An Arabic man dressed in ankle-length wool garment—a thobe—darted out from behind the wreckage of a small burned, overturned pickup truck. He leaps over the stone median that divides the highway into two lanes and disappears into the darkness on the other side. Adlemeyer is the first to spot him, training his finger like a riflescope over the back of the insurgent’s head. The AK-47 slung over his shoulder informs them he is al-Qaeda.
“Look at that asshole run. Holy shit, he can run!” Adlemeyer shouts.
“What do you suppose hajji is up to this time of night?” Bill asks, well aware of the answer.
“Better not be what I think it is, or the asshole’s gonna get 5.56 rounds all up his ass.” Adlemeyer places his M-16 beside his right leg with the butt of the weapon resting against his crotch. Slapping the bottom of the magazine to seat it properly, he then releases the rifle’s bolt catch, charging the bolt forward and sounds off, “Whip this shit around.”
Bill angles the Humvee to the left facing off with the median and flips on the overhead lights. “Blaster, get Ma up.”
“Aw… hell, yeah! Time for some grinning and pinning!” Blaster snaps upward in one fluid motion from his sitting position, sliding through the manhole and resting against the back support. He moves like a well-oiled machine rather than his usual shit-bird self; the brawny marine flips open the feed cover and seats the rounds that Nuke feeds him in a large succession of chain links from an ammo container. A few moments later, Blaster pulls twice on the charging handle, expelling the initial chained link. “We’re good, Colden. Ma’s up!”
Adlemeyer and Bill exit the Hummer at the same moment. They hunker down, making their way to the safety of the four-foot stone median and pressing their backs against it. Nuke exits the vehicle, crouching down just outside the Humvee’s open door in case Blaster requires additional ammo or needs to get on the comm for any reason. Erecting his first two fingers, Bill makes sure all eyes are on him, except for Blaster; his eyes train hajji. Bill then raises his hand over his head and ushers his fingers in a forward motion to call out hajji’s location. “All right then, light his ass up.”
Blaster aligns his sight just to the left of the insurgent and presses down on the butterfly trigger. Loud, powerful popping belts out in continuous succession as each round tear into the asphalt just inches behind the fleeing man’s feet. Stumbling forward in panic, hajji’s rifle falls free from his shoulder and slides out in front of him—skittering and rapping across the pavement. The suspected insurgent then rolls onto his back into a defensive position; his arms extended out in front of him. He is unable to make Blaster as the Hummer’s bright lights shield his position. Lying on his back, he desperately waves his hands back and forth in surrender. Blaster lets up on the trigger although maintaining a steady line of sight.
“Hajji’s down!” Blaster belts out and then adds for effect, “MAN, THAT MOTHERFUCKER WENT DOWN!”
Bill nods once and relays a solid three count under his breath while nodding the same number to Adlemeyer. Slowly inching his back up the wall, Bill takes a quick peek, surveying the area around the target. He then flips around into a firing position with the stock of his weapon butted up against the flat of the median. Flipping the M-16’s selector switch from safety to a single-firing position, he aligns the rifle’s sight with the insurgent’s chest. Adlemeyer raps on the side of Nuke’s helmet, signaling Nuke to get on the comm. He then joins Bill along the wall.
“What the hell do we do now?”
“Christ, keep me covered,” Bill orders. “It’s time hajji embraced the suck.”
As Bill hightails it over the median, his weapon instinctively comes up in an offhand position. He takes slow cautious steps, steadying his hands while keeping the rifle’s sight locked on hajji.
Twenty-five months in-country and near the end of Bill’s second tour, and he still has not learned more than a stitch of the Arabic language; at least nothing more than the few common words military personnel use while questioning detainees. He finds it more like persecution rather than a communicative exchange—the way both the Saudis as well as Americans interrogate detainees. He knows it is going to be like pulling teeth trying to interrogate the man. Bill intends to get his point across.
“You al-Qaeda—” Bill approaches the terror-stricken man with steadfast ferocity, “you are a jihadist—yes? You’d better canary up before I drop your sorry ass!”
