory floor was pretty big, but maybe that was just in comparison to the small rooms in which I had been held. The vast room swallowed up the sounds of our footsteps as the six of us made our way to the back of the building. Just before we got there, Gomer pushed in front of us and opened a door. We entered to see another set of metal stairs. Gomer stood back, letting us go ahead. We went up two flights of stairs and were starting on our third when we were pulled back and pointed at the door there. This was our destination.

It was another video. One set of lights was already on, and the camcorder was on the tripod and pointing to two chairs up near the wall. On the wall above the chairs was a poster that said something in Arabic. We were motioned to the chairs, so we sat and waited. The cameraman had been waiting for us, so now there were five men watching us. No one said a word.

Joe kept looking at his watch, then walking over to the window that opened to the factory floor. We were waiting for Kaseem, it seemed, before we could get going.

“Notice how we had to move back here?” Dennis whispered.

“Yeah, so no one could hear,” I replied.

Our other room had been closer to the street. We could hear trucks and such go by occasionally. But back here, we had to be a good 50 or 60 yards from the street.

The Iraqis didn’t seem to mind us whispering, but we didn’t have anything else to say to each other. We waited for what had to be another 30 minutes before Joe spun around and came to join us. It seemed that Kaseem had finally arrived. We could hear him climb the metal stairs, then come into the room, followed by his bearded bodyguard. He was dressed like he was for the first video. He looked around, then asked something of the others. I heard the name “Farid,” or at least I thought I did. Even I could tell that they were telling him they didn’t know where he was.

“He’s asking where the other two are. They don’t know,” Dennis whispered quietly out of the side of his mouth. If my ear weren’t so close to him, I would never have heard.

Kaseem angrily said something, then seemed to take it in stride. He settled in to wait. After a few minutes, though, he came over to us.

“As you can see, we are taping this. I hope you won’t have to go through the same things as last time. I trust you told Dennis here what happened last time?”

I nodded.

“Excellent. Let’s just make this as quick and painless as possible. No one has to suffer. We’ll get going as soon as Farid and Achmed arrive, so for now, please just relax.” He turned and walked to the cameraman, checking the status of the camcorder, no doubt.

We waited for another twenty minutes, and I could see that Kaseem was getting anxious. He even pulled out a sat phone from his robe and looked at it for a few moments before putting it back away. I knew he wanted to call someone so bad, but with American monitoring capabilities able to track any sat or cell phone call, I also knew he didn’t dare.

“He’s wondering aloud if he should just get going without them. It seems as if Mr. Farid has a job to do for this little show, and if he’s not here, someone else has to do it,” Dennis said.

I felt a small thrill, a bit of hope. I knew what Farid did. He was the torturer. If he wasn’t here, would this thing get postponed?

After another ten minutes, Kaseem had had it. He angrily shouted instructions to the others. I felt a sense of satisfaction flow through me.

“Oh, fuck,” Dennis quietly said next to me. “This is it. Kaseem is telling the bearded bloke that he has to take Farid’s place. He has to cut off our heads after we speak.”

I felt my world collapse. Tunnel vision threatened to close everything off. Dennis couldn’t be right, could he? He had to have misunderstood!

My sight came back, but still in a daze, I saw the bearded guy put his rifle in the corner of the room and pick up a knife that had to be 12 inches long. The edge looked impossibly sharp, and on the back was a wicked-looking saw blade. I’m not sure how I hadn’t noticed it before. He turned and looked at me; I could see a deep sense of triumph in his eyes. Dennis was right. This was it.

Well, fuck them. I wasn’t a lamb going to slaughter. I started to get up when Dennis put his hands on my leg.

“Wait for my cue,” was all he whispered.

I didn’t know what he had planned. We had gone over a million scenarios, but none really seemed realistic, and I didn’t know which one he even wanted. I sunk back into my chair.

Kaseem told the extra camera crewman something, and that man nodded and walked out the door.

“One down. He’s supposed to watch the front of the building and make sure no one comes in,” Dennis told me.

Kaseem was walking up to us, all smiles. “Gentlemen, shall we get started? Let’s get this over with.”

He motioned Joe to go behind us. Once again, Joe seemed to be the speaker. He had stacked his AK up against the bearded guy’s, so he was not armed as far as I could see. As Gomer started to move behind me, Kaseem grabbed his shoulder and stopped him. He took his rifle and dropped the magazine. He emptied it, putting the rounds in the small pouch slung over Gomer’s shoulder, then put the mag back in and gave him back the rifle.

I looked around. Buttface was armed, and the cameraman had his rifle beside him, but that was all. I had a glimmer of hope.

Kaseem positioned himself behind Dennis with Buttface to the outside. Our executioner stood off to the side, arms folded across his chest, the polished knife point up. The tip of the thing reached up past his shoulder. Kaseem took two pieces of paper, handing on to Dennis and one to me.

“Dennis, you’ll go first, then you, Nick. Don’t cause any disruptions, if you please,” he said jovially, as if nothing was up.

I wanted to reach up and strangle him right then and there. I knew the others would take me down, but not before I broke the little prick’s neck, I hoped.

There were a few more instructions given, but finally, Kaseem gave the OK, and the camcorder was turned on. Joe was better this time around. He went into his spiel, telling the world about the Great Satan or whatever. I tuned him out. Surprisingly, I was calm and focused. I tried to figure out what Dennis was going to do.

In front of us was the cameraman, maybe 15 feet away. He had his rifle slung on a cargo strap hook on the tripod. To Dennis’ right, the bearded bodyguard stood, just out of camcorder range. His rifle was a good 25 feet away leaning up against the front wall. Just off Dennis’ right shoulder was Buttface, armed and ready. In back of him was Kaseem. He didn’t have a rifle, but he probably was armed. In back of me was Joe. His rifle was up against the front wall, too. In back of me to my left was Gomer. He had a rifle, but now no rounds. Kaseem had made a mistake with that, but was it a fatal one? There were still six of them and two of us, and our hands were still bound in front of us.

Dennis had to go for Buttface first. He was the priority. Then he would have to go for the beard. That left the cameraman for me, but I couldn’t leave Joe or Kaseem unaccounted for. Kaseem probably had a pistol on him, and that would kill a man just as well as an AK.

I knew I had to act quickly, but without emotion. I could not let anger or pent up frustration take over if we were going to have any chance of getting out of this alive. Actually, I didn’t expect to. I think I expected to die here. But I would die on my terms and take as many of them out with me as I could. I was not going to meekly sit there while my throat was cut and let that video show that to the world. If a video made it out, it was going to show that they paid a huge price to get me. And if me and Dennis could fuck them up enough, they couldn’t show the video to anyone. That would be a victory.

As I thought “me and Dennis,” I smiled.

That’s right, Kaseem al blah blah blah, “me and Dennis.” Take that English lesson and stick it up your ass.

Behind me, I heard Joe come to a close. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kaseem nudge Dennis in the back. I knew then what Dennis planned.

It was showtime.

Dennis didn’t say anything. I tensed up, ready to move, but I needed him to make his move first. Kaseem took a tiny step closer to him, then nudged him again. Dennis picked up the paper, then cleared his throat just like was getting ready to give a class lecture. I could sense more than see Kaseem relax.

“Good afternoon.” Dennis’ voice filled the silence, calm and collected. “I am Sergeant Dennis Coxen, of The Poachers, the Second Battalion, the Royal Anglian Regiment. I was captured in Basra on May 4th, 2006.”

I’m pretty sure he was winging some of that, but Kaseem wasn’t stopping him.

“Kaseem al-Gharsi, the Yemeni pitch and toss here, has more for me to say, but to that, I pretty much say fuck it. And to all of you ragheads here in the Sandbox, you can suck my big white cock!”

Upon hearing his name, I could sense Kaseem take half a step forward, then pause as if taken by surprise by the crudeness of Dennis’ words. He shouldn’t have.

Just as Dennis started to move, I exploded up with as much power as I could. I arched my back and led with my head. Even though I couldn’t see him, my aim was true. I felt the back of my head crush into Joe’s face. I kept going as Joe fell under me. I looked to my left in time to see Dennis’ hand clasped around Buttface’s neck as he jumped up and leveled a vicious Muay Thai knee kick right in his face. It looked like Buttface had been trying to swing his rifle up, but Dennis was too close, and Buttface went down. In almost one motion, Dennis spun and delivered a back kick to Kaseem’s chest, knocking him into me.

I couldn’t hesitate. The guy on the camcorder was already grabbing for his rifle. If he took a bead on us, it was over. The chair I had been sitting on had been knocked over, and it was between me and him, but I just ran right through it. My target pulled his AK and brought it up just as I lowered my head and slammed into him. We both went flying, his rifle skittering across the floor. He was stunned, and I didn’t hesitate. I jumped on him and took his collar in my hands. I brought his head up, then slammed it back down into the deck. He groaned, but managed to twist and turn face down. I put my bound hands over his neck and started to choke him.

Looking up, I saw Dennis tangled with the bearded guy, Gomer struggling to get rounds out of his manpurse, and Kaseem getting up with what looked like a 9 mm in his hand. He looked at both me and Dennis, trying to pick his target, I guess. I didn’t wait to see who he’d pick. I jumped up, dragging cameraman up with me. Somehow, when we got up, he was facing me. No matter. On the line, a tackle will always win if he has balance and leverage. He’s got to get his center of gravity lower than the rushing lineman. I flexed my knees, got down, put my hands on his chest, and drove him. I heard the report of Kaseem’s pistol, and my cameraman gasped, then started to slump, but offensive linemen know how to hold. I kept my hands locked around the front of his robe and propelled him across to the others, driving him right into Kaseem, smashing him into the wall. Kaseem’s hand was flung back and his pistol went flying out of his grasp.

Below me, Joe was feebly trying to get up, but with three people on top of him, he went back down. I dropped the limp body and tried to get to Kaseem, but with my hands still tied in front of me, my balance was off, I stepped on either the cameraman or Joe and fell. By the time I’d scrambled back up, Kaseem was facing me, his rhino phallic symbol in his hand.

I risked a glance at Dennis; he was still locked together with the bearded guy on the ground. I wouldn’t get any help from him.

“So, Nick, this is how you want it,” Kaseem said, a gleam in his eye. “Too bad you chose today to die.”

“Bullshit. You planned to kill us anyway,” I snarled back.

I needed to be calm. I didn’t need to get into a trash-talking contest with him. He didn’t look hurt, and I was still tied.

“Ah, maybe so. But your death, both of your deaths, one from each Crusader country, would have served Allah, praise-be-his-name, so much better. It would have been so much more dramatic.”

When he said “dramatic,” he raised the knife in his hand and lunged with an overhead swing. I had taken MCMAP training, of course, and at the time, like most Marines, I wasn’t that sure how valuable it really was. I enjoyed it as a sport, but modern wars are fought with rifles, attack helos, and drones, and most of us thought the whole thing was somewhat of a joke. When he lunged, though, something kicked in. Without thinking, instead of stepping back, I stepped in, raising my hands to guide his thrust up and over my back. His forearm hit my shoulder, and I swung my hands back and down, hitting him in the face.

With my hands tied together, I really couldn’t get that knockout punch I wanted, but the blow still had to have stunned him. He stumbled a step back, the knife gone, and for once, that look of self-assurance was gone as well. I raised my hands again and stepped forward, but he got his hands up, and that deflected most of the force of my blow. This wasn’t going to work.

I reached for him instead, grabbing him by the front of his Iraqi-style dishdasha, and pushed him back towards the wall. Stepping over Joe, though, I was a little off-balance and had left myself open. Kaseem reared back and kicked me between the legs with all he had—his foot impacting on the left side of my nutsack. I’m not going to say it felt fine, but without a ball there, I wasn’t destroyed. With another step, I had him up against the wall. He reached up to grab my hands, trying to pry them off of him, but broken fingers and all, I wasn’t having any of that. I smashed the back of his head into the wall: once, twice, three times, with all my force. He groaned, and his hands fell away from mine. I kept smashing, over and over. One eye burst from his socket, blood pouring down the front of his face, but still, I drove his broken skull into the wall.

I heard a clatter of shells falling on the deck, and that finally registered. I looked over to see Gomer was standing there, horror on his face. He had a magazine in one hand, and the shells he had been trying to load were on the floor around him. I dropped Kaseem’s husk, and it slid down, leaving a crimson trail with bits of brain and bone embedded in the wall.

Don’t, Gomer , I thought, willing him to stop.

He froze, his eyes as big as saucers. I just stared at him. Suddenly, he started scrambling for the shells he had dropped. He had sealed his fate. I was there in two steps. He barely resisted as I pulled him up and put my hands around his throat. He grabbed my hands with his and tried to pull them apart, but he might as well have been a child. I slowly squeezed. He seemed to accept it as he quit struggling and looked up into my eyes. Just before he went, though, instincts took over and he started to flop around, but it didn’t do him any good. I watched the light in his eyes dim, then go out.

“Go with God, Farouk,” I whispered as I laid him back down to the deck.

Dennis ! I suddenly thought, wrapped up as I had been in my own battles.

I reached down and grabbed the knife Kaseem had dropped and hopped over bodies to get to Dennis. The bearded guy was face up and on top of him, but he had the empty eyes of death. Dennis’ arm was snaked around his neck, evidence of the guillotine that had killed the bastard.

“He’s gone, Dennis. Let go of him; we’ve got to get out of here,” I told him.

There was no answer.

“Dennis! We need to go!”

It was then that I saw the blood, lots of it. A guillotine choke doesn’t cause bleeding. I rolled the dead man off of him. The big knife that was supposed to cut off our heads fell away, revealing a huge gash in Dennis’ belly. It looked horrible.

There was a gasp as he took in a breath.

“Hang in there, buddy. I’ll get you out of here.”

I felt panic coming over me, panic I hadn’t had during the fighting.

He tried to say something, but started coughing.

“Take it easy, don’t try to talk,” I told him.

“Front door guard,” he managed to wheeze out.

It took me a moment, but then it hit me. There was another Iraqi, an armed one, guarding the front door of the factory. He had to have heard the shots. I dropped the knife and ran over to the two stacked rifles. I grabbed one, took it off safe, then looked out the window and out onto the factory floor. I couldn’t see anything. I was about to turn back to Dennis when the door started to ease open. A rifle muzzle poked in. He must have seen the bodies because I heard a shout as he rushed into the room. He never saw me as I emptied half a dozen rounds into him. I ran up to him, but he was gone.

Keeping the rifle, I came back to Dennis.

“Thanks, buddy. He would have nailed, . . . .”

I stopped midsentence. Dennis was gone, too. For all he’d been through, he’d been taken out by a fucking knife, of all things. Dead is dead, but at least he went out like a true warrior.

I picked the knife up and examined it. I don’t know what I expected to see, though. I heard a moan, and that broke through to me. Buttface was making feeble movements. I stepped over and looked down at him. His nose was broken, maybe his jaw, too. Dennis had fucked him up good. Without emotion, I took the big heavy knife and slid it into Buttface’s throat. He didn’t even gurgle.

I needed to get out of the handcuffs. I took a step over to Joe, throwing Kaseem’s body off where it had fallen on him. I started going through his pockets. That was harder than it looked, as I wasn’t familiar with the robes Arabs wore. As I finally found the keys to the cuffs, I looked up and saw him looking at me with the one eye not swollen shut. I had thought he was dead. He seemed resigned. I reached for the big knife I had stuck in my waistband, and he never even moved. I stopped, looking into that unblinking eye. In the end, I stepped back, leaving him be.

With my hands cuffed, I could not get the key in the lock, try as I might. I couldn’t spend too much time here, so I gave up. I sheathed Kaseem’s rhino dagger and put it in my cargo pocket. I put the big blade in Dennis’s, figuring it had a better chance there of not cutting its way out as I walked. I leaned down and grabbed Dennis, and with quite a deal of effort, managed to get him slung over my shoulder. I looked back, and Joe was still lying motionless, his one eye glued to me. I shrugged, then turned to leave.

As I started to take my first step, the flashing red light of the camcorder caught my eye. It had been recording this entire time. I kept looking at it, wondering what I should do.

There was really no choice. I walked up to the camcorder and stared into the lens.

“You don’t fuck with the Marines,” I said before hitting the eject and taking the old-fashioned VHS tape.

Chapter 27

Fallujah

July 22, 2006

With Dennis over my shoulders and carrying the AK, I stumbled down the stairs and into the abandoned factory floor. I didn’t know if there was anyone else, or if maybe Farid would show up. Even the sounds of the gunshots might bring someone to check it out. I moved to the far left wall and crossed the floor, unwilling to walk right out in the middle. I made it to the front of the building, leaving the floor and entering a small lobby. A smashed reception desk and a few broken chairs were all that remained there.

In front of me was a single, large door. There was glass in the door, but even unbroken, the glass was too grimy for me to see out. I stood in front of the door, wondering what was on the other side. I briefly considered holing up until nightfall, but I figured that someone had to know about this, and when Kaseem didn’t return, people would come to find out why. Mostly, though, the real reason I didn’t want to wait was that I just had to get out of there. I had to be free, and now, not later.

Standing there, though, I could see a problem. I was carrying Dennis on my shoulders, holding him in place with my bound arms while still holding the rifle. On top of that, I had to bend my head forward to help keep Dennis more secure. The simple matter of opening the door was problematic. I could put Dennis down and handle it, but I really did not want to do that. Maybe I subconsciously considered that as abandoning him.

Finally, I put the AK between my knees and while balancing Dennis on my shoulders, opened the door, grabbing the rifle back up and stepping outside. The first thing that hit me was the “whiteness” of it all. I hadn’t been outside without a hood for quite some time, and with the sun overhead and beating down on me, with the white buildings, I was almost blinded. I couldn’t shield my eyes, so I squinted, eyes watering and my vision limited.

The second thing was the heat. It was like walking into an oven. For a moment, I started to back up inside to collect myself, but as I blearily saw Iraqis react to me, I knew that wasn’t an option. They were probably surprised to see me, but that wouldn’t last. In moments, they would take action. I knew I was committed and had to move.

I spun around, waving the muzzle of the rifle at the men and women around me. There were only a handful, I saw, as my eyes adjusted, but it would only take one of them to cause me a lot of headaches. Some of them dodged about as my rifle covered them, but a few just stood there, mouths open in surprise.

I started moving alongside the edge of the road, up against a concrete wall. An old Iraqi had been sitting on a chair at a doorway in the wall, but he got up and moved to the center of the street as I came up on him. He looked surprised, but not particularly afraid of me.

“Get back!” I shouted as I noticed two men following me as I moved. I tried to cover them, the old guy just a few yards away, and to the front of me, all at the same time.

As I swung the AK back and forth, my movement kept making Dennis shift on my shoulders, and I had to struggle a bit to keep him securely in place. He started to slide off once, and I had to stop and fix that, using the wall as a base on which I could push him back up.

This wasn’t a particularly crowded area, but there were now at least half a dozen people following me, even if at 20 yards or so. Several people had dived back into doorways as I came up, but these others seemed pretty interested in what I was doing. I think it was only the rifle that kept them at a distance.

Up ahead of me was an intersection. I had to make a choice. I had had a vague notion of finding a place to hole up, but with the people following me, I knew now that was not an option. I had to keep moving, come what may.

There was no rhyme or reason as to why I chose to turn left at the intersection. I just did it. I hoped it was the right choice. By now, my entourage was up to about 10 people. They were holding back, but for how long? In front of me I could see more people. I had turned onto a busier street. I knew I had to contact some Americans quickly before a full-out mob formed.

While the adrenaline had been flowing during the fight, I hadn’t felt my injuries. Now, though, they were making themselves known. My right hand was aching as I kept trying to keep Dennis in place. My legs were not just aching, they were hurting. Each step brought sharp jolts of pain that ran up my spine and into my brain. I wanted to rest, but I’d seen enough Animal Planet to know what happens to the water buffalo when it does that with hyenas on its trail.

I did pause for a moment, looking forward and trying to decide where to go. I could see more people ahead, and most seem to stop and notice me, what with the small mob now following in my trace. It would only take one angry man with a weapon to end this all. I wasn’t sure how many rounds were in my mag, but not enough, that was for sure.

When I looked back again, the mob was slowly parting. I turned to face what was coming, AK at the ready. A beat-up car pushed through, then rolled up to me and stopped. It had seen better days, and I couldn’t even tell its original color. Black smoke came out of the exhaust as it roughly idled.

As the driver’s door opened, I got ready. If this was it, I was not going to go meekly. A 40-something man got out, dressed in the uniform of the police. He hitched up his pants, then walked up to me. With his mustache, he looked like Saddam himself.

Most of the Marines I knew didn’t trust the police. Too many Marines and soldiers had come under fire from these supposed allies, and we were sure many of them worked for Al Qaeda or Sadr’s Shia. My instincts screamed at me to open fire, but I knew that would be the end of me. The hyenas would close in and take me down. I withheld my fire as he came up to me and stood there, arms on his hips, first staring at me, then slowly turning to look at the expectant crowd. He looked back at me, expressionless, ignoring the weapon that I had trained on him. He said something to me in Arabic, something about his tone making it seem like a question.

“Corporal Nicholas Xenakis, United States Marine Corps,” I told him, figuring that the fact I was an American was pretty obvious.

He stood there a moment longer, then said something else to me. I couldn’t understand a word, so I just stood there. He repeated it, but I had no idea what he wanted.

“Go into car,” a woman in the growing crowd said in broken English.

Into the car with him? So he could make me disappear?

I hesitated. Refusing him wouldn’t go over well. He was a cop after all, standing in front of his countrymen. But going with him could have drastic consequences, too, anything from being back in captivity to a quick execution.

He repeated his sentence, a bit of anger showing through. I knew I had to make my choice. I already knew I really didn’t have a choice, though. I had no options. I couldn’t take him and the mob on, not with only one weapon. I could take him down and probably some others, but I would be torn apart by the rest. I lowered my weapon and walked to the car. He watched me for a few seconds, then turned and preceded me, opening up the back seat door. I walked up and bent over to lower Dennis into the seat. My leg almost collapsed, but I managed to keep upright and get him in. I had to clamber in after him, pushing his legs so there was room for me.

There wasn’t much leg room in the back of the beat-up car, but still, I sort of collapsed back there. Dennis’ blood began to ooze out onto the vinyl seat, making it slick, but with the back of the front seat jammed against my knees, I was able to hold my position. My adrenaline was long gone, and I was mentally and physically defeated. As the cop got into the driver’s seat and got the car into gear, I was glad, in a way, that it would all be over soon, one way or the other. I just had to wait awhile longer to find out how.

The car made its way through the people, and as we cleared them, he picked up speed again. I watched out the window as we drove, seeing Iraqis going about their daily lives. I couldn’t help but wonder if their lives were really better, or if they even cared. Saddam was a monster, to be sure, but now the Sunnis and the Shia were killing each other in pretty big numbers. Bombs went off in markets. The economy was dead.

As I stared out the window, something clicked. I recognized this place. We were in Fallujah! I bet I had been here the entire time. For a moment, I felt my hope return. I wondered if I could jump out of the car and run. If I could hide out, Marines would have to come patrolling by eventually. I tensed, my body getting ready for action. I looked up to see what my cop was doing, and then I realized something else. I recognized the place because it was by the government compound. The front entrance to the compound was right in front of us, and the cop was slowing down. He turned in where the several Iraqi police and two Marines were standing sentry.

He rolled down the window to present his credentials as one cop came up. I felt weak. I couldn’t even cry out, but the guard either reacted to what my cop said or because he saw me and Dennis in the back. He cried out in Arabic, then motioned to one of the Marines.

“Holy shit!” the Marine said as he took me in. “Get the sergeant of the guard now!” he shouted as he pulled open the door.

I just wanted to get inside the compound. I wanted to be among my own.

“Corporal Nicholas Xenakis, United States Marine Corps,” I said for the second time in 10 minutes. “I’m back.”

Chapter 28

Camp Fallujah

July 22, 2006

“We all prayed for you, Nick,” Father Trent told me as Lieutenant Richmond nodded in agreement. “It’s great to see our prayers answered.”

After my unexpected arrival at the government compound, I had been rushed back to camp and to the hospital. There had been a small crowd there, waiting for me. The medical people wouldn’t let anyone approach me, but I heard voices cry out their welcome, voices I recognized. Tears had come to my eyes as I realized it really was over.

The battalion CO had stuck his head in my examining room, but even he was chased away as several doctors went over me with a fine-tooth comb, and they decided I needed cutting. While they were prepping me, I asked for a cold Dr. Pepper, and one doctor was adamant that I couldn’t have anything until after the surgery, but Doc Whipple, the same one who treated me when I was here the first time, relented and told me I could have one swallow. A corpsman was sent to get one, and I was given a very small cup with a swallow or two in it. Somehow, feeling it go down my throat was one of the most intense feelings I’d experienced. It cemented the fact that I was no longer a POW.

I was wheeled into surgery, and within moments, I was out of it. I wasn’t sure how long it was before I woke up, but instantly, several doctors were there checking me out. Doc Whipple told me that they had cleaned out my wounds, but I would need some more surgery on my fingers, and they might want to do some microsurgery on my nutsack. They were going to keep me under observation for a day or two, then medivac me to Germany. The doctors up there would figure out what to do next.

Once the docs were done with me, the parade started. The battalion CO came in to shake my hand and tell me that he was glad I was back. The battery commander said pretty much the same thing, adding that they had never given up hope, that the Marines had sent out patrol after patrol to try and find me. It was only then that I found out that Tony had made it. Left for dead by the Iraqis, he was found probably moments after I had been taken away. It had been nip and tuck there for awhile, but he was back at Bethesda now, looking forward to getting transferred back to the Wounded Warrior Battalion at Pendleton.

That piece of information took away a black cloud that had been affecting my soul. I could not have heard better news.

Another bit of news was that I found the reason why Farid hadn’t been at the taping and beheading. He and the other guy were picked up by a Marine patrol, almost certainly on their way to the factory. If either one of them had made it there, well, I think things would have turned out quite differently.

With the sergeant major, all the officers, most of whom I didn’t even know, making their way to see me, I wished I could see my friends, my fellow NCO’s and enlisted. Brent most of all, but Fowler, Harris, Blount, Hansen, Kim, and the rest. But the big dogs had to have their say, first. Down to the chaplain, the platoon commander, and Gunny Pancoast, I knew it was getting closer to those I really wanted to see.

Until the biggest dog came in.

“Attention on deck!” the shout came out.

“At ease,” I heard before I could move.

The commanding general walked in and up to my bed.

“You don’t fuck with the Marines?” he quietly asked.

I looked at him confused. What was he talking about?

He must have seen the confusion on my face as he added, “You really said that?”

Then it hit me. I had said that, or something like that, on the video after the fight. They must have taken it out of my utility trou when I got to the hospital. He couldn’t blame me for that, right? Then I saw the big smile on his face.

“That was pretty impressive, there, Corporal. I have to say, I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Some of us have watched it a dozen times now. You’ve made us proud.”

I didn’t say I was just trying to survive, but that’s all it was. And Dennis didn’t survive. He made the first move, and because of that, I was here now.

“Uh, about Dennis, sir?” I started.

“Oh, Sergeant Coxen’s body has been flown back to Basra. The Brits have expressed their gratitude. We’re making a copy of the tape to send to them so they’ll know that he went out as a warrior.”

“What about, sir, I mean, what about the rest of the tape?” I asked.

I knew that the camcorder was the same one they had used to tape me giving my confession, blabbing about anything they asked. That was hanging over me. I broke, and I was sure that the tape I took also showed that.

“The rest of the tape? There wasn’t any rest of the tape,” he replied.

“But . . .”

“Corporal Xenakis, I think you must have taken a knock on the head today, questioning your commanding general. There was no more to the tape. There might have been more, but the tape was damaged, and that part was corrupted. Whatever was there is gone. It never happened because I say it never happened. Capisce? ”

I looked up at him as he stood over me. He had a serious look on his face, but I could see the concern. I knew then that he had seen what I had feared, but that he had taken care of it. I still felt the shame, but no one else but him and some people on his staff would know. I guess even generals took care of their troops.

“ Capisce, sir,” I said.

“Good, then. Well, the sergeant major has a few words for you, but I’ve got to get back to the war. We’re really glad you’re back, and so’s your family. We’ve got a phone coming in here, and I want you to call them and let them know you’re still kicking. And after that, it looks like half the camp is outside waiting to come and say hello. Sergeant Major,” he said, turning to him, “keep it short and then get the rest of the old guys out of here. I’m sure Corporal Xenakis would rather be seeing his friends than entertaining the entire command staff.”

He shouted “at ease” before anyone had a chance to call the place to attention and strode out. The other officers and SNCOs milled about a bit, then made their way to shake my hand and telling me they were glad I was back. Outside the door, I could see Brent and SSgt Cordero waiting, along with what had to be pretty much the entire battery. I was tired, but nothing was going to stop me from being welcomed back by them.

Chapter 29

Camp Fallujah

August 13, 2006

I got off the Black Hawk and followed the rest of the passengers to the “passenger terminal” at Fallujah. Strangely it was good to be “home.”

This was my second ride in a Black Hawk. The first had been from Fallujah to Balad Air Base to catch a flight to Landstuhl. When I had arrived in Iraq, I had wanted to ride a Black Hawk, but that wasn’t really the way I would have wanted to earn the ride given the choice. Still, even fucked up as I was, it was a pretty sweet ride.

At Balad, I waited around with the other sick, lame, and lazy, waiting for the flight. Most were soldiers or Marines, but there was a Navy lieutenant there, too, who had been hit by a rocket in the Green Zone. He wasn’t like most officers. We all hung out in the TV room, those who could move about, that is, in our hospital scrubs, wrapped up in brightly-colored blankets made for us by grammar school kids back in the States. The lieutenant held a running commentary that kept most of us in stitches, maybe even breaking a few medical stitches when we laughed so hard. The guy had more stories than any comedian.

When a mortar round landed on the base maybe 500 yards away, the Air Force nurses went into a panic and yelled at us to get on the deck. We were watching a movie, so we ignored them. When one major screamed from her position on the ground that we had to get down, he stood up, calmly walked over to her, and told her shrapnel was nothing and didn’t even hurt, all the time keeping a straight face.

When the major looked up at him and asked, “Really?” we all cracked up.

When he wasn’t joking with us, though, he did have a serious side. I saw him quietly talking to some of the bedridden guys, holding their hands, letting him know he cared. I think he would have made a great Marine.

Somehow, people found out my story. A few made comments, asking questions, but most left me alone. I could see their looks, though, and I could see them talking to each other about me. I know some were dying to get the down and dirty, but I was being given space. I appreciated that. I wasn’t ready to open up like that about what had happened.

PFC Chad Nesbit, though, rather broke my heart. Chad had been standing with his squad up north when a mortar hit his group, killing five Marines and tearing him up. His flak jacket stopped most of it, but his legs were peppered and his hand was pretty much destroyed. They had it in some sort of Frankenstein contraption, all wires and rods. He was going back to the US for more surgery. He came to me to ask me if I could do something so he could stay until his unit rotated back to the States in another month-and-a-half. When I told him I didn’t have any power, he said I was a hero, and the general would listen to me.

The thought that he thought I was a hero was strange and more than a bit uncomfortable. I didn’t go into battle without fear or volunteer for a suicide mission. I was just trying to save my ass. But what hit me more was this young man’s fervent desire to stay with his unit, with his brothers. This was the core of what it meant to be a Marine, I thought. That hit me hard.

After a day at Balad, the big C17 arrived to take us to Germany. We hurried up and waited for about six hours, then sat on the plane in the middle of the night for another hour before they wheeled in the critical patients and we took off.

We had five of those patients on the plane on mobile beds taking up most of the entire right side of the plane. Each one had four or five doctors and nurses taking care of them. Several hours after taking off, one of them, an Army staff sergeant, died despite the frenzied efforts of not only his team, but doctors from the other teams. All of us watched as they fought to save him, and I think it hit us all when he passed. One of the nurses, a young girl who couldn’t have been out of college long, sat down on the plane’s deck and cried. I think quite a few of us felt the tears forming, too.

We got to Ramstein in the early morning, then were bussed up the mountain to the hospital, a rather pretty place surrounded by big, leafy trees. We were met at the front of the hospital by a host of people, then taken to our wards. The Marines had a staff there who took pretty good care of us.

I was seen by an Army doc and five or six hours later, I was in surgery. If he thought he couldn’t do it, I would’ve had to go back to Bethesda, but he said it was pretty straightforward. Other than that, the Army doc thought the docs at Fallujah had done a pretty good job, so nothing else needed to be done right away.

I woke up with my pins in my fingers. After all that had happened to me, that was about it. I wouldn’t be using my hand for awhile, but the doc said there was no major nerve damage, and after they repaired the tendons, all I had to do was wait for the bones to knit. By that time my nose, the bullet hole, my ribs, the drill holes, even my nutsack would be healed. A nurse even told me they could give me a fake nut, just like they give girls fake tits. I would have to decide on that later.

I only spent two days at the hospital, then I was transferred to the Medical Transient Detachment barracks at Kleber Kaserne, a good 45-minute bus ride away. The ride back and forth to my follow-up appointments sucked, but living at the barracks sucked more. The permanent personnel could get in civvies and go out into town, but we were stuck in the barracks. We could sign out to go to the chapel, the snack bar, or the exchange, but that was about it. And since we were all from Iraq or Afghanistan, we were still under the no-drinking ban that we had back in theater. Here we were in Germany, land of beer, and we couldn’t tip back even one. To add insult to injury, we had five formations each day, the first at 0600, the last at 2300. We could see soldiers coming back from a night on the town as we stood there in our uniforms getting mustered.

Luckily, I was only there for a week. They were originally going to send me back to the States, but I really wanted to get back to Iraq and rotate with my battery. I was told not only no, but hell no. I made my case to a gunny first, one of the Marines liaisons, and he got his lieutenant on it. I heard it went all the way up the chain in Germany, then over to the CG in Iraq, but the bottom line was that I would fly to Iraq, then a few days later, go to Kuwait with my battery and then back home. If they thought I was a hero of some sort, I might as well get some currency from that, and the CG came through for me.

I left the barracks and went to a warehouse they had set up for people going back in theater. There had to be 200 cots set up for us. It was pretty sparse. We had a big screen TV and a bunch of DVDs, and the USO had brought a couple of hundred books, but that was about it. We couldn’t go anywhere or do anything. We weren’t even getting out of Germany, though. Each day, we would check how many people would get on one of the listed flights, and each day, zero seats would be released. There were over 30 soldiers who had been waiting for as long as 17 days just to get back to Afghanistan. I was beginning to worry that I wouldn’t make it back before my battery started their retrograde.

On my fourth day, an Air Force colonel showed up, just like the rest of us. He got a cot over in the area where some officers, mostly lieutenants, had claimed theirs, but he sat around with us, watching movies, waiting for chow. He raised a stink that we couldn’t leave the barracks, and the Army staff sergeant at the front desk at first said that was because a flight could materialize at a moment’s notice. When the colonel persisted, the soldier said that a lieutenant was caught fucking a female corporal about six months ago, so the base commander ordered all returning personnel be confined to the warehouse.

I heard mutters of “Big Army” from among us—of course, we were all listening in. The colonel said that was “fucked up.” Yeah, a colonel, using those exact words. But he came back to us and took a seat to watch Shrek 2 .

The next morning, there were two flights that supposedly had seats, so about 25 of us were bussed to Ramstein, and there we waited. About two hours before the flights were to leave, those seats disappeared. The colonel went off, storming to the passenger counter and let the poor civilian there have it. We crowded around in back of him. The civilian tried to explain that it was up to the pilots if they wanted to take anyone. The planes were mostly C17s, and since Ramstein was not a pax port, they could refuse passengers if they wanted. He stammered out that since taking passengers created an additional paperwork drill, most crews simply declined to take any.

Colonel Simms, that was his name, called us over in the back of the passenger waiting area. “We’re getting royally screwed here, but that’s why I’m here, to be honest. My boss, the CG of MNF-Iraq, sent me here to find out what was going on, and to be blunt, he’s not going to be happy. This is worse than we’d heard, and I apologize to all of you. No warrior should be treated like this. I’m going to get on the hook with him and bring him up to date. I don’t want anyone to go back to Kleber Kaserne. There’s another C17 leaving for Al Asad this afternoon, and I can pretty much guarantee that all of us will be on it.”

He was a good as his word. He made his call back to Iraq. The crew of that afternoon’s C17 still tried to zero out the pax load, but I guess three stars carry weight, because that suddenly changed back to 58 pax, and that afternoon, the lot of us accompanied some sort of aircraft engine back to the Sandbox.

I overnighted at Al Asad, then caught the Black Hawk to Fallujah. I stepped out, following the others to the terminal. I didn’t have much with me, which was good as my arm was in a sling. I had my assault pack with a sci-fi book I’d taken from Kleber Kaserne, shaving gear, a toothbrush, and the rainbow colored blanket I’d gotten at Balad, the one made by school kids. On the way to Germany, my pack had held my uniform and boots, but now I was wearing them.

Before I got to the terminal, which was only the size of a shack or something, I heard my name called out. Over to the right, outside the plywood terminal, Lieutenant Richmond, Gunny Pancoast, Gunny Templeton, and Brent were waving me over. I looked at the rest of the passengers filing into the terminal, wondering if I needed to sign something, but that was my lieutenant, so screw them. I peeled off and met them.

“So, our malingerer is back, huh?” Gunny Pancoast said, hand automatically out to shake before realizing my right hand was in a sling.

“You can’t get rid of me that easily, gunny,” I replied, my heart pounding. I hadn’t realized I missed them, my brothers-in-arms, so much. I was touched, to be honest, to see the lieutenant and the two gunnies coming out to meet me, just a corporal, but I really wanted to see my friends, the other NCOs and enlisted.

“Well, we’ve got two more convoys before we leave, so I can put you to good use, unless you’re telling me that that busted wing of yours means you’re on light duty,” Gunny Templeton said, giving my good shoulder a smack.

“You give me a vehicle, and I’ll drive it back to Seal Beach, one-armed or not.”

“If you three are all done, I think there is a little party planned, right, Corporal Cooperage?” the lieutenant asked.

“Yes sir! We’ve got some people mighty eager to see Nick back with us.”

“Well, then, let’s get going,” he said, motioning for us to get in the Humvee. “No, I think you’ve earned the front seat,” he said as I started for the back. “I’ll walk back and meet you all back at the CP.”

I pulled myself into the front seat. It was hard to believe that I was back. I couldn’t wait to see everyone.

“We’re really proud of you, Corporal Xenakis. Nick. Really. Glad you’re back,” the lieutenant said before closing the door. He stepped back, saluted me, than slapped the Hummer’s side so Brent could take off.

I was really glad, too.

Chapter 30

Seal Beach, CA

August 23, 2006

It didn’t matter that this was my third pump or first. As the buses pulled up to the reserve center, there was a growing feeling of excitement. We were almost home. Families had put up banners and balloons at the entrance, and we could see kids and adults milling about, waiting for us. Several news teams were there, too, ready to capture just the right moment for the 5 o’clock news.

We had left Iraq almost four days before, being trucked to Al Asad, then flown the next day to Camp Liberty in Kuwait. While being in Kuwait relieved us from the ever-present chance of an attack, I think leaving Iraq made us even more anxious to get home. Our mission was done, so get us back!

We did not take Camp Liberty seriously. We made the usual catcalls to the newbies coming it with things like “You’ll be sorry!” and such. We ate chow. We hung out at the gym or rec center. The first sergeant said the reason we didn’t fly straight back was so we could “decompress” from being lean, green, fighting machines and back into model citizens.

We had to go through classes on getting back; typical stuff like don’t hit your wife, call if you feel anxious, shit like that. OK, they didn’t really exactly say not to hit your wife, but that’s what they meant. They asked us if we killed anybody, if we saw anyone killed. We even had to put that on a form and sign it. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t check the box that I had done any of that.

The other main event was to get inspected. It was worse than any airport back in the States. We had to unpack everything and lay it out for the inspectors to check. With my arm in a sling, Brent had to help me get my stuff on display. The inspectors didn’t find any grenade or rounds or anything from anybody, but they did confiscate some souvenirs, even one from our lieutenant.

Finally, though, we were loaded up on a United 747, ready to go home. This was not your typical charter. It was a real plane that United used all the time. It had three classes of service, not that I came within spitting distance of even business class. First class only had the colonels and sergeants majors there, and business class was the rest of the officers and down to some gunnies. The flight attendants told us that the crew was volunteering their time for free.

We stopped in Ireland like last time, and I had my first beer since I left the States. It was mighty fine. We were all warned not to get drunk, but a few of us made a pretty good attempt at getting there before we had to board again.

Next stop was Gander. They had some folks there handing out cookies, cupcakes and fruit, welcoming us back to North American, at least. I thought it was kind of cool that the Canadians were so friendly to us. Maybe the big crash they had there, where all the soldiers died, built stronger ties between the people of Gander and the US military.

During the last leg to March, not many of us slept. There’s something about getting home that really can’t be explained to others who haven’t served. I know other people go away for their jobs, but when a violent death is such a real possibility, it’s like once you get back to your home turf, it’s really over. You have survived.

We all cheered as the plane touched down at March. We didn’t need to be told to get ready. We were all standing up in the aisle, waiting to get off the big bird. We filed down the stairs and into a hanger where we were met by old guys from the VFW waiting to sign us up now that we qualified for membership (I had already joined after my first pump), lots of snacks, and not much else. None of us understood why we had to park ourselves on a piece of deck and wait, and wait, and wait. How hard could it be to just get on a bus and get home?

At least someone was smart enough to have the food there. We all started to bitch at the delay, but it’s hard to bitch too much when you’re stuffing your face on a free Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut. Finally, though, we were loaded on the buses for the ride back. We had delayed just long enough to hit the traffic on the 91 when we reached Corona. It took more than another hour to reach Seal Beach, but finally, we were back. We piled off the buses, and there was a mad rush of bodies as husbands and wives, parents and kids flung themselves at each other. The single guys looked out of place as they just high-fived each other as mission accomplished.

It took me a moment, but I spotted my parents and sis. I had called all of them, of course, from Fallujah, and let them know what had happened and that I was OK, and I knew the Corps had sent someone to let them know I was no longer a POW. I didn’t think there had been any press release or anything, just that I had been freed, and I had been warned by a public affairs officer that the news teams might want an interview. I didn’t know just how much my family knew.

Actually, I saw Cali first as she barreled her way through the bodies to reach me. Cali was all girl, a rather cute one, if I could say that about my little sister, but she still had the Xenakis size to her. She smacked right into Captain Dorsey, almost making him drop his baby girl, as she rushed up. She had her arms out ready to bear hug me, but seeing my arm in a sling, she hesitated, a look of worry coming over her face.

“Come here, baby sister,” I told her, my good arm outstretched.

She melted into my hold, her own arms snaking around my back to give me a good, strong, Xenakis squeeze.

“You OK there, Nick?” she asked as she pulled back to stare up into my face.

By that time, my mom and dad had made it through the people to reach me. With Cali still wrapped around me, my dad reached out with his right hand, then switched it so we could shake with our left hands. He didn’t let up, though, giving my hand a crushing squeeze. I didn’t let up either, giving as good as I got.

My mom just stood there for a moment, then slowly moved in. She enveloped me as Cali slid to the side. No words were spoken for a few moments, and even if I was a good five inches taller than her, I was her little boy again.

It took awhile, but finally, she let up and backed off. As the questions started, I looked around to see who else might be in back of them.

“She called, Nick, to say she’s running late. She’s on her way,” Cali told me, knowing who I was looking for.

I hadn’t expected much different, to be honest, but still, it kind of stung.

Brent came over to introduce me to his parents and his girlfriend. His father seemed impressed with me and tried to tell me about a couple of soldiers he had known in Vietnam who had become POWs.

“Come on, dad, you promised you wouldn’t go all Vietnam on him,” Brent admonished him.

“I know, son, but I wanted him to know that he’s not alone. It’s OK,” he said.

“He knows he’s OK, dad,” he said while rolling his eyes before turning to me. “Sorry Nick, he just can’t ever resist telling anyone about his time in Vietnam.”

“It’s OK,” I told him. But that made me wonder just how much people back here knew about what had happened. I wasn’t sure I was really ready to talk about too much yet.

We milled about for the next hour or so as the next set of buses came in. The CO and the I&I both gave us welcome back speeches. The sergeant major gave us his welcome back, all the time holding his two-year-old daughter on his hip. She kept reaching up to touch the side of his face while he told us to be careful about drinking and driving, that sort of thing. It was kind of cute seeing the big bad sergeant major so completely wrapped around the little finger of his tiny daughter.

The rest of the Marines and sailors had to turn in their weapons to the armory. I hadn’t drawn a new one after I got back to Fallujah, so at least I didn’t have to wait in line for that. I still couldn’t leave though. We were going to have one last formation before we were dismissed for a 96. On Monday, we had to report back to begin our demobilization process.

It was at least an hour later before I saw a familiar figure searching the area. I had to say, Sig looked great. She had on a dark brown dress that cinched at the waist and showed off her figure. Some of the wives had dressed, well, I guess “trampy” would be accurate. I don’t mean to be catty, and after being away each other for so long, I’m sure the husbands appreciated it. But Sig looked just as sexy but a lot more classy.

She caught sight of us and came over, taking my good hand and leaning up for a kiss on the cheek. She looked at my right arm in the sling and furrowed her brows for a moment. Was that concern I saw there?

“Sorry I’m late. I couldn’t get off work, and traffic was murder,” she said. “Welcome home.”

“Good to be here,” I told her.

I glanced up and caught the look of disdain Cali was giving Sig. I caught my mom’s look, too, which while it might not have had the daggers coming out of her eyes that Cali had, it wasn’t too welcoming, either.

Sig didn’t seem to notice. She stepped to the side, but she kept a hold of my hand as she stood beside me. At least she did until her cell phone rang.

“Oh, sorry, I’ve got to answer this,” she said, moving away 10 yards or so away from us so she could talk.

I looked up at Cali and tilted my head in the Xenakis family sign for a question.

“What?” she said back at me.

“Why the evil eye, Cali”

My mom came between us. “Not now, Callia. Nicholas just got back, and today is going to be a celebration.” She turned to me. “Your Uncle Stavros’ got a lamb cooking his backyard. He had to go all the way up to Bishop to get it. And your Aunt Rhoda and Kathy have been cooking all day. All your favorite foods: avgolemon, lachanodolmades, paidakia, keftedes, moussaka , all your favorites. All special for you.”

Despite myself, my heart jumped. My uncle would BBQ a whole lamb, just like they do back in Greece. And as far as the other dishes? My mouth was already starting to water. Paidakia , which was just lamb chops with lemon and oregano, might seem like overkill when we were having a whole lamb, but there is no such thing as too much when talking about this kind of food.

“ Galaktoboureko ?” I asked hopefully.

“Yes, especially galaktoboureko ,” she said with a laugh as she hugged me.

My Aunt Kathy, whose ancestor came to the New World almost 400 years ago from England, my freckled, rotund, non-Greek looking aunt, made the best galaktoboureko in the world. The phyllo and custard dessert was maybe the single best thing the Greek culture ever came up with, at least in my humble opinion. Forget democracy, algebra, geometry, the Olympics. It’s galaktoboureko !

I looked over at Sig. She was in an animated discussion with someone. I would have thought that with me just getting back, she could at least turn off the phone for an hour. I put it out of my mind and turned back to my mother.

“So, what else’re we having?”

The food in the Fallujah DFAC was really pretty good. I had no complaints about it. But it wasn’t home cooking. It wasn’t a family meal.

Before she could reply, the gunny got on the bullhorn to call us to formation. Finally!

I gave my mom a kiss on the cheek and took my place. It wasn’t a long formation. The CO took the formation and gave us a job well done. The regimental CO was there, all the way from Fort Worth. Our CO turned to him and asked for permission to dismiss us. The regimental CO stood up from his seat and gravely gave his OK. The CO did an about face and called the sergeant major forward.

“Sergeant major, dismiss the battalion!” He did an about face, then stepped off as the other officers followed his lead.

The sergeant major did his own about face, then looked over us before saying the words we were waiting to hear. “Battalion, dismissed!”

We all took a step back, then erupted into cheers. Brent almost crushed me in his hug. Even Krispy Kreme pounded me on my back. It was official. We were done with Iraq.

I looked over at my family, my dad beaming proudly, my mom just looking happy to see me back. Sig was off the phone and had rejoined them, and she had a smile on her face as well. It was good to see that. I hoped things were good with us. I shook a few more hands, then strode over to my family. It was time for a real homecoming.

Epilogue

Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada

August 3, 2008

I looked down at my hands, thinking how far I’d come. I flexed my fingers, watching them open and close. Except for two nasty scars running along the underside, they looked and functioned pretty normally.

I wasn’t used to the spotlight, but that is what happened when the video of my escape was “leaked” on the internet. I was still on active duty at the time at the Wounded Warrior Battalion at Camp Pendleton, and before I knew it, I had news reporters in my face. Luckily, the Marines kept most of the craziness at bay. I couldn’t even watch the video for some time, but when I did see it, I noticed that it had been expertly edited. Oh, it showed what happened, but not all of it. The video didn’t show my putting the knife into Buttface’s throat. It seemed like the Marines wanted the video surfaced, but not what was essentially murder of a helpless man. It wasn’t murder in my mind; Buttface was ready to kill us, and I was still hurt and had to take him out before he could recover, but a whole lot of people might not see it that way.

So I had my 15 minutes of fame. That was good for my ego, but I liked the T-shirts that the other Marines and sailors (and two soldiers) in the battalion made for everyone. Across the front was emblazoned “YOU DON’T FUCK WITH THE MARINES.”

Sig used the incident, though, to file for divorce. She said she couldn’t take the pressure of “the press,” as if they were stalking my front door at home. I knew it was coming. My sister and several friends told me she had been seeing someone or someones, depending on who I chose to believe, while I was gone, and surprisingly, once she told me, she wanted the divorce, I was OK with it. I wished her well (maybe not too well, though).

Divorce is a pretty big thing (it still wasn’t done yet so I guess I was still technically married). But I had one more life-changing moment. I was back on active duty. I reenlisted once I was released from the Wounded Warrior Battalion and given a clean bill of health. I had left the Corps because of Sig, but with her gone, that reason was gone. To be honest, though, even if Sig had wanted to stay married, I would still have reenlisted.

Now, I was stationed as an instructor at School of Infantry at Pendleton. Pretty much all of the instructors were combat vets, some pretty highly decorated, and I felt proud to be part of that crew. Training Marines to stay alive in Iraq and Afghanistan while taking it to the enemy was a vital mission.

It was Sergeant Xenakis now, though. I had been promoted shortly after arriving at SOI. It was officially a meritorious promotion, but I’d already reached the cutting score, so I would have made it anyway. Still, getting those chevrons on my collar was one of the proudest moments of my life.

I received a Purple Heart with two gold stars for my tour in Iraq. I was awarded the POW medal, but that one, I feel funny wearing it, to be honest. They gave me the Bronze Star with Combat “V” for rescuing Tony. As far as the stuff on the video, I’ve been told I’ve been put in for the Navy Cross, but who knows what will happen?

I’m proud of the Bronze Star, even if I think it might be a little high of an award. It will, though, remind me of what a Marine does for his fellow Marines. The Navy Cross, on the other hand, even if it gets downgraded to something lower, well, I was just trying to save my own ass. I wasn’t trying to be a hero. I just wanted to live. It seems to me that even the most craven coward would have at least tried the same thing. I simply got very lucky that for me, it somehow worked.

Tony was still in the Wounded Warrior Battalion, going through intensive therapy at the Naval Hospital, so we saw each there pretty regularly. He was still a Marine, but waiting for his medical board. He was probably never going to walk again what with the damage done to his spine, and his right arm was pretty useless, but he was already planning his “life after Corps,” as he called it. He was going to start a custom silk-screening business that disabled veterans could run from their homes. I had a feeling that he’d succeed in it.

One thing that surprised me was that Joe, or Hammad Zobi, I guess his real name is, was given asylum in the US. I am not sure what Al Qaeda thought of him after I escaped, but after the video came out, his wife and son were murdered. Evidently, some in Iraq thought his “conversion” to the cause had been faked, and that he had helped me escape. He was not around when his family was killed, and he managed to get to the Green Zone and requested asylum. I’m sorry his family was killed, I guess, but I can’t say I am feeling comfortable about him being here. I know he has tried to reach out to me, but I’m just not ready for that.

The best benny that happened after I got back was that I was invited by the Leicester Tigers rugby team to be there when they dedicated a plaque to Dennis. The team flew me over, all first class, or “posh,” as they call it there, and I met his family. They treated me like a son. I have to admit that I cried when the plaque was uncovered.

I only knew Dennis for a very short period of time, but without him, I knew I wouldn’t be here today. I owed him a debt, and my paying that debt led me to where I was now, sitting in the locker room outside the arena at the Hard Rock.

Dennis had wanted to fight in the UFC. That was his dream, a dream cut short. I was trying to figure out what I could do to thank him, and then it hit me. If I could convince someone to let me fight, I would dedicate the fight to him. I asked the new WEC middleweight champion, Brian Stann, for help. He was a Marine who won the Silver Star in Iraq, and he had won the championship in March. As a fellow Marine, he decided to help me, and the owners of the WEC (the UFC owned it now) probably thought of the publicity of having a man who had fought for real fighting in their ring. They agreed.

I had no illusions that I was a real mixed martial artist. Yes, I was athletic and strong, but so are all the fighters, and they had much more experience. I tried to cram in as much training as possible in the few months before the fight, then I took leave the last three weeks to go all out. And here I was, in Vegas, ready to fight. It might not be the UFC, but with the WEC being part of the UFC, maybe it was.

Brian had his own championship defense later on the card, but he poked his head in to wish me luck. I was nervous while being taped and while warming up, but when I was told to enter the arena, I was strangely calm.

I got a lot of cheers as I made my way to the octagon. I hadn’t ever fought before, but the crowd was behind me. We went through the preliminaries, my banner not having the normal advertising but rather a photo of Dennis with his name and rank, with a simple “RIP” as the only other words.

I listened to the referee give his instructions, the same ones he’d given me back in the locker room. He told us to go back to our corners, then asked if we were ready. We both were.

“Fight!”

My opponent reached out and up with his right hand as we came together, and I touched his with mine. We lowered the gloves, and with a big smile on my face, the fight was on.

This book is dedicated to all US Navy Corpsman who have served with their brothers in arms in the US Marine Corps .

HM A “Corps” School, Naval School of Health Sciences, Balboa Naval Medical Center, San Diego

“So, Zach, you ready to get your golden ticket?”

I turned around to see Devon Harris coming up to me from behind, a broad smile on his face. Devon was the class honor graduate, a position I had hoped to earn, but his enthusiasm was so infectious that it was hard to be jealous of him.

“Yea, Balboa, here I come!”

“You deserve it, bro. Come on, let’s get in and make it official,” he said, clapping a hand on my shoulder.

This was the culmination of a lot of planning; but still, I felt a degree of nervous excitement. It had only been year ago that I had gone up the steps to get my high school diploma, looking forward to whatever my future had to bring. I had no idea that the path to my future had already been mapped out. Unbeknownst to either of us at the time, Amy was already pregnant with Tyson, gotten that way on prom night. Yea, on prom night. Pretty cliché, huh?

We found out Amy was pregnant at the end of June, and after a quick trip to the county administration center down on Pacific Avenue, we were married. It may not have been the wedding Amy had wanted, but we had been going together for two years and I think both of us knew we would end up together even if we had never actually made the announcement.

My mom was happy. She liked Amy, and with us getting hitched at the county, she didn’t have to come up with the money for a wedding. Amy’s parents sure wouldn’t have been able to help out. They spent pretty much every penny over at Barona Casino and never paid too much attention to their youngest daughter.

We moved into a crappy apartment in El Cajon, but at $500 per month, it wasn’t that bad. What was bad was trying to find a job, one that paid the bills and offered medical. With Amy getting rounder, we needed coverage.

I took some odd jobs, but what I really wanted to do was to be a medical technician. I saw an ad on TV about getting trained as a radiology tech, and when I researched it online, it seemed that jobs in the medical field were going to be in huge demand in the future. The only problem was that the training cost money and took up to two years. Amy was going to pop long before that.

It was then that my brother told me to join the Army. He had enlisted and even been in on the invasion of Iraq. He got out after his enlistment was up, and he regretted it. I didn’t want to go to Iraq, though. I was a homeboy, not a warrior. And I wanted to be in San Diego for my baby’s birth. So I went to the Navy recruiter. He guaranteed me the HM field and told me I could go to C School after becoming a basic corpsmen so I could get trained in a specialty field. I could even serve right at Balboa Naval Medical Center, not even ten miles from our apartment.

Amy had been afraid that I would go off to war, but after assuring her I would stay in San Diego, she gave her blessing. I had gone to Great Lakes for boot, then came back to San Diego for Corps School just as Tyson was born. Today, we were getting told our assignments. Everyone else knew what I wanted; I sure told anyone who would lend me an ear my plans. Radiology was my first choice as I could easily get a job at Sharp or Kaiser Permanente after my enlistment was up, but really, any hospital training would do. If I had been the honor graduate, I would have been guaranteed my next billet, but from what my recruiter had told me before I signed up, I really wasn’t worried.

We took our seats in the classroom. We still had follow-on training to do, but this was the day when our Navy service would really sink in. This was when we would be told what we would be doing and where. I had talked to the chief about my assignment, and I was pretty sure I was staying in San Diego, but this was the Navy and you never knew. I had done well in Corps School, so I should get my choice, but in reality, if there was a Navy hospital there, I could get stationed there.

I looked around the room. A good portion of the other students would be going to the Fleet Marine Force, or the FMF, as we call it, the poor saps. They might as well be Marines. Some of them, like Mike Pulante over there, actually enlisted for that. He could have it as far as I was concerned. I’ll serve in a nice air conditioned, clean hospital, getting training for a long and profitable career after the Navy, thank you very much.

One of our instructors, HM1 Teller, walked up to the class podium, papers in hand. We immediately quieted down. He started telling us all about serving as a corpsman, how every billet was important, yada yada yada. I just wanted shout out for him to get going. At last, he looked down at the papers and begun to give the assignments.

“Aguilar, Reynaldo,” he intoned, “The USS Nimitz , Naval Station Everett, Washington.”

The first billet was a fleet billet. Rey wouldn’t be going to C School, at least not on this tour. He would be shipboard and probably off on deployment before he knew what hit him.

The next few billets were either ships or the Marines. Josh Allen got the Ronald Reagan out of right here in San Diego. Anderson N. got the USS Denver in Sasebo, and Anderson S. got the Marines. Then Tricia Astor got Naval Clinic Hawaii, which raised a murmur. Hawaii was considered a plum billet. She would be in a clinic, but without a C school. No hospital billets had been assigned yet. It looked like I would be the first one.

Toby Battle got the Marines, and that caused a different kind of murmur. Despite his name, Toby was not the most impressive physical specimen, and he had been adamant that he would not serve with the Marines. He looked shell-shocked. Well, better him than me, I thought.

When John Byzewski got his billet, also the Marines. I knew I was up next. I leaned forward eagerly.

“Cannon, Zachary. Second Marine Division, via TEMDUINS Field Medical Service School, Camp Lejeune.”

Chapter 1

Camp Fallujah, Iraq

Feb 28, 2006

The first Marine was rushed into the ER. He was filthy, covered with Iraqi sand. The scarlet staining his arm seemed too bright, too saturated for the rest of him. All of the docs, nurses and corpsmen rushed to him; two of the senior docs talking over each other, each trying to take charge.

This was our first casualty. We weren’t all even in-country yet. II MEF was still on the scene, and I MEF was just beginning to come in. I had been at Fallujah for two days now, part of our advance party coming in from our final training in Kuwait, which was why I was at the hospital. With only a handful of Marines from the company here, there wasn’t much for me to do, so HM2 Sylvester had sent me to the hospital to help out while manning was in flux.

The Marine was a LCpl Miller, and he had been shot in the arm while out on a routine orientation convoy. No one had expected any action, but this was a war zone, after all, and the enemy didn’t usually play by our rules.

I had rushed to the ER when the word had passed about incoming casualties, but there was nothing for me to do. The place was packed with people trying to get involved, and I was just an untrained HA. Still, I got a good look at Miller, at his drawn face and the mangled arm. I didn’t feel queasy, per se, but still, I didn’t feel completely normal. It was one thing to go treat simulated casualties with moulages back at Corps School or at FMSS at Camp Johnson, but it was another thing to see bits of human bone coming out of the skin. I hoped when it was me out there trying to treat a Marine that I would be calm and professional.

I stepped aside as the second Marine was brought in. He was a corporal whose name I didn’t quite catch. He was unconscious, but had no visible wounds. Some of the docs shifted over to him, so I sort of insinuated myself in that group. I didn’t actually get involved with the physical examination, but I hovered, trying to look like I was contributing. I didn’t want anyone to order me out of there for just being in the way. After his flak jacket and deuce gear had been taken off and dropped on the floor, I scurried forward and grabbed them, pulling them and out of the way.

One of the doctors, a captain, had taken charge of the Marine. He performed a complete medical assessment, announcing each step and his finding as he completed each one. The corpsman in the field had placed a collar on the corporal, and that was left in place. Finally, the doctor seemed satisfied. He ordered an MRI, and one of the nurses grabbed me to help push the surgical table to radiology.

I thought it was ironic that even if I didn’t get C-School for radiology, my first real assignment as an HA was taking someone there.

For all the hustle and bustle in the ER, I was left alone with Cpl Xenakis, as his chart labeled him. I took him to radiology, then sat and waited until he was done. Then, it was to the ICU to wait for him to recover. A nurse checked him over and helped me shift him into one of the beds. Dr. Whipple, the captain who had done the initial assessment, and someone who was probably the radiologist came and discussed the results. It seemed like our corporal was lucky. The IED that had taken out his hummer had probably given him a slight concussion and banged him up a bit, and he had taken a round in the chest that his flak jacket had stopped, but he seemed not to be in too bad shape.

“OK, then, let’s let him wake up, then I want a chest X-ray to make sure he doesn’t have any broken ribs. You, what’s your name?” asked the doctor.

“HA Cannon, sir,” I told him.

I was probably supposed to be in my cammies here as I was just lending an extra hand, but I had grabbed a set of scrubs and put them on, and with no name tag nor rank insignia, I was pretty much incognito. With two sets of medical teams though, the incoming and the outgoing, no one really thought it odd that someone they didn’t know was there.

“OK, Cannon, he’s resting well now with good vitals. As long as those remain steady, just wait until he comes to, take him back to radiology for a chest X-ray, then get him cleaned up. I’m going to want him to stay overnight, at least, for observation.”

Both docs and the nurse left, leaving me alone with the Marine. He was a big guy, pretty buff, but he looked vulnerable laying there on the bed. If such a big guy could be taken out like that, I wondered what would happen when it was my turn to go out there into the fray.

“Can I come in?” a voice called out.

I looked up to see a head sticking in the door. A dirty, disheveled head. I walked over and was surprised to see the cross of a chaplain on his collar.

“I was with the corporal, and I’d like to come in to see him,” the chaplain told me, looking in to catch a glimpse of the corporal.

In back of him were a few staff NCOs, including a first sergeant. I knew Xenakis needed to rest, but how do you keep a chaplain out?

“OK, sir, you can go in, but please just sit there for now. Cpl Xenakis is fine, but we want him to remain quiet for now. The rest of you, I’ll let you know when you can see him.”

The first sergeant nodded respectfully. None of my petty officers or chiefs had given me much respect in training, and here a first sergeant, the same as a senior chief, was giving me, a mere HA, respect. I’d heard that the Marines valued their corpsmen, but this seemed a bit much. Not that I was complaining.

The chaplain and I went back to sit beside Xenakis, who was breathing easily. There was a bit of blood on one of the chaplain’s fingers, and I took a look at it, trying to muster an attitude of competence. He had a small scratch on the finger, but I told him to have it checked with as much authority as I could inflect into my voice.

I had to use the head. An ICU was normally manned all the time when there was a patient there, but evidently, this was not considered serious, and LCpl Miller was still in surgery, so I was left here alone. But with the chaplain there, I thought I could slip out and take a piss.

As I came back, I saw that Xenakis was awake, talking to the chaplain.

“I see you’re awake. You feeling OK now?” I asked.

“Not too good, to be honest,” he told me.

I gave a rueful laugh.

“Yeah, I would imagine so. You’re going to be pretty sore for a few days. None of that’s too serious, but you’ve got a concussion, and we’re going to keep you overnight for observation. If you’re feeling up to it, let’s get you cleaned up, and Doctor Whipple’s ordered a chest x-ray, just to be on the safe side.”

I turned to the chaplain and said, “You might as well get cleaned up, too, sir. I’ll take care of Xenakis now.”

He looked at me, obviously torn.

“You go, sir. Get cleaned up. When LCpl Miller’s out of surgery, he might need you,” the corporal told him.

That seemed to register, because he got up, wished the corporal well, and left, but not before promising to be back to check up on him.

“We kept your first sergeant and the rest out, but the chaplain, he insisted on staying until you woke up,” I said, bringing a wheelchair up to the bed. “Well, let’s get going.”

“I don’t need that thing,” he started to protest.

“Sorry there, corporal. But you’ve taken a knock on the head, and regs are regs. You get yours truly as your personal chauffeur. And here, you might want more of this,” I said.

I don’t know if it really was regs as I wasn’t trained in this, but it made sense to me, and I would rather be over-cautious than under. I handed him the tube of cream the nurse had left behind.

He took it, then looked at me questioningly.

With that, I pushed him out the hatch and down to radiology.

Chapter 2

Hurricane Point, Ramadi

March 16, 2006

I let out a loud burp, the taste of bacon coming back up.

“Shit, Doc, didn’t your mama teach you better than that?” Cpl Deacon asked, pulling back in distaste.

“Like the immortal Shrek proclaimed, ‘Better out than in, I always say.’ ”

“Yea, Shrek’s a fucking ogre, too. Just keep that shit inside of you when we’re out there. I don’t want the entire Al Qaeda to know we’re coming.”

“Aye-aye, there Cpl Deacon, sir, yes sir!” I answered, coming to an exaggerated, knee flapping attention and British-style salute.

He merely snorted and went to look at his fire team. I was one of the junior, if not the most junior, member of the squad, yet I was given a good deal of leeway and more respect than a PFC, my equivalent rank in the Marines, might receive. I had heard all of this at Corps School and FMSS, but it wasn’t until we were out here in the Sandbox that I began to understand it. I didn’t want to serve with the FMF, and I would go back in a minute if they let me, but still, I had to admit that this was one aspect of serving with the Marines that I liked.

If I had to serve with the Marines, at least it could have been at the hospital back at Fallujah. I had helped out there for almost a week before the rest of the battalion came aboard and we moved down here to Hurricane Point at Ramadi.

At Fallujah, I had hung out with medical personnel, even the doctors. Doc Willis, for example, had taken me under his wing. He was a reservist, a gastroenterologist with a practice in Beverly Hills, an ass doctor to the stars, as he called himself. He had been recalled to active duty, and each day he was in Iraq cost him thousands in lost medical fees and in keeping his practice open. Having a willing ear was cathartic to him, I guess, and he offered me a place with this practice when we got back. I’m not so sure I would really want to be a colonoscopy cowboy, but the money he mentioned was way more than I would have guessed.

Fallujah was a much more comfortable place to live, too. The barracks were OK, but the chow was great. We had a 24 hour ice cream bar, burgers, steaks, even prime rib on the weekends. Here at Hurricane Point, well, we had hot chow, but the variety was limited and so the menu was already getting boring—and we had not even been here a week yet. Well, not everything was boring. We got daily mortar and rocket rounds hitting in the camp, but no one had been hit yet.

Fallujah was big, too, with lots and lots of Marines. At the Point, we had the battalion and a few others, but not much else.

And now, we were leaving even that bit of security. My platoon was going on a short patrol around the camp. We know the camp had been under surveillance, and we had taken some sniper rounds among the indirect fire. The battalion CO thought that was messed up, that the insurgents could get to that close to camp, and he wanted us to keep active to keep the bad guys back from our perimeter. The National Guard, who had been in-country for almost a year, was still doing the major patrolling and combat ops out of Camp Ramadi and Camp Corregidor, but this was our backyard, and we had to secure it. This was going to be our third patrol. Nothing much happened on our first two, so I didn’t expect much on this one. But still, I felt the butterflies. This was exactly why I didn’t want to be with the FMF. I was weighed down with 60 or 70 pounds worth of gear, I was hot and tired just standing there, and I could have someone shooting at me soon. The radiology lab back at Balboa would be so much better a proposition.

We had up-armored hummers and even a few LAVs, so I wasn’t sure why we were going out on foot. Ramadi was more suited for a MAP, the Mobile Assault Platoon, and we had been trained in that, but like the other two times, we were going like regular infantry. Sgt Butler, my squad leader, a guy on his third pump to the Sandbox, said it was just a show of force, to remind the bad guys that we were paying attention. If we were really going into the attack, we would be going full bore, ready for bear.

I didn’t pay much attention to the op order. All I really had to do was follow Sgt Butler and render aid if anyone needed it. It wasn’t like I was assigned to a fire team to kick ass and take names. I was armed, of course, but I wasn’t sure that was even necessary. I didn’t plan on shooting anyone. Yea, I know that corpsmen get right in the thick of things. At FMSS, we got a history class on all the corpsmen who received the Medal of Honor. Since WWI, all 18 of them had served with the Marines, and 12 had died earning the medal. Several had fought back, and one guy had killed a bunch of Japanese soldiers while saving his commander—at one point, holding an IV up with one hand and shooting a .45 with his other. But I didn’t expect that I would be doing any fighting. I was there to treat Marines, not be one.

When the order came to move out, we moved past the plywood SWAs that made up our buildings on the camp. I wasn’t sure why we called them SWAs, and I sure didn’t care for them as far as living conditions. They let in sand and hot air, then kept the heat in even after it started cooling down a bit. The Seabees had installed an air conditioner in each one, but they couldn’t really keep up with the heat.

We trooped past the “Complacency Kills” sign someone had painted in red on a piece of plywood. The so-called front gate of the camp had more of the temporary look of the rest of the camp. Plywood and HESCO barriers were main theme running through the base, with green sandbags on the roofs thrown in for a bit of a fashion accent.

First squad went out first, followed by the platoon commander and his headquarters. We were Tail-End Charlie, behind Third. As we passed the front gate and made our way past the barriers, I couldn’t help but feel a shiver run down my spine. We were not going far, just to check out two buildings less than 200 meters away, but still, we were in Indian country.

We moved slowly, but steadily. The sun was up in force, and with all our battle gear on, the sweat was pouring. Visions of white-walled, air conditioned radiology labs flitted through my thoughts as we trudged up to our objectives.

Second Squad was to provide security while First and Third each took one building. We had taken some sniper fire earlier in the day, and these two buildings looked like the possible hide spots of the sniper, so we were supposed to look for signs of that, I guess. I don’t know why we just didn’t take the buildings down, though.

Luckily, the snipers here sucked, so no one had been hit so far, knock on wood. I’d seen a few of our snipers with the battalion, and one of them supposedly had over 25 kills just on his last tour. He wouldn’t have missed at only 200 meters, I’m sure.

Sgt Butler placed his teams in position as First and Third moved into clear their buildings. The Marines in my squad had to focus on what was out in the open and in other nearby buildings, but I watched the two target buildings instead, curious as to what the other squads might find. I really didn’t expect them to find the sniper there, but I almost wished I was in there to see for myself. Almost.

When the blast came, I was taken my surprise. I dropped to the deck, more by instinct than by training. I could feel the concussion of the second explosion wash over me. My ears were ringing, but I could still hear the calls of “Corpsman up!” cry out. It took me a moment to realize that that was me. I was the corpsman.

I started to get up, but hesitated. I knew I had to get over there, but my legs were like jelly. Another round exploded right in front of me, shrapnel zinging over my head. If I had stood up a moment ago, I would have taken all that shrapnel in my chest.

Before I left, I had promised Amy I would never be a hero, and I wanted nothing more than to just lie back down and hug the ground. But a second call rang out for me, and I knew what I had to do. I took a deep breath, then got up and ran, expecting another round at any second.

It seemed like forever, but I probably made it over to Cpl Deacon’s team in just a few seconds, diving in just ahead of Sgt Butler. I landed so hard I knocked the breath out of me, and I gasped for air. When I looked up, I forgot all of that. I forgot everything, all my training, everything.

Cpl Deacon was lying down, holding what was left of his right leg. It was still attached, but from mid-thigh on down to his knee, it was hamburger. Blood pulsed through his fingers as LCpl Runolfson tried to put pressure on it. On the other side of him was the still form of Steve Potts, a newbie like me, just a few months in the Corps. Blood seeped from under his face-down body. Sitting up, but with blood making growing stains on his arm right arm and leg was Cy Pierce, a SAW gunner who bunked next to me in our SWA.

I froze. Rob Runolfson was covered in blood, but I didn’t know if that was his or not. Cy was hurt, but maybe not too bad. I couldn’t tell about Steve, but I knew Deacon was hurt bad.

“Come on, Doc. Get your ass in gear,” Sgt Butler shouted as he pushed past me, joining Rob in applying pressure to Cpl Deacon’s leg.

The tone of command in his voice must have registered, and I snapped back into corpsman mode. I saw that both of them had good pressure on Deacon, so I rushed to Steve. I felt for a pulse, not finding anything. I turned him over to give start CPR, but as I did, his head flopped to the side. His throat above his flak jacket had been torn open. He was gone. Only nineteen years old, and he left his life right there on the ground in the supposedly “safe” part of Ramadi. I looked up at Cy who motioned me to help our fire team leader. Blood was still seeping out with each beat of Cpl Deacon’s heart, and his skin was taking on a grayish hue. He was conscious, but in shock.

