“Since when was the decision to wage war a popularity contest?” McCarthy demanded.
“Since Vietnam,” Trapp said.
“Apples and oranges,” McCarthy said. “As long as there’s no draft, public opinion is just background noise.”
If Washington would just let the armed forces do what they were trained to do, the War on Terror would have a beginning, middle, and end instead of spanning the new millennium. The beginning had been 9/11, the middle was Iraq, and the end would be nigh when marines were finally let loose in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Meanwhile everybody was pussyfooting around so-called weapons of mass destruction like they were the be-all and end-all of military might. When was the last time a WMD won a war? They were more like bogeymen than actual weapons. The very definition of the term was an affront to the infantry.
“What are we?” McCarthy said. “Chopped liver?”
Mass destruction was being perpetrated by American soldiers on a daily basis, thank you very much. Marines had toppled more than concrete facsimiles of Saddam and his Royal Guard. They had stormed his palace and brought Baghdad to its knees. They had flushed him and his Ba’athist rats out of thousands of desert holes, one by one. Insurrections in Ramadi and Mosul had been smashed by yours truly, and they would do the same in Fallujah. To date, the Marine Corps alone had killed tens of thousands of insurgents and leveled countless recalcitrant towns. The fact that United Nations inspectors couldn’t find WMDs proved one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt. They couldn’t tell their asses from their elbows.
Real weapons of mass destruction had human faces. They were swift, silent, and just as deadly as their nuclear and chemical counterparts. Not that McCarthy or anyone else thought US Marines occupied an exalted position in the pantheon of warriors. They were the ultimate grunts, and proud of it. In their version of military history, leathernecks were the first in and last out of every major campaign since Belleau Wood. Nations declared war. Platoons fought them. Without boots on the ground, the conflict played out in the press rather than on the battlefield. Virtually every marine motto attested to their dedication to the art and ethics of close combat. Real war, not virtual war.
“One shot, one kill.”
“Gun control is hitting your target.”
“Don’t run, you’ll just die tired.”
“Never forget your weapon was made by the lowest bidder.”
The Marine Corps’s reputation for doing more with less was a badge of honor. They prided themselves in beating the odds when everyone else folded. This was precisely why Sinclair joined the marines rather than the army or the air force. He understood the necessity of artillery and air strikes in a pinch. Commanders couldn’t afford to squander valuable human resources, especially in an all-volunteer infantry. But what he liked best was fighting face-to-face. No tanks or jets or white phosphorous, just rifles and automatics. Or better yet, knife against knife, the ultimate measure of courage. One man pitting his strength against another. No frills.
Snipers like Sinclair routinely scored more kills than gunners. But his relative distance from targets made him eager to join the action below. It was just a matter of time. Every block they cleared tightened the noose. The sheer density of fighters packed into smaller and smaller quadrants would eventually preclude long-distance sharpshooting. The sooner the better. House-to-house combat was always up close and personal. When they finally penetrated the heart of Fallujah, it would be downright intimate.
Colonel Denning proved to be right about their proximity to the eye of the storm. The platoon started encountering more and more munitions stockpiles, none of which they were authorized to confiscate. Their only option was to blow them to smithereens. If and when the Iraqi National Guard got their shit together, Radetzky would trust them to watch their backs. In the meantime, insurgents could easily reoccupy cleared areas, helping themselves to any weapons left behind. Not on his watch. He assembled both squads, to make damned sure everyone understood the game plan.
“You heard the colonel,” Radetzky said. “Full speed ahead.”
Having issued the official order, Radetzky switched off his headset. What Colonel Denning didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Letting speed take precedence over prudence would put his men at risk, something Radetzky only did when absolutely necessary. The bottom line was that they were expected to clear their way to Phase Line Freddy by sundown on the third day of the offensive. How they got there was their own business.
“While you’re at it, destroy every single weapons cache you can find,” Radetzky continued. “Our objective is twofold. Get to Phase Line Freddy on time. Without getting our asses blown off.”