Shifting his wide anxious eyes back and forth, assuring himself that another succession of bullets would not mow him down, hajji speaks angrily with fast and fluent Arabic. Most of what he says comes across as gibberish, although what Bill does manage to translate from the man’s heated words and volley of furious spittle is that he has taken offense to the label al-Qaeda. This is an obvious indication to Bill that his detainee understood a little, some, or a whole hell of a lot of the English language, which means he is being deceitful, and in turn means he is hiding something from Bill, and it’s probably nearby.
“You speak English?” Bill takes a few quick steps forward, pressing the barrel of his rifle into hajji’s forehead. “American, Yankees, hot dogs, John Wayne… Do you speak English?”
Hajji shakes his head once—no.
Nuke sits in the backseat of the Hummer with the comm resting on his lap and the handheld receiver up to his ear. His rifle, mounted with a grenade launcher, rests across his lap. He has already informed Corporal Munoz of the situation and is now awaiting instructions from base camp. A few moments pass and Colonel Lesieur picks up the other end of the line.
“Charlie-Oscar-Mike, this is Foxtrot. What’s your current situation?”
“We’ve detained an armed assailant three clicks east of checkpoint Tango,” Nuke informs the colonel. “As of now, our situation is nonaggressive… I repeat, our situation is nonaggressive.”
“Roger that, Charlie-Oscar-Mike. Can you confirm if the detainee is a classified high-value target?”
“Wait, one.” Nuke lowers the receiver to his shoulder and shifts his attention to Adlemeyer. “The colonel wants to know if hajji is a high-value target.”
“Shit,” Adlemeyer curses under his breath. Just the thought of a package sends chills down Adlemeyer’s spine. He calls out to Bill in a hushed voice, “Colden… what’s the situation? The colonel wants to know if hajji has a price tag.”
Bill moves off to the side of the detainee, circling over to the AK-47, kicking it well out of reach. He then looks steadily through his sight and squarely into the desperate man’s shifty eyes. By now, sweat beads hajji’s face and his breath seems quickened and visible. Nothing appears familiar about hajji, only the familiar fear he broadcasts from his eyes. Bill shifts his own eyes to the left of his sight, thoroughly examining hajji’s sweat-drenched face. This man is no leader—perhaps a flunky out peppering debris with IEDs.
“What’s the word, Colden?” Adlemeyer grows fidgety by the second.
“Tell Colonel Lesieur that’s a negative on his Christmas dinner.”
Nuke picks up the receiver. “That’s a negative on the high-value target, Foxtrot.”
“Roger that, Charlie-Oscar-Mike. Search the detainee for contraband and then assist him off the highway.” The comm squelches and then goes silent for a moment. Lesieur then speaks again, “Watch your six out there, marines. Foxtrot, out.”
Nuke slips the comm in the floorboard and climbs out of the Hummer, taking position with his weapon against his chest and his back pressed against the median. He addresses Adlemeyer with the Colonel’s orders. “Colonel Lesieur wants us to search hajji for information, and get this, he wants us to escort the asshole off the highway.”
“Son of a bitch,” Adlemeyer raps the back of his Kevlar helmet against the median wall. “Fucking useless, red tape motherfucking fobbits.”
Fobbits are essentially marines who never leave the forward base camp yet seem to make the lives of field marines a constant hell. Nowadays, it seems the military was never in short supply of fobbits. In fact, these days, there are just too many of them; all making very important decisions about what was going down in Fobbitville. The entire marine corps is being overrun by fobbits, and Adlemeyer hates every last one of them.
“Fucking fobbits,” he curses again. “We should be hauling this asshole in for questioning or planting two in his chest and one in his head.”
“We have our orders.”
“Shit—”
* * *
A second Arabic man dressed identical to the first slips out from behind a pickup’s wreckage on the other side of the Hummer. He moves cautiously, silently holding his assault rifle awkwardly at his hip with his left hand. Hastily worn like a vest, the insurgent has slung a shapeless mass of wires and dingy padding with Velcro strips attached to C4 charges over his shoulders. Several glass jars filled with various scraps of metal, nails, bolts, screws, and ball bearings adorn the vest. In his right hand is a pressure plate, which he intended to camouflage among the highway debris but now nervously thumbs over it with the palm of his hand. Amid his sweaty face and obvious terror, there is the transfixed resolution of a fanatic in his eyes.