I was aware of people behind me coming to help, but I knew I had to do something.

“When I tell you, I need both of you to let go. His femoral artery has been hit, and I need to close it,” I told Rob and Sgt Butler.

Neither one of them argued with me, trusting me with what had to be done.

I snapped on a pair of latex gloves, took a deep breath, and said “Now!”

Both men let go and leaned back out of my way. Blood spurted up as I reached in with my hands to try and trap the artery. I knew what had to be done, but the artery was slippery and flailed like a garden hose. It took me several tries, but finally I caught it, almost yanking it out. Cpl Deacon groaned, but he didn’t cry out as my hands rooted inside of him.

Carefully, I reached back into my kit and took out a hemostat. Just as carefully, I clamped it over the artery. I knew I had to be careful. The stupid thing could slip, causing a blowout. Cpl Deacon might have already lost too much blood already, but if it came loose, he would certainly bleed out.

HM2 Sylvester had been with the platoon commander, and he reached me first. He started to push me aside, but I was not budging. I could feel him looking over my shoulder before he grunted and started yelling for some Marines to act as stretcher bearers while he checked out Cy. I guess he figured that we could get Cpl Deacon back inside quicker than if a vehicle was sent out to get him.

“Listen, Cannon. You hold that hemostat and no matter what, don’t let it slip. If it does, you get that artery clamped down, you hear me?” he said forcefully as he began to bandage Cy’s wounds.

“I got it,” I told him.

And I did. All the way to the aid station, stumbling over broken concrete and around barriers. I held on as we went across the water to Camp Ramadi and Charlie Med. I never let go until the surgeon there almost had to pry my fingers off of it.

Chapter 3

Hurricane Point

March 21, 2006

Tyson gurgled and cooed on the other end of the line. I knew he didn’t have a clue as to what he was doing, but still, my little man’s sounds made my heart pound.

“Did you hear him? Did you?” Amy asked as she took back the phone.

“I sure did, baby,” I told her.

“He misses his daddy, don’t you Tyson,” she said before turning her attention back to me. “Anyway . . . what was I saying?”

“You were telling me about your checkups?”

“Oh yea, I was. Well anyway, the doctor said he’s right in the middle of his percentile, no problems. He’s strong as an ox and eating more and more. I’m fine, too. I’m still a little fat, but don’t worry, I’ll have that gone before you get back home.”

“Baby, you’re not fat. You were already almost down to normal before I left.”

She hadn’t been, really, but I knew what I was supposed to say. Her belly had been stretched pretty good by Tyson, and the muscles hadn’t knitted back together by the time I deployed. But if that was the price to pay for him, I didn’t have a problem with that.

“Anyway, Mom says that it took her almost a year after each one you was born.”

When she said “Mom,” I knew she meant my mom, not hers. We let the apartment go when I left to meet my new battalion at Twenty-Nine Palms prior to deployment, getting out of the lease thanks to the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines Relief Act, and she moved in with Mom so she could have help with Tyson. We gave Mom half of my VHA money, which she first refused, but with two extra people in her trailer, it came in handy. Amy saw her own mother once every couple of weeks or so even if they were only about 10 miles apart.

I let her chatter on, not really paying attention, but giving the appropriate grunts and comments. I couldn’t help but feel good, just hearing her voice, hearing normalcy. Yesterday had been a wake-up call for me. My Iraq adventure became serious. I had lost someone, and while not really a close friend, he was still someone I knew well and liked. We were about the same age, and he was gone. Forever.

I had watched the day before as the Navy surgeon at Charlie Med took off Cpl Deacon’s leg, a nurse putting it on a steel table to the side of the operating room like a piece of meat. I wasn’t sterile, and in a stateside hospital, I would have been chased out. But I was there until I released my hold on the hemostat. When the surgical team moved in, I just backed away to the corner but didn’t leave. I was afraid he wouldn’t make it, he had lost so much blood. I was sure I had killed him by not acting sooner, by screwing up somehow.

The surgeon, though, wasted no time. After a quick assessment, he announced that the leg could not be saved. He went to work simply saving Deacon’s life instead. They had suspended his mangled leg in a web of gauze that hung from a hook in the ceiling. After painting most of his body with what looked like Betadine, the loose skin and tissue was clipped with surgical scissors. Then the leg was sawn off with what was essentially a bone saw. The grating sound as the saw cut living bone made me wince. A chisel was used to clean up the area, then an electrocauterizer was brought into play, closing off arteries, veins, and nerves. With each zap, a smell that will live with me forever grew stronger. The nub was washed with a small sprayer, and it was only then that the surgeon closed off the leg. I knew what the procedure was and had seen photos of it in training. But seeing photos and actually being there were two different things. The smell, in particular, was not what I had expected.

It wasn’t until he pronounced Deacon stable that I felt I could move. I had thought I was inconspicuous, back there in the corner, but as he finished, he looked over at me and nodded. The surgeon knew I had been watching—he knew I had to watch, and he had let me. Back at a stateside hospital, that would never have happened, me not being part of the team and not being sterile. But I guess he figured that with my hands inside of Deacons thigh, if I hadn’t contaminated him yet, I never would.

They started to move Deacon to the ICU where he would wait until the casevac came to take him straight to Balad to await the flight to the Army hospital at Landstuhl. Charlie Med was a level 2 hospital, only concerned with saving lives. It was an Army hospital, but with only three physicians, none being surgeons, the Navy sent Charlie Surgical, a team of surgeons, to operate on the wounded. They handled lifesaving—more advanced medical work had to be done at Balad or Baghdad, the two level 3 hospitals in country.

I cleaned myself up the best I could, then went back to my SWA and lay down on my rack. I didn’t get up when I heard the Black Hawk come in to take Deacon and probably Potts away. The helos that took away those killed were called “Hero Flights,” and I’d heard that the company would be standing at attention when Steve’s body was carried to the ambulance and then to the helo. I wasn’t mentally ready for that, though, after watching the surgery. I just lay there, staring at the plywood ceiling of our squadbay, trying to find relief in sleep.

I spent most of the night like that, getting only snatches of sleep. When morning came around, the first thing I did was to call my Amy.

The phone companies and different groups donated calling cards to us, so it wasn’t that difficult to call home if you could get a landline out. I called Amy every couple of days, but today, I really needed to hear her.

“Anyway, I told her that she had the temperature too high. It was going to burn the outside before the inside was cooked. She told me I was crazy, but you know, I was right. When she took it out, it was like stone cold inside, and she couldn’t serve it. She should’ve listened . . . .”

Yesterday, I lost something inside of me, but listening to Amy’s mundane chatter, well, that was putting something back in the tank.

“Uh, huh,” I dutifully interjected, figuring I had another ten minutes left on the card, ten more minutes of the real world.

Chapter 4

The Government House, Ramadi

April 12, 2006

“All right, another day in paradise. We all know the drill, so keep alert. We’ve got that VIP visit here today,” Sgt Butler told us as we took our positions on the roof of the Government House.

This was our third day of our rotation. There were some military folk stationed at the government compound, but no trigger pullers. Those were rotated in to provide outside security (the VIPs were protected inside by Triple Canopy, the contracting company made up mostly of ex-Recon, Special Forces, and SEALS). This was our first time with the duty, and frankly, it was pretty frustrating so far. We’d taken a daily dose of sniper fire, mortar fire, and even a couple of bursts of machine gun fire, but we hadn’t had the chance to retaliate. There hadn’t been a concerted attack.

That isn’t to say there wouldn’t be. We all knew that back in 2004, 12 Marines had been killed in the compound during a big coordinated Al Qaeda attack. Even without the big attack we all felt was coming, it was still pretty dangerous. The day before we rotated in, a Marine manning the gun on a hummer had taken an RPG round in the chest, right at the front gate. Then, last night, a rocket had hit the building with all the support staff, going right into the comm shack. The round tore up some of the radios, but the comm guy there was somehow untouched.

Food sucked worse than at Hurricane Point, and though we lived in a real building instead of a SWA, it might as well have been a SWA what with all the plywood and raw construction inside the buildings. Well, the Government House itself was kind of impressive, but we peons didn’t do much there except for climbing up to the roof or providing security at the main entrance.

The worse thing, though, was that we shit and pissed in plastic bags that were then taken outside and burned. The place reeked, not only of the piss and shit, but of BO. Marines being Marines, put together a gym in one cramped corner of our building. It wasn’t enough that we lived in a shithouse, but it also had the elements of a locker room thrown in, a locker room with no running water.

Lieutenant Hobbs was already on the roof when we got there. He probably got up there at zero-dark-thirty when Third Squad was on duty, and now he was going to sit up there with us. He was a new second lieutenant, very conscientious, but very green. Even I, one of the real newbies, recognized that. The guy needed to relax some, not be so serious. But he didn’t bother me any, so how up-tight he was didn’t really matter much to me. It was his funeral. He was the only black officer in the battalion, but that didn’t seem to carry any weight with the brothers in the unit. The divide between officers and enlisted trumped race in the Corps, I guess.

Up on the roof, we had our squad, a sniper team, a fire support team, and some comm guys. We were just supposed to keep watch over the area. A bunch of the buildings around us had been taken down, but there were still buildings up that could act as hide spots for snipers, and there was enough rubble to hide a hundred insurgents. Some of the shot-up buildings already had names like the “Swiss Cheese” and “Battleship Gray.”

I took my place under the netting that provided at least some shade. We had four hours before we would get relieved, and I intended on taking it easy. After only 20 minutes or so, I started nodding off. Taking it easy was one thing, nodding off was another. I had to get up and get moving. I went to the cooler and grabbed a handful of water bottles before going to each Marine and giving him one, telling him to keep hydrated. Preventive medicine had been hammered into us at FMSS, and it was not all just lip service. Heat stroke would take a Marine out of combat as readily as a bullet. I gave bottles to the comm guys, the lieutenant, and the sniper team, too.

The sniper was a strange-looking guy. Sitting on a rooftop dressed in one of their camouflaged suites, ghillie suits I think they were called, was weird enough. Was that supposed to make him invisible up here on top of the building? But even without the suit, he looked strange. There was nothing remarkable about his build. He was probably 5’ 8” or 9” and about 160 lbs, give or take, not too buff or too skinny. But his head was somewhat fucked up. His ears were too big, and his eyes too small and too far apart. I could tell that he had some sort of syndrome, but I wasn’t any sort of expert on that. I’d have to take a look online later or ask one of the docs. Whatever his condition, it obviously didn’t affect him in shooting his rifle.

The other sniper, his spotter, was a complete 180. Tall, buff, and with a poster-boy square chin, he looked like what Hollywood imagined Marines should be. He smiled and thanked me for the water, unlike his buddy who took his without even a grunt.

Sniper teams were technically two people, but in Ramadi, they often went out in larger teams with the other members of STA to provide security and help observe the area. But up here on the roof with us, it was generally just the two man teams.

It was pretty quiet, but when we got word that the VIP was inbound, tension mounted. We didn’t want to be the unit that lost some bigwig. I didn’t have an assigned sector of fire, so I wandered over to stand by Sgt Butler at the edge of the roof to where I could look down at the entrance.

“You holding up OK, doc?” he asked me as I got up to him.

“Sure thing, Sarge,” I told him.

He rolled his eyes at that but didn’t say anything. I knew he didn’t like to be called “sarge.” I don’t know if that was personal or a Marine thing, but there wasn’t much else I could do to bust his chops. I may have been dressed in Marine Corps cammies, but that was only so I didn’t stand out to any snipers. I was a “blue” corpsman, through and through, and I didn’t want any of these grunts to forget that.

I knew I should probably lay off the sergeant, though. He was a good guy, a three-tour vet of Afghanistan and Iraq, and he knew his shit. If anyone could keep us alive, I knew he could. We’d already lost Steve, but God willing, that would be it.

“Secure your armor,” he told me, pointing at my throat. “We need you safe if you’re going to take care of us.”

It was pretty hot up on the roof, and I had loosened the top of my flak jacket in an attempt to let some air circulate. I fastened up the Velcro, then took a glance over at him as he watched for the VIP convoy. That assistant sniper may look like a Hollywood Marine, but Sgt Butler just looked like a Marine, if that made sense. Physically, he looked fit, but not like some UFC fighter or bodybuilder. The scar across his chin was the only physical hint that he was a warrior. But his attitude, his focus, they left no doubt. This guy was a warrior through and through. I knew I was pretty lucky to have him as my squad leader.

“There they are,” he said, pointing out to the first vehicles coming down Route Michigan, the main road in from Camp Blue Diamond.

The first vehicle was a gun hummer, and it stopped just the far edge of the gate to give cover. The next several vehicles entered the compound, pulling over to the side and parking. The fifth hummer, though, drove right on past the gate and started merrily on its way to no-man’s land.

“What the fuck?” LCpl Jarod asked from his position a few meters down from me.

They must have been thinking that below us, too. We could hear the shouts as people started running around like crazy below us.

“Cpl Mays, heads up over there. I want eyes peeled. We’ve got a situation going on!” Sgt Butler ordered to the First Fire team leader as the lieutenant rushed over.

We lost sight of the wayward hummer, but the rest had stopped after two had pulled up just short of the gate. After a long, 30 seconds or so, the missing hummer backed up into view, swung about, and dashed into the compound. It zipped past some of the parked hummers, but a bit too close, taking the opening door of one hummer right off.

It skidded to a stop as a big Marine got out of the now doorless hummer and rushed over to meet it. I thought I could feel the volcano about to explode all the way up here. The big Marine, he had to be an officer, I just knew, opened the door to the hummer, and out came a short woman, whose laugh reach up to us. She wasn’t pissed, but someone’s ass was going to be grass, that’s for sure. They stood around for a few moments talking, then all of them trooped into the Government House.

As the drivers and trigger pullers got out of their hummers, Sgt Butler said, to no one in particular, “No way! He got out already!”

He leaned over the edge and started to shout down, then seemed to think better of it.

“Mays, you’ve got it!” He turned to the lieutenant, “Sir, that’s one of my buddies from 3/4. I’m going to go down and say hello for a bit. I’m leaving Cpl Mays in charge.”

He rushed to the ladderwell, going down before the lieutenant could respond. I could tell the lieutenant wasn’t happy about it, but he didn’t say anything. It wasn’t like every one of us was rooted in place for the entire four hours.

I looked back over the edge, and after a few moments, I could see Sgt Butler rush out. He must have flown down the stairs. He rushed over to behind one of the Marines and said something. The Marine turned around, and a series of back slaps and other manly means of greeting commenced. After a few moments, the two of them walked into the outbuildings, Sgt Butler obviously giving him the grand tour of our luxurious surroundings, and I lost sight of them, at least until both of them came out onto the roof 15 minutes or so later.

Sgt Butler’s friend was a big corporal who looked familiar, but it took me awhile to place him. He was the corporal who got hit by the IED back last month, the one I wheeled around to radiology. He looked none the worse for wear. He didn’t seem to recognize me, so I didn’t bother to re-introduce myself.

While we had our spurts of being targets for the insurgents, most of the time, it was pretty boring on the roof, so we settled into our routine. Whether it has anything to do with our VIPs downstairs or not, I don’t know, but the routine changed when Gunny Tora, who had come up to make his rounds a few minutes before, left Rob and Cy and came up to the lieutenant.

“Lieutenant, we’ve got another looker,”

“Where at? Show me,” he said as he jumped up, binos in hand.

I pulled out my own set of binos, trying to see the turkey-peeker. It took me a few minutes, but I finally saw him. Only he wasn’t really a turkey-peeker; no up and down looks trying to watch us before dropping down into concealment. No, this guy was nonchalantly studying us. And he had to see that we were watching him.

The lieutenant watched for a few moments before ordering, “OK, get Cpl Lindt.”

The sniper came up from the other side of the roof where he had been observing.

“We’ve got a looker over there, right on the roof of that building, about 90 mills to the left of the minaret,” he said, holding three fingers up at arm’s length “I want you to put a round beside him. Don’t hit him, but let him know we’d rather not have him there.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Cpl Lindt responded as he went to get his spotter.

I watched the two Marines as they moved to get into position. Remarkably, the Iraqi just stayed there, not moving as the sniper team set up. LCpl Poster Boy used some sort of a laser thing to get the range. At 876 meters, I figured that had to be a long shot, but they didn’t seem to be concerned as they discussed things in sniper talk, all minutes and wind speed and such. The spotter looked like he was entering data on some sort of smart-phone looking thing, but the sniper seemed to be ignoring what the spotter was telling him. It probably took only a minute or so, but the Iraqi had plenty of time to boogie if we wanted to. But no, he just sat there, his head and shoulders clearly visible as he watched us. If he hadn’t shifted his position a bit a few times, I would have sworn he was a dummy that the Iraqis had put up just to fuck with us.

Cpl Lindt reached under his blouse, took out something that looked like a rifle round on a piece of chord and put it in his mouth. After a calm “Send it” from his spotter, he aimed his rifle, let out a long breath, then fired. A second or two later, the round hit the stucco wall beside the Iraqi, and he disappeared from sight. Most of us broke out in laughter, and I heard on “Get some!” coming from my left.

Cpl Lindt started to get back up, mission accomplished, when to everyone’s surprise the Iraqi made a second appearance.

“Well, Cpl Lindt, I guess your message didn’t get through. Give him another, this time closer,” the lieutenant ordered.

The sniper shrugged his shoulders and got back into position. He already had his dope, so within only a few moments, a second round was on its way downrange. This time, the stucco only inches from the Iraqi’s head exploded into dust. Once again, the guy disappeared out of sight.

“That one’s gotta hurt,” the gunny said.

We all figured that the guy had to have gotten the message. We figured wrong. You could have knocked me over with a feather when he made another appearance, right in the same place. Was he a complete idiot? He had the glasses back up, and this time, it looked like he was talking on a cell phone or radio. That changed things. This was suddenly much more serious.

Several Marines called out to the lieutenant, but he had already seen the man for himself.

“Cpl Lindt, take him out now!”

It might have been funny before, but this was different. Talking on a radio could mean nothing good. Cpl Lindt drew down and sent the round downrange. A long second or two later, the round hit him square in the face, a pink bloody mist spraying out behind him, all clearly visible despite the distance. He collapsed in a heap. His binos fell onto the rooftop and bounce a few feet away from his outstretched hand. Half of his body was hidden from view, but the top half was out in the open, face up. We didn’t need to go over and check him to know he was meat.

“Good job, Corporal,” the lieutenant told the sniper.

The corporal merely shrugged. He had just killed a man, but he might just as well have bought a loaf of bread. Someone told me his nickname was Iceman, and I could see why. He tucked the tooth thing back inside his blouse, went over to the cooler and got a water for him and his spotter, then sat back down, pulling out a Three Musketeers Bar out of his pocket for a nice little after killing snack.

Sgt Butler’s guest left a few minutes after that, a little shaken, I could see. Well, the Marines were there to kick ass and take names, right? Cpl Iceman was just doing his job.

I had to admit, though, the guy kind of creeped me out.

Chapter 5

Ramadi

April 19, 2006

I tried to shift my weight. I never really felt at ease in the back of a hummer. The seat and the floorboards were too close together, so my knees came up too high. With all my battle gear, it was hard to get comfortable. Something or another was always digging into me. Of course, it was better than the alternative of humping everywhere. Lima Company had been out there on foot almost every day, patrolling between the High Water Bridge and the Low Water Bridge, the two bridges that crossed the Euphrates and led into the heart of the city from the north. When they humped, they carried about five tons of gear apiece. We’d done our share of foot patrols, too, going out at night and coming back in the morning, so uncomfortable or not, targets for IEDs or not, being inside a hummer gave me a bit more sense of security.

Today was part of the hearts and minds campaign. We were going out with a load of soccer balls, school supplies, and candy to give out, and I was going to be giving check-ups. We weren’t supposed to fight, but I don’t think anyone told the Iraqis that.

We pulled into a square and got out. The platoon had not been in any serious action since our first one last month. We’d been mortared and had pot shots taken at us, and two hummers had been blown up by IEDs, but no one was hurt. Even our first action was more of just being a target. We were probably the only platoon in the battalion that hadn’t gotten into some serious shit yet. But this was still bad guy country, and except for Pacman, who was born-again and wanted to take every opportunity to convert the Iraqis, none of us wanted to be out here like this. We had to appear “friendly,” as we were told.

Some Iraqis had already placed out some tables and chairs. I guessed they worked for us, but that doesn’t mean any of us really trusted them. The chairs were full, mostly with women and children. They watched us pull up with flat eyes, neither welcoming nor antagonistic. Sgt Castanza was one of the first guys out, and he had a soccer ball in his hands. That got the interest of most of the kids. With full battle gear, he did that soccer thing where they keep kicking the ball up in the air, then converted that into a side kick, sending the ball slamming into the side of a building. The kids didn’t even wait for their mothers’ permission; they swarmed out of their chairs like a flock of birds and converged on the ball with shouts of “football, football!” in English. Their cries of delight sounded like the playground back home when I was a kid. Despite myself, I relaxed. It didn’t seem likely that anyone would attack with all their kids around us.

Buster Seychik waved me over. He was Third Squad’s corpsman, an HM3 on his second pump to the Sandbox.

“OK, HA Cannon, we need to set up. We’ve been all over this before, but mostly what we can do is just triage.”

Buster was a little too gung ho for me, too Marine. He wore his FMFEWS, or Fleet Marine Force Enlisted Warfare Specialist Device, like it was his most prized possession. Most junior corpsmen, and that included HM3s, were on a first name basis with each other, but he was always HA this and HM that. I even heard him call Terry Banks, over in First Platoon, “HM3 Banks” before, someone not only his own rank, but his good friend. He was a pretty good guy for all of that and knew what he was doing.

“Without that female medic coming, we can’t treat any women here, but little girls we can, depending on what’s wrong with them.”

We didn’t have any female corpsmen with the battalion, so we were supposed to get a loaner from the 228 th , the National Guard unit that controlled most of the city, to take care of any Iraqi women who came for treatment. The medic never showed, though.

Even though this was the 100 th time I had heard it today, he was right, though. We were corpsmen, not doctors or medical assistants. I had been trained to save a life in the field and to take simple sick call, but my clinical skills were pretty lacking. We’d give out antibiotic cream, dress wounds, and give out the kind of over-the-counter meds anyone could buy back at Wal-Mart, but that was about it. If someone was in serious shape, we could casevac him or her back to base, but that caused a shitload of problems, so we had been told in no uncertain terms that that was a last resort.

A civilian translator came up to us and asked, “You are the doctors? Please, come with me,” in heavily accented English.

I guess all our Iraqi translators were civilians, but the ones who were assigned to us wore uniforms and battle gear. This was a middle-aged man dressed in grey slacks and a white shirt. He gestured with his arm towards one of the buildings. I looked at Buster and he looked at me. I didn’t really think we needed to be going into a building alone, and even gung ho as Buster was, he didn’t think so, either. We shouldn’t have worried. Sgt. Butler had our six.

“Mays!” he called out. “Get your team and clear that building there, then provide security for the docs.”

Cpl Mays looked sort of looked and sounded like Bubba Blue, Forest Gump’s friend who was going to open up the shrimp restaurant after the war. The other Marines sometimes started going into all the ways to cook shrimp when he was around. But unlike Bubba, Mays was no dummy. After Sgt Butler, Mays was probably the most competent Marine in the squad, so I was glad it would be his team with us.

We let him clear the building, then when he gave us the OK, the two of us went inside. Whoever had set this up had a unique idea of an examining room. There was a folding table in the back of the main room and two chairs. Period. Nothing else.

Buster just sighed and told me to take the chair on the right side while he took the one on the left. He told our translator to start bringing in the patients. For the next hour or so, we saw kids. No men came, and without the female medic, no women, at least for treatment. All the kids had who I assumed were their mothers with them. I checked runny noses, coughs, infected cuts—pretty much everything we could have expected. I gave out what medicine I had, telling the mothers the dosages through the translator. Everyone listened to me with rapt attention as if I was some sort of expert. In reality, though, except for a broken finger than I splinted, everything I did could have been done by any mother back in the US. This was basic medicine.

I hoped I wasn’t hurting anyone by giving them the wrong treatment. I may be a corpsman and not an MD, but the “doing no harm” part still held true for me. I wanted to help, but the hard part was that these were not Marines. Marines might want to hide what was wrong with them so they could stay in the fight, but at least they spoke English and would answer to direct questions. These kids didn’t speak English, were mostly scared, and weren’t sure how to react to me. I had the translator, but I didn’t get the feeling that he was that good. I would ask a detailed question, and he would speak to the kid or the mother for all of five seconds before coming back to me with an answer. I knew if I was back at Kaiser Permanente in San Diego that most of my patients would speak English, of course, but maybe I just wouldn’t be very good with kids whether in Ramadi or San Diego.

When the old man was led in, his arm on top of that of a young, fully-robed woman, things were a little different. He sat down, silent and motionless. The girl spoke to the translator who then told me that they wanted me to restore the old man’s sight. I started to tell them I was only a corpsman, but I thought I might as well look. I knew in some countries simple, easily-removed cataracts caused blindness, and maybe we could get him into a surgeon.

I tilted the old man’s chin up and looked into his eyes, or the ruins that were left of them. Something had eaten away the corneas and destroyed the pupils themselves. Aqueous humor was clearly apparent and murky. The right eye was eaten away past the lens, and the left was not much better. It didn’t look like what I remembered about trachoma, a disease about which we had been briefed as it was prevalent here. That would not have destroyed the eyes like this. What had eaten away his eyes, well, I didn’t know. But I did know that he would never see again.

I told the translator that there was nothing to be done, but before he could repeat that in Arabic, the old man simply stood up, holding his arm out for his escort. She took it and the two of them marched out, but not before I caught the full brunt of her glare, coming from above her veil. It wasn’t my fault that something had happened to him, that there was nothing I could do. Nothing anyone could do, for that matter. But somehow, I felt that I had failed.

The next patient came up while I was still watching the man walk out of the building, standing tall and proud. I turned back to see a small girl of about four years old. With one hand in her mother’s, she held up the other arm to me. Her right arm was bandaged with a piece of cotton, blood staining it with little red flowers.

She was much older than Tyson, but something in her eyes made me think of him. Maybe it was the trust that I was going to help her. I felt a little wave of paternal instinct.

“Well, what have we here?” I asked, leading her to sit on the chair.

I knew she didn’t understand a word I said, but I hoped my tone was comforting enough. I carefully unwrapped the bandage until her arm was bare. Right in the meat of her forearm, a piece of jagged metal stuck out. I didn’t need to ask: I knew it was shrapnel, and while it could have come from anyone, I figured it was ours.

“The mother says the girl was hurt yesterday when the Americans attack. The American army bomb hit the street and came in the house. It killed their cat,” the translator said.

I looked up at the last. What had their cat to do with the price of tea in China?

He simply shrugged before continuing, “That is what she says. They tried to take the metal away, but the father says the Americans put it there, so the Americans must take it away.”

This was actually something I could do. I was trained to render aid to wounded Marines; she was not much different, only smaller. I cleaned up her arm, careful not to move the shrapnel. It looked embedded pretty deeply, but I was more worried about infection. I took out a hypodermic, and the girls eyes got big. She didn’t cry, though. I told the translator to tell her it was going to be like a bee sting.

I gave her the first shot, and while tears welled up in her eyes, she still didn’t cry. Her mother, though, looked like she might faint. I wished we had another chair so she could sit down. I didn’t need her to pass out on me.

Once her arm was numb, I took a pair of forceps and slowly eased the piece of metal out of her arm. My maneuvering started the bleeding again, but I flushed the wound out several times with both water and Betadine before stitching it up. I was kind of proud of my needlework. Amy was a big seamstress at home, making clothes and things, and she wouldn’t have been able to fault my work.

Normally, a basic corpsman is not authorized to give out things like antibiotics, but in wartime, things have a habit of shifting. I had been given several Z Paks and some Augmentin before I came out, but while the Z Paks were pretty good meds, I thought the Augmentin would be better for a wound like this. I took out two tablets and used my pill cutter to cut each one into fourths. I told her mother to make sure she took one piece twice a day and to use it all up.

I waited while the translator did his thing, then stepped back—my signal that the treatment was over. The little girl slid off the chair and shyly took the sucker I held out to her. She gave it a tentative lick, then quickly put it into her mouth, jaws working with pleasure. The mother, who had not let go of her daughter’s left arm during the entire procedure, leaned over and said something to her.

The little girl looked up, took the sucker out, and softly said “Shakran,” before putting the candy back into her mouth.

By instinct, I started to reach out to tousle her hair, but stopped, trying to remember if that was one of the cultural taboos here. Maybe I should have paid more attention to our Arabic culture classes back at Lejeune.

I had treated a couple more minor cases, nothing serious, when Buster called me over.

“HA Cannon, what do you think about this?” he asked, pointing to a teenage boy who was sitting listlessly on the chair. He stepped back to allow me to get a better look.

The kid was probably 14 or 15, and I could immediately tell he was in pretty bad shape. His skin color was sallow, and he was breathing in quick, shallow breaths. I took his wrist and almost dropped it. He was burning up. His pulse was weak and febrile. I pinched his fingertips; his perfusion was slow. Whatever else was ailing the boy, he was severely dehydrated.

I looked up at his face. Dull, listless eyes stared back at me. It looked like he had given up and was only waiting to die.

I was at a loss, though. I’m not sure what Buster wanted me to say. I could treat obvious injuries, I could treat normal common diseases. I was not a doctor, though, and I was not a diagnostician.

“Give him an IV?” I offered. That would help with the dehydration, at least.

“Yea, but what’s wrong with him?”

I looked at the boy’s parents who were waiting anxiously. I knew the man could have been laying IEDs last night, but now, he was merely a father afraid for his son. I looked at the translator as if he could suddenly diagnose patients. Finally, I had to look back at Third Squad’s corpsman.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

Buster smiled and clapped my shoulder. “Of course you don’t know,” he said. “We’re corpsmen, the first line of treatment. But it’s important that we never overreach ourselves. We can see that this boy is going to die soon, maybe within hours, if he doesn’t get treatment, but as to what is wrong with him, we can guess, but that won’t do our patients any good. They need full medical treatment, and we need to know when we can’t do any more and to push cases like this up to the MDs back at camp. We need to know our limitations.”

Of course he was right. I remembered our training about standard of care, what we were allowed to do and what we weren’t. I knew Buster had been testing me, but I hadn’t realized the focus of his test. OK, lesson learned.

Buster asked Cpl Mays to send a runner to get the lieutenant. He then told the parents, through his translator, that the boy needed immediate attention back at the hospital or he would die. It was easy to tell when the translator got to the point about the boy dying. The father took a step back while the mother gasped, putting her arms around the neck of the unresponsive boy.

Lieutenant Hobbs came in with SSgt White, the platoon sergeant. Where the lieutenant was all serious earnestness, the platoon sergeant was a gruff, surly Marine who liked to do things his way, not by the book. He was over the weight limitations and was constantly on weight control, but he could hump all day, half carrying fitter-looking Marines when they faltered.

“What do you have, doc?” the platoon commander asked Buster.

“Sir, this boy here,” he started, pointing to the kid, “is pretty bad off. I’d say he’s got only a couple hours left. Back at Charlie Med, they might be able to save him. I think we need to get him there.”

“Remember what happened up at Haditha, sir,” SSgt White reminded the lieutenant.

At Haditha, the Marine CO had authorized life-saving treatment for a little Iraqi girl. She had to remain hospitalized, and some of the local bigwigs took offense at that. It had caused a pretty big brouhaha, and consequently, we had all been warned about taking in strays. We hadn’t been ordered not to do it, but we needed to use extreme discretion.

The lieutenant nodded, then asked Buster, “Charlie Med? Can’t our docs at Hurricane Point help him?”

I understood the lieutenant’s point. Charlie Med was the hospital over at Camp Ramadi, the main base in the city. It was “owned” by the National Guard. Our small aid station was under our control, and that gave us more leeway in how we handled things.

“No sir. I don’t think we have the treatment capabilities ourselves. He probably needs to go to Baghdad or Balad, but there’s no way he should be moved that far. He needs treatment, and fast. Like within an hour.”

2ndLt Hobbs didn’t look convinced. He looked up at the mother of the boy who looked back with hopeful eyes. She couldn’t understand what was being said, but I think she understood that the decision on what to do with the boy was in the platoon commander’s hands.

When it looked like the lieutenant was wavering, SSgt White said, “Remember what the skipper said. Do we really want to get into all that political shit?”

The lieutenant was a serious man, not given much to displays of emotions. But since taking over the platoon, it was pretty obvious that he cared for us. Not a show of caring, not merely acting in order to get us to follow him, but real caring. He was a compassionate person.

I could see him come to a decision, and I was pretty sure that we were going to try to save the boy’s life. He just started to say something when an Iraqi rushed in, shouted out a few words of Arabic, then ran back out.

Whatever he said had an immediate effect. All the Iraqis, translators included, quickly got up and rushed to the door. All of them. The father of the dying boy picked up his limp son and joined the exodus.

SSgt White beat all of them to the punch, though. As soon as the people started getting up, with a single “Shit!” he rushed out the door, the first one out of the building. I could hear him bellowing to the platoon to get ready.

“But sir!” Buster shouted at the boy’s father, regardless of the fact that the man did not understand English. “If he doesn’t get treatment, he’s going to die!”

The man ignored him. His wife did look back at us with a troubled look on her face, but she joined her husband and son in getting out of the room.

“Cpl Mays, wrap it up here and get to the vehicles,” the platoon commander ordered before he rushed out as well, pushing past Iraqis who were still trying to get out.

I had taken off my battle gear to treat the patients. Orders were to keep it on at all times, but I thought treating kids looking like that wouldn’t be conducive to getting their trust, so off it had come. I scrambled now to get it back on.

Buster, Cpl Mays’ team, and I followed the last of the Iraqis out. Outside, the place was rapidly getting deserted. There were a few backs still visible as every Iraqi tried to make himself scarce.

“I don’t like this shit,” Jerry Scanlon muttered, the fire team’s SAW gunner.

I grunted my agreement. If the hajiis scattered like this, that usually meant something was up. While we went out on purpose to close with and kill the enemy, this time, we were out on a humanitarian mission. I could see the lieutenant on the radio while SSgt White tightened up our defensive posture. I even unslung my M16 and scanned the buildings, waiting for them to hit us.

2ndLt Hobbs put down the radio and gave us the hand signal to mount up. I felt a surge of relief as I rushed to my hummer. We weren’t out of the woods yet. The Iraqis had run for a reason, and that reason could hit us at any time.

I think we were ready to roll in record time. Our route back had already been planned. It was not the same route as we had taken on the way in. We pulled out and made our way through the buildings, each one capable of hiding a hundred Al Qaeda insurgents.

After about five minutes, I heard the whup-whup of an Apache making a pass over us. In many ways, being a Marine battalion in a National Guard’s area of operations made things difficult for us, but in this case, I was glad of it. An Apache was a pretty serious helo, more lethal than the Marine’s Cobra. It even looked fierce.

Whether it was because of the Apache overwatch or us taking a different route back, we made it to Hurricane Point without being hit. Something had gone down, though, but we never found out what it was.

I often wondered later about the fate of the teenage boy. Intellectually, I knew he must have died later that day or night. I never even knew his name.

Chapter 6

Hurricane Point

April 22, 2006

“You going to the gym, doc?” Jerry asked as we walked back from chow.

“Fuck you,” I responded without rancor.

“Come on, get rid of that baby fat!”

“We just went on a 12-hour patrol, I’m tired, and I want to catch some z’s,” I said. “I’m hitting the rack.

“OK, OK. If you don’t want to be a lean, green fighting machine, that’s up to you,” he said, flexing his biceps in a beach pose. “Me, I’m gonna get me some iron before I hit the rack.”

I watched him peel off and head to the gym. This wasn’t Lejeune where people got into PT gear to exercise. Most Marines simply took off their blouse and had at it.

I hadn’t been kidding. Last night’s patrol sucked. We humped around all night, first as “camouflage” for dropping off a five-man sniper team at their hide, then making “house calls” on addresses given to us by the IPs, the Iraqi police. And we got into the shit again, for the second night in a row. We went into one house and the owner fought back, coming out of a room with an AK. He was taken down, but Steve Jenner was hit. I had gone into the house to treat him, but I couldn’t get my eyes off of the Iraqi man. He had taken four or five rounds dead center in his chest and was laying face-up on the floor of the room. His room, his house. I wondered if he was really an insurgent or just some hothead who didn’t want armed men tramping through his home. The IPs, though, thought he was an insurgent, one of the bomb makers. Bad guy or not, this was the first dead Iraqi I had seen up close and personal.

I bandaged up Jenner’s arm and he went back into the fight. He wouldn’t even consider going back, so I quit trying to suggest it and just told him to get his arm dressed at the battalion aid station when we got back.

I was looking forward to a shower and sleep as I walked back to our SWA. Before I got there, I came up on Rick Haddad, dressed in the oh-so fashionable shorts, t-shirt, flip-flops, towel around the shoulder, and full battle gear that told me he had just come back from the showers himself. I didn’t think I would ever get used to that ensemble, even when I was wearing it. There was something about flip-flops and flak jackets that just didn’t jive.

He was in some sort of argument with two other Marines. Rick was a lance corporal in the squad’s Third Fire Team. He was pretty mouthy and rather irreverent. Where other Marines ran around with their lusty “Oorahs,” his was a more sarcastic version of it, something that pissed some people off. He was a good Marine in the field, though, tough as nails.

He was also a Lebanese-American, and that earned him some grief at times. He didn’t speak Arabic, only the handful of words that all of us learned. He wasn’t Muslim. But that didn’t stop others from giving him shit about it, calling him “raghead” and stuff like that.

I didn’t know if whatever was going on was because of his mouth, his being Arab-American, or what, but it looked like he was giving as good as he was getting. He was up in the face of one of the other Marines, a guy a good four inches taller than him. They were both posturing up, and the third Marine hovered off Rick’s shoulder, adding to the shouting.

I just wanted to get back to my SWA, so I kept walking. Whatever it was, it was not my fight. Until the taller Marine gave Rick a shot in the chest that knocked him down, that is.

Rick was a tough son-of-a-bitch, so that had to have been a pretty good shot. He immediately jumped up and tackled the other guy, driving him to the ground. The third guy jumped on the pile and started pounding the back of Rick’s head while Rick wailed away on his opponent.

I looked around for an officer or staff NCO, but even for such a small camp, no one was in sight. I looked back at the three fighters, and the second guy had pulled Rick back with a headlock, giving the tall guy a chance to scramble up and begin to pound on Rick.

I’ve never been much of a fighter. My one school fight was back in 5 th grade when Justin Marks and I squared off over him taking my french fries during lunch. If I said it was a draw, well, that would have been generous with regards to my efforts. And I certainly did not want to be drawn into some stupid Marine macho shit. But Rick was getting it handed to him, and he was one of my squad mates.

With trepidation, I lowered my head and charged the three men, knocking the tall guy back off of Rick. He seemed surprised. That, or just the force of my rush, threw him flat, and somehow, I landed on top of him. I didn’t waste any time but started flailing away on the guy, punching as hard as I could. I probably got in half a dozen blows when he twisted, pushing me off to the side. I kept swinging, but I couldn’t really connect in that position. He got up to his knees, and now he was swinging. I tried to ward off the blows, but he connected two or three times in a row, and my face exploded.

I went crazy. I never felt that way before, but all I wanted to do was to kill the guy. Knowing Rick, this guy could have been in the right, but I didn’t care. When he smashed my nose, I lost all reason. I kicked and swung, all from my back. I don’t know if I connected, but if I didn’t, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

I felt hands grabbing me by the back of my flak jacket, pulling me off the guy. I turned and swung at my new assailant, connecting solidly on his chin. I was about to swing again when to my horror, I realized I had just hit Gunny Tora, our company gunny. I had just struck a staff NCO!

That knocked the fight out of me. I stared at him in shock.

“All of you, stop this shit!” he shouted, still holding me. “You!” he shouted at the tall Marine. “Who are you?”

“Uh, LCpl Whitten, H & S Company,” he told gunny, wiping his forearm across his nose.

I was in it deep, but still, I felt a thrill. I had connected with him.

“And you?”

“LCpl Thierry, Gunny. H & S Company,” said the second guy.

“You two, get back to your company CP. Report to Gunny Miller and tell him to hold you there until I get there.”

“Aye-aye, gunny,” they said in unison.

Thierry picked up his helmet, which had come off, and the two hurried off. Gunny looked back at us with fire in his eyes.

“What the fuck do you two dipwads think you’re doing? How about saving some of that for the fucking hajiis!”

I stared at his cheek, which was turning red where I had hit him. I was waiting for the explosion and charges.

He let go of me. “Both of you, get back to your hootch and don’t move a muscle until Sgt Butler gets there.”

“But, . . .” I started. I had just hit him. I knew the consequences of that.

“You got something to say, Cannon? Something other than that you two got into a fight with other Marines? That you stopped when I came up?”

I could see the swelling already start on his face. He knew I had hit him, but he also knew what would happen if he reported that. I couldn’t believe it. He was giving me a break!

“No Gunny! Nothing to say!”

“OK, the two of you, I want to see asses and elbows. Get to your hootch now!”

He didn’t have to tell us twice. Both of us took off at a run, and we didn’t stop until we were back.

“You OK, man?” Rick asked.

I didn’t even know, to be honest. But sitting on the edge of my rack, I took inventory. I’d had my battle gear on, so it would have been pretty hard to get to hurt, but my nose was swollen and beginning to ache. My hand hurt, too. I must have punched Whitten in the helmet or something.

“No, I’m all right,” I answered.

“That was pretty righteous, you know?” he said.

“I don’t know. I think I hit him once or twice, but it looks like he got me better.”

“Not that. I mean you were righteous, taking that big guy on like that, Doc.”

When I didn’t say anything, he went on, “I mean, I thought you weren’t much on fighting. You’re not too aggressive, if you know what I mean. Like you’re only putting in your time here.”

I thought about it for a second. Why had I joined the fight? I was not a fighter by nature. As corny as it sounded to me, I think it all had to do with that Marine Corps esprit de corps, about brotherhood. Rick could be an annoying loudmouth, but as one of my squadmates, he was our annoying loudmouth.

“Eh, I couldn’t let you have all the fun, you know,” I said, unwilling to get all mushy and sentimental.

“Well, you’re not too bad for a squid,” he said with a laugh.

“If you two are done with your love fest, maybe you can tell me what just happened? Gunny just tore me a new asshole.”

We both jumped when Sgt Butler stepped out in front of us. We’d never heard him come up.

“Ah, well, nothing, you know, Sergeant, nothing happened. Just a misunderstanding,” Rick stammered out.

“Nothing my ass. Haddad, you’ve got to keep that trap of your closed. Learn some friggin’ discipline!”

“But, . . . .”

“But nothing. You’re lucky the gunny is letting me take care of this, not the CO. How would you like a summary court instead?”

I gulped, I mean physically gulped. That was pretty serious stuff. That could result in 30 days in the brig at Fallujah.

“And you, Doc, what the heck do you think you were doing? You’re supposed to heal people, not mess them up.” He paused a moment, then his tone lightened up. “Did you really tackle the biggest one of them?”

“I guess so. The other one was on his back, and that guy, he was the only one I could get to.”

“We’ve got ourselves a warrior-doc, there Haddad. I think we’ll make a Marine of him yet.”

With that, he spun around and started to leave. “You’ve got the shit burning detail next week at the government center. Not just for us, but for the entire installation,” he shouted out over his shoulder. “Enjoy!”

Chapter 7

Government Center, Ramadi

April 26, 2006

“What, you’d think we’ve both got cooties or some shit,” Rick said as we walked into the building.

“I think ‘shit’ is the operative word,” I said as we both broke into laughter.

Living in the government center was an assault on anyone’s nose, but with us given the duty of burning the plastic bags of shit, well, I would guess we were pretty pungent. Our noses might have become deadened to the smell a bit, but judging from the way others avoided us, I imagine we were pretty ripe.

The first floor of the Government House itself was still pretty impressive despite every window being sandbagged. The ceiling had to be 20 feet high, and the big staircase leading up to the second deck could have doubled as some billionaire’s stairway. The ladders we took to get up to the roof were not as impressive, but that first one sure was.

A bulletin board had been put up on the second deck, and out of habit, we checked it. Different word tended to be passed there.

“Check this out. They want suggestions for the company t-shirts,” Rick said, pointing to one piece of paper.

I edged over to look.

The first one to catch my eye was “Fuck with us and we’ll fuck with you!”

“Eh, I don’t think the CO will accept that one,” I said with a laugh.

Captain Wilcox was a tough mother, but a born-again Christian, or at least a pretty devout guy, and he didn’t accept swearing by his Marines. Personally, I think he was trying to hold back the flood with the proverbial finger in the dyke. Back in the real world, I was never much of a guy for swearing and stuff, but out here in the Sandbox, everyone, and I mean everyone cursed. It’s “fuck this” and “shit that.” I think even the chaplain probably lets out a “shit” or two.

“Here’s a good one,” Rick said, pointing.

“Kilo Company: Killed More People Than Cancer.”

“Oh, man, that’s cold,” I said.

“You know, I bet we can come up with something if we tried,” he said, excitement rising in his voice.

“Yea, like ‘Come to Iraq and Burn Your Shit’!” I said.

“No, I’m serious. We could do it,” he insisted.

“Well, we’d better do it up on the roof. We were supposed to get up there as soon as we finished with the detail.”

“Yea, but think about it, OK?”

We turned away and started up the smaller ladder to go up another floor. Rick and I had started hanging out, not just on the shit detail, but during our free time. I even asked Sgt Butler if I could move with Third Fire Team during our patrols. We couldn’t BS while on patrol, of course, but it felt good knowing he had my six.

Rick was from Longmont, Colorado. He’d been born there after his parents had left Lebanon as refugees. His father had worked for the Marines and had been in the barracks in Beruit when they had been bombed. After that, his dad had requested asylum, and it had been granted. Rick grew up a typical Colorado kid, worshipping the Broncos and living each winter on skis. His parents moved to Dearborn during his senior year in high school, but he had stayed with a friend until graduation. He spent a semester at the Colorado School of Mines before deciding that school wasn’t for him, so he enlisted.

Despite his fatal flaw of being a Broncos fan, we actually had a lot in common. And even while surrounded by the shit smoke, I didn’t regret coming to his aid one bit. It was a pretty good thing to have a friend.

As we came out onto the roof, we had to endure the expected jibes: “It’s the shit brothers,” “You smell like crap,” “Can’t you get your shit together?”

“Ha, ha, ha,” Rick responded in a deadpan voice. “That is so funny, I don’t know when I’ll stop laughing.”

He went to his position while I relieved Buster, who had stayed on with my squad while I was burning shit. The Marines had to have coverage all the time, and he hadn’t batted an eye about staying an extra 45 minutes. That amount of time might not seem like much, but when it took away from maybe 45 minutes of sleep, it took on a different perspective.

I thanked him, then sat down to inventory my kit. I hadn’t wanted it around me while I was on the detail for fear of contamination, so now that I was on duty, I wanted to make sure I had everything I might need. This was our third time at the center, and so far, I had done nothing more than sick call. We’d been hit quite often, but it seemed more like harassing fire. India, though, had taken some shit last week. They’d had to casevac one of their staff sergeants to Balad and off to Lansdstuhl after he’d taken some serious shrapnel from a mortar round up here on the roof. A couple of other guys had been hit, too, but nothing very serious.

“You starting any more fights there, Doc?” Sgt Butler asked as he came up.

“Who me, Sarge? Never in a million years!”

“Good. We don’t need you taking out any of our Marines. You just be ready for the call of ‘Medic up!’”

Since I started calling him “Sarge,” he had started to retaliate by referring to me as a “medic.” Buster had overheard him do it and wanted to go correct him. No Navy corpsman is a “medic,” and Buster, full of righteous fury, was going to set my squad leader straight. I had to pull him back and assure him that Sgt Butler was just pulling my chain, that is was an inside joke. Buster huffed and puffed, then said it wasn’t funny and that NCO’s shouldn’t be joking with E2’s. He left it alone, though.

“Vehicle approaching down Michigan,” La’Ron Talbot called out.

Sgt Butler joined SSgt White as they made their way to the north side of the roof. I decided to follow.

“Yea, looks like it’s that reporter coming to cover the conference,” my squad leader said.

“Where was he from? What did the lieutenant say? The NY Times ?” asked SSgt White.

“Not the lieutenant. That WM major. But yes, that’s where he’s from. Too late to the party, though. Only six of the provincial ministers showed up. Six out of 36. They’ve already taken off, leaving the gov here to man the fort alone,” Sgt Butler said.

“’Man the fort alone?’ With a company of Marines, Triple Canopy, that SEAL team that came in, and what, 50 or 60 others? He’s hardly alone.”

“You know what I mean, staff sergeant. The sheiks here, they won’t give him the time of day ‘cause he’s a commoner. His ministers keep getting knocked off. Al Qaeda’s tried to do him, what 30 times now? But that doesn’t stop him. He keeps coming in to work each day like he’s the governor of Delaware, not Al Anbar.”

I looked up at Sgt Butler in a little bit of a new light. I knew he was a kick-ass Marine. I didn’t know he was looking into all the politics in all of this. Like most everyone else, I really didn’t pay too much attention to that. I knew we were in Sunni land, and I knew the Shia and the Sunnis were going at it when they weren’t going after us. After that, I really didn’t care much. Even if we went out and gave out soccer balls and treated sick Iraqis, I still had the mentality that it was us versus them. And by them, I meant all of them, all Iraqis.

“Ah, whatever. He’s still just a raghead as far as I’m concerned,” SSgt White said while we watched the reporter get escorted into the building.

Sgt Butler looked like he wanted to say something, but he just shrugged his shoulders and kept quiet.

Here at the government center, we had civil affairs Marines, guys whose job it was to help build up the country. They lived in this shithole, getting mortared and shot at every day. And for what? To help the Iraqis. We had the governor, coming in to the government center each day, risking himself just to show a degree of normalcy to his constituents. If all Iraqis were the same, that they wanted to take out their own governor, then what the fuck were we doing here?

We were spending lives and taxpayers money because we thought that they were not all the same. We helped Japan and Germany rebuild after WWII. They had been our enemies, and now they were among our strongest allies. I hoped our efforts here in Iraq would have the same degree of success.

A huge explosion broke my train of thought. Smoke billowed not 100 yards from the gate. The hummer that had brought the reporter must have been hit. It was rare for vehicles to travel Michigan alone just for this reason. There was no support. On the roof, we all got ready. Below us, down in building we called home while we were here, Second Platoon, the Quick Reaction Force, would be getting ready to dash out if needed.

Just as 2ndLt Hobbs rushed up to the roof, we could see the four Marines from the hummer walking back down Michigan as if nothing had happened. One looked back, then we could see him laugh as he slapped another of them on the shoulder.

It seemed surreal to me that these Marines could be so nonchalant about getting blown up. I understood gallows humor, but there were even pools put together, $10 to enter, on who would have the most vehicles blown up underneath him by the time we rotated back to Lejeune.

The sun was already going down, so it wasn’t murderously hot, but still, I need to keep the Marines hydrated. I swear some of them didn’t have enough sense to drink when they needed to. I started grabbing water bottles and distributing them.

Cpl Dunlop, the new Second Fire Team leader, took all of this team’s water when I came up. He had come over from First Platoon after Cpl Deacon had been casevac’d. He hadn’t done any of the workups with us, so he kept doing things like this so Runolfson and Pierce (who was back to full duty after taking shrapnel in his arm and leg) knew he was in charge. It had been over a month now, so I thought he was going a bit too far. He was a new corporal, true, but he could take some lessons from Mays and Choi, the other two fire team leaders.

As I was giving out the water, HM2 Sylvester came to the roof. I saw him come up, and I was glad I was doing something when he came instead of just sitting on my ass.

HM2 Sylvester was the First Squad and platoon corpsman both. I wasn’t sure how much influence he had on my next duty station, or if it was Senior Chief (or even 2ndLt Hobbs, for that matter.) But I figured if I wanted to get into C School, I needed to keep him impressed.

Sylvester was like Buster in some ways. He was a die-hard “green” corpsman, mighty proud of his FMFEWS. He had never served with the Navy, from what I had heard. He didn’t look like what most people would expect of someone who served with the Marines, though. He reminded me of a penguin, to be honest, from his penguin shape to his waddle when loaded down with his battle gear. He had a Silver Star, though, from the initial invasion back in 2003. I’d only heard rumors about what he’d done to get it, but he’d also earned a Purple Heart at the same time, so it must have been pretty hairy. Medal or not, the guy had the undying respect of the Marines in the platoon. Even the lieutenant and SSgt White gave him his dues.

He sat down on an MRE box, then motioned for me to sit as I finished passing out the water.

“Everything going OK?” he asked.

“Not bad. You know Pacman, I mean PFC Lopez, is down with a heavy cough and sore throat, but the rest, everyone’s OK. No issues.”

“Yes, I checked with Lopez an hour ago. I think he’ll be fine in a day or so.”

Pacman was down in our berthing spaces. I hadn’t seen any reason to get him back to Hurricane Point.

“You know, you’re doing a pretty good job, Zach. There was some concern with you being only an HA, and we had a chance to bring in an HM from India after your fight with the H & S Marines, but Sgt Butler said he’d just as soon have you as his corpsman.”

This was news to me. Very welcome news. I was surprised and more than a little touched that Sgt Butler would stick up for me.

“Have you thought about working on your FMFEWS?” he asked, much to my surprise.

“Uh, HM2, I, uh, well . . . I’m glad you think I can qualify, but really, after this tour, I want C School to be a radiology tech. I’m not really cut out to be an FMF Corpsman.”

There was a pause as Sylvester looked off in the distance. I hoped I hadn’t pissed him off saying I didn’t want to be stay with the Corps.

“Don’t sell yourself short, Zach. You are cut out for it. Sgt Butler is a pretty good judge of character, and from what I’ve seen, from what Buster has seen, what Terry Banks has seen, well, we are all in agreement on that.”

Buster Seychiik was a recruiter at heart, so that didn’t surprise me. But Terry Banks was not FMFEWS qualified, nor did he want to be. He was anxious to get back to the Navy side of medicine.

“Well, anyway, just think about it.”

He stood up, hitched up his flak jacket, and left, disappearing down below. I really had no intention of going native. I had to admit, that while much of Ramadi sucked, being with the Marines was not as bad as I had expected. I would still rather be back at Balboa Naval Hospital, back with my family, back with a clean room and good chow. But if I had to be out here in the middle of the desert getting shot at by radical insurgents, I’d probably not be able to find a better group of guys to be with.

I looked over to Rick as he glassed the area around the government center. I had a feeling that he and I would be friends for long, long time. I would never have met him if I hadn’t been assigned to the Marines, to 3/8 in particular.

I looked at my watch. Another 90 minutes and we’d be done up here for eight hours. Eight hours to see if there was any hot chow, eight hours to try and clean up. Eight hours to sleep. I knew some of the other companies did eight hours on and 16 off, but Capt Wilcox thought eight hours on made us lose our focus. So we did the four on and eight off instead.

Some previous battalions even had their companies take security at the government center for one day at a time. Sometimes I think we just loved to reinvent the wheel. We wanted things with our stamp on them.

In Ramadi, there was the continual sound of warfare going on. Ramadi was a big city, and the National Guard kept Michigan open and ran patrols, even if they avoided certain areas. We had Marines at Blue Diamond and Hurricane Point, and the National Guard was at Camp Ramadi and Corregidor. We also had COPs around the city. That gave lots of targets for the hajiis to hit. I heard three of the distinctive thunks of outgoing mortars, so I got up to see if I could spot where the rounds would land. I wandered over to where Rick was.

“Any bets on the target?” he asked me.

“The Point?” I hazarded a guess.

“Too close. I think it’s us,” he replied.

“Maybe,” I conceded as I hunched down up against the low wall that surrounded the roof.

“What’d Sylvester want,” he asked me.

“Eh, he thinks I should get my FMFEWS qual. Says I would be good at it.”

“And here I thought he was a pretty good judge of character. Just goes to show you how wrong you can be,” he said.

I reached up to smack him on the back of his helmet just at the mortar landed on the roof. I felt the blast, the heat and dirt flying. At the same time, I felt a sting on the back of my hand and another on my arm. Below us, in the courtyard, I could hear two more explosions, but I was more concerned with my hand. It started to bleed, and I wiped it away to see the damage. It felt worse than it was. I had been hit by one piece of shrapnel in my forearm that looked to have just left a gash, and another small piece was lodged in the back of my hand.

Shouts rang out, checking on everyone. One cut through the cacophony.

“Hey, Doc! Can you come here?”

It was Cpl Choi. He was holding his shin, and I could see the blood staining his cammies. Forgetting my own little scratch, I rushed over. He’d been hit in the front of his leg, which seemed weird. I wasn’t sure what he’d been doing to get hit like that.

A machine gun opened up in the distance, and I could hear the rounds chatter as they impacted on the wall of the building. I ducked down as I pulled Cpl Choi’s hands away. He’d taken a pretty good gash, and it would need stitches, but like mine, it looked worse than it really was.

Sgt Butler came rushing over. “You OK, John?” he asked.

“Sure thing. Doc’s just going to bandage me up, then I’m good to go.”

Sgt Butler looked at me, the unspoken question clear. I nodded.

“He’s going to be fine,” I agreed.

I could put a pressure bandage on him, and then get him taken care of later.

Another huge explosion rocked us, but only smoke made it over the wall. It was probably an RPG, not the most effective weapon while we were in defilade. The mortars undoubtedly fired their load, then took off. Our counterbattery abilities were just too deadly for them to hang around and fire for long.

The squad was returning fire by now, and we had incoming. This was an honest-to-goodness firefight. With all the rounds impacting around us, I knew someone had to get hit just by the law of averages. I could hear the impact of incoming below us, too, in the courtyard and the other buildings.

We had well over a hundred Kilo Company Marines at the compound. There were the other Marines, soldiers, and civilians in the Provincial Reconstruction Team, but they were supposed to hunker down in the event of an attack. And this was a full-fledged attack.

A burst of tracers flew over my head as I ducked down. I wasn’t sure how anyone could get direct fire into us on the roof, but those tracers were too close to comfort. The walls on the roof were a good meter high, but I low-crawled to check on each of the Marines. Pierce was hit again, but not seriously. We were here less than two months, and he already had two purple hearts. He had to be some sort of shrapnel magnet. I cleaned out his wound and slapped a bandage on it.

After only a few minutes, the other two squads made it to the roof and everyone shifted to give them room. We had the entire platoon up there. The other two platoons would be down below, keeping any bad guys from coming in. Our job was to support them from our higher vantage point.

A first lieutenant came up the stairs and out onto the roof to join us, his R/O in tow. He had a quick meeting with the lieutenant, then moved to his vantage point. Holding the handset from his radio, his R/O on the ground beside him, he started passing messages.

More tracer rounds went over our heads. The insurgents had to have more than one machine gun targeting us. The arty lieutenant evidently spotted where one of the machine guns was, because he got excited and started giving out coordinates.

The rounds kept pouring in, and an RPG rocket skipped over our heads. I could clearly see it as it crested the wall by about two feet and kept going to land somewhere out there in Indian country.

We could hear the sound when the arty rounds passed over us, on their way from Camp Ramadi to wherever the lieutenant had sent them. For a moment, all of us paused and heads popped up to watch. There were several huge explosions not 400 meters away, and the volume of incoming fire slackened. There were several cheers, and the lieutenant and his R/O gave each other a high five.

Buster Seychik slid up to me and said, “Let me take a look at your hand.”

With all that had happened, I had forgotten that I’d been hit. Now that he reminded me, my hand began to burn.

He took a quick look.

“Not much there, but I don’t want to remove it here. After all of this is over, we’ll get it out. Your arm though, that’s a clean cut.” He rinsed my hand, bandaged the small hunk of metal in place, then slapped a bandage on my forearm.

The firing slacked off some, but it was pretty constant for the next two hours. We’d been hit before while on patrol, but that was nothing like the sustained attack that was going on. No one on the roof was hit again, but below us, the call of “Corpsman up!” rang out at least three times.

Darkness fell, and that didn’t make a difference. We had plenty of night vision goggles, but I couldn’t figure that they had any. But that didn’t stop them from attacking.

“Man, look at those idiots,” I heard Jenner say, looking below with his goggles.

He and Rick raised their weapons when the heavy staccato of a .50 cal opened up.

“Oh, shit!” Rick said in awe. “That fucked up their day!”

“Well, whaddaya expect? Coming across in the open like that. Probably suicide bombers.”

“Well, I guess First Platoon only gets a suicide assist on that one, though. Sent them off but good. They should thank First for getting them to their 79 virgins.”

I asked Rick to borrow his goggles. I slipped them on, then peeked over the edge of the roof wall.

“Over there, by the northwest corner of the Swiss Cheese,” Rick offered helpfully.

I looked in that direction, trying to get my perspective in the flattened, monotone view. It took a moment before what I was seeing registered. There were probably five bodies out there, not 100 meters from the compound. I say probably because two or three of them were so torn up, I couldn’t be sure, at this distance, how many parts were there. A .50 cal round would do a lot of damage to a body.

I slid back, then gave the goggles back to Rick. I glanced at my bandaged hand and tried to imagine what would have happened had I been hit by one of the big rounds.

The firing slacked off, then picked up. Slacked off again and picked up. SSgt White said they were firing, then moving. That didn’t stop the sniper team on the roof from scoring a couple of kills. There were two teams up there with us: Cpl Lindt, the odd-looking sniper, and his assistant and another team. They seemed to be having some sort of macabre contest to see who could kill the most attackers.

Captain Wilcox came up several times, the last time with another captain. We’d been getting some increased machine gun fire, and along with the first sergeant, 2ndLt Hobbs, and the lieutenant who called in the artillery fire, they discussed this for a few minutes before giving way to the captain who came up with the CO. He had some sort of high-speed-low-drag radio, and he got on it.

“He’s the FAO,” Cpl Choi said. “They’re going to call in air on the bastards.”

Five minutes later, the dark became day for an instant as fire erupted skyward about 400 or 500 meters away. An entire building, and anyone inside of it, ceased to exist. It was there one moment, gone the next.

There were exclamations of “Fuck!” and the inevitable “Get some!” At that moment, deep in the very core of my being, I was glad I was an American. Glad I was with the Marines, instead of some third-world insurgent facing them.

The ruins of the building were pretty visible in the resultant fires. Like a campfire, the flames drew and captured the eyes. I think we were offering plenty of targets for a sniper as we watched, but whoever was out there was evidently in no mood to fight. All incoming stopped, except for a single magazine being emptied in our direction about 15 minutes later. I could imagine the frustration and anger one of the attackers must have felt, and emptying the magazine was probably just an expression of that frustration.

After about 30 minutes or so, while still remaining on alert, we began to stand down somewhat. Our platoon had five WIAs, none seriously. First Platoon had two fairly serious WIAs and Third Platoon had one, but despite the huge amount of fire, no one was killed. No Americans, that is. There had to be 20 or 30 Iraqis killed.

HM2 Sylvester checked out my hand again.

“The shrapnel’s pretty small, but it’s in there tight, and it might be lodged under your tendons. It doesn’t make sense to try and pull it out now. I’m going to get you to Charlie Med and let the surgeons take care of it. Don’t move your hand anymore, though. If the metal’s under one of your tendons or nerves, we don’t want you abrading your way through it. You’re going to be fine, so don’t worry about it.”

I never thought that I could actually damage my hand. Could that keep me from become a radiology tech? It was such a tiny piece of metal.

“Here’s the hero,” Rick said as he came up. “Free license plates for life, right?”

“What?”

“You know, for your Purple Heart. You get free license plates for your car. All for that little bee sting you call a wound. One, I might add, would have been mine if your hand hadn’t been in the way.”

“Well, sorry I had to save your ass there, Marine. Saved by a squid, huh?”

“Took my benny, more like it. Next time, save some for me. Well, unless it’s a big mother fucking grenade or something. In that case, it all yours,” he said with a laugh.

“Haddad!” Sgt Butler said as he came up. “You’ve got the fire team until Cpl Choi’s back on full duty. And since Doc Cannon here’s going to be on light duty, too, well, I guess you’re off the shit burning detail. You two get below, get cleaned up, and get some rest. We’re back on in . . .” he paused to look at his watch, “in just about 6 hours.”

Chapter 8

Charlie Med, Camp Ramadi

April 27, 2006

“It’s your call. We think it will be a fairly simple surgery, but there is a chance of complications. If you’d rather go and get the procedure at Balad, we’ll get that done.”

The Navy surgeon looked to me for my answer. He had introduced himself to me, but his name slipped my mind, and he didn’t have a nametag on his scrubs. I didn’t even know his rank.

I looked down at my hand. It was only slightly inflamed, but the little bit of protruding metal was very evident. It was what was under my skin that caused the concern. With the congestion of nerves, bones, and tendons in the hand, taking the piece of shrapnel out could cause more damage than when it went in. Charlie Med had X-ray machines, but not the entire line of diagnostic imaging machines that would let the surgeons know exactly what was happening inside my hand.

For the first time, I began to get a little concerned. I had been told not to flex my fingers, but I involuntarily did so as I looked at my hand. It was a little hard to believe that there was an issue. My hand hurt, but it worked fine. The piece of shrapnel was small, maybe the size of my little fingernail. How could that be causing the surgical team concern when they were used to treating massive injuries?

HM2 Sylvester had been about to tease the shrapnel out of my hand back at the government center, for goodness sake. And now these surgeons hesitated?

I hadn’t even been in much of a hurry to seek treatment. I’d caught a ride from the government center late in the morning, then grabbed hot chow at Camp Ramadi first thing. In Ramadi, there was a definite hierarchy of comfort. At the bottom of the ladder was the government center, and probably the COPs. I’m guessing at the COPs as I had never been to one, nor to Corregidor, so I couldn’t say for sure from personal experience. Basically speaking, the government center sucked. Next up the ladder was Hurricane Point and Blue Diamond. Most of the Marines were at the Point, and while our SWAs were pretty basic, at least we got hot chow and had a few facilities to make life easier. At the top of the ladder, that Shangri-la, at least to us Marines, was Camp Ramadi. They had a small PX, or BX, I guess the Army folks called it. Hell, they had organized sports on the base. As I walked to see the docs, I looked on with more than a bit of envy as a team practiced hoops at a makeshift court. I might never have been Kobe Bryant, but I could bring it.

I eventually made my way over to Charlie Med, ready for a quick removal, a stitch or two, then getting back to the Point and my platoon. We were going back on duty in a few hours, and I needed to get back before that. Things weren’t working out that way, though. One of the Army docs took a look at my hand, then referred me to the surgical team. I had X-rays taken, then three surgeons took a look while they conferred with each other. This was pretty ridiculous. It was only a tiny piece of shrapnel! Bobo Smith in First Squad had taken a round though-and-through in his biceps during the attack, and he was already back at the Point, arm bandaged up, ready to go out again.

The surgeon was standing there, waiting for my decision. I looked back down at my hand. It really didn’t look like much. I didn’t understand their concern, to be honest, but I did trust their skill. I’d heard really good things about them, and I’d rather have Navy surgeons than the Air Force surgeons they probably had at Balad. I’m sure the Air Force docs were great and all, but keeping it in the family made sense.

I didn’t really want to leave, either. If I went to Balad, when would I get back? Who would take care of my Marines?

That thought struck me. My Marines? I just wanted to get done with my tour and move on to C School, right? And now I wanted to get back in time to go on duty? It was a strange world.

I looked back up at the doctor and said, “No, you do it.”

A smile broke over his face as he replied, “Great! Let’s get you prepped and take care of it!”

One of the nurses helped me off the examining table and led me to a shower, giving me pretty detailed instructions on getting clean. It was overkill, I thought. I knew how to shower, and I was a corpsman, after all. I understood the importance of keeping as sterile an environment as possible.

I got out of the shower and into surgical gown. Like millions of other people who have worn them, I wondered at having my ass hang out in the breeze. There had to be a better way to design them. A different nurse led me to one of the operating tables and had me lay down on it. She was a tiny woman with the dark looks that made me think she was a Filipina. Tiny or not, she knew how to take charge.

“OK, HA Cannon . . . Zachary, right?” she asked, but went on before I could acknowledge her. “I’m LTJG Quijano. I’ll be assisting Dr. Hawkins in this.”

Hawkins, LCDR Hawkins. Right! That was the surgeon’s name!

“We’ll get you sterilized, then we’ll give you local. I’m sure there won’t be any problems. Dr. Hawkins is about the best there is.”

She supervised the attachment of a small, well, tray, I guessed you would call it, on which my arm would be placed, keeping it in a position that gave the surgeon the best access to it. She then told one of the guys, probably a corpsman, but I guessed he could have been a nurse, too, to scrub down my entire arm with a Betadine solution.

Another man came out, probably one of the doctors. It was a bit hard to know who was who when everyone was in scrubs. He spoke with the nurse, then came over to look at my hand.

“This will feel like bee sting,” he said in a somewhat rote tone of voice as if he had said it a million times before, “and then it will numb right up.”

A “bee sting.” That was exactly what I had told that little Iraqi girl before I stitched her up. The tables had turned.

And you know what? It did feel like a bee sting. The first shot, that is. The next two were put into tissue that was already feeling numb.

“You OK, there? How does it feel?” he asked.

“Local analgesia has set in,” I answered.

For some reason, I didn’t want this doctor to think I was the normal Marine or soldier being brought in, that I was in the medical field myself. So I used “analgesia,” sure that no one not in the medical field would use the term. I shouldn’t have bothered.

“Good, good,” he said. “Let LTJG Quijano know if you begin to feel anything.”

He left and the JG moved to my side. She really looked young, younger than me. Younger than Amy. But she was a nurse, so he had to have already earned a nursing degree.

“Dr. Hawkins will be here in a few moments, and we’ll get you out of here in no time.”

Only he wasn’t. Charlie Med got a call about incoming. A National Guard hummer had been hit by an IED. There was one KIA and two WIAs. The surgical team went into hyper drive getting ready for the two wounded soldiers. My entire operating table with me on it was pushed to the side of the room.

The whup-whup of a Black Hawk announced the two soldier’s arrival. I could feel the tension in the room increase. I realized this was their war, the medical team, and it was just as important, if not more important, than mine. They might not going out into the fight, but they had their own demons with which to contend. They fought to save life and limb.

The two wounded soldiers were rushed in and placed on the two tables that now took center stage. Charlie Surgical split into two well-oiled machines, one taking each soldier. The soldiers’ uniforms were quickly cut off, and they both were swapped down with Betadine. I caught bits and pieces of what was happening as the surgeons shouted out orders.

One soldier was in pretty bad shape. He was the one closest to me, and I saw his uniform was covered in blood as someone shoved the pieces into a plastic bag. His surgeon, LCDR Hawkins ordered blood, and bag after bag was given to him as the team struggled to save him.

I couldn’t see as much of the other soldier, but he didn’t look as bad off. His team kept focusing on any head wound, noting that his right pupil was dilated and non-responsive. I knew enough, though, to understand that appearances did not always mean who was worse off.

In this case, though, appearances were probably reflective of what was happening. The team on the first soldier got more and more frantic, the tone of the orders being given going up several notches. Dr. Hawkins kept yelling out for more blood as they tried to save the soldier’s life. When he reached up from the abdominal cavity and began cardiac compressions, I knew the situation was dire. After ten minutes of that, he slowed, stopped, and stepped back.

“I’m calling it,” he said in a subdued voice.

The entire team visibly deflated. In their own war, they had just lost the battle.

Dr. Hawkins seemed to gather himself, then moved over to the other table, careful not to get too close and contaminate that theater. He asked for an update.

I kept staring at the dead soldier as two people in scrubs started cleaning up the scene, so I didn’t catch everything. Essentially, the second soldier had some minor and moderate injuries that had been taken care of, but he was concussed and needed care. Dr. Hawkins ordered a medevac, then left the room.

“We need to change and get scrubbed, but we’ll be back for you,” LTJG Quijano said as she approached me.

I looked over at my hand again. One tiny piece of shrapnel, one little speck of iron. That was nothing. Over on that other table, not five meters from me, a soldier lay dead. I felt like an imposter, a malingerer.

I just nodded and continued to watch as the soldier’s body was given the first steps necessary to get him back home to his family. When the black plastic body bag came out, there was a degree of finality to it.

They used a body bag on the other soldier, too. Iraq is a hot place, of course. But when flying wounded, the docs wanted to keep the patients warm, and the body bags did a pretty good job at that. We called them “hot pockets.”

The dead soldier’s body was taken out to the temporary morgue while a soldier consulted with some of Charlie Surgical’s staff about the casevac. I overheard the name of the wounded soldier: Specialist 4 Ernesto Padilla Pérez. While they were getting ready to bring him outside to meet the incoming Black Hawk, he began to stir for the first time. One of the team members put his hand on the body bag where is covered the soldier’s leg, obviously trying to give comfort. It had the opposite effect. I think Spec 4 Padilla Pérez must have come to and realized he was in a body bag and thought he had died. He started shouting about being dead, and it took several minutes and four people to calm him down, to assure him he was alive and going to get help. Whether they got through or not, or whether the half-conscious soldier simply drifted back into full unconsciousness, I wasn’t sure.

Right about then, Dr. Hawkins and his team came back in. It was like they all were different people. They had left dejected, and they came back seemingly ready to go. I was moved back over to center stage, right in the same spot that the first soldier had died.

