THE MARINES SAT IN A CIRCLE ON THE SANDBAGS OUTSIDE THEIR tent. It was evening now, and they were passing around a Listerine bottle, taking turns drinking the mouthwash straight. Desperate measures were needed in a country without alcohol, Jimmy thought. He didn’t think he could drink mouthwash, but they hadn’t offered him any either.
Ramos took a drag on his cigarette, making the ember at the end brighten, bathing his young face in an orange glow. A smoker throughout college, Jimmy was tempted to bum one but resisted. It was a pleasant sight, more pleasant than watching some of them dribble tobacco juice into empty soda cans. Lance Corporal Dabrowski had a different reaction.
“Get you shot in the field,” Dabrowski said to Ramos as he exhaled.
“Come on,” Ramos said.
“In Chechnya, snipers killed the smokers first,” Dabrowski said. “At night, when the Russians were resting and having a butt, the snipers would aim at the cherries—”
“This isn’t the Recon exam, D-Boy, and we aren’t in the field yet,” Ramos said. Dabrowski was trying to join the elite Marine unit, Force Recon. He was already the strongest and fastest and, Ramos told Jimmy, meanest among them, but he had to train himself to be stronger, faster, and meaner still. Instead of reading paperbacks or magazines in his downtime, he read training manuals on guerrilla fighting tactics. “You can stand down for five minutes.”
“Whatever, man.” Dabrowski laughed. “Dip and live.”
“You should consult your Marine Behavior Manual, Lance Corporal Dabrowski. I will write you up for actions unbecoming of a junior noncom,” Ramos said in an unflattering imitation of Katzenbach. The other Marines began a chorus of meowing and mewling.
“Sorry, Lieutenant Pussy,” Dabrowski said.
“Now take my bras to laundry, Lance Corporal, and don’t forget the fabric softener,” Ramos continued.
“Lieutenant Pussy,” Dabrowski asked, continuing their impromptu skit, “if I may, sir, just one thing?”
“Yes, Lance Corporal?”
“Well, the boys have been in the desert a real long time. And there’s no girls out here except the adjutant to the command company, who looks like a hog. And, well, would you show us your tits?” Dabrowski asked. The Marines burst into the harshest laughter Jimmy could ever remember hearing, punctuated with shouts of “Boob job!” and “Double-D!”
“What’s that about?” Jimmy asked. Ramos cupped a pair of imaginary breasts in front of his chest.
“Man boobs. XO has some titties, baby,” Ramos answered. As executive officer for the company, Katzenbach had the no-glory jobs like paperwork and discipline. He was, Jimmy surmised, the object of particular hatred for all of the Marines in the company. All the men knew that he had been passed over for a promotion to captain and command of his own company for the second time. They called him Tits Ahoy and Kitty Cat and Lieutenant Pussy. They speculated about his wife’s faithfulness in a way Jimmy found truly unpleasant. With the nose for fear that prisoners use to sniff over new guards, they had Katzenbach pegged as weak.
Jimmy felt terrible for Katzenbach, but was hardly in a position to defend him. As the squad’s reporter, he wasn’t sure what his role was, exactly. He had tried to think of an article to write, but what would he say about waiting? While the first sergeant put the Marines through a grueling array of exercises in their gas masks, Jimmy found himself engaged in a chat with the head Marine chef about his crew of Pakistani sous-chefs. It wasn’t much, but it might provide the raw material for a brief feature story.
“Here’s Sergeant. You missed PT, Sergeant Harper.”
“Boys,” Harper said, as a low, unhurried greeting. “Made a run into town for batteries.”
“For the NVGs?”
“Yeah.”
“Oo-rah, Sergeant.”
“Got us a little Kentucky Fried Chicken down in Kuwait City too,” Martinez said.
“Damn,” someone else said with envy.
“I’d kill fifty Iraqis for some KFC, man,” Dabrowski said.
“PFC Martinez, give these men their chicken,” Harper replied. Martinez produced three crumpled buckets of fried chicken from his knapsack. There were scattered grunts of approval and even more hands reaching out.
“No offense, Sergeant Harper,” Dabrowski said, half of a drumstick lodged in his cheek. “But your breath smells like shit. You want some mouthwash?”
“Appreciate the honesty, Lance Corporal Dabrowski. Let me try to fix that problem.” Harper took a long swig from the mouthwash bottle and passed it to Martinez, who did likewise. It rounded the circle to Ramos, who was sitting next to Jimmy.