Nuke catches a glimpse of the insurgent as he approaches the Hummer from the right front door, attempting to circle around. He springs up with his weapon in the offhand position, hastily moving sideways and around the front of the Hummer. Before the insurgent catches wind of the approaching marine, Nuke fires off a three-round burst that explodes into the right side of his neck and collarbone, twisting the man down and around to the flat of his belly.
The sound of gunfire catches everyone off guard and even manages to terrify hajji #1. Blaster instinctively pivots Ma Deuce around in the direction of the gunfire, readies himself for an exchange of rounds, if need be. Adlemeyer maintains his sight on the first insurgent after he processes the distinct three-round-burst of M-16 gunfire.
“Someone talk to me! Who fired off?” Bill shouts, keeping his sight evenly over the detainee’s chest. He too has processed the distinct three-round burst and waits for confirmation.
Nuke watches the downed insurgent’s body convulse as his life pours out onto the cold asphalt. Under the full moonlight, it appears black like crude oil and only shimmers where the pale moon reflects. For the first time in his six-month tour, Nuke has taken a life. He does not feel empty or nauseous as he previously thought he might. Nuke’s training kicks in, and it consumes him. He feels as if he is floating on air; anxious and elevated, yet his movements convey training and calculation.
Nuke moves slowly over to the fallen insurgent, nudging his left rib cage with his boot while maintaining an eye through his sight. The body is limp with no signs of life. The slow expanding pool of crude oil touches the butt of the insurgent’s rifle and Nuke kicks it away.
“Nuke—” Adlemeyer calls out from his position along the median. “You good, devil dog?”
Nuke turns away from the downed insurgent, facing Adlemeyer on the other side of the Humvee.
“Clear!” Nuke shouts, although there is no vacancy posted in his eyes. Blaster grins, taking in the look on Nuke’s face. Clearly, the young Ojibwa is in shock as his eyes remain blank and unfocused.
“Nuke’s good,” Blaster reassures Adlemeyer while continuing to grin down at Nuke. “Cochise just got him a little.”
“Clear!” Nuke repeats himself much louder.
The insurgent’s eyes flutter open. A shaky, blood-covered hand emerges from under the body; a clenched fist drags knuckles through a pool of moonlit crimson. In one last effort, the insurgent lifts himself up and falls dead with the weight of his body, collapsing down on the detonator. The explosion hurls him upward into the air, fanning him out and raining down many smaller chunks of burning cauterized flesh, bone, and metal shrapnel alike. Most of the shrapnel escaped from under him before he launched, and what did not tore him into fiery chunks, spreading him thin across the highway.
The mere force of the blast pushes the Hummer violently up on one side and down against the median wall, pinning Adlemeyer with extreme pressure. His screams are horrid as the weight of the vehicle collides against him, crushing Adlemeyer just below his rib cage. Blaster is thrown free of the Hummer as it smashes violently into the median wall. He touches down on the other side of the highway, telescoping his spine with immeasurable force, immediately shattering every bone from his collar down to his pelvis. Unconscious, he nears death.
Bill feels the force of the explosion on his back long before he hears it. Seconds afterward, he registers Adlemeyer’s bloodcurdling screams. Bill breaks concentration off the detained insurgent, who is now scuttling backward, away from the explosion.
Turning just in time to see the violent fireball dissipate behind the overturned Hummer, Bill shields his face with one arm and lazily points his rifle back toward the detainee. Expressionless and slack-jawed, Bill’s mind starts to race.
Nearly ten feet away from where Bill stands, Blaster lays broken in front of him—bloody and limp, his legs bent over his shattered back as the toes of his combat boots touch the asphalt past his head. Bill cannot make out Nuke’s immediate position all the while processing Adlemeyer’s shrill screams.
“Nuke—” Bill calls out.
There is no response from the Ojibwa private.
“Nuke—” he repeats himself.
Nothing.
“Come on, Nuke! Sound off!” Still, Adlemeyer’s groaning and whimpering are the only sounds that break the silence beyond the burning embers that were once a man.
Bill takes a step toward Blaster and Adlemeyer when a rifle charges back and forward behind him. Immediately, he realizes the error in letting his guard down.