The platoon breathed a collective sigh of relief. They were willing to follow Radetzky through the gates of hell because he never betrayed their trust. The squads peeled off again. They picked up the pace, working double-time to avoid falling behind. Whenever ordnance was discovered, they loaded it into abandoned cars and trucks. Everyone took cover while Percy did the honors, blowing the whole kit and caboodle sky high with his SMAW. It was nerve-racking work, especially for Sinclair. From a distance, Percy’s controlled detonations sounded an awful lot like random IEDs, which squads were encountering with increasing frequency in abandoned compounds. Every time he heard a big bang, Sinclair held his breath until his buddies emerged unscathed.
Weapons caches told them a great deal about who was arming the insurgency. They were like miniature history lessons, documenting military conflicts spanning more than half a century. There were Cold War rifles from Czechoslovakia. Iranian FAL rifles. German Mausers and Heckler & Koch assault weapons. Soviet-era machine guns. Good old-fashioned hunting shotguns from local factories ranging from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Russian SVD sniper rifles no more than a year or two old. Even World War II Garand rifles manufactured in the United States. AK-47s were ubiquitous. International trade in weapons was a big business, with less official regulation than the manufacture and sale of children’s toys.
The fact that East Manhattan was armed to the teeth should have precluded the persistent presence of civilians. But Fallujans were either inured to the risk of cross fire, or they had grossly miscalculated the scope and duration of Operation Vigilant Resolve. The platoon started confronting more and more women and children. The strategic net, designed to capture insurgents flushed out of other sectors, was also catching their families. Sinclair wondered why they hadn’t slipped through the mesh. Every day they tarried would be more dangerous than the day before.
Time and again, squads kicked open front doors, and civilians rushed out the back. Women in burqas usually shepherded larger groups, traveling in teams with two or three families in tow. They moved calmly and quickly as though they had rehearsed their escape routes thousands of times over the years. Even the youngest children seemed preternaturally composed, seldom horsing around or making a fuss. There were a surprising number of babies. Sometimes they cried out, but the running and jostling soon pacified them. Sinclair scoped them all, visually frisking even children, who had been known to smuggle, if not wield weapons. They wound their way through streets and alleys, never bothering to take cover. Eventually they staked out another house or sought refuge in a mosque.
“The area is crawling with civilians,” Sinclair reported to Radetzky.
“And insurgents,” Radetzky responded. “We just nailed three in a laundry. Heads up.”
“Roger that.”
Sinclair felt left out. He hadn’t even heard the kills over his headset. For the umpteenth time since deploying, he regretted being such a crackerjack shot. All morning long, he’d been stuck babysitting women and children, missing all the action behind closed doors. The only potential threats he identified were occasional teenage boys interspersed among families. One in particular looked like he might have a handgun tucked into his belt. He was disarmingly clean-cut and well dressed, almost preppy. The bulge could just as easily have been a cell phone. The fact that he had the same no
se and deep-set eyes as the lead woman tipped the scales in his favor. He obviously wasn’t masquerading as a family member to escape detection. This didn’t necessarily guarantee his innocence. Even terrorists had mothers.
The other children were considerably younger, but the woman seemed most protective of her eldest son. She kept close to him, presumably shielding him from adulthood and its attendant dangers. The older the child, the more likely he would be targeted. Teenagers who might have vandalized cars in Iowa planted roadside bombs in Iraq. But this kid looked more like a bookworm than a punk. Sinclair scoped him until the family disappeared into a house the squads had not yet cleared. He probably should have taken him out anyway, to play it safe.
Maybe next time.
Then Sinclair knew he was in trouble. The word maybe didn’t exist in military vocabulary. Never before had uncertainty reared its treacherous head in Iraq. He blamed the boy’s mother. Talk about a lame excuse. He had learned to stanch his fear of IEDs and even suicide bombers. Surely he could withstand the sight of a woman without losing his nerve. His boot camp commander, Sergeant Troy, had warned them about the dangers of ambivalence. He hammered home his point with graphic examples, shouting at point-blank range to make sure it penetrated their thick skulls.
“Know what happens when you straddle the fence?”
“Sir!”
“You get your balls blown off. Know what happens to your buddies?”
“Sir!”
“They get their balls blown off.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Want to live the rest of your stinking life with their blood on your hands?”
“No, sir!”