“Permission to give some Listerine to the sissy-ass civilian reporter, Sergeant Harper.”
“Only if he keeps it off the record, Private,” Harper said.
“Off the record, Jimmy?” Ramos asked.
“Sure,” Jimmy said, reaching for the bottle. He almost spat as he tasted it but managed to hold it in, some of the liquid channeling up into his sinuses, where it burned. There was only a hint of mint flavor. The rest was pure alcohol.
“Ethyl alcohol. Grain,” Dabrowski said. “Stuff’s a little harsh, but gets the job done.” They chuckled. The grain alcohol was tinted with food coloring. It had been delivered inside a ziplock freezer bag with a toothbrush, toothpaste, and dental floss. The seal had been reheated for any suspicious Kuwaiti inspectors.
“That was some pretty stupid shit, covering for the boys against the XO like that, Jimmy,” Harper said.
“Aw, Sergeant,” Ramos began.
“Hold on, now. He’s got a different job out here. How do you expect to get good intel for your stories if the XO hates your guts?”
“Why’s he so important?” Jimmy asked. Harper was older and somehow more authoritative. Jimmy assumed he was much more important for his daily work than Katzenbach.
“He’s second in command for a hundred and ninety men,” Harper said. “And he’s the guy assigned to keep an eye on you. Give you information.”
“Isn’t he younger than you are?” Jimmy asked.
“He’s an officer, with a commission. I’m just an enlisted grunt. Doesn’t matter how many stripes I have on my shoulder, I’m still lower than any second lieutenant fresh out of the Naval Academy,” Harper said. “This must be your first time covering the military?”
“What? No. Of course not. I know that.” Jimmy felt a tremor of anxiety. He remembered what Becky had said. He could not admit to being a clueless gossip columnist just as he was starting to fit in. “I’ve…uh, been doing more terrorism lately,” Jimmy said. Terrorism sounded tougher than American Idol.
Bits and pieces of news, combined with what he knew about cop reporting, built his fake résumé. Since September 11, it had been all terrorism all the time for the hard-boiled reporter. Before that, he had mostly bobbed and weaved from crime scene to crime scene, sparring with tough NYPD detectives, with some time clocked in among military units on special assignment. The Daily Herald had a Pentagon correspondent, of course, “but he’s more of a desk guy.” Jimmy let it sink in that he was more of a man of action himself. He wasn’t sure how convincing his act was, but Harper dropped the subject. “I just think that the enlisted men are the heart and soul of the Corps. Not the college boys. I dropped out of college,” Jimmy said proudly for the first time in his life.
“You and me both, members of a truly auspicious club,” Harper answered.
Once the grain alcohol was gone, they vanished one by one into the tent. Jimmy knew right away he would fall asleep without incident unless there was more hazing to come. The liquor made him drowsy. Even his cot felt more comfortable. The fact that he had lied to the squad, reimagined his past exploits in a way that he could never hope to live up to, would wait until morning to gnaw at him. In Jimmy’s pleasantly drifting mind it was Fashion Week in New York, and his two favorite models each held an arm as the three of them strolled through SoHo.
Alone in the tent, early in the day before it had gotten unbearably hot, Jimmy ventured into his e-mail for the first time since leaving Kuwait City three days earlier. In the back of his mind he knew he should have been writing and filing stories, but he chose to avoid the matter by leaving the phone off and the laptop shut. Ellison couldn’t get to him at a forward base in the northern Kuwaiti desert.
What was he supposed to write? The Marines threw their reporter in a ditch. The mess hall served London broil. Marines smoked. Marines spat. Marines did push-ups. But he knew he could put it off no longer. Still, it was worse than he had expected. Requests had come in at a rate of about two an hour since he’d embedded, all of them unanswered and until then unopened. Entreaties poured in from the Daily Herald’s other embeds, its Pentagon correspondent, and even its reporter in Baghdad. The poor fellow who was waiting in Jordan had received his visa and made it to the Iraqi capital. Now he had an understandable desire to learn more about the American assault aimed at his location.
The telecommunications reporter back in New York wanted to know about the pay phones and Internet options for the troops. The retail reporter wanted to know about the PX. The local reporters all wanted interviews with Marines from their suburbs or neighborhoods. An intern was trying to write a story about the mail service and was particularly petulant about Jimmy’s refusal to answer. It seemed like every writer at the paper wanted a little piece of the war. Requests had even come from Ellison directly.