“HA Cannon, you ready to get your hand taken care of?” he asked, pulling up my chart once more.”

“Yes, sir,” I answered.

I just wanted to get out of Charlie Surgical and back to my squad.

The doctor had me re-sterilized, and I was given the anesthetic again as the first series had already worn off. Surrounded by the team, the doctor began to explore my hand.

On my back, the surgical lights were extremely bright, almost painfully bright. I guessed most of their patients were unconscious, so maybe it didn’t matter.

“Well, that was easy,” I heard him say.

I looked over to see Dr. Hawkins hold aloft a small piece of shrapnel in his forceps. It was already out.

“Let’s take a look here and see what damage was done,” he said.

I didn’t think he was talking to me, so I didn’t respond.

He poked around my hand for a few minutes, asking the opinions of some of the others before he stepped back.

“Nothing. No damage.”

He picked the forceps back up and held them in front of me. I could see two very jagged edges, sort of protrusions that had been under my skin.

“You’re a lucky man, there, Cannon. If anyone had tried to simply pull this up and out of your hand, you would have needed microsurgery to make the repairs. Even then, your hand may never have been back to 100%. But coming back exactly on the path it took in, well, it came out without a whimper. Your hand is fine.”

Yesterday, I would have said my hand would be fine. But with all the concern expressed since then, my anxiety level had risen. It was a huge relief to hear the surgeon’s words.

“We’re going to flush this out, then give you a couple of sutures and send you back to your unit.”

I felt a squeeze on my other arm. I looked over to see LTJG Quijano. Even with her mask covering her face, I could see from her eyes that she was smiling.

Her smile, however, could not possibly be bigger than the one that took over my face as I heard the news.

Chapter 9

Ramadi

April 28, 2006

Another house call. I wasn’t sure what mission I dislike the most. At the Government House, we were essentially targets, waiting for the bad guys to come. But we were in back of walls or up on the roof, and we had fire support dialed in. In a house call, we were skulking around in the middle of the night, out there in the bad guys’ neighborhoods. We were moving on our terms, taking the fight to them, but we were way more exposed.

A house call was when we were given the names and location of a bomb maker, leader of the insurgency, or any high-level target. We’d go out in the middle of the night and try and take the guy—alive if possible, but dead was OK, too. On a normal patrol we didn’t have a specific target, so we could go as the skipper, the lieutenant, or as Sgt Butler deemed fit. On a house call, however, we needed to get the guy.

This was a platoon operation. First and Second had their own targets, and the skipper wanted all three “served” at the same time. Other than the timing, though, we were on our own.

We were already in the small alley near our target, just waiting for the other two platoons to get into their positions. This time, Second Squad would be the first to bust inside the house. Third Squad was positioned in another small alley in back of the house, and First Squad would provide additional security towards the front of the target building and reinforce us if needed.

I looked down at my hand. It was dark, and I had a glove on, so I couldn’t see anything. I’d take a bit of good-natured shit from the others on it. It certainly looked less serious than most of what the other wounded Marines had. I didn’t bother to tell them that another millimeter more or someone casually taking it out would have resulted in permanent damage. I just nodded, said I was a pussy, and let it go. Without me fighting back, it wasn’t any fun, and it was soon forgotten. HM2 Sylvester was the only one I told. I figured he should know that his decision not to try and remove it was the right one.

We waited in the dark for close to 30 minutes. The longer we waited, the more exposed we were. As a rule, Iraqis in Ramadi didn’t get out and about at night too much. But that is not to say no one did. The guys setting the IEDs sure did. Other people did, too, when they had to get something done. We didn’t need some passerby to stumble on us crouching in the dark and then raise the alarm.

Finally, the lieutenant must have gotten the word because he motioned Sgt Butler to move out. Carefully, hugging the walls of the buildings alongside the alley, we moved our stack forward. We got to the road, and right across the street from us was our target, a non-descript, two-story building. Like most homes in Ramadi that didn’t front right on the street, this one had a masonry wall in front of it, the metal gate opening out onto the street. In back of the wall would be a smallish courtyard, then the house itself another six or seven meters back.

Sgt Butler flipped down his night vision goggles, moved forward, and looked down the road on both sides. It must have been clear because he sent Cpl Dunlop and his team rushing over and up against the home’s wall as the assault element. Cy Pierce reached up and slowly tried to pull the gate latch open.

Usually, these latches were locked. Sometimes, they were not locked, but opening them made a loud enough screech to raise the dead. This time, we were lucky. The latch opened, and Second Fire Team slipped inside. A few long moments later, a hand stuck back out the gate and motioned us forward.

Rick’s Third Fire Team, which was the support element, rushed forward along with Sgt Butler and me. We slipped inside the gate and into a courtyard. The use of cement made it fairly light inside, and visibility was pretty good for 2:30 in the morning. There was nothing too remarkable about it, no big surprises. It was about 6 meters deep and ran the length of the house. Halfway to the house was a small step, then a two concrete pillars held up a small roof covering the front doors. Cpl Dunlop had his two Marines up against the building just to the left of the door. Rick took his two Marines and moved up to the building to the right of the door.

As Sgt Butler and I stopped by the courtyard’s step, what looked liked a large flowerpot gave a whump and fell apart. That’s what it looked like to me, at least. Granted, it was dark, but I was looking right at it when the front seemed to fall off and to the hard deck of the courtyard. We heard a shout from the second story, but it didn’t seem to register to me.

It did to Sgt Butler. He grabbed me and literally threw me up against the house as the world erupted into noise. Small arms fire started pouring out from all three second story windows. Rounds started pinging around the courtyard, throwing up chips of cement. I looked back at the dust that was rising from where I had been standing just a moment before. If Sgt Butler hadn’t reacted like he did, I would already have been dead meat. This close to the wall, those above were having a hard time hitting us, but the rounds that were striking only a foot from us were proof that if we weren’t up against the wall, we would be getting clobbered.

I hugged the front of the house as fire from First Squad began to impact above us. The Marines with me swiveled up and began to fire, trying to keep whomever was up there from firing down at us.

Steve Jenner was laying just to my right. He pulled out a grenade, shouted “Frag,” and looked to try and loft it in one of the windows above me. Rick lunged forward to grab his hand.

“The angle’s too shallow!” he shouted. “It’ll fall back down on us!”

The Iraqis above us didn’t have the same problem. A grenade came flying down, but the thrower hadn’t gotten a good enough angle, so it bounced away a couple of meters, towards the front of the courtyard. Several voices yelled out “Grenade!” as we all tried to burrow into the concrete. The explosion was huge, but no one was hit.

Lying there in the ground, I looked over to the flower pot that had fallen apart. From this vantage, I could see a wire coming out of the back of it. It had been rigged to explode, but for the grace of God, something had gone wrong. The thing had only partially detonated. And that was why I was still alive. That and Sgt Butler pulling me out of the kill zone.

A strong arm grabbed the back of my flak jacket and pulled my face off the deck.

“Fire your fucking weapon, Doc!” Sgt Butler screamed at me.

I looked at him in confusion. I was the corpsman, not one of them. I hadn’t fired my weapon since FMSS back at Pendleton.

“Now, Doc!” he thundered.

I was clutching my M16 in my hands, and I looked down on it for a moment. I turned to my back, raised the muzzle and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. I pulled the rifle back down to look at it before I remembered the safety. I flipped it off, then raised the weapon, pulling the trigger. The soft kick barely registered as I put several rounds up into the air. I honestly could not see where I was aiming or if I was hitting anything. Rounds were impacting all over the wall, sending dust and bits of cement raining down on us. I stopped and pulled out my goggles, putting them on to protect my eyes. I raised my weapon again and fired.

“Everyone! Face down and cover!” shouted the squad leader. He said something over the small PRR, then a few moments later, it seemed like half of the wall on the second floor was taken out with a huge explosion. Debris fell around us. One of the attached SMAW gunners from Weapons Platoon had evidently done his thing.

We spun back around and began to fire again, but it was evident that the firing from above had stopped. We heard shouting in Arabic from inside as people ran to get away. And they did get away out the back, until Third Squad opened up, that is. We could hear a pretty fierce firefight, but it was short. In less than a minute, firing ceased.

I got up to check the Marines. A piece of wall had fallen on La’Ron, maybe breaking a few fingers, but amazingly, that was about it. Seven Marines and one sailor had been in the kill zone, and not one of us had been hit by enemy fire. It would have been a different story, though, if that first booby trap had detonated. We might of all been killed given the confined nature of the courtyard.

Then it hit me. They knew we were coming. The open gate, the booby trap, the insurgents ready to fire. This whole things had been a set up. If this was a set up, then the other two platoons had probably been set up as well.

Set up or not, we cleared the building. On the second floor, we found two dead insurgents, blown apart by the SMAW. Several blood trails proved that some of them had been hit but were still alive to try and make their escape.

When we linked up with Third Squad, they had three more insurgents, two dead, and one being treated by Buster Seychik. From the amount of fire that had been pouring down on us, it seemed hard to believe that there had only been five of them.

The platoon had been pretty lucky, even if Marines like Sgt Butler had made some of that luck themselves. I knew I was alive because of him, and maybe some of the others were as well.

Third Platoon had not been so lucky. While First Platoon had gone into an empty target, Third had gone into the same type of ambush as we had. They killed two insurgents, but had two KIAs and three serous WIAs. One of the KIAs was HM Sean Gruber, USN.

Chapter 10

Hurricane Point

April 29, 2006

“Did you know him well?” Rick asked.

That was a good question. Of course I knew him—him being HM Gruber. When Senior Chief called a meeting of the battalion’s corpsmen or when we had training, he was there, too. And when all the corpsmen and our families had that pre-deployment dinner at the Golden Corral, he and I had talked. But knew him well? He and I might have been junior corpsmen, we might have both been US Navy, but I knew the Marines in my squad much better.

“I knew him, yea. We weren’t bosom buddies, but yea, I knew him,” was all I finally came up with.

“Well, yea,” was Rick’s short comment.

“That sucks,” he added after a few moments.

Rick and I were the only ones in our hootch at the moment. The other Marines were probably still at chow. We sat down on facing bunks, not really knowing what to say. We’d already lost one Marine KIA and another WIA and medevac’d back to the States, but dealing with death was something that we all had to come to grips with.

On one hand, for me, at least, there was a bit of a relief, guilty relief that is wasn’t me, that it wasn’t Rick or one of the others in the squad. That was a pretty messed up emotion, I know. Sean had his own friends, his own family back home, and to them, his death occupied center stage. The feeling of relief I felt made no sense, anyway. It was not like there was a quota on deaths, that if someone else bought it, that would somehow make our odds any better. If anything, it made the odds worse, what with fewer people taking the fight to the enemy.

The hatch opened and in walked Sgt Butler.

“Can you give us a moment there, Haddad?” he asked as he stood there.

I had been somewhat avoiding him after his blowup at me during the fight. I admired the man, and I had not been particularly happy that I had not met his expectations.

He stood silently as Rick gathered his gear and left. As the hatch closed behind Rick, he pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to me. I took it and looked. It was a copy of a photo, obviously pulled from the internet and printed out.

The subject was a statue. The base of the statue was large, maybe ten feet long and five feet high, made up of stones mortared in place and with a plaque affixed to the side. There were two figures on top, both WWII-era military. One was lying on his back. At his head crouched another figure, one hand holding what looked to be a plasma bag, another holding outstretched a .45.

“Do you know what that is?” he asked me.

“A statue of a corpsman, or maybe an Army medic,” I answered.

“But of who?”

Something tweaked in the back of my mind, but I wasn’t making the connection.

“Um, . . . I’m not sure.”

“The hospital at the Stumps?” he prodded.

“Oh, is that Robert Bush?” I asked.

The hospital at 29 Palms was named after Robert Bush, a corpsman who had been awarded the Medal of Honor back in WWII. We had been told about him back at school. He’d been wounded, refused evacuation, and treated his Marines all the while fighting the Japanese soldiers.

He handed me another piece of paper. On it was the citation for Bush’s Medal.

“I want you to read that,” he told me.

I looked back down and began to read:

CITATION:

Rank and organization: Hospital Apprentice First Class, U.S. Naval Reserve, serving as Medical Corpsman with a rifle company, 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division.

Place and date: Okinawa Jima, Ryukyu Islands, 2 May 1945.

Entered service at: Washington.

Born: 4 October 1926, Tacoma, Wash.

Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as Medical Corpsman with a rifle company, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Okinawa Jima, Ryukyu Islands, 2 May 1945. Fearlessly braving the fury of artillery, mortar, and machinegun fire from strongly entrenched hostile positions, Bush constantly and unhesitatingly moved from 1 casualty to another to attend the wounded falling under the enemy's murderous barrages. As the attack passed over a ridge top, Bush was advancing to administer blood plasma to a marine officer lying wounded on the skyline when the Japanese launched a savage counterattack. In this perilously exposed position, he resolutely maintained the flow of life-giving plasma. With the bottle held high in 1 hand, Bush drew his pistol with the other and fired into the enemy's ranks until his ammunition was expended. Quickly seizing a discarded carbine, he trained his fire on the Japanese charging pointblank over the hill, accounting for 6 of the enemy despite his own serious wounds and the loss of 1 eye suffered during his desperate battle in defense of the helpless man. With the hostile force finally routed, he calmly disregarded his own critical condition to complete his mission, valiantly refusing medical treatment for himself until his officer patient had been evacuated, and collapsing only after attempting to walk to the battle aid station. His daring initiative, great personal valor, and heroic spirit of self-sacrifice in service of others reflect great credit upon Bush and enhance the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

I finished reading and looked back up at the still-standing squad leader.

“Zach,” he began, “you are a good corpsman, and people have noticed. You’re pretty green, but you don’t lack balls. And you care. Everyone in the squad’s happy with you as our doc.”

I didn’t like the direction that this was going. It sounded like a breakup— you are a great guy and all, and any girl would be happy to have you , but . . . —and the thought of that was surprisingly painful. Not all corpsmen were suited to going out with the Marines. Some just couldn’t hack it, and those corpsmen were quietly transferred back to the aid station or one of the hospitals.

That is what I really wanted—to be in a hospital, right? So why was I feeling a sense of dread coming over me?

“What I want to point out is that you are supposed to be a Fleet Marine Force corpsman, a combat corpsman. You seem to be forgetting that. You get trained to shoot; we give you an M16 and a full combat load. Why do that unless you are supposed to fight?

“Right now, we are short-handed. We need every swinging dick to get into the mix. Last night, we were pretty much in a shit sandwich, and there you were hugging the concrete. I needed you to put some rounds downrange.”

I understood what he was saying, but I never really thought of my job as fighting. That was for the Marines in the squad. I was just there to patch them up if they got hit. I put down the citation and picked up the picture of the statue again. Well, Robert Bush hadn’t idly stood by, waiting for a patient. He treated with one hand, killed Japs with another.

“Have you heard of the Order of St. John?” he asked me.

I shook my head no.

“Their full name is The Sovereign Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta, now usually just referred to as the Knights of Malta.”

He waited for me to acknowledge that, but I stared back up at him blankly.

“The Knights of Malta, from the Crusades?” he asked as he sat down on the bunk opposite me.

“Yea, I know the Crusades.”

“And do you know what the Order of St. John did?”

“Well, they fought the Muslims, right? To get back the Holy Land?”

He sighed and said, “Well, sort of. They did fight. But what was their mission? Think of what’s in their name. Hospitaller .”

Something clicked. “They were doctors?”

“Not quite,” he said, “but you made the connection to where we got the word ‘hospital.’ But no, they weren’t doctors. They were medieval versions of medical assistants. They were founded about a thousand years ago to serve sick and wounded crusaders and pilgrims, helping the doctors and doing all the care, you know, like changing bandages, feeding, cleaning up, lancing boils and whatnot, all that medical stuff. In other words, they were the world’s first corpsmen.”

All of that was well and good, but I wondered where he was going with it all. As long as I didn’t hear that I was fired, though, anything else he had to say was welcomed, and he seemed to be on a roll.

“They were the first chivalrous order, and from them, we get all our ideas of how knights are supposed to act. They also took vows of poverty and chastity, though, and to serve the Pope. What they didn’t do was take vows of non-violence. Quite the contrary, they were perhaps the fiercest warriors of the Crusades.

“When Suleiman the Magnificent attacked the fortress on Rhodes, the home of the knights, he attacked with over 200,000 men. The knights were only about 500 men. But they held out for six months, beating back every Ottoman attack. What got them was when they ran out of food. Starving, they surrendered, and Suleiman let them keep their arms and sail away in recognition of their courage and tenacity.

“The reason I’m telling you all of this is because I want to show you that the first corpsmen, the first medics, so to speak, were maybe healers first, but they were still warriors. And that’s what you need to be, a warrior.

“Look, no one doubts your balls. If we did, you’d be gone. But you need to get it in your head that you’re a ‘combat corpsman,’ and that you are not just an observer of the fight, you are part of it.”

He paused to let me take it all in. I had no problem with the fighting. It wasn’t like I was a conscientious objector. I just don’t think I ever got it into my mindset. My rifle was for personal protection, like 2ndLt Hobbs carried a weapon, like Capt Wilcox, hell, like the colonel carried one. But what he said made sense.

I still wanted to be a radiology tech. I needed a career after all of this, a way to support my family. But I was with the Marines now, and I was going to do my best with them, not just because I needed a good recommendation for C School, but because I liked them all and felt the esprit de corps the Marines always gave homage to. I felt part of them all.

I looked back at the picture of Robert Bush’s statue. He’d made his choice. I figured the Knights of Malta would have been mighty proud of him.

“So whaddaya think,” Sgt Butler asked me. “You onboard?”

I shrugged my acceptance. “A vow of poverty’s no problem. I’m just getting E2 pay, anyway. But do I have to give a vow of chastity?”

Chapter 11

Ramadi

May 4, 2006

“Holy shit!” Jarod muttered.

I seconded the feeling. We had gone out on patrol in the bright sunlight, and now the sun was blocked. Up ahead, we could see an immense cloud of sand rolling our way.

Things had changed over the last few days. The National Guard was getting ready to go back home, and the Army was sending a mechanized brigade in to take their place, the “Ready First,” they called themselves. This was a much bigger force. Where the 2/28 BCT had five tanks, I think, the Ready First had 40 or 50. We’d already gotten the word that we, and that included the Marines, were going to be more aggressive in taking it to the enemy.

I never really understood why we were under the National Guard, and now the Army, as soon as they officially took command, when they in turn answered to I MEF back at Fallujah. Our big boss was a Marine, then the next was Army, then we got to the battalion. And even us, we were a Camp Lejeune battalion, but we were under a Camp Pendleton MEF. Then again, all of that was above my pay grade—way above it.

What we all did know, even us peons, was that Ramadi was heating up. Some people said we were losing the city. Others said we had to go and Fallujah it, just move in and take out the bad guys. What that ignored was that most of our bad guys had been in Fallujah and had been driven out, taking up residence in Ramadi. If we did the same thing here, they’d just go to Haditha or some such place.

While the colonels and generals hashed out what we would do, those of us on the pointy end of the spear hoped they’d get it right. Not that they’d ask us, of course. We’d just do what they ordered us to do, and if they were wrong, we’d pay the price.

This patrol was one of those we hated. We had no specific target. We were just out, being seen, and becoming a target. We would be moving north to the High Water Bridge that provided one of the avenues into the city, then come back. It was routine, but still stressful.

It was routine until the mother of all sand storms kicked up, that is. It looked just like the storm in The Mummy , coming down to engulf us. Sgt Butler got on the hook with the lieutenant, but the word came to continue with the mission.

This was a platoon patrol. Each of the three squads was advancing up its own route—each route being an adjacent street. We needed to advance at the same rate so we could support each other if need be. This storm would wreck havoc with that.

The day turned to a dark, orangish dusk as the huge dust cloud rose above us. We could almost smell the ozone in the air. The streets of Ramadi were always pretty empty, but now the place was a ghost town. Doors and windows were tightly shut.

When the storm hit us, it hit us like a fist. I literally staggered. If I didn’t have my goggles on, I would have been blinded. Even with the goggles, I could barely see my hand in front of my face.

Tactical dispersion eroded away as I think all of us feared getting separated from each other. We closed it up until we could see the outlines of those directly in front and in back of us. We gravitated towards the buildings to the right, not so much as a guide to keep us moving, but hoping that the walls would offer even a bit of protection.

I pulled up the kerchief higher on my face. I was pretty well covered, but the sand was stinging me where it struck my cheeks and nose.

We slowly moved forward. I couldn’t see him, but I figured Sgt Butler was keeping tabs on the rest of the platoon. I really thought it would be better if we hunkered down until the storm blew itself out, but we’d been briefed that some storms could last for a couple of days.

I ran up the back of Jarod, who’d stopped dead in his tracks. Looking around him, we had run up into Third Fire Team. I could barely make out the bulky figure of Cpl Choi, back now on full duty. The Marines seemed to be looking at something ahead.

Cpl Mays passed me to join the others, then with hand and arm signals, we started to get online, spreading out across the street. I still couldn’t see what was up. It wasn’t until I got abreast of the others that I could barely make out two figures crouching in the street, busy at some task.

We didn’t need much stealth with the sand storm giving us cover, but we moved forward, the flanks of our impromptu line bending around to circle the two men. I kept expecting them to jump up and run, but then I realized that while our viz was crap, I could see the two men didn’t have goggles. They were trying to protect their eyes with cloth, and with us surrounding them, that was far from effective.

What they were doing became pretty clear. They were digging a hole in the road, ready to emplace an IED. Normally, they did this kind of thing at night, but they must have thought the stand storm would give them cover. That made some sense. They wouldn’t be seen by aircraft, which was all grounded. But that didn’t take into account a foot patrol.

It was sort of surreal. We had most of the squad surrounding the two guys, but they didn’t notice us. Should we just take them out? Should we go up and make introductions?

I couldn’t tell of sure, but it looked like it was Cpl Choi who stepped close, then poked one of the men in the back with his weapon. The guy jumped up, knocking over the one who was doing the digging.

My finger tensed on the trigger. I hadn’t had a real target since Sgt Butler’s talk a few days before. I’d at least return fire the day before when we’d taken fire, but I really hadn’t seen who I was shooting at. This time, they were right in front of me. Of course, there were other members of the squad in front of me, too. When I realized that, I had a gut check. I hoped whoever was in back of me realized I was in front of him.

The two men jumped up, then froze, hands in the air. It didn’t look like they’d be fighting. Marines moved forward to flex-cuff their hands behind them and move them to the side of the road and up against a wall.

The initial brunt of the sand storm lessened a bit. Viz still sucked, but instead of five feet, it was probably 15 feet. I got my first look at the insurgents. They were pretty well wrapped up, but one of them looked young, maybe 15 or 16 years old. The other guy was an oldster.

Sgt Butler reported the capture, and we were told to wait there. The lieutenant was on his way. We set up a hasty defensive perimeter with the captives in the middle.

It took the platoon commander almost 15 minutes to make it the one block to us, which seemed like an awful long time, sandstorm or no. He was with Third Squad who did a sort of passage of lines with us to provide flank security. He probably moved First Squad in so we were now in the center.

The lieutenant, SSgt White, and Champ Dykstra, the comm section R/O, moved up to the Iraqis, our interpreter in tow.

Azar was the translator normally assigned to us. He was Iraqi, an Arab, but he was a Christian. He seemed pretty happy to be working for us, and we thought it was not just for the pay, which was pretty good by Iraqi standards. He sometimes ate lunch with us, and he was a bloodthirsty little bastard. He seemed to relish the idea of taking it to his Muslim countrymen.

“Warrior doc” or not, being a corpsman still had some bennies, so I sidled up closer to the prisoners so I could hear what was going on.

Azar was puffing up his chest and yelling in the faces of the now cowering men. I have no idea what he was telling them, but probably that we were going to cut off their heads or wrap them in pig skins before burying them in unconsecrated soil. Azar had told us quite often that he threatened prisoners to “loosen their tongues” and that he enjoyed seeing them squirm.

The lieutenant was used to Azar’s little games, so he gave him a few minutes before he started asking questions. I was surprised, though, at how easily the two prisoners spilled. They both readily admitted that they were laying an IED (rather hard to deny considering we caught them in the act.) They said they had been forced by some “foreigners” to plant the explosive, and that they would be killed if they didn’t. How that jived with the fact that they had been promised $500 as well, I wasn’t sure.

They kept bouncing back and forth between asking both Allah and the lieutenant for forgiveness and begging for their lives. The young kid seemed to have a rather stoic expression on his face, but the old guy was shitting bricks. He was flat out scared.

The lieutenant asked the company for instructions, and about ten minutes later, we were told to hang tight. Battalion wanted to send out an EOD team to blow the IED in place, and we couldn’t leave it unattended. Capt Wilcox didn’t want us to split the platoon to bring back the prisoners, so we would just sit there until the EOD team came and did their thing.

That actually took less time than normal. Two Bradleys made their way to us, and out came the Guardsmen. They rigged the IED, sending out a small robot to lay some C4 on it, and with us moved way back, blew it in place. Even with the storm still raging, the explosion was epic.

We bundled the two prisoners into one of the Bradleys. That was probably going to piss off battalion. The Bradleys would be going back to Camp Ramadi, not Hurricane Point, so we were passing them out of Marine hands. On paper, at least, it might look like it was the Guard who made the capture, not us. Some officer promotions probably relied on less than that.

Even in war, even with brother Americans, politics sometimes raised its ugly head.

Chapter 12

The Government Center

May 16, 2006

At 8:20 local, 16 May 2006, Sergeant Derek Butler, USMC, Second Squad, Second Platoon, Kilo Company, Third Battalion, Eighth Marines, was shot and killed at the Government Center, Ramadi, Al Anbar, Iraq.

His battle gear was on and fastened as he made his way from the main building to our berthing when out of the blue, a single sniper round hit him at the base of his neck, right above the top of his flak jacket. The round entered just below his Adam’s Apple and crushed at least two of his cervical vertebrae. He was dead before his body hit the ground.

I was about ten meters in back of him when he fell. One look told me he was gone, but I started CPR anyway, refusing to acknowledge it. I kept it up until we got him back to battalion.

I cried when LT Henry, the battalion surgeon, told me to stop.

Chapter 13

Ramadi

May 31, 2006

Cpl Mays gave the order to move out. It felt good to be back in a vehicle. The hummers couldn’t protect against everything, but they felt safer to me.

We were escorting an Air Force colonel from Baghdad and his team to go meet the governor. I didn’t really know what the meeting was about, nor did I really care too much. Another convoy had made it down Michigan not even 20 minutes ago, so the way was likely clear.

My attitude had changed quite a bit since Sgt Butler had been killed. Now, when we went out, I half-way hoped that someone would try to hit us. That would give us the opportunity to hit back, hit back hard. I thought most of the squad felt the same.

Cpl Mays had taken over the squad. At first, SSgt White told us that one of the sergeants from Weapons would take over, but the ten of us asked the lieutenant to back Mays. He took care of it.

Rick, as the senior lance corporal, took over First Fire Team. He was up to strength, but the other two teams were down to three Marines. When we went out, I started slipping into Third Team, giving them an extra body.

While I supported Cpl Mays taking over the squad, now I was having second thoughts. I thought he had been the strongest fire team leader, but he was not Sgt Butler. I just didn’t feel as comfortable with him in charge, and I’d already had one argument with him over some piddly-ass shit.

I was riding shotgun with LCpl Whitten as our driver, the same Whitten from H & S, I’d gotten into that fight with back at the Point with Rick. That was all behind us, and we were actually on pretty good terms now. La’Ron had the .50 cal. In the back, we had two civilians, a middle-aged man and a youngish woman. The man had quite a potbelly on him, and his black flak jacket was bursting at the seams to try and contain it. His face was red, whether from the heat, exertion, or if that was his normal color, I couldn’t tell. He did not seem to be happy to have left the comfort of the Green Zone to go out gallivanting around in Ramadi.

Welcome to my world , I thought.

The woman was a different story. She had that sort of gaunt look that some ultra-marathoners had. Her flak and helmet seemed more natural on her, and she shook my hand with a sense of purpose, as if trying to show how tough she was. Both of them had given me their names, but frankly, I had forgotten them as soon as I was told.

Ramadi in June was brutally hot, and keeping on all our gear took a strong sense of discipline. Having seen some of the burn cases, though, helped keep the focus on why we wore them.

Knowing why, though, was not the same as meekly accepting it. I realized I was a little tightly-strung after Sgt Butler was killed. I got a little angrier more easily. Besides my argument with Mays, I’d even gotten into an argument with Amy the other day when we spoke on the phone. So if I picked at the edge of my gloves, unraveling the seam, well, better they take the brunt of my mood than a person.

We made pretty good time going down Michigan. I caught faces and a few bodies as we passed, but no one seemed too interested in them.

“Hey, hand my up a water,” La’Ron asked.

One thing about Iraq, out in the middle of the desert, we had plenty of water. We had bottles of it everywhere. I’d started reading some history after my talk with Sgt Butler, about the Knights of the Order of St. John and the Crusades, and they’d had no ready source of water in their war. More than a few men had died of thirst while marching over the hot desert sands. In the First Crusade, two thirds of the force died before reaching Jerusalem, a good portion of them dying from hunger, thirst, and disease.

I handed up the bottle, placing it into La’Ron’s questing hand, sort of like handing off a baton in a relay race. He wasn’t about to take his eyes off the road just to get the bottle.

We drove for another two or three minutes when La’Ron called out that there was trouble ahead, just at the radio sounded, telling us to halt.

“What’s going on?” I asked La’Ron, not able to see anything.

“It looks like we’ve got some big-ass truck stuck up there, trying to get turned around,” he called down through the turret.

Anything out of the ordinary was reason for concern, and once during our workups at the Stumps, the aggressor force had used a flatbed to stop us before hitting us from the flanks. I started scanning to the side, checking out each doorway and window.

“What’s up, son?” the quavering voice of our passenger reached out.

I didn’t know if he was asking me or Whitten, but I answered, “Nothing to worry about. I’ll tell you if you need to know anything.”

I knew we were supposed to call civilians “sir” and all of that. He was probably some civilian big-wig, and he probably had afternoon tea or whatever with half the generals in the country. But I wasn’t in the mood to pacify the guy. Let him report me if he wanted.

We listened to the radio chatter as Cpl Mays reported back to the platoon, asking for instructions. The debate seemed to be on whether the truck could get out of the way on its own, if we needed an Army wrecker to come pull it out, or if we should re-route down one of the uncleared roads.

Our hummer had air-conditioning, but on this one, the air worked better when we were cruising. Sitting there, it struggled to keep us cool. The woman was OK with it, not complaining, but the guy asked us several times if we could turn it up, like this was some limo back in the States. His whining was getting to me.

“Jeeze, can you just shut up?” I finally broke, opening the door to the hummer and stepping out.

I stood there for a moment, trying to look ahead to see the truck for myself. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t know what was worse—this whining fat fuck, being stuck in back of a damn truck, Cpl Mays screwing up—I wasn’t sure. But I couldn’t just sit there.

I had been standing there for half a minute or so, taking deep breaths, trying to calm down, when I was kicked high up on my chest by a mule. I went down to my knees, unable to breathe. I heard my weapon clatter to the dust, and I blindly groped to get it back.

I was vaguely aware of the .50 cal opening up above my head, of shouting. I was more concerned with breathing. The thought struck me that I was drowning out in the middle of the friggin’ desert, and despite everything, that made me laugh. And when I laughed, I realized I was breathing again. That brought everything back into focus.

I reached up to my chest, feeling for damage. There was no blood, but my chest hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. I opened my flak jacket, and there was no blood inside either. I gingerly touched my chest, and that hurt even more. I probably needed to see if any ribs were broken, but that would have to wait a bit.

La’Ron had stopped firing, the cascade of spent brass littering around me. The hummer in front of us, the one with Rick in it, had gotten into the fight as well, turning towards the right. Jarod fired a few more bursts, and it was only then that I saw the target. Just off to the right was a van, or what was left of it. It had been parked in one of the small side alleys, the side of it facing us. The sliding side door was open just a hair. The .50 cal rounds had pretty much made mincemeat of the van—it wasn’t going to go anywhere under its own power.

There was shouting up ahead, and from my vantage point sitting on the ground, I could see Marines pulling the truck driver out and onto the ground. He was screaming something as they threw him face first into the dirt, pulling his hand and zip-tying them in back of his head.

From the other hummers, Marines piled out and advanced to the van. I heard La’Ron swivel the .50, and I looked up to see his back. Good man. He was now covering our rear, giving no one the chance to use the commotion to come up on us that way.

The Marines in the squad bounded up, covering each other. Rob Runolfson was the first one to reach it. He gave the door a push before stepping back. When nothing happened, he looked in again. Immediately he stood up straight and motioned the others to come forward.

Rick looked in, then turned around and shouted “Corpsman up!”

I was still sitting when he had shouted that out. Almost by instinct, I started to get to my feet.

“Zach, get up here!” he shouted again, his hand motioning me forward.

I lurched forward, ignoring the calls from the civilian inside the hummer. When I reached the van, only 10 0r 15 meters away, Rick seemed to notice that I wasn’t moving right.

“You OK, Zach?”

I realized that he didn’t know I’d been shot. He’d just reacted to La’Ron opening up.

“I’m fine,” I said. “What do you got?”

I peered inside the van. There were two men there. One, his hand still clutched through the hand strap of a camcorder, was very dead. He’d been hit at least four times, the big .50 cal rounds tearing him apart. The inside of the van looked like a slaughterhouse his blood and flesh dripping everywhere. The heavy smell of shit was almost overpowering, like a physical assault.

The second man, though, was still alive. He looked up at me, his surprisingly green eyes pleading for help. He’d been hit twice, it looked like, once in the arm and another in the back of the shoulder. I started to move forward when Rick stopped me, telling Rob to disarm the man. It was only then that I saw the rifle beneath him.

Things clicked. This was the guy who had shot me.

I had a brief flash where I wanted to step up and kick the shit out of him. I could have been killed! But then, my training kicked in. Enemy or not, I needed to see what I could do.

I checked him first, running my hands over him, to see where he’d been hit. For all swiss cheese the two .50 cals had made this van into, for all that they had completely torn apart his companion, it was amazing that he had been hit only twice. His left arm was pretty bad, and I doubted the doctors could save it, but while the shot in the shoulder had obviously broken the scapula, that bone had been enough to slightly deflect the big round, sending it running down the back before exiting, then creasing his buttock. It caused a lot of damage, but it never penetrated enough to hit any vital organs.

I left the back alone and addressed the arm. The humerus was splintered into tiny fragments, and the lower arm was hanging on by only a few threads of flesh and tendons. I turned him over, eliciting a grunt as his back wound touched the floor of the van.

Yea, how do you like them apples, you bastard? I couldn’t help think for a moment before I forced my corpsman face back on.

I put a tourniquet on his upper arm, then brought the mangled remains over his stomach. As I was bandaging them into place, SSgt White, who was with us on the mission, came up.

“What’s the status here, Doc?”

I looked up, surprised to see the Air Force colonel standing alongside of him. I would have expected him to be huddling inside his hummer.

“One KIA, one WIA. I think he can make it, but he needs immediate surgery for his arm. He’ll lose that for sure, though.”

“Can we leave him here for pick-up?” he asked me. “We’ve got to get the colonel here off the street and into the government center.”

Before I could answer back, the colonel interrupted and said to me, “Don’t worry about us there, son. If that man needs immediate assistance, then we’re going to stay here until he gets it.”

He turned to SSgt White and said, “Let’s get this taken care of. I’ve got all you Marines here for security. Couldn’t ask for more. So go ahead with the original plan. Get that wrecker in here to move the truck, and while that’s being done, get that Iraqi back for treatment. We’ll get there when we get there. I’m sure the governor will understand.”

The platoon sergeant looked like he was going to argue, but then he nodded.

“You heard the colonel! Dunlop, Haddad! Get this man over to Doc’s hummer, then get everyone back in their vehicles. Be ready for anything, and I mean anything!”

Pacman and Rob helped me move the Iraqi back to the hummer, where we laid him alongside of it in the shade. I looked up to see our male passenger leaning over the lap of the woman to peer down at us. I just ignored him.

It was almost 20 minutes before the wrecker came, accompanied by the battalion reaction force. My patient, my sniper, was taken off my hands while the wrecker physically yanked the front of the Iraqi truck around, slewing it sideways and opening up the road again.

I took a deep breath, then winced at the pain. I reached up to my chest, and my fingers felt a small lump in my flak jacket. I picked at it until I wrestled free a flattened piece of lead. This was the round that had hit me. It didn’t seem that big, but without my body armor, and without it properly closed up, I would not have survived.

Before Sgt Butler kept on me about wearing my battle gear correctly, I would have loosened it. Would this round still have hit my armor, or would it have found the base of my neck? It was hard to tell, but it would have been close.

I had a feeling though, that even in death, Sgt Butler had saved my ass one more time.

Chapter 14

Hurricane Point

June 1, 2006

“You OK, Doc Cannon?” Umar asked as I held out my tray. “Mr. Rick, he tell me you got shot.”

“Yea, I’m fine, Umar. Nothing happened.”

Something had happened, though, and me being shot was a wake-up call. My mind hadn’t been in the game, and that could have some pretty drastic consequences. The de facto camp motto of “complacency kills” was right on, even if my “complacency” might have been more of frustration mixed with anger. Either way, I hadn’t been focusing on my job, and that was the key point.

There was no use getting Umar concerned, though. Umar was a fixture in the DFAC, a young Iraqi who bubbled over with enthusiasm for all things American, and the Marines in particular. He was especially taken with Rick. He had passable English, but with Rick, he kept trying to speak to him in Arabic, never grasping the fact that just because Rick was of Lebanese descent, he didn’t speak the language. It seemed like his personal mission to bring Rick back into the fold, which was ironic as the kid was so anti-Iraq and pro-USA. When not on duty, he hung out around the camp, wearing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers t-shirt someone had given him. A few of the guys hated him, sure he was giving information to Al Qaeda. They were very obvious in their disdain, but for the most part, Umar was sort of our unofficial mascot.

I took my chili with rice, got a hunk of cornbread, filled my cup with bug juice, then went back to the table we normally claimed as our own. Conversation was already heavy on baseball, with Cy proclaiming loudly that the Twins were going to make a comeback.

“Yea, right,” Pacman said. “What are they, 10, 11 games back of Detroit? In your dreams they come back.”

I wasn’t a huge fan. I’d go to a Padres game about once a year, but that was mostly just to have a night out. Last time I’d looked, the Pads were neck and neck with the Dodgers and Rockies in the division.

I sat down next to Cpl Dunlop and mostly tuned out the bickering.

“You OK, Doc?” he asked as I sat.

“Yea, no problem. Just a bruise. LT Henry cleared me.”

“Well, you’re pretty lucky. Another couple of inches, and bam!” he said, raising his voice for that last word.

“We weren’t even a target, you know? The lieutenant told Mays that the truck driver wasn’t involved. He’s just a shitty driver who got stuck. The guys who shot you, they were just there to watch Michigan, and I guess one guy just got too excited and decided to try and take you out, the stupid fuck. He’s already outta here to Balad, then it’s Abu Ghraib for him, I bet.” He paused for a second. “It sucks to be him.

“Good chili, by the way,” he said as I took a bite.

I’m not sure what they called chili in Indiana, but I wasn’t from Texas, and even I knew this chili was pretty weak. It was fuel for the body, but no way was it good. I nodded, though, then settled back to watch the others while I ate.

When I was a kid, after my older brother took off for God know where, meals were usually something thrown together that my mom and I ate in front of the TV. Eating with the same group of guys each day must be what it would be like to be part of a big family. Rick and Cpl Mays weren’t there, but the rest of the squad was. The baseball argument was getting more heated, and the insults were flying, but none of that was serious. I think all of us really liked each other.

One of La’Ron’s friends from Lima Company came up to him, slapping him on the back and initiating a convoluted but well choreographed fist bump. Mitchell, I think his name was, ignored the rest of us as he got on La’Ron’s case about not hanging with his homeys. La’Ron promised to catch up with them later, and after another flurry of fist bumps, Mitchell left to eat his own lunch.

At Hurricane Point, there was some degree of racial grouping during free time. The brothers tended to hang out sometimes, along with some white brother wannabees, the Latinos hung out, the white guys hung out. The handful of Asians, though, seemed to gravitate between the brothers and the white guys. Part of the hanging out together was probably because of like interests, especially in music.

For the most part, though, we hung out in our units, especially in our squads. Sure, we bunked together, we worked together, but even beyond that, like here at chow, our squad, at least, stayed together. We may have had three black guys, an Asian, an Arab, a Latino, and six white guys, but, as hokey as it might sound, I felt we were all brothers from a different mother.

And if I couldn’t get my head back in the game, I was a handicap, one who could end up costing one of the Marines in my care.

“Doc Cannon, the platoon sergeant wants to see you in the lieutenant’s office,” PFC Cherrystone interrupted my thoughts.

Second Squad was pretty close, but with Cherrydick standing there, I was struck with the thought that I was glad as hell that he wasn’t in my squad. It was another reality check. Before my thoughts dove down too deep into mushiness and kumbaya, here was Cherrydick reminding me that not all of us were saints. Some were malingering dipwads.

Cherrydick claimed to have hurt his wrist, and Buster told me that it could have been a VERY slight sprain, but Cherrydick was milking it for all he was worth. This was his second “injury,” and somehow, it just never seemed to heal. So he stayed back in the company office, acting as a runner.

“Sure thing, Cherrydick,” I told him.

He got red in the face and said, “That’s CherrySTONE, Doc.”

“Oh yea, sure thing. Sorry about that. I’m coming,” I told him, shoveling in one more mouthful of chili and rice.

I stood up as the rest of the guys laughed. I heard “fobbit” mentioned a few times, something Cherrydick heard, too, but he didn’t have any outward reaction. “Fobbit” was a pretty severe insult to an infantry Marine, or any Marine, for that matter, but it was not surprising that he didn’t have the gonads to take issue with the comments.

I didn’t wait for him as I made my way to the company office. Lieutenant Hobbs had his own little office there that he shared with the other platoon commanders. The hatch was open, so I knocked on the door frame and stepped inside. Lieutenant Hobbs, SSgt White, and 1stLt Marez were inside. Both lieutenants excused themselves with my platoon commander closing the hatch after him, leaving me alone with SSgt White.

“Take a seat, there, Cannon,” he told me, pointing to one of the mount-out boxes that served as a bench.

I wondered what this was all about.

SSgt White stared at me from over the small desk for a moment before beginning, “Doc, Cpl Mays tells me you’ve had a rough time of it lately. What’s up?”

“Nothing, Staff Sergeant.”

“Bullshit! I’ve watched you, too, and you’ve got a fucking chip on your shoulder the size of Alaska. And that, my friend, can get you killed.”

I started to say something when he held up his hand, stopping me.

“I want you to take a look at this.”

He turned his laptop around so I could see it and pressed the play on the Window Player that was up front. I scooted a little closer and saw a grainy video of a line of hummers out on some Iraqi street.

“Just watch,” he told me as I started to ask him what this was.

The camera was not steady, and I could hear low voices speaking in Arabic. Just then, on one of the hummers, the one barely in the frame, the passenger door opened and someone stepped out. The camera suddenly centered on him, and the voices got a little more excited.

With a sudden realization, it hit me that the figure in the video was me. That was me getting out of the protection the hummer offered. That was me with a disgusted look on my face as I looked forward.

I looked up at the platoon sergeant, but he motioned me back to the screen. The voices got more excited, then they stopped talking. Only the heavy breathing of the cameraman could be heard.

The quiet lasted for about 15 seconds, then a shot rang out. On the screen, I fell to my knees, back up against the hummer. There was a shout of obvious exultation, then all chaos broke loose as La’Ron swung his .50 around and opened fire. Rounds peppered the scene for only a few seconds before the video stopped.

SSgt White slowly closed the laptop screen and swung it back to him. He sat there looking at me, waiting for me to say something. The problem was that I had nothing to say.

It must have been at least a full minute before he sighed and asked, “Just what the fuck do you think you were doing, Doc?”

“I, . . . I mean, . . . I don’t know. I fucked up.”

“‘Fucked up’ is putting it mildly! That was a fucking royal ass fuck up! Do you know, you weren’t even a target? Those fuckheads weren’t there for us—they were just observing, until you handed them their target of opportunity on a fucking silver platter!”

His voice as rising as he got more excited. And there was nothing I could say.

“What would have happened if Jarod or your buddy Haddad had gotten hit while trying to cover for you? Who would’ve taken care of them with you taking yourself out of the game like that? You not only put your own fucking worthless life on the line, but the lives of your entire squad, not to mention all the VIPs.”

“I did treat that Iraqi,” I mumbled quietly, not knowing what else to say.

“Only by shear fucking dumb luck. A better sniper and you’d be in a body bag right now heading for Dover.”

He seemed to get a hold of himself and calmed down.

“Look, Sgt Butler was a hell of a Marine, a hell of a leader. I know you looked up to him.”

He pulled out some papers, looking down at the top one.

“He kept notes on all of you. I copied these before we shipped his personal effects. Do you want to hear what he wrote about you?”

My heart skipped a beat. I wanted to shout out yes, but I wondered if I really wanted to know. Then I realized that for good or bad, I needed to know. I simply nodded, unable to get a word out.

“Let’s see. OK, here is goes. ‘HA Zachary Cannon, blah-blah-blah, boot size, gas mask size and so on.’ Let me get to the better part. ‘Immature, doesn’t think things out. Accepts what others tell him. Only pays attention to his immediate tasks.’”

I swallowed. Was that what he thought of me? I know all of that was true, but I would have hoped that he held me in a little higher esteem.

“There’s more: ‘Loyal, capable, cares deeply for others. Courageous in the face of danger, tenacious in performing his job. Zach’s a young corpsman, but he is ideally suited for the FMF. Talk to Doc Sylvester about him. Bring him on board.’ He finishes with this: ‘I REALLY like this young man.’ He capitalized and underlined the ‘REALLY’.”

He put down the paper and looked at me expectantly.

I felt, well, I don’t know what I felt. Relief? What?

“So Sgt Butler thought you are some sort of fucking super doc. What of it? If you’ve got your head up your ass so far because Sgt Butler got killed, then you are a fucking liability, and I’ll send you back to the aid station so fast your eyes will burn. The platoon’s lucky ‘cause we’ve got three corpsmen. T/O’s only for one, but here in Iraq, they know we’re going to be in the shit, so they try and give us more. But I’ll just keep Sylvester and Seychik if it comes to that. Better just two corpsmen I can trust than one whose going to get Marines killed.

“So what of it? Was Sgt Butler right? Or did you just blow smoke up his ass?”

“He was right,” I murmured quietly.

“What was that? Say it like a man!”

“He was right!” I shouted out.

“Right about what, Doc?”

“Right about everything. I am immature, and I know it. I’ve been pissing and moaning ever since Sgt Butler was killed. I’ve been angry, and I’ve let it show. I almost got killed because of it, and I could have gotten others killed, too. But he was also right when he said I cared for the others. I care for my Marines, and if you try to take them from me, Staff Sergeant, I’m not going to let you. I’ll request mast to the commanding general if I have to. Sgt Butler wrote I was tenacious, and believe you me, if you want to see how tenacious, just try and fire me.”

I had stood up while going off, and I leaned over his desk, breathing hard. I had to struggle to hold back my emotions. I suddenly realized what I was doing, that I was yelling, that I was threatening a SNCO. I stepped back away from him, waiting for his inevitable explosion.

“OK, then, that’s what I wanted to hear. I’ll keep you with your squad, but Cpl Mays and I’ll be watching you,” he said calmly.

“Sgt Butler was a hell of a Marine, and we all mourn his loss. I understand what you’re going through.” He leaned back, eyes closed. “You know, this is one fucked up job. It’s hard to take. I love the Corps with all my heart. It’s my life, you know. The Marines, and that includes our corpsmen, they are the best men in the fucking universe. But when people like Derek get killed, like so many others I’ve known have been killed, I have to wonder about it all. What a fucking waste,” he continued sadly, more to himself than to me.

He seemed to get a hold of himself, and the brash, foul-mouthed platoon sergeant was back.

“Get your ass back to your hootch. You’ve got another fucking patrol tonight, and you better not fuck it up.

I turned and opened the hatch. Halfway through it, I turned back and said “Thank you” before going to join the rest of my squad.

Chapter 15

Ramadi

June 5, 2006

I was out with Third Squad and not particularly happy about it. Kilo had deployed with 11 corpsmen, but with Sean Gruber KIA and now HM2 Sylvester down hard with a respiratory infection, the company was down to nine effective corpsmen, and it was up to Buster and me to cover the platoon. Sylvester was the platoon corpsman, but he was also dual-hatted Third Squad’s. We had 21 corpsmen in the Aid Station Group, and while sometimes they would help out in the field, this time no one was supposedly available.

I had nothing against Third Squad, but that left Second Squad, my squad, uncovered. They were standing gate watch for the day, so they could get help from the aid station if someone got hit, but still, they were my Marines, and I wanted to be with them.

Sgt Castanza hadn’t blinked an eye, though, when he was told he would have me, a mere HA, with him instead of the more experienced Sylvester. I appreciated that, at least.

We really didn’t expect much to happen on this trip, anyway. We had escorted some Army major and a civilian to the government center, dropped them off, and were headed back to Hurricane Point. The stress level was much lower in the daylight. Attacks were not as common as at night, and we could see the signs of IEDs much easier. And in this case, we’d just come down Michigan only 30 minutes before, so we knew the way was clear, at least of IEDs.

As we made our way north, I looked out the window of the hummer. The place looked deserted. I wondered where all the people were, where they spent their time. This was a pretty big city, but we rarely saw many people when we were out there. I knew they saw us, though. There were probably multiple sets of eyes on us at that very moment.

Between Hurricane Point and the government center, on the west side of Michigan, was half of a small building. It looked like Godzilla had taken the missing half of the building out in one bite. I always wondered what had made that shape—a huge, fairly even crescent—it was just too geometrical. I thought Godzilla was just as logical as anything else. To me, though, the Godzilla building was my landmark that we were halfway back.

I turned to look at the building as we drove past when an explosion sounded in front of us. I spun around, thinking our lead vehicle had been hit. But the explosion was further forward, and the radio chatter confirmed that it was up ahead. Firing rang out, the deeper chatter of an M242 25mm chain gun mixing in with the M240 7.62 machine guns and small arms. The Marines were light on LAVs, so that meant it was probably an Army unit getting hit just ahead of us. Sgt Castanza would know who was on the route, but me sitting in the back of the fourth hummer in the convoy, well, no one was rushing to keep me informed as to what was happening.

We initially stopped when we heard the explosion. The insurgents often would plant secondary IEDs to get us when we rushed to help someone else. But after only a few moments, Sgt Castanza ordered us forward. After another few moments, the wounded Bradley was in front of us, a small amount of smoke drifting up. Two more Bradleys were in position, guns tracking, but no longer firing. We pulled into as much of an arc as the width of the street would allow.

The radio chatter was incessant, but I tuned it out as I peered forward to the Bradley, wondering if anyone was hurt. While not a tank, it was still a pretty robust vehicle, and from what I’d heard, they often just brushed off IED attacks.

The Bradley had a turret right on top, and the hatch on top of that opened. A head stuck out, arm waving. I was focusing on him, wondering what was happening.

“Doc! Didn’t you hear that? They need you out there!” shouted Cpl Redding from the front seat.

I didn’t hesitate. I pushed open the door and ran over to the front of the Bradley, joined by Sgt Castanza, Cpl Harris, and Kyle Van Meter. I was looking up at the guy in the turret, and I could see he was going into shock. I started to climb up when a couple of soldiers ran around from in back of the Bradley.

“Over here,” one of the shouted, waving his arm wildly to get our attention.

We rushed around to join them.

“You’ve got your medic? Ours is in there” one of the soldiers asked wildly.

I raised my hand as Sgt Castanza pushed me forward.

Almost absently, I noticed that he was a lieutenant. Just as absently, I took in the couple of soldiers providing security, arms pointing outwards. That calmed me some. Even if the lieutenant was excited, those soldiers looked pretty professional. The Bradley looked intact, so any injuries should be minor.

I was wrong.

I came around the back of the Bradley and stepped up and through the round open hatch. Inside, the smell hit me first, the coppery smell of blood, the foul smell of shit and body parts. Then, well, as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, it took my mind precious moments to register what I was seeing. As a kid, I used to read detective books, and quite often, horrific crime scenes were described as looking like an “abattoir.” I always wondered at that description, but it all suddenly came into focus. That is what the inside of the Bradley looked like.

There was a fairly large hole up high on the side of the vehicle. Whatever made it had wrecked havoc inside the compartment and to the soldiers who had been inside. Body parts and blood covered almost every square inch of it. I took a step and almost slipped on bloody tissue, tissue I couldn’t even place. I started to blanch in the face of the horror, actually taking a step back.

“Gail, . . .” a voice weakly called out just to my right.

That focused me. I needed to snap to. This was my job.

“Get an air casevac in here now!” I shouted out to those behind me.

Triage was my first priority. I had to find out who had the best chance of being saved. I knelt next to the man who had called out for Gail. Half of his face was gone, his arm was gone, and his chest was a tangled mass of damaged flesh. He wouldn’t make it. I left him to check on the next body. I flipped him over. His head was gone. The next man was dead, too, his back and chest a mangled mass of hamburger. I saw the patch that the Army medics wore on his tattered uniform, but I let that slide past me. The next solder was alive, but unconscious. I did a very quick assessment. He was bleeding, but not seriously. His neck was stable, so I pulled him towards the back where Cpl Harris, the Army lieutenant, and another soldier were looking in the open hatch.

“You,” I ordered the lieutenant, “get him out of here. He’s got a concussion, maybe more. Lay him down and then don’t move him.”

I turned back inside. The next body wasn’t a body, just two legs connected at the hips. There was nothing whole above that. I tried not to look too closely, steeling my emotions.

From above me, light was coming in the open turret hatch. Blocking the way, though, was a groaning soldier. I could see that both of his feet were gone, the top of his right boot still tied around his lower leg. Whatever had taken out his feet had cut the lower part of his boot right off. I helped him ease back down into the compartment. He was conscious, but very much in shock. I did a quick assessment. Other than his feet, he didn’t look hurt.

“Cpl Harris, get in here!” I shouted.

I should have checked the remaining soldiers, but I didn’t want this guy to bleed out. I applied two quick tourniquets around his stumps, then told Harris to grab someone and pull the wounded soldier out of the Bradley. I knew these vehicles had fire suppression systems, but I kept getting flashes in my mind of the thing going up into flames.

To the left of the soldier I’d just pulled out was another soldier. He was conscious, but barely so. He was moving, so I left him there to check on anyone else. In the front of the compartment, was one more soldier. He was alive, but his right shoulder was hanging on by a thread. Descending from it was a mangled mass of flesh. Looking back at the hole in the Bradley, I figured he had been sitting facing where they had been hit, but far enough forward that he didn’t bear the full brunt of whatever hit them.

Even with his arm mangled, he wasn’t bleeding too badly. He had other injuries, but he was pretty lucky. I picked him up, carefully stepping though the blood and grime, not wanting to think of all of that, but not wanting to slip and drop the soldier, either. I handed him off to eager waiting hands waiting for me.

“I need two men here, now,” I shouted out.

Kyle and a soldier jumped in, neither looking to the sides at the carnage but focusing solely on me.

“There’s a guy up past that turret. He looks like he isn’t too badly hurt, but bring him out carefully. I’ll check him when he’s out.”

I looked around. That was seven soldiers.

“Hey,” I called out to the soldier, “how many of you in one of these?”

“Nine. Three crew and six pax.”

I looked around. There were body parts and pieces all around me. Did they make up the missing two men?

I turned back to the man who had first called out for “Gail.” I wondered who she was. A wife? A lover? A daughter?

I knelt beside him. He was still alive, and even partially conscious. I didn’t know how much longer he would be. There was nothing I could do but to ease his pain. I took out my kit and gave him a shot of morphine, leaving him in place. Moving him could kill him.

I stepped out to check on the others. Another soldier had joined the rest, but he hadn’t any weapons and was covered in dirt and soot. He looked up as I came out.

“The rest . . .?” he pleaded.

I shook my head.

Sgt Castanza came up to me. “He’s the driver. Came out his hatch. Doesn’t look hurt, but you might want to check him over. We’ve got two birds incoming, ETA about two minutes.”

With only two minutes, I wanted to make sure my patients were ready for transport. Number one would be the soldier who had lost his feet. But if they were Black Hawks, I knew we could get all the WIAs in one load.

“Can we lower the whole ramp on that Bradley” I asked the lieutenant.

“Sure thing,” he answered, then telling one of the soldiers to get it done. The first soldier jumped up and reached inside the open hatch, only to reel away and kneel to throw up in the road. An older soldier stepped up and reached inside. The hatch began to lower, bringing in more light to the scene inside. There were more than a few gasps from the assembled men as they saw what had happened to their buddies.

The first of the Black Hawks settled down beside one of the remaining Bradleys. The crew chief jumped out and was briefed by a soldier who ran up to him. He nodded and started to pull out the mobile stretchers they had onboard.

About ten soldiers and three Marines helped load the wounded onto the bird. Anderson, the one who had called out for Gail, was the last to go. I had read his name on his flak jacket when the ramp went down. I wondered if that was a good thing or not. He was clinging to life, but he couldn’t last much longer, and now that I knew his name, his passing would have more impact on me.

As they lifted off, my adrenalin rush left me. I looked back up at the Bradley. Something had punched right through the side armor, up high. I’d heard the insurgents had a new kind of IED, where they used a steel plate as a projectile, and this looked like it might be that type. It being high would explain the injuries to the heads and upper bodies of the soldiers who had been seated inside.

I wondered how the insurgents had managed to get whatever it was between the time we first passed on the way to the government house and the time we came back. Then it hit me. It had been there all along. It was just that in a hummer, we weren’t an important enough target. This was a test, to see if they could take out something bigger. They had watched us drive by and passed us up.

The thought hit me hard. I looked down at myself, completely covered in gore. But for the grace of God, that could have been us. The Ready First soldiers had been unlucky enough to be guinea pigs for new Al Qaeda tactics.

Other elements of the Army arrived, including one of their Voodoo Mobiles, the ambulances they made out of the old M113s. It was a pretty smart use of old gear, I thought, creating a way to get casualties out of a hot zone, even if this time, we’d used air assets. With the Army having things well in hand, Sgt Castanza rounded us up for the trip back. Before I could get back into my hummer, though, the lieutenant and a sergeant first class came up to me. They shook my hand, and the SFC handed me a coin. The Army loved to hand out coins, and this one probably had their unit on it, but I was too frazzled to really look at it.

“Thanks, doc. We appreciate what you did. You ever get over to Camp Ramadi, you look us up, OK?” the SFC said. “We mean it.”

“It was nothing,” I said automatically before realizing that might come out right. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that all of this was nothing.”

“We know what you mean,” he reassured me. “But you were something. We always take care of our own, and with Blanchard KIA, we’re lucky you and your Marines were nearby so you could take his place and help us. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you.”

I watched them as they turned around and went back to the remainder of their unit.

A hand was put on my shoulder. “Come on, doc, let’s get home.

I would never have thought of Camp Hurricane as home, but for now, I could accept that. I opened the door of the hummer and got inside, ready to get back, take a shower, and maybe get a call into Amy.

Chapter 16

Ramadi

June 11, 2006

There was a new sheriff in town. We’d been briefed that the Ready First’s commander wanted to take it to the Iraqis, but I think most of us thought that after a couple of weeks, some of that would fade away. If anything, the tempo was increasing. We were going on more patrols and more kinds of patrols. They even had India out there running some patrols in boats, cruising up and down the river. More action, though, meant more casualties. There were more Hero Flights, more memorial services.

So far, the platoon had been lucky. We’d had no serious casualties for a couple of weeks, just one sprained ankle and a back injury. Considering the weight we carried and how we were jumping walls, going in windows, and all of that, I was surprised we weren’t getting more muscular-skeletal injuries. The wear and tear was pretty serious, though. I figured the VA would be having its hands full with claims as the years went on. These issues would be the Iraq War’s Agent Orange.

“We’ve got a blood trail,” La’Ron said as he came back to report to Cpl Mays. “It looks like he’s bleeding pretty good.”

“OK, let’s follow it and see where it leads,” the squad leader told him.

We were close to the edge of our battle area. We’d gotten word that an Army sniper had hit an insurgent, but the man had stumbled back and into our AOR. Normally, we coordinated hot pursuit between units, but since the platoon was in the area, the Army informed us and left it to us to find the guy. It made sense to me. We knew the area better, and anything that lessened the chances for friendly fire was a good thing.

The platoon was spread out, moving slowly, each squad in a stack doing a block-by-block search. It hadn’t taken long; after only twenty minutes or so, our point had hit the blood trail.

The tension in the squad immediately went up a notch. We wanted to be the ones who captured the guy.

I moved slightly ahead so I was just in back of Rick’s team. We knew the guy was hurt, but not how badly. If he was really messed up, it was up to me to keep him alive until we could get him back to the ITT team.

Up ahead, I saw Jerry Scanlon hold up his fist. We all froze. He motioned for Rick to move forward, and the two of them conferred. I wished I knew what they were saying.

Rick looked back, then made some hand and arm signals. The blood trail led into one of the buildings. Cpl Mays carefully moved forward, and when he reached me, I followed in his wake. We made it up to Third Team and crouched down behind the wall in front of the building.

“We’ve got blood going in the front door. There’s no sign of anything else,” Rick told the squad leader.

Cpl Mays did a quick bob up and down, seeing for himself what Rick had told him. He told Rick we would be clearing the house. He motioned for the two other fire team leaders, then called the lieutenant to let him know what was happening. Lieutenant Hobbs told him to go ahead, but to wait until the other two squads could get into position to support us with security and overwatch. With the houses in Ramadi so close together, it was easy for insurgents to move from one house to another while Marines were clearing the first one, so someone had to keep an eye on what was going on.

“OK, we’ve done this a million times. Nothing new here. We’ve maybe got a wounded or dead insurgent inside. We don’t know who else might be there. Heads up, and think, think, think. First, you’re still the assault team. You’re in first, and you clear to the left. Second, you’re still support. I want you in on First’s heels. Split the stack and clear to the right. Third, make sure the bottom floor is cleared, then keep it secure. We don’t need anyone coming up our butts from outside. After that, use our footholds and just talk it out. If we take a casualty, be ready to flood the house or break contact on my order. There’s no room for mistakes here. Remember, ‘tactical patience!’”

The “book” pushed for a top down assault, that is, going in on the roof and working our way down a building. This tended to limit the egress routes the guerillas used to make their getaway were easier to cover by the support element, and we could use grenades by throwing them down instead of up. For the martyr types, the insurgents who didn’t expect to live but who wanted to take out as many of us as possible, they tended to barricade themselves in rooms and stairwells, and coming down at them was easier than fighting up.

For me, though, as a corpsmen, I hated top-down assaults. If someone was hit, getting them out of the fight by hauling them back up ladderwells was pretty tough. It hadn’t happened to me yet, but I’d heard all about it.

Top down or bottom up, guerilla or martyr, clearing a building was one of the more harrowing things we had to do in Iraq. The idea that right behind a door was a machine gun ready to take you out was always on your mind. Out in the street, there was a sense of distance, and even if they shot at you, there was room to move. But in some small bedroom, not even an Iraqi could miss. The first guy into a room was at serious risk of getting taken out.

We all moved into position, and when given the OK from the platoon commander, we rushed through the gate and up to the front door. Jerry ran his hands along it, looking for any sign of a booby trap. He reached the knob and twisted, but it didn’t move. It was locked. There went the first part of our subdued entry. I wondered if Cpl Mays would change it to a dynamic entry, with us yelling and firing, tossing grenades as we went. But then again, if we were trying to capture someone, that probably wasn’t the best way to go about it, unless we just wanted a body.

The Marines Corps had a hundred ways to breach a door, some of them pretty high tech. But for a rifle squad, it usually boiled down to the Mark 1 Mod 1 boot, a hooligan, or shooting out the lock with a shotgun or M16. An M203 was effective, but friendlies had to be pretty far back before one was used. SMAWs worked great, too, but a squad didn’t always have access to one, and the same problem about standoff distance was there. We also carried an “eight ball,” which was a 1/8 stick of C4, but the same problems of us getting out of the way made this less than the preferred course of action.

In this case, Jerry decided to use the Mossberg. He shouldered his M16, unlimbered the shotgun, and holding the muzzle down at an angle and touching the locking mechanism, sent one of the big Lockbuster-C slugs into the door. The door didn’t have a chance and flopped open.

Immediately, First Fire Team rushed in, just as they’d practiced hundreds of times back at Lejeune and the Stumps. Even after all this time with the unit, it still gave me a bit of a thrill to watch them work like that, as if they were all connected somehow. Second Team rushed in right behind them. I was on their heels. Like most houses, the front door led to a small entry with two small sitting rooms alongside it. Two interior doors led to other rooms with a main hallway running to the back of the building. These interior doors could almost always be just kicked in, and Pacman had already breached one of them. There was a stairway going up to the right, and a quick glance showed me blood going up them. Cpl Dunlop saw the blood too, but he needed to clear the bottom floor. Just because we saw the blood didn’t mean that someone else wasn’t downstairs ready to hit us, or even if the wounded insurgent hadn’t doubled back.

“Coming in!” Steve Jenner shouted as First Fire Team entered the building. They were the security element. Cpl Choi put his two Marines on the ladderwell, weapons pointing up it.

“Clear!” shouted Jerry to the left.

As usual, the point man called out what he was seeing. All of us were supposed to shut up and listen.

“Hold left, clear right!” shouted out Cpl Mays, letting First know to hold up until Second cleared their sector.

In MOUT operations, no one was ever left alone. It was always the buddy system. With Cpl Mays as the squad leader, neither of us had an actual combat buddy, so we were wedded together for the course of the action.

The shouts of “Next man in left,” “Coming out,” “Clear,” “Move,” and such were an ongoing newsflash of how things were progressing. In just a few minutes, the shout of “All clear!” let us know that the bottom floor was secure. We turned to look at the ladderwell.

Going up stairwells was one of the most dicey parts of clearing a building. The way was restricted, and anything could come tumbling down on you. Cpl Mays gave Rick the signal to move out. The four Marines in the team started the choreographed movement up the stairs, each move designed to keep the entire area covered. There could be no area that would put us in danger. Despite the dirty, sweaty Marines being loaded down with gear, it was almost a ballet.

I just hugged the outside wall, following Cpl Mays up, my M16 at the ready. We made it to the top of the stairs without incident and faced a long hallway. Once again, Cpl Mays split the stack, sending First to the rooms on the right, Second to the rooms on the left. Cy Pierce peeled off and stayed with us, his SAW providing security down the length of the hallway.

We found our insurgent in the first room to the right.

Pacman and LCpl Jarod moved in, then immediately called out, “Here he is!”

Cpl Mays and I rushed in. It was small room, maybe 8 feet by 6 feet. Up against the side wall near the back was a small wardrobe that had seen better days. On the floor, up against the far wall under the window, was a middle aged man, his arm a bloody mess. His white cotton shirt was stained crimson. He looked like he had been trying to reach the window, but his body had just given out. He was panting and looking up to us, an almost feral expression of a trapped animal in his face. I shouldered my M16 and started to move forward, but Cpl Mays held his arm our across my chest, stopping me.

I was surprised for a second, but as Pacman started to search the man, I felt embarrassed. It wasn’t just a few people in the fight who had been taken out by wounded men who suicided when someone came close.

Pacman gave the all clear, so I moved forward. I picked up the man’s wrist to take a look. He never even flinched, but I could see he was in serious pain. The Army sniper’s round had hit the man right in the back of the elbow, making a hash out of the joint. Even a cursory glance made it clear that this elbow would never work again, and that the arm would probably come off. His elbow stood in stark contrast to the hand below the hamburger of a joint. Aside from a stream of blood that had run down it, the hand was clean. There wasn’t even any dirt under his fingernails. I had figured that if he was shot, he must have been emplacing an IED or something, but this man hadn’t been digging anything.

I did a full assessment. He was in obvious pain, and his pulse was racing, but the only injury was to his arm.

“He’s going to make it,” I told Cpl Mays.

“OK, well, patch him up, and we’ll get him out of here. You two,” he told Jarod and Pacman, stay here with the doc. We still need to clear the rest of the building.”

With that he stepped out, joining the rest of the squad.

It was hard to treat the man up against the wall, so I pulled him out to the middle of the small room. He didn’t resist, but I could see him tense up as his arm touched the floor. I knew he was in some serious pain, so first, I decided to give him a shot of morphine. I reached in my kit and pulled out the pre-loaded syringe, tapping it to get rid of the air bubbles.

“Pacman, get back from the window,” Jarod said.

I looked up where Pacman had sidled to the edge of the window to look out. He made a sheepish grin, then stepped back, bumping into the small wardrobe that was up against the wall.

As soon as he did that, the door to the wardrobe flew open, and a shape burst out, knocking him flat. I was barely aware of what was happening, but I reacted by instinct. With Pacman down on the floor and me between Jarod and the guy who had exploded from the wardrobe, I spun around, syringe in my hand, backhanding him as hard as I could and burying the syringe into the stomach of the Iraqi as he tried to rush past me.

The guy folded and collapsed on the floor, probably more from the shock of my fist in his gut than from the syringe. Jarod stepped up, weapon trained on the man as I slowly stood up.

“Holy shit, Doc! You took him out with your fucking hypo!” he exclaimed slowly.

“Coming in!” shouted Cpl Mays as he and Cy rushed back into the room. He took in the gasping Iraqi on the floor, then the open wardrobe door.

“You didn’t clear that thing?” he shouted. “What’s your fifth step of room clearing?”

He was almost frothing at the mouth, he was so upset.

“Search the room,” the two answered in unison.

“That’s right! Search the fucking room!”

I don’t think I’d ever heard Cpl Mays curse before. I hoped I wouldn’t become one of his targets. I was in the room, too, after all.

“I . . . I . . . just search him, at least! Get this room secure! Coming out!” he managed to get out before wheeling out of the room.

Pacman and Jarod looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders, and let out a big breath of air. Pacman got up and searched the new man who seemed to realize that he wasn’t really hurt that much. Oh, he had a four-inch syringe embedded in his stomach, but mostly, he’d just had the breath knocked out of him. I pulled out the syringe, then unlimbered my M16 and held it on the man until Pacman had him zip-cuffed. Then it was back to the original Iraqi, the one who’d been shot in the first place.

I took out another syringe, the first one being ruined.

“Man oh man,” Jarod said with what sounded an impressed tone of voice, “Combat Doc here’s nailed his first raghead, and with a hypo, no less. That’s some serious shit!”

“Amen to that” Pacman joined in.

I didn’t know what to say, so I just did what I knew how to do. I treated my patient.

Chapter 17

Hurricane Point

June 20, 2006

“Hey Zach, Senior Chief wants to see you.”

I looked up to Cpl Morrison, the company clerk.

What the heck does he want? I wondered.

“He said make it snappy.”

“OK, OK. I’m on my way.”

I really wanted to do anything other than going to see how I’d screwed up. We’d been out all night, and I spent the morning at sick call and cleaning my weapon. I just wanted to catch a few Z’s before lunch. Today was my birthday, not that it meant anything here. But I’d call Amy later, when it was the 20 th back home, time difference and all that.

I wearily put my gear back on wondering if I had time to hit the head first, but deciding that no, I needed to get whatever it was over with. I went into the aid station and asked HM3 Krytpos where senior chief was.

“He’s in a meeting. You can park it over there if you need to see him,” he told me.

“He wants to see me, not the other way around.”

“Don’t know anything about that,” he said as he went back to his paperwork.

So I sat down and waited. And waited. Twenty minutes went by, and no senior chief. I started drifting off; it’d had been a long night, after all. When someone collapsed in the chair beside me, I jumped up, but it was only Rocket.

HM Pauling was a whining-type corpsman who made no bones that he hated it with the Marines. He was a big tall guy, but he was soft, like the Pillsbury Doughboy. He was in his full battle gear, dirty and beat. He’d obviously been augmenting one of the platoons on a patrol overnight.

“I don’t know . . . how you put up . . . with this shit,” he said to me, the words coming between big intakes of air.

“Ah, it’s a job,” I responded.

Truth be told, I was a little ashamed of Rocket. I thought he made all corpsmen look bad. I wanted to tell him to just suck it up.

“I’ll be so glad when this tour is over. Then it’s back to the fleet for me. You still want to be a radiology tech?” he asked.

“Yea, that’s the plan,” I said.

“Then no more of the Marine bullshit, right? That’ll be sweet, right?”

“Yea, I guess.”

I wanted to tell him it wasn’t bullshit. I still planned on getting the training I needed to get a good job for my family. No more living with my mom. But being with the Marines wasn’t “bullshit.” I would remember my time with them. I didn’t say that, though. I just sat there, not really understanding why I didn’t stick up for my buddies.

Rocket chattered on for awhile, probably too beat to get up and get his gear squared away. Senior Chief finally came out and rescued me from him.

“You want to see me, Cannon?” he asked.

“No, Senior Chief, I was told you wanted to see me?”

“Now why would I want to see your sorry ass, there? You trying to get out of some company duty?”

I was confused.

“No, no. Cpl Morrison said you wanted to see me right away. You don’t want to see me?”

“You think I don’t know who I want to see and who I don’t want to see? Let me give you a hint: I don’t want to see you. Get back to your company and back to work.”

With that, he spun around and went back into his office.

I didn’t know what the heck was going on. Was Morrison messing with me, or maybe the word just got mixed up.