Taking in what he knew might be his last breath and holding it deep in his lungs, Bill closes his eyes and clears his mind. There, in that split second before chance and luck rolls bones to determine his fate, the chaos of Bill’s thoughts give way to a vision of Abigail. She does not look any older than he remembers her. After all, she is nothing more than a surface memory—a shining effigy that has come to warn him that he needed to act with precise calculation in his next few actions, for both of their sakes. Her hair, as he summons her from memory, is the color of honey, not the dark hue of honey in a bottle, although precisely like the reddish golden hue you will see when viewing the bottle held up to sunlight. Her eyes are green like a cat’s and they stand out against her milky bronze skin, keeping her as vibrant and full of life as Bill remembers.
She moves slowly in his mind, twirling about in circles in a field of young sunflowers, beckoning him. In her white cotton skirt and pink tank top, Abigail smiles back at Bill as her hands glide over the tops of the flowers. She looks back at him as if she expects Bill to follow her to some safe, secret rendezvous. There, they will both collapse into each other’s arms in the rapture of the twilight and make love through the night. Instead, Abigail stops and her beautiful green eyes become stringent with terror. Bill watches as her hands move upward to cover her mouth and she screams, bill! Her voice echoes in his mind.
Bill opens his eyes and whips around, determined as his aim is precise. The insurgent brings up the muzzle of his rifle. There is a quick exchange of gunfire and then all falls silent. Standing motionless yet thoroughly fixated, Bill watches as the insurgent’s body seizes up with shock; blood spills from the hole in his thobe not more than a half inch from his heart. Bill’s aim is spot on. He will soon be dead for sure, but still, something is not quite right. There is an emptiness in Bill’s stomach. During the exchange, he felt something inside him separate. He drops his rifle burying his hand under his flak jacket and pulls back blood as black as the darkest sky from the wetness drenching his camouflage shirt. Bill places his hand up in front of his face viewing it from front to back; both seem equally covered with wet darkness.
After dropping to his knees, he falls forward with the ball of his shoulder planted in the asphalt. There he rests for a few moments, trying to catch a breath that is getting harder to chase. The fiery excruciating pain in the pit of his stomach is as constant as the flow of blood that escapes through the two small holes in his abdomen. With no other sane recourse, Bill unsnaps his chinstrap, groaning, and then discards the constrictive helmet that no longer serves a purpose. He rolls onto his back extending his arms out to his sides.
A trail of blood smears a path along the asphalt where the insurgent crawled off to safety, eventually to die from the wounds he sustained. Bill clenches his teeth and roars furiously and then again in disbelief. The ground under him is ice cold, but he does not mind it much. His body relaxes and his face contorts as he has no more breath to take in. Bill’s thoughts focus solely on that of his mom and dad, and his beautiful Abigail.
Several months have passed since he had really thought about any of them, at least not like he used to. Of course, he would ghost letters home so everyone knew he was still alive. Most of the time, Bill was sincere. The truth of the matter was that life in the war zone kept Bill’s attention on his squad and himself. He had since realized that Abigail and the real world, up to this point, were slipping through his fingers more and more every day. It was not the case eight months ago, when all Bill could do was think about Abigail and anticipate her next letter. Lying there, bleeding out, breathless, and dying, Bill succumbs to thoughts of deep regret.
How foolish it all sounds . . . All of those arguments with Dad about what to do with good ol’ Billy Boy.
Close to the end and now, it looks as if his dad may have been right.
How foolish it all sounds . . .
Abigail begged Bill not to enlist. Nevertheless, Bill had been enraged with his father; he wouldn’t listen to her or anyone else for that matter.
“Two more years and I’ll graduate,” she pleaded with Bill. “We can get out of Derrylin and start our lives together. We can travel to Rome, just like we planned.”
He remembers how she desperately begged him to stay with her.
Had you listened to any of them, Billy Boy, you would not be lying in a pool of your own black blood, slowly and painfully dying. How foolish it all sounds . . .
“I should have never left her alone,” Bill mumbles.
It does not have to end this way… pick yourself up . . . there is much work to do…
His eyes feel so heavy. The pressure in his chest intensifies. He no longer wants any of this. It is all a terrible mistake and Bill just wants to go home.
You have taken your last breath, Billy Boy… but it doesn’t have to end this way… now pick yourself up . . .