Overwhelming, Jimmy thought. The whole thing felt overwhelming. He didn’t understand the first thing about what was going on. Anyone with a television tuned to CNN must have had a better idea of what was happening than he did. Since both going to war and losing his job would be counterproductive, Jimmy got to work. But he found he couldn’t banish parallels to red carpet events from his thoughts. It was a big gathering with crowds of tense, excited people. “Guess what time it is? Invasion time. It’s ten p.m., America; do you know where your Marine Corps is? Getting ready to kick some ass in the desert, that’s where.” He typed to get it out of his system.
“My Marines taking care of you there, Mr. Stephens?” Katzenbach appeared at the flap of the tent, peering in at him.
“Excuse me?” Jimmy said.
“Are the boys taking care of you?” Katzenbach asked. They hadn’t spoken since the incident with the videotape. Jimmy had detected some frostiness there, but the lieutenant came into the tent and sat down on the bunk across from him. He was wearing the standard-issue exercise shorts and a T-shirt soaked completely through with sweat. His husky build was not, Jimmy determined, for lack of trying. Katzenbach was probably fighting a losing battle with his genes. Against his will Jimmy noted the soft flesh of Katzenbach’s chest pressing against wet fabric, an irresistible target for the young Marines.
“Oh. Uh, yes, sir,” Jimmy said, hoping he had not been staring. “Of course.”
“You writing good stuff about how hard they’re working out here? Working to protect our country?” Katzenbach asked.
“Of course, Lieutenant Katzenbach,” Jimmy said.
“We’re so glad to have you here, Jimmy. So very glad. Because you’re here to tell the story of the Corps.” He broke into his goofy smile. “So you haven’t asked me about how our men are doing.”
“As…as I was about to,” Jimmy said. “How are they doing?”
“Their morale is high. They’re ready. They’ve been training for this for years. They can’t wait to go.” This was predictable and therefore unpublishable in Jimmy’s eyes, but he took out a pen and began copying down Katzenbach’s words, skipping many, but flashing the notebook toward the lieutenant so he could see certain ones, like “morale” and “ready” written large among squiggles and chicken scratch.
“What are they doing, in particular, to be more ready for this, you know, versus another war? For this war, I mean. How are—how are they specifically preparing?”
“They’re always ready,” Katzenbach replied.
“But—”
“They’re always ready,” Katzenbach said, as if he couldn’t understand the question or was stuck on a loop, “because they’re Marines. Marines are ready to fight any time. At a moment’s notice.”
“I saw the wrong end of that at a bar in Boston once,” Jimmy said, chuckling alone. The lieutenant stared and didn’t react, glancing down at the notebook. “Anyway.” Jimmy scribbled “at a moment’s notice” extra large, tipped the notebook toward the lieutenant, then loudly flipped to the next page. “Perfect,” Jimmy said. “That’s great. Everything I needed.” Katzenbach nodded eagerly. Jimmy waited for him to leave, but he remained seated and smiling.
“Remind me again where you went to college,” Katzenbach said.
“NYU,” Jimmy answered. Katzenbach seemed to cling to this common experience. The officers—lieutenants, captains, majors, and up—were almost entirely college graduates, from what in the old days might have been called the upper classes. Harper and Katzenbach were on completely different tracks, parallel ladders. Katzenbach was trying to make the step to captain, to end his time as the paper-pushing vice principal and command his own company. As high as Harper climbed, he would never become a captain, instead making first sergeant or sergeant major, with greater responsibility and higher pay, but always below the officers in the chain of command.
“I went to New York once.” The lieutenant nodded enthusiastically. “Times Square. Dazzling. It’s wild up there. How do you manage to live there all the time?”
“Well, coming from Jersey, just about everybody’s parents work in the city, you went a lot weekends.” Jimmy had work to do, but more important, he didn’t feel like pursuing this idle chitchat with Katzenbach. He felt bad for the guy, but found it hard to be friends with people he pitied. The more ingratiating someone was, the more pathetic he could seem. “Sorry, I’ve really—”
“You need to work?” Katzenbach asked him. “I understand.”
“Yeah, it’s just…” Jimmy began. He felt terrible. “You know how deadlines are.”
“Absolutely,” the lieutenant agreed. He stood up and walked toward the tent flap again. “But if you need anything,” he said, “just ask.”