I shook my head and started out.

“See, even the career FMF corpsmen are just as fucked up as the Marines,” Rocket said as I walked past him and out the hatch.

I walked back to the company SWA, ready to confront Morrison. Rick caught me though, limping.

“Hey Zach, can you check out my foot? It’s hurting pretty bad.”

I looked over to the company CP, wanting to grab Morrison, but my Marines had to come first, especially Rick.

“Sure,” I said, following him back to our hootch. He opened the hatch, stepping aside and waiting for me to enter.

“Surprise! Happy Birthday!”

It looked like the entire platoon was crammed into our squadbay. A couple of the other corpsmen from the company were there, too.

La’Ron had a big knife in his hand, standing in back of the hootch’s only table. On the table was a pitcher of bug juice and a cake.

“Come cut your cake. It’s looking mighty delish sitting there.”

I almost felt overcome. I looked out at the faces, and all I could see was a true welcome. I had the sudden urge to run back to the aid station and grab Rocket, tell him that this wasn’t all bullshit. But to him, maybe it was. He didn’t have Marines, brothers like this, who would get a cake out in the middle of the Sandbox for him.

“Where’d you get the cake?” I asked as I walked up, hands pounding my shoulders.

“Umar got it for you. He got all the chow for us,” Rick said, his limp miraculously gone.

Umar was standing there beside La’Ron, beaming. I knew he did it as a favor for Rick, but I still appreciated it.

As I got to the cake, I had to stop. It was a flat pan cake, with bits of chocolate peeking out beneath the white frosting. Umar had decorated it, though. Beside the “Happy Birthday Doc Cannon,” there was an image of someone obviously meant to be me. In his hand was a huge syringe, and he was in the process of hitting a caricature of an Arab, complete with robes and a camel in the background.

I had to laugh as calls of “OoRah!” and “Combat Doc!” rang out.

I was still pretty embarrassed by the incident. The man I’d stuck wasn’t really an insurgent. He was just the brother of the guy who’d been shot—but that man was insurgent, at least. But insurgent or not, the rest of the guys in the platoon, heck in the rest of the battalion, seemed to love it. I knew I had to take it with good grace.

At the repeated urgings of the others, most stridently from La’Ron, I cut the cake. The privates and the PFCs got theirs first, and then up the ranks. Senior Chief made it in in time to get his before the lieutenant. He was laughing, so I knew he’d been in on it all the time. I was surprised that Capt Wilcox, the first sergeant, and the gunny even stopped by for a few minutes.

After everyone else was served, I got my own piece of cake. I took a big bite. It was surprisingly good, Iraq or not.

“Happy birthday there, bud,” Rick said as he took a seat beside me on my rack.

I looked around at everybody, some starting to leave the hootch, to get back to the war. I was away from my Amy, from my son. I was in the middle of the desert, where people would be happy to kill me. I was dirty, tired, and exhausted. But somehow, this birthday had to rank up there as one of my best.

“Damn fine birthday,” I told him.

“Yea, not bad,” he agreed. “You’re still not old enough to order a beer, though, youngun!”

Chapter 18

Ramadi

July 1, 2006

The loudspeakers blared out their taunts in Arabic. I couldn’t understand each phrase, but Azar had enthusiastically told us that they meant things like “Are you a man? Then come prove it to us. Come fight!” and “Only women hide like rats, afraid to fight.”

“So, are they coming?” La’Ron called down from where he crouched in the gun turret.

He wasn’t exposing himself to any sniper, but he was ready to pop up and fire if the attack came.

“If they’ve got balls, they will,” Cpl Choi answered. “Thems some pretty heavy insults we’re throwing their way.”

We had taken on a new tactic. Instead of trying to dig the bad guy out, we were daring them to come meet us. We called it being “fly bait.” One of the Ready First battalions had done this last week, and 14 Iraqis had died trying to prove their manhood.

This was a company operation. Our entire platoon was arranged in one of the squares, ready and waiting. The other platoons were deployed within a few blocks of us. We had a Bradley with us, and their chain gun was a nice piece of insurance. Back at Lejeune and at the stumps, we’d worked with the Marines’ LAVs, but the LAV battalion was up at Ar Rutbah conducting their own operations out in the open desert. Among all of us hummers, the Bradley looked like a beast, even if it was dwarfed by the M1s that the BCT had. There was an M1 with First Platoon, one of the four Marine tanks in Ramadi, but Third and us had Army Bradleys.

As I glanced at it, though, I couldn’t help but think about the last time I had been in one. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

“I wished they’d get it on. I’ve got to take a wicked piss,” La’Ron remarked.

Cpl Choi just handed him up an empty water bottle. La’Ron took it and kept it for when he really couldn’t wait any longer.

We’d been sitting there for about two hours. The sun was up and beating down on us; we were burning hot. I wanted to undo the neck of my flak jacket, but each time my gloved hand unconsciously reached up, I thought of Sgt Butler. That stopped my hand each time.

A loud rasping snore filled the cab of the hummer.

“Jenner! Wake the fuck up!” shouted Choi, smacking Steve on the shoulder.

Steve was the driver, and he’d actually fallen asleep. He shook the sleep out of his eyes.

“I wasn’t asleep,” he protested.

“Yea, that was just an Iraqi frog farting we heard there,” La’Ron said, sticking his head down.

He reached back and I gave him the obligatory fist bump.

“Yea Doc, he knows.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that, but I bumped fists with him again anyway.

“I wasn’t asleep,” Steve muttered to no one in particular.

A single shot rang out from somewhere above us. La’Ron jumped back up into his turret as we spun our heads looking around.

Across the street from us, a body lay inside a doorway. It was only 15 or 20 meters from us, so we could easily see the packed explosives around his torso.

A fucking suicide bomber!

The thought chilled me. IEDs were bad enough, but suicide bombers were like guided IEDs. We hadn’t had that many of them yet, but Al Qaeda’s use of them was increasing.

I spun my head to try and look up over us. One of the emplaced snipers had just taken the guy out. He hadn’t even made it one step into the street, so the sniper must have been watching him, and when the bomber made his move, our sniper sent him to his 79 virgins, even if a tiny bit earlier than when he wanted to go to Paradise.

Sporadic fire broke out. The suicide bomber was probably supposed to signal the start of an attack, but when he was taken out, it took the insurgents a few moments to get going.

It didn’t take the platoon a few moments to respond, though. Almost immediately, all the gunners on the turrets opened up, and the Bradley’s chain gun and 240 machine gun their contribution. The noise was tremendous, sound waves bouncing back and forth from either side of the square. Within moments, dust and smoke obscured our vision. I had my weapon at the ready, but unless someone came running out of the smoke at us, this was going to be a battle of our mounted weapons.

I had been with the Marines for a little over half a year, but this was the most concentrated fire I’d ever experienced. We’d blown off rounds at the range back in the US, but this was different. We were firing these rounds with evil intent.

After almost a minute, the radio crackled with the command to cease fire. Cpl Choi slapped La’Ron’s leg to get his attention.

My ears were ringing as silence took over. It took awhile for things to come into view, vehicle shapes emerging slowly as the dust settled. Around us, there was no movement. The buildings, never in good shape in this city, had absorbed a tremendous amount of damage, the firing chewing up the walls. Whole sections had been shot out. We hadn’t even used indirect fire, and the Bradley hadn’t fired their TOW, but you could have fooled me on that based on the degree of damage I saw.

It was up to First and Third to check our damage. We remained as the security element, covering the other two squads.

The two squads pulled out six broken bodies, laying them out on the dirt of the square. The suicide bomber was left in place for EOD. Blood seeped out from under the bodies, at first bright red, but then dulling as dust rose to cover the blood’s surface. Even under the bright sunlight, everything took on a washed out hue.

Seven men couldn’t take the insults and had rushed to prove their manhood. Now they were just mangled meat.

Chapter 19

Hurricane Point

July 4 th , 2006

“The first sergeant told me to give this to you,” Cpl Morrison said after walking into the hootch, handing me a piece of paper.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“I guess you’re gonna hafta read it,” he said.

I looked it over. It was a cover sheet from the Department of the Army.

What would I care about the Army?

I read on. I saw the brigade commander’s name there, then mine. I got to the subject.

“Well, shit,” was all I could say.

“What do you got?” newly promoted Corporal Richard S. Haddad asked.

“The Army’s giving me a friggin’ medal,” I told him.

“What?” came from him and several of the other guys.

We’d all just come back from chow, a July 4 th feast of steak, chicken, burgers, corn-on-the-cob, even fresh watermelon. They got up off their racks and came to look over my shoulder.

“It says right here that I’m getting the Army Achievement Medal for that shit with the Bradley that was hit. Says my actions were ‘exemplary.’ Look here, it even says that I ‘prevented further loss of life.’”

“Well no shit, Doc. Fuckin’ A,” Rick said, grabbing the paper from my hand.

“But I didn’t save anyone’s life. I just gave basic care, and that Spec 4, Anderson? I didn’t think he was going to make it, and I never gave him any care until after all the rest.”

“But he did make it, right? And he’s back in Germany or the States, now, right?”

“Yea, but . . .”

“There’re no ‘buts’ about it. You done good. And if the Army wants to give you a medal for that, all the better.”

“You’ll get the medal and certificate at the awards presentation. The sergeant major said the CO wants to pin it on you,” Morrison said.

He looked around as the cover sheet made the rounds of the others. His voice went down a few decibels.

“Did you hear?”

Cpl Morrison was a conscientious, hard-working Marine, stuck in the company office as the clerk. Working for the first sergeant was something none of us would want, so we all had a better you than me attitude when he came around. One more thing, though, was that he was a big-time gossip. He heard things. When we heard his standard opening of “Did you hear?” we usually rolled our eyes—Marines didn’t listen to gossip, right?-- but that never stopped us from listening in.

“Over at Fallujah, the Iraqis, they captured one of the Marines there, we think.”

We didn’t make any pretense of belittling what he told us. This was serious shit, something probably everyone one of us thought about and feared.

Our combined exclamations drowned each other out.

“Yep. Right outside their government center. One of the convoys got hit, and a corporal’s gone missing.”

“Maybe he’s laying low?” Pacman asked, almost hopefully.

“The word is that they found drag marks, and they think he’s been taken.”

“Well, he’ll be starring on the Al Qaeda You-Tube right ricky-tic,” Jarod said sourly.

“Oh you mother,” and “shut the fuck up,” were shouted at him, along with a boot being hurled.

“What? You all know what’s going to happen,” he said in protest.

LCpl Bret Jarod was a good enough Marine, but the guy had no social skills. That was probably why we always referred to him only as “Jarod;” never his first name, never a nickname.

We’d all seen the beheading videos, I would bet. They lurked down deep in the recesses of our minds. But we all wanted to keep them there, and we didn’t need Jarod to bring them out into the open.

“You got any better news for us, Carl?” Rick asked.

“Well, uh, . . .” he said as he tried to think. I knew he’d die before failing to pass any good scuttlebutt.

“Ah, maybe this? It seems like someone made off with seven million dollars from the Rasheed Bank, and get this, the bank was right next door to one of the Army COPs.”

He looked at us with a satisfied expression.

“Seven million smackers? I could do that, just like that movie, Kelly’s Heroes,” Cpl Dunlop said.

“That’s a hell of a lot of money,” Jerry added. “Maybe the doggies helped themselves?”

The story wasn’t that engrossing, but I think all of us wanted to get our minds off that missing corporal. We were deep into our own plans on how we would pull off a heist and then get the money back to the US when Cherrydick came in.

“Cpl Haddad, there’s some girl at the front gate who’s asking for you,” he said without preamble.

If there was one thing we never expected to hear here in the Sandbox was that there was a girl waiting for any of us. You could have told us that the Martians had landed, and we’d have thought that was more likely.

“Bullshit,” came his surprised response.

“Hey, I’m just passing the word.”

The rest of us started to whoop and holler.

“Haddad’s going to get some!” cried out Steve in a falsetto, sing-song voice.

“Who is the girl?” Rick asked.

“I don’t know. But she said she’s the sister of someone you know. That cook, I think, from the DFAC.”

That shut us up immediately. This had something to do with Umar.

“Get battled up!” Rick barked up, all serious.

The entire squad threw on our gear, and in a few moments, we were ready to move.

“Pacman, go tell Cpl Mays or SSgt White what’s happening. The rest of us, don’t do anything stupid. Let’s just find out what she wants.”

We followed Rick out and moved on down to the gate. As we came up, one of the Marines on guard told the rest of us to hold back, then motioned Rick forward. We watched Rick as he went to the outside of the gate. If this was a ruse of some sort, he would be an easy target of a sniper.

Sitting down on the ground was a fully burkaed, chadored, or whatever they called it, woman. She stood up, hands wringing in front of her and she spoke to Rick. We could see Rick asking her to repeat herself. It seemed like he understood, because he called out to the sergeant of the guard and evidently got an OK as he looked back and called out for me.

“Zach, get up here!”

I always felt a little exposed when I passed through the gate, but this time, I felt it even more. I had the squad just inside the gate and the Marines on security there, but really, it was just Rick and me and a lot of Iraqis out there.

“There’s no interpreter here now. He’s taking a shit,” he told me as I came up before turning back to the girl.

“Tell him again, just like you told me,” he told her.

The girls voice was clear through her veil, “Umar brother me. Brother, mother, grenade. Umar money for doster. No money Umar.”

It took me a moment to realize she meant “doctor,” not “doster.” The girl had memorized what she was saying.

“Umar die.”

My heart fell. He was dead?

“Umar doster,” she said earnestly.

I could see she was trembling. She was scared out of her mind, whether that was because of us or because she was scared to be seen with us, I didn’t know. But if she was saying he needed a doctor, then he was still alive.

“Is Umar alive?” I asked.

“Umar, doster,” she said again.

“Where is he?” Rick asked.

“Umar, doster.”

I reached out and pointed, swinging my hand around, while asking “Umar?”

She seemed to grasp my meaning. She turned to point down one of the roads leading to the gate.

“Umar.”

There was a beat up white sedan at the corner. It had to be forty years old. Crouching beside it was an old man. He saw us looking, then raised a hand and waved.

“Umar’s in that car,” I said, grabbing Rick’s arm. “I’m sure of it.”

“I think you’re right.”

He turned to the sergeant of the guard who was watching us intently.

“We need to get that vehicle in here. Can I motion it forward?”

“Not going to happen,” the sergeant said.

I wanted to scream out, but he was right. Vehicles did come in and out of the Point, but they were escorted to us and searched. A beat-up old car was common platform for a VIED, and even if this girl was really Umar’s sister, she could be being forced to be an accomplice in an attack.

“Can we go out there?” he asked.

“You need to get permission first,” he said.

“Look, that’s Umar out there, you know him, right? From the DFAC?”

“Of course I know him.” He hesitated, then said, “Look, this might be my ass, but you take two more guys, then get over and get back. If that’s really Umar, then carry him back here. He’s cleared, so we can let him in, but not the girl.”

“Fair enough,” Rick said.

“La’Ron, Steve, get out here. The rest of you cover us.”

Steve Jenner was a pretty big guy, so he could help carry Umar. La’Ron was not a big guy, and for a moment, I wondered why Rick had picked him. But then I realized that PFC or not, La’Ron was one of the coolest Marines we had when the shit hit the fan. Nothing fazed him.

“OK, let’s go,” he told us.

By force of habit, we disbursed as we walked across the open area in front of the gate, our formation only spoiled by the robed girls walking in the middle of us. Thirty seconds later, we reached the car. The old man stepped back, and for a moment, I thought that was the signal for the car to explode. But he was only afraid.

I looked in the back seat, and Umar was lying down on it. He wasn’t moving. I opened the door, mindless of booby traps, and felt for a pulse. The guy was burning up, his skin hot and dry. His pulse was febrile and weak. As I leaned over to check his eyes, I was almost overcome with the smell of rotted flesh. His shirt was discolored, and I could see the seeping stains of puss.

“We’ve got to get out of here, Zach,” Rick said urgently, reminding me that I could not sit and go through my entire assessment out here in Indian country.

“Steve, give me a hand,” I said, and the two of us pulled Umar out of the car. Steve hoisted Umar on his shoulder, and we high-tailed it back to the gate. I think I actually sighed with relief as we made it through.

Just inside the final barrier, we laid him down on the deck so I could get a good look at him. Even without a full assessment, I could see he was about gone. His eyes were slightly open, but rolled back. His breath was extremely shallow and quick. I pulled back his shirt, and over his belly was a wad of rags acting as a bandage. They were soaked with foul-smelling fluid. Two of the Marines who were standing beside me watching stepped back, covering their noses.

The missing interpreter came through the barriers where he had gone to talk to Umar’s sister.

“That is the sister. She says someone threw a grenade into their house. The mother and Umar were hit, but they have little money. They only have enough to pay doctor for mother. Umar never no went to doctor.”

“When did that happen? I need to know how long ago,” I asked as I peeled back the makeshift bandages.

I couldn’t even tell how many pieces of shrapnel had hit him. His entire belly and groin were swollen and leaking serum. It was pretty obvious that infection had set in hard, and he had a very short time left.

“Four days ago, that was when,” the interpreter said.

He looked concerned, probably considering that he could be a target too for working for us. If a cook was punished, how much worse would it be for an interpreter?

“Rick, he’s pretty bad off. We need to get him to Charlie Med, and like now. We can’t wait.”

“OK, you heard him. We’re not going to wait for a vehicle. We’re going to carry him to the boat basin and across the river. John, can you go clear this with the powers-that-be?” he asked Cpl Choi.

We picked him up as Cpl Choi took off at a run. We were hurrying, but Umar was beyond feeling the jarring we were wracking on him. An incoming mortar round landed up ahead, something that happened a number of times a day, but I barely noticed. Half-way to the basin, Gunny Tora and Cpl Choi drove up in a hummer, and we put Umar on the hood. I sat there with him as we drove to the river.

One of the India Marines had already started the engine on one of the boats. We loaded Umar on the hood, then Rick and I got in as well as we took off across the river.

Word had been passed at Camp Ramadi, to. An ambulance was there waiting for us, and five minutes later, we were taking him into the Charlie Med ER. One of the Army doctors immediately took charge, and he was put up on an examining table.

“When was this man wounded?” a voice asked behind me.

I turned to look. A major was there wearing the collar tab of what was probably the Army version of the medical service corps. She wasn’t a doctor, but she would be on the admin side of care.

“He was wounded four days ago, ma’am,” I said.

“Stop it, stop it!” she shouted at the medical team who had just stripped Umar of his clothes.

Everyone turned to look at her.

“According to our new orders, Iraqi civilian nationals can only be admitted if their injury was suffered within 24 hours. Anything over that, and they need to get care in an Iraqi hospital.”

She had taken several steps forward as she was speaking until she was right up against the table.

“But he works for us! They tried to kill him because of that!” I shouted out.

“It makes no difference,” she said over her shoulder. To the rest, she ordered, “Prepare him for transport.”

The gathered team looked at her, motionless. I couldn’t believe they were going to send Umar away, to send him to his death.

After an eternity, the doctor turned back to Umar and said, “Let’s prep him for surgery. Someone get Doctor Hawkins.”

“Captain Vance,” the major said with emphasis on the captain , “I don’t believe you heard me. You will not treat this man.

“I heard you, Major Stallings, but you see, once I’ve started treatment, and as a physician , I am not allowed to stop life-saving measure. It’s in my oath, you know.”

“It doesn’t look to me that you’ve started any treatment. This man will be transferred,” she said, steel in her voice.

Dr. Vance reached over and took one of the swabbing brushed used to sterilize large areas of skin, and with one stroke, made a large, brown-colored swath across Umar’s chest.

“You were saying. Major?”

She just stood there watching as the team drew blood and got Umar ready for surgery.

“You’ll hear from the colonel about this,” she said before wheeling and stomping out.

I watched as IV’s were put in and Umar was prepared. Dr. Hawkins, the same guy who did my surgery, came in and listened intently as he was brief by the Army doc. The surgery team took over and wheeled Umar out.

“Will he make it?” I asked the doctor as he took off his gloves.

“Don’t know. That infection was pretty advanced. But Hawk’s a good surgeon, so he might pull through. Another hour or so, though, and I think he’d be gone. At least now, he’s got a fighting chance.”

“Well thanks. He’s sort of a mascot to the Marines in the battalion.”

“No thanks necessary. We aim to please.”

He started to walk past me when I stopped him.

“Is that really part of the Hippocratic Oath? That not being able to stop treatment?”

“Ah, who the hell knows? It was all in Ancient Greek, and they told us about the oath all the way back in pre-med. But she doesn’t know, that’s for damn sure, and I wasn’t going to let some admin pogue tell me what to do in my ER.”

Chapter 20

Ramadi General Hospital

July 5, 2006

I wanted to work in a hospital, so I thought it ironic that here I was in one, even if I had just helped take it.

Ramadi General Hospital was a large complex, seven stories high, with about 250 beds. It had been considered off limits at first, but Al Qaeda had been not only using it to treat their own wounded, but they had been using the roof as a sniper nest from where they could fire on us. The last straw was when several Iraqi policemen who were wounded and taken there for treatment were found beheaded. Medical facility or not, it was now officially a target.

This was a battalion objective with two companies in the attack. Only, there wasn’t much of an attack. The insurgents melted away before we got there. We found a mostly empty building with only a few patients and very little staff.

We slowly cleared the building. I was more interested in the layout and the equipment than in fighting. I had to keep reminding myself to keep up my level of concentration.

Once we realized that Al Qaeda was not going to contest the building, the Iraqi police, in their light blue shirts and black helmets, stormed in, probably anxious to show that they were on the job.

“Yea, show up now, you stupid hajiis,” Jarod said as yet another group of IPs stuck their heads in the ward we were clearing, then disappeared.

“Steady, there,” said Cpl Mays. “Remember what the lieutenant said about insulting our illustrious allies. If they want to take credit for this, just let them.”

We broke open lockers, medicine chests, anything that might be holding weapons. We never found anything, but First Platoon found a pretty big haul of IED triggering devices hidden in the overhead of one of the offices.

All in all, it hadn’t been a bad day. We had expected the fight to be pretty fierce, and while we didn’t take it to the insurgents, neither had we suffered any casualties. I’d take that as a win.

Chapter 21

Ramadi

July 12, 2006

I tried to lean forward, anything to change the position of my back. I think I carried everything I owned when we were dismounts. Not only did I have the full combat load of every Marine, but I had all my medical gear as well. Kneeling at the side of the road was a great breather, but I knew the signal to get up and move out again would come any minute.

I looked over at the ISF jundiis on the other side of the road. They didn’t carry even half of the gear we did. SSgt White said that was because they were still in training, but this was OJT, and we were getting hit on almost every patrol now. If they could carry less, I wondered why we couldn’t.

Patrolling with the ISF was not our favorite thing to do. The jundiis were better than they used to be, according to some of the older salts, but still, they were not up to snuff, and not many had the will to fight. One whole battalion had to be sent back to Baghdad after an IED gave one of their hummers a flat tire—no one was even hurt. But they refused to patrol after that happened, and the BCT commander fired them, just like that.

Just a few years ago, many of them were in Saddam’s army, and they were fighting us. Most of the Marines thought that some of them still were fighting us. Just a week ago, an ISF soldier opened up on his MiTT, killing an Army captain and an NCO. Shot them both dead.

I looked up ahead where the senior MiTT member, Gunny Sandoval, was conferring with the lieutenant on our route. That was one job I don’t think I’d want. He and SSgt Bronstein were eating, sleeping, and fighting with the ISF. They were commanded by a major, I think, and there were more members of the team, but when we went out with the ISF, it was usually with only one or two Americans with them. No, the Military Transition Team would not be my top choice, even if the word “transition” hinted that we Americans would be getting out of this place. Other countries, like Spain, were pulling out. Only the Brits and the Poles were really sticking around in any numbers, from what I’d heard.

We’d been going out in the daylight more often lately. When mounted, daylight was good because we could see IEDs better. But when dismounted, we liked the darkness. The common saying back at the Point was “We own the night.” In the daylight, we knew we were under constant observation: sniper fire, mortars, and rockets were a constant threat.

Thinking of mortars made me look up again. We didn’t like to stop while out on patrol. That gave them time to fire off a few rounds at us. I hoped the lieutenant figured out what was going on so we could get moving again.

But back to the ISF, they didn’t like the night. So we went out more often on these joint patrols in the daytime, under observation, and in 100 degree-plus temperatures.

The lieutenant made his decision, and the signal to get up was given. I took another sip of water from my CamelBak and struggled to my feet. I was OK when already up, but getting up was sometimes a bitch.

This patrol was to investigate a possible IED factory. We’d been given intelligence on where it was. Weapons platoon, or the Combined Action Platoon, as they were now officially designated (even if we usually used the old term out of habit), had set up checkpoints 200 meters beyond our target. They would be the blocking force.

Up ahead, I could see the intersection that was one of our own route checkpoints. We had to cross this open area first, and then another 150 meters or so was our objective.

Any open area was a hazard. I knew we had sniper overwatch, but they had snipers, too, and ever since the Chechnyan snipers had joined them, they were getting much more effective.

At the intersection, the security element oriented down both directions of the perpendicular road, the one we were crossing. Then, two at a time, we sprinted across. I was maybe the tenth American to cross, but still, I felt the unseen crosshairs of some Al Qaeda sniper aiming in on me.

Actually, it didn’t take very long, and all the Americans and jundiis were across and to the other side. We were now pretty close to our staging area, from where we would launch into the attack.

Up ahead, 15 or 20 pigeons took flight.

La’Ron looked at me and pointed at the birds, shrugging his shoulders.

The pigeons were probably a signal that we were getting close. If there were insurgents at the IED factory, they would either scatter or settle in for a serious fight. This being Ramadi, it would probably be the fight.

I’d only taken a couple of more steps before all hell broke loose. Machine gun fire opened up in front of us, the bright green tracers of the enemy making arcs over our heads. I jumped over the wall I’d been walking next to, falling in a heap in a courtyard. La’Ron was right behind me. We moved forward to the gate, then pushed it open a crack, La’Ron high and me low, weapons out and looking for a target.

Behind us and down the road from where we’d already been, another machine gun let loose. I scanned the rooftops, looking for targets.

Most of the Marines had crashed into homes and courtyards when the machine gun opened up. I could hear the lieutenant in the next courtyard over yelling on the radio for support.

The ISF soldiers, though, had merely hit the deck up against the street side of the walls in front of the homes. Several of them had jumped into the narrow canals that ran in front of the walls, the small open sewers filled with septic fluid and waste.

Across the street, just in front of the lead jundii, was a narrow alley. We tended to avoid them. They looked inviting, but the bad guys knew that. No, it was better to make our own paths.

Rounds were clipping all the buildings around us, sending chips of mortar and cinder block down on us. The muzzles of the guns weren’t depressed enough to hit us, which meant either these gunners were extremely poor marksmen, or there was another game afoot. If they were merely holding us in place, that might mean that we had incoming. But mortars didn’t do much against prone Marines.

One of the ISF soldiers pointed from his position to the alley, turning his head to call out to his fellow soldiers.

“Don’t do it,” La’Ron muttered. “Keep it cool.”

But a decision had been made. En mass, seven or eight jundiis jumped up and ran for the alley. Gunny Sandoval, who had been prone with them, jumped up, screaming something in Arabic. I heard the English word “No!” in the mix, so I got the drift.

He ran forward, grabbing one soldier by the collar and throwing him backwards on his ass onto the street. He kept running, reaching out for another just as he disappeared into the alley.

The explosion was muffled, but it sent plumes of smoke coming out. I didn’t hesitate. I pushed open the gate and ran as fast as I could for the alley. I expected the machine gunners to focus on actually hitting us now that their trap had been sprung, but the guns had gone silent. They gunners were probably making their escape.

Regardless, as I got to the alley, I held up, back against the street wall. SSgt Bronstein and one of the ISF soldiers hit the wall opposite of me. The staff sergeant said something in Arabic, and the two turned and dashed into the still smoking alley. I waited about five seconds, then I went in, too.

The alley was only about eight or maybe nine feet across, and the smoke from the explosion was slowly drifting up. As the viz cleared, I could see the havoc caused by the blast.

It looked like several of the Iraqis had already gotten prone, and that might have saved them. Their moans, at least, told me that they were still alive. Others, though, weren’t so lucky. My attention was caught for a moment on an intact arm, hanging eight feet up from the tattered remains of a cloth covering, the kind the shopkeepers used to give their storefront shade. From the uniform sleeve that still covered it, I knew it was an ISF arm.

Right at my feet were two bodies. Gunny Sandoval’s torso seemed mostly intact, but his legs and one arm were gone. His head was almost gone, the gruesome angle evidence that his neck and been broken clear through. Next to him was a jundii, well, the top half of one, probably the guy he’d been trying to stop. He should have listened to the gunny.

“What do we have, Zach?” HM2 Sylvester asked as he ran into the alley.

I just pointed at the gunny. I hadn’t known him that well, but still, this Marine had just died trying to save ISF soldiers. Iraqis.

“Treat the living,” Sylvester said as he knelt next to one of the moaning jundiis.

I shook my head, but knelt as well, starting my assessment.

Of the eight men who had entered the alley, including the gunny, five were KIA. Three were WIA, one critical.

After the explosion, Weapons Platoon had shifted missions and hit the target. They blasted down the doors of one very surprised, frightened, and innocent family. The “intel” had all been part of the ambush.

We got the wounded out of there. I watched them leave, then started to walk back across the street. An Iraqi ISF soldier stood there, looking at me. It took me a moment, but then I recognized him. He was the one that Gunny Sandoval had pulled back, the one the gunny had saved.

He looked up at me with pleading eyes, as if he wanted to say something.

I didn’t give him a chance. I shouldered past him, knocking him back as I went.

Chapter 22

Ramadi

July 18, 2006

We were back on fly bait duty, but this time, there we were only four hummers, just our squad. Oh, the rest of the platoon was at one of the Army COPs, just a few blocks away, ready to react. But for the moment, we were out there all alone.

When we first started this tactic, the insurgents were easily goaded into attacking us. But now, after being spanked hard time and time again, they were more reluctant to come out and play with us. Not that I disagreed with their thinking, but the fact was that we now had to offer up a juicier target—us.

The lieutenant was with us along with a captain, the battalion Air Officer. So at least it wasn’t just Cpl Mays and us sitting out here in Indian country on our lonesome.

“Think they’re coming?” Steve Jenner asked for the umpteenth time.

“They’ll come if they come,” Cpl Choi answered with the resigned tone that a father might have after listening to his kids keep asking “Are we there yet?”

There was probably only a year or two’s difference between the corporal and Jenner, but there was a world of difference in their level of maturity.

“Well, I wish they’d just get it over with,” Steve muttered as he clicked his safety off and back on again, a nervous tic that he had recently begun to display.

I understood Steve’s anxiety. Things had been heating up, and the battalion was suffering more casualties. There wasn’t a day that Marines weren’t in the shit, and the pressure was building up. Couple that with a shifting schedule of night patrols, day patrols, security duty, and what have you, well, it was beating down on us. I think a few of the guys were at the end of their mental ropes.

The waiting was almost worse than the fighting, though. At least then, we didn’t have time to think much. Sitting in the hummer, a piece of fly bait, well, that gave a guy a chance to think, a chance to wonder if the battalion would soon be standing at attention for our own Hero Flight. Wondering where our photo would go up on the battalion CP’s Hero Wall.

Time dragged on. Nothing stirred in the heat until a pack of feral dogs came trotting by, stopping to nose our hummers, undoubtedly wondering if we were fair game. We were taught in our classes back at Lejeune that the Muslims thought dogs were unclean. If these were a reasonable sample of Iraqi dogs, then I could understand that. The feral dogs were mangy, dirty mutts. But they would take you down if they could. No Marine or soldier had been killed by a pack, despite rumors to the contrary, but several packs had attacked in the past, once just a month ago. They had been driven off with a few bursts of fire, but the fact that they would take on armed men was always at the back of each man’s mind.

The dogs, at some unseen command, suddenly turned and trotted off. As they disappeared from sight, we were alone once again. Nothing stirred. It was even too hot for the flies. I pulled at the edge of my gloves, trying to get some air in. I’m not sure why I bothered, though. The air around me was probably the same temperature as my skin inside the gloves.

Even though we were waiting for it, when the double boom of the RPG came, it came as a shock. RPGs always had two booms. The first was as it was fired and the second, a moment or so later as it hit, sending its molten plasma and shrapnel into whatever it struck. I looked ahead to see if that plasma had gone into one of our hummers as our gunners opened up on a building about 50 meters down the street.

Our hummers were intact. The cloud of smoke on the building just beyond Rick’s hummer showed me that the RPG gunner had hit too high. This meant he was probably up high in the building we were now taking under fire. When firing down, gravity had less effect on a projectile, so this was a common mistake. This time, that mistake might have save Rick, his team, and the lieutenant.

One of our hummers had been mounted with a MK19 grenade launcher, and the gunner from Weapons Company attached to us started launching grenade after grenade at our target. With the .50 cals, we were peppering the building, but still fire was coming back at us. There was another boom, and I could see the rocket coming at us. It hit the dirt right in front of us and skipped past, less than a meter from the front of our hummer. There was an almost immediate boom in back of us, and we were showered with broken plaster. La’Ron cried out in anger, but he kept pumping out rounds.

We had three .50 cals and one Mk19 in the attack, but as Marines, we wanted to bring more to the party. I kept craning my neck up, waiting.

I never saw the bomb, but I felt the concussion as the building with the insurgents just disappeared. One huge blast, an equally huge fountain of flame and smoke, and a shower of debris that had La’Ron ducking down for cover, and where there had been a seven-story building was now a half-story pile of rubble.

“That was your boys, there, Doc. Freaking awesome,” Cpl Choi turned to me and said.

“Fly Navy!” I said, the best I could come up with despite hours trying to come up with an Arnold-like one-liner. So The Terminator I wasn’t.

The building was gone. Zippo. Nada. But that wasn’t enough. A long, prolonged burst of fire rained down from above like a swarm of huge, angry mutant wasps. No one could have survived that initial blast, but the big C-130 gunship loitering overhead wasn’t taking any chances. As soon as the Navy F-18 hit the building with its bomb, the Air Force plane rushed in for its turn. It just slammed the rubble with its 25 mm gatling cannon, making little pebbles out of big chunks of concrete.

After the C-130 left the station and the dust cleared, the order came to move out. Dunlop’s hummer pulled out first, followed by the rest. We drove right past the demolished building as we made our way back to the COP to link up with the rest of the platoon. Wisps of smoke and dust were floating up in the still air. There was a bitter smell of some chemical residue from the bomb, not overpowering, but there none-the-less, mixed up with the smell of pulverized concrete. Not for the first time, I was glad I was part of the US forces and not facing them.

Chapter 23

Hurricane Point

July 23, 2006

“Hey, you hear about that Marine from Fallujah who got captured?” Pacman asked as he came into our SWA.

I felt my heart drop. This wouldn’t be good.

“He fought off the insurgents and got away. I just heard it at the company CP.”

“No shit?” Rob Runolfson asked, swinging his legs around to sit up on his rack.

The rest of us were making similar expressions of surprise.

“Yea, they were like, going to cut off his head, you know, like in those videos. But he and some British soldier went hand-to-hand and messed them up good.”

I was shocked, to be honest. But overriding that shock was a thrill that someone had managed to fight back. My morale shot straight up; everyone else’s had too, if the excited chatter that greeted the news was any indication. We’d just been sitting around waiting, so this gave us something to talk about.

The platoon was the battalion Quick Reaction Force for the day. This could mean that we’d be in camp all day. But if things went to form, we could be called out not only once, but several times. Some guys liked being the QRF. We sat around in our full battle gear, but there wasn’t usually humping involved. If we went out, we went out fast and mounted. For me, though, I never really liked it much. The waiting sucked, but more to the point, if we did go out, it was because someone was in a shit sandwich, a sandwich where we would soon be.

Some of us had been dozing, backs on the racks, booted feet on the deck, but this had gotten everyone’s attention. We wondered how that Marine had managed to do it, and that led wondering what we’d do if we were captured. Jerry Scanlon flat out said that if any of us saw him being carried off by the ragheads, we should just shoot him right then and there.

The talk started to peter out as our thoughts turned inward. Being captured by the insurgents was a fear always floating around in the back of our minds.

Cy Pierce broke that train of thought. “Hey, Jenns, what day are we at?”

“Oh shit, I forgot!” Steve answered, jumping up to get to his locker.

“Hey man, you can’t go forgetting that,” La’Ron called out. “Thems bad juju, man. You miss a day, and maybe we have to stay a day longer.”

Steve Jenner had a shortimer’s calendar, but one that went above and beyond. The background of the calendar was a photo of his girlfriend. Covering the photo were small stickers, each with a number on it. There had been 190 stickers, and a good portion of them had been removed, one at a time as each day went by. Enough had been removed to show that Corrine was naked and was holding a sign saying “Come home to this, Stevie,” with an arrow pointing down at her crotch, and she was hot. No, not hot, but smoking hot.

To say she was completely naked, though, was only conjecture. The remaining stickers were strategically placed around her tits and pussy. By careful examination, it looked like she was topless, but the debate was whether a g-string hid her goods.

Steve was completely at ease with sharing his calendar with us. I couldn’t imagine doing that with Amy. She had given me a rather revealing photo before I left, but I had that secured and would never show that to anyone. Steve, though, didn’t mind when we ogled Corrine.

He brought out the precious calendar, then scanned it for the day’s sticker. Cy, Bret, and La’Ron crowded around him as he found it, then pulled it off.

“Ah, man,” Jarod exclaimed.

I wanted to get up to see, but I didn’t want to act like I was drooling over his girlfriend, me a married man and all.

“Just a little side titty,” Jarod said as he sat back down. “I want to see the good stuff.”

“You might want to see it,” Steve said as he put the calendar back in his locker, “but in two months, I’ll be doing more than that!”

La’Ron held up a fist, and Steve obliged with a bump.

I know it takes all kinds, and I know we had forged a bond of brotherhood, but Steve’s openness about his girlfriend was something I couldn’t get my head around. That didn’t stop me from taking a look, though, on occasion, and watching the slow, seven-month strip-tease.

I was sitting on Rick’s rack as mine was a top bunk. I leaned back, keeping my booted feet off the rack and on the deck. With Steve’s ritual, I started thinking about Amy. I missed her pretty badly, and I wanted to see my son. But I was also a bit apprehensive about seeing them again. How would I fit in? Would Tyson even remember me?

I was lost in my thoughts when the alert came through. A sniper team was in trouble, and we had to go extract them. Within moments, we were up and out by the hummers. We were getting mentally prepared while the lieutenant was getting his orders. We had to focus. A rocket or mortar landed inside the camp about 200 meters away or so, but this was so commonplace that we didn’t react. If someone was hurt by that rocket, then others would take care of it. We had our own mission, and at least two Marines were depending on us.

The lieutenant joined us in about five minutes, and he took another two or three minutes to give us our op order. For normal missions, we took a lot longer going over details. But as the QRF, any time wasted could make a difference. We mostly used SOPs, adjusting them as necessary.

The sniper team was on the roof of one of the buildings a couple of hundred meters from the government center. They’d called in being under attack, and we knew at least one of them had been hurt. It was up to us to get to them.

Within moments, we were rolling. Our squad was the assault element. We would fight our way up to them if they could not come down. I took out my magazine, checked the rounds, and re-seated it.

We barreled down Michigan. We knew that this could be a trap, that the road could be mined now. But Michigan was kept pretty clear, and by going fast, we could make it more difficult for any RPG gunners, or even mess up the timing of remote-controlled IEDs.

We made it to the rallying point without incident, piling out of the hummers. Third Squad was the security element, and they secured the area. First was technically the support element, but as usual, we tended to go into a hybrid organization, almost as if we had two assault elements. It may not be by the book, but we found that it tended to work better for house-clearing.

I looked up to where a Cobra was circling. I overheard enough to know that the roof was clear, but there was a blood trail leading back inside. The Cobra would remain on station until we had the team back.

The familiar calls of “Coming in,” “Clear,” and “Move” were soon ringing out as I followed my stack into the building. This was routine, and I was moving almost by rote memory. That was dangerous, though. As the sign at the Point said, “Complacency kills!”

The ground floor of the building was empty. That didn’t mean anything, though. If the building was truly empty, wouldn’t the sniper team make it down to meet us? Champ Dykstra kept trying to raise them, but there was no response.

Rick’s team started to move up the first flight of stairs. Stairs were pretty vulnerable places for us. We couldn’t mass firepower, and we were fighting gravity. Pacman had the point, Jerry Scanlon was next with the SAW, then Rick and Jarod. I followed them, senses on high alert. I was filtering out the shouts of clearing, striving to hear anything out of the ordinary.

There was a light thudding sound of something hitting the stairs. Something bounced off Pacman’s shoulder, then started to curve down towards us.

I shouted “Frag!” as I felt more than saw Marines hitting the deck. Gunfire erupted from above us, stitching the wall beside Pacman. I looked up and clear as day, I saw the grenade come at me as if in slow motion. It was an American grenade, I noted, almost as if it was of no consequence. A grenade, though, in this confined ladderwell would have pretty grave consequences.

About a foot from my head, Rick’s arm shot out, cleanly fielding the grenade. He stepped up, ignoring the firing coming from above, and by leaning over, got the angle he wanted and threw the grenade back up the stairs. Throwing a grenade up a stairs was something else that could have grave consequences. Grenades thrown up stairs usually came back down.

This time, whether due to Rick’s golden arm or by pure luck, the grenade did not come back down. It exploded above us.

“Go, go go!” Rick shouted, echoed by Cpl Mays behind me.

We were up the stairs and to the next floor in seconds. A dead insurgent was at the top of the stairs, his body riddled with shrapnel. In front of us was another floor that had to be cleared. Another flight of stairs led to the top floor of the building.

Rick’s team held the landing as Cpl Mays and Cpl Choi’s team made it up the stairs. The squad leader was just telling Cpl Choi to start clearing the floor when the fire from at least three or four weapons opened up from above us. I caught a glimpse of an AK being held out over the ladderwell, blindly firing down at us. I fired at the hands. I don’t know if I hit them, but the AK was pulled back. Another grenade came up over the railing and floated down to us.

“Frag” and “Grenade” rang out as we dove to get out of the way. Once again, Rick decided to play center field. Instead of diving, he stepped forward, fielded the grenade, and with a weird, side arm motion, tossed the grenade back up the ladder and over the rail. We waited a very long moment, and I half expected to see it come back at us, but the explosion rained nothing more than dust and debris down at us.

Immediately, we rushed the ladder, making it up to the top floor, eagerly looking for targets. There was no one there. A door to the roof was open, and the whup-whup of the Cobra outside took on a different tone. Within moments, we could hear the deep chatter of the Cobra’s 20 mm gatling opened up.

“Doc, here!” shouted Pacman, pointing to the blood trail leading to one of the rooms. He started to rush forward, but Rick grabbed him. We weren’t sure who was in there. It looked like the hajiis bugged out, but they’ve been known to have suicide fighters willing to die if they could take out one of us at the same time.

Rick positioned his team to provide security down the hallway, and Cpl Dunlop took his team to get ready to enter. I got on his ass, ready to follow him in.

At Cpl Dunlop’s signal, Cy shouted “US Marines, coming in left!”

Rob echoed with “Coming in right!”

They moved as one, sweeping into the room. Cpl Dunlop and I followed, almost running up the back of Cy as he had stopped dead. I looked around him and froze.

Two Marines were lying on their backs against the far wall, feet towards the middle of the room. Their heads were detached from their bodies and placed on their chests, facing whomever entered the room. In each mouth was a severed penis and testicles. As one Marine was black and another white, it was clear they had put the other man’s penis in each Marine’s mouth.

My head started spinning, and I heard retching. I wasn’t sure if it was me or not at first. I walked over to the two snipers as it there was something I could do. Almost as from a distance, I noted that one of the Marines had a badly mangled face and shoulder. He had probably been dead before they had cut off his head.

The other Marine had a smashed femur, but from the amount of blood and the spray, I would say he was alive when they did this to him.

“Cpl Dunlop,” the lieutenant said, “get your team out and finishing clearing this building.”

I hadn’t heard him come in, but that wasn’t surprising. He looked gray, and he was swallowing hard, but he had taken charge, making sure we did what we had to do.

“Go down to the second floor, Doc, and see if you can help Doc Seychik,” he told me.

I figured that he just wanted me to keep busy, but I complied. In somewhat of a daze, I walked down the ladder to see Buster working over a body. I knew that hajii was already dead, so why take the effort? Even if he had been alive, should we save him after what he did to those two Marines?

It wasn’t until Buster leaned back in defeat that I saw he wasn’t working on the hajii. It was Steve Jenner. I took the last two steps in a bound and rushed up. Buster looked up at me and shook his head. I stood there in shock, then knelt beside him. His flak jacket and blouse had been taken off, exposing his chest. A round had hit him in the jaw, it looked like, then traveled into his neck and down into his chest cavity. I couldn’t see an exit wound, but the round had to have mangled his internal organs as it traveled through his body.

With the SAPI plates, the flak jacket can stop most small arms rounds. But this round had come from above, entering his body from the small opening caused by his neck. Steve must have been looking up when he was hit. I thought of the AK I had seen. Had that coward, afraid to show his face, actually managed to blindly shoot and kill Steve?

I pulled the flak jacket closed over his chest.

We had received the news today that a Marine had escaped certain death in an amazing escape. But two other Marines might have paid the price for that, their beheading a stark message that Al Qaeda in Iraq was not about to roll over on us. And as a result, Steve had become the squad’s third KIA.

Of the insurgents, there was one killed. The rest got away over the roof, the Cobra not being able to fire until they reached the other building as its 20 mm cannon fire would’ve gone right through the roof of this building, hitting us as well.

One for three was not an exchange any of us could accept.

Chapter 24

Ramadi

July 26, 2006

The mood within the squad was bleak. We were tired, mentally as well as physically. Losing Steve had affected all of us. When Cpl Morrison had come in to get his effects, we told him that was our job. We gathered up everything, stopping at Corrine’s calendar. The regs were that everything would be gathered. But should his family get that? Would he want that? On the other hand, as Rick pointed out, shouldn’t Corrine know that he had appreciated her efforts?

In the end, Cy, Steve’s best friend, took the calendar, put it in a large envelope, and sealed it. He knew Corrine, and he would make that decision later back at Lejeune.

Steve Potts’ Hero Ceremony had been bad enough. But to be blunt, we were new to the Sandbox then, and we hadn’t bonded with him to the same degree that we had with Steve Jenner. As with Sgt Butler, we’d gone through a lot with him. Cy wasn’t the only one who shed tears during the memorial.

Now we were out on yet one more patrol. We had gone out on a meet and greet during the night, planning to come back before morning. It was now almost 1600 the next day. We had had no food since about midnight, and at that point, all of us were out of water.

Al Qaeda had stepped up the pressure. They were losing Ramadi, and they weren’t going to meekly slink away into the desert. They needed a victory to rally the young Iraqis to their cause, men who were getting tired of the foreign Al Qaeda’s heavy-handed methods. The local sheiks were starting to align with us, and Al Qaeda needed to turn that tide with some sort of victory over us.

The entire battalion was engaged, each company in the fight. Some general, I forgot who, said that modern warfare was turning into a three-block war. I didn’t know what he meant when I was told that, but I learned. I could hear firing around us, I could see aircraft, hear the booms of artillery. But my war was winnowed down to the building Second and Third Squad held, the small soccer field next to us, and the building across it that First Squad held. I knew that we were at one end of a line after joining the rest of the company, but I could not see the others, and our PRR’s only let us reach to the other squads. The lieutenant could communicate with the company, of course, but as squads, we couldn’t.

Getting to the company had been a bitch in and of itself. It took until about noon. We had to run the last 1,000 meters, and I was carrying about 80 pounds of gear. I had drunk the last of my water as I lay panting on the deck of the pock-marked building that gave us some cover. Four hours later, we had cleared only one more building. A machine gun had opened up on us as First Squad was crossing the soccer field. Amazingly, only one Marine had been hit, and not seriously. But the gun was a threat, and we had called in air support. It was a relief to just sit for a moment and wait for the airedales do their thing.

“Hey Doc, can you check my foot?” Cpl Choi asked me as we waited.

I had checked enough feet during this deployment to last me my lifetime. If I knew anything, it was that I was never going to specialize in podiatry. But in some ways, that might have been my most important task. With the heavy loads we carried and the everlasting heat, the Marines’ feet took a beating. And without healthy feet, a Marine couldn’t move. Every night, I had the squad take off their socks for an inspection, just letting the jokes about me and my foot fetish roll right off me.

Cpl Choi had taken off his boot and sock. I got up to take a look. A nasty smell hit me as I reached him. The top of the foot was filthy. Dirt and sand had worked their way down inside the boot. He rolled on his stomach and lifted his lower leg, exposing the bottom of his foot.

I recoiled a few inches before taking his foot in my hand for a closer examination. He had a huge ulcer, almost three inches across. I couldn’t tell how deep it was. By the smell, I knew it was infected. He needed to get back to the aid station, but that wasn’t going to happen.

I just cleaned it the best I could, Cpl Choi never flinching even though I knew it had to hurt like hell. I slathered on an antibiotic gel, then built up some padding and bandaged it in place. He had to gingerly slide his boot back over it. It wasn’t optimal, but it would have to do.

“Thanks, Doc. I guess your foot fetish came in handy.”

“Yea, right. Just make sure you get to the aid station ASAP,” I told him.

“Sure. No problem. I’ll just saunter on out there and catch a taxi back.”

Jerry Scanlon started to laugh at that, then ended up coughing. He had been moved to Third Team after Steve was killed. Cpl Mays said if anyone else was lost, we’d probably have to go to only two fire teams.

The familiar whup-whup told us that our air had arrived. I could hear the lieutenant talking the pilot into the target. The Cobra lined up, then let lose a salvo of rockets, following up with its 20 mm gatling. An Apache might have more firepower, but the Cobra was no slouch, either. The building from where we’d been taking fire erupted in dust and smoke.

“Get some, Mr. Cobra,” La’Ron said as we watched it finish its run and peel off.

The lieutenant got back on the PRR and told Sgt Castanza to come on back. At one end of the soccer field, we knew the road was covered by the insurgents. At the other end, the Cobra had made mincemeat of the building. The quickest way to reunite the platoon was for them to run back across the field, over maybe 40 meters or so of open ground.

We all took positions to cover them, and after a few minutes, the first two men started to run across. Amazingly, the hajii machine gun opened up again from the building adjacent to the one that had been taken out. The two Marines immediately turned and ran back to their building.

The lieutenant immediately got back on his radio and tried to get the Cobra back, but evidently, it was almost out of fuel and we’d have to wait.

I heard the sound of vomiting in the floor above me. I wanted to ignore it, but I got up and made my way up the ladder. HM2 Sylvester was already there, treating Private Jennings, from Third Squad for heat exhaustion. We had three Marines suffering from it already, and without water, more would probably get hit. I made my way back down.

SSgt White saw me come back down and hurried over. He’d been looking for me.

“Doc Cannon, we’ve got someone down hard in First. They need you there now,” he said.

“I didn’t see anyone get hit,” I said.

“I don’t think it’s that. It’s Castanza. They say it’s serious.”

“How am I supposed to get there?” I asked, looking out the blasted window to the building across the way.

“Run your fucking ass off!” was his reply.

At first, I thought he was joking. Then I realized he was serious.

“We wouldn’t ask you, but it sounds real bad.”

I caught the “ask,” not “order.” I didn’t have to go.

The lieutenant came up behind him and asked, “Well?”

I looked around. All the Marines there were watching me, waiting to hear what I said. What I wanted to say was that my first job was to keep safe so I could treat them. I wanted to say that my wife told me not to be a hero. I wanted to say a lot of things.

What I did say was “No problem. I’m good to go.”

Did I see relief sweep the platoon sergeant’s face?

I knew it had to be me. With Buster out wounded and back at camp, it had to be me or Sylvester. And what I had thought about keeping safe to treat the Marines, well between Sylvester and me, he was more qualified. So I was up.

“Good man, Doc,” he said, giving me a slap on the shoulder. “Drop your gear here. Just take your kit. We’re going to cover you, but you’ve got to run like a fucking deer. No fucking zigzag bullshit. No stopping. Just run.”

I took one last suck on my CamelBak, as if water had somehow managed to magically form inside of it. It was still empty. I took out most of the crap in my pack, keeping only my medical gear. Clutching my weapon, I considered ditching that, too. I wouldn’t be stopping to fire it. But that would make me feel too naked.

When I was ready, I nodded at the platoon sergeant. I walked to where something had taken out a chunk of wall. Steeling myself, I took a few deep breaths, then gave SSgt White a thumbs up I didn’t really feel.

On order, Marines opened up in the general direction of the building from which the machine gunner had fired. From our side, I didn’t think that anyone had a good angle, but from First Squad’s position, they should be able to put rounds on target.

I hesitated only a second, then before I could change my mind, I took off in a mad sprint. I had gotten only about 10 meters when I heard the machine gun open up. I expected to feel lead tear into my body and I tried to do my best Jessie Owens. I knew he had me in his sights, though.

He may have had the bead on me, but he couldn’t put rounds on me. Somehow, miraculously, I made it to the other side, diving to the deck of the building there. The First Squad Marines gathered around me and pulled me to my feet.

“Holy shit, Doc! Did you see that!” Ivanski shouted. “It was like, buda buda buda, and the rounds were kicking up in back of you, chasing you all the way to us. You were kick ass!”

PFC Ivan Borisov was excited as he recounted what had happened, his accent growing stronger the more excited he got. Ivanski was one of the two Marines in the platoon who were using service in the Corps to speed up the citizen process.

“It was just like in a movie. Buda, buda, buda,” he said, using his hands to mimic firing a machine gun.

I was using his excitement to catch my breath. My hands were trembling, but whether from an adrenaline drain or from dehydration, I wasn’t sure.

“OK, where’s Sgt Castanza?” I asked after a few moments.

Cpl Cranhover led me to the back where Sgt Castanza lay on the floor, unresponsive. I knelt down and pulled open his eyelids. His eyes were rolled back. I felt for a pulse. His skin was hot and dry, his pulse febrile.

“I need some water!” I shouted.

“Don’t have any. Sgt Castanza gave all his away when others ran out. He hasn’t drunk since this morning, I think.”

I started stripping him. He was burning up, and his battle gear was keeping the heat in.

“Help me,” I ordered.

Two Marines rushed to help, LCpl Leslie taking out his K-Bar to get the clothes off quicker. We almost had him naked when Sgt Castanza went into seizure. I jumped on him, holding him down to prevent injury while the seizure lasted.

“Look around,” I told Cpl Cranhover. “Get any liquid. We’ve got to get him cooled down.”

I knew what was wrong with him. I just didn’t know how bad it was. I pulled out a rectal thermometer and inserted it into him. I waited, then pulled it out. This was an emergency. His core temperature was 109.

“Get on the PRR and tell the lieutenant we need a no-shit immediate casevac,” I told the corporal.

“You, you, and you,” I said, pointing to three Marines. “I need to you piss on him.”

Surprisingly, none of the three hesitated. They unbuttoned their flies and aimed streams of dark piss onto the body of the prone sergeant. The dark color told me they were pretty dehydrated, too.

“Isn’t piss hot, too?” asked Doug Apfel, one of the Marines pissing on him.

“Yea, but it’s cooler than his temperature, and I need him wet.”

I picked up a piece of plywood, shattered in some past firefight, and used it to fan him, trying to accelerate the evaporation process.

“I’ll take over that,” another Marine said, freeing me up to monitor the sergeant.

“What’s with that casevac?” I shouted as I started to feel panic set in.

“They’re working on it,” Cpl Cranhover shouted back, the PRR held up to his ear.

We took turns emptying our bladders on Sgt Castanza as we waited the 40 minutes for an Army Voodoo Mobile to make it to us. The armored ambulance backed right up into the building, making its own entrance. With rounds pinging off the front of it, we loaded Sgt Castanza in the back and sent it on its way, but not before the crew left ¾ of a case of water.

After another 20 minutes, a Cobra made another run, and this time, it either took out the machine gun or made the gunner withdraw. It wasn’t until 2200, almost 24 hours after we left Hurricane Point, that we returned. We had twelve heat casualties in the platoon. Eleven would recover. Sgt Elias Castanza would not. He died 30 minutes after reaching the aid station.

If the insurgents couldn’t defeat us, the land itself sure seemed to be trying to.

Chapter 25

Hurricane Point

Sep 8, 2006

“Check out the newbies,” Pacman said as he sat down to join us at the table.

We looked around. Our replacement battalion, 1/6, had sent ahead an advance party, and about five of them were getting their food. They looked different from us, but I couldn’t really put my finger on it except maybe that they were “clean?”

“Who you calling newbies there, boot?” Cpl Choi asked as he took a bite of mac and cheese.

“Those guys. The ones over there. They just got in, so they’re newbies.”

“’Those guys are all vets who’ve been around. This isn’t there first time to the dance,” he remarked.

“Well yea, maybe, but not like us. I mean, look what we’ve gone through. Right?”

“See that sergeant over there, the one getting his bug juice?” the corporal asked.

“Yea. So what?”

We all looked over to see who Cpl Choi was pointing out.

“That’s Sergeant Matthew Vandermier. My brother was with him with 2/4, right here in Ramadi in 2004. He won the Silver Star, and my brother says it should have been a Navy Cross. He charged a machine gun position when they were pinned down, taking out three hajiis even if he was hit twice.”

“Well, OK, but that was one guy. We still have it worse, right?”

“Jeeze, Pacman. You been keeping your head up your ass? You don’t listen to what’s happened before? 2/4 had 34 killed on their tour here and had over 350 wounded. So how about you take your “newbie” shit and shove that up your ass, too, boot.”

Cpl Choi was normally as good natured as they come, but I wondered why he took so much offense. We were all on edge, looking forward to getting out of here, and Pacman should know better than to spout off like that. He, La’Ron, and I were the real newbies here, not even a year in the FMF, but I thought Choi was a little harsh.

“OK, sorry,” Pacman said, backing down. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

I watched the sergeant as he sat down at his table. Thirty-four KIAs was a huge number. I thought we’d been in the shit, but we weren’t even half of that. This close to the end, I hoped we would stay that way.

Chapter 26

Ramadi

Sep 19, 2006

“So, I can get letter from you, right?” Azar asked me yet again.

“I told you yes, but nothing from me is going to help. I’m just an E2. You need something from Captain Wilcox, or the battalion CO.”

Azar had been pestering most of us for letters recommending him for asylum in the US. He went on about his uncle getting killed by Al Qaeda, but we got the impression that he just wanted a better life. And now, I couldn’t really get away from him, so he kept asking.

“I am not like them,” he told me, tilting his head back to indicate the “Shawanie” sitting back in the hummer. “I do what you do. I am the same as a Marine.”

He had a point at that. The Shawanies were supposedly some sort of Iraqi Special Forces soldiers, but in reality, they were middle-aged guys in uniform who would rather sit in a hummer than get in a fight. They would come out when called to explain to some woman that we would be taking over her home for an hour, but when fighting started, they usually could be found as far away from the fire as possible.

Azar, on the other hand, never shirked from a fight. I would give him that.

I hoped today wouldn’t give him the opportunity to prove himself again. We were on a battalion-wide mission of cordon-and-search, maybe our last full-scale mission before 1/6 took over. The platoon was acting as a blocking force to catch anyone trying to escape to the north. Second squad had the middle road. Third was on the next road to the west, and First was on the one to the east. We had the lieutenant with us and five ISF soldiers. Basically, no one would get past us until the mission was completed.

We’d heard several explosions, but from the sound of them, they were probably just breaching charges. There hadn’t been sounds of an out-and-out firefight yet.

I looked around us. We had two hummers blocking most of the road, both with .50 cals at the ready. La’Ron and Pacman were up in the turrets, scanning the avenue of approach from the south. The lieutenant and Cpl Dykstra were up against the hood of Rick’s hummer where the platoon leader had a map laid out in front of him.

The hummers were angled forward, their hoods pointed towards each other. Between the hoods was a wooden barrier, complete with a swing-up gate. This was manned by the ISF soldiers and Cpl Dunlop’s team. Second Team had new addition. Cherrydick was with them. The first sergeant had transferred him over to the platoon when First Platoon basically kicked him out. After all this time in the Sandbox, this was only the second time he’d been out in Indian country.

The ISF soldiers seemed to be of better caliber than those who were serving when we arrived. They seemed more focused and more determined. The lieutenant told us that since AQI (he always said “A-Q-I” for Al Qaeda in Iraq instead of just “Al Qaeda” as most of us referred to them) was targeting the sheiks and executing capital punishment at the drop of the hat, more and more tribal men were answering the call.

“Sure Azar, I’ll write something up,” I told the waiting interpreter.

He thanked me, then wandered over to the lieutenant, probably to bug him about a letter as well. I didn’t think having a collection of letters from us would do any good, but then again, what the heck did I know about that stuff?

I wondered when we’d be going home. Every day now, we were expecting to find out the date. If we just knew it, we could get it straight in our minds. A couple of Army units got involuntarily extended in country, and the rumors were starting to crop up that said the same thing might happen to us.

I took another sip from my CamelBak. All of us had nonissue gear, but this was probably my best purchase, something I bought after Sgt Butler had recommended it back at Lejeune. The Marines issued their own version of one, but mine was top-of-the-line. After the heat injuries last month, I kept that thing full. Each hummer had extra water cans, and one of my jobs was now to make sure everyone was topped off.

The sun was beating down on us. Even in September, the daytime temperatures were scorchingly high. I never thought I would welcome getting back to the “cool” North Carolina coast.

My mind started to wander, thinking of my last conversation with Amy on whether she and Tyson would move out to Jacksonville or wait until I had my orders to C-School and a hospital. I sort of zoned out, so when the explosion sounded in front of us, I was caught by surprise. I looked up to see an RPG rocket coming at Cpl Choi’s hummer. The fire team leader was just to the side of his vehicle, and he wheeled around at the blast to see what was coming. Almost casually, it seemed to me, he hesitated, then jumped in the air as the rocket passed underneath him, hitting the road and skipping back up again to impact on one of the buildings behind us.

Another blast sounded in front of us, and this rocket was heading toward Rick’s hummer. This one didn’t miss, flipping the vehicle up and over on its back. I was running before I realized it, the firing barely registering to me. In only a moment, La’Ron opened up in return fire with his .50 cal.

I skidded to a stop in back of the hummer, trusting its bulk to protect me from the rounds that were impacting all around us. Hands reached out of what used to be a window, and I grabbed them, pulling hard. Rick tumbled out, covered with dust and soot, but seemingly unhurt. He scrambled back, and together we looked in. Pacman’s legs were right in front of us, his body disappearing out under the turret, so together we tried to pull him back. His legs seemed to give slightly, but I realized that was because they were separating from his torso. He had been crushed when the hummer flipped, and the bulk of the .50 cal hadn’t been enough to protect him. Rick started to get another grip to pull again.

“Stop. He’s gone,” I told him as he looked at me first with confusion, then in shock.

Jarod was jammed up in the back of the cab. I didn’t know if hummers could explode like in the movies, but I crawled in, grabbed his wrists, and pulled him out as fast as I could. Rick helped me the last few feet, and I checked Jarod’s pulse. It was strong and steady, but he was out cold.

I looked around to see who else was hurt. At the checkpoint, an ISF soldier was down, not moving. I could see the others in back of Cpl Choi’s hummer, taking cover while firing down the road. Just in back of me, Cpl Dykstra was crawling up to the hummer as rounds continued to zing around us. I turned and took a step towards him when my foot hit something. To my shock, I realized it was the lieutenant. I had run right past him to look inside the hummer.

He was on his back, his hand up against his throat and chin, trying to stem blood that was welling between his fingers. He looked up at me, his eyes wide as he tried to say something. The lower part of his jaw was shattered, though, so between that and the blood, nothing was coming out. His right foot was under the hummer, trapped between it and the road.

My heart fell as I dropped down beside him.

“Rick, help Dykstra,” I said over my shoulder as I assessed the lieutenant.

I pulled his hands back expecting the worst. There was no spurting of bright red blood. His carotids somehow hadn’t been compromised. But he still was in desperate shape. The blood was blocking his throat, and I could see mangled flesh and bones. He was choking to death.

I reached in with my hand to clear the airway, but it was like reaching into a bowl of hamburger.

A blast of fire sounded by my ear, making me jump. It was Rick, though, who had reached back in the hummer and pulled out an M16. He sent a couple of three round bursts downrange. I could hear him trying to raise one of the other squads on his PRR, but either the little British radios were having problems again the in the concrete canyons of Ramadi, or they were engaged, too.

There was only one thing I could do for the lieutenant. I reached into my pack, fumbling for the oropharyngeal airwa y . I thought about using the nasal airway, but with head injuries, we were warned that we could kill a patient by driving one into the brain. I looked at the curved plastic airway in my hand, then back at the lieutenant. For a moment, I hesitated. I’d never inserted an airway in real person before, only a dummy, and all the dangers, the risk of death flashed through my mind. I could kill him right here on the road.

His hand fell weakly to his side. He was barely conscious and would be dead soon, so I had to act. I steeled myself and tried to go through the steps in my mind. I’d checked the airway already. It was a mess. Clear the airway? How was I supposed to do that? It was pretty much blocked, only a tiny bit of air making it in and out. I was supposed to position the airway tilting his head back into the “sniffing” position. That was supposed to enable me to visualize his epiglottis, but with so much blood and so many bone fragments, I couldn’t see anything. I just had to go for it.

I took the airway, turning it upside down so the curved tip was up against the roof of his mouth. I pushed until it hit the back of his throat, then with a quick prayer for guidance, twisted it in a 180 and pressed the tube down. It pushed through the mangled flesh and blood, and slid down the throat. I still couldn’t see anything, so I had to trust I was in the trachea and not the esophagus. Suddenly the lieutenant’s breathing became steadier, and his chest movement more noticeable. By some miracle, I’d done it!

I still had to auscultate the chest and stomach to make sure everything was in place. There were no gurgling sounds in the stomach, so his esophagus was clear, but the sounds in the lungs were not good. He was breathing, but he probably had fluid in his lungs. He could still drown in his own blood.

I tried to pull him back so I could treat that, but his foot was trapped hard under the hummer. He was not going anywhere. I tried to put him up on his side to keep at least one lung clear, but with his foot trapped, his body wanted to lay flat. I had to kneel in back of him, using my body to keep him in position on his side.

Another boom caught my attention, and I looked up to see La’Ron duck down back into his hummer. The RPG round impacted right on the roof of the hummer, the detonation taking the .50 cal right off. The Marines and ISF troops who had been in back of the hummer dropped flat, but it looked like no one had been hit. Anyone standing would have had his head taken off. A moment later, La’Ron popped out of the rear door and joined them.

Cpl Mays shouted over from the other hummer, “Get on the company net and let them know we need help!”

“You’ve got it, Zach. I’m a little busy here,” Rick said, leaning around the hummer to fire. He popped his empty magazine out and slammed home another.

I leaned back, trying to keep the lieutenant in position while I grabbed the handset of the radio Cpl Dystra still had strapped to his back. I wasn’t sure how to use it. I was used to the small PRRs. Still I had to figure it was already on the right frequency.

I keyed the handset and said, “Uh, Banger, this is Banger One-Two.” I waited, hearing nothing in response. “Oh, over,” I answered. Still nothing. Then I remembered to release the transmit button.

“Banger One-Two, this is Banger. What is your situation, over?”

Oh, yea, situation. What was the acronym? SMEAC? Situation, Mission, E for something. A for Action? I was confused.

“Um, Banger, we’re under attack. We’re pinned down, . . . oh, over,” I transmitted.

“Banger One-Two, put Banger One-Actual on, over,” the operator on the other side said.

“Banger, the actual is not available. He is WIA, and we need an immediate casevac. We have WIA and KIA here.”

There was a pause on the other end, then a new voice came on.

“Banger One-One, this is Banger Actual. Can you clearly tell me what’s happening? What is your situation?”

“Banger Actual, we have at least two KIA. We’ve got another two or three WIA and ineffective. We’re pinned down, and there are maybe, wait one, . . .” I transmitted, before leaning over the lieutenant to take a glance down the street as if the insurgents were about to stand up and be counted.

It was a pretty dumb move. Whether by chance or by skill, a round hit the radio handset, knocking it out of my hand.

“Son of a bitch!” I shouted, jumping back over the lieutenant.

I shook my hand, only stopping when blood splashed up in my face. I looked at my hand. I thought the round had only hit the handset. I was wrong. The top of my little finger, from about the nail bed on up, was gone.

I stared at it curiously. It was not registering. Holding my hand up, I reached into my pack and brought out a bandage, wrapping it tightly around the tip of my finger.

“You OK there, Zach?” Rick asked.

“Sure. Good to go,” I answered, despite feeling a little dizzy.

“You got any extra mags?” he asked me.

“Yea, come get them.”

He scooted over, taking four mags from me, leaving me with the full mag still in my weapon and one other.

Cpl Mays called out from where he was with the others, “Get on your PRR!”

Rick shrugged his shoulders, holding up an empty hand.

“We’ve got to get under cover,” the squad leader called out. “We’re going to get off the road and into the building over here. Can you make it over?”

It was only about 10 meters to the others, but it was probably five to the courtyard directly abreast of us.

“I’ve got three to carry and only two of us. We’ll take this side. You get in that building over there.”

Cpl Mays looked back and forth at each building. He was obviously torn, but he knew that made sense, even if it would be splitting his squad. First squad would be on the other side of the block, so he must have figured we could link up with them.

“OK. Wait for the SAWs and M203 to open up, then move it.”

He huddled with the other Marines and the ISF troops giving instructions. The firing from the insurgents had slackened but we all knew they were still out there.

“OK, I’ll take Jarod first, then come back for Dykstra. You be ready with the lieutenant,” Rick told me.

I looked down at the lieutenant. He wasn’t going anywhere, until we could move the hummer off of him. I didn’t tell Rick that.

Cpl Mays shouted at us to get ready, then Jerry Scanlon and Cy Pierce jumped out with their SAWs while Rob Runolfson put a 203 round downrange, then opened up his breach, rammed another grenade home, and fired that one, too. At the first burst from the SAWs, the other five Marines and four ISF soldiers made a dash for the building, Cpl Choi slamming himself into the gate. Amazingly, it burst open, getting all of them off the road and out of the line of fire.

At the same time, Rick picked up Jarod, dashing across to the house and to the wall, pushing Jarod up and over before dashing back to me.

The SAWs stopped firing, and the three remaining Marines made their dash as well. The Iraqis were expecting it, and they opened up. I thought I heard a shot from up high and in back of me, and the firing seemed to cut in half, but I couldn’t be sure of that. What I was sure of was seeing Jerry go down. Cy stopped, came back through the fire, and grabbed Jerry by his deuce gear, dragging him until he got in the courtyard and under cover.

I started to get up to go over there, but that would probably kill the lieutenant, and I hadn’t heard the call of “Corpsman up!” That meant either he was OK or dead.

“Zach, pick up the lieutenant and follow me.”

I just shook my head.

“I’m serous, come on!” he said.

“Can’t. He’s trapped,” I told him, pointing his foot.

Rick stepped up, looking at the foot under the hummer. He squatted, grabbed the vehicle and strained. It didn’t budge. He scootched back, thinking.

“Look, he’s stuck here for now either way. You come with me, and when we’ve got help, we’ll come get him. We can cover him better from over there, anyway.”

“Can’t do that either,” I said. His lungs are filling with blood. If we lay him flat, he’ll die. I’ve got to keep him on his side.”

“Well, let’s prop him up, then.”

“Any movement, he falls flat. And he’s gone. Look, I’ve got the hummer here. They can’t hit me. You go get help, and I’ll just wait here with him. “

I looked down at the ashen platoon commander. He was struggling for breath, even with the airway bypassing his mangled face and neck. I didn’t think he was going to make it.

I think Rick came to the same conclusion.

“Look, as the senior Marine here, I’m ordering you to come with me. Jarod and Dysktra here need your help, and you can do them some good.”

“Sorry, Rick, but you know I’m not in your chain of command. I’m staying.”

“OK, then, I’m staying, too.”

“No, you need to get Cpl Dykstra under cover.”

Cpl Mays shouted from across the street, “What are you two doing? Get moving!”

“Doc’s staying. The lieutenant can’t be moved, and neither can Zach,” Rick called back.

“Doc, are you sure?” the squad leader asked.

“He’s already made up his mind,” Rick called back.

There was a pause, then Cpl Mays shouted out, “OK, we’ll just have to cover you.”

I was in a half kneeling position, keeping my head down, but still holding the lieutenant up. Rick was quiet for a moment before he reached over and hugged me. It was about as awkward a hug as could be, but it was most welcomed.

“Keep your head down, you stupid squid,” he said quietly.

“You know it.”

He got Cpl Dykstra in position, stood up, and vaulted across the open gap between the hummer and the wall. As with Jarod, he threw Dysktra over, then vaulted over himself. A machine gun opened up, throwing chips of plaster everywhere, but the gunner was too late. Rick was already over.

“You OK?” I asked though, just to be sure.

“Never fucking better,” came his voice from the courtyard.

I looked around. I was alone with the lieutenant and two bodies, one Marine, and one Iraqi. For the first time since this started some five minutes ago, I could listen to what was going on. I could hear firing to the south and the sound of helos flying in support. I’d heard fiercer fighting before, but this was still a major operation.

There was a burst of fire every 30 seconds or so, more probably to keep our heads down than expecting to hit anything. I knew they’d have to bug out soon. They couldn’t wait until our units arrived in force. Still, if that took too long, the lieutenant wouldn’t make it.

I heard another crack from in back of me. Then, from in front, I heard the screaming of a man in pain. He cried out for about 20 seconds before falling silent. Looking back, I wondered who was the sniper team watching over me. Whoever the two guys were, they needed to keep their heads down. The machine guns started reaching up to the roofs, searching for them.

I was watching the rounds impact up there when a burst of rounds went off from my right. I felt like someone hit me on the head with a baseball bat. I spun around, whipping my M16 off my shoulder. Someone had crept up in the buildings closer to me and had me in his sights. I saw movement and fired three round bursts until my mag was empty.

From the other side of the road, the rest of the Marines must have seen where I was firing because they opened up as well, the SAWs putting up a lot of rounds and an M203 round actually flying in through a window. The grenade went off inside. Whether I had hit anyone, whether the squad had taken him out, or whether he had just bugged out, I didn’t know. I just knew he had stopped firing at me.

The lieutenant started gurgling, and I lunged for him, putting him back up on his side. I reached up and felt my helmet. There was a crack right at the back. The round had not penetrated, though. My head hurt, but once again, I had to thank Sgt Butler, who had pretty much insisted I buy the BLSS helmet system before we left Lejeune. The system was not cheap, but I gave in, more for the comfort of the system over the standard issue helmet liner. Now, I was glad I had it. I probably would still have survived this shot with the issue liner, but I’d be hurtin’ for certain much more, maybe down with a concussion.

I changed mags. I wished now that maybe I’d kept at least one more.

Over the next several minutes, I heard seven distinctive shots fired. I couldn’t see the targets, but I hoped my guardian angel was taking his toll on the hajiis. If he was keeping them busy, they couldn’t come after me.

“Still there, buddy?” Rick called out, his voice sounding like he was up a floor.

“Yep. Still here.”

My head hurt and my finger was throbbing, but I was just happy to still be breathing. I couldn’t see Pacman from where I was, and the lieutenant was struggling mightily to breathe, so I really couldn’t complain.

Up ahead, maybe 50 meters, I heard the screeching of a gate open. This was on the right side of the street, the side with the bulk of the squad.

“Rick, something’s happening!” I called out, disregarding the fact that anyone else could hear. The ragheads knew exactly where I was.

I heard a car gunning its engine, then it came out of a courtyard up ahead and turned towards me, hugging the walls. This kept them out of the line of fire from Cpl Mays and the rest of the squad, and they probably thought that it screened them from the sniper team. I lowered my M16 and empted my mag at them. I saw that I hit them, but they picked up speed and barreled down the wall. I didn’t hear anything from above, so maybe they had figured out our sniper’s position correctly. I was well and truly screwed.

I hopped over the lieutenant, putting my body between the car and him. There were three men in the car, all dressed in the black the insurgents preferred. One was driving while the other two held weapons at the ready. The driver caught my eye and smiled. He knew he had me.

One of the gunmen leaned out the window as he got a bead on me. He fired a burst that went over my head as the car bounced, not 20 meters away. A white flower suddenly blossomed in the windshield, and behind that flower, the driver jerked back. There was another crack, and the head of the gunman exploded into a pink mist. He fell, his body half in and half out of the car as it continued to move forward, drifting slightly to the right. Within an instant another round went out, taking out the second gunman.

The car slowed, but kept coming before plowing into the other hummer. The impact threw the dead gunman out of the car and up and over the hummer, his body sliding to a boneless stop not ten feet from me.

With a clear field of fire, the Marines and ISF opened up on the car, but that was overkill. In what had to be less than three seconds, three rounds had gone downrange and killed three insurgents. I looked back up and raised my hand to my helmet in a salute.

Firing like that evidently pinpointed his position, though, as all hell broke loose. The insurgents were hurt, but they had plenty of fight left in them. Automatic weapons focused on one specific rooftop. An RPG gunner stepped up from a building and kneeled, but he fell before he could fire. I wasn’t sure how anyone could focus like that while under such an intense barrage. Another RPG went off, and almost in slow motion, I watched it rise until it impacted right at the edge of the roof with a huge explosion. When the smoke cleared, a chunk of the roof was simply gone, most likely the sniper team with it. The firing kept up for another minute, then died down.

An insurgent ran across the road 100 meters down. Nothing happened. No shots. Either they had taken out the team, or the team wanted to suck them in. I wanted the second of the two, but I feared the first.

I looked at my watch. It had only been about ten minutes since we got hit, even if it seemed like an hour. Surely the company would be charging to the rescue any minute now. I could hear copters in the air, but none flew over us.

I looked over to where I knew Rick was, but a flicker of movement in the adjacent building caught my eye instead. The bastards had been moving up.

“Rick! You’ve got company to your nine!” I shouted out.

I feverishly checked myself for another mag or a frag I might have somehow forgotten I had. Nothing.

The lieutenant, though, had a 9mm strapped to his thigh. It wasn’t in one of the nylon military holsters, but in one of the commercial leg holsters, the hard plastic kind that most officers and SNCOs preferred. I reached over to take it, but the release had me confused. It would not let go of the Beretta.

I looked up just in time to see three black-clad hajiis rush out. I realized that just as the hummer had protected me from them earlier, now it protected them from the squad. But not from Rick. I heard a burst of fire, then another.

“You’ve got one on the other side of you, Zach!” Rick shouted. “I don’t have a shot!”

I pulled at the 9mm, but it just wouldn’t come free. I could actually hear heavy breathing on the other side of the hummer, not six feet away. If he came around, the rest of the squad couldn’t fire for fear of hitting the lieutenant and me. I lay down across the lieutenant, pulling at the pistol. From this angle, I saw what looked to be a release button. I pressed it, and the pistol came free just as insurgent let out a shout and rushed around the front end of the hummer, AK lowered and firing. Only he hadn’t lowered it enough, and the rounds went over my head. I raised the pistol, thumbing the safety, hoping that the lieutenant kept a round chambered.

I could see the shocked expression of the man as he saw me at his feet instead of crouching up higher. He started to swing his muzzle down as I pulled the trigger. Two rounds hit him in the chest, but either he got another shot off or his fingers spasmed as he died because a round caught me across my left shoulder.

I don’t know what I expected. But he put two more rounds into the road beside me, straddling the lieutenant as he fell on top of us. For a moment, I thought he was attacking, and I struck out. But he was dead. I pushed him off the lieutenant, then looked at him. He had seemed so terrifying when all I heard was his breathing. Now, he just looked small, so deflated. I felt a small rush of joy, but it was muted. I had just killed a man. I had fired my weapon before, and maybe I had hit someone. But I never knew if I had or hadn’t. This time, there was no question. He was in front of me. I put two rounds into his chest. He was dead.

To be honest, I didn’t feel much after that first flash of joy. He rushed us. I killed him. It was simple as that.

“Zach, Zach!” You OK?” Rick shouted out.

“Yea, we’re still here. We’re OK.”

Then I looked at my shoulder. It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but even that, I almost noted as if it didn’t matter. My emotions were numb. I reached up with my right hand and probed the shoulder. The round had gone right through the fleshy part of the shoulder, right above the triceps and just below the edge of the flak jacket. It didn’t look like the bone had been hit.

Some of my blood had fallen on Lieutenant Hobbs. I reached over and tried to wipe it away. His breathing was getting shallower. If it stopped, I was going to start mouth-to-mouth through the flange end of the airway and not stop until a doctor pulled me off.

I didn’t recognize the sound I’d been waiting for for a moment or two. But when the Cobra flashed over me, guns and rockets ablazing, well, I popped my head up to watch, shouting like an idiot. It made two passes before going off to help someone else.

A few minutes later, two hummers came up our back, guns ready. One stopped right beside me, and a Marine I vaguely recognized as a sergeant from Lima company jumped out.

“What d’ya got?” he asked.

“This is Lieutenant Hobbs, our platoon commander. He needs an emergency casevac. His airway is compromised,” I told him.

“Doc, get over here,” he shouted.

HM3 Charlie Wake jumped out of the second hummer and rushed over.

“He’s barely hanging on,” I told him. “He needs to get back now. His foot’s trapped, though.”

Charlie took over, getting Marines from Lima and my own Marines, who had come out, to physically lift the hummer up and over while I kept the lieutenant still. I was surprised, and more than a bit sad, to see Azar’s crushed body from where the hummer had been. Charlie managed the move the lieutenant to one of the hummers. I wanted to stay with him, but Charlie told me I needed to stay with my squad, that he had the lieutenant now. We also got Jarod and Cpl Dykstra loaded, and the two hummers took off, their destination an impromptu LZ a couple hundred meters away.

I raised my arm, now bandaged courtesy of Charlie. I seemed to have full movement, even if it hurt to do so. I looked over to the courtyard where Pacman, Jerry, Azar, and the ISF soldier lay. I never even knew that jundii’s name. We’d gotten orders to wait for SSgt White. Third squad had two wounded who needed a casevac, then a seven-ton was supposed to get us and bring us back. It looked like the fight was winding down.

Out in the road, we had pulled the six dead hajiis in a line and left them there. We could see at least one more down the road, but no one suggested we go down there to get him.

Of the three our sniper shot that were in the car, two had been hit in the face, one just where the neck met the chest. That was some amazing shooting.

“That was some shit, there, Zach,” Rick said, coming up to me.

I was looking at the man I killed.

“Two shots, double tap!” he said.

“Nice shooting, Doc,” Rob said, coming up behind me.

“Well, I couldn’t very well miss. I mean, he was two feet from me.”

“Shit, Doc, two feet? Couldn’t you let him get a little closer?”

“Now, that, that’s some shooting,” I said, pointing to the three from the car.

“Yea, who did that? I couldn’t see from where we were,” Rob asked.

“Up there,” I said, pointing to the ruined building in back of us. “We must have had a sniper team up there.”

As I looked, I saw another flicker of movement. Was there someone in the building?

“Are they still there?” Rick asked.

“I don’t know. They took a pretty big hit. Hey! Did you see that?” I asked.

I’d seen movement again, this time through ruined window on the second floor.

Everyone spun around, taking cover.

“What did you see, Doc?” Cpl Mays asked.

“Over there, where our snipers were. I’m sure there was movement.”

“The snipers?” he asked me.

“I don’t think so.”

“What do we do,” Cpl Dunlop asked.

“We’ve orders to stay here,” the squad leader said, not sounding to adamant about it.

I knew Al Qaeda had a huge bounty on snipers. They hated them. And I remembered the sight of the two Marine snipers, heads cut off and placed on their chests. Dead or not, I did not want that to happen to anyone else, especially to two Marines who undoubtedly saved my ass.

“We’ve got to go,” I said. “No one is going to mutilate two men who came to our call. They could’ve bugged out, but they kept the hajiis off our ass until the Cobra came.”

Rick nodded and said, “Doc’s right. And if not that, we need to secure this area. We can’t wait and get on the truck only to have them hit us then.”

Cpl Mays only hesitated a moment before nodding.

“Sounds righteous to me,” he said.

“John, you stay here,” he ordered.

Cpl Choi had dislocated his shoulder or clavicle breaking in the gate of the courtyard they’d retreated to.

“Rick and Noah, you’re with me. We’re taking, uh, La’Ron, Rob, and Cherrystone. Cy, you stay here with that SAW.”

“I’m going, too,” I said.

“Not to belabor the obvious, but you’re messed up. You stay here,” he replied.

“Sorry, that’s not an option, corporal. You need me there, and if any sniper is by chance still alive, you’ll need me.”

The squad leader looked at Rick who simply shrugged.

“OK, you’re in,” he said. “Everyone locked and loaded?”

I’d taken Jerry’s magazines, so I was ready. Cpl Mays went over our plan, such as it was. We were going in with seven of us, and we were going to move fast. We’d done this a million times, and we had to rely on our training.

We moved to the other side of the street, almost nonchalantly, as if we were just shifting our position. From there, we would be out of sight of our target, and we could scurry up to the building, hopefully unseen. With three corporals, we were a bit unbalanced in rank, so Rick took point.

The stack quickly moved up, using the buildings to screen us. We got up to our target. Rubble lay all around us, and the dust still in the air threatened to make me cough. I bit it back. We weren’t going to be shouting out our movements. We wanted to get in, unseen and unheard.

Using hand and arm signals, Rick indicated he was going in left. Rob, right in back of him, was going in right. The rest of us would follow. Rick reached out and pushed open the door, which was barley hanging on by the hinges. I was afraid it would crash down, making a racket. He got the door open halfway, then slid inside. One by one, we were in.

It took a moment for our eyes to adjust to the dim light inside. This floor didn’t look too damaged, but dust from the explosions above covered everything, clearly revealing several sets of footprints going up the stairs.

We started slowly going up the stairs. Halfway up the fist set, Rick held up his fist. We froze. We heard voices above us, subdued voices, but they were speaking Arabic. Rick took a few more steps up, then held up three fingers. Whoever it was, they were on the third floor.

It could be the home owners, checking the damage to the home now that the battle was almost over. It could be a couple of guys who wanted the reward for the snipers and would pick up the bodies, claiming the kill. Or it could be Al Qaeda foot soldiers.

We moved carefully up, our senses on full alert. There was more wall damage on this floor, so more light was coming in. We all gathered below the ladderwell to the next floor. Cpl Mays motioned to Rick and Cherrydick to check out the four rooms on this floor. We could hear movement above us, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anyone on this floor as well.

Rick moved over to the first room, took a step inside before coming stepping back with a thumbs up. He motioned to the room across from him, and Cherrydick looked inside. He did a double take, then started to step in when Rick screamed out “No!”

He was lunging forward when the blast caught him.

The room had been booby trapped. I wanted to run over to him, but we had to move. Cpl Mays was shouting as we rushed up the stairs. There was shouting in Arabic, too, and shots rang out. Cpl Dunlop made it up the stairs first, firing as he ran. He went down at the top, but he didn’t stop firing. We rushed past him. I was the third man up, and I was putting out three-round bursts. There were two insurgents in black at one end of the hall, and the three of us at the other end. All five of us stood there, weapons blazing. Somehow, no one was getting hit. I ran out of rounds and put in a new mag. It seemed like forever until at last, one of them took a round in the belly and folded over. His partner bolted to the side into the last room, a room that was fairly intact. It still had walls, at least.

I bolted after him, covering the short distance in seconds. Forgetting all my training, I simply burst into the room. In a flash, the two bloody Marines laying flat out on the deck and the insurgent lunging towards them with a huge machete-like knife registered like a photo. With my M16 at my hip, I fired another three-round burst, catching him in the side. He fell, dropping the knife.

He was alive, I could tell, but out of the fight. Rob came in right after me, and he kicked the knife out of the way.

I knelt beside the bloody bodies of the two Marines, checking to see if they’d been mutilated. And I recognized them. This was the team from the Government House, the odd-looking corporal and his tall a-gunner. Cpl Lindt.

He looked mostly intact. At least we had kept his remains from being desecrated. His family deserved that.

So I was completely surprised when Cpl Lindt opened his eyes, looked at me, and said, “Jeff’s always getting after me to acknowledge others, so thank you.”

Chapter 27

Hurricane Point

September 21, 2006

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

Those words ran through my head as the bagpipes wheezed to a halt. SSgt Kemper, the battalion’s piper, had performed this service too many times over the last seven months. I looked around the chapel. It was standing room only, but that was the norm for memorial services.

In the front row, a number of stacks of pamphlets took up a couple of seats, one for each of the fallen. Beside them, the battalion commander and sergeant major, the company commander, the first sergeant, and the Army brigade commander from Camp Ramadi sat. In front of the chapel, beneath the pulpit, were photos of each man killed. These were men who were our brothers, men with whom we struggled and fought here in the desert thousands of miles from our homes.

The chaplain got up as the strains of the hymn faded away. He looked at us for several moments before he started talking, going on about righteousness, about sacrifice, about families and friends. To be honest, though, I wasn’t really listening. I was thinking about those men we’d lost.

I didn’t listen to the battalion CO, either. Oh, I heard his words while he praised each man, but they didn’t register.

I looked back up at the photos in the front. At least the lieutenant’s wasn’t there. He was at Balad, waiting to go to Landstuhl and then back to Bethesda. He had a long road ahead of his as the doctors tried to reconstruct his jaw, but he was alive and out of danger. I was grateful for that.

Jarod was actually in worse shape. He was still in a coma with a severe Grade Three concussion. He was with the lieutenant at Balad ready for the long journey back.

The CO stepped down, and First Sergeant Thompson got up and stood in the front of the Chapel. He pulled out a paper, and cleared his throat.

“Acona, Marcus,” he called out, his voice steady.

“Here,” the lance corporal from First Platoon responded.

“Adams, Michael.”

“Here, First Sergeant.”

“Alderrama, Theobald,” the company first sergeant continued.

“Here.”

He slowly went down the list, naming each Marine and sailor in the company. He got through the A’s and B’s and into the C’s.

“Cable, David.”

“Here,” Third Platoon’s lieutenant called out, his voice strong and steady.

“Cannon, Derek.”

“Here,” I said quietly.

“Cherrystone, Lewis.”

The chapel was quiet.

“Private First Class Lewis H. Cherrystone,” the first sergeant said, his voice slightly louder.

Lewis? I thought. I was ashamed that I never even knew his first name.

The first sergeant waited a few more seconds before calling out a third and final time, “Private First Class Lewis H. Cherrystone.”

Only silence greeted him.

“Private First Class Lewis Cherrystone, killed in action, September 19, 2006, Ramadi, Iraq,” he intoned.

Three Marines, La’Ron one of them, marched forward, turning to face the photo of Cherrystone. La’Ron placed a rifle in the stand in front of the photo, then put a helmet on top of the rifle. Greg Marusky from his old platoon, the one that had essentially kicked him out, placed a pair of boots in front of the rifle, and Doug Miller, also from First, reached over and hung Cherrystone’s dog tags from the M16. The three Marines stepped to the side.

“Chompers, Christian,” the first sergeant continued his role call.

“Here, First Sergeant.”

After four or five more names, he got to “Dykstra, Noah.”

“Absent but accounted for,” SSgt White responded.

This wasn’t the only time we’d hear that during the ceremony. The lieutenant, Jarod, and four Marines from Second Platoon also had someone else speak up for them.

We made through the roles up into the H’s.

“Haddad, Richard.”

“Here, First Sergeant,” Rick said in a weak voice.

I turned to look at my best friend. His face was torn up, both from shrapnel and from the flames, his arm was broken, and he had suffered a Grade 2 concussion, but nothing was going to keep him from attending the service. The brigade commander had picked him up at Charlie Medical and brought him over with him.

After Rick’s name was called, I stared at Pacman’s photo as the first sergeant made his way through the roll call. It wasn’t as if we didn’t know what was coming, but still I felt the tension build up until the first sergeant reached his name.

“Lopez, Emmanuel,” he called out.

“Private First Class Emmanuel J. Lopez.”

The chapel remained silent.

“Private First Class Emmanuel J. Lopez,” rang out one last time.

The first sergeant waited a few moments, then went on. “Private First Class Emmanuel J. Lopez, killed in action, September 19, 2006, Ramadi, Iraq.”

Rick, as Pacman’s team leader, had wanted to place his M16 and helmet, but the doctors only let him come to the ceremony if he promised to sit through it, not participate in it. Cpl Mays, as the old fire team leader, Cpl Dunlop, who was limping from a minor leg wound, and Cy Pierce placed the rifle, helmet, boots, and dog tags in front of Pacman’s photo. I struggled to hold back tears as they did so.

It took awhile to get through the next names, but I wished it would have taken longer. I know this is stupid, but I almost felt that if we didn’t call out the names, then they weren’t really gone yet. But inevitably, we got to Jerry.

“Scanlon, Gerald.

“Lance Corporal Gerald G. Scanlon.

“Lance Corporal Gerald G. Scanlon.”

There was no reply.

“Lance Corporal Gerald G. Scanlon, killed in action, September 19, 2006, Ramadi, Iraq.”

Cpl Choi, his arm in a sling, Rob Runolfson, and Frank Gandy, a hometown friend of Jerry’s from H & S Company placed his items.

There was only one photo left. I got myself ready.

It was only a few moments more until the first sergeant called out, “Seychik, Buster.”

Buster had been killed trying to save one of the ISF soldiers with his squad. The soldier had been hit in the back and was in the middle of the road, screaming in pain. Buster knew that the insurgents were waiting for someone to rush to the man’s aid, but he couldn’t let him suffer. He rushed out, grabbed the man by his harness, and started to drag him to safety when a burst of machine gun fire caught him. The guys in his squad said that even wounded, he still tried to drag the ISF soldier out of the line of fire when another burst killed him and the soldier both.

“Hospital Corpsman Third Class Buster B. R. Seychik.”

Then one last time, “Hospital Corpsman Third Class Buster B. R. Seychik.”

As the first sergeant said, “Hospital Corpsman Third Class Buster B. R. Seychik, killed in action, September 19, 2006, Ramadi, Iraq” I stepped out with the other two Marines.

I had been surprised when SSgt Smith had told me that Buster had said that if anything ever happened to him, he wanted me to be one of his attendants at the memorial. I followed Sgt Smith and Cpl Stanborough out. The squad leader placed the rifle and helmet, Cpl Stanborough the boots. Once they were done, I placed Buster’s dog tags over the butt of the M16.

I got along with Buster well enough, but I really had thought him to be too gung ho, too officious. He wasn’t “my kind of guy.” Now I felt guilty for that. I’m not sure what he’d seen in me to warrant this honor.

I burst into tears as we made our right face and marched off. The tears weren’t just for Buster. They were for all of them. For Steve Potts. For Sgt Butler. For Pacman, Jarod, Steve Jenner. For Azar. These were tears for my brothers.

The rest of the ceremony consisted of Marines and sailors standing up and saying a few words about each of the fallen. I didn’t listen. I already knew the temper of their steel. I didn’t need anyone else to try and tell more.

After the 21-gun salute, I went to get ready for the night’s patrol. We still had a war to fight.

Epilogue

Camp Lejeune, North Carolina

November 21, 2006

“There’s my boy,” I said, taking Tyson from Amy’s arms.

I held him out from me for a moment, reading the writing on his green t-shirt. Amy had got it done out in town, making a mini-copy of the shirt the squad had given me when we got back.

THE MARINES HAVE ALREADY FOUND THEIR FEW GOOD MEN

U.S. NAVY CORPSMEN

“Hah, that looks great,” I told her as I gave her a kiss.

I had been jealous of the other guys whose wives met us as we landed at Cherry Point last month. Amy and I had decided that we just couldn’t afford the ticket, especially as I was going back to California during my post-deployment leave. I enjoyed my leave in El Cajon, bonding with Tyson and getting reacquainted with my wife. Parting again so soon was a blow, and a week after I got back to the battalion, we decided enough was enough. We scraped together enough for her and Tyson to follow me to Lejeune. We were staying with Jason Dougherty, a corpsman from India Company, taking a small room in their trailer. It was small and cramped, but Amy thought it was oddly romantic being “trailer trash.”

Carol, Jason’s wife, thought it was great having a baby around, passing hints to Jason that maybe it was time for them to start their own family, but it had only been a few days, and I knew having guests could get old pretty quick. I hoped base housing would open up soon. Even as a newly promoted HN, the VHA for an E3 wouldn’t cover the rent for an apartment in J-ville.

“So this is the little Doc Cannon?” SSgt White said, coming over. He looked at Amy. “And you are the lovely Mrs. Cannon, I presume. I feel I know you already,” he said, taking her hand delicately. “Zach here could not keep quiet about you, and now that I see you, I can understand why.”

I looked at the acting platoon commander in awe. He had completed four complete sentences without once dropping the F-bomb. Who was this and what had they done with the real SSgt White?

The four of us walked into the company office. Cpl Morrison jumped up and offered Amy a seat on the couch, asking if she needed anything. She declined, but I could see in the glow in her eyes that she appreciated the attention. She’d been a “Navy Wife” for more than a year, but she really hadn’t been around the military, other than going to PX at 32 nd Street or Balboa to give birth.

Gunny Tora came in and made his introductions, then the XO. The first sergeant came out of his office and asked me if I knew what I was supposed to do. We’d gone over it about a million times already, so I assured him I was ready.

At about 1245, Captain Wilcox returned from wherever he’d been, probably either PT or chow. He shook Amy’s hand, telling her how proud the company was of me. I knew it was all BS for Amy’s sake, but still, hearing the commander say that felt rather good. He invited us into his office where we sat and chatted. I should say the captain and Amy chatted. I didn’t know what to say. This was my company commander, and I didn’t have a habit of just chatting up Marine captains. Amy, though, was in her element. She was never at a loss for words, and I was happy to let her take over.

The first sergeant interrupted us, sticking his head in the office and telling the captain that is was time. We got up and went outside to the parking lot where we held formations. The company was already in formation, waiting for us.

Cpl Morrison came up, offered his arm to Amy, and escorted her to a chair that had been placed to the front and off to the side of the formation. He then took position to her side and went to parade rest. Most of the battalion corpsmen were alongside her as well, including the senior chief. Even the chaplain was there as the senior Navy member of the battalion. I did not accompany her but went to take my place in the back of the formation.

The first sergeant called the company to attention, went through his formalities, and made an about face to turn the company over to the skipper. As Captain Wilcox marched forward, the three officer platoon commanders took their place in front of their platoons. I wished Lieutenant Hobbs could have been there, but he was still up at Bethesda. He had sent me a nice letter, though, giving his regrets.

The first sergeant stepped to the side of the company commander and called out, “Personnel to be recognized, front and center . . .march!”

I made a right face and started marching, going along the back and then up alongside the headquarters element before making another left turn to march along the front of the formation up to the captain. I halted, did a right face, and saluted. He returned the salute, and I came back to attention. I felt dizzy, and I prayed I wouldn’t pass out.

The first sergeant’s voice, toned by two tours on the drill field, boomed out:

DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY

THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT
THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY HAS AWARDED THE

NAVY AND MARINE CORPS ACHIEVEMENT MEDAL

WITH COMBAT DISTINGUISHING DEVICE

HOSPITALMAN ZACHARY L. CANNON, UNITED STATES NAVY

FOR HEROIC ACHIEVEMENT IN CONNECTION WITH COMBAT OPERATIONS AGAINST THE ENEMY WHILE SERVING AS A CORPSMAN WITH KILO COMPANY, THIRD BATTALION, EIGHT MARINES ON JULY 26, 2006. WHILE CONDUCTING OPERATIONS AGAINST A CONCERTED ENEMY ATTACK, FIRST SQUAD, SECOND PLATOON WAS SPLIT FROM THE REMAINDER OF THE PLATOON BY HEAVY AUTHOMATIC WEAPONS FIRE. WHEN A MARINE BECAME A CASUALTY IN NEED OF IMMEDIATE CARE, THEN HOSPITALMAN APPRENCTICE CANNON VOUNTEERED TO BRAVE THE WITHERING FIRE TO GO TO THE MARINE’S AID. WITH DISREGARD TO HIS OWN SAFETY, HE CROSSED THE ENEMY KILL ZONE, REACHING THE SQUAD’S POSITION WHERE HE RENDERED LIFESAVING MEDICAL TREATMENT. HN CANNON’S PROFESSIONALISM WHILE UNDER FIRE AND HIS CONCERN FOR HIS FELLOW MARINES OVER HIS OWN PERSONAL SAFETY REFLECT GREAT CREDIT UPON HIMSELF, AND WERE IN KEEPING WITH THE HIGHEST TRADITIONS OF THE US NAVY AND THE U.S. NAVAL SERVICE.

G. H. HARRISON

LIEUTENANT COLONEL, COMMANDING

As the first sergeant finished, the company commander reached forward to pin the medal to the pocket flap of my cammies. He stepped back, then shook my hand. I started to salute out of habit, but caught myself and came back to attention.

As with my Army Achievement Medal, I was somewhat ambivalent about this one. It might have been different if Sgt Castanza had made it, but with him passing, I hardly felt my efforts really mattered much.

The first sergeant cleared his throat and started reading again:

THE UNITED STATES NAVY

THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT THE NAVY ENLISTED

FLEET MARINE FORCE WARFARE SPECIALIST BADGE

HAS BEEN AWARDED TO

HOSPITALMAN ZACHARY L. CANNON

FOR SUCCESSFULT COMPLETION OF THE COURSE MATERIAL AS PRESCRIBED BY THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY

GIVEN ON THIS 20 TH DAY OF NOVEMEBER, 2006

THOMAS R. HADDERATY

MAJOR GENERAL, COMMANDING

As the skipper reached over to pin the badge above my pocket, I felt a surge of pride. This really meant more to me than any medal. This was acceptance. I hadn’t planned on getting qualified. It wasn’t going to do me much good in a hospital, but thinking back on the Marines I served with, and thinking on Buster Seychik, well, it just made sense. It was awarded to me, but it was also a tribute to them. This was my salute to those we’d lost.

It hadn’t been that difficult, to be honest. I was given credit for much of what I’d done in Iraq. I’d gone out one day with an MP company to fam fire some weapons, which I would have jumped at the chance to do anyway. The M19, in particular, was a trip to fire. I had to take some tests on general knowledge. The worst thing was getting grilled by the command master chief, our battalion senior chief, and another senior chief. I had been pretty nervous standing before those three, but I made it through. And now I had my FMFEWS . It was something that I would cherish for the rest of my life.

I’d been told that I’d been put in for a pretty high award for the action where Pacman, Jarod, and Cherrystone had died. Whatever came of that, I think this simple badge would mean more. I joined the Navy for technical training, but I had built up a sense of pride in the Navy and in my service to it. This badge showed me that the Marine Corps valued me, too.

This time, I did salute the skipper, did a left face, then marched to the rear of the formation. The skipper turned it over to the first sergeant who then dismissed us. I wanted to go right to Amy, but I had to get through a pretty big group of well-wishers. My back felt bruised from all the pounding it took.

I finally got to Amy. She reached out to touch the Achievement Medal. The bright green with orange stripes and the bright gold V in the middle looked more impressive to her then the silver-colored badge. Tyson liked it, too. When she leaned forward to let him see, he grabbed it and tried to put it in his mouth.

I had the rest of the day off, but the squad was taking Amy and me to the Harvey House, all the way in New Bern, so we planned to stick around on base. I’d never been there, but Cpl Mays assured me it was pretty high class.

“I’m afraid I need to steal your husband, here, Mrs. Cannon,” senior chief finally said. “I’ll have him back to you in a few minutes.”

I looked at Amy, raising my eyebrows in an unspoken question. She looked deep into my eyes, then nodded. Good, nothing had changed, then. I turned and followed the senior chief to the battalion aid station and into his office. He sat down behind his desk, indicating with his hand for me to take a seat as well.

“You done good there, Zach. You’ve made the Navy proud.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You made the right decision on earning your badge. I just ask you to wear it with pride at your next duty station. You may be in a hospital, but show that world that you succeeded as a corpsman with the Marines.”

“Aye-aye Senior Chief. Don’t worry, I’ll wear it.”

“Well, we’re going to hate to lose you, but me and the sergeant major got the CO, and he got the regimental CO to push it.”

He opened a folder and took out a set of orders, sliding them across the desk at me.

“You’ve earned it.” he said.

I looked at them. They were orders to C-School to earn my HM-8407 enlisted code, the code given to radiation health technicians. From there, I was going to Naval Hospital Bethesda.

“Well?” he asked when I didn’t say anything.

I flicked the missing tip of my little finger with my thumb, a habit I’d picked up when I felt stressed. I hesitated, then plunged forward.

“Sorry, Senior Chief, I can’t accept these,” I managed to get out.

“What? What do you mean? Do you know how lucky you are? Do you know how many people went up to bat for you? I know you wanted Balboa, but billets are billets, and three purple hearts and whatever else you’re getting or not, it’s still needs of the service,” he sputtered.

I could see he was surprised and not too happy about what I’d said.

“And I appreciate that, Senior Chief, I really do. But Amy and I’ve been talking seriously about my future, about our future. I’m only 20 years old, and I’ve got a wife and son. I’ve got to do what’s right for them, and as Amy tells me, I’ve got to do what’s right for me. I need to be happy in my job.”

“What? You don’t mean you want an early out, do you? If you do, that’s not going to happen.”

“What?” I parroted, not understanding.

“What do you mean, ‘what?’ Are you trying to get out of your service commitment?”

“Uh, no, Senior Chief, why do you ask me that?”

“Well then what the fuck are you getting at?”

I looked down at the silver badge on my breast before answering.

“I’m a Fleet Marine Force corpsman now, Senior Chief. This is where I belong. I’ve found my home, and this is where I need to stay.”

TABLE OF CONTENTS

MCRD, Paris Island

Jan 16, 2002

“You messing with me?” Sergeant Yarra, one of the platoon drill instructors asked the marksmanship instructor. “Recruit Gollum?”

I just focused on the target downrange. It was a simple mathematical equation, guiding the round into the bullseye, and math was one of my strengths.

“This is freakin’ amazing,” Sgt Yarra went on. “We’ve finally found something that this recruit can actually do. There may be hope for him yet.”

At 300 yards the slight wind would not have much effect on the round. I sighted in and squeezed the trigger. A moment later, the target went into the butts only to rise back up almost immediately. The white marking disc in the middle of the target had not moved, indicating one more bullseye. I felt a glow of achievement, of being right yet one more time.

“Are you a Gunny Hathcock there, Recruit Gollum? Some super sniper?” he asked in back of me.

I didn’t respond and stayed in my kneeling position, staring downrange at the bank of targets. Sgt Yarra had labeled me “Recruit Gollum” on the very first day in the squad bay. I wanted to tell him that Tolkien’s Gollum had large, closely-set eyes. Because of my condition, I had smaller, widely-set eyes. I looked different from most people, but I was the polar opposite of Gollum. Sgt Yarra was breaking the regulations governing the conduct of drill instructors by not referring to me by my proper name, but even I knew that pointing that out would have dire consequences. I might be socially inept, but I was not stupid.

“Cease fire, cease fire. Clear and lock all weapons. Coaches, check ’em,” the voice of the range SNCOIC intoned over the loudspeakers. “Clear on the left? Clear on the right? The line is clear. Shooters, once given the command by your coaches, and only then, move off the firing line.”

Once checked, I stood up and moved back to the ready bench. Sgt Yarra was there waiting for me.

“Do you know you’ve got 200 out of a possible 200 so far?” he asked me.

Of course I knew. I could count. The standing position had been a little iffy, though. I could see the target clearly, and I knew what I had to do. But holding the M16A2 steady was easier said than done. I had to resort to “ambushing” the target, only squeezing the trigger when the sight-picture was correct.

“Yes, Drill Instructor!” I said like a good little recruit.

“You going to get a possible? You’ve still got the 500-yard range, and that’s not easy.”

Actually, I felt more comfortable with that. At 500 yards, the wind would have more effect on the round, but in the prone position I could keep the weapon steady.

“Yes, Drill Instructor Yarra. This recruit will get a possible!”

“Hmph! We’ll see. It would be about time you actually do something right,” he said.

I sat down on the bench, ignoring the other recruits around me. As usual, I didn’t interact well with others. I preferred my own world, to be honest. I could understand that. Understanding others was a skill in which I was sadly lacking.

Recruit Mabrey took his place on the line to fire, shooting the same target as I had. Once his group was finished, we would move back to the 500 yard line and fire the final 10 rounds of qualification. The commands were issued, and shots began to go downrange. A call went out to have Target 19, Mabrey’s target, checked. It disappeared in the butts only to rise back up after about 30 seconds without a marking disc in it. The big red disc used in the butts to show where a round hit was slowly waved from left to right across the target. This signified a “Maggie’s Drawers,” a clean miss. Mabrey couldn’t afford to miss many more if he hoped to qualify.

I am not a person who gives too much in the way of emotions, but I felt a growing sense of satisfaction. Here was something in which I could do well. There hadn’t been too many things in my past that I could point to where I was better than most people. I knew I was smarter than most people, but others tended to dismiss that because of both my appearance and my lack of interaction. Here, the numbers didn’t lie. I was a good shot, and soon I would earn the coveted Expert marksmanship badge to put on my uniform.

Recruit Mabrey had another Maggie’s Drawers, then a two. He’d blown 13 points in only three shots. I could tell some of the DI’s wanted to jump all over him, but at the range, they were not allowed forward of the ready benches.

Dr. Grant kept telling me that one of my issues was a lack of empathy for others. I guess there was a degree of truth in that, but I did feel for Mabrey. I had been at the receiving end of our DIs’ attention myself more often than not. I’d never been very physical. Sports were verboten for me as my skull was much more susceptible to injury, and boot camp is extremely physical. I struggled, to put it mildly. When the DIs would scream in my face, I tended to zone out, and that got them even more upset.

“Don’t you care, Recruit Gollem?”

“Where’s your passion, Recruit Lindt?”

As Mabrey scored a three with his next shot, his chances of qualifying were rapidly fading. I knew the DIs would be all over him as we moved back to the 500 yard line, and I think I did feel bad for him. I wondered what Dr. Grant would think of that, me feeling bad for someone else. That was progress, at least.

Time expired for the current shooters. I knew that Mabrey only had a three point cushion going back to the last course of fire. We policed up the 300-yard range and moved back to the 500. I sat on the bench eager to get going. I looked over at the range flags, the huge red flags that fluttered in the breeze, revealing wind direction and speed. The range was pretty wide, though, and the wind at the edges of it did not necessarily indicate what it would be in the center of the range. My target, number 19, was well removed from the partial protection the trees at the edge of the range provided. I studied the grass between the 500-yard line and the targets. Close to the firing line, the breeze wouldn’t have as much effect on the round, but closer to the butts, the effect would be more pronounced.

The range coach started reminding us to calculate windage and elevation, but I tuned him out. I could almost see the wind as it swirled around. I had read about idiot savants and super calculators. Some of them saw numbers as colors, and they were able to do calculations based on those colors. I wasn’t either one of those, but along with my slight degree of autism, I think I had a bit of that ability. I wasn’t actually seeing colors, per se, but I could “see,” if I could use that word, the wind downrange. I knew exactly what effect it and gravity would have on my round, and without even trying, I knew what dope to set on my sights.

“Shooters, approach the firing line and assume a good prone position. You have three minutes, shooters, three minutes to prepare,” the range NCO passed over the loudspeakers.

I moved forward and got down on my belly. I adjusted both my windage and elevation, not waiting for the coach. Adjusting my sling, I waited for the command to lock and load.

As I watched the conditions on the range, I was barely aware of speech, and like a bee buzzing in my ear, I ignored it until someone kicked my boot.

“Recruit Lindt, are you deaf? I asked to see your dope,” my range coach was telling me.

I rolled over to my side and showed the coach my weapon. He inspected it, then asked, “Did someone give you that dope?”

“No, Corporal. This recruit calculated it himself!”

“And is it correct?” he asked.

“Yes, Corporal!” I answered.

“OK, then, we’ll see,” he said before moving on to the next recruit.

“Shooters, your preparation time is over. With a magazine and ten rounds, lock and load,” the range NCO instructed us. “Ready on the right? Ready on the left? Shooters, you may commence firing when your targets appear.”

I tuned out everything except for my weapon, my target, and the intervening distance between us. The target was a man-sized black profile, from about the waist up. Any hit on the black counted as five points. Hits outside the black went down in value depending on how far out they were.

I knew my dope was on, so I held my site picture slightly to the right of the center of the target. I should have kept it on the midline of it, but I wanted a heart shot. My sight picture was perfect and the wind steady as I squeezed off the shot. The M16 kicked back against my shoulder, hardly noticeable. After a moment, the target disappeared below the berm. Ten seconds later, it came back up, the white disc indicating a shot right at where the heart would be in a real person. The shot value disk then came up, the white side facing us, the disc held center to indicate a bullseye.

“Good shot, there recruit. But come over two clicks left windage. That’ll put you dead center,” the voice of my coach barely registered in back of me.

Of course, I ignored him. I sighted exactly as before, then sent another round downrange. This time, the target went down in the butts to come right back up, the disk hadn’t have moved. Up came the shot value disk—another bullseye.

The coach moved up alongside of me. “Did you adjust your windage? You’re still in the bull, but not center mass.”

I knew he wasn’t going to leave, so I reached down and took my windage two clicks to the left. This time, when I sighted in, I used Kentucky windage, that is, aiming at a different point to adjust the strike of the round. I aimed closer to what would be the armpit of the target and squeezed off my shot. The target went down for only a moment before bouncing back up. Once again, the marking disk hadn’t been moved.

“You moved that windage, right?” the coach asked me.

“Yes, Corporal,” I shouted back, dutiful little recruit that I was. “This recruit came left two clicks.”

“Well, try another round,” he said before moving to the recruit two over from me.

Actually, I put two more rounds downrange before he got back to me, neither of them requiring the spotting disk to me moved. I was in the zone. Around me, I was peripherally aware of other shots, other targets being marked. The slow swing of the shot value disks across the breadth of the target indicating a Maggie’s drawers were hard to miss. But I tuned those out.

On my next round, just as I started to squeeze the trigger, the grass two-thirds of the way downrange shifted position as the wind did a 180. I adjusted my point of aim to the left and continued squeezing, my round going off almost simultaneously with that of Recruit Billings, shooting just to the left of me. The white spotting disk in my target fell off as my round hit it. Our targets went down into the butts together. Mine came back up as the recruits in the butts got the disk put back in. I heard a “Shit!” from Billings. On his target, the red side of the spotter disc was showing, off to the right. He had not taken into account the changing wind.

“Recruit Lindt, are you trying for a heart shot?” my coach asked.

“One shot, one kill, Corporal!” I shouted back. I felt a little goofy spouting off like that, but that seemed to be what was expected.

After three more shots, all in the heart area, I had three coaches around me. Sergeant Yarra, my DI, was in back of me as well.

“One more, Recruit Gollem! One more. Let’s see if you can’t do it without fucking it up,” he shouted out.

“Another heart shot? He’s got nine in a row,” one of the range coaches asked as they watched me prepare.

“I bet you a six-pack he does it,” my coach said. “He’s got this in the bag.”

My coach, a corporal, had not come down hard on me during range week. He seemed earnest enough, and I wouldn’t have minded him winning his bet, so I’m not sure why I shifted my aim. I only needed one more bullseye to score a perfect 250, a “possible.” I knew I could hit the torso without even trying.

Instead, I shifted my aim up and to the left. I pulled the trigger. The target was pulled down. It took a bit longer to come back up, and when it did, the spotter disk was not at the heart area. It was dead center in the head of the target.

“Oh shit!” I heard in back of me, and “You owe me a six-pack,” to be followed by “Bullshit! He got his possible!”

I didn’t really care about them, who owed whom what. I just looked at the target, the white disk indicting a sure kill shot. After a rocky start, it was gratifying to know that there was something I could do well. Shooting a rifle was at the very core of what it meant to be a Marine, and shoot I could.

Chapter 1

Hurricane Point, Ramadi, Iraq

March 12, 2006

“You know this is bullshit, Staff Sergeant,” Doug Taggart said, echoing what I would guess every one of us thought. “Just because those reservists got whacked, well, we knew what we were getting into when we became snipers.”

“Bullshit or not, it is what it is. The LT, he’s goin’ to push the case with the major, but for now, it’s teams of five,” Staff Sergeant Tui Rawhiu said, pronouncing out the platoon commander’s rank as “El Tee.”

Snipers were trained to go out in teams of two: a sniper and a spotter. I had been a spotter during my first tour, assigned to the Scout Sniper Platoon simply because of my rifle range score. I hadn’t been school-trained, still a PIG. My sniper was Sgt Idaho Tensley, a Brooklyn boy despite his cowboy name, and together we notched up 26 kills during the invasion, him shooting and me spotting and providing security.

A few months ago, though, six snipers from 3/25 had been killed in an ambush, so the word from on high was that there were to be no more two-man teams. What that seemed to ignore was that the Marines killed were in a six-man team and had been spotted as they moved into their hide. Two-man teams would better be able to get in and out of their hides unnoticed.

I looked around the platoon “office,” a small partitioned area in the larger SWA that served parts of H & S Company. We had 16 Marines in the platoon with SSgt Rawhide (never “Rawhide” to his face, though) as our Chief Sniper and 1stLt Tammerline, the battalion S-2, as our commander. Six of us were HOGS, “Hunter of Gunmen,” graduates of one of the four Marine Corps Basic Scout Sniper Schools and entitled to wear the “Hog’s Tooth” around our necks. Another seven had been given informal training as scouts and as snipers, and three Marines had been assigned as security, each carrying an M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon, the SAW.

This was the second combat tour for four of us and the third for Doug, one of those being in Afghanistan. Doug was an opinionated Marine, and he felt it was his responsibility to let us know those opinions. He’d made one confirmed kill of 1,450 meters in Afghanistan using the Barrett, and that, in his mind, made him the defacto Shell Answer Man of the platoon, despite SSgt Rawhide and two sergeants out-ranking him.

In this case, though, he was pretty much expressing what all of us thought. We’d been trained for two-man teams, and that was what we wanted. We’d done some training back at Lejeune and at the Stumps with larger teams, but I think we all thought that once we got to Iraq, we would be able to revert back to the traditional mode. I was in that group, too. I understood what the brass thought, but I didn’t particularly like change. It had taken me long enough to work as a team with my spotter, and now I would have another dynamic thrown into the mix.

The staff sergeant droned on and I tuned him out, something I often did. Instead, I looked over at PFC Jeffrey Linn Stoelk, his left butt cheek up on a desk, half standing, half sitting. He was my polar opposite. Tall and strikingly good-looking, he would have looked at home on any recruiting poster. Where I tended to be withdrawn and a loner, he was personable, everyone’s best friend. He was that guy, the one who every girl wanted and every guy wanted to be. Every unit had one of them. I tended to ignore most people around me, but that would be difficult in Jeff’s case. He was my spotter.

Most members of SSP, the Scout Sniper Platoon, came right from the line companies. Jeff had been assigned from Fox Company about two months before our deployment. I had just lost my previous spotter, LCpl Marcus Boyd, because he had complained to the Chief Sniper that I was “weird.” In the Marines, you work with whom you’ve been assigned, personalities aside. But in a sniper team, where you depend on each other so much and work almost as one, personalities matter. So Boyd was gone and the newbie Jeff was in.

At first, I wondered how it was going to work out. Jeff talked non-stop, something I normally found annoying. He was earnest in his job, trying to contribute, but it didn’t take him long to realize that on the range, at least, I paid him little heed. I tuned everything out when I was firing, and that included my spotter. He had asked me if I was angry with him. When I assured him that I wasn’t, he seemed to accept that and started looking for other ways to contribute. I can’t say we were extremely close, but we seemed to have settled into a good working routine.

One problem with tuning things out is that I often missed things. It took a number of loud “Oo-rahs” from the others in the platoon to catch my attention. SSgt Rawhiu had just let us know that the platoon would have its first mission tonight. Sgt Nelson would be leading a five-man team to a hide where he could observe the High Water Bridge, one of the routes into the city from the north. Jeff and I would be pared with Doug and his spotter, along with LCpl Eric Thanh, “Chuckie” as we called him after the movie doll, who would be our SAW gunner. We were designated Team Three and our mission would go tomorrow night.

After all our training, it was time to get to work.

Chapter 2

Ramadi

March 13, 2006

Doug Taggart slipped into the building as the India Company patrol started up again. The platoon-sized patrol had stopped while a team had quietly cleared the building. It was known to be abandoned, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t slipped inside in the meantime. With the building clear, the platoon stood up and moved off again, only this time, we didn’t go with them. One by one, we slipped in, five of us and one sniper from the outgoing 1/6, the battalion we were replacing. We had been briefed ad infinitum by them since our arrival, but one of them actually going out with us was going to be more beneficial.

It wasn’t that we didn’t trust the team from India, but these were our asses on the line, so we quietly cleared the building once again before taking our position in a corner room on the top floor. Four stories up, it gave good observation of the bridge and another 30 meters of Route Michigan to the south. Something had taken out a huge chunk of the corner of the building, connecting what had been the north and east-facing windows. This gave us great visibility, but that also opened us up to observation. The insurgency wasn’t known for having night vision devices, but with light walls in back of us, we could still possibly be spotted.

We had ways to combat that, though. All of us carried various pieces of fabric and materials. By stringing up black woven polypropylene, the same material as the bright blue tarps back at home, we could create our own shadows and dark spots. Within minutes, we were set up, and after sending Chuckie Tranh to cover the ladderwell leading up to our hide, the rest of us edged forward to where we could observe the area. Doug and I flanked Sgt Pohl, the 1/6 sniper, so he could more easily communicate with us. We flipped down our night vision goggles.

“OK, over there, about 10 meters before the bridge, see that flat spot before it rises up to the bridge itself?” Sgt Pohl asked, his voice in a whisper.

Night vision goggles were great, bringing the night to life, but they tended to flatten out images. It was a little difficult to see just what part was flat and what part was rising from 400 meters away.

“We’ve had three kills right there over the last six months. We got one last Tuesday, in fact.”

I studied the area. While there were buildings going down Michigan, the area right in front of the bridgehead was pretty open. The insurgents must know they were out in the open there, despite the darkness.

As if he was reading my mind, Sgt Pohl went on, “The ragheads who emplace the IEDs are just regular hajjis. They get paid or threatened by the mujahideen to put them in. The bomb makers and the fighters, they sit back and let the peons take the risks. I’d love to take one of the bosses out, but I’ll take what comes up.”

For the next 30 minutes, we listened as the sergeant pointed out various hot spots for the bad guys and places where they’d set up hides before. One wasn’t a building but a shallow depression alongside the banks of the river not 120 meters from the bridgehead. It seemed rather exposed to me, but they’d once spent all night, the next day, and the following night there, waiting for an IED emplacement that intel had promised. That emplacement never happened, and I wondered if that was due to faulty intel or if the team had been compromised and the IED emplacement plans changed. Two days later, a National Guard Bradley armored vehicle had been hit by an IED after crossing the bridge. No one had been hurt, but it begged the question of why nothing had happened when the sniper team was in position.

With a five-man team, the normal SOP, as we had developed it during pre-deployment workups, was for one team of two to be observing while the rest of the team relaxed or slept. Particularly when looking through night vision goggles, it was difficult to stay focused, and the eyes could begin to play tricks on you if you didn’t take any breaks. But this was our first mission and all of us were amped up. We all stayed awake, scanning the area around us. A couple of times Jeff noted movement, but when we looked closer through our scopes, it was just the normal activities of the local population. There was nothing suspicious.

At about 0420, we got a message over our PRR that the patrol was returning. We watched as their point man came into view, soon to be followed by the rest of the platoon. We picked up our gear, making sure nothing was left to indicate we had been there. We crept back down to the bottom deck, made contact with the India company Marines and unobtrusively slipped in with them. This had been a short orientation mission, but I think all of us were still disappointed that we hadn’t had any action.

Chapter 3

Route Michigan, Ramadi

March 15, 2006

Jeff and I scanned the area below us, looking for anything out of the ordinary. We were on the top floor of an abandoned five-story building that had pretty decent observation of a good stretch of Route Michigan below us.

SSP Marines are not just snipers. We are the total package: snipers and recon, the battalion commander’s eyes in the battlespace. Today, we were not in direct support of an infantry operation, nor was there intel of any insurgent activity. Reconnaissance was part and parcel to our mission, and we were merely observing what we could, trying to get a feel for the city and reporting anything we saw back to the battalion. On the other hand, I had my M40A3 in my hands, and if anything did come up within our Rules of Engagement, I could and would take action.

We had come into the hide in the early morning darkness. Doug pulled seniority and took the first watch with LCpl Bo Wilson, his spotter while Jeff and I tried to catch some z’s on the deck below with Chuckie on security. Jeff spelled Chuckie at dawn, and a couple of hours later, we took over for Doug and Bo.

“Nothing out there,” Doug had told us during the changeover. “I need some action!”

There hadn’t been any action for us, either. Two convoys had gone down Michigan, probably on their way to the government center, and that had been the highlight of the morning. Iraqis has started to stir with their daily routine, but for a city the size of Ramadi, there weren’t really many people out and about.

A war setting or not, though, about 1500 meters away, through an opening in the buildings, I could see part of a dusty, empty lot. A handful of kids ran back and forth in a soccer game. I watched them through my scope, as they passed the opening, first one way, then reappearing going back the other way. These kids didn’t seem to care that their city was essentially under siege. They cared more about their game like kids the world over. Despite myself, though, I went over the windage, elevation, and counteraction to the spindrift in my mind in order to make a shot on that small soccer field should the need arise.

The day was getting hotter as the sun rose in the sky. We weren’t even moving, but sweat was already soaking our cammies under our battle gear. We still had all day here in the hide and most of the night before we would get back to Hurricane Point, out of these uniforms, and into a shower.

“Psst, Noah, I’ve got something here,” hissed Jeff from the window opening on the south-facing side of the room.

We had rigged the room with the existing broken furniture and fabric to make observation into the room difficult, but any movement could possibly be picked up. I slowly edged back from my window opening, then low-crawled over to him, edging up to where I could see.

“Over there, by that broken utility pole, 700 meters out,” he told me.

I looked through my brand new Schmidt and Bender scope, the Corps replacement for the old venerable Urnetl that I was used to, its 3 X 12 magnifying bringing the area into clear focus. I liked the Urnetl and tended not to like changes, but I had to admit that the quality and ruggedness of the Schmidt and Bender was outstanding. At the base of a broken concrete utility pole, a man was furtively digging a hole in the road, glancing up and down the road as he dug. This was in broad daylight, on the main thoroughfare. A woman in a full burqa walked by, but from my vantage point, she didn’t even give him a glance.

“Should I get Taggart?” he asked me.

“No, call it in, and let’s see who else shows up,” I told him.

The Iraqis often used several people to emplace an IED. One or more might scout out an area. Someone else would dig a hole or move garbage, a dead animal, or anything that could hide the explosives into position. If the guy in charge, who could be observing all of this from hundreds of meters away, felt it was safe, someone else would come up with the explosives and emplace them. Either he or yet someone else would arm the device. If it was remote controlled, the final person would observe and fire it off when it would do the most damage.

“The TOC says to make sure these are bad guys, then take them out if we can do it without compromising our position. There’s going to be some National Guard Humvees coming up from their COP in about 30 mikes, so we need to make a decision before then,” Jeff told me.

“OK, we’ve got time, 30 minutes they say. Let’s wait and see what happens.”

“What about Taggart? Should I go get him?”

“No, let him sleep. If we need him, we can still get him later,” I told him.

In reality, I had no intention of getting my fellow sniper. He’d want to take the shot if it came to that, and this one was mine. I had never fired a round in anger, and I was curious to see if there was any difference when firing here for real rather than when back on the range. Paper targets don’t bleed. The math of this shot was interesting, too. We had a good breeze coming from the southwest, and we were five stories up. On the open range at Lejeune, we could see the breeze as it blew the grass. Here in the concrete canyons of Ramadi, we had to hope for dust or trash to indicate the wind speed and direction.

We had previously gotten the range for some landmarks within view. Based on those, I estimated that the utility pole was at 730 meters.

“Give me a range to the pole,” I told Jeff.

He aimed the laser range-finder and looked at the reading. “I’ve got 732 meters to the base of the pole.”

We settled down to watch. The man took a couple more shovels of dirt, then threw the shovel to the ground. He glanced over his shoulder and hesitated for a moment before turning back, and with his face down and eyes looking to the ground, quickly strode off.

I took the scope and backtracked along the direction of the man’s glance. Nothing jumped out at me at first. There were just building fronts. Then I saw it. Just a small flicker of movement in one of the windows. I looked more carefully and saw what looked to be a hand being lowered from a face, as if it had just held a radio. Normally, I would assume that someone had just used a cell phone, but with Al Qaeda blowing up the cell phone towers, there was no coverage in the city.

“Across the street from him, where the road starts curving back. Three floors up, last window, what do you see?” I asked Jeff.

As my spotter, Jeff carried the M49 Spotter Scope, the same scope that had been in use since WWII. It might be old, but it was twice as powerful as my Schmidt and Bender Dayscope.

After a moment, he said, “I’ve got a male, looking like he’s trying to stay out of sight. He’s holding some sort of handheld radio, and he keeps looking south along Michigan like he’s waiting for someone.”

“That’s the boss man,” I said. “Can you get me a range?”

“Um, I get, 805, but the angle’s bad so I can’t be exact.”

“That’s good enough,” I said.

The angle was bad, and that gave a smaller window if I wanted to make a shot. All he had to do was take half a step back, and he’d be out-of-sight. If Michigan hadn’t curved a bit right there, we’d never have been able to see him at all.

We settled in for a long wait, but after only a couple of minutes, a man appeared, pushing a small cart down the road. He looked pretty alert for a man supposedly going about his daily grind.

“Here comes the IED,” I told Jeff. “Check out what our buddy in the building is doing.”

“Uh, yeah, he seems pretty interested. He’s almost leaning out the window now.”

“Tell battalion that we have IED activity and will engage.”

All snipers carried small hand-held ballistic computers. These alleviated the necessity of stubby pencil work when figuring out a shot. I never used mine. Back at school, I would pull it out and enter the data, but I ignored the results. The little computers were accurate, but they were only as good as the data entered, and except for range, all of that data was subjective to estimations. Estimate the wind wrong and the shot will be off.

Instead, I relied on my gut. I couldn’t explain it, but somehow, I could “see” the conditions. I could picture the round going downrange, seeing the trace before it actually happened.

This was pretty much like how I made most mathematical calculations. I just knew the answer. Curious about my abilities, I had read about idiot savants, the human calculators. My abilities had to be related to that same phenomenon. Part of my developmental problems as a child had been diagnosed as a mild form of autism, and that often came with other abilities. I couldn’t tell you what day of the week August 9, 1014 was like some of them could, but I had a feel for numbers. My subconscious was doing the calculations, and my conscious mind just harvested them. It’s hard to describe.

I was five stories up, 14 meters. Past 600 meters, spindrift had a small but real effect on the round. The wind was gusting down Michigan. I took in all of these factors.

“TOC wants to know if you’re sure,” Jeff said, droning on in the background. I tuned him out.

I adjusted the scope, putting on 26 minutes of angle, or MOA. For the drift, one MOA, for the wind, another, so that gave me two MOA right. The Schmidt and Bender was a ¼ MOA scope, that is, one click moved the round .25 inches at 100 yards. For 26 MOA in elevation, that meant 104 clicks on the elevation knob. This was my base adjustment. This dope would stay on the rifle. At the time of the actual shot, I could adjust my point of aim if necessary.

Our cart-pusher was getting closer. He slowed down, then looked around. He hesitated, and then reached into the cart and under some bags, pulling out what looked to be an anti-armor mine, struggling under the weight. That was my proof.

I swung my M40 around, acquiring the man in the building. He had moved forward a few inches so he could observe his compatriot, and that gave me a full view of his left front. I squeezed the trigger, and the round went downrange. The rifle kicked, and as it came back down, I picked up the trace of the round as it arched over and down to its target.

In my mind’s eye when I picture my shots, the trace was vivid, almost colorful. In actuality, a bullet trace was more of the wavering you see in a mirage, visible, but not vibrant. It was plenty clear enough to follow, though, as it covered the 800 meters and slammed into the man’s left pec and tore through his chest.

“Shit!” I heard Jeff say, taken by surprise.

I immediately swung over to the IED-man. He was closer, so I couldn’t have the same point of aim. Rounds fell more drastically the further out the shot, so even if the total range to him was only less by 100 meters, I would have to make a fairly significant adjustment. The man had stood up straight at my shot, looking back down the street, and that gave me a clearer target. I held the crosshairs low and fired the shot. He looked up as I fired, right at me. I could clearly see his face, the scraggly beard, the fact that his right eye dropped lower than his left. I saw the impact of the round as it hit him in the hollow between his collarbones. I watched him fall into a heap.

“What the fuck, Noah?” Jeff said. “How about telling me you’re engaging?”

PFC’s are not supposed to talk to corporals like that, but I knew he was technically correct. As my spotter, he should have been spotting the rounds, using his scope to watch for the impact and giving me corrections. But when I fired, I was in the zone. I knew I couldn’t miss. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.

I didn’t even respond while Jeff picked up his scope and looked downrange. I pulled out my log book (my DOPE, or Data on Previous Engagements/Data on Personal Equipment—both meanings are used) and started making the entries for the two shots, my first two actual kills. Feet pounded up the stairs, and the other three rushed into the room.

“What happened? What’s going on?” Doug asked, out of breath.

“Cpl Lindt engaged two hajjis laying IEDs,” Jeff replied, handing Doug the scope.

“I see one there on the road. What happened to the other? And why didn’t you get me up here so we could engage simultaneously?” he asked, his voice rising.

“The second one was the controller, over there in that building, the yellow one. Three floors up, the last window,” Jeff told him.

Doug looked through the scope. “I don’t see anything. You sure he got him?” he asked.

All four looked at me as I continued to log in the engagement.

“Noah, did you get him or not?” Doug asked.

“Yes, a heart shot. I saw the impact.”

They all stared at me silently.

“You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?” Doug told me. “You could have shared, you know? Stoelk, call it in. They’ll probably want to send in a squad to check that other guy for intel, so you better hope he really is a bad guy. We may have been compromised, so everybody’s on alert now. Chuckie, I want that stairwell covered in case anyone wants to come pay us a visit.”

I let Doug take over. I really had no interest in being a leader. All I wanted was to take my shots, the more difficult the better. My first two were in the bag.

Two rounds, two kills.

Chapter 4

Hurricane Point

March 16, 2006

“Hey Noah, you doing OK?” Jeff asked me.

I didn’t know what brought on the question, so I shrugged and said “Sure,” before focusing on my rifle. I had it taken apart and was cleaning it.

We were both back at the hootch, cleaning our weapons. The others were taking a shower, so we were alone.

“You sure?” he persisted.

I didn’t even answer.

“I mean, those two guys were your first kills. You want to talk about it?”

I really wasn’t sure what he was getting at. Sure, those were the first two men I’d killed. But that was my job. That was what the Marine Corps wanted from me. What did it matter if those were only my first two? Once again, I chose to say nothing, picking up my receiver and wiping it down.

Jeff sat there looking at me for a moment before standing up. “OK, just fuck it. You ignore me at the hide, not letting me do my part while you go off John Wayning it. Now, I try to talk, and you shut me out. The other guys warned me about you, that you don’t give a fuck about anyone else. You know, if you’re not happy with me as your spotter, well, fire my ass. I don’t care anymore. I’m fucking done with it.”

He picked up the pieces of his M16, snapping them together. I looked up at him wondering about his outburst. What caused that?

Figuring out people had always been one of my weaknesses. Dr. Grant said I lacked empathy. I couldn’t put myself in others’ shoes. Unless someone told me something directly, I usually didn’t know what they wanted or how they felt. Because of that, I learned to just ignore people when I could. I kept to myself. That was one of the things I liked about the Marines. You got told what to do, and you did it. No need to figure things out. But now, Jeff was pretty upset.

I really didn’t want to get another spotter. I didn’t like change. Once I had a routine, I tended to stick with it, and I didn’t want to have to adjust to someone new. I knew I had to do something, but I wasn’t sure what. He had his M16 almost back together, and once he left, I knew my chances would be over.

When all else fails, try the truth, Dr. Grant had told me. I was a very private person, but faced with adjusting to a new spotter, I was willing to give it a shot. Jeff had his weapon together and turned to leave the hootch.

“Jeff, can you hold up a minute?” I asked, standing up.

He turned to look back at me, eyes smoldering.

“Come sit down, I want to tell you something,” I said.

For a moment, I thought he would refuse. But then he placed his M16 on the table and sat.

“I, uh, well. . .” I started, not knowing how to go on. Other than the staff at the home and Dr. Grant’s office, no one else knew my background. I thought of how to broach it.

“Are we just going to sit here, or do you got something to say?” he asked me.

“I . . .” I started before stopping to take a deep breath. “I’m not very social, I guess. I don’t always react well to others.”

“So tell me something I don’t know,” he said sourly.

“Acrocephalopolysyndactyly Type II,” I said in a rush.

“Say what?”

“I’ve got it. Acrocephalopolysyndactyly Type II. Carpenter’s Syndrome,” I said.

“Never heard of that. It is catching?” he asked, moving his body slightly back.

Carpenter’s Syndrome is a rare disorder where the skull fuses while inside the womb. This makes it impossible for the brain to grow, and left untreated, results in horribly deformed heads, severe disabilities, and death. I was able to get treated, and the surgeons were able to separate the pieces of my skull to allow somewhat normal growth. I looked odd, though, with a wide forehead and small, widely-spaced eyes. My fingers were shorter than normal, but they didn’t require surgery to separate them as some of the more severely affected sufferers of the syndrome had to get done.

“No, not at all. It’s a genetic defect. When I was born, my skull was already fused. When that happens, the brain can’t grow, and that can cause big problems. Without surgery it will eventually cause death.”

“But your parents got you treated, right? I mean, you’re alive now.”

Disregarding the surgery, perhaps the most important result of my syndrome is that my mother decided that I wasn’t worth the bother. She abandoned me at the Des Moines Christian Children’s Home without even a note as to my name. I’d like to think that she did that because she couldn’t care for me, but I knew that was merely wishful thinking. The home gave me a name and got me medical care, and although no one ever wanted to adopt the funny-looking kid, I had food on the table and my own bed at night.

“No, they didn’t. My parents, whoever they were, didn’t want me around. I was abandoned at the Des Moines Christian Children’s Home shortly after I was born.”

I could see some of the anger fade from Jeff’s eyes as he leaned forward again and said, “Really? Man that sucks. Do you know who your parents are, at least?”

“I don’t have a clue.”

“But you never tried to find them? You could use the internet to search. Can’t be too many ‘Lindts’ around.”

“I was abandoned without anything. No name, no birthdate, nothing.”

“But your name?”

“Mrs. Fergusson, the assistant director of the home, was pretty fond of candy, so she gave me my last name. For my first, I was the fourteenth child abandoned at the home without a name during her time there. That made me an “N,” and we were all given Biblical names.”

“Ah, so ‘Noah Lindt.’ Still, I can’t guess that many kids were born with your Carpenter thing, so they could have gone to the police to find out what kid was just born with it, right?” he asked.

“How many more mothers would bring their unwanted kids to the home, do you think, if word got out that the home was siccing the police on them?”

“Uh, I didn’t think of that. That sucks, though. But at least you got your medical care, right?”

“Four surgeries during my first year.”

“And you’re OK, right?” he asked.

“Do I look OK? My brain was able to develop and grow, but you’ve seen that I look odd, to put it mildly,” I told him. “On top of that, whether caused by not getting care right away or not, I was diagnosed as being autistic.”

“You mean you’re a retard? You rode the short bus to school?” he asked.

I wasn’t good at picking up social cues, but he seemed curious rather than damning.

“Actually, I did ride the short bus, as you put it. And wore a helmet,” I told him. “The helmet was to protect my brain, and I wore that until I was eight. As far as the bus, I was in Special Ed until I was in second grade.”

For my first three years of school, I was put into Special Ed classes. My lack of interaction, coupled with my syndrome, made people assume that I was of below average intelligence. To be more blunt, that I was stupid. Part of that could be a logical assumption. A good percentage of others with the Carpenters Syndrome did in fact have developmental retardation. I did not, but couple that with my mild degree of autism, and my various foster parents and Family Services representatives assumed I was in the same boat.

“Everyone thought I had a learning disability,” I told him. “It took them awhile to understand that I was actually pretty smart, but I tended to focus on certain things, ignoring anything else.”

“And that’s why you can be kind of a jerk?”

“You can say that. I’ve had lots and lots of therapy, and I’ve been taught to cope better, but sometimes, I just don’t get people.”

He leaned back and looked up at the ceiling, taking in what I just told him.

“But you’re OK now? I mean you’re a Marine, a sniper.”

“Like I said, I’ve had lots of therapy.”

What I didn’t tell him was that I was really not physically qualified to be in the Corps. My skull was not as strong as a normal skull, and for the same reasons I couldn’t play contact sports in school. I should not be a Marine. A head injury that would simply hurt someone else could kill me. But this was my choice. It hadn’t been that hard to get a hold of my medical records and get rid of the surgery entries before turning them into my recruiter. As far as the Marines were concerned, I was a kid who had overcome a minor case of autism, period. They had no reason to investigate further. My looks were odd, true, with the characteristics of others with the syndrome, but not so odd as to have people pointing at me screaming like the pod people in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers .

I am still not sure why I chose the Marine Corps. Another branch would have certainly been easier, but maybe I wanted to prove something to myself. I passed the physical and did very well on the ASVAB test. I was accepted into the Corps.

Because I couldn’t let the Corps know I had a condition, I had resisted telling anyone about it, but I now felt a weight being lifted off my chest. Telling Jeff was surprisingly freeing. I felt an urge to call up Dr. Grant and let him know I had a breakthrough.

Dr. Grant had felt that my enlisting was a big mistake, one with potentially fatal consequences. He had pushed me to go to school, and I tried. After only a few weeks at Iowa State, though, I knew I was not suited for it. I had no problem with the coursework. I just lacked the social skills and self-discipline to live outside of a structured format. I would get sidetracked very easily and spend the night constructing mock-ups of dragon wings, or at least, what I thought they should be, instead of doing my homework. After the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, I was done with school. I quit, went back to Des Moines, and convinced Dr. Grant that I needed to enlist. Using medical privacy issues as an excuse, I got him to unwittingly help clean up my medical records before going to see the recruiter.

“You’re serious about all of this, aren’t you? This isn’t some bullshit excuse as to why you’re something of an asshole?” Jeff asked me.

“Well, I don’t know that I can put the blame for being an asshole on anything else. Maybe I am one by nature. But if I seem to be ignoring you, give me a kick in the ass. If I really mean to be ignoring you, I’ll tell you up front. How’s that?”

“Pretty fucking funny, there, Corporal. But seeing as you are giving me permission to strike a non-commissioned officer, I don’t see how I can turn that down.”

“One thing, though. You’re a fucking amazing shot, and yesterday showed you don’t need much help from me. I’m not going to stay a spotter forever, though, so I gotta learn. You need to keep me in the loop. You need to let me be part of it. If we are going to be a team, we need to be a team.”

I don’t know if I was cut out to be a teacher, but he was right. It was my duty to help him just as Sgt Tensley had helped me. Beyond duty, though, I wanted to be a team. I didn’t know exactly how to be a good teammate, but I know I wanted to be one.

“You’ve got a deal, there, PFC. Scouts’ honor.”

He nodded, then reached over to grab my dirty magazine. “Here, let me help you with that. I’m starving, and we need to get to chow.”

Chapter 5

Ramadi

March 23, 2006

The Iraqi seemed defeated, looking up at us with blank eyes. He looked to be in his thirties, a small, thin guy with a scraggly tuft of hair on his chin trying to become a beard. The woman, though, seemed angry as she held the little girl to her chest, glaring at us as we came in. She shifted her glare to the man, as if he had failed her. I’m not sure what she expected him to do.

The Lima Company fire team had them herded into a corner of the room, weapons not actually trained on them, but at the ready. It was clear that they would brook no interference with our plans for the night.

Using a private home as a hide was not something we wanted to do often. “Hide” inferred secrecy, and having a family watch us go in was just the opposite of that. But sometimes, due to our mission, we had to use occupied positions. That is when we used the line platoons not only to clear a building, but to hold it secure for us. Holding it could be problematic, though. We didn’t want to hurt anyone, but the simple comings and goings of people in their daily lives could compromise a hide. Two days before, Second Team had to leave a hide when a small boy had wandered in from the street, only to dash back out before anyone could grab him.

The corporal, I think his name was Stockton, motioned us to the ladderwell by tilting his head. We followed him up the stairs to a third floor corner room. He led us back to back where we could look out.

“That building over there, the one before the corner of the second street over from us here, that’s the target. Is this OK?” he asked us.

From a couple of feet back, Doug looked out, first out of the south-facing window, then out of the east-facing one. He shrugged then looked at me. I nodded.

“Yeah, this’ll do,” he said.

“OK, then, you’ve got it. The house call is scheduled to kick off in . . .” he paused to look at his watch, “about two hours and 20 minutes. We’ll be downstairs with our hosts.”

We checked out the room in the dark. There was a bed, a folding table, and a chair in the room. The bed was pretty big, and we decided against moving it. The table and the chair were pushed up against the inside wall, and we went about carefully making our preparations to make us invisible to outside observers.

The windows were something else, though. Unlike abandoned buildings, this home had fully intact windows. The windows could help refract the line-of-sight into the room, but we really didn’t want t shoot through them if we could possible avoid it.

“Do we leave them closed for now and open them if we have to?” Doug asked us.

“If we open them right before firing, that could give us away. Look, it’s nighttime. People sleep with windows open here just like at home. I say we open them here, then open a few in some other rooms. But we can’t ease them open. Just do it like we’re hajjis going to sleep,” Jeff said.

Doug seemed to consider that for a moment before saying, “Makes sense to me. But I don’t want someone in full battle gear opening them. In case anyone happens to be looking our way, it needs to look like a hajji. Chuckie, you’re about the size of the guy downstairs. Take off your gear and open them up.”

That made sense, but it put Chuckie at risk. We didn’t think we were under observation by an Iraqi sniper, but we didn’t know for sure. Anyone out there taking a shot while Chuckie played homeowner could have drastic consequences.

Chuckie didn’t hesitate, though. Off came his helmet, harness, and flak jacket. He took off his blouse and stood there in his T-shirt and trou.

“Damn, I feel naked,” he told us.

“Nice and easy. You’re just a tired raghead wanting to catch some z’s,” Doug said.

Chuckie slowly moved up to the first window. He stretched his arms as if yawning, then slid the first window open. I half-expected to hear the report of a shot, but the night remained silent. He walked over to the next one and opened that as well.