Jimmy began to compose an article out of snippets of what he saw and heard around the camp, as well as his brief interview with Katzenbach. It was little more than a collection of sights and sounds, the bustle of activity around the camp, structured around bland quotes from the executive officer. It would, Jimmy hoped, never see the light of day in the paper.
His smallpox vaccination had given him a fever. On the bright side, the pamphlet with the American flag on the cover and the photos of hideously disfigured people on the inside reported that it was completely normal to run a fever and develop a bubbling sore on your shoulder. The downside was that the heat was already sweating every drop of liquid from Jimmy’s body. He had developed a cough the Marines called “the crud,” which they said was a result of his lungs getting used to an unpleasant coating of sand. He felt completely enervated and easily confused.
It did not help matters that for the fourth time he went through the unsettling experience of filling out a next-of-kin form. He suffered through his second gas-mask training session as well as his third lecture about threading a dog tag through one of his bootlaces. That way, in the event that his head and body disappeared, he could still be identified without too much effort, the lieutenant explained to him. He could see with ever-greater clarity what a mistake it had been to join the Marines for this invasion. So he expected at least a little understanding as he packed his belongings for the third time. He got none.
“Let’s go. This is it. We’re moving up,” Harper said.
“This is it?” Jimmy asked, dropping the pamphlet. “We’re invading?”
“No,” Harper said. “We’re moving to the assembly point.”
“Aren’t we assembled already?” Jimmy asked.
“We need to assemble,” Harper said very slowly. “After that we can move ahead to the staging area.”
“I thought this was a staging area. This isn’t a staging area?” Jimmy asked the sergeant.
“This is a prestaging area,” Harper said.
“Is there a poststaging area?” Jimmy asked.
“Iraq,” Harper said.
“I mean between the two, between the staging area and Iraq,” Jimmy said.
“There’s the LD,” Harper said. “Line of departure.”
“Is that a location or a state of mind?” Jimmy asked.
“A little of both,” Harper said. “You almost ready?”
“Almost,” Jimmy said, zipping up his backpack. He heard Harper’s footsteps moving away on the plywood floor and quickly gathered his belongings to follow. He hoisted the frame pack onto his shoulders, raised the handle on his suitcase with one hand, and grabbed both duffel bags with the other. The wheels of the suitcase were useless on the unpaved path. It dug a wide canal behind him in the sand. It was all he could do to keep Harper in sight. At last the sergeant stopped at a line of Humvees.
“I told you we were gonna get a chick,” Ramos said.
“Play nice, Devil Dog,” Martinez said, using one of the Corps nicknames for its troops.
“He’s packed like a bitch, all I’m saying.”
“What’s wrong?” Jimmy asked.
“You can’t bring anything to the staging area that you aren’t bringing across the berm,” Harper said.
“Okay,” Jimmy said, moving toward the Humvee to load his luggage. Harper stepped in front of him. The bulge of tobacco in the sergeant’s lower lip made him look even more square-jawed and tough.
“Jimmy, that’s more than we can fit in this Humvee. For all of us.” Harper loosed a string of brown spit on the ground, a foot from Jimmy’s bags.
“Sergeant Harper, we could leave all our weapons behind, Sergeant. To make room for the reporter’s panties,” Ramos said.
“Private, no speaking for the rest of the day. At all,” Harper said. “Jimmy, we got to repack you here.”
“Um, this one’s my computer and phones and stuff.” He lifted up the heavier of the two duffels. “I got to take it with me. And, uh, this one has my clothes and shoes—I mean, boots—and stuff, in it. Kind of need that. Let’s see. Chem gear over here. Toiletries. It’s all on the list.”
“What list?” Harper asked.
“The embed packing list.”
“Do you have a copy of this list that maybe I could look at?”
“Sure, right here,” Jimmy said. Harper took the pages from him and began to read.
“Six pairs of underwear?” Harper read out loud.
“That’s what it says.”
“Gore-Tex pants,” Harper said, blinking and looking up from the paper at Jimmy.
“For the rain,” the reporter explained.
“Sergeant Harper, we’re supposed to—” Ramos began.
“Private, the not-talking? That was an order,” Harper barked.
“Sergeant Harper,” Martinez said. “I think what he wants to say is that we’ve got five minutes before we roll.”
“You can have the backpack and one duffel,” Harper told Jimmy.
“One?” Jimmy asked.
“One,” Harper confirmed. “You have five minutes.”
“Four,” Ramos said. Harper didn’t chastise him this time. The diesel fumes heightened Jimmy’s nausea as he bent over to empty the pack.