“OK, Bo, take the SAW and go with him to the next room,” Doug ordered. “Stay out of sight, though. Only Chuckie gets seen.”

Standing back, I scanned the nearby rooftops through the night vision device attached to my scope. I didn’t see anything, and a few moments later, the two came back. Chuckie quickly got back into his gear.

We spent the next several minutes plotting reference points and getting ranges. The target building was only 175 meters away, but if there was a problem, that problem could come from anywhere. We wanted to be prepared for anything. After that, it became a matter of waiting, something with which all snipers became very familiar.

With a specific mission, we all were on alert. Jeff and I took the east-facing window and spelled each other on our NVD’s, one looking through the device while the other looked with naked eyeballs, then switching over. Watching too long through the scopes was hard on the eyes. To make holding the M40 a little less strenuous, I carefully eased a chair over and turned it around so I could sit and rest my rifle on the back while scanning through the scope.

The house call was scheduled for 0315. A “house call” was the term we gave to patrols where the target was an individual we wanted to take into custody. We normally conducted them in the early morning hours when most people were in bed asleep. According to our op order, this particular target was high-value, and this was why the entire Lima Company was conducting the operation. There was a high degree of probability that this target would not give up easily, hence the heavy hitting. We were providing overwatch on the north side of the target, and Second Team was providing the same on the south.

Right at 0255, I saw a flicker of movement down on the road. It was the first elements of Lima Company, getting into position. This would be Second Platoon, and they would be spreading out, making a cordon that would trap the target if he tried to flee when Third Platoon assaulted the house itself.

I didn’t need to be spending time watching Marines. I needed to make sure no one was watching them. I scanned the various rooftops and window openings in my line of sight. I didn’t see anything.

“Over there, I’ve got movement,” Jeff whispered to me, pulling my rifle around and pointing it to the left of where I had been scanning. “Right there on the roof at your 10 o’clock, 200 meters out, in the laundry hanging out to dry.”

Jeff wasn’t looking through a night vision device. It had been his turn to be scanning with his naked eyes. In the darkness, that hindered what he could see, but he still had a much wider field of vision than I had looking through my scope.

I focused in on where he had indicated, and sure enough, in back of some shirts barely moving in the night breeze, I could see two men. One looked armed. I was surprised that Jeff had even picked them out. Even the slight movement of the laundry in the breeze served to mask any movement of the men. As I watched, one of them seemed to be waving someone else forward, someone I couldn’t see as of yet.

“Let the others know,” I told Jeff, listening to him scootch over while I kept watch. One of the men leaned out from behind the laundry to peer over the side of the rooftop, clearly exposing his AK-47 and clearly exposing his interest in the Marines on the street below him.

I glanced over at Doug. It looked like he had the Iraqis in his sights as well. Bo Wilson was on the radio, probably calling it in to Lima Company. I turned my attention back to the two Iraqis. We had previously ranged the corner of that building at 203 meters, and at the same height as us, taking them under fire would be pretty simple. The breeze was too light to have much effect, and the range was pretty short. I could have been back at Lejeune at the range, the darkness notwithstanding.

Three more men moved up to join the two men there. I felt a little jump when I recognized that two of them were carrying RPK light machine guns. The ante had just been upped. I looked over to Doug again, and he was signaling to me that he saw them, too.

Jeff came sidling back to me, keeping out of the line-of-sight of the windows. “Lima says to keep them under observation, but not to fire unless they are about to fire first. They don’t want anything to alert the target.”

That made sense, but it also posed a big threat to the Marines down below. They’d been warned now, but still, the Iraqis had the high ground. I continued to watch as the Iraqis met amidst the laundry, counting on the shirts and burqas to shield them from prying eyes. Unfortunately for them, with my PVS-14 NVD mounted on my Schmidt and Bender, they stood out as if in broad daylight.

They evidently came to a conclusion as the men broke into two teams, one at each corner of the building. They kept low so as not to be seen by the Marines below, but they moved with a sense of purpose.

“Psst!” Doug whispered to get my attention.

He pointed at himself, then to the north, waving his finger. He was telling me that he would take the gunman on the north side of the roof, giving me the gunman in the south side. He wanted us to coordinate the shot so both automatic gunmen would be taken out at the same time, neither able to take cover. Firing from different windows, both of us were at a bit of an oblique, but by spreading out, the insurgents had unwittingly given us a better shot.

My target had two of the other insurgents with him while Doug’s had one. If we took the gunmen out, I wasn’t sure what the others would do, but I had to be ready for anything. None of the Iraqis were showing much, using the lip around the roof as concealment. I kept my weapon trained on the top of my target’s head, so if he got up to engage the Lima Company Marines, I would have a center-mass shot.

Down the street in the direction of the target house, there was a muffled explosion, probably a breaching charge going off. Immediately, the Iraqis spun around, standing up while swinging their RPKs around.

“Send it,” shouted Doug, all attempts at stealth gone.

We hadn’t counted down, but both rounds went off almost simultaneously. I saw my target fall back, the RPK dropping to the rooftop. I chambered another round and fired again, targeting the insurgent who seemed to be in charge. As my round hit him flush in the face, I was vaguely aware of automatic fire reaching out for us. Whether Doug’s shout or muzzle flashes had given away our position, we were now under fire from not only someone on the RPK that had belonged to Doug’s target, but from somewhere else as well.

“Shit!” I heard from my left as I shifted my scope to Doug’s target.

I could see a body sprawled there. Doug had sent his round true. But the second insurgent there had picked up the RPK and was spraying our building. He was Rambo-ing it, standing with his weapon at waist level. Plaster and dust was falling all around me as I took the shot, hitting him in the chest. His machine gun fell from his grasp and tumbled over the edge of the roof, falling to the street below.

“Up there, at your 11 o’clock, 300 meters, up on the eighth or ninth floor, the middle window,” Jeff said from beside me, pointing out from where we were still taking fire.

I could see the muzzle flashes of something heavier than the RPK. I could not, however, see a body behind the weapon. Rounds hit the glass of the open window, sending shards shooting through the room. A piece of glass hit my cheek, but I put it out of my mind. I tried to acquire a target, but I couldn’t see a thing other than the muzzle flashes as the gunman poured rounds into the room. Well, someone had to be in back of those muzzle flashes. Jeff had said it was 300 meters to the new gunman. I took into account the increased range, which was still quite close, and the higher elevation. I didn’t bother adjusting my scope but raised my point of aim to a point above and behind the muzzle flashes, then fired. The machine gun fell silent.

I brought my weapon back down to the closer roof where our first gunmen had been. There had been one insurgent left there, but I couldn’t see any sign of him. He was either flat on the roof below the lip of the low wall or he had taken the opportunity to run when I was engaging the far gunman.

Down towards the target, a handful of shots rang out from inside the building, then they fell silent, too. Only then, did I look around the small bedroom that had been our hide. Jeff was half crouching beside me, barely above the floor level. Doug, Bo, and Chuckie were flat on the floor, and for a moment, I wondered if they had been hit.

“Holy Mother of God!” Bo said as he sat up. “Will you look at this place?”

Dust filled the air, and scattered over the floor were broken pieces of plaster and wood.

“Coming up!” a voice shouted from below, followed by the sound of feet pounding up the stairs. Two Marines rushed up, weapons at the ready.

“You guys OK?” the first one asked.

Doug called out as he stood up, “Anyone hurt?”

He walked over to the wall beside the window out of which I had shot. The side of the wall was peppered, and he put his hand right through what had been solid plaster, reaching outside the home.

“You’re one lucky dude, there, Noah,” he said.

I looked from the damage to the wall to where the rounds had impacted behind me. I hadn’t realized they had been so close. Some of those rounds had to have passed within inches of my head. Intellectually, I knew that should make me feel something more than the somewhat complacency that I did feel. The insurgent missed me, and whether by inches or by miles, it didn’t matter much end the end, did it?

“Lucky my ass,” Chuckie said. “Did you see my boy there? Cool as shit with all hell breaking loose. We’re scrambling around on our faces trying to take cover, shitting our trou, and Mr. Cool here just sits like he’s on the range at Lejeune, taking his shots without a care in the world. He’s got his Hog’s Tooth in his mouth while bam, bam, bam, he smoke checked them.”

I was a little confused. I just took my shots, like I was supposed to. I had the precision weapon, not the Iraqi out there just spraying rounds. I had the advantage. And I really didn’t know what he was saying about my Hog’s Tooth. I looked down, and it was hanging outside my blouse and flak jacket, so I tucked it back inside.

“Not Mr. Cool. He’s ‘The Iceman.’ Cpl Iceman, reporting for duty,” Jeff said as he reached over the help me to my feet.

Chapter 6

March 24, 2006

Hurricane Point

“Iceman, give me five!” Sgt Harris said, holding his hand up.

I dutifully gave the company admin chief a high five before getting back to my Nintendo DS. I was deep into Super Mario, trying to get to the next level before chow.

“So you smoked hit four of them, right?” he continued. “Everyone’s talking about it.”

I kept playing, his words buzzing around me. I could feel more than see his eyes on me.

“That’s ‘smoke checked,’ not ‘smoke hit,’” I heard Jeff tell him. “And yeah, Iceman got four hajjis who were lighting us and Lima up. Cpl Taggert got one, too, so that’s five in less than a minute. Five shot, five kills, ooh rah!”

I maneuvered Mario to the Mini Mushroom, jumping into a small pipe that his shrunken size now allowed him to enter. Bowser Jr. better watched out! I could hear Jeff regale Sgt Harris, but most of it didn’t register. I concentrated on the game. My Nintendo was my security blanket, I knew. Games of all sorts had been where I could escape the real world; escape the children’s home, escape school, escape lonely nights. I had upgraded to the Nintendo DS before deploying, and in my free hours I was usually either on the console or buried in a book.

I spotted the Mega Mushroom and grabbed it, expanding me, or Mario, that is, to his biggest size. I rushed over and kicked down the flag pole, completing another level. I wondered if I had enough time to go on before chow. Looking up, I saw that Sgt Harris was gone, and Jeff was lying on his rack, eyeing me.

“You know, you could have helped me,” he said.

I could tell he was put off, but I didn’t know about what.

“Help you what?”

“I’m trying to raise your street cred around here, giving you a cool-ass handle, bragging on you, but when someone comes, you sit there like a toad playing Super Mario Fairy,” he said, giving a snort and flopping back down on his rack.

“My ‘street cred?’ I didn’t know that needed raising,” I told him.

“Well, that’s probably because you don’t have a clue, there, Corporal. Most people think you’re on the weird side, to be blunt, and I think you know that. You just smoked checked four hajjis, though, and that’s pretty amazing. This is your chance to fit in better. Why do you think I gave you that nickname? It’s pretty wicked, right?”

“I was going to ask you about that. Why ‘Iceman?’ I mean, why anything at all?”

“Come on, you’ve got to be shitting me. You’ve never thought about a nickname? With your real last name and your lack of social graces, you could end up with something like ‘Candy Ass’ or some shit.”

Thinking back to Sgt Yara’s “Recruit Gollem” back at Paris Island, I could see he had a point. “Iceman” was pretty cool, or “wicked,” as Jeff described it. If I already had a name, that could serve to block any other, less savory nicknames from being given to me. It really didn’t matter much in the long run what others called me. I was me no matter what. But still, I felt a stirring of gratitude that Jeff was watching out for me. I nodded my acceptance.

“You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to say thanks.”

I tilted my head.

“You know, as in ‘Thanks there, PFC Stoelk, spotter extraordinaire, for covering my six and giving me such a awesome nickname.’”

I had to laugh. “Thank you, PFC Stoelk, spotter extraordinaire, for covering my six and giving me such an awesome nickname.”

I had a habit of trying to quietly correct his grammar, but as usual, my changing his “a awesome” to “an awesome” went unnoticed.

“That’s better, oh great sniper.” He looked at his watch. “You ready for some chow? I need to show you off in the DFAC while your currency is hot. Remember, you got to be cool, ‘cause as your spotter, I get some of your reflected glory, or reflected shit, for that matter, and I’m going to do my best to increase the glory and decrease the shit.”

Chapter 7

Ramadi

March 28, 2006

I scanned the river below us, looking for anything out of the ordinary. We hadn’t taken a shot on any of the last several missions, which was odd since insurgent activity was up after the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

“OK, give me your firing data for that burned-out car across the river by the four-story building,” I whispered to Jeff. “Call it 800 meters.”

“For the Barrett or the M40?” he asked.

“Make it the Barrett.”

We were in the ruins of a building that had taken some pretty serious damage, probably due to an air strike. We were up three stories in what had been a four or five-story building, concealed in the rubble and what we could rig up to keep us unobserved. Our mission was to provide overwatch for Lima Company. They were actually out on the river doing boat patrols. I knew we had Navy and Coasties in-country doing that too, so I wondered why they had Marines out doing the same thing. That seemed more like one of their missions.

Jeff and I were on the north side of the ruin with views to the High Water Bridge and OP Thunder some 900 meters upriver. Looking downriver, we could see down to Camp Ramadi, where the National Guard had their base. Doug, Bo, and Chuckie had responsibility for that area, though. They were on the other side of the blasted area, only 10 meters or so away, but with the way we were hidden in the rubble, we might as well have been in our two man teams the way we’d all been trained to deploy.

I entered my own data into my ballistic computer. I wanted to check my solution with Jeff’s. The two solutions wouldn’t be identical. We were both entering data as we determined them, but how we interpreted the wind, temperature, humidity—all of that mattered. Data in, data out. Even with the exact same firing solution, that wouldn’t mean a round would hit exactly the in the same place. All shooters were slightly different from our grip on the weapon to our cheek weld.

Jeff saw me enter the data and said, “So the great Iceman has to use a computer like the rest of us? I thought the firing solutions just appeared in your head.”

I glanced down at the Barrett beside me. The M82 SASR, or Special Application Scoped Rifle fired a huge .50 cal 12.7 x 99mm NATO round. It was technically an anti-material rifle, for use against vehicles and in EOD operations. Before I joined the Corps, I’d known about the rifle from the gaming community, and I thought it was illegal to use it against personnel. When we talked about that, the standing joke was that if you wanted to take out a person with it, don’t aim at the chest but at equipment, like a belt buckle. I was surprised to discover that that was a myth, though. It was a fully legal weapon against personnel, and with an effective range of 1,800 meters, it was one of the few rifles that could reach out that far. It was a new weapon, developed in 1982, reliable, and very accurate. I hated it.

With the M40, I was familiar with it, and I almost never had to use the ballistic computer. I could see the bullet trace in my head before firing. I was Luke Skywalker feeling the force. With the Barrett I could not get as good a feel for what I had to do. For the longer shots the .50 cal rifle could make, exterior ballistics such as spin drift, the Magnus Effect, the Poisson Effect, even both the Coriolis Effect and Coriolis Drift from the rotation of the earth itself under the flight of the round, all became more important than at shorter ranges where most of these effects could be ignored, and I was not as confident taking in all these other factors when determining my firing solution. I realized that this could be simply because I had not fired as many rounds with a Barrett, and the logical solution was to get more experience. But I liked things as routine as possible, as familiar as possible. I longed for my M40 with what I imagined was the withdrawal pangs of a drug addict.

At least the Schmidt and Bender Dayscope could be used on the Barrett, unlike the older Unertl. I was already a fan of the new scope and felt comfortable with it.

With the mission of overwatch on a river, it might be necessary to take out a boat of some sort, so the Barrett made sense. But Doug, thinking that it was more likely we would have a normal personnel target, and anxious to rack up another kill, took the M40, leaving me, the junior sniper, the Barrett.

“Eh, with you using that computer, I need to make sure I see just where you screwed up, so I have to use it, too,” I told him. “You being a boot and all.”

“Oh my gosh, my illustrious partner made a funny. A lame one, but still . . . .”

“Times a-wasting. The enemy’s getting away. What’s your solution?” I asked.

“Um, I’ve got 2 minutes left, 15 minutes up,” he said, looking at me hopefully.

“What did you enter as the humidity? Did you forget about the river?”

“Ah shit, yeah, that’s going to increase it, right? So the air’ll be less dense, decreasing drag. Let me fix that.” He worked for a moment. “14.5 up?”

That was close enough to what I got that I simply nodded. In a real situation, we’d adjust off of that. We spent the next hour going over different firing solutions, both for the Barrett and the 40. Jeff didn’t seem to tire of it, and it was good practice for him. We couldn’t ignore our mission, though, so we had to focus on our area of observation.

“Lima’s in the water,” a voice hissed from the left.

It sounded like it was Chuckie. I looked over, but I couldn’t see the boats. They would have taken off from Hurricane Point, and I wouldn’t be able to see them until they cleared the masking effect of the southern side of our hide.

“Head’s up,” I told Jeff. No more training for now.

I kept glancing to the left, watching for Lima to come into view. When the first boat moved into my line of sight, I wondered at the Marines down there. They seemed so exposed. I guess there wasn’t a threat of an IED out in the middle of the Euphrates, but anyone could take potshots at them.

Jeff nudged me. He tilted his head to indicate I needed to be watching the area, not our own Marines. A little chagrined, I started scanning. We Marines liked to say that we owned the night, but at least during the day, both of us could scan without having to have one of us on the NVD.

“Over there, at our 11 o’clock. A hajji and a donkey along the riverside,” Jeff said.

I swung my binos around. An old man ambled slowly in back of a very run-down looking donkey pulling an empty cart. He never glanced up at the boats in the river. A good actor wouldn’t look up, but I could see that there wasn’t anything in the cart.

“I think he’s OK. We can keep an eye on him, though,” I told my spotter.

I looked back north to see if there was any activity at OP Thunder, the small outpost on the west side of the river near the bridge. They had eyes on the bridge entrance from the west, but as we’d seen before, IEDs were often emplaced on the east side of the bridge with relative impunity.

Just past and below the big four-lane High Water Bridge was the smaller Low Water Bridge, an old one or one-and-a-half lane bridge just six feet or so above the waterline. Lima’s patrol was to scoot under that bridge, then head on up the river to the island that split the river. As the Marines on board would have to duck to get beneath the Low Water Bridge, this was a natural choke point.

There were fewer buildings to the north of the bridge, but that meant mujahideen could hide in the reeds or farm plots to jump up and fire an RPG. That would be Lima’s worry, though. Right after the bridge, the river curved away out of our sight.

I was looking beyond the bridges when movement caught my eye closer in. With the High Water Bridge up high and the Low Water Bridge down almost at water level, the two blocked the view beyond pretty effectively. But between them, on the east side of the river, I could see what looked to be a boat prow peeking out from the reeds.

“Jeff, look beyond the bridges, on the shore. I can’t quite make it out, but does that look like a boat there?”

He swung his spotter scope around, searching until he picked it up. After a moment, he said “Sure is, with one hajji looking downriver.”

I scooted over and looked through Jeff’s scope. With the higher power, I could more easily see the man’s head as he looked over the gunwale on the prow of the small boat, obviously watching downriver, the same place where Lima’s patrol was making its way up. The man didn’t have any binos, and the bridges would serve to block his view as well, but his interest in the river was troubling. I couldn’t make out an obvious weapon, but I did not have eyes inside the boat from here.

“What’s the range to him?” I asked Jeff.

He took out his range finder, made his reading, and said “I’ve got 907 meters.

I started to enter that into my computer when I stopped.

“No, that’s to the bridge itself. Try again.”

“I’ve got, well, still 910 now,” he said a moment later.

The two bridges were effectively blocking the range finder to the man. Each time Jeff tried to shoot the distance, his laser would range the bridge instead. He tried a few more times, getting 906, 1345, 1570, and 909 meters. This wasn’t going to work. I didn’t even have a real military map. I pulled out a printout of an old satellite image, trying to pinpoint where the boat was on the map. The best guestimate I could make was that he was 1,450 meters away. I punched in my data the best I could, got my firing solution and put it on my scope as Jeff got back on the spotting scope. The man in the boat could just be curious, but I had to be ready.

As the first Lima boat approached the bridge, it slowed down. The Marines would be ducking to get under it, and they had no security on the other side yet. OP Thunder was on the west side of the bridges, but the bridges themselves would block their view until Lima was able to move on.

As soon as the first boat started to maneuver to get under the bridge, our Iraqi friend jumped up and gunned his boat forward.

“Holy shit, he’s loaded for bear!” Jeff shouted, heedless of the need for secrecy. “I can see a ton of explosives. You’ve got to take him out, Noah!”

“Report it in,” I shouted, and then “On scope” as I brought my weapon to bear.

As part of a five-man team, we didn’t have a radio with the two of us. I heard Jeff shout out to Doug as I acquired the man, now pulling downriver at full throttle. That meant my range was diminishing, but to what, I didn’t know. I was just about to call out “On target” when the insurgent swerved, bringing him in back of the curve of the upper bridge. I could not take him under fire. I knew, though, that in a moment, he would swing back into view, essentially between the two bridges from our perspective. I would have a very narrow window between the two bridges, a problem further exacerbated by our higher elevation in the hide. I would have to thread the shot between the two bridges, and I would have only seconds before he was behind the Low Water Bridge with a clear route to the first Lima boat.

I had no idea as to what the range would be when he came back into view. I had to trust my gut. If this was my 40, I would feel better about that, but this was the Barrett. I took a deep breath, chanting out in my mind the sniper Five-S mantra. “Slow, smooth, straight, steady, squeeze, slow, smooth, straight, steady, squeeze.”

“Send it!” Jeff shouted as the boat nosed into view.

It was only the prow at first, and a shot there, even with the big .50 cal round, wouldn’t do much good. I had to take out the insurgent or the motor behind him.

“Send it!” Jeff shouted again.

I waited a moment longer, and between the two bridges I caught sight of the man. But I didn’t fire. The .50 cal round did not follow line of sight. If I fired, something told me that the trajectory would hit the bridge. I waited even with my brain screaming to fire. My finger tensed on the trigger.

“What are you doing? You’ve got to send it!”

Just then, it was like a green light came on. I squeezed the trigger and felt the big rifle’s recoil. I came right back on target, ready to fire again, but I could clearly see not only the bullet trace, but this time, also the white puff of condensation as the round went through the humid air, something I’d heard about, but never witnessed. The round arched up over the river, then plunged in a graceful loop back down, just missing the span of the High Water Bridge as it passed between them. I lost the bullet trace and vapor trail as the round went between the two bridges, but a split second later, just before the boat disappeared behind the Low Water Bridge, the insurgent’s chest exploded as he was bodily knocked over the engine and out of the boat.

The boat continued for another second, dropping out of our sight, before a ball of fire and smoke reached up into the air. A moment or two after that, the subdued roar of an explosion reached our ears. The insurgent’s dead man switch had done its job and detonated the explosives.

“Oh my God, did you see that? That was fucking wicked! I can’t believe that shot!” Jeff said.

I looked thorough my scope for the Lima Company boat, hoping that the suicide boat hadn’t been too close when it blew. But the same combination of the two bridges and the elevation of our hide that made the shot so hard made it so I had to engage while that boat was still a good 50 meters away from the bridge. The first boat edged into view, Marines scanning the water. The boat swerved a bit, and I could see them reach into the water and bring pull up a body. My kill.

“Nice shot there, Noah,” Doug said from behind me. I hadn’t noticed him coming up.

“Nice shot? That was a great shot!” Jeff said excitedly.

“OK, great shot. But we’re still on duty and won’t leave until 2100, so let’s get tactical again.” He turned and crawled back to the other side of the room.

“Ah, he’s just jealous he didn’t get the shot. But all due respect, he could never have made that one. That shot, well, that’s one for the history books,” Jeff said, full of conviction.

He reached over to me and grabbed my Hog’s Tooth from my chest, sliding it back under my battle gear. “You gotta keep that thing safe,” he said.

I wondered how that had slipped out again as I pulled my log out to record the details of the shot.

Chapter 8

Hurricane Point

March 29, 2006

“Change of plans. Follow me,” Jeff said, brushing past me.

I steadied my tray and looked to where the some of the others in the platoon were already sitting. Jeff made a hard left turn away from them. I didn’t know what he had in mind, but I dutifully followed in trace. It took only a few moments before I knew his target.

Two WM corporals were sitting across from each other over their lunch, laughing at what a sergeant was telling them. Between the sergeant and the WM’s there were a few empty spaces, and Jeff beelined right to one, sitting down between the male and female Marines, much to the obvious disgust of the sergeant.

“Here’s a seat, Iceman,” he said, a little too nonchalantly, pointing to the empty seat across from him.

I hesitated, then took the place he indicated. I ignored the Marine next to me, looking at Jeff and wondering what was going on. I’ve never felt comfortable with women, and female Marines even less so. I knew I had to treat them as any other Marines, but I was always aware of their sex, and that got me nervous.

“I talked to the major about that shot on the river yesterday. He says it was about the best shot anyone’s made here,” he went on, ignoring the two women.

I knew for a fact that he hadn’t spoken to any major. This was all BS. He had told me before that he wanted to hitch a ride on my “cred,” so I guessed this was one of those times.

“Hey, that was you? At the bridge?” the sergeant said, his annoyance at having his conversation with the two WMs interrupted forgotten.

I almost laughed. Jeff had dangled the bait, but the wrong fish had taken it. He manned up, though.

“Yeah, sergeant. That was the Iceman here. The shot was just about impossible ‘cause he had to thread it between the bridges, and the range was . . .” he went on, embellishing what was really a straight forward shot.

But I let him go on. I took a bite of my pork cutlet, trying to remain inconspicuous. I did take a quick glance at the WM sitting beside Jeff. It was hard to tell with her sitting, but she looked tall and slender, her light brown hair framing her face. She was listening to Jeff as he wove his exaggerated tale of derring-do.

There were some pretty strict rules on fraternization while we were in Iraq. Men and women worked together, but romance was a no-no. Besides, whether Jeff’s target of opportunity was the tall WM beside him or the one next to me, the woman I hadn’t even really looked at yet, they were both corporals, and he was a PFC. Jeff and my casual relationship was one thing. We were a team. But even with the no fraternization between the sexes in Iraq, fraternization between NCOs and troops was verboten anywhere.

“Damn, that’s outstanding, Marine,” the sergeant said, standing up and bending over the table to shake my hand as Jeff finished his spiel. “Sergeant Dale Knockworth, Corporal, and it’s my honor.”

I half stood until I could reach his hand and shake it.

“I’ve always shot expert, you know, and I’ve thought about being a sniper. But my commanders, you know, they never let me. Said I was too valuable in supply. But I bet I could do it, you know. I mean, shoot like that. If you ever need someone to augment you when you go out, you can always call on me.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I looked up, and Jeff had looked to the corporal sitting beside him, catching her eye and shrugging. She raised her eyes and gave a quick laugh. I couldn’t believe it. Somehow, he had made the connection, and even when the sergeant jumped in, he was using the sergeant’s over-eagerness to forge a bond with her. Dr. Grant would have been fascinated.

I let the sergeant ramble on, giving half grunts to show I was listening and answering his questions about our equipment, Scout Sniper School, and basic doctrine. This went on for about five minutes until he stood up.

“I’ve got to get back, but it’s been great talking to you. Remember, if you ever need anything, you know where to find me. And if you can, you know, get me on even one mission, that’d be great.”

He shook my hand once more, picked up his tray, and left. As he got out of earshot, I heard Jeff whisper “Wannabe” to the corporal, who laughed with him.

“So, Iceman, you ready to sign up Sergeant Gung Ho for our next mission?” he asked me, but for the benefit of his new friend.

“Yeah, right. Next mission,” I replied.

“Hey, now that your fan has gone, let me introduce you. This is Jewell Mitchell,” he told me, indicating the woman next to him. “And sitting next to you, that’s Arlene Kim.”

I noticed that he called them by their names, not their rank, but neither seemed to take offense to that. Jewell looked over at me and gave me a short “Hi” before turning back to Jeff. I was caught by her eyes before she looked away. They were an intense golden green, a color I don’t think I’d seen before. I turned to acknowledge the corporal next to me. Even if I was sitting beside her, this was my first look. She was shorter than her friend, an Asian-American. Even with her cammies on, I could tell she had significant curves. She gave me a cursory nod before turning her attention back to Jeff. And so it went. While I quietly finished my lunch, Jeff held court. Most of what he said had a basis of truth, but nothing was quite like he described it. What amazed me was that he seemed to diminish his own abilities. I thought that men were supposed to strut and preen like stags in rut. Here he was cracking jokes about how scared he was at the gunfight over Route Michigan, or how he got run over by some fullback over and over again in some high school football game. But even I could tell the two women were eating it up.

This went on for quite awhile, and finally, I had to point at my watch. We had a meeting to get to, and I didn’t want to be late.

“Ah, my boss is keeping me on the straight and narrow, and duty calls. It’s been my pleasure meeting you ladies,” he said, standing up and acting as if he was removing his hat in a flourish.

“Our pleasure,” the taller woman, Jewell, said. “Keep safe out there.”

The fact that she said that to him and not to me was not lost on me. I stood up and followed Jeff to drop off our trays.

“That went well,” he said to me as we got out of earshot.

“They’re NCOs, Jeff. And you’re a PFC. What’re you doing? You know the regs.”

“Oh, don’t get your panties in a twist. We were just talking. Nothing in the regs against that. Besides, you’re a corporal, so nothing wrong there.”

I hoped that was all it was as I followed him out of the DFAC.

Chapter 9

The Government House, Ramadi

April 12, 2006

“You look pretty gung ho, there Corporal. At least I think you do, ‘cause with that ghillie suit, I’m not sure I can see you up here.”

“I guess you think you’re being funny there, PFC? Seems to me that you should be in one, too. The lieutenant said he wanted us to put them on to see if they break up our outline when we’re out in the open like this. I think you are part of ‘us’.”

“Not to be a sea lawyer, but he said he wanted his snipers to test it out, and I’m just a lowly spotter,” Jeff said with a chuckle.

Jeff and I were on the roof of the Government House. This was one place where we reverted to the doctrinal two-man teams. The reason for this was that we had an entire grunt platoon with us on the roof, so security was not much of an issue. Doug, Bo, and Chuckie weren’t even here. They were back at Hurricane Point.

I looked down at the ghillie suit. It did look rather silly there, especially as I only had it on from my waist down. We’d trained quite heavily with them at Scout Sniper School, but in Iraq, I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone wear one. But the lieutenant, in his position as the Scout Sniper Platoon Commander, thought it might make us stand out less when on the open roof of the Government House. Personally, I thought he was just grasping at asserting his leadership and taking it right out of the training manual from the Scout Sniper Platoon Commanders Course at Quantico. The ground truth in Iraq was different from what they taught the new intel officers in that three-week course, but except for making me a little hotter, it was harmless enough. I’d heard a couple of comments about it from the India Marines on the roof with me, but water off a duck’s back, as they say.

The Government House was one of the Marines’ main responsibilities. Not much governing went on there anymore—a good portion of the council and staff had been killed by Al Qaeda. But the governor came in each day, and all the coalition bigwigs made it a point to visit him there as a show of support. There was always a rifle unit there to provide security outside the building with Triple Canopy, the contractor security company unit made up of ex-SEALS, Rangers, recon, and the like providing personal security inside. If our operational tempo allowed it, we would have one of our teams there as well.

I went back to glassing the area, focusing on the destroyed buildings next to Battleship Gray, the name given to one of the abandoned buildings a couple hundred meters out from us. Things were quiet now, but we’d all been briefed on the attack two years ago that had killed 12 Marines. That had started with Al Qaeda infiltrating up closer before launching their attack, so as a Scout Sniper, it was my job to observe for things like that. Jeff might have been busting my chops, but he was glassing the area as well.

There was a VIP coming in, the Director of USAID in Iraq. That was probably why we got the mission. I would be glad when it was over: I’m not a big stickler on good food and conditions, and Hurricane Point was no paradise. The Government House, however, made Hurricane Point seem like a Caribbean resort. Food really sucked, and we had to shit in plastic bags that were later burned, wafting lovely aromas up to us here on the roof. Jeff and I would only be here until dark, at least, before we would return to camp.

When we arrived just before dawn, the rifle platoon commander, 2ndLt Hobbs, gave us a thorough briefing on what he expected. He was a newbie, known as a pretty earnest guy and the only African American lieutenant in the battalion, but he wasn’t a sniper. We just listened to him and nodded, but we knew our job and would conduct it accordingly

It was already pretty hot despite it still being morning. I was getting thirsty when the corpsman making his rounds came up and gave Jeff and me a bottle of water. It wasn’t cold, but it felt good as I swallowed.

“You could have thanked him, you know,” Jeff said.

I must have looked puzzled because he added, “That corpsman just gave you a bottle of water. You could have thanked him.”

I drained the bottle and looked at it, then back at the corpsman. He’d just been doing his job, right? Nothing too amazing. I shrugged.

“Shit, Noah, sometimes I think you have the social graces of a pig.”

I knew he was right, but social niceties didn’t always register with me. I’d rather just do my job and keep to myself.

We scanned the area in silence until word came that the VIP was inbound. Both Jeff and I shifted to cover her route in. Most of the danger on Route Michigan came from IEDs, but with as with any VIP, Al Qaeda might think the prize was worth a concerted attack.

“There they are,” Sgt Butler, the rifle squad leader said.

I swung my scope around and acquired the first vehicle approaching. Immediately I swung back up, scanning the surrounding buildings.

“What the fuck?” one of the other Marines said.

I looked below to see that while a couple of Humvees had already entered the compound, one had continued on and was going past the government center gate. Sgt Butler started issuing orders while I grabbed Jeff and we ran to the other side of the roof where we could give cover if the vehicle kept going. It stopped, though, and after a long pause, started backing up. I could see it reach the gate and pull in.

A crashing sound grabbed my attention. I looked below us in the compound where another Humvee was missing a door. The wayward Humvee had pretty obviously taken it off. A tall Marine got out of the doorless Humvee, and I recognized him as one of the MEF’s one star generals. He didn’t look happy, to say the least. Someone was going to catch some deep kimchi. The general reached the offending Humvee and opened the door, and a short woman got out, looking like Charlie Brown in winter with all the body armor she had on. Her laugh reached us up here on the roof. She didn’t seem to be upset, so the general didn’t kill the Humvee’s driver right then, but I was sure the driver would not get off scot-free. The VIPs walked over to the entrance to the Government House, but not before the general stared fire back at the driver.

“No way! He got out already!”

I looked over at Sgt Butler as he pointed below. Sgt Butler was pretty well-known in the battalion. This was his third tour and the consensus was that he’d be a sergeant major someday. He was one of the handful of Marines who all of us in the scout sniper platoon respected.

“Mays, you’ve got it!” he said, then turned to the lieutenant and added, “Sir, that’s one of my buddies from 3/4. I’m going to go down and say hello for a bit. I’m leaving Cpl Mays in charge.”

He rushed to the ladderwell and disappeared down below, not reappearing for another 15 minutes with a big corporal. He introduced him to some of his squad, and I overheard that they’d served together during the initial invasion.

I ignored the reunion and kept watching. I caught a quick flash of movement and zeroed in on what I’d seen. A head popped up from behind some rubble, then disappeared.

“Seven hundred meters, two minutes to the left of the north side of the Swiss Cheese, behind the rubble at ground level,” I whispered to Jeff.

I could feel him swing around as I slowly positioned my finger on the trigger, not in preparation to fire, but more to be ready if this was a threat. I saw another tiny flash of a head, gone before I could identify it.

“I’ve got it. Looks like a turkey-peeker,” he said, using the term we gave to insurgents who bobbed up and down to observe us, too afraid to remain exposed long.

Unless he had a weapon and was ready to fire, we’d have to get the Lieutenant Hobbs’ permission to fire. He’d actually call back to the TOC just as we would do if we were on our own, but as the rooftop was his responsibility, it was up to him to either get permission or make the call himself.

Just then, the head appeared again, followed by the boy’s body as he climbed to the top of the rubble, stick in hand. He swung it at something unseen below him, his laughing clearly visible through the scope. He couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old. With all the fighting, it was easy to forget that Ramadi was still home to people, to families, to small boys who just wanted to play.

“Yep, I can tell he’s a Al Qaeda top lieutenant” Jeff said.

I just started to relax when I heard the big India gunny, Tora, say, “Lieutenant, we’ve got another looker,”

“Where at? Show me,” he said.

I spun around, trying to see for myself, but I was on the wrong side of the roof. I kept glancing at them behind me, though, trying to see their reactions.

The lieutenant watched for a few moments before ordering, “OK, get Cpl Lindt.”

That was our cue. I got up and went to him.

“We’ve got a looker over there, right on the roof of that building, about 90 mils to the left of the minaret,” he said, holding three fingers up at arm’s length “I want you to put a round beside him. Don’t hit him, but let him know we’d rather not have him there.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” I told him, motioning for Jeff to join me.

Because of the lip of the wall, I couldn’t get prone, so I squatted, using the wall as a support. It took only a moment to acquire the target. He was calmly sitting on the roof of a building we’d previously ranged at 870 meters. He was partially in back of a small wall, the wall that mostly likely housed the stairwell from below, but most of his body was exposed.

“I’ve got 876 meters,” Jeff said.

Since we were simply supposed to put the fear of Allah into him, we had time to determine the conditions. One problem with the longer shots in a city like Ramadi was that air currents varied. Wind could come in the stucco canyons, and heat radiated up differently in different places. We had to observe the air and guess from the heat waves how the bullet would be affected during its entire flight.

I knew what I wanted to do, but keeping with my promise to teach him, I asked Jeff what he’d do.

“Well, close up, I think we’ve got a five knot crosswind right to left, but right before the target, I think it might be a knot or two left to right. Over the roof tops at 500 to the target, I can see the updrafts, but I think they’ll have minimal impact.” He punched his numbers into his computer. “Say, three minutes left, 32.5 up?” he asked.

That was pretty close to what I’d calculated in my head. I started to tell him what I would do differently, but then I simply nodded and put on his dope. I would Kentucky windage the slight correction I wanted from what he told me, that is, offset my aiming point to hit the target, not change my dope.

The target had been glassing us the entire time. He had to have seen us—I was under no illusion that my half-ghillie suit had any effect on our visibility. He hadn’t moved though, so I acquired the spot just to his left in my sights.

“On target,” I said quietly.

“Send it,” Jeff said with more force.

I slowly squeezed the trigger and felt the comforting recoil against my shoulder. I saw the round hit six or seven inches from the target’s head. The man disappeared. I felt Jeff’s hand clap my shoulder. Actually, I had been aiming closer to a foot from his head, and Jeff’s dope would have put me closer to that.

“Get some,” someone said as I sat up, mission accomplished,

But it wasn’t accomplished. To everyone’s surprise, the man made a re-appearance, right where he was before.

“Well, Cpl Lindt, I guess your message didn’t get through. Give him another, this time closer,” the lieutenant ordered.

I wondered if this guy was full of bravado or just plain stupid. I shrugged and got back into position. This time, I made less of a correction, shooting Jeff’s dope. I sent the round downrange and it exploded on the stucco inches from the Iraqi’s head, sending dust flying. If I’d used my own dope on that, he’d have been dead with a head shot.

“That one’s gotta hurt,” the gunny said as the man disappeared from sight.

That one had to have gotten the message across. But it didn’t.

“He’s got a radio!” several Marines shouted out as the man came back out, his only concession to my shots being keeping more of his body in back of the low wall.

“Cpl Lindt, take him out now!” shouted the lieutenant.

We didn’t know to whom he was talking, but it couldn’t be good. At this point, there was no TOC clearance. We had to take action. I settled back into position, acquired my target, and pulled the trigger. A second-and-a-half later, the big 173-grain round smashed through the bridge of his nose and into his brain, killing him instantly. He fell bonelessly to the rooftop, the blood pouring from his head and out onto the stucco a vibrant red through my scope.

“Good job, Corporal,” the lieutenant said.

Jeff reached over and pulled something out of my mouth. I was surprised to see it was my Hog’s Tooth. He gave me a knowing smile.

“We’re going to count you as eight shots, eight kills. Those first two don’t count none ‘cause the lieutenant said not to kill the hajji with those,” he said.

I wouldn’t have thought that statistics like that mattered to me, so I was surprised to feel a bit of relief when Jeff said that. I tucked the Hog’s Tooth back inside my blouse and went to get two bottles of water, one for Jeff and one for me. I sat down, took out a Three Musketeers bar, and started to munch on it while I entered the kill data in my log.

Chapter 10

Route Michigan

April 13, 2006

“So you never realized you were sucking on your Hog’s Tooth for every shot?” Jeff asked.

“No, not until you pointed it out.”

“So why d’ya do it?”

I had thought about it over night. When I was younger I had suffered from a few tics. They were nothing serious, but they were embarrassing, something my younger self tried to avoid. So I learned to substitute other actions for the tics. At first, the substitutions were almost as bad as the tics. I would snap my fingers instead of kicking out with my feet. As time went on, I was able to move to less obvious substitutes. I think that with the Hog’s Tooth, I was taking preemptive action. I didn’t want any tic to reappear as I was taking a shot. Putting the Hog’s Tooth in my mouth was my subconscious trying to prevent that. That was more than I wanted to share with Jeff, though.

“Just good luck, you know. Like knocking on wood.”

“Well, it must work. You’re at eight shots, eight kills.”

“When you finally become a HOG, you can get your own tooth and see if it works for you,” I told him.

There is a saying among snipers that on any battlefield, there is a bullet with your name on it. After becoming a HOG, a “Hunter of Gunmen,” each new sniper is presented with a 7.62 round, mounted on a piece of 550 cord to be worn around the neck. If every sniper had a bullet with his name on it, and if we kept that bullet with us, then we would be invincible on the battlefield. I don’t think anyone actually believed it, but I never knew a HOG who went out without wearing his Hog’s Tooth. As a PIG, a “Professionally Instructed Gunman,” Jeff didn’t rate a Hog’s Tooth, and he couldn’t become a HOG until graduating from Scout Sniper School.

We fell into silence and we scanned the area. We were over Route Michigan observing the area. Doug and Bo were about five meters away at another opening while Chuckie caught some z’s in back of us. We were not on a kill mission, but we needed to be ready for anything.

“I hope, when it’s my turn I do as well,” he said, somewhat wistfully.

“You’ll do fine. You’re a good shot.”

“I’m good on the range, yeah, but you know, I’ve never killed anyone. I hope I don’t freeze.”

“I’m sure you won’t,” I said absently, still scanning the area.

“I mean really, what do you feel? Do you think of it?”

I hadn’t realized he was actually worried about this. I thought it had just been idle talk. I looked at him, and he was expecting an answer, one I assumed that would put him at ease. This struck me as odd. This was Jeffrey Linn Stoelk. Star athlete, good looking, a hit with all the girls. He was the kind of guy who had everything. Yet he was looking to me, the invisible guy, for advice.

I really didn’t think of it, of those I’d killed. There were no ghosts coming to me in the night. I did my job, and that saved the lives of my fellow Marines. That made it all right. I started to say that, but then thought better of it.

“Of course I thought of it,” I lied. “But when the time comes, training kicks in.” That part was true, at least.

“I’ve watched you. You’ll be fine,” I told him.

He grunted, but I think he took what I said to heart. We fell back into silence.

About five minutes later, his posture changed. He tensed up.

“I think I see something,” he told me. “On the road, right beside that broken blue piece of paper by the old restaurant. See?”

I swung my scope over and looked, but I couldn’t see anything.

“What is it?”

“About two feet, maybe three to the right of that paper, I think I see a wire coming out of the ground and into the restaurant.”

I looked again, but couldn’t see anything.

“Look through my scope.”

I edged over and took a look. His spotter scope was much better than my Schmidt and Bender, but still, I wasn’t sure I saw what he was seeing.

“Hey Doug,” I called out. “Can you come over here?

“Jeff, tell him what you told me.”

After Doug and Bo took a look, we all decided we’d better call it in. There was a convoy due through in another twenty minutes, and if it was an IED, we needed to stop that convoy. TOC did not sound happy. The brigade commander was supposed to go see the governor, and with us not being 100% sure, they weren’t overjoyed to tell the colonel he had to wait. But prudence ruled. As the sign said back at camp, “Complacency Kills.”

About 45 minutes later, one of the National Guard’s big EOD vehicles came up escorted by two Bradleys. The EOD team employed a robot, one that looked like WALL-E. It trundled up, placed some C4, then trundled back to the vehicle. The charge didn’t look very big, but I guess they didn’t want to bring down the entire neighborhood.

We waited, out of the loop as to the countdown. Even if we were expecting it, I think all of us jumped when the explosion sounded. There was an immediate secondary explosion, much larger than the initial one. Some people say they can hear both explosions individually, but I couldn’t. The white smoke and size of the combined explosion, though, told the story. There had been an IED there, probably in the 40 pound range. That was big enough to take out a Bradley. Or a brigade commander going to the government center.

“Good fucking job there, Jeff,” Doug said, slapping him on the back. “Good eyes.”

Jeff might be worried about taking a shot, but he was a fantastic Marine, a better Marine than I was. His simple observation probably saved lives today.

Chapter 11

North of Ramadi

April 19, 2006

“Shouldn’t this be something for the SEALs?” Sgt Piccalo asked. “I mean, this is what they do, right?”

“Maybe so, but the Brigade Commander’s given this to us. We need to cover all approaches, and between the National Guard snipers and us, it’s going to take all of us,” the lieutenant had replied.

Fourteen hours later, we were out in the desert, the five of us in a hollow we scraped out of the sand, our eyes on a broken-down hut some 400 meters away. We had the entire platoon on this mission, the first time I had ever deployed that way. We had come out by a convoy, the trucks barely slowing down as we hopped out and humped to our hide. As the trucks continued off into the night, I felt alone despite the other Marines with me.

First Team had debarked with us, but immediately split off and humped to the far side of the same building that was our target. They had reported in as 550 meters to the north of it. I had tried to pick them out with my scope as daylight crept over the desert, but I couldn’t see a thing. As it should have been.

SSgt Rawhiu was with Second Team as they watched over yet another non-descript hut about 700 meters to the east. I think Sergeant Piccalo was peeved about that. As our team only had a corporal team leader, he probably felt that the chief sniper should have been with us. But I guess with Second alone on their target, Rawhide felt he should be with them.

On this mission, we were working with the National Guard snipers. They had most of their platoon just to the west of us at a cluster of four buildings. I hadn’t seen them, but I knew they were there.

The Guard was stationed at Camp Ramadi, across the river from us. I had seen their tanks and Bradleys, and I’d watched their Apaches patrol the skies over Ramadi, ready to let loose their deadly rain of fire. Our overall commander was a National Guard colonel, although he reported to our Marine CG at Fallujah. I’d never even spoken to one of the Guard snipers. I would like to sometime, though. Their M24 Sniper Weapons System was based on the same rifle as our M40A3s, but I would be curious to see what the differences in the two weapons are.

All these sniper assets in one place was a unique situation, but then again, our target was unique. Intel was sure that a high-ranking Al Qaeda commander was in Iraq, and that a meeting was planned for tonight. The actual meeting place was unknown, but it had been narrowed down to these two small valleys. This area was remote, and there were only a handful of buildings, so the powers-that-be figured we had enough sniper assets to cover each possible meeting place. There was also a drone hovering out of sight over us and Navy F18’s on station only a couple of minutes away.

The problem with the drones and the fighters was that both would come with collateral damage, something MNF-Iraq wanted to avoid. If we could not take out the commander, they would be used, but the choice was a nice surgical sniper shot if possible.

I looked at the other four Marines. None of us were asleep. I think we were too keyed up. Whether that was because of the importance of the target or the fact that we were so exposed without support, I wasn’t sure.

I thought back to Gunny Hathcock, the famed Vietnam sniper who SSgt Yara had compared me to back on the range at Paris Island. There was no comparison. While this mission was similar to the White Feather’s most famous mission in that a high-ranking commander was the target, I was here with four other Marines, waiting to take a possible shot from a hide. Gunny Hathcock was alone, and he had to crawl inch by inch for 1500 meters over four days to get his shot to take out the North Vietnamese general.

The sun was beating down on us. I took a sip from my CamelBak. We’d be here until our withdrawal early the next morning, so I had to ration my water. What we had with us was it. There would be no resupply.

Our hide spot had looked pretty good when we had come up in the dark. Now, it looked very exposed to me. We were 3/4 of the way up a slope where it had flattened out a bit. We were probably about 50 feet higher than our target, so as long as we maintained good discipline, we were probably OK from below. But anyone wandering by from above us could walk right into us. There was no use fretting about it now, though. We couldn’t move. If we were seen, the commander would be waved off from wherever he was.

We’d carefully scrapped out a hole, making sure that none of the sand was deposited on the leading edge of it. Now, we had our ponchos spread out over us, and that did nothing to combat the heat. I felt like I was in an oven.

Below us, about 150 meters away, a small boy led, or was led, it looked like, by 10 of the scrawniest goats I think I’d ever seen. He’d take a few steps, stop, poke at a goat with his stick, take a few more steps, bend down to look at something on the ground, take a few more steps . . . . He was just a kid, maybe 8 years old or so, doing his job, but if the goats led him up the slope to us, we’d be compromised. I know all of us were thinking about what we’d do if that happened. There were some pretty heavy prayers being sent that he’d just keep on walking by below us.

Evidently, it was getting too hot even for him. There was an outcropping of rock about 250 meters to our ten o’clock that provided a small patch of shade. The goats were obviously familiar with it as they started to show a more determined pace as they came closer. They beat the boy to the shade as they flopped down. The boy had to push some of them aside before he could sit in the shade as well. Within moments, he had lain down, and all we could see of him was his feet sticking out in the sun. The goats couldn’t have smelled too good, but at the moment, I envied him for being in the shade.

As the sun moved in the sky, the patch of shade shifted. It was almost funny to watch the goats and boy slowly fight for position in the shade. Neither goats nor shepherd seemed to completely wake up, but they continually pushed and shoved each other to keep from being out in the sunlight.

The target was not expected until evening, but still, we kept watch. If the hut was the meeting spot, then some of the men down there already would be Al Qaeda.

“Right there, on the east side. He’s got an AKM,” Chuckie whispered.

He had the more powerful scope, but even with my scope, I could see he was right. A man was sitting up against the wall in the shade, and in on the ground beside him was a weapon, and if Chuckie said it was an AKM, it probably was. At the distance and placement of it on the ground, I don’t think I could have told an AKM from an AK47. The fact that he was armed, though, was significant. Not every Iraqi who was armed was an insurgent. Some Iraqis were armed just for personal protection. But this raised the alert factor.

“Call it in, Chuckie,” Doug ordered.

The rest of the day dragged on. The sun continued to beat down on us, but there was nothing to do but grin and bear it. My bladder started screaming for attention, so I slowly rolled over on my side and let loose into the sand. This was pretty normal, and no one batted an eye.

We had already shot the distance to the hut, but as the day changed, so did conditions. Doug pulled out his computer every hour or so to change the data and put the new dope on his weapon. I followed suit, but without the computer.

Most of our missions didn’t entail firing. The reconnaissance part of our mission took up more of our time: observing the battle area for intel useful for the commander. And chances were that the target wouldn’t show up here either because of bad intel, a change in plans, or the he would go to another position. We had one armed man, but that didn’t necessarily mean much out here. If battalion thought that significant, they could send a grunt patrol out to investigate.

Finally, the sun started down, and the temperature eased off. This was the magic time in Iraq when it was almost comfortable. It could get cold in the night, but for now, I felt almost human. The locals down in the valley obviously felt better, too. They started stirring. Aside from the one man, the people were all women and children. Several women, in their burqas, wandered over to gather and gossip.

From our left, two women appeared, driving a small herd of goats. Our own small goat herder had long since left and gone back to the hut. With the new group of maybe 20 goats, that was a lot of goats for one home.

“Something’s not right,” Jeff said as we watched the women approach the others.

“What do you mean?” asked Doug.

“Look at the two with the goats. Look at how they walk. They’re not women.”

I looked at them. They were about 300 meters away, but they looked like women to me. Well, they were dressed like women, at least.

“I don’t know,” said Doug. “How can you tell?”

“They’re swaggering like they own the place. They’re leading with their shoulders and swinging their arms. No hip movement. And see how they keep looking around? These are not raghead wives coming over for tea,” he asserted.

“Man, I don’t know,” he said again. He looked at me. “What’d you think, Noah?”

I sure didn’t know. I wasn’t the world’s expert on women. I just shrugged.

“OK, call it in, Chuckie, but only say they are suspicious.”

I heard Chuckie on the radio. He came back to us with “They want a picture.”

“A picture? What the hell they going to do with that? They’re all covered up,” Doug complained. “But OK. Bo, take the shot.”

Each team carried a Canon 10D digital camera, and we could send the photos we take over the radio. Normally, we used that for buildings, bridges, and other landmarks, but any photo we could take could be sent.

Bo carefully took out the camera, focused, and took the shot of the two “women,” now about 350 meters away. I kept watching them through my scope, but I couldn’t tell if they were really men.

Bo sent the photo, but from experience, we wouldn’t hear anything back for a long time. I wasn’t sure they could tell anything anyway from a simple snapshot.

The women reached the others, and the lone man jumped up and came to talk to them. It might have been my imagination, but the man seemed to defer to the women. Was Jeff right?

We watched them, waiting for the TOC as the three people talked. The man pointed back to the road which passed some 400 meters to the east of them, gesturing back and forth. The conversation seemed to end as one woman walked into the hut. The other one went over to the side of it.

“Bingo!” Jeff stated, but we all saw it.

The “woman” reached under her burqa, hiked it up in front of her, and leaned back in the unmistakable posture of someone taking a piss. This was undoubtedly a man. Bo snapped a photo and radioed it back, but there was no doubt. The question was just who this man was, and was our target one of the two “women?”

The man finished his stuff, then dropped his burqa and went inside. Within moments, several women came out along with four or five kids. Another man came to stand just inside the doorway, but clearly visible through our scopes. He had a beard, so he was not our target, but his posture screamed bodyguard.

“Batman says get a positive ID,” Chuckie relayed, using the TOC’s call sign.

“How the hell are we going to do that? They’re inside now,” Doug asked.

As if in response, a glow started up inside the house. With the two windows facing us, we could see movement inside. One of the “women” took off her burqa, but that man was not our target, ether. We couldn’t see the other one.

“They want to know what we see,” Chuckie said.

“Geez! Give us time, why don’t you. Uh, tell them we have poor viz, but we’ll keep them updated.”

“They want to know if we have a shot. If not, they’re going to use other means.”

We all knew “other means” meant a cruise missile or an F18 strike. With the kids right outside the hut, there would be collateral damage, no doubt about it. I didn’t think that they would risk that without a confirmation that the target was there, no matter how suspicious things were.

I pulled out the photo each one of us had. It showed a young man, maybe in his thirties. His beard was longer than most, and it had a white streak along the left side of it. Even at this range, he should be easy to spot if he was really there. Unless he had dyed his beard. Unless he had shaved it off. Unless any of a hundred other things had happened since the photo was taken.

“Shit, we’ve got company,” Bo whispered. I looked back. Not 25 meters away, an old local had appeared. He was watching the hut below, not noticing us almost at his feet. His legs were bowed, his face weathered. He looked like he’d been here in the desert since the time of Babylon.

“That’s him!” Doug whispered. “In the left hand window.”

It was really just an opening, not a window, but I knew what he meant. I switched from the old guy and looked back to the hut. For a moment, I saw the face, the beard, the white streak. It was him, I was sure.

“That’s him,” I confirmed. You going to take the shot?”

There was a pause. “No, you are.”

That took me by surprise. Doug was the senior sniper, the team leader. He wanted to take the shot, I knew, so why give it to me?

“But . . . .” I started.

“Look,” he said, his whisper forced. “SSgt Rawhiu said if it comes to it, you’re taking the shot. So take it.”

I didn’t understand, but I’d do it. This would be a good shot, through a window 410 meters away, at a target who was not in view now but whom we hoped would step back into view. I pulled out my Hogs Tooth, put it in my mouth, then sighted in.

“Fuck! Here he comes!” whispered Chuckie.

I heard footsteps coming up from behind us, gravel and sand sliding. I kept watch on the window, waiting for my shot. I had one glimpse of the target, but he was gone before I could have put around through the window. Old man or not, if I had the shot, I was taking it.

The footsteps suddenly stopped right behind us. I heard a gasp, then the old legs started running, a weak shout coming from his throat. I kept watching, only vaguely aware of Jeff jumping up beside me, jumping over the edge of our hide, and chasing down the old man. I heard him tackle the man as the old guy let out a piteous cry, then the thud of a fist hitting a face. A moment later, I heard him drag the old man back up the slope and into the hide.

Through my scope, I saw no commotion, no sign of alarm. I hoped that Jeff hadn’t killed the old man, but if he had, our mission was still a go.

Just then, my target rose up as if he had been sitting in the room. He looked angry and was shouting at someone out of sight, his hand raised to emphasize each point. I knew he might sit back down any second, and a profile shot was not as easy as a frontal shot, but I had to take it. I rushed through the five S’s and squeezed the trigger.

I couldn’t see the trace this time as the round made its way down to the hut, in through the window, and through the base of the target’s neck. He went down fast as the report of the round echoed throughout the valley. Several figures jumped up and into view, staring down at their fallen leader. One rushed to look out the window, and I could hear his cry of anger as he shouted. I could have taken him out, but our orders were explicit. Only the commander was to be targeted unless our own lives were in danger. That didn’t make sense to me. If they were meeting with our target, weren’t they the enemy, too?

Four or five men rushed out the door, weapons at the ready. That surprised me. I hadn’t realized that there were so many men there. They must have been waiting inside the hut all day. It must have been an oven in there.

“Target Bozo is down, I repeat Target Bozo is down,” Chuckie said over the radio. There was a pause. “There are at least five enemy combatants at the site. We will confirm if we can.”

Only then did I look up. The old man was lying in a heap behind me. He was breathing, at least, so he was still alive. The sand in front of us had been disturbed, though, but with the rapidly fading light, maybe that wouldn’t be noticed.

The men below us scattered shots out into the desert, but that was more in venting their anger than anything else. After about half an hour, a donkey was led up from behind the small house, and a limp, wrapped body was brought out and tied to the animal. It looked like the body was wrapped in a burqa, probably the same one that he had worn to reach his meeting. There was no doubt that the man was dead. Doug contemplated putting another shot into the body to make sure, but that might have given our position away.

A firefight opened up to the east of us. The National Guard had gotten into it. That went on for almost an hour, and that delayed our pickup. A few more armed men filtered into the valley, and we crept out of the hide and back over the crest of the hill. We left the old man where he was, loosely tied. Our presence was no secret now, so there was little reason to keep him with us and more to let him go.

It wasn’t until late the next afternoon that the National Guard was able to come out in force in a mounted company, and we were extracted.

Chapter 12

Hurricane Point

April 21, 2013

“Attention on deck!” Teddy Vick shouted, sending us to our feet.

We really didn’t call the place to attention here in Iraq when an officer came in, just like we didn’t salute. But this was Major Fitzgerald, the S3, the third ranking Marine in the battalion. This was the first time he’s come to our platoon office, and he had the lieutenant and Capt Ray, our company commander, in tow.

“At ease, sit down. Get back to what you were doing,” he told us, which of course we disobeyed. Majors didn’t come to platoons to be ignored.

Maj Fitzgerald was a tall, lanky redhead. He might have weighed less than me despite his height, and it looked as if a good breeze could sweep him away. But he could run a 14 minute three-mile run. During our final workups, when we all had to run our PFT, he showed up and ran the three-miler with each unit, finishing, then turning around and running back out on the course to bring in the rest of the Marines.

I wondered what he wanted. He’d listened in to our debrief with the lieutenant not two hours ago, focused on what we had to say, but he never said a word. Now he motioned to SSgt Rawhide to follow him, and he came right up to the five of us. We all stood waiting, almost-but-not-quite at attention, the preferred posture when a major was addressing you even when he’d already put you at ease.

“I didn’t tell you before, but I’m mighty damn proud of you. All of you,” he said, taking the time to look each of us in the eye. “You’ve been doing good work in support of the battalion since we got here, but two nights ago, well, you scored a strategic victory, something that affects the entire multi-national force. From the Commanding General on down, and I mean the Army four star, everyone knows what went down, and we’re all proud of you. But that’s not what I came to tell you. Al Qaeda in Iraq has already announced on their website that you did in fact kill your target. You took out one of bin Laden’s lieutenants, one of his right-hand men. The CO thought you’d like to know.”

He took each one of our hands and shook it. I was somewhat surprised to find out he knew each of our names, and he congratulated Doug on his kill over Route Michigan.

When he got to me he hesitated a moment, a huge smile on his face. “And you, Cpl Lindt, or should I call you ‘Iceman’ too? You’ve made quite a name for yourself.” He pumped my hand up and down. “That was some shot, from what I’ve heard.”

It had been a good solid shot, I knew. But my shot on the river had been technically more difficult. I wasn’t going to tell him that, though.

“When you’ve got time, why don’t you come over to my office. I’ve got a few questions to ask about sniper employment, what we can do better.”

From us, he went to the rest of the platoon. Once again, he knew each of us by name, and he congratulated the other three who’d also had kills so far. He must have been briefed before coming in, but he made it seem like he’d known us all his life.

“All of you, the CO’s proud of your work. You’re keeping Marines alive, and there’s not much more you can ask of someone. Carry on,” he said, hand up to forestall another call to attention.

He left, and we sat back down to finish cleaning our weapons. No one said anything for a moment. That didn’t last long.

“Why don’t you come on down to my office for tea and crumpets, there, Cpl Iceman,” Uriah Torrance said, his voice up an octave and in an exaggerated lilt.”

“Oh yes, please do,” Sgt Piccalo said, his voice a falsetto.

The platoon erupted into laughter and a cleaning rag came sailing over to land on my head.

“Hey!” Jeff shouted out. “If you’d just get yourself some kills, maybe you’d get invited, too. Of course to do that, you’d need a real spotter, old Corps, like me!”

An avalanche of rags and a water bottle or two flew at him, making him dodge out of the way. Uriah, a fellow corporal and sniper with First Team, and Deshawn Lewis tackled him, taking him to the ground.

“I’ll show you a real spotter,” Deshawn shouted and both men pulled up on Jeff’s T-shirt, leaving it wrapped around his head and arms.

“Do we help him?” Doug asked nonchalantly.

“Nah, he’s the super spotter. Let’s see what he can do,” I said.

More rags went flying to land on the three Marines. Jeff arched his back, managing to throw Uriah off of him, but crashing him into one of our cleaning tables.

“OK, OK, ladies, enough of that,” SSgt Rawhide called out, but his smile belied any seriousness. Roughhousing like this was part and parcel to life in a platoon.

“Saved by the chief,” Deshawn said as he stood up. He did some sort of strut back to his gear.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Jeff said, pulling down his shirt and doing an even more exaggerated, cartoonish strut. “

“Thanks for the help there, oh great HOG,” he told me as he started to retrieve his cleaning gear that had gotten scattered.

“I knew you had them. Doug wanted to join in, but I knew you wanted them all for yourself.”

Despite the banter, I was grateful for Jeff. I didn’t like being at the center of attention, and he had pulled the attention the major had created off of me and onto him. The spotter was looking out for his sniper.

Chapter 13

Government House, Ramadi

April 26, 2006

I looked out over the city, trying to find a target. Things had been quiet for the last week or so. We’d gone out three times and never taken a shot, never seen anything to report. During the invasion I don’t think I’d spent even one day in which Sgt Tensley hadn’t fired his weapon from the time we crossed the border until we’d hit Baghdad. During this deployment, we’d only engaged three times so far. Today, though, should make it four if either Jeff or I could locate a target. A mortar round had just landed on the roof, and machine fire had opened up, hitting the walls of the Government House below us.

I took a quick look behind us. A couple of Marines had been hit by the mortar, but none looked too serious. The corpsman was patching them up.

“See anything?” I asked Jeff, turning my attention back our job.

“We’ve got automatic weapons fire coming from the three-story building at our one-o’clock, 275 meters out, the one with the lopsided water tank. I can’t see anyone, but I’m getting a trace of smoke and dust on the second floor. He’s got to be well inside, maybe at the second or third window.”

I looked through my scope. I could see a bit of dust, but no flash. The insurgents were learning, and that made it more difficult for us.

There was a boom below us as an RPG slammed into the wall. It didn’t do much damage, and a barrage of our own fire reached back out in response. I didn’t see from where the rocket was launched so I ignored it.

“You guys going to let us crash the party?” Doug asked as he came up in back of us.

He’d been down getting chow or sleeping, but when the firing started, he’d evidently rushed to get up on the roof with us. It had probably only been two minutes since that first round, and he’d made it all the way up to the roof with Chuckie. Bo had diarrhea and was out of it, so Chuckie had been temporarily promoted to Doug’s spotter.

“Can’t let you pull too far ahead of me,” he remarked. “What do ya got here?”

Jeff had told me that Doug was pretty jealous of my kill record. I thought that was silly. I’d just had more opportunities, and what mattered was the mission, not who did what. But Jeff was pretty adamant about it, so I tried to keep that in mind.

I pointed out the building we’d been observing. “There’s fire coming from the second floor, but we haven’t pinpointed from just where yet.”

Doug started adjusting his dope with the data we’d given him. He brought his weapon to bear, looking though his scope for himself. Just then, a stream of tracer’s flew out of the third window, arching to fly over our heads, missing us by at least ten feet.

“You mean you can’t see that?” Jeff said before sending three quick rounds into the window.

At least he fired three rounds. The Marines below us opened up with their own weapons, peppering the building around the window.

“Shit, that’s my kill,” he muttered, although without being able to see the actual target, I wasn’t sure how he could claim a kill.

The insurgent had been smart enough to camouflage his position, but then a brain fart had cost him. He’d obviously removed the tracers from his belt at first, but in the heat of the moment, he’d used another belt, this one with tracers, showing us right where he was. Whether he had bugged out or if one of our rounds had hit him, the firing stopped.

The unit on the roof was the same one from Kilo where I’d made the kill earlier in the month. Initially, it was just the one squad, Sgt Butler’s squad, but two more squads rushed up to join us. Then a lieutenant I didn’t recognize came up and met with 2dLt Hobbs. He had an R/O in tow, and he was asking for targets.

I saw a head pop up and then back down. He was probably about 175 meters out, an easy shot. I steadied my weapon right where he’d disappeared. Sure enough, I saw the front of an RPG appear right at that spot. I started tightening up on my trigger, and by the time the Iraqi’s head followed the RPG as he tried to acquire a target, I sent the round home. It slammed into his chest, sending the RPG flying as he fell from sight.

“What’d you engage?” Jeff asked, almost casually.

“Eleven o’clock, 175 meters, at second V in the broken wall.”

He adjusted his scope. “Don’t see anything. Did you get him?”

“Chest shot. Right through the sternum.”

Another RPG round came flying at us from pretty far out, passing over our heads. I hadn’t seen it fire, but someone had, and that was passed on to the new lieutenant. He called back some coordinates, and less than a minute later, we could hear the whizzing of artillery rounds passing over our heads. I think all of us stopped to watch, and a moment later, there was a group of explosions turning one building from a home into rubble.

“Man, that’s fucking awesome,” Jeff said as other Marines burst out into cheers.

My M40A3 was a great weapon, a surgical weapon. The 155 artillery rounds, though, packed a pretty big punch, and whoever was in that building with the RPG gunner was gone as well. There was something to be said about the firepower of the King of Battle. I was glad that the mujahideen didn’t have the same capability.

The incoming fire slacked off a bit, then picked up again in spurts. At one point, Jeff spotted three targets near the Swiss Cheese, but before I could take them under fire, one of our .50 cal machine guns opened up, tearing the three men apart. I had just got one of them in my scope when the .50 cal hit, one arm being taken completely off before the second round hit him low in the belly.

I’d watched Sgt Tensley’s rounds hit bad guys before, and I’d seen my own rounds hit, but the 7.62 rounds tended to drop people, not destroy them. I swept my scope over the opening where what had been three men were trying to maneuver. Now, one didn’t even look human, and the other two were pretty torn up as well.

“Hey Lindt! Got another! You keeping up?” Doug shouted from the other side of the roof.

That was his second kill today, although he was claiming a third, the initial machine gunner in the window. He wouldn’t get credit for that one, though. On the other hand, despite the amount of fire and the length of the gunfight, I hadn’t been able to take another shot. He was up two to one for the day, and that seemed to make him happy.

One of his kills was in a lone building 450 meters out, a relatively unscathed white four-story apartment complex. We were getting fire from it, quick bursts before the shooters moved to a new position. As dusk settled in, Captain Wilcox, the Kilo Company commander came up to the roof, and I overheard him talking about sending the QRF to physically secure the building, but then another captain came up. He and Capt Wicox discussed it with the TOC, and then he got on another radio and did his thing.

“He’s the FAO,” I heard one of the Kilo Marines say. “They’re going to call in air on the bastards.”

It took about five minutes, but when the officers all perked up, I watched as well. A flash of light lit up the growing darkness, almost blinding me. That faded into a huge fireball that reached up into the sky. A moment later, the concussion reached us, a force I could feel in my bones.

“Get some!” several of the Marines said, almost in unison as the fireball faded, revealing what had just been an unscathed building was now a heap of glowing rubble. If I had been impressed by the arty, this sure trumped that. I didn’t know if 450 meters is officially considered Danger Close, but if it wasn’t, I was pretty sure I never wanted to experience it.

After that, the fight was pretty much over. Doug was pretty happy, high-fiving Chuckie and bragging about his kills. As a sniper, I was pretty focused on my efforts, and even when pulling recon duty, I’m not sure I really grasped the proverbial “big picture.” Today, though, I finally got it. Between Doug and me, we managed three kills. But that was pretty insignificant to the efforts of the grunt platoons, the arty, and the air. Watching them work together was like watching some sort of lethal ballet. As much as we might like to think it, we snipers are not the tip of the spear. We are a support element, a lethal one, to be sure, but still, support.

Chapter 14

Ramadi

May 3, 2006

I ignored the Iraqi family. I had to focus on our mission. Austin Del a Cruz from Kilo would keep the family in check. Austin was from Des Moines, well, Ankeny, and that was almost the same. He was a corporal and was one of the few Marines outside the platoon with whom I ever talked. I can’t say we were friends, but at least we were acquaintances, and for me that was good enough.

This was a hot mission. Intel was pretty strong that a “significant” target would be in the house on the next street over from us in the morning, and we needed to be in position to support a house call from Lima. Capture was preferred, but if he made a break for it through the back alley towards us, he was to be taken out. We had two teams ready and in position.

Since the big firefight at the Government House, we’d done nothing. Oh, we’d been sent out on supposedly good intel about IEDs three nights in a row, but nothing had happened. It seems odd to say it in the middle of Ramadi, but things were boring. I think all of us wanted some action.

This house had been chosen carefully. It had access from the next street over, so we could enter from behind, never going in from the front. That left a cushion of two blocks from the front door of our target building. We moved along with Kilo’s First Platoon as if in a patrol, and then during a halt where the commander made a big deal of looking at a map and talking on the radio, we quietly followed Austin’s fire team into the Iraqi house. He quickly rounded up the two adults and three children, the interpreter with us assuring them that they would not be harmed. It didn’t look like they believed us.

That wasn’t my concern, though. Doug and I had to pick our hide where we could observe the routes of egress that our target might use if it came to that. This was also one case where our spotters might get involved. It could be that we would have only a very short range to a target running towards us, maybe 15 or 20 meters. At that range, our scoped M40A3s would be cumbersome to bring to bear, so Jeff and Bo with their M16s or Chuckie with his SAW, might have to be the principles. We wouldn’t know until we got upstairs and observed our fields of fire.

One of the three kids was a boy of about seven years old or so, and he didn’t seem cowed by our presence. He started yelling at us, calling out despite the pleas of both our translator and of his mother. We were out in Indian country at the moment, cut off from the rest of Kilo. We didn’t need the neighbors to get curious, not only for our own safety, but not to let our target get word that we were in the area. This guy was supposedly the biggest IED maker in Al Anbar, and MNF-W really, really wanted him off the streets.

As one of the Marines moved towards the boy, the mother grabbed the kid and put her hand over his mouth. She looked fearfully up at the Marine, a PFC whose name I’d heard but couldn’t really recall. The boy glared at the Marine over his mother’s hand.

“So, you ready? We need to get upstairs and prepared. I don’t want any movement once we’re in position,” Doug said. Our mission was to shoot, if necessary, not babysit an Iraqi family.

The five of us started for the stairs leading up to the second floor. It had already been cleared, but Chuckie still took the lead, SAW at the ready. At that moment, the young boy stood up, pulling from his mother’s grasp. He shouted something at her, full of conviction that the young often have. His small chest was heaving as he stood there in his Old Navy shirt and what looked like pajama bottoms. He stomped one bare foot on the floor as Rafi took a step to him. He spun around, pointed a finger at Rafi, telling him something that stopped our interpreter.

It looked like his outburst was over, and I started back to the stairs when suddenly, he darted towards the door. The PFC, Ramsey or Ramstein or whatever his name was, started to lunge for the kid, but the mother jumped up and grabbed Ramsey, pulling him back. He responded by swinging his M16 around and butt-stroking her upside her head, sending her crashing to the floor. The husband shouted out, but didn’t get up. LCpl Torrinton tried to grab the kid, but he missed. Without pausing, the kid was out the door. The PFC reached the door a split second later and raised his weapon.

“Ramsey! Stop!” shouted Austin. “Stop!”

PFC Ramsey looked around, confusion on his face.

“But he’s going to give out the alarm!” he said.

Outside, we could hear the kid yelling at the top of his lungs.

“He’s just a fucking kid!” the team leader told him.

The littlest child, a small girl in a huge white T-shirt that reached her feet started crying to see her mother on the ground, a trickle of blood coming from her forehead.

“Cpl Del a Cruz, he wants permission to go to his wife,” Rafi said, pointing back at the husband.

“Yeah, yeah, OK,” he said, then turned to us. “What do we do now?”

“Oh, fuck me,” Doug said, something we all felt, I think, but that didn’t answer the question.

This was pretty serious. If we were given away, we didn’t have the firepower to hold off a concerted attack. No matter what, our target was going to be warned away.

“Call it in,” Jeff said.

“Yeah, it’ll be their call,” Austin agreed, getting on his PRC-148 and reporting up the chain.

Torrington went over to the mother and looked over the husband’s head as he cradled his wife in his arms. I think we all felt bad about her, but who knew what he would do?

Within five minutes, we had our answer. The mission was aborted. We had been compromised, and no doubt the powers-that-be figured our target would be waved off.

The woman started coming to. She was groggy, but it looked like she would be OK. Austin scribbled out a chit telling her she could get medical care at Camp Ramadi. We normally used these to compensate people for property damage, but they could be used for injuries like this, I suppose. Not that any of us thought she’d make use of it.

PFC Ramsey kept telling us it wasn’t his fault as we made our way out of the home to rendezvous with First Team and get back to the Point.

Chapter 15

Southern Ramadi

May 6, 2006

I looked back at Doug. He was on his back, his balaclava over his eyes as he slept. I wondered if I could wake him up. My legs were trembling, and I wasn’t sure I could be effective. I needed a break.

We were in a house overlooking Baseline, really in the National Guard’s AO. We’d picked this hide on a foot patrol we’d made the day before because it offered good coverage to the roadblock the ISF had set up on the road. We were trying to train the ISF to take over more missions, and this was part of that. There was a three-man MiTT doing the training, but the actual troops were Iraqi.

The house had good coverage over the road. Baseline was a major thoroughfare, and even before the roadblock was set up, Doug had killed a man setting up an IED. Jeff and I’d been asleep at the time, knowing we’d be on duty after noon, but we woke up to the shot and Doug’s happy exultations.

The problem with the house was that it was pretty much intact, and we’d all been told to try and minimize damage to any of the homes of our “hosts,” was the word the brass used, as if we’d been invited instead of barging in during the middle of the night. In order to have the roadblock where we could support it and still remain out of sight, we had to stand to get the angle and use our tripods for support.

These were not government issue. These were simple camera tripods we’d all bought at Walmart and brought with us. We’d taken off the mount and affixed a curved cradle that could hold the stock of our weapon. These tripods worked surprisingly well, and they took up the 16.5 pounds of the rifle. They couldn’t support us, though, and we had to stand. That was OK for awhile, but after three hours or so, my legs started to tremble. It would be better to be humping 20 miles in full packs than just standing there.

I decided against waking Doug up. I slowly lifted one leg after the other, bending each one to try and get my circulation going. Any quick movement, and all the work we’d done to set up the hide, all the ponchos and sheets we’d nailed to the roof, the dresser I’d moved to deflect the line of sight, would be for naught. I settled in for my last hour before Doug would take over.

I glanced at Jeff. He had his scope on a tripod, too. I was pretty sure that his legs weren’t bothering him, though.

“Noah!” he hissed. “200 meters out.”

I quickly looked back through my scope. A car had come around a bend in Baseline into view of the roadblock and stopped. It was about 400 meters from us, but with the glare of the sun on the windshield, I couldn’t make out the driver. The car moved forward ten meters, then stopped again.

I couldn’t actually see the driver, but I knew where he was. I kept the crosshairs of my scope on the driver’s side of the windshield.

In typical military fashion, we had no way to communicate with the MiTT below us. The gunny in charge knew we were up here somewhere, but there wasn’t any way for us to tell him we had a suspicious vehicle heading their way.

The beat up white car started to roll forward again. I took up the slack on the trigger,

“What do you see?” I asked Jeff.

“Nothing, just the car. I don’t know why it stopped, but it’s moving now.”

I didn’t know what I should do. I could take the car out, no problem, but was suspicious action grounds for lethal force? I could put a round in the engine block, but this wasn’t a Barrett. A 7.62 NATO wouldn’t stop the car. Maybe we should have taken the Barrett with us.

Other than the initial couple of halts, we saw nothing to make deadly force an option. I felt that something was wrong, but I had no proof. The white car joined the line of cars waiting to go through, and I finally made out the driver. He was an older man, dressed in a suit coat and striped shirt. That didn’t set my mind at ease. Old men set off VBIEDs, too.

I kept my weapon trained on him, although it was really too late to stop the man. He made it to the checkpoint, and held my breath . . .

. . . only letting it out again as he passed through without a problem.

I looked over at Jeff who tilted his head and let out an exaggerated breath of relief. He’d been just as concerned as I had been.

I checked my watch. Another 25 minutes and I could sit down and relax, get a bite of an MRE. Below us, car after car came up and was passed through. One car was stopped and pulled to the side, the driver arguing vehemently if his gestures meant anything. It evidently didn’t do him any good as he had his hands zip-tied in back of him and was led off to the side.

“OK, who’s this bozo?” Jeff asked, but I’d already taken in the orange and white taxi that had pulled to the side a good 150 meters still from the checkpoint. It didn’t look like he was there to pick up anyone. I tried to get a good look at him through my scope.

“Uh, he looks scared,” Jeff said. “Real scared.”

“He-doesn’t-have-a-taxi-license-and-doesn’t-want-to-get-fined-scared, or he’s about-to-earn-his-79-virgins-scared” I asked, trying to see for myself.

“”Uh, I’d say 79-virgins-scared.”

At that moment, the taxi swung into the driving lane, its underpowered engine actually creating enough torque for the rear wheels to kick up some dust. He started speeding up.

This was different. The ISF soldiers had placed signs out for 200 meters warning drivers to slow down. He was speeding up. He was either getting ready to detonate or try to break through the roadblock, and in either case, deadly force was authorized.

“Take him out,” Jeff yelled out.

The sun’s angle hadn’t changed much, so I still had the same problem with glare. I couldn’t actually see the man. I aimed low, right where the windshield met the hood of the car, and squeezed. The M40 kicked against my shoulder as I quickly ejected the round and chambered another. The windshield had blossomed with a white flower right where the driver would be, but the car was still moving forward. I acquired the target again when the car erupted in a ball of flame and smoke still some 50 meters from the roadblock. Pieces of car flew in the air before falling back as the ISF soldiers hit the deck. One tire came out of the smoke to continue rolling down the road towards the checkpoint. It wobbled, then veered to the left, rolling over the side of the road and crashing into the car that had been pulled over before, the one belonging to the guy they’d arrested. It bounced off the passenger door, leaving a dent, then rolled around and around on its edge until it came to a stop.

I looked back at Doug to tell him what happened. Amazingly, both he and Bo were asleep, the slight sound of snoring letting Jeff and me know they were dead to the world.

Chapter 16

Hurricane Point

May 13, 2006

“Let’s just get this done and we’ll go to chow after. I don’t want to have to come back to finish this shit,” Jeff said.

I was hungry, but I guess it made sense to finish PM’ing the gear before eating, so I simply nodded.

“Look, you take both scopes; it’ll go by faster. Let me get some batteries from the locker, and I’ll finish with the rangefinder here. We’ll be done in 30 minutes,” he said.

We were in our platoon office, taking care of the gear. The chief sniper had inspected everything this morning and had about blown a fuse. Our weapons themselves were clean, but we might have been neglecting everything else. He ordered a full PM party, to be completed before anyone could get some sleep. Not that we were deprived of that. Our last several missions had been dead quiet, and it had been easy to get some sleep with the others stood watch. Still, I think we all would rather be doing anything other than sitting in the SWA while SSgt Rawhiu watched from his small desk.

As Jeff stood up, Tevin asked if we were going to chow. Tevin and Doughboy were the only two still working—the rest were at chow. I think they were just looking for affirmation, because even when Jeff told them no, they decided that the DFAC beckoned and they would finish up when they got back. As the three of them left, it was just SSgt Rawhiu and me in the office.

“Cpl Lindt,” the chief sniper said as the hatch closed behind the three Marines, “put that down and come over here.”

That took me aback a bit. I’m not sure I’d ever had a one-on-one conversation with him before. I put down the lens cleaner and walked over. We only had two small desks in the office, and he swung the second chair so it faced him and indicated that I should take it. I waited while he leaned over, hands on his knees. I didn’t have a clue as to what he wanted.

“You are a hellacious shot,” he started, his heavy South Pacific accent making his words run together somewhat. “You make shots, my God, you so good everyone know the Iceman. The CO, he know you. The new Army colonel, he know you too.”

I was surprised at that. There was a changing of the guard at Camp Ramadi, and our new commander was the CO of the Ready First, an active duty brigade with a good rep. That he knew my name was gratifying. I started to relax as Rawhide complimented me.

“But,” he said, looking me in the eye, “you are shit as an NCO.”

That wasn’t what I was expecting.

“You’re a corporal, but you let your boy Stoelk boss you around. He the boss in your team, no doubt. He make you his bitch, his own corporal bitch. That won’t cut it. You catch me?”

I was at a loss as what to say. I was shit as a corporal? I was doing my job, wasn’t I? I had more kills than anyone else. I hadn’t missed a shot yet.

“Ah, I see you don’ get it. Look, this green machine decided you should be an NCO, put those chevrons on your shoulder, a leader of Marines. Stoelk, he still a PFC. He don’ know enough to wipe his ass after he shit. But he know enough to tell you what to do. He’s the NCO in your team, not you. Look, you can outshoot anyone in the platoon, your boy Taggart, too, even if he don’ admit it. Me too. I can shoot, but you can take the balls off a fly at 1,000 meters. That don’ make you a good Marine. That make you a weapon, just like the robo-rifles the Army got, the ones they can sight in and shoot a grouping no bigger than a quarter.”

I was feeling overwhelmed by all of this. The Corps was my home, a place where I did my job without the bullying, teasing, and derision I experienced out in the real world. After boot, I’m not sure I’d experienced anyone telling me I didn’t measure up.

“If you don’ want to be just a weapon, you need to be a true leader. You need to teach your boy Stoelk there to be a sniper. You need to lead him. Later, you’re goin’ to need to lead more Marines, to make them better snipers, more lethal Marines. But you’re not ready for that. If you can’t lead one PFC, you can’t lead a team, and if you can’t lead a team, no use making you sergeant. You’ll be out on your ass, looking to flip burgers for a living. You catching me now?”

I wanted to recoil from what he was saying. With all modesty aside, I knew I was the best shot in the platoon. Heck, he told Doug to give me the shot out in the desert, so he knew I was the best. But I couldn’t deny the logic, now that he brought it to my attention. I could shoot, but I didn’t lead. I let Jeff pretty much make most decisions because it was easier. But being a Marine, being an NCO, wasn’t supposed to be easy.

There was also the implied warning. I would need to make sergeant to be eligible for reenlistment. Unless I did a better job in the leadership aspect of my position, I would not be recommended for promotion. My time in the Corps would be over no matter how many kills I racked up.

Jeff, in his own way, had told me much the same thing. He wanted to learn, and I was letting him down. I was teaching him the routine mechanics of setting up a shot, but I was not teaching him how to be a Marine, and that was the real job of every NCO, be they grunts, clerks, helo mechanics, or engineers.

“Yes, Staff Sergeant, I understand you. I, well, I mean, I understand what you want, and I’ll do my best. I’ve concentrated on just shooting for so long, but I can adjust.”

“I think you can,” he said.

“If I have problems, if I need some guidance, can I come to you?”

“You teach your PFC, I teach you. That’s the way it works,” he replied.

Just then, Jeff came in the hatch, a pack of batteries in his hand. He looked at me sitting there with the chief sniper, a confused look on his face.

“You done with the scopes already? We need to finish up on them so we can get out of here,” he said.

“Secure them for now. I’m not going to rush it. We’ll get some chow, then come back and finish the PM properly,” I told him.

“Change of plans, but OK,” he said as he went back to secure the gear.

SSgt Rawhiu nodded at me. “You’ll be OK, brah,” he said as he got up and got ready to leave. “You’ll do fine.”

I hoped he was right.

Chapter 17

Ramadi

May 20, 2006

We’d heard that the new brigade commander wanted to be more aggressive in taking it to the enemy. Not everyone thought it was a good idea, from what I’d gathered, but he was the boss man, and he had the backing of the CG back at Fallujah. The Ready First was more robust than the National Guard brigade it replaced. The Guard had more armor than our Marine battalion, but the Ready First was loaded for bear. We had already watched a convoy of Humvees and a truck roll by below us, an M1 looking pretty huge as it escorted them to drop off the embarked company.

“Glad that’s them, not us,” Jeff remarked.

Hurricane Point was smaller than Camp Ramadi, and we took incoming mortar and rocket fire each day. We hadn’t been attacked, though, by ground fighters. We posed a pretty impressive shield of defense against them.

This Army rifle company, or whatever they called their mechanized companies when they were dismounted, was heading south to take up residence in a new COP. That Combat Outpost had been, until this week, someone’s home. The Army had taken it over, and now that company was going to be out there in Indian Country, all alone, surrounded by Iraqis.

I watched as the convoy disappeared from sight, dust rising from the buildings still marking their way. This was no stealthy insertion. Everyone and their mother would know just where those soldiers were.

We’d been assigned overwatch on the convoy as they passed through Marine-controlled territory. We had another team a klick further south, near the government center, and they’d be watching over them now.

We had another convoy coming, right down Route Michigan again, soon, then we were just supposed to observe the area until a platoon from Hotel Company was to round us up and get us back to the Point.

Doug and Bo were on the other side of the room, covering the route to the south. Chuckie was there with them, their heads huddled together as they talked about something. Chuckie really should have been focusing on the door coming into the room, but I wasn’t sure if SSgt Rawhiu’s admonition for me to take more of a leadership role extended to telling Doug what to do. He’d be pinning on his sergeant’s chevrons in July, and he was the team leader, so I figured it was his call. Jeff, however, he was my responsibility.

“OK, back to school,” I told him, now that the convoy was out of our area of responsibility. “We’ve got a yellow and orange taxi coming down Michigan, right at the bent sign post. He’s not stopping, and there’s a Marine checkpoint at the intersection. What’re you going to do?”

“Um, OK . . .”

He started to aim his rangefinder, but I put my hand over it. “No time,” I told him.

“Yeah, well, say 500 meters, wind left to right at 10 knots . . .” and out came his personal computer.

“Boom, they’re dead. You killed them because you didn’t act.”

“But . . . I mean, I can’t figure it all in my head like you can,” he said in a plaintive voice.

“You shouldn’t have to calculate anything. What point there have we already ranged?”

“The intersection. It was 353 meters to the corner of the northeast building.”

“And how far away is that signpost from the intersection?”

He looked at it for a moment before asking “A hundred meters?”

I took the rangefinder and shot it. I turned it over so Jeff could read the results.

“462. We had 353 to the intersection, and you said from there to the signpost, so you had it at 453. Do you think that extra nine meters is really going to affect the shot that much?”

“No, I see your point. So I enter what I think it is?” he asked.

“You don’t enter in anything. You don’t have time. You know your dope for the intersection. You’ve already entered it because that’s where the grunts have their checkpoint. So at 450 meters, how much will the round drop in the last 100 of that?”

“I don’t know. I just enter in the total range and it gives me the answer,” he told me, seemingly getting frustrated.

“You’ll get more training in this kind of thing once you hit Scout Sniper School, but you need to know it now. You won’t always have time to calculate your dope when Marines need you. I’ll print out a chart for you to study, but the difference between 350 meters and 450 meters is just over 11 inches of drop.”

“So I increase the elevation by . . .”

“No, you increase nothing. You’re weapon is set, and you have no time. So you . . .” I prompted.

“Aim eleven inches higher?” he asked.

“Bingo! Aim high and fire. Sight in again as the car is moving towards us, aiming a little lower, and fire again. Keep firing until the car stops or blows up.”

I could see the comprehension dawn on his face. Objectively, I knew Jeff wasn’t a Rhodes Scholar. His grammar wasn’t the best, and he had a tendency to spout off some rather unique “facts” that had little relevance in the real universe. But he was still a capable Marine, and I knew he’d be able to master the art of shooting.

We kept at it, going over scenario after scenario. He still needed to memorize the trajectory of our 7.62 NATO round, but he was getting better at coming up with snap firing solutions.

Teaching Jeff was fine, but we weren’t back at Quantico or Lejeune. We were in Ramadi, and our mission was to observe the area. So while Jeff was working out solutions, we were both constantly scanning the area. Movement on a roof to our right caught my eye.

“What do you make of that,” I asked Jeff, pointing out the man I had spotted.

Jeff looked at him through his big scope.

“He seems a bit too calm, if you ask me. How do you call it? Non, non . . .”

“Nonchalant?”

“Yeah, nonchalant. He’s looking at nothing, and that’s not normal.”

I was looking at him through my scope as well. I didn’t see a weapon, and he could be just out getting some fresh air, but something didn’t feel right. I looked at my watch. We’d have another convoy going past in about ten minutes or so. I could already see the dust cloud rising to the north.

“Let’s keep an eye on him. For now, work out your firing solution on him.”

“You mean, like we’ve been doing?” he asked.

“No, get the rangefinder and let’s do this exact. I want a firing solution that’ll put a round center mass.”

I kept an eye on the man while still scanning the area as I heard Jeff mutter as he inputted the data. The man had sat down, his back against the small wall that rimmed the roof. He was one floor below us, so we could see him, but when he was sitting, we could only see his head and upper chest.

“Here you go,” Jeff said as he showed me this computer screen.

“Put it on,” I told him, handing him my M40A3.

“But always you do your own dope,” he said.

“That’s pretty much what I’d put on, so get the practice of setting up a shot for real. This is just for practice.”

“Practice changing elevation and windage? OK,” he said, taking the rifle.

“Doug!” I hissed across the room. “We’ve got a possible target. No weapons, but something’s not right.”

He nodded, and then came over. Standing well behind us, he aimed his rifle, looking through his scope.

“I think you’re right. I’m going to call it in, but if he so much as blinks a fucking eye when the Army comes by, smoke check his ass.”

I focused back on Jeff and said, “I want you to get a good sight picture. Tell me what you’re doing.”

It looked weird seeing Jeff holding my weapon, my baby, sighting in on a target. I wondered if that odd feeling was jealously, as stupid as that might sound. Jealous over a weapon?

“I’ve got the crosshairs at the base of his neck, ‘cause I don’t want to miss low and hit the wall. He’s below us, too, so I need to aim high about a inch, maybe two.”

“Yes, about ‘uh’ inch or so,” I repeated with a smile, mimicking one of Jeff’s more common grammatical errors. He didn’t seem to have “an” in his vocabulary.

I pulled over his spotter scope and looked through it. The man certainly did have a bit of a forced look of nonchalance about him. Twice though, he looked up and back over his head as if he wanted to get up and look over the wall. As the convoy got closer, he seemed more nervous, wiping his face and glancing around him. At one point, he seemed to be looking towards us, but I was sure he couldn’t see inside our hide without optics. He didn’t show any reaction, at least.

“You see that?” Jeff asked.

The man, still saying low, turned around so he was facing the wall and Route Michigan below him.

“Here, you better take this back,” he told me, holding out my M40.

“No, I want to use the spotter scope for now. You keep using the Schmidt and Bender for now.”

“But . . .” I heard before he seemed to think better of it.

The lead vehicle, a Bradley, came into view, 200 meters from where our Iraqi friend was perched. He seemed to get his legs under him as if he was going to stand up. But was that to launch some sort of attack or to just get off the roof and out of the way of a possible fight?

The answer to that came pretty quick. From beneath him, where it was out of our sight, he pulled up an RPG. I thought I could almost read the serial number of the thing through the M49’s big lenses.

“Take him out, Jeff!” I hissed.

“But . . .”

“I said send it. Now!” I told him.

I heard Doug rush up in back of us, a protest starting, but I held up my hand in back of me telling him to stop. I kept watching through Jeff’s spotter scope as the man inched up and forward as he tried to ease into position to take the shot, exposing more of his torso. At only 215 meters, this was a gimmie.

“Send it,” I told him again, quietly reaching for Jeff’s M16. I brought it up and sighted it in on the man.

I was just about to give up take the guy out with the M16 when a single shot rang out. Despite the short range and me looking through the M16’s sights, the bullet trace was as clear as day. It only took a split second, but the round arched slightly as it hit home, smashing through the right side of the man’s chest. I could picture the round plowing through the ribs, tearing open the lung, and then destroying his heart. He dropped like a stone, and I knew he was dead before he hit the ground. I quietly put the M16 back down between us.

“What happened, did he get him?” Doug asked excitedly, stepping on me as he came forward, weapon ready to engage.

“He’s dead,” I said.

“Really?” Jeff asked quietly beside me.

“Yes, really. Chest shot. You smoked checked him but good.”

“Well fuck me,” he said, almost to himself. “Fuck me,” came a little louder. “Well fuck me royal, I’ve got me a kill. Holy shit!”

“That did you, young Master Luke,” I said in my poor Yoda imitation. “But now, must you quiet be. We still tactical are.”

“What? Oh yeah, sorry, but holy shit! I’m a sniper now,” he said, quietly, but with no doubt as to his excitement.”

“You’re still a PIG,” Doug said before moving back to his position, “But good shot. Noah, me and you will talk later.”

Jeff kept lifting up my M40 and looking through the scope. “You sure he’s dead?”

“No doubt about it,” I assured him. “We’ll get Hotel to go up and check the body for any intel.”

“Shit, I know I should feel something more serious, but right now, I feel on top of the world. Is this normal?”

“You’re asking me what’s normal? Me? I’m the wrong person to ask that. If you want to ask somebody, go talk to the chaplain.”

“OK, it’s jus’ that I don’t think I should be feeling this good. But I do, that’s a fact.” He looked over at me. “Why didn’t you tell me I was going to take the shot?”

“You told me before that you weren’t sure you could do it. So I wanted you to act just as if we were back on the range at Lejeune. I didn’t want to give you time to second guess yourself.”

“But what if I didn’t do it? I mean, he was going to fire that RPG.”

“I knew you’d fire. I had full confidence in you.”

I didn’t tell him I’d been about to take out the guy myself. I wanted to train him, to make him a sniper, but not at the possible expense of American lives.

“Where’s your log book?” I asked him.

“My log book?” has asked, feeling around for it.

“Yeah, your log book. You took the shot. You need to log in everything about it. One more thing, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Give me back my weapon.”

It felt good getting the familiar shape back in my hands.

Chapter 18

Hurricane Point

May 26, 2006

“So why’re we going to the library?” I asked.

“I told you, I need your chevrons. But don’t worry, I’ve got you covered,” he said as we entered the SWA that served as the “library,” a place with a few shelves of donated books. It wasn’t very big, but there were some tables and even two deep easy chairs.

It took me moment to adjust my eyes from the harsh morning sunlight to the dim interior. The place looked empty, which wasn’t surprising given the hour. Almost everyone in the camp would be either working or sleeping, and it wouldn’t be until lunch time that a few Marines might want to sit out of the sun and more importantly, out of their commanders’ sight. As my eyes adjusted, though, I saw the library was not entirely empty. Jewell Mitchell stood as we came up, a smile stretching her face. She took Jeff’s hand for a second before indicating that he should sit beside her.

Next to her was a large, African-American WM, a lance corporal. She smiled and as she stood, I could see she dwarfed the three of us, especially me. To be honest, Jeff was taller, but she was an Amazon for all intents and purposes.

“Noah, this is Tara,” Jewell said. “Why don’t you take that seat so you two can talk.”

I looked at Jeff. He was setting me up? I was pissed, to be honest, but he just gave me a goofy smile and a thumbs up. There was nothing to do at the moment, though, so I just sat down.

Tara reached out her hand, so I had to take it.

“So you’re the famous Iceman?” she asked.

I had to give her credit. She was acting interested, at least, even if I knew that interest was faked. We were there to give cover to Jeff and Jewell. This is what he meant by needing my chevrons. He was using me, just at Jewell was using Tara. He had told me before that nothing was going on between them, but that obviously wasn’t true. SSgt Rawhiu had told me to take charge, and I was tempted to do it right then, to stand up and tell Jeff to follow me. But I didn’t.

Tara kept the conversation between us going. I don’t even remember what she asked, things about sniping and my family, I think, and I answered with brief, monosyllabic answers. I felt very, very uncomfortable.

First, she was a lance corporal, and I was an NCO. I didn’t need SSgt Rawhiu’s lecture to tell me that this was a problem. I didn’t want to get into any trouble with fraternization. Office hours would be the death knell for me. Even if I didn’t lose a stripe, I’d never be able to re-enlist.

But that wasn’t the only reason, I had to admit to myself. I wasn’t the biggest guy around. I wasn’t tiny, but most Marines were larger than me. Couple that with the years of having my condition pounded into my brain that I couldn’t do contact sports, to be careful all the time, well, I think that made me feel even smaller. And Tara was a big, healthy woman. We may have actually weighed the same, but she seemed so much bigger. She had a big presence, if that makes sense. Her manners, her direct speech, her laugh all loomed large over me. I hate to admit it, but I was cowed. Women in general got me nervous, but this lance corporal got me even more so. It wasn’t anything she said. She was doing a good job at acting. She was pleasant, and I don’t think anyone would’ve thought twice if they’d overheard anything she said.

After a never-ending ten minutes, Jeff and Jewell stood up.

“You two sit here for a moment. I want to show Jewell a book,” Jeff said, his smirk taking over his face.

I watched as they walked down the aisle between two shelves, Jewell giving Jeff a hip bump, him quietly laughing and giving her one back.

I turned to Tara and said, “You know, you don’t need to do this. We can just sit here for now. No need to pretend.”

She pulled back, her brows furrowed. She started to say something, then stopped and seemed to think a moment. She shrugged.

“OK, if that’s what you want. I’m not pushing anyone. I just . . . well, forget it.”

She sat back in her chair as if pulling away from me. She seemed upset, but I wasn’t sure why. I just gave her the excuse to stop having to act. That was a good thing, right?

We sat like that, not saying a word while we waited for Jeff and Jewell. It wasn’t like we couldn’t see them at the far end of the plywood shelves. They were whispering to each other, standing chest to chest. Finally, Jewell took Jeff’s hand, gave it a squeeze, and then tilted her head in our direction. They both turned and came back to the table.

“Nice to see you again, Noah,” she told me. “Tara, we’ve got to get back.”

Tara stood up, and without even looking back, followed Jewell out of the building. Jeff watched them go before turning to me with a Cheshire cat smile.

“Well?” he asked.

“Just what was that?” I asked, keeping my voice low, but the anger bubbling over.

The smile vanished from his face. “What d’ya mean, ‘what was that?’ I’d think it was pretty obvious?”

“You told me that nothing was going on between you two. But here you are, dragging me along while you two get together!”

“OK, I needed you to be here. Like you said, she’s a corporal. So you had to be here, you know, corporal to corporal. But you saw us. Nothing happened. And she set you up, too. You didn’t like Tara?”

“Set me up? That was only camouflage, so there were two of them and two of us. Tara wasn’t interested in me. She was just acting!” I said, my voice getting louder.

“Acting? Man, for a smart guy, you are so fucking dense sometimes! Don’t you know people are interested in you? They all know your name here. They know what you’ve done. I’m not saying she came here determined to have your babies, but she was abso-fucking-lutely interested in you. You got the get your head out of your ass sometimes, Noah!”

“And you’ve got to obey Marine Corps regulations, PFC Stoelk. Don’t you forget that!”

I turned and stalked away, not waiting for him, the sun blasting my face as I left the building.

Chapter 19

Just north of Ramadi, along the river

June 3, 2006

“Hey Jeff! You ready to head out to the pool?” Bo asked.

The “pool” was a decrepit concrete-covered hole in the ground about 10 meters from the one-room building that we were using as our hide. None of us had any idea what it had once been, but it became “the pool” to us. What with the pool, the palms that surrounded us, giving the desert a tropical feel, and the river only a short way off, we had dubbed our hide the Marriott.

We were at the Marriott to spot insurgent mortar teams who used the lush river foliage as cover in order to push out a few rounds at Camp Ramadi or Hurricane Point before vanishing before the counter-battery fire could reach them. If we couldn’t spot them and take them out, then we were supposed to report back the POO, or Point of Origin, something we could see by tracing the line of smoke from a round. The mortars could be in the back of a pickup, on the back of a donkey, or man-packed. They weren’t concerned about accuracy; drop the tube, point it at our camps, and send a few rounds off. Some folks said we should just knock down all the trees and plants to deny the insurgents the cover, but I think memories of Agent Orange blocked that course of action.

The place looked like Vietnam, though, at least how I imagined it to be, so it probably would take something like Agent Orange to get the job done. Instead, the line platoons made patrols through the jungle-like growth, and scout sniper teams were deployed to deny this as a safe haven.

“Sure, just let me get on my sun screen. Can you order up a Sex on the Beach for me?” Jeff replied.

“That’d be as close to sex as you’re gonna be getting for a long time,” Chuckie put in.

“You dipshits really want to give our position away? We’re exposed enough as it is out here,” Doug said, squashing any more comments.

He was right, though, and I should have said something. But we’d been out here since yesterday morning, and things were pretty boring. We’d seen people passing by along the small dirt road that ran alongside the line of palm trees in front of us, and we’d heard the double thunk of mortars going off a couple of hours ago, but those had been too far off for us to see the firing position. Not that they’d have to be too far for that. Our line-of-sight was limited from this hide. We had about twenty meters of open area in front of us and about ten in back of us. To the front and sides, we could see maybe 75 meters through the trees, but in back, the thick, high reeds blocked all vision. For snipers used to reaching out and touching someone at 400, 600, 800 meters, this was almost claustrophobic. The limited visibility also made our POO reporting a non-player. How could we see the mortar trails through all the foliage?

The hide itself was pretty small. It was a one-room shack, long abandoned. The northeast corner of the roof has collapsed and the north wall seemed ready to fall during the next stiff breeze. The building had long been abandoned as a place to live or work, but someone had been visiting. There had been cigarette butts when we got there, and we’d been blessed with the aroma of several dead rats. We didn’t need to be CSI to know their putrefying bodies hadn’t been dead more than a few days, so someone had been in there to lay some poison.

We’d rigged our hide as usual, but with the road a mere 20 meters away, we relied mostly on ducking down behind the walls to keep out of sight. So far, no one had seemed to show the slightest interest in our position.

I didn’t like the Marriott. We really didn’t have any egress routes. I would rather have been in the thick reeds behind us, but we were given this position to occupy, probably so any friendly would know where we were. It made sense. The area around us was registered for artillery. If it came to that, I hoped the King of Battle boys would be on target.

I felt the call of nature, so I took out a plastic water bottle, leaned on my side, then filled it. We carried the ubiquitous water bottles everywhere we went. I had my canteens and CamelBak, but for taking a piss, I could just fill up a plastic bottle and dump it. You just had to be sure where you put one that had water and where was the piss bottle when you wanted a drink at night.

It was getting to be late afternoon when people should be going home from the fields or from fishing, but the road in front of us was deserted. An old man had passed by an hour or so ago, but since then . . . nada. Anything out of the ordinary was cause for concern, but there could be a multitude of reasons for the lack of traffic.

“Jeff,” I whispered, “Any movement at all over there?”

“Nothing, Corporal,” he whispered back from where he was glassing the area to the north of us.

He’d been more formal since I blew up at him over using me for his meet-up with Jewell. We’d lost some of our easy camaraderie that we’d had before, and I missed it. I didn’t know how to fix that, though, or even if I should. I was supposed to be the NCO here, after all. Still, I felt the loss.

Being a scout sniper has a certain panache, I knew. I think most people, not just civilians, but Marines, thought we went out each day and tallied huge kills, like Vasily Zaitsev, the famous Soviet sniper at Leningrad. The movie, “Enemy at the Gates,” was good in that it highlighted what snipers do, but it was Hollywood, and it was based on one of the best snipers ever, so it gave the impression that all we did was go to shooting galleries all day, knocking off the enemy right and left. In reality, most of the time, we sat with our thumbs up our butt, doing nothing other than calling in bits of intel; if we even saw something noteworthy, that is. The line platoons had more action than us, if you want to be truthful about it. And so far, this was par for the course. We’d been out here for close to 34 hours, just lying on the ground and watching the trees. To make matters worse, this close to the river, and with all the green around us, mosquitoes were a pain in the butt. In Ramadi itself, flies were a constant annoyance, but here, the mosquitoes were on the attack, looking for any way to get to their next meal. I’d talked to some old salts about Vietnam, and those guys knew mosquitoes. I never thought, though, that I’d be worried about the buggers in the deserts of Iraq.

The night before, I had to cover up in my snivel gear, the Marine-issued poncho liner I carried with me. This close to the river and at this time of year, it didn’t get very cold at night, but it was better sweating like a racehorse than being eaten alive.

In the distance, a flock of birds started making a racket. That could mean someone was there, or it could mean they were just waking up and preparing to go out and eat. That direction would bear watching, though.

I checked my M40A3. I was more comfortable with this weapon than any other, but for the hundredth time, I wondered if I should have brought an M16. The viz was so limited from our hide that the M40 would be harder to bring to bear. An M16 would’ve been more practical, and with the ACOG, the scope we mounted on them, the rifle was more than accurate enough for any shot we might have to make. If I could hit a bullseye at 600 meters with iron sights, I could hit a person at 1,000 meters with the ACOG.

Both Jeff and Bo had M16s. Chuckie had his SAW and carried a Mossburg shotgun across his back. Doug and I both had our M40s as well as our 9 mm’s strapped to our thighs.

“I’ve got movement along the road, here,” Bo said. “Looks like nine hajjis and a donkey cart.”

I shifted my position to look. Through the trees, I could see the men. A few carried the weird-looking shovels many Iraqis seemed to favor, and they all were pretty filthy. This looked like a construction crew going home; only most of the homes were in the direction from where they were coming, not where they were going. Three of them were grab-assing around, but the others just seemed tired, plodding along, eyes on the ground in front of them. One carried a long stick which he periodically used to switch the donkey’s butt, but I couldn’t see any change in the animal’s pace.

“Looks like a working party. Let’s keep our eyes on them, though,“ Doug ordered.

I swiveled back to cover my own sector. If there was anyone out there, they could use the group of men as a distraction. I kept glassing the area, but as the men got closer and I could hear them talking, I kept glancing back up to them. We’d all taken Arabic lessons back at Camp Lejeune before deploying, but none of it had stuck with us long enough for us to understand what they were saying.

I had just glanced back as they drew abreast of us, about 20 meters away, when someone rose up from the bed of the donkey cart. It took me a second to realize that he had a PK in his hands, and he started John Wayne-ing it, spraying our hide with machine gun fire. The other workers, the ones who had looked so tired a moment ago, jumped to the cart and pulled out weapons before diving to the ditch on the other side of the road.

All of this registered in a split second as rounds peppered our hide, going right through the front wall and out the back. Luckily, we were all prone, and the insurgent was shooting high, each burst stitching upwards.

I swung my M40 around, trying to acquire the target, but the field of vision on the scope was limited, and the range was so short, that I was having a problem. I heard Chuckie open up with his SAW just as I got the machine gunner in my sights. Chuckie’s burst hit him from the belly and up through the chest. He fell over backwards, landing bonelessly on the hard-packed dirt of the road.

There was a whoosh of an RPG followed almost immediately by the boom of it hitting our hide. We’d all been focusing on the machine gunner, ignoring the rest of the men, and one of them had gotten off the rocket. Once again, though, it had hit high, most of the blast going over us even if we were stunned for a moment.

I coughed and wiped the dust from my eyes, struggling to take someone under fire. Another blast in front of me sent dust up, blocking my vision. It had probably been a hand grenade, but the walls of the Marriott were strong enough to stop most of the shrapnel of that, at least.

I caught a glimpse of figures running through the trees. The insurgents in front of us were there to pin us down and provide cover for who knows how many others to join them. I had someone in my sights for only a moment as he ran forward, but that is all I needed. I jerked the trigger, praying that how quick I did that wouldn’t pull my weapon off target. It didn’t. I saw my target tumble forward to lie on the ground. Two down, and I had no idea how many more to go.

“Batman, this is Kiwi 3. We are under attack by at least 20, I say again, 20 insurgents. We need arty now at Target C2, I say again, C2, over,” Doug was shouting on the radio.

It wasn’t a proper call for fire, but it would do. We’d registered the area around us as targets, and we should have incoming in a minute or so. Once those landed, I knew the insurgents would melt away. We just had to hold on that long.

“Noah, take the rear! We can’t let anyone come up behind us!” he ordered.

I hesitated a moment. I would be better utilized right here, facing where we knew we had bad guys, not watching for some coming up from somewhere else. But then again, the three non-rates were better armed for that.

I low-crawled to the back wall before edging up and peeking out the window: I didn’t see anything. I looked back to the front where the other four were busy putting rounds downrange. They were all prone, shooting through breaks in the wall. If the insurgents were in the ditch, then all those rounds were doing was making them keep their heads down. We couldn’t hit them, but if they were keeping down, they couldn’t hit us, either.

Doug grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin and tossed it out the window. A few seconds later, I heard the blast, but then a “Shit!” from Doug. His toss evidently hadn’t landed in the ditch.

I looked back out the window. The back wall was more intact, and the window was the only place from which I could see out of the hide. I shifted from one side of the window to the other, trying to cover as much area as possible.

“Incoming!” Doug shouted,

I ducked down. A few moments later, I could hear our arty whistle in, then explode. Peeking out a broken portion of the front wall, I could see explosions, but up too high. Maybe some rounds were getting to the ground, but I could see at least two rounds exploding as they hit the treetops. Even so, that should be enough to convince the insurgents to pull back.

As the last round landed, there was a hush. No one was firing. I figured the insurgents were making a hasty retreat. I figured wrong. First one AK opened up, then what sounded like an M16 opened up. They were still in the fight.

Doug got back on the hook with Batman, the TOC, telling them the arty didn’t have much effect. The TOC told him air was coming in with a two-minute ETA.

The line of reeds formed a wall in front of me, only 10 meters away. My M40 was really a liability.

“Hey Chuckie, give me the Mossburg!” I shouted.

He stopped firing his SAW for a moment, flipped the shotgun off his shoulder, then slid it across the floor to me. It only went halfway, and I had to crawl to get it. The Mossburg was a 12-guage shotgun. We used it with a Lockbuster-C round to open locks on doors for building entries, but we also had double ought buckshot rounds. I thought it would be a better weapon given the circumstances. I checked it for rounds, then backed up against the wall beneath the window and edged up.

I popped my head to so I could see out, and I am not sure who was more surprised, the insurgent standing two feet away or me. His eyes got wide and his mouth dropped open as he started to swing around his AK.

I probably looked the same. I had seen bad guys through my scope, of course, but I had never been this close to the enemy. I had led with the barrel of the Mossburg, though, so I was quicker. I pumped one round of double ought into his chest, blood making a cloud that lingered in the air as he went down hard. I pushed forward to make sure he was dead, sticking my head out and leaning over the sill.

Mistake.

Hands grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and pulled me forward. Off balance, I tumbled out of the window and on the ground. I hit hard.

Whoever grabbed me had pulled my flak jacket, and now it had ridden up over my face, pulling my arms up. I couldn’t see a thing. I expected to hear the shot that would kill me as I struggled to bring down at least one arm to grab my 9 mm. I realized that there were at least two people pulling me, dragging me to the reeds. I tried to call out, but my flak jacket was around my throat, and I’m not sure anyone could hear. Images of being captured flashed through my mind. None of us liked to think of it, but we all knew it could happen. We’d all seen the beheading videos. I was in full panic mode, struggling to break free. I wasn’t going to let them take me.

There were two burst of M16 fire. The hands pulling me stopped, and a body fell on top of me.

“Noah!” I heard, then feet pounding.

Without the pressure of being dragged, I was able to pull my battle gear down and get to my knees, pulling out my 9 mm. Jeff reached me just as I cleared the handgun.

“Get up!” he shouted.

He pulled me to my feet, and we sprinted back to the window. We had to jump over the guy I’d taken out with the Mossburg. Jeff pretty much threw me up and over the sill, where I fell flat to the floor. He jumped in after, landing on top of me.

“You OK?” he asked, handing me the shotgun he’d picked up off the ground.

“I . . . I think so,“ I said. I was dazed, and just now realizing what had just happened. I felt like throwing up.

“Don’t pull that shit again!” he said as he rushed forward to take his position.

“Cover our six, Noah,” Doug said. He had to have known what’d happened, but he needed me on point.

I crept back and looked out the window again. Below me, his chest a bloody ruin, my victim lay on his back, his right elbow bent, his hand pointing to the sky. His eyes were open, and his expression was as if this was all some sort of mistake. I had seen the results of my action before, but all at a distance. My targets were not really people, just figures in some realistic video game. This guy, though, this guy was a person. I couldn’t just compartmentalize him. I could see the stubble of his beard. I could see that he had tied up his left sandal with a piece of cord to keep it on. I wondered fleetingly what his name was.

I didn’t feel regret. He would have killed me, then fired on the guys from behind. I was glad I killed him. But he was different than the rest. He made me wonder, and I don’t think that is a good thing for a sniper.

The other two men, the ones who had been intent on dragging me off, were laying face down right at the edge of the reeds. Another two feet and we would have been gone, out of sight and out of reach. Jeff had saved my butt in the nick of time.

I heard the whup-whup of an approaching Cobra. There would be two of them, making gun runs. The trees wouldn’t give the insurgents any protection as the 20 mm shells rained down on them. They had to know that, and there was no way they would stand and fight. They never did.

Except this time.

As the first Cobra started its run, I heard Bo mutter, “Oh fuck, here they come!”

Someone in that ragtag group of insurgents also knew that they couldn’t stand up to the Cobras, but instead of running, they were charging. That nameless man knew the safest place would be in the hide, and he had gotten at least some of his fellow insurgents up and charging us.

I dove forward to where I could fire out of another broken spot in the wall. Just to the right of me, Chuckie stood up, using the open window to give him a better field of fire. He opened up with the SAW, sweeping it back and forth. I saw three people fall from the fire as I fired at another with the Mossburg, dropping him. He screamed and clutched his belly, but as he was out of the fight, I left him alone. All of us were firing, and at least five were down, but another four were almost on us. They were just too close for us to take them out before they reached us.

An explosion ripped us from behind. I felt a sting in my leg, and next to me, Chuckie stumbled. None of us had seen the grenade fly in. Chuckie had been standing, so he had taken the brunt of the explosion. He went down to one knee, then steadied himself and stood back up, firing just as one of the insurgents started to dive in the window. Chuckie blew his head off, the body coming to rest half in and half out of our hide.

Not everyone had followed the leader of the charge. I saw at least two men stand up to run away just as the entire road erupted into dust, broken palm branches, and smoke. The Cobra’s 20 mm rounds simply destroyed the area and anybody still in the ditch.

There were at least two men, though, still standing, up against whole sections of the wall of our hide. We couldn’t get out to fire at them, they couldn’t get at us. We could hear them shouting to each other, separated from us by only the width of the wall, a few inches. At best.

Chuckie hobbled over to where we heard one voice, leveled his SAW, and let loose. The rounds ate their way through the wall in seconds, and the voices stopped.

“There he goes,” Bo said calmly as the remaining man made a break for it. He fired one round from his M16. “And there he stays.”

The second Cobra made a run, but I don’t think there was anything left alive out there.

Chuckie sat down hard.

“Did you see that?” he asked. “I smoked checked them good, right?”

“Fuck yeah, you did,” Doug told him. “Here, let me look at you.”

Blood streamed down both of his legs and one arm. His neck was bloody, too. He started breathing hard.

“Bo, call back to TOC. Tell them we need an immediate casevac,”

“Chuckie, you done good there. Let’s get you patched up, then we’ll see about getting you to Charlie Med.”

“I’m OK,” Chuckie said. “Man, I fucked them up but good!”

They couldn’t get a helo into such a small area, so they sent one of the Army M1113 ambulances, escorted by some Bradleys. Chuckie kept saying he was fine even as the Army medic was taking care of him, but he was pretty messed up. It was amazing that he’d even been able to stand again after being hit to take out the two of the last three bad guys.

Outside the hide, bodies were strewn about like broken toys. The guy I’d shot in the stomach was still alive, so he was loaded up with us while the soldiers policed up the dead, looking for intel. We didn’t wait to get a body count but rode back with Chuckie and the wounded insurgent back to Charlie Med at Camp Ramadi.

Chapter 20

Hurricane Point

June 3, 2013

Mario was up against a wall, his little legs churning but getting him nowhere. I watched him, but my mind was somewhere else. His efforts finally registered, and with a sigh, I shut off the Nintendo and looked around the squad bay. All of us were hanging out, even SSgt Rawhiu who bunked in with the SNCOs. Our weapons were clean, our gear policed. The four of us in our team had been debriefed. Normally, half of us would be racked out, but we were all still awake. A couple of guys were playing hearts, but most of us were just waiting.

When the lieutenant came in with the first sergeant and Azar, one of the interpreters, we all jumped up and gathered round waiting for the word.

Lieutenant Tammerline was dual-hatted as our platoon commander and the battalion S-2. His primary mission was as the intel officer, but it was as our commander that he’d been over at Camp Ramadi with 1stSgt Hall.

“OK, listen up. The first sergeant and I just got back from Charlie Med. LCpl Tranh’s out of surgery and stable. He’s on his way to Balad, though, then he’s going to Landstuhl.”

That brought a murmur from all of us. If Chuckie was getting medivaced to the Army hospital in Germany, he had to be in pretty bad condition.

“At ease,” the first sergeant growled.

The lieutenant held up one hand like a cop stopping traffic. “He’s stable, and he’s going to make it. But his left knee suffered some serious damage, and they don’t have the capability to put it back together here. They’ll try at Landstuhl, but he’s probably on his way back to Bethesda. He was still out of it when he was medivac’d to Balad, but I’m sure he would have told everyone not to worry about him.”

“But he’s going to be OK?” Doug asked.

“That’s what the doc said, yeah. The most serious thing is his left leg. The surgeon was able to save the leg for now, but he doesn’t know if Eric will have a full recovery. That’s up to what happens at Lansdstuhl or Bethesda,” he said, using Chuckie’s real name. “His right leg was cleaned out and patched up, and both the radius and ulna on his left arm were broken, but those injuries, and the rest of the wounds on his left leg, should heal fine. It’s the knee that’s a concern.”

I’d been one of the first to get up to stand in front of the lieutenant. Now I stepped back and sat down. The battalion had suffered casualties before, even KIAs, but Chuckie was the first of us to be seriously hurt, hurt bad enough to get casevac’d, then medivac’d out of theater. It was a relief to know he’d make it, even if he was still pretty seriously hurt.

There was a moment of silence while we digested that, and then the first sergeant asked, “What about you other four? Doc Julian said you’d taken some shrapnel? You OK?”

I’d taken a small piece of shrapnel in my thigh, barely the size of a grain of rice. I’d had Doc Tinker, one of the junior corpsmen, swab it down with betadine, but I wasn’t going to let anyone else outside of the team know about it. Tinker told me I would rate a Purple Heart if he logged it, but that wasn’t going to happen. He merely shrugged when I told him not to log anything, and from his reaction I figured he’d heard that before from more than one Marine.

Bo needed stitches on his arm, and we couldn’t hide that. He wasn’t sure when he’d been cut, but it took thirteen stitches down at the battalion aid station to close it up.

“LCpl Wilson needed some stitches, but he’s good to go, First Sergeant,” Doug replied.

I looked over at Doug when he’s said that. I’d seen the bandages covering his thigh, but evidently, he’d wanted to keep that quiet as well.

“Now, I wanted to pass on some intel to you. As you know, it isn’t like Al Qaeda to stand and fight. Well, we found something that might explain their willingness to take on Marines . . . and die,” the lieutenant said.

Sometimes, I think our platoon commander was more gung ho that the rest of us. He’s gone to the commanders course at Scout Sniper School, but he wasn’t a HOG, nor did he go out to the fight. He was a pogue, a desk jockey. But when he talked to the platoon, he had more bravado than any of us.

“First, it looks like we weren’t attacked by seasoned Al Qaeda insurgents.” The LT was a good guy, but who was the “we” he was talking about. He wasn’t out at the Marriott with us. “These bozos were probably just normal Iraqis, not even former Iraqi Army. So why would simple farmers take on battle-hardened Marines? Were they suicidal? For that, I’m going to let Azar here show you something.”

Azar stepped forward, his hair and moustache perfectly groomed, as usual. Azar was one of the half-dozen interpreters we had at the Point, and if I thought the LT was gung ho, Azar put him to shame. He was a Christian, and he seemed to hate both the Sunni and the Shia with equal passion. I’d heard through the grapevine that he’d gone overboard a few times when out with the line companies.

He pulled out a piece of folded paper from his rear pocket, and made a show of opening it up.

“Cpl Lindt, do you know you have a bounty on your head?” he asked, looking at the paper.

That took me by surprise, to say the least.

He walked over and handed me the paper. It was in Arabic, but a few English words stood out. What stood out more where four photos, one of me leaving the main gate to Hurricane Point.

“The first reward, that is for Al Shaitan Ramadi , what you say ‘The Devil of Ramadi.’ He is worth $20,000.”

We all knew who the Devil of Ramadi was. He was a Navy SEAL, and his rep was rapidly rising. I hadn’t met him yet, but I would be honored if I had the chance.

“After him is SFC Mathews, but he is already in the US, so it is long way to get him, I think.”

He paused as if waiting for a laugh. I just kept looking at my photo. Several other Marines crowded around my shoulder to get a look as well.

“So we have two more, one SEAL and you, Cpl Lindt. You are worth $5,000 to anyone who can get you. Every sniper is worth $1,000, but you are more. The dead men who try to kill your team, they have three of the posters. The man you shoot, he likes to sing like a canary, as you say. You shoot off his cock, and he wants it back on, so he tells us everything. They know Marine snipers are there, but they don’t know it is you, only pray you are there. They want the money.”

I looked up and asked “I shot off his cock?”

I’d just been told there was a bounty on my head, and I asked that?

There were laughs from the others, and Uriah shouted out, “Shit, Noah, he’s talking now because he’s running around half-cocked! Get it? ‘Half-cocked!’ Good IT technique, there, HOG!”

That brought louder laughter, and Jeff slapped me hard on the shoulder.

“Not actually, Noah,” the LT said, holding out his hands to quiet everyone down and regain control of the conversation. “Most of the pellets hit him in the belly, but one evidently nicked his, well, shaft, and the guy was afraid he’d lose it. He was, shall we say, very cooperative on the condition that the surgeons make everything good again. According to him, this was purely financial, from what I heard while I was there.”

“For 5,000 bucks, I’ll take him out myself,” Grant Vaca said, slapping me on the back as he looked over my shoulder at the poster.

Others chimed in that they wanted the chance first, and I heard hooted warnings not to walk in front of anyone else while on patrol. Doug shouted that he was worth at least $10,000 and offered to put up the reward money for him himself.

I was in a slight state of shock, knowing that the enemy had my name and had offered a reward. Seeing my photo reproduced on the wanted poster made it seem real. But when I looked up at the platoon as everyone laughed and bragged, the first sergeant and LT laughing, too, I wondered what a strange creature a Marine is. We’d just lost one of us, someone who could end up losing his leg. Now we found out that there was a bounty on us, not just me, but all of us. Our reaction? To laugh and brag about how badass we were.

The thing is, I think there is a lot of truth to those boasts.

Chapter 21

Ramadi

July 1, 2006

“Do you think they’ll come?” Jeff asked.

“Don’t know. They’ve got to know what we’re doing, but from the brief, those are some pretty insulting words.”

We were alone in a room overlooking the square below us. Doug and Bo were in the next room. We were supposed to be together, but this way, we could give better coverage, and with only a wall between us, it wasn’t like we couldn’t support each other.

In the square below were six Humvees, a 5-ton, and an Army Bradley. There was a speaker mounted on the 5-ton and from it poured a stream of Arabic. I couldn’t understand any of it, but we were briefed that it was all extremely insulting, calling the Iraqis cowards and worse.

This was a new mission, something we dubbed as being flybait. The Army had employed it first a few days ago, and they had egged on about 14 insurgents to attack. The result of the attack was 14 dead insurgents and not a single soldier hurt.

I was glad I wasn’t sitting out there with the Kilo platoon, just waiting. There wasn’t any doubt that in a full-out fight, the Marines would win, but there was nothing to stop someone from popping out with an RPG, taking a shot, then bugging out. Of course, we were also somewhat exposed. Our hide was chosen because it offered good coverage. The insurgents would realize that, too, and they might send someone up to take a look and find the four of us already here. Still, I think I would feel more vulnerable out there in a Humvee.

“Sticks and stones, you know,” Jeff said.

“Yeah, you and I know. But those guys who took on the Ready First sure didn’t know that.”

“Oh well, kill enough of them, and the ones left’ll know not to fuck with us. That’s like the Darwin Awards, right?”

I looked at Jeff. I loved the guy, but did he realize the survival of the fittest was from Charles Darwin himself, not the internet-based Darwin Awards that honored burglars who crawled down chimneys at restaurants and got stuck only to be cooked by the breakfast shift? I started to say something, then decided to leave it alone. I guess the Darwin Awards were more entertaining than Darwin himself.

It was getting pretty hot, and I had to keep wiping the sweat from my eyes as I glassed the area. I tried to think where I would be if I was an Al Qaeda sniper, so I scanned the heights, looking for any movement. A solitary crow flew to an old TV antenna. It perched there looking down on the Marines. I tended to read lot, especially fantasy, and I could imagine one of the crows from Game of Thrones spying on us, someone watching through its eyes. The bird certainly seemed interested in what was below him. I put the bird in my sights. At less than 120 meters away, he filled my field of view. It would be an easy shot.

Luckily, while I was goofing off, Jeff was doing his job.

“I’ve got movement at Wonka.”

We’d named some of the buildings below us while we were waiting. “Wonka” was no different from the others except that it had pink curtains with some sort of figures on it. The figures sort of looked like oompa loompas, so we dubbed it Wonka. This wasn’t exactly by the book, but it was quicker than “that building, the white one to the right of the one with the scorch mark on the side wall.”

I snapped to, dropping my scope to see for myself. I tried to see through the window, but there was nothing.

“What was it?”

“Two people, and I’m sure I saw a weapon. They should be up against the front wall,” he told me.

The front door to the building was about 20 meters from the nearest Humvee. That gave very little reaction time to the Marines down there. I started to tell Jeff to go get Doug to call it in, but at that moment a man made an appearance at the front door. Packed around his chest was the unmistakable bulk of a suicide vest. He had a pronounced look of fear on his face as he started to run, but I was already in action. My single shot took him in the upper chest, just above his vest, before he had taken his second step. He fell face-first to the ground. I had braced for the explosion, but nothing happened. I looked back through my scope. I could see the suicide button still grasped in his hand. Could it have clamped down as he died? Could my shot have severed the control wire?

It took a moment, but then fire broke out: a few individual shots, then a volley. It didn’t take the soldiers and Marines more than an instant to fire back. The Bradley’s 20 mm chain gun opened up, sending stucco and wood flying. The Army vehicle’s M240 opened up as well, and the Ma Deuce on the five-ton began to dance with the M240, each burst of one answered by a burst of another. It was like a violent version of Dueling Banjos . I’m not sure too many of the Marines fired their personal weapons. The Bradley overpowered everything else as far as pure firepower, and the five-ton and Humvees’ mounted guns and the M19 grenade launcher added to the cacophony.

After about two minutes or so, the firing died down. Dust and smoke covered the square, and the bitter smell of cordite drifted up to us. Wonka looked like Swiss cheese, as did a number of other buildings. The Marines started getting out of their vehicles to clear the buildings. I only took a glance at the TV antennae. The crow had long since flown the coop, and I felt guilty about letting myself get distracted. I kept up my observation, covering those Marines below us. It only took them about ten minutes to clear the buildings, dragging out six bodies to lie in the street. The bodies came out tan and covered with dust, but as the blood seeped from the broken bodies, it stained the street red.

Chapter 22

Surrounding Ramadi General Hospital

July 3, 2006

I’d never really met any Army snipers before. We’d gone over to Camp Ramadi for the brief, and we had two Marine Scout Sniper teams joining up with three of the Army sniper teams. We had a real HOG mission, a counter-sniper mission. The battalion was going to take the Ramadi General Hospital in two days, but there was a problem. The hospital had been used as a base of operations by a sniper team, in particular, a Chechen sniper, and he’d been taking out ISF and IPs with a high degree of efficiency.

The Chechens were pretty capable snipers. Armed with their 7.62 SVD Dragunovs, they had held off the mighty Soviet Army from entering Grozny. It wasn’t until the Soviets basically leveled the city with artillery, tanks, and air that they were able to root out the snipers.

Intel didn’t have a name, but they knew he was Chechen, and the CG had let the brigade commander know he didn’t want the battalion to go into the assault with that guy still there. The brigade’s operations officer figured that it took a sniper to catch one, something pretty much all of us felt. In a nutshell the plan was to surround the hospital and take him out the minute he showed even a nose.

I was glad to compare notes with the Army guys. They were snipers, not scout snipers. The brigade had separate scout sections that took care of the recon missions. I was more interested in their weapons. While we had the M40A3 rifle , they used the M24 Sniper Weapon System . I wasn’t sure why it was a weapon system, but the rifle was based on the same Remington 700 as ours. It had a slightly longer action as it was initially designed to fire a 30-06 round, but overall, it was pretty much the same as ours.

We weren’t given time to see much of Camp Ramadi, which was too bad. It looked like a Hilton Resort compared to the Point. We were out of there before we knew it, getting positioned for the mission. That was easier said than done. The area around the hospital was more densely populated than the area around the government center and Route Michigan, and we had to get five teams in without alerting our prey. Once we were emplaced, an Army platoon was going to show themselves as bait. It was up to us to take the enemy sniper out before he could engage the soldiers.

Those soldiers, God pity them, had shown up over an hour ago. They were in a few Bradleys, debarking to go around with an interpreter and knock on doors on some sort of fake mission. So far, the bait hadn’t been taken.

I continued to scope the hospital, looking for any sign of movement where there shouldn’t be. Jeff was beside me, completely still as he glassed the hospital as well. Doug and Bo were in the same building as us, but one floor below and two windows to the right. Between us, this gave us a broader field of fire. Jeff and I had found two tables while we were preparing our hide, and we were lying on them, a good foot higher than the bottom of the window. We both were covered with ponchos and had draped fabric over us, making it as difficult to see us from the outside as possible. I moved as slowly as I could while I scanned. I thought we’d constructed a pretty good hide, but this was an accomplished sniper, and I didn’t want an incoming round to announce we’d screwed up somewhere.

We didn’t have Chuckie with us, and that still felt odd. We did have one other person, though. The lieutenant had decided he needed to see what we did on an actual mission. The chief sniper was with First Team, but the platoon commander was with us, five feet back and prone. It had taken me a few minutes to explain why he shouldn’t be using his own binos to scan the hospital. Our scopes, even mine, were much better instruments, and we didn’t need him to give us away with light reflecting from his lenses. He took that well, though, and was now in back of us on the deck, lying on his stomach and face down. He had his radio up against his ear as he monitored what was happening, which was not much yet.

We’d been there for about five hours, and my eyes were tearing up. I could hear the LT in back of me as he shifted position more often. I wanted to say something but backed off. When the first report of a round sounded, I think we all perked up. It was a lone shot, from the direction of the hospital, some 300 meters away. Moments later, a handful of shots from the other side of the hospital sounded. It looked like the Army was engaged.

I could hear voices come over the lieutenant’s radio. He answered back, then listened for another moment.

“I think they got him,” he told us, shifting to a sitting position.

“Sir, get down! We don’t know that yet, and you’re presenting a target,” I hissed.

“But . . .” he started, then laid back down.

I strained to see something, anything on the roof, through a window, anything. This guy was a pro, and if he’d been taken out, well and good. I wasn’t going to stand down, though, until I had confirmation that he was gone. We waited, not moving a muscle, for another five minutes before the lieutenant got another message.

“One dead hajji, on the roof, confirmed,” he said.

I could hear him get up, steps coming toward us. I started to relax, to let myself ease off of the full alert status I’d kept myself. Something teased at the back of my mind, though. The lieutenant had said “hajji,” the name most Marines gave to the Iraqis, particularly when they were in civilian clothes. We called soldiers jindiis, and from what I gathered from previous briefs, the Chechens like to wear their uniforms as if to differentiate themselves from the Iraqis.

“Sir,” I started to say when a shot rang out.

At almost the same instant, I heard the whiz of the round as it came in the window, then the thunk as it hit home.

“Shit!” the LT shouted as he fell, hitting the table on which I was lying. He bounced off and fell to the floor. I froze, knowing that I was in someone’s line of sight.

“Mother fuck!” the LT said from below.

“You OK, sir?” Jeff asked.

“No, I’m not OK! I’ve been shot!”

I risked a glance down. Lt Tammerline was on the floor, pulling off his helmet. He took a look at where a round had ripped through the cover along the side. He had a gash along his triceps, running a few inches, blood beginning to soak through his cammie sleeve. The round had evidently been deflected by the helmet, but I wasn’t sure how it had then hit his arm.

“Sir, if you’re OK, stay there. You’re out of the line of fire, but if you get up he’ll have you in his sights again,” I told him.

“Mother fuck! If I hadn’t started to bend over, that would have taken me in the chest. Would my flak jacket have stopped that?” he asked as he scooted up under the window, then over to the side.

He hit my poncho while doing that, making it shake. I scanned, hoping that hadn’t revealed my position.

“You catch anything?” I asked Jeff.

“Nothing.”

I hadn’t seen a muzzle flash. This guy was good. Whoever had been taken out, I was sure it wasn’t our guy. Maybe a spotter, maybe a protégé, but not our target.

“Batman, this is Kiwi Six. The target has not been eliminated, I repeat, not been eliminated. He is taking us under fire. I’ve been hit but am OK, over,” I heard the LT call over the radio.

I tuned him out. I had to concentrate.

A single shot rang off from our left. Team One had taken someone under fire. I thought I saw a trace for a moment, but I couldn’t follow it to the target, nor did I see a strike. I keep scanning, try to acquire a target.

“Noah, I’m not sure, but I think I see something. Look on the roof, in back of that water chiller. Look beneath it to the back on the left,” Jeff said.

I shifted my scope and did as he told me. The water chiller was some sort of big condenser, the kind that factories used to pre-chill water before cooling. It was a huge square thing, with pipes the brought the water up, then let it drizzle down over baffles to cool it a few degrees. Most of the water went back down through enclosed pipes, but some fell like rain along the outside of the pipes. I would had thought that in Iraq, the loss due to evaporation would make that an expensive proposition, but then again, that evaporation would work to cool down the water faster. Between the baffles, pipes, and dripping water, it was pretty hard to see through the thing. There was light coming through, so this wasn’t a solid piece of equipment, but I couldn’t see through the small spaces.

The chiller was at the edge of the roof where it would catch the best breeze. There was another on the north wall, and from my position to the west, I could see in back of it. There was probably five or six feet between the back of that one and the wall of some sort of structure that sat on top of the roof.

It looked like the water was gathered in a collection pan that made up the bottom of the chiller. This pan was less than a foot above the deck of the roof, and between the four support posts that held the entire thing up and the mass of pipes that disappeared down into the hospital, there was a gap of about a foot or so. This gap was on both sides of the chiller.

My angle was bad, and I didn’t have a clear field of view, but there did seem to be something out of place under the raised bottom and beside the pipes. I couldn’t make it out.

“Yeah, I see it. What of it?”

“I thought I saw it move,” he told me.

I took another look. The shape was nothing specific. It could have been a toolbox, a trash bag, almost anything. I looked again at the chiller itself, trying to see through the maze of pipes and water. I couldn’t see a thing. But someone up against the chiller, that would be different. Just as you could see out a keyhole while no one could see in, someone in back of the chiller, even in the chiller, could see out. A barrel of a Dragunov could be placed where it could be fired. A sniper wouldn’t even have to stand behind the chiller. A few bent pipes, and he could slide in, getting wet the only result.

I tried to imagine someone standing just in back of the chiller, or just within it. Would there be someplace to stand, or would he have to stand on the ground? Could that shape be a boot, my view partially obstructed?

The more I looked at it, the more it just felt right. It was worth a shot, at least.

“I’m going to shoot it,” I told Jeff.

“You seem him?” the lieutenant asked from the corner.

I didn’t answer. Shooting solutions were going through my mind. This was a very, very narrow opening, and my round would be dropping. I could see the trace in my mind, and no matter how I figured it, I couldn’t make the shot. The round could not make it. There was not enough clearance between the front edge of the chiller and the roof top to hit the foot, if it was a foot, in back. The Barrett might be able to do it with its flatter trajectory, but it could also probably punch right through the chiller. The problem was that no one on the team had the big gun.

“I can’t do it. There’s not enough clearance,” I told Jeff.

“Skip it in,” he said.

“What?”

“You know, skip it, like skipping rocks. Bounce it.”

I thought for a moment. The roof top was concrete. A direct impact would either go through or deflect off, but this would be an extremely oblique angle. If I hit the concrete half way back under the chiller, it would simple deflect back up. It was worth a shot, I figured.

This would still be a very difficult shot. The air between us seemed still, but the currents could be swirling. I had a very narrow target, maybe four inches or so of it showing. If it was a boot, there would be a leg going up, but that was out of my sight. I had about six or eight inches to get it under the chiller, then I had to get it at the right spot to deflect just right. For once, my mind couldn’t decide on a firing solution. I just didn’t know how to take bumper pool into account.

Finally, I just picked a spot under the chiller. I would ignore the boot and focus on that spot. I took my hog’s tooth out, kissed it, and put it in my mouth. I brought my weapon to bear and began to squeeze the trigger. I had a fleeting thought that I might be shooting some maintenance man’s lunch when the round went off. A moment later, I saw the impact as it hit under the chiller and ricocheted up. Concrete dust blocked my vision.

“It’s gone,” Jeff said. “You got it!”

But just what had I gotten?

I thought I saw a drip of something under the chiller, but whether that was water, blood, or the Iraqi equivalent of raspberry jam, I wasn’t sure. I kept staring, trying to see anything.

What I saw was a very faint flash, more of a puff of mist as dripping water was displaced. I didn’t even think. I just rolled to my right as something gouged a hole beneath me, splinters of wood flying. I tumbled off the table and onto the floor. I heard Jeff land on the floor a split second later.

“You OK?” he shouted anxiously.

“Yeah, he missed,” I replied, knowing he’d missed by only a fraction of a second. There was no doubt in my mind that the round would have hit me flush in the face had I not moved.

“We need to move. If he’s locked onto us, I can’t get up, acquire him, and fire before he can fire at us,” I said. “Lieutenant, we’re going up to the roof. You stay here.”

He was sitting in the corner, right hand pressing down on his left bicep, left hand holding his radio. He looked around the room before replying, “That’s a negative. No one stays alone here. I’m coming with you.”

I started to argue, but he was right. I’d been trying to keep him safe by having him stay back, but no one in Ramadi was ever safe when he was alone.

“OK, sir, you come with us, but stay way back when we get there. You sure you’re OK, though? You need a corpsman?” I asked, looking at his red-stained sleeve.

“I’m fine. I’ve been hurt worse playing tennis. I’ll get it taken care of after all of this is over.”

“Tennis, Lieutenant? Where’d you play? Sadr City?” Jeff asked with a laugh.

“Fort Worth. People take their tennis seriously there.”

If the LT was joking, he was probably not too badly hurt. We had to focus now at the job at hand. Staying low and out of the line-of-sight, we crawled to the door and out into the hall. At the ladderwell, I covered Jeff while he dashed down to the next deck and yelled to Doug what we’d seen and where we were going. He dashed back up, taking two steps at a time.

“Taggart says he hasn’t been spotted and he and Bo are locked in now. He said me and you gotta be careful and don’t let anything happen to the LT.”

“The ‘LT’ is standing right here, and don’t you worry about me. Just do your job and nail the bastard,” our commander told us.

We went up the ladder one more floor to the metal door that opened onto the roof. The door was on the other side of the small structure that protected the ladderwell, so we could get out onto the roof without being seen from the hospital. That didn’t mean that someone else on the west side of us couldn’t see us, so we cracked open the door and crawled out. We were now at least on floor higher than the Chechen, so that gave us a bit of cover as we chose our next position. There were boxes of machine parts close to the edge of the roof, so leaving the LT at the door, telling him to cover us, Jeff and I low-crawled to the boxes. There were two boxes side-by-side. I chose the left one as it would offer me a better angle to engage the enemy. A small conveyer-looking thing protruded from the top of the box. I gave the box a slight nudge. It moved, so it wasn’t full. If I was spotted, there was no guarantee that anything in the box would stop a round from passing through and hitting me.

During the invasion, Iraqi soldiers had a habit of using bushes as cover, firing at us from behind them. The thing is, bushes won’t stop a round, and Sgt Tensley got at least half a dozen kills by simply firing through the bushes. Well, I was in that same position. If the Chechen spotted me, he could simply fire through the box.

I slowly looked around the edge of the box. I couldn’t see the base of the chiller, only the top. I knew that by kneeling, I would be able to observe the entire thing, but if I could see him, he could see me. He had to be scoping us out just as we were trying to spot him. The problem for us was that he was still concealed. Jeff and I were on a roof, in back of two cardboard cartons. It would be easier for him to spot us than for us to spot him. Our only advantage was that he wouldn’t necessarily know we were on the roof while we were still pretty sure he was in back of or somehow jammed inside the chiller. He was probably inside it. The LT had radioed the guy’s position, and there was an Army team to the north who should have viz to the back of the chiller.

Just behind the chiller and up four concrete steps was a hatch that led inside the hospital. We hadn’t been able to see it from our previous hide. It was opened just a crack. I knew if the sniper made it to that, he’d be able to move anywhere inside. I intended to close off that avenue of escape, so I was keeping my eye on it. I was surprised to see an arm flash out, throwing what looked to be a magazine towards the chiller. It fell in back of it where the chiller itself blocked my view.

I wasn’t sure why the Chechen would be low on ammo. He’d only fired two shots that I was aware of. He should still be loaded for bear. I looked back up at the door. It was still partially open. I couldn’t see inside, but I could imagine someone standing there, waiting to see if the sniper was able to retrieve the magazine.

“On target,” I told Jeff. “The door behind the chiller.”

“323 meters,” Jeff told me, but I’d pretty much figured that out. He didn’t ask me what my target was.

“Send it,” he said.

Imagining a man standing there, I would be firing at about four feet up from the deck to get a chest shot. But if he was kneeling, that could go over his head. I opted to go lower. If he was standing, it would be a gut shot. If he was kneeling, it could be a head shot.

The hatch was only open about 6 inches. That was both good and bad. It was bad because it gave me a smaller target. It was good because it would limit where the target could be if we was watching the Chechen.

I sent the round. I didn’t catch the trace, and I didn’t see an impact on the hatch or the doorjamb. Nothing happened for a moment, and I wondered if all my assumptions had been wrong. Then the hatch slowly eased open, a body appearing as it slumped forward, pushing the door open with its dead weight. Half of a white-robed body fell forward to lie face down on the steps, the lower half still inside the door.

Either my report gave me away or I got too high, because the Chechen fired, the round clanging on something metallic inside the box I was using for concealment. I dropped down as two more rounds hit the box, the last one going right through, passing over me by six inches.

After the third shot, I bounced back up. I knew he was going to be making a break for the hatch. I was right, I saw his hands grasp the top of the chiller to pull himself out, then disappear. I set my sights on the steps, knowing that he would have to step around the dead Iraqi to make it in. I saw the very top of his head bob up and down as if he was limping, so my first round must have hit home. Still, even hobbled, I’d have only a second or two before he dove through the hatch.

The chiller still covered him from me, but not from the Army team to the north. A single shot rang out, and the Chechen fell to the ground just within my sight to the side of the chiller. He managed to pull himself forward twice, then he went still. His right foot was at a weird angle, and it left a pretty vivid blood trail.

Face down, I couldn’t see if he looked any different from the typical insurgent. He was wearing camouflage utilities, soaked from hiding inside the chiller, so unless this was a big ruse, we’d gotten our man. He had been pretty good, good enough, at least, to take out ISF and IPs. He wasn’t good enough to take out American snipers, though, even if he’d gotten close. He’d let this boil down to a battle between him and me, something it never was. He was a lone wolf, pretty much fighting alone, whereas I was part of a well-oiled, well-trained machine. We fight as a team, even snipers, and that was a lesson he didn’t learn until too late.

Chapter 23

Ramadi

July 13, 2006

“So when do you think you’ll be firing, Iceman?” Stan, as he insisted we call him, asked as he came up in back of me.

“You need to get back down, there, Stan. This is still a hot zone,” Doug answered for me.

Stan was Stanislaw Pisk, a Fox TV correspondent. We’d had other embedded reporters, and most of them were pretty good guys, sharing our risk, doing what we do. Stan, on the other hand, was on a short two-week assignment, and he was chomping at the bit to get a good story, or at least some good footage. He’d missed out on the story of the corporal who’d been captured in Fallujah, and he seemed bound and determined to win an Emmy.

“I know, I know. But we’ve been here for over three hours now, and nothing’s happening. We’re ready to tape something exciting, something that’ll make you stars back home. Wouldn’t that be great?”

Even his cameraman rolled his eyes at that one.

Except for possibly Jeff, I was sure that none of the rest of us cared the least bit about being a “star,” so Stan’s tactic was lost on us. Doug, in particular, hated the press and thought we bent over backwards to appease them. He was positive that they all were in a league to discredit the US military. As for me, I could take them or leave them as long as they didn’t get in our way.

This guy, though, was in our way. We had been given an ad hoc mission, not really required by our planners but to let Stan see what “real snipers” did. And as I had the most kills in the battalion, he wanted to go out with our team, of course. What made matters worse, at least with Doug, was that Stan insisted on treating me as the team leader. He couldn’t seem to get his head wrapped around the fact that seniority does not go hand-in-hand with kills.

We were up in a hide we’d previously scouted, one we’d planned on using for a real mission. It was fairly intact, a large four story building with good fields of fire. We were in a room on the fourth floor, overlooking an open sandy field and a small road on the other side. We had an entire platoon from India in the bottom floors for security. There was no way we got that many people into a hide in broad daylight at 1030 without being spotted, so I doubted very much that we’d get any targets.

Stan had gotten his cameraman, someone whose name I’d already forgotten, to tape us while we set up the hide. He’d gotten shots of me on glass, scoping out the area. Now, Stan wanted a shot, the deadly sniper killing from afar.

“Look, I don’t know how much time it takes you to do your job, but we are running out of time at our end. What say we just shoot out the window? I really don’t care at what. Let us tape it, and we’ll run with that,” he said.

Hearing that, I completely tuned him out. This may be a staged mission, but this was still Indian territory. Doug was the team leader, and this time I really was content to let him deal with the situation.

Chapter 24

Government House

July 23, 2006

The Fox corpsman, Doc de Silva, I think his name was, brought over two bottles of water and gave them to us.

“Thanks, bro,” Jeff said as the corpsman moved on. He looked at me with his you-done-wrong look. “You know, it really wouldn’t have hurt you to say thank you, too.”

“Why? You thanked him.”

I really didn’t see why Jeff kept harping on me about it all the time. The corpsman was doing his job keeping all of us hydrated, plain and simple. I didn’t expect the CO to come running over to me to thank me for every bit of intel I reported, for every bad guy I took out.

“You’re a piece of work,” he said with a shake of his head as he opened the bottle and took a big gulp.

I put it out of my mind and looked out over the city. I wasn’t sure how many hours I had put in on the roof of the Government House looking over the same buildings, the same streets, watching for anything out of the ordinary. It was getting pretty boring, to be honest. I hadn’t fired my weapon since the big sniper hunt at the hospital, but at least in other missions, we’d called back mortar POOs and watched a barrage of counterbattery fire create havoc or reported suspicious activity. A couple of days ago, we’d been sent out to count how many people crossed a small footbridge going over a canal. We weren’t sure what that was all about, but it was obviously important to the head shed to get those numbers.

I reached in my cargo pocket and took out a Three Musketeers Bar. I wasn’t spending much money in Iraq. There wasn’t much to spend it on, to be sure, but I did enjoy my Three Musketeers. Between that and Mountain Dew, both of which I could buy at the geedunk, I was a pretty happy camper.

A burst of fire opened up to the north of us, only three or four hundred yards away, but out of our line of sight. I wondered who was getting into it. We had a team up there, but the firing was too intense to be from a sniper team. Jeff and I both moved to the north side of the roof. If any insurgents decided to bug out, it was possible we could catch a glimpse of them as they ran through the warrens below.

The radio chatter picked up as I watched, and when I heard “Kiwi Two,” my heart froze. “Kiwi Two” was our second team, and they were under attack from an unknown number of enemy.

“Were they alone out there, or were they with a grunt platoon?” I asked Jeff.

“I don’t know. Maybe with a platoon,” he responded, even if we both knew that was wishful thinking. The firing we heard was not from a platoon. Most of it had the distinctive chatter of AK47s, with sporadic answering fire from an M16. I kept waiting to hear the signature from a SAW, but it never sounded.

I scanned anxiously to see something, anything. The firing was not very far away, well within range, but we couldn’t see a thing. The hollowness of the sounds meant that the fight was taking place inside a building. I scoped every window I could, trying to find a target.

“They’ve called out the QRF,” Jeff said beside me.

The Quick Reaction Force would be back at the Point. The best case scenario would get them there in about 20 minutes. Could Sgt Nelson keep up the fight until they arrived?

“Gunny, you’ve got two platoons here, can’t you get up there?” I asked Gunny Albright, the Fox company gunny.

“I just asked, and we can’t leave the government center vulnerable. The QRF will get there quicker anyhow,” he replied.

I started to argue, but one of the platoon commanders rushed out on the roof and wanted to be briefed. Gunny Albright had just been up on the roof to see how his Marines were doing, and he looked relieved to pass the torch to someone else.

It was torture to stand on the roof, close enough to reach out and touch what was happening, but unable to do anything about it. There was a sudden burst of firing, then nothing. I looked back at the lieutenant and his R/O as they listened in to the traffic. Most of us were watching him. We should have focused on what was outside the compound, but that was pretty difficult.

No firing could mean that the insurgents had pulled back. It could mean something worse, though.

A small flurry of fire brought our hopes up. This time, I could hear the signature of a SAW. The firing wasn’t quite from the same area, though, but rather on the east side of Michigan. A Cobra arrived on station, and the firing died off. The attack helo circled something out of our sight, on the other side of a tall, six story building that blocked our view.

The QRF got there pretty quick, quicker than I expected. I got a glimpse of them as they drove up and got out. I had to assume they went into a building, even if I couldn’t see that.

Fighting broke out. We could hear rifle fire, and the small explosions that probably meant grenades. Something was going down. The Cobra got into the action, its 20mm cannon taking something under fire. After ten minutes, the firing petered out.

We waited.

When the word was passed, I felt like someone had hit me with a sledgehammer. Two snipers were found dead, mutilated, their weapons missing.

Chapter 25

Hurricane Point

July 24, 2006

Several of us paused outside the chapel, standing and not saying much. It was as if we didn’t want to let go. Once we went back to our squadbay, it would be over.

We’d been to other Heroes Ceremonies before, and they were all moving. This was the first time, though, that most of us in the platoon had actually known those being honored, at least known them well. We all knew Sgt Butler from India, and his ceremony back in May touched us, but this time, it was for two of our own.

Three rifles, three helmets, three sets of dogtags, three pairs of boots. The first sergeant had called the roll, all of us answering “here” except for three Marines. He called each name three times.

“Killed in Action, July 23, 2006,” he intoned for each man when they didn’t respond.

Tevin, Doughboy, and LCpl Steve Jenner, and one of the QRF Marines who had answered the call to save the other two, were dead. Yesterday, they had been full of life, three young men with futures in front of them. Today, they were in body bags at Balad, waiting to go home.

Tevin Milner was a fellow corporal, a whiter-than-white kid from Spokane who loved country music and wanted to go to Nashville and become a star. He hated to be called “Casper,” which of course we called him if for no other reason to get his goat.

Brad Poitier, “Doughboy,” was his spotter. He looked soft and pudgy, but his shape hid a powerful body that could bench 450 lbs. I tried to recall more of him, to cement his memory in my mind, but nothing was coming to me. I remembered he was a Knicks fan, but it was like my mind was caught in a huge ball of cotton. Maybe I needed some drugs like they gave Sgt Nelson.

Nelson hadn’t made it to the ceremony. He was drugged and in the rack. He was Tevin and Doughboy’s team leader, and he blamed himself for their deaths. He’d been across Michigan in another building, separated from the two. It didn’t matter to him that he’s just been following orders after having been given a mission that couldn’t have been accomplished from one spot. Most of us had been pushing for two-man teams, just like we’d been trained, Nelson being one of the most vocal about it. Given the mission yesterday, he’d reported up the chain that he needed two separate hides to accomplish it. The decision to split the team, though, wasn’t his. It came from higher up. I doubt that that made Sgt Nelson feel any better about it, though.

We all knew we were in a dangerous job. The very reason we had been switched of five-man teams was because of the Marine Reserve team getting killed. But so far, the danger seemed to only affect others, not us. Chuckie had been the only one in the platoon seriously hurt. Bo had been hit at the Marriott, too, but he was fine now. John Berry had taken a couple pieces of shrapnel from an incoming rocket while he was going to chow, but he never even made it to light duty. Even the lieutenant, who while he was our commander, we didn’t think of him as one of “us,” had been patched up and never missed a day of work. Maybe we had thought we were invincible, better than the grunts in the line platoons, and certainly better than the pouges.

“I’m going to miss that Casper son-of-a-bitch,” Grant said to no one in particular.

“Doughboy, too,” Deshawn added, poking at the sand with the toe of his boot.

Deshawn and Doughboy had been tight, and during the ceremony, it had been Deshawn who’d placed Doughboy’s dogtags over his rifle. Jeff moved over a step and put his arm around Deshawn’s shoulder.

SSgt Rawhiu left the chapel and came to join us. “It was a good ceremony, and we gave them honor. They would have liked it.

“But they gone now, and you need to get your heads on straight. Thirty minutes in the office for tonight’s mission. Be there”

The war never paused.

Chapter 26

Route Michigan

Aug 1, 2006

“Can you move your fat ass over and give me some room?” LCpl Jeff Stoelk shouted at Bo as we bounced around in back of the Bradley. He’d just put on his chevrons this morning, and now he and Bo were the same rank.

He gave Bo a shove. Bo, a spoon digging into the bottom of his MRE Chicken with Cavatelli, merely shifted over six inches.

It still seemed somewhat weird to me being in a Bradley. We’d all been cross-trained in LAVs, of course, but with the LAV battalion up at AR Rutbah doing COIN ops, we normally relied on Humvees and trucks to get going. Today, though, we’d been able to hitch a ride in a Bradley down to the government center.

I’d seen enough of the armored vehicles out and about, but this was my first time in one. The troop compartment was a little cramped, and with the five of us and two Army pax, it was tight. My knees extended to split Jeff’s with a couple of inches of overlap. Given the choice, though, between being cramped in a 30-ton armored vehicle and riding in a Humvee, I felt much safer in the Bradley. It had been quiet along Michigan for the last couple of days, but still, better safe than sorry.

When they carried an infantry squad, the squad leader could talk to the crew through a headset. For anyone else, though, the noise made normal conversations almost impossible. I just leaned back and closed my eyes, trying to catch a few z’s despite the lurching and bouncing of the big vehicle as it maneuvered down the road.

I think I had actually managed to drift off when I was awoken by a huge roar and being flung up and over, flying across the compartment to crash into Jeff and Bo. Smoke filled the compartment as I tried to get off of them. It took me a moment to get my head on straight and realize that the vehicle was on its side.

“Everyone OK?” one of the crew shouted, climbing down, or I should say horizontally, out of the turret to check on us.

I didn’t know if we are all OK or not. We were all tangled up in each other, the three of us from the right side of the compartment falling on the four sitting in the left side. I tasted blood in my mouth and couldn’t get enough air in. When I pushed off of Jeff’s chest, I could see the bright crimson of blood. Whether that was his or mine, I wasn’t sure, and my brain was fuzzy, making coherent thought difficult.

I got my legs under me and stood, sort of, on what had been the left wall of the Bradley, Jeff and Bo at my feet. I reached over to give Doug a hand, but he was limp and non-responsive.

The Army captain who’d been riding beside me reached over to open the back hatch—not the ramp, but the hatch built into the ramp. The sunlight streaming in hurt my eyes, and the crewman jumped over the tangle of bodies to hold back the captain, who was trying to get out.

“Wait a second! Let the chase vehicle cover us!” he said.

That sounded right. The insurgents often waited to target responders to IED attacks. My mind was working at 20 percent, but that had been drilled into us so many times that I think it was rote instinct rather than rational thought.

It only took a few moments, but I could see another Bradley come up, back end facing us. A Humvee pulled up alongside that, and a soldier jumped out and ran to our hatch.

The hatch was an oval, usually vertically oriented. Now, the long axis of the oval was horizontal, which meant the soldier had to bend over and crawl in. He scrambled to his feet. The nearest person to him was the captain. The new soldier grabbed him by his MOLLE gear.

“You OK? Talk to me!”

“Yeah, yeah . . .”

“Move out, then,” he said, guiding the captain down to where hands were reaching in to help him out.

I saw the patch on the soldier’s arm. He was a medic.

He looked at me, then grabbed a penlight out of his sleeve pocket and shined it in my eyes, flicking it back and forth.

“Sit down there,” he told me, pointing to the corner of the compartment.

He quickly assessed the rest of us. Bo, Jeff, and a crewman were told to exit and forgotten. The other Army pax was holding his left arm against this chest, and he was told to sit. Doug was kept in place while the medic asked for a board. It was handed in, and with another soldier who joined us, Doug was strapped onto the board, head braced in place. He was then maneuvered out the hatch.

My mind was clearing, and I tried to follow Doug out.

“Not so fast there,” the medic said. “How’re you feeling? Nauseous? Headache? Do you know what happened?”

“Of course I know what happened. We hit an IED,” I told him. I would’ve thought it was pretty obvious.

“Good, your memory’s intact,” he said as he took some cotton patches and wiped my face. “You’ve taken a pretty good shot to your head, and your pupils are a little unresponsive. We need to get you checked.”

He thought I had a concussion. I felt a dread of fear run though me. Ever since I can remember, from wearing my helmet to school to not being allowed to play sports, I’d had it driven into me that I couldn’t hit my head, that my skull was weak. Head injuries were my boogieman, the monster under my bed.

He passed me off to the other soldier who helped me down and through the hatch. Several soldiers were there for the handoff, helping me up and into the other Bradley, which had its ramp down. Around us, soldiers were deployed, weapons at the ready.

I looked back at the Bradley. It was on its side, the tracks that were now on top blown off the road wheels. It looked odd, sitting there like that. The sides of a Bradley were much shorter that the width, so here was this big tall vehicle upright on a fairly short side.

The last soldier came out, his arm secured to his chest just at the casevac bird landed on the street. If the insurgents were going to hit us, this would be the time. Doug was carried first. He gave a thumbs up back to us as he was taken.

“Don’t forget to bring my M40,” I shouted at Jeff as I was hustled next to the bird, along with the banged up soldier. He’d already retrieved it and held it up for me to see.

I had barely strapped in when the Black Hawk took off, rising slowly until it was some 40 or 50 feet up, then putting the nose down and swooping through the air as it swung around. It was a very short flight, and moments later,we were landing at Camp Ramadi. Doug was taken out and put on a wheeled gurney. The soldier and I followed. Two soldiers put their arms around my back and escorted me to the flight pad entrance to Charlie Med. I thought that was overkill, but it was easier just to go along with it. My nose was swollen and ached, but as far as I could tell, that was about it. I hoped that was it.

I was seated in a wheelchair and left alone with the soldier. MAJ Sturdevant, I could see now from his flash.

“You doing OK there, Marine? That was something, huh?” he asked me.

“I’m OK, sir. You OK?” I asked, not used to conversations with O’s.

“I’m fine. Dislocated my shoulder. I’ve done it before,” he said. “Might not have been too much of a price to pay to get out of that meeting with the provincial staff. Those things can be torture.”

A tall man in scrubs came up, interrupting us. “I’m Dr. Brand,” he told us. “Major, Dr. Lee’s going to make sure there’s nothing else wrong with you, then he’s going to try and reduce your shoulder. If he can, great. If not, if there are problems, we’ll turn you over to our Navy surgeons to put you right.”

This was an Army hospital, but I’d heard they had a Navy medical team there.

“And as for you, Cpl Lindt, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me. Let’s get you to a table over there and check you out. Specialist Meyers will help you and get you out of your gear, and I’ll be there in a sec.”

Specialist Meyers was an attractive girl, her brown hair tied in a tight bun. She gave me a big smile and wheeled me over to one of the empty examination tables.

“You need help getting up there?” she asked me, reaching down to give me a hand.

“No, I’m OK,” I answered as I sat.

She pulled a curtain partway around the table, then reached over to start taking my flak jacket off.

“Let’s get all of this off so Dr. Brand can get a good look at you.”

I am fully aware that men and women serve together, that we are equals. I am also fully aware that in medicine, gender doesn’t matter. But I couldn’t get around the fact that I had an attractive women, no matter how professional, taking off my clothes. I only went down to my T-shirt and trou, but still, I felt pretty naked.

She told me to lie down, then she got some sort of wet wipe and started cleaning the blood from around my nose and down my face. I tried not to stare at her face while she leaned over me, tried not to wonder what part of her was touching my left arm as she worked. I knew my reaction was ridiculous, like some hormone-infused fourteen year old.

“Is Spec Meyers taking good care of you, Corporal?” Dr. Brand said as he came up and went on before I could respond, “Let’s see what’s going on with you. I read here you have no nausea, no headache, no memory loss. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, good. Well, let’s take a look.” He touched my nose first. “It looks like you took a pretty good shot. It’s probably broken, I’m afraid.”

He took a penlight out of his pocket and turned it on, held it to the left, then flashed it several times back and forth over my left eye. At about the third pass, he stopped, stepped back, and seemed to look me over, obviously concerned.

I’d begun to feel better about my situation, but now my heart dropped again. Had my head taken a bad shot?

“Do you . . . have you . . .” he started, then stopped. “Kathy, can you leave us alone for a moment?”

She shrugged and left. The doctor pulled the curtain around us better closing us off from a good deal of what was going on out there.

He reached out and took my head in his hands, gently probing. I could see him frown. Then he took each of my hands, manipulating my fingers, spreading them apart.

“OK, what is it?”

“What is what, sir?” I asked, but I knew what he meant.

“Apert Syndrome? Crouzons?” he prompted.

He knew.

“Acrocephalopolysyndactyly Type II,” I said, waiting for the hammer to fall.

“Carpenters Syndrome. OK, that fits. That leads me to ask what, in the name of God, are you doing in the Marines, in combat?”

“I . . . I, uh, my doctor, he said I, that I was OK, that I could serve,” I stammered out.

“Bull shit. Carpenters Syndrome is a lifetime affliction. I’m sure you know that.”

“But I’m fine, really sir. I’m fine,” I said, trying not to let any panic into my voice.

“You may be fine, but you know you’re at risk. You are not physically qualified to serve in the military, much less in the combat arms. I don’t know how you fell through the cracks. Someone should have caught this before. I’m going to have to report this, you know.”

He started to pull back the curtain, and I reached out, grabbing his arm tight, stopping him.

“You can’t sir!” I hissed so no one else could hear. “I’ve only got a mild case, and I’m fully functional. No problems. I’ve served for five years now, and I can’t leave. This is my life!”

He looked at me, and I could see his thoughts warring in his mind.

“You are not medically qualified, though,” he said. “It’s for your own protection.”

“Sir, please!” I pleaded. “I can’t leave. There’s nothing for me out there.”

I always knew that, even if I didn’t dwell on it. Hearing that he was going to report me, knowing that I would be kicked out, that knowledge was thrust front and center. The Marine Corps was my life. I was judged on how well I did my job. I was a good sniper. I was respected, admired even. Back in the world, I was just that funny looking guy, the retard. I could recite off Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle , and people would smile knowingly and tell each other that some of “those people” had “special gifts” with numbers or memory.

He seemed to hesitate. He reached down and pried my hand off of his arm, then held it up to look at it.

“Well, there isn’t any webbing between your fingers, and your head isn’t terribly misshapen. Your syndrome is obviously not too severe. I can see how others might have missed it. I’m a pediatrician in my civilian life, and I deal with infants, so this might be more up my alley. Still . . .” he said, thinking hard.

“You’ve never had a concussion? Any head trauma?”

“No sir, never!” I didn’t volunteer that I’d never been allowed to do anything that would put me at risk of an injury.

“You’re the guy they call Iceman, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yeah, even we docs know what’s going on outside the wire,” he said, reaching out to feel around my skull.

“God help me, I can’t believe I’m even considering this. I should send you home. You’ve already contributed more than most guys here. But, I tell you what. You took a pretty big shot on your nose, and it looks like your skull held up fine, better than your friend there.”

That stopped me. “How is he? Doug? Sgt Taggart?”

“Don’t worry about him. He’s got a pretty serious concussion, and we’re checking him for spinal injuries. He’s on his way to Landstuhl, but he should make it. As far as you, you really want to stay in, stay here in Iraq?”

“Yes sir, I need to.”

“OK, here’s what I’m going to do. You’re getting a full work up. I’m going to take x-rays of your head. I’d do an MRI if I had one here. Any sign of damage, any sign of weakness in your skull, and you are on the next plane out of here. If things are normal, at least normal for you, I’m not going to report this. Deal?” he asked, hand out.

“Deal, sir,” I said, shaking his hand. “Thank you!”

“Just keep this between us, Corporal, OK? And don’t get yourself killed.”

“Don’t worry about that, sir, that’s the furthest thing from my mind.”

Chapter 27

Ramadi

Aug 8, 2006

“OK, boys, I got a feeling we’re going to be earning our paychecks today. Let’s be sharp,” SSgt Rawhiu told us.

“Us” was a good portion of the platoon. We had First Team and the three of us from Third (with Doug gone, I was now the team leader of Third Team). Including the chief sniper, that was nine Marines, all on a single mission. Three of us were HOGs, and that was the most I’d ever seen go out together in one place since we’d gotten in-country. This was also the first time I’d been out with the chief sniper. He’d gone out on the Chechen sniper mission, but to supervise, not to hunt.

In about two hours, the entire Al Anbar provincial cabinet was going to hold their first meeting since the destruction of the Golden Mosque. Several of the ministers had been assassinated, and that had put the kibosh on meetings. Up until now, it had been the governor going to work each day and no one else. With the governor continually haranguing his ministers, and with the assurance from the US that security would be tight, the various officials would emerge from hiding and get together to start the business of governing.

This wasn’t something that could be kept secret, plus that would defeat the purpose, anyway. The people of the city knew about it, and that meant Al Qaeda knew about it. Intel had more than enough information to know that there was a good chance that the Government House would be hit, so the bulk of the brigade’s forces were tasked with security. Two line companies from the battalion would be inside the government center, one of them in the Government House itself. Air would be on station. We were positioned in one of the few large buildings in the area, a seven story abandoned hotel that provided fields of fire over a good deal of the area to the south of the government center, which stood about 500 meters to the north. Another 500 meters south of us was an Army company from COP Falcon that was ready for anything that came up. We’d never used the hotel before as it was an obvious sniper platform, but the importance of the mission took precedence.

This was a pretty big building, and we didn’t have a line unit to provide security. We couldn’t cover it with the nine of us, so we had to improvise. We chained the main entrance from the inside. It wouldn’t stop anyone who was really determined from coming in, but it at least we would have ample warning. Next were claymores that we set up to cover the entrance. These could be detonated remotely by the security team SSgt Rawhiu set up to cover the main ladderwell.

The chief sniper had us split up. Bo, a spotter without a sniper now, was part of the security team that covered the ladderwell, and Ross Silvestrie, one of our PIG snipers, but a darn good shot, was with his spotter on the floor right above them. Jeff and I were with the staff sergeant on the seventh floor, and Uriah and his spotter, Tim McWorter, were up on the roof.

Being high up gives great fields of observation and fire, but it makes it harder to actually deploy our weapons down below. At the Ramadi General Hospital, the Chechen had been just as high as us, and we’d found two tables to lie on at window level. Here, we would be firing down at the ground, so I put down my pack and unstrapped my tripod. As always, I had a love-hate relationship with it. It helped me pick a good firing position, but I knew my legs would be trembling before long.

We set up quickly and began to glass the area. There was much more activity below us than was normal. People were moving back and forth, mostly men with an urgency to them that seemed out-of-place.

“Like I said, we’ll earn our paycheck today,” SSgt Rawhiu muttered to himself.

As we did whenever we had a number of people to observe, we immediately started naming the more suspicious-looking characters, watching them as they went about their business. We got ranges for various landmarks. We had ranges from 78 meters to 490 meters and another stretch from 622 to 849 meters. We were weapons free, so we didn’t need to radio back if we saw something suspicious. It was our call.

“Check out Rosebud,” Jeff said, referring to the Iraqi in all white except for a deep red keffiyeh on his head.

I swung my weapon around. Rosebud was in earnest conversation with another man, pointing emphatically in the direction of the government center.

“You picking this up, Staff Sergeant?” I asked.

From the next window over he said, “Sure thing. Something’s going down.”

“I’ve got them at 306 meters,” Jeff offered, but I’d already figured that out.

Right then, Rosebud turned the other guy around and gave him push. That other man, reluctantly, it seemed, took a few steps forward and bent down. Our view was blocked as to what he was doing, but when he stood back up, he had an RPG that he handed to Rosebud.

“And there it is,” SSgt Rawhiu said. “Noah, on three, you take Mr. Rosebud there, I’ll take his buddy.”

“On target,” I told him.

“One . . . two . . . three!”

As soon as he hit “three,” I squeezed the trigger. Our shots went off almost simultaneously. This was a pretty easy shot; the only issue being it was a plunging trajectory. I had put the crosshairs at his belly, and the round struck true in his chest. Both men fell and half a dozen other men in the area scrambled for cover. Several of them took refuge in back of a ruined car. The problem with that was they were on our side of the car, in full view of us. If they’d had weapons, they’d have been dead men.

“I told you boots that my Taiaha could do the job,” SSgt Rawhiu said.

The chief sniper had named his M25 Taiaha, which was a Maori word for some sort of weapon, a fighting staff or something. The M25 was a light sniper weapon the Army and SEALs developed. It fired the 7.62 x 51 NATO round, the same as a Winchester .308. It didn’t have the effective range of my M40, but it did have the advantage of being semiautomatic instead of bolt action. Sgt Nelson was the only one of us who had used it a few times, but SSgt Rawhiu kept pushing it as being a better weapon for city fighting.

I looked over at Rawhide. His face was awash in the glow of satisfaction. I knew this was the first shot he’d fired in anger since we arrived, but other than that, I didn’t know much about his past. He’d deployed with OEF, but no one seemed to have the skinny on what he’d done.

He wasn’t a tall man, but he was big, wide across the shoulders and torso with tree trunks as legs. Sometimes, he seemed like the jovial nice-guy, but at other times, he was downright scary.

When he talked, he sometimes shifted from “normal” Kiwi-accented English to some sort of South Seas island rhythm and structure and then back again. He was a full-fledged Maori from New Zealand, complete with tribal tattoos on his legs, torso, and shoulders. His tattoos would have probably kept him from enlisting due to current regs, but he’d been grandfathered in. I’d overheard him say once that when he retires, he’ll go back and get his facial tats. He’d spent time in American Samoa, and that was where he decided to join the Corps. As he put it, there wasn’t much opportunity for a warrior to prove himself in the New Zealand Army.

Despite the two kills, not much changed. People still moved back and forth on the adjacent streets and open areas. Once the guys who’d taken cover didn’t hear any more shots, they slowly got up. Most hurried out of there, but two men got up from behind the ruined car and walked over to the two bodies lying in the dusty street. They looked down and up at the surrounding buildings, obviously wondering where we were. They seemed to argue, then hurried off. I caught a glimpse of one, Bellyboy, we’d labeled him, a moment later crossing another street.

We went back to glassing the area. There was a palpable air of tension down below us, but we could not fire on gut feelings. We had to see a weapon or offensive action.

About 20 minutes later, a single shot rang out from the roof. Uriah must have engaged.

Two heavily-armed convoys made their way up Michigan from the south. We knew convoys had been sent out to pick up the various ministers, so it was getting close to showtime. Below us, the activity picked up.

Within another fifteen minutes, the chief sniper took out another insurgent with an RPG. It was an easy shot, only 220 meters. I had my own scope locked in on him in case he missed, but the round hit true, dropping the guy in his tracks. We didn’t need Jeff’s confirmation that the guy was dead.

Jeff was keeping busy spotting for both of us. One spotter to two snipers was not SOP, but this was almost like target practice. The ranges were short, and no one seemed to have figured out our position yet. Surprisingly, only a few men seemed to understand that someone was watching them, despite at least three and probably four bodies dead on the streets below us. Not everyone was oblivious, though.

“Check out Anna,” Jeff told us from his position at the middle window.

“Anna” was a stocky, heavyset man, labeled by the staff sergeant because he supposedly reminded him of his first girlfriend. Jeff thought that was pretty funny, but the intent of giving these guys nicknames was to make communications simpler, and it was pretty hard to forget this guy now. So “Anna” it was.

He’d gone into a building a few minutes ago, so I swung my scope to the front door. I could see Anna peaking out, an AK47 hanging down at his side as if he was trying to keep it out of sight. Just behind him was another man, his face covered with a balaclava.

“They’re goin’ to make a break for it. Anna, he’s mine, brah. I suffered enough from my Anna, so this Anna, he’s mine,” SSgt Rawhiu told me. “You got hajji number two.”

“Two-seventy-eight,” Jeff said to both of us.

This actually would be a little more difficult. There was only a short distance from the door to where they would be blocked from us by another building in front of them, maybe five meters or so. If they were quick, we’d only have a second or two to engage them before they would be out of our line of sight.

“Wait for it . . .” Rawhide told me.

Anna took a deep breath and then started to rush out the door. The chief’ sniper’s shot went off immediately. I was sighted in on the second guy just in back of him and was about the squeeze my trigger when Anna went down in a heap, my guy stumbled over him. If I’d fired, my round would have hit him if he was standing but over him sprawled out on the ground like he was. I shifted my sight picture down as he got up to one elbow to look at his fat companion. My shot took him in the mouth, right through his balaclava, and blew out the back of his neck.

“Not very sporting of you,” Jeff remarked facetiously. “Couldn’t you have let him get up and running before you took him out?”

“What? You think I’m the good Captain Ferguson? You know I’m no officer and gentlemen,” I replied to the other two’s laughter.

Captain Ferguson had been a subject of much discussion and not a little debate within the platoon back in our berthing. He was an early sniper, touted as the best marksmen in the British Army. At the battle of Brandywine, he had George Washington in his sights, but he held back from firing as he thought it wouldn’t be chivalrous to shoot an officer who was merely observing the area. As Americans, we were happy Washington was spared, of course, but as military men, we had to wonder if he had fired, would the war have turned out differently? Would we be British citizens today?

Over the next hour, the two of us engaged five more targets. I hit both of mine, but the chief sniper might have missed one. The blue jeans-clad target immediately jumped into a doorway, and without spotting where the round hit, we couldn’t tell if he’d been hit or not. SSgt Rawhiu did not take that well.

Uriah had one of our two PRR squad radios, and he had reported engaging four targets with three confirmed kills and one probable. We didn’t have squad radios for everyone, so the chief sniper sent Jeff as a runner to check up on the team on the third floor. Ross Silvestrie had two kills. That was eleven confirmed, only two fewer than the entire tally of the platoon to date. SSgt Rawhide kept reporting back to Batman, and they kept urging us to keep it up.

We spotted two men loading something in the back of a pickup. Jeff was trying to see just what it was when three other men jumped in the back and the truck started forward, immediately going in back of a building and out of sight.

“Them’s bad guys no doubt,” SSgt Rawhiu said. “Noah, they’ll come out at the intersection. Get ready to take out the driver, and Jeff, you look hard. Iffen they’ve got weapons, you give the OK. It’s on you, now.”

I shifted my aim to the intersection where we had fields of fire. We’d already ranged it at 467 meters. I was zeroed at 300, so I raised my point of aim about 15 inches to take the plunging fire into account.

SSgt Rawhiu got on the PRR and told Uriah to get ready, too, and act on my shot. I waited, calming my breathing, pulling in the slack on my trigger. The nose of the white Toyota pulled into the intersection, the driver, a white rag across his face clearly visible. The pickup was creeping along, not moving fast enough to require much of a lead. With the slight west to east breeze, I only led the driver by about eight inches. I kept waiting for Jeff’s go ahead.

“Send it!” he shouted out.

There was a good bullet trace as the round found its way to the truck, smashing through the driver’s window. In back of the white blossom of the glass, the driver jerked, and fell forward. The pickup veered to the left. I shifted to take in the passengers as both the staff sergeant and Uriah opened fire. The passengers in the bed of the truck started to get up, and I could see they were armed. I aimed at one man just as he fell forward and out of the bed of the pickup, victim to one of my fellow snipers.

Another man was jumping out of the back, his mortal mistake being jumping to our side instead of the other. My shot hit him high in the chest. Two others were luckier. They jumped out to the other side and stayed low as the truck pushed up against the nearer building that made up one of the corners of the intersection. We lost sight of them. In just a few seconds, four more men were smoke checked.

With this action, the area cleared within moments. I think it finally dawned on them that they were under attack. I was sure of that when an RPG reached out of the warren and slammed into the side of our hotel, down and to the right. Evidently, with the shot out window in the truck, they were able to back trace and figure out our general position.

That rocket began a two-hour game of cat-and-mouse. They knew where we were—the building at least, even if not our exact position. They fired six RPGs and uncounted rounds of small arms fire, but they tried not to present a target, so their rounds were ineffective. On the other hand, our large choice of targets disappeared. A head would pop up, take a shot, then disappear.

I was able to nail one turkey-peeker. He popped up twice in the same spot. I leveled my crosshairs, and sure enough, he popped up again at the exact same place, even doing me the favor of standing up so he could level his AKM at the hip to send a burst of rounds at us. That was his intention, at least. I took a very easy 175 meter shot right into his chest before he could squeeze his trigger.

Even if we weren’t tallying the bigger kill numbers, we were keeping the insurgents occupied. If they were down here with us, they couldn’t be up at the government center assaulting the place.

The radio came on, and I heard SSgt Rawhiu argue, but I didn’t pay attention to what he was saying. I was busy trying to play a deadly game of whack-a-mole, but one where the moles could fight back. I couldn’t give anyone time to deliver some well-aimed fire. They didn’t have to see us through the windows. All they had to do was start putting rounds in each window, and I was standing upright, my rifle on my tripod, an easy target for a round whether they saw me or not.

I heard a “Roger, out,” then “We’re bugging out. Batman says they’ve intercepted traffic, and the hajjis are sending a suicide bomber to take down the building. They’re sending a mobile extract team from COP Falcon to come get us.”

That got my attention. They’d done that before, figuring it was worth one life and a building to take out Marines or soldiers.

“Jeff, go down and tell our boys to get ready,” he ordered before calling up to Uriah to tell him to come down.

I watched the area below us. I caught furtive glimpses of shadows moving forward, but this is where a scope was a liability. The insurgents were within 200, even 100 meters of us, and my scope limited my field of view. I thought about taking the scope off and moving to iron sights. I got off one snap shot that looked like it hit a shoulder, but I wasn’t sure if that was a mortal wound.

“Coming in!” Uriah shouted as he and McWorter came into our hide. “What’s going on?”

“The hajjis want to bring the hotel down, so time for us to bug out,” Rawhide told him.

“Sounds like a plan,” Uriah said. “Too bad, though, the hunting’s been good here.”

The four of us rushed down the ladderwell. We called out to the others to let them know that is was us bolting down, then gathered at the top of the first flight of stairs over the first floor. I thought maybe we should have left the SAW and the riflemen on the second floor to cover the entrance, but SSgt Rawhiu said we needed to be ready the moment the mobile extract team arrived.

While he was telling us what we were doing, the front door started rattling. We all froze, I mean literally froze in place as if someone might be able to see us through the door if we moved. The door pushed in, straining, but the chain held fast. We tried to spread out, covering the door with our various weapons.

Whoever was out there tried for a good minute to open the door, then seemingly quit. We waited a few more minutes while the chief sniper tried to find out the extract team’s position.

“OK, they’re two minutes out. Let’s get going,” he told us.

We got in the order he’d given us: the SAW and riflemen leading, the snipers in trail. We were going to shoot our way out, keeping their heads down while we sprinted around the west side of the hotel and to Michigan where the extract team would pick us up. It should only take 20 or 30 seconds.

We filed down to the door. SSgt Rawhiu removed his scope, then moved to the front. It looked like when he said snipers in the rear, he didn’t mean himself. His weapon, though, was better suited than ours for close in work. Maybe he had something in championing the thing.

Bo unlocked the lock and pulled our chain away while we covered him. The chief sniper moved forward, hand on the door before looking back.

“We kick ass now, OK?” he said, his island accent taking over.

He pushed on the door—and nothing happened. He put his shoulder into it. The door flexed, but it wasn’t opening. We had locked the insurgents out, but they had locked us in!

SSgt Rawhiu immediately started issuing orders. He called the extract team and told them to hold up just out of the area. He told Uriah and McWorter to C4 the door. We pooled C4 that we were carrying, and Uriah set three pounds of it against the steel door. We would blow the door, then charge out. I had visions of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid charging out of the Bolivian bank, but I hoped the end result wouldn’t be the same.

We went up the ladderwell, out of the line of a direct blast. SSgt Rawhiu stopped at the lowest step muttering under his breath, a rhythmic chant, his foot stomping as he chanted. I strained to hear the words as we went past him, higher up and further from the blast. I have a pretty good memory, and caught most of what he was saying:

Ka mate Ka mate

Ka ora Ka ora
Ka mate Ka mate
Ka ora Ka ora

Tenei Te Tangata Puhuruhuru

Nana i tiki mai whakawhiti te ra

Upane Upane

Upane Kaupane
Whiti te ra

We all stared at our leader as he reverted to his Maori childhood. We all realized this was a haka, like what the All Blacks chanted before a rugby match. I had no idea what it meant at the time, but there was something uplifting in it, something that got the blood flowing. I forgot all about Butch and Sundance—all I wanted to do was close with and destroy anyone who dared to stand in our way.

When he got to the last line of the haka, he signaled to Uriah, and with a huge, deafening blast, the door blew open. We charged through the dust and out the door, our chief sniper in the lead as he yelled out his battle cry. I actually saw one insurgent come out a door, not 20 meters from us, leveling his AK at the staff sergeant. I had pulled out my 9mm, and I tried to save him, but with our warrior leader screaming at the top of his lungs and charging him, the guy actually dropped his weapon and bolted back inside. That might have saved his life.

All of us were screaming and firing. I’m not sure how many we actually hit. I saw one man cut down by our SAW, but the rest was a confused cacophony of noise, smoke, and confusion as we bolted. I turned the corner of the hotel to the welcome sight of the US Army: four Humvees and two Bradleys. The lead Humvee opened up with a mounted Ma Deuce, the big .50 cal rounds whizzing over our head.

It couldn’t have taken more than a minute from the time we blew the door until SSgt Rawhiu jumped in one of the Humvees, the last of us to do so, something he did only after he’d gotten a head count. I saw him jump in just at the hatch of the Bradley I’d chosen closed.

Chapter 28

Hurricane Point

Aug 12, 2006

“Anyone seen Stoelk?” I asked in our squadbay.

“I think I saw him going to the locker,” Uriah told me. “He said something about needing rags.”

The locker was a plywood closet where we kept cleaning supplies along with odds and ends. The solvents were there because we weren’t supposed to keep them in with us in berthing. The odds and ends, well, that was just a handy place to keep them.

We’d already cleaned our weapons right after returning this morning, so I wasn’t sure why he needed more rags. We were on our own time for the moment, and most of us were going to catch some z’s right after chow, so there wasn’t any reason for him to be hiding to get out of a work detail or anything.

I stepped out of the air-conditioned squadbay and out into the sun. It was late morning, and I’d guess it was at least 95 degrees, maybe more. If he was hiding out in the locker, it would be brutally hot in there.

I walked through the berthing SWAs, between some HESCO barriers, and back to where the storage sheds were. Ours was at the end of a line of them, up against the back of one of the HESCOs. I passed comm’s locker, or what was left of it. A mortar had hit it a week ago, blasting three of the walls down. Only the wall with the door was still upright, still locked, but guarding nothing.

I trudged on. The door to our locker was closed, but the lock was off. I was going to shout out, but thought better of it. If he was asleep, I wanted to know. He could be sleeping in his air-conditioned rack, but old habits died hard. At Lejeune, sneaking off for a nap was something most Marines had done at least once.

I thought I could hear him snoring as I reached up for the door. He was asleep after all! I jerked open the door to surprise him. I was the one surprised. That wasn’t snoring, that was moaning. His naked ass was pounding up and down between naked legs. He spun around as I entered, revealing Jewell’s naked, sweaty body under him. He was . . . they were . . . they were DOING IT!

I stared longer than I should have as Jewell reached for her cammies, trying ineffectually to pull them over to cover herself. I pretty much saw everything as Jeff pulled up his trou, covering his rampant state. I spun around and stepped back, slamming the door. I took a couple of deep breaths, then strode off, not knowing what to do.

The door opened in back of me.

“Noah! Noah! Wait up!”

I kept walking.

“Noah, stop, please!” he shouted as he reached me, pulling on my shoulder and turning me around.

He stood there looking at me, no battle gear, barefoot in just his cammie trou and T-shirt.

“You’ve got to be in full gear back here,” I said stupidly, as if that was his biggest transgression.

“Noah, what’re you going to do?” he asked, shifting his feet in the hot sand.

“I’m . . . I should . . . uh, I don’t know,” I said. “I should turn you two in, you know. That’s my duty. And if I don’t, it’s my ass, too. I’ll go down just like you.”

“Nothing’ll happen to you. You’re the major’s fair-haired child,” he started.

I put my hand in his chest and stopped him, “I’m still a corporal in the Marines, an NCO, and that takes precedence. I took an oath when I was promoted.”

He started to argue before stopping himself. He started on another tack, “So you’ll wreck her career? It won’t be me, you know. I’m the junior Marine here. I know you’re pissed at me, and you have every right to be, but you turn us in, and it’ll be her that goes down.”

He was right. She would go down, and maybe she deserved it. She was an NCO, after all. But I had done some digging after the incident in the library. Jewell Russell Mitchell was not some nameless Marine. She was a truck driver, and during the invasion, her convoy had been ambushed by a bypassed unit of the Hussein’s Republican Guard. Then a PFC, she had taken a round in the shoulder, a round that had passed through her and then killed her 5-ton driver. She pushed him out of the way, and using the big truck as a battering ram, had charged the Guard position, literally running over a machine-gun nest, smashing the Iraqis flat. With the machine gun out, the rest of the Marines were able to break the ambush, killing or capturing the rest of the Iraqis. She was awarded a Bronze Star with Combat “V” for the action and was promoted to lance corporal. A meritorious promotion to corporal came next back at Lejeune where she was serving as the Assistant Division Commander’s driver, a cush job she fought to get out of to come back to Iraq, if what I was told was true.

If I did turn them in, her career was over, despite what she’d done before. Was it worth it? But did I want to risk getting pulled down with them? I caught them. If they didn’t stop, someone else would catch them, too. If it came out that I knew about it, I would pay the price, too. I was Jeff’s direct senior, after all.

I stood there looking at him. He was silent, knowing he was better served shutting up. For once, I was the alpha in our relationship, our ranks notwithstanding. And something in me wanted to punish him, punish him for being the alpha male, for everything being so easy for him, for getting the girl out in the middle of the desert. But, and this was a big but, he was my friend. Maybe my only friend. We’d been through a lot together, even been blown up together. And, I had to admit to myself, if someone like Jewell Mitchell came up to me and offered me her company, duty or not, I knew what I would do.

Who was I, anyway, to be so wedded to the regs? I could have been back at Lejeune now in the seps platoon, waiting to get discharged. Someone else, an officer no less, had put his neck on the line and cut me a huss. I was still in the Corps only because he chose not to go by the book. Was I really that much of a hypocrite?

“Look. You get back there and get dressed. You get Cpl Mitchell dressed and out of there. We’ve got less than two months left out here in the Sandbox, and you will not, I repeat will not see her anywhere alone again while we are still here. If you want to continue this back at Lejeune, we part as a team. They’ll split us up anyway. You’ll go to Scout Sniper School and get your own spotter. I can be . . . I will be your friend, and as a friend, you can see who you want, and I’ll support you. But now, as your NCO, this is the way it’s got to be. Agreed?”

I could see the relief take over him. “Yeah, yeah, agreed. We knew that, we just couldn’t wait until we got back. You know, the stress, and then . . .”

“I don’t want to know all of that. All I want to know is if we have a deal.”

I held out my hand. He took it without hesitation, pumping hard.

“Make it so,” I said, doing my best Capt Piccard impression, not that it was any good, before turning away and leaving Jeff. I felt, well, I didn’t know what I felt, and I tried to use my poor sense of humor as a shield.

I had embraced the Corps, and I wanted to make it my career. I felt like I was someone when I put on my uniform, someone with value. Embracing the Corps for me had meant strict adherence to every rule, every reg, every order. I was the Marine Corps version of a goody two-shoes. But the Corps was not some vague, amorphous being. It was the men and women who served in it, the cells that gave it shape. Loyalty to the Corps meant loyalty to the Marines in it. Sure, Jeff and Jewell broke the regs, but Jeff was my friend, someone who had saved my life. And Jewell had served God and country well, too. They gave in to hormones, but turning them in would do nobody any good and hurt the overall effectiveness of the Corps. I never thought I would break regulations, and now I had, but for what I thought were good reasons.

I could live with that.

Chapter 29

Hurricane Point

Sep 1, 2006

“You’re up,” Sgt Polk said as he left the company office.

I looked closely at his face, but I couldn’t tell what was going on. We three team leaders had been called to the office without any indication why. None of us thought it was for anything good.

I stood up, pulled down on the front of my blouse and then marched in, centering myself on the company commander’s desk. Many military formalities had fallen by the wayside in-country, but my instincts told me that I should revert back to formality.

“Corporal Lindt, reporting as ordered, sir!”

My eyes were centered on the captain, but in my peripheral vision, I’d seen the chief sniper and the lieutenant standing there as I entered, now behind me. Seated next to the company commander was the JAG officer, Capt Morales.

“At ease, Corporal Lindt. I believe you know Captain Morales here, right?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

My heart sunk. Why would I need a lawyer? Was I in trouble? I’d been out with the JAG before, but then, his mission was to follow in trace with his driver, negotiating with locals and handing out chits to pay for damage done to their property. I had a feeling, though, that whatever was going on, it didn’t have anything to do with Marine Corps IOUs.

“We’ve had reports of a serious incident, and Captain Morales is going to ask you a few questions.”

“Good morning, Corporal Lindt,” he began, voice at ease. “I need to ask you a few questions. Nothing is formal as of yet, and you are not under oath, but your absolute honesty is paramount. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir!”

Had they heard about Jeff and Jewell? From three weeks ago? Had those two gone and done it again and gotten caught? I didn’t know why the other team leaders would have been called in for that, but my choosing not to report them was the only thing I could think of that I’d done wrong. If it was that, my tenure as team leader was undoubtedly over.

“Where was your team on the morning of August 31 st ?”

I actually broke my lock on his eyes and started to turn around to look at SSgt Rawhiu. What kind of question was that? They knew where we were.

“Uh, sir, we were at OP Hotel until approximately 1030 or so, then we were brought back here.”

We’d been in a hide all night, watching for activity, before moving back to the Marine OP to catch a ride back to the Point.

“At any point, during the night or early morning hours, were you in the vicinity of the al-Huz neighborhood?”

Al-Huz? I vaguely knew where that was, and it certainly was nowhere near where we’d been operating.

“No, sir. Not even close to there.”

“Are you positive about that?”

“Yes, sir. Positive.”

He watched my face intently. Was he trying to see if I was lying?

“I’m going to ask you a very specific question. Please think carefully before answering. At anytime, from August 30 through Aug 31 inclusive, did you or any member of your team engage anyone on or near al-Ma’ared Street in the al-Huz neighborhood?”

This was a weird question, but my metal radar warning was blaring. I thought al-Huz was about three klicks from where we’d been, and that would be an impossible shot for us out in the desert, much less where buildings were in the way. I was positive that if someone would have fired their weapon while I was sleeping, I would have woken up. No, there was no way any one of my team had done that.

“No, sir, no one in my team discharged their weapon at all,” I said with certainty.

“Would you be willing to repeat that under oath?”

“Absolutely, sir!”

“OK, then. That’s all for now. You’re dismissed, but I you need to be ready to stand by in case we need a written statement.”

I was dismissed, just like that? After those questions, I thought I deserved to know what was going on.

“Sir, can I ask you what’s this all about?”

Capt Morales looked at the company commander and asked, “That’s the last team?”

“Yes, sir, that’s all of them,” the lieutenant answered instead.

“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter then,” he said before turning back to me. “You’ve heard of the Voice of Iraq?”

“Yes, sir.”

The Voice of Iraq was an independent news agency made up of Arabs from not only Iraq, but from around the region. It was not certified by the military, so we never had any embedded reporters from them, but they showed up on the scene somewhat often to film and ask questions. We pretty much ignored them because they seemed to focus on real or imagined atrocities committed by coalition troops.

“The Voice of Iraq has reported that at 1100 on the 31 st , US Marine snipers shot and killed a man, his wife, and two children who were simply walking together on al-Ma’ared Street. They posted video of supposed eyewitnesses who have confirmed that.”

I started to protest. I knew where our teams were, and there was just no way.

He held out his hand to stop me. “We know where you and the other two teams were. But no matter how outlandish the claim, we need to cover ourselves and ensure that the ground truth accurately reflects common sense, what we thought to be true. The command is confident that this is a false report. We know no Marine sniper team did this, and you can be sure the Army and Navy are confirming that none of their teams could have done it, either.”

This war in Iraq was fought on the ground, but also on the airwaves. I wondered if the folks back at home were getting an accurate picture of what was happening here. If the report from the Voice of Iraq was any indication, I was positive that the people in the Middle East were getting an extremely biased and even completely false account of what was going on.

“Anything else, Corporal?” he asked.

“No, sir. It’s just that that sucks. All it will do is rile up the Iraqis against us.”

“Yes, it sucks, and turning the people against us is probably just what the intention of the report was. But that’s the hand we were dealt.

“If there is nothing else, you’re dismissed.”

I did an about face. SSgt Rawhiu gave me a thumbs up as I marched out the hatch.

Chapter 30

Ramadi

Sep 19, 2006

Jeff and I were in position glassing the area below us. The operation would kick off in another twenty minutes, and we could have little cockroaches trying to scurry away from the fire. We had the entire battalion out on this one, a huge cordon-and-search mission. Lima was in the assault, taking down an entire block where some heavy hitters in Al Qaeda were supposed to be holed up. India was in a crescent to the south and south west, Kilo was to the northwest and north, and Weapons filled the gap to the east as blocking forces. The three sniper teams were at the boundary between each company to both provide cover and to keep anyone from slipping through the cracks and getting away. We were to the north between Kilo and India.

“We” were two two-man teams again. I was the team leader, and Jeff was still my spotter. Bo was the spotter for the second two-man team. The sniper was LCpl Boyd, the same Marine who’d refused to be my spotter back at Lejeune. I wanted to complain when he was shifted over to fill out my team, but I let it go. My only reaction was to keep our relationship wholly professional. No “Marcus.” It was always “LCpl Boyd.”

We had one more person with us on the mission. LCpl Bannister Dunlop, “Bank,” from Supply, was with us for security. I knew who he was, and he had eaten chow with us a few times when the World Cup was being played. He, Deshawn, Boyd, and Sgt Foster had been soccer players in high school, and they all were heavily into the tournament. Other than that, I didn’t know much about him, but SSgt Rawhiu assured me the man knew his way around a SAW. He hadn’t been trained as a sniper and didn’t know his way about a hide, but I guessed it was not much different when we had a line fire team or squad for security.

Our hide was in an abandoned three-story building overlooking the small road that was the boundary between Kilo and India, but about 25 meters or so behind the line company positions. The building kitty-corner across the street would have given us a longer field of observation, but it was occupied, and the line companies hadn’t wanted to pull anyone to keep security for the sniper teams. Four Marines watching a family meant four fewer Marines manning the lines.

Just even with us to the west was the platoon commander for the far left India platoon. He and his R/O were on the roof of a two-story house. I know he thought it gave him better overview of his platoon, but I wondered if he knew how exposed he was. At only two stories up, he was a prime target for any enemy sniper, and with all his moving back and forth, he certainly wasn’t difficult to spot.

“You two ready?” I asked Bo and Boyd.

“Sure are, Corporal,” Boyd replied.

Just as he was “LCpl Boyd” to me, he always used my rank or last name when talking to me. I’d put him on the west side of the roof where he would have the road below us, which was wider and where if he’d have to take a shot, it should be easier. Jeff and I were on the east side, and below us was more of a rabbit-warren of meandering alleys and lanes. If there was a shot to be taken in them, it would have to be a snap-shot.

“How’s your buddy?” Jeff asked as I crept back to join him.

Everyone in the platoon studiously ignored the fact that Boyd and I had a history, but Jeff was the only one to actually have it in the open.

“He’ll do OK. Bo knows how we operate.”

I looked back at Bank, who was at the top of the ladderwell that led below. He saw me look at him and gave me the OK sign. I can’t say that I was overjoyed to have Boyd with us, but at least he was part of the overall “us.” Bank wasn’t, but I guessed it was a good idea to have his SAW with us. Every time we went out, I think all of us thought of what had happened to Tevin and Doughboy.

I checked my watch again and said, “It’s just about showtime.”

As if on cue, we heard a muffled explosion, followed by another. They sounded like breaching charges. Lima was in the assault. Not much was happening, though. I wondered if we’d gotten bad intel.

As team leader, I now had radio comm with Batman, so I listened in on our tac. Not much was being passed. I could switch freqs to listen in on the company tacs, but then I could miss something being sent to us.

A burst of AK fire sounded from India’s positions, answered immediately by M16s. I couldn’t see anything, but it looked like the rats were trying to leave the ship. Boyd and Bo were glassing the area, watching for a target.

To the left of us, the distinctive boom of an RPG reached us, followed by the second as it detonated against one of the buildings just to our left. Someone had taken a shot at one of Kilo’s positions, probably one of the road blocks, from the sound of it. We couldn’t see the position from here, but we had placed it on our map.

Another RPG sounded, and this time, the second blast was quicker, indicating the rocket had probably hit its intended target. A plume of smoke rose in the air about 100 meters in front of us and another 100 to the left. That was the roadblock, no question about it. Small arms fire opened up.

There was a lull, then more fire. Another RPG went off. Kilo was in it deep.

“Kiwi Three, this is Batman, over.”

I grabbed my handset. “This is Kiwi Three, over.”

“Do you have eyes on Banger One-Two? I say again, Banger One-Two, over?”

Banger was Kilo company, One was first platoon, Two was their second squad. I’d been out with them before. That was Sgt Butler’s squad, before he was killed. I knew where they were, and it wasn’t far, but I couldn’t see them from this position.

“Negative, I do not have eyes on them, over.”

“Kiwi Three, Bangor One’s under heavy contact, and Bangor One-Six is WIA. If you can maneuver to provide cover without exposing yourself, do it. Do not, I repeat, do not leave your present position uncovered, over.”

“Roger. I will see what I can do, over.”

“Keep us informed. Batman out.”

Jeff looked at me expectantly.

“We need to see if we can get eyes on Banger One-Two,” I told him.

We moved to the far east side of the building, but we couldn’t see anything. The other buildings were in the way. We knew where they were. The firing pointed them out.

Adjacent to us was another home, its roof even with ours, a small four foot gap separating us. I looked down between the two buildings. Junk piled up below us 25 feet down. I took a couple of steps back, then ran forward and launched myself, easily covering the gap and landing on the other building. I looked back at Jeff who shrugged, then took two steps before jumping. He made it look easy.

“Should we be over here?” he asked. “I heard Batman tell you not to leave our position uncovered.”

“And it’s not uncovered. We’ve got Boyd over there,” I said.

All three Marines were sitting up, looking at us.

“Keep to the mission,” I shouted out. “We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

The two of us hustled to the far side of the building, trying to catch sight of the Kilo position. More rounds went off, but we still couldn’t see anything. Up ahead of us was a four-story building, and I knew it would have viz on them, but getting there would be the problem. We would have to climb down from this building, cross a small open area, then move through an alley to get to it. Whether it was occupied or not was an entirely different issue.

I looked back at the other three. Bo and Boyd were glassing their area, but Bank was still watching us. I motioned for him to focus on the ladderwell, not watch us. His mission hadn’t changed just because Jeff and I had sort of expanded the width of our hide.

Another burst of fire sounded from Kilo’s position.

“You up for this?” I asked Jeff.

“You lead and I’ll follow,” he said.

I shouldered my M40 and clamored over the edge of the house and down a rickety steel ladder. At least we wouldn’t have to go into the house to get down. I looked up as my feet touched the deck. Jeff had his M16 out covering me, and with me able to fire again, he quickly followed suit. He was down in thirty seconds, breathing hard, but from the look in his eyes, it was not the exertion that was making him huff and puff.

When we’d been up on the roof, we’d still been in contact with the other three. Now we were alone, something we’d fought for upon arriving in Iraq, but now, it was a little hairy.

“No use hanging around here. Let’s move it!” I said, starting my dash across the open area.

It seemed like an hour, but it probably took less than ten seconds or so, and I was dodging into the alley on the other side. I looked back to make sure Jeff was there and ran into something big, but yielding, knocking me down. My helmet fell over my eyes, and I pulled it up to see a man in his thawb, looking dazed, but reaching for the AK lying next to him. I tried to get up and protect myself as I watched the barrel of the Russian-made rifle start to swing to me. A single shot sounded in back of me as a scarlet flower blossomed on his chest. He dropped the rifle and fell back as Jeff grabbed me and pulled me to my feet.

“There’s more of them where he came from,” he said, pulling me back into a run.

There are procedures for entering a building; procedures we’d practiced time and time again back at Lejeune, at Ft. Bragg’s Combat Town, and at the Stumps. As we ran up to the building, we used exactly none of them. We burst through a side door and into what looked to be an abandoned school or government building. The first floor had a high, arching ceiling, and double staircases curved up and to the second floor. We never stopped while we took the stairs two at a time until we made it up, and this time, our huffing was due to exertion.

We stopped at the edge of a doorway that still overlooked the open entry, weapons ready to see if we were being followed. All I could hear was our heavy breathing.

“They know we’re here,” Jeff said. “I saw four of them.”

“That’s not good,” I said.

“No shit, Sherlock. But we’re here. What now?”

“Now, we do what we came to do. Up to the roof.”

He nodded and took off. I followed behind him. We didn’t know if the building was abandoned, but we didn’t have time to clear each room. We went up two flights of stairs and moved to where the roof access was. I was on Jeff’s heels as we ran out on the roof. In front of us, another Iraqi was lying, binos in one hand, a huge, old fashion walkie-talkie in his other as he observed the area in front of the building. He turned around as we burst out and started to reach for the old bolt-action rifle beside him. Jeff’s shot stopped him cold.

He was gasping for breath when I got down and crept up to where he’d been observing. I pushed him aside, looking out over the edge of the roof.

Below me was a good-sized north-south road. Kilo had set up their roadblock in the middle of it where they had about 500 meters of clear fields of fire in front of them. They had two Humvees: one was now upside down, the other was upright, but it had obviously taken a hit, too. In back of that one, Marines and ISF troops huddled. I could see one ISF soldier down, probably dead beside it. In back of the first Humvee, huddled up against it, was a Marine, down on his back. It looked like the squad corpsman was attending him. Three other Marines were there, two of them down.

Beside me, the Iraqi’s breath rattled in his throat, then stopped.

“They’re going to make a dash for it,” Jeff said.

I was already coming up with firing solutions. I could see movement down the street, about 500 meters from the two ruined vehicles. That made it about 575 from this position. I let my mind go, my subconscious taking over. I reached up and set my dope, knowing I was dialed in.

A moment later, one of the Marines in back of the upright Humvee fired off a 40 mike-mike round. I could see it arch up and back down. As soon as it hit, two Marines opened up with their SAWs as the M203 gunner fired off another one. The ISF soldiers and a couple of Marines made the dash across the road, one putting his shoulder down and ramming open the gate to a courtyard of a home.

Their action didn’t go unnoticed. There was a flurry of movement as the insurgents started to fire with automatic weapons and rifles. I acquired one guy on what looked like an American M240 Machine Gun. I didn’t have time to wonder about that as I squeezed the trigger and watched my round hit him high on the chest. He fell back, and the gun went silent.

The insurgents ducked back down, so I took a quick glance to see if the Marines and ISF jundiis had made it to the cover of the courtyard. One of them had been hit, it looked like, and was being helped through the open door.

On the upside down Humvee, though, one of the Marines had carried another and threw him over a wall and into another courtyard, but the other three were still there. I wasn’t sure why. They were sitting ducks out there. The one Marine came back, squatted and tried to lift the Humvee, but it wasn’t budging. I looked closer, and I could see that one of the downed Marine’s feet was trapped under it.

“Tough break there,” Jeff said, watching the drama unfold.

The corpsman and the Marine, it looked like LCpl Haddad, talked for a moment, then hugged each other. There was a look of finality about it. He picked up the other down and out Marine and made a dash to the wall, throwing his buddy over it before vaulting over himself. An insurgent machine gun opened up, but I couldn’t get eyes on him from where I was.

I did see someone, though, standing alongside a building, thinking the wall was protecting him. I could only see about four inches of his front, but from his head to his toes. I could afford to miss high or low, but not left or right. The air eddies were quiet. I had a moment of calm air. He was slightly turned so his back shoulder protruded out a little, so I aimed at the juncture of his shoulder and chest.

The round impacted across his chest, tearing our flesh and smashing ribs. I don’t think it was deep enough to hit his heart, but he was pretty messed up. He fell forward on his face and struggled to get up, blood spurting everywhere. Even from this distance, I could hear his wails. Hands reached out to pull him back, and he went limp. Dead or not, he was out of the fight.

Two machine guns started firing again, but not at the guys below us. They were impacting on our building. But just as we couldn’t see them to take them out, they couldn’t see us, and the rounds were impacting some 20 feet to our side. They had to be firing from one of the buildings to the right.

“I’m shifting over. You keep glassing and let me know what you see,” I told Jeff.

I didn’t want to move to where the automatic fire was impacting, but that was the only way I could see where they were. I got as low as I could, then two inches lower than that. I tried to channel my inner mole, to burrow through the roof as I scooted to an air vent. I put my back to it to gather myself.

I heard a flurry of fire below me. I didn’t stop to see what was happening down there. I could only affect that by looking downrange. I turned and immediately saw where one of the machines guns was. It was on the second floor of some sort of shop, firing out the window. I pulled up my M40 and scoped it. The barrel of the gun was poking out the window, but I couldn’t see any hands. It was firing out a good clip, though.

It was a little closer than my last shot, so I held six inches lower and squeezed. My round hit the front handguard, sending the weapon back inside the window. I kept watching for a few moments, but whoever was inside wasn’t going to expose himself to me.

I was pretty exposed myself, but for the moment, I wasn’t being targeted. I was free to target them.

“Hajji, blue keffiyeh, courtyard on the left, 423 meters,” Jeff called out.

I swung my weapon around. The blue headwrap stood out in the sunlight, almost making it too easy. He was peering over the wall, his entire head and shoulders exposed. Why he had such a complete disregard for his personal safety wasn’t my concern but rather something I could take advantage of. My round took him right above his nose.

Within moments, another man tried to cross the road. He had an AK in his hands and an RPG strapped across his back, but the rocket slid down as he started to run, banging into his legs and making him stumble. He didn’t stop but kept going forward. He was persistent, I had to give him that. Persistence isn’t always a good survival trait. Another easy shot dropped him in his tracks.

The machine gun I’d shot made another appearance. On the roof of the same building, a man dressed in black, even to his keffiyeh, started edging along on his back with what I could now see was in fact an American M240 on his stomach, the front hand guard shattered. The building was three stories high, and he must have thought he couldn’t be seen. The building I was on was four stories. This shot was even easier than the last. He was moving much slower, after all. I fired one shot, and he simply stopped moving, machine gun still on his chest. It wasn’t very dramatic, but it was effective.

Around me, the battle raged on. Gunships circled to the south of us, pouring fire in long deadly streams to unseen targets. Small arms fire and explosions raged throughout the city. I was aware of them, but only peripherally. My attention was focused on the enemy below us. They were intent on the Marine still trapped on the road and the corpsman who refused to leave him, and I wasn’t going to let any of the bad guys get to them. I felt invincible as targets dropped under my sights. They weren’t men, men with families, with girlfriends, with companions. They were merely targets. They were no more than electrons on my Nintendo. Jeff spotted them, I killed them. I don’t think I missed a shot.

We took some fire on the roof, but nothing came close. I don’t think they knew exactly where we were, only that we were doing them grievous harm, and they wanted to stop us.

“I think we’ve got company,” I heard Jeff say.

He pulled back and scrambled to the top of the stairs. I heard him fire but put it out of my mind. There were too many targets for me. I dropped an empty mag and snapped in another. Five more rounds, five more opportunities.

I’ve read that sometimes in a man’s life, he feels godlike, he feels in control of his destiny. That’s how I felt on that roof. I had power over life and death. I could reach out and snuff out a life. I could protect those under my wings. There was nothing I couldn’t do.

Jeff fired again, a three-round burst. I wasn’t concerned. Jeff would cover my six.

From below, to the right of the road, a gate screeched open. This was on the same side as the bulk of the Marines and ISF soldiers. I didn’t have eyes on the gate itself due to my position, and the other Marines wouldn’t have, either. I wondered if the insurgents would try and make a break for it. If they did, I could nail them as they ran under my sights.

It wasn’t anyone trying to run, though. I could hear a car start up, then edge out of the gate. I could see the right side of the grey sedan, but the driver was hugging the buildings and I couldn’t see him. The car was coming up fast, and I knew the target was the Marine and sailor below me.

I needed to get a better angle, so I stood and ran ten feet to my left. Still standing, I turned, and with the full car in view, I pulled up my trusty M40. There was a gunman, dressed in black like the machine gunner I’d killed, leaning out the passenger door and firing at the two Americans. Another gunman was on the right side of the car, half out as he tried to get in a shot of his own. In a few moments, the car would be too close, and I while I could take out the two who were half in and half out, I wouldn’t be able to hit the driver.

The first gunman was firing, but I needed to take out the driver. I’m not sure where I even held my sight. I worked on instinct, and my round went true, smashing through the windshield and into the chest of the driver. My fingers flew as I worked the bolt, and my second shot hit the gunman in the head, red blood spraying. A second later, I hit the second gunman in the chest as the car curved to its right and slammed into the upright Humvee, throwing the first gunman out of the car, his body sliding to a stop not ten feet from the Americans. That was three shots in less than five seconds—three shots and three kills.

I knew I was a good shot, but I was amazed I had made those three. I never thought about them. I never worked out a firing solution. I just shot. I stood on the roof for a moment, drinking in the scene below me.

Immediately, all hell broke loose. I guess it wasn’t hard to spot me then, standing on the roof without a care in the world. A stream of automatic gunfire reached out towards me. I dropped to my belly and followed the tracer rounds to their source. In his excitement to get me, this machine gunner got up a little too high, and I was able to hit him in the shoulder. He rolled out of sight before I could finish him. Another insurgent kneeled with an RPG. I hit him in the chest. I didn’t get the next RPG gunner, though. I heard Jeff call out for me and start to rush forward when I heard the boom of the rocket as it was fired. It looked huge as it arched towards me. I was hoping it would pass over the roof, but I knew in an instant that the gunner’s aim was true. I didn’t even try to roll away and it rose up to meet me, slamming into the edge of the roof five feet to my right in a roar of noise pressure, and heat.

I lost that godlike feeling. I was in a cocoon of dark cotton. I wasn’t sure if I was dead or just on the path to it. Strangely enough, I was calm. I wasn’t concerned about it. I’d taken enough lives that it was probably time to pay my dues. I was vaguely aware of voices, of shapes coming up to me, of being carried somewhere. At first, I thought my fellow Marines had come and gotten me, that they’d take my body with them. But then I realized no one was speaking English. I think I was handed down the ladder, falling heavily as someone dropped me. I was dragged into a room and left there. A moment later, another shape was laid beside me. Was that Jeff? That seemed to break through my lethargy as I tried to force my brain to function. I knew what they’d done to Tevin and Doughboy, and I didn’t want Jeff to be mutilated like that.

I’m not sure how long I was there, waiting for the inevitable. Dimly I heard firing, and the shapes around me left. I concentrated on clearing the muddle of my mind. I needed to get Jeff out of there, but my arms and legs refused to obey my commands. Firing erupted very close. One of the shapes came rushing back in, coalescing into a man, a man with a huge knife in his hand. His face came into focus, the hatred burning. I still couldn’t move, so I knew this was it. I made my peace.

A three-round burst cut him down.

Another person came up, kneeling beside me. I recognized him. He was the corpsman from Kilo, the one who’d stayed with the trapped Marine on the street below. He had managed to make it. I knew I should say something. I worked my mouth, trying to form words, and suddenly, as if a switch was thrown, I could speak.

“ Jeff’s always getting after me to acknowledge others, so thank you,” I told him as politely as I could.

Epilogue

Camp Lejeuene, NC

Feb 20, 2007

I looked in the mirror, straightening my dress blues blouse. The blouse kept wanting to bunch up under the belt, and I had to keep pulling it down.

“You look beautiful, Noah, so stop admiring yourself. How do I look?” Jeff asked.

Jeff came up beside me. It was good to see him moving around. His therapy had been pretty difficult so far with more to come.

We’d both been medivaced to Balad, then Landstuhl. I’d been checked out pretty thoroughly, and after a few days in the hospital, I joined the other sick, lame, and lazy at the Medical Transient Detachment barracks at Kleber Kaserne while I had a week of being bused twenty miles to the hospital each day for check-ups and monitoring, then bused back. Once the docs were satisfied that my concussion was manageable, I was shipped back to Lejeune and the Wounded Warrior Battalion for several months more of therapy. I’d only been cleared to return to active duty two weeks prior to this.

Jeff, on the other hand, was messed up worse than that. He’d been stabilized at Landstuhl and then taken back to Bethesda where he’s undergone several surgeries so far where they’d worked on his broken back. He’d been rushing forward when we’d been hit up on the roof in Ramadi, and the blast had bent him backwards, breaking three of his vertebrae and damaging his spinal cord. He’d arrived back at Lejeune in December, going to therapy and waiting for his transfer to the Temporary Retired List. He swore he’d make a full recovery and come back on active duty, and I wouldn’t have bet against him.

I checked him over. He looked sharp in his blues; but then again, he’d look sharp in a pair of ratty cut-offs and a wife-beater T-shirt. Some guys just had the look.

I straightened his Purple Heart, presented to him by the Secretary of the Navy himself at Bethesda. Jeff didn’t remember that being pretty out of it at the time, but he had a photo of the bedside presentation.

“Looking good there, Jeff-my-boy,” I told him.

“Well, then, maybe we should get going, Corporal of Marines?”

“You’re the boss,” I told him, casually wondering what SSgt Rawhiu would say if he heard Jeff telling me what to do. Undoubtedly not much, at least not today.

I stepped behind him, grabbed the handles, and started pushing the wheelchair. I knew Jeff would rather walk into the ceremony, but if there was one thing that breaking your back in three places taught a man, he told me, it was humility. Having a young nurse change his bedpan and wipe his ass every day changed his perspective on things.

In some ways, I thought, the Marine Corps survived on ceremonies. From the Marine Corps Birthday dinner and pageant to Hero Ceremonies to our fallen to graduation from boot camp parades, we did things a certain way every time. It was these traditions that cemented the bonds between us, not only those of us serving now, but of every Marine who’d worn the uniform, from the first recruits at Tun Tavern to those of us in Iraq and Afghanistan today.

A few Marines were still arriving as I pushed Jeff down the concrete sidewalk that led up to the chapel. I pushed him up the ramp, a ramp that had only been added as Marines and sailors came back unable to walk up four simple steps.

It looked like most of the battalion was there in the chapel. All eyes swung to us as I pushed him down the center aisle. We made it to the front of the chapel past the entire pew in the front filled with other Marines from the Wounded Warrior Battalion. Even Capt Evans was there, “Brett” to those of us who were in the battalion with him. He was in a wheelchair at the end of the pew. He hadn’t learned to maneuver one with just his mouth yet, so he was in a basic model that someone else had to push, but bound and determined not to let the constant pain that wracked his body keep him from the ceremony.

Chuckie was there, standing tall as he could with his crutches. He gave me a thumbs up as I passed.

I kept pushing Jeff forward, stopping at the front and turning him around. I stood next to him while we looked back down the aisle.

“Man, oh man,” Jeff whispered, his hand snaking out to grab my trou right at the blood-stripe. “Get me through this, Noah.”

“You’ll do fine,” I told him. “I see you got the colonel to come. I’m not sure why he agreed, though.”

“‘Cause I asked him to come, that’s why,” he said, as if it had been a foregone conclusion.

After the battalion got back from Iraq, there’d been a change of command, and the CO had gone up to his new billet at HQMC. That was a five hour drive for him to come back down to Lejeune, all for a lance corporal I’m sure he didn’t really know.

When she finally appeared at the end of the aisle, we all perked up. I have to give her this. Jewell was hardcore. She had compromised with her family by wearing her whites instead of her blues. She marched — military marched — her medals on her chest swinging with each step. Her dad struggled to keep up, but he gamely tried, and four of her friends, also in full uniform, followed in trace.

As she reached us, she gave me a wink, then faced forward as I wheeled Jeff around to join her before stepping back.

The chaplain came forward to stand in front of them.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to join Jewell Sarah Mitchell and Jeffrey Linn Stoelk in holy matrimony . . . .”

I couldn’t believe it. My man Jeff was getting married!

Thank you for reading T he Al Anbar Chronicles . I hope you enjoyed it. I would love to get your feedback, either in a review or through the website http://www.jonathanbrazee.com .

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Other Books by Jonathan Brazee

The Return of the Marines Trilogy

The Few

The Proud

The Marines

The Al Anbar Chronicles: First Marine Expeditionary Force--Iraq

Prisoner of Fallujah

Combat Corpsman

Sniper

The United Federation Marine Corps

Recruit