Sinclair vowed to shoot anyone carrying anything even vaguely resembling a gun. This was a war zone, not a kindergarten. Kids too young to drive were packing guns. Their mothers concealed grenades in their abayas. Not all of them. But it only took one to maim and mangle a body beyond recognition.
“Better theirs than yours,” Sergeant Troy shouted.
“Yes, sir!”
A firefight erupted in a nearby compound, answered by the boom of a grenade. Two men dressed in black with checkered kaffiyehs jumped from second-story windows. Finally some action. They tumbled to break the impact and sprang up with the dexterity of either athletes or trained combatants. Sinclair hit the lead runner square in the chest, a clean shot. His fourth kill of the day tripped up the second man, who sprawled and skidded across the pavement behind a low wall. Sinclair dialed in the distance and bided his time. All those hours spent in hunting blinds had honed his patience as well as his aim. Sooner or later, kill number five would peek over the wall or make a run for it. Suddenly Trapp and McCarthy appeared at the back door of the compound.
“Watch the wall,” Sinclair said into his headset. “One concealed insurgent.”
“Got him,” Trapp said.
Trapp motioned and Vasquez joined him at the door. They opened fire to cover McCarthy as he sprinted across the courtyard. The insurgent realized he was surrounded. Jumping to his feet, he dropped his rifle and raised his hands over his head in a single urgent motion. McCarthy emptied a round into the man’s torso and then signaled to Sinclair, giving him a thumbs-up.
Sinclair didn’t respond to this breach of protocol. Giving away a sniper’s position was strictly taboo. McCarthy was obviously pretty pumped up, so much so he had just plugged a man in the act of surrendering. Sinclair refrained from scoping the corpse to check for the concealed weapon that would justify McCarthy’s decision to fire. Second-guessing a fellow marine would have been another breach of protocol.
Wolf and the rest of the squad joined McCarthy’s celebration in the courtyard. Like football players, they had been warned not to hotdog. Rubbing victory in your opponents’ faces was especially bad form when the stakes were so high. But cameras were seldom around to enforce the ban. In any case, platoons could usually count on media discretion. Embeds had received their own warnings. They turned a blind eye to the spectacle of Americans dishonoring corpses. Conversely, footage of the enemy gloating over American bodies was worthy of prime time news. No one would ever forget the image of terrorists cheering the falling Towers. The image alone launched the War on Terror, allegedly justifying the eventual invasion of Iraq. Had Fallujans not been caught in the act of reveling on Brooklyn Bridge, Sinclair and his buddies would have been playing pinochle back at base camp rather than racking up kills in East Manhattan. The pictures, not the four charred bodies themselves, prompted Operation Vigilant Resolve.
Trapp high-fived Vasquez. McCarthy mimicked the dead insurgent, mincing around with his hands over his head.
“Don’t shoot! I’m unarmed.”
“Looked a fuck of a lot like an M16 to me,” Vasquez said.
“He was on his way to the pawn shop,” Trapp said. “To trade it in for a white flag.”
The minute Radetzky’s squad filed out of the adjacent compound, everybody sobered up. He had zero tolerance for anything except the mission at hand. Wolf started waving his men on to the next block of compounds, but Radetzky intervened. The closer they got to Highway 10, the less affluent the residents. Presumably Ba’athist fat cats disliked the sound of traffic as much as any other privileged faction. Houses in more modest neighborhoods were built practically on top of one another, close enough to facilitate jumping from one roof to the next. Radetzky ordered the platoon to mix things up, alternating street-level and rooftop points of entry whenever possible. The more varied their tactics, the less likely insurgents would anticipate their movements.
Ambushes were often conducted by lone gunmen stationed on living room couches. They were really more like suicide bombers, content to die as long as they took American soldiers along with them. Lounging around for days on end, they passed the time getting high on epinephrine and adrenaline. It’s a wonder they managed to aim their weapons, given how high they were. Most of them never even bothered to stand up when coalition forces finally stormed their compounds. They just fired and took fire from prone positions until even the drugs stopped pumping through their veins. All that dope made them practically impervious to pain and death. The more syringes strewn across the floor, the more bullets their bodies absorbed before accomplishing their martyrdom.
Sinclair kept one step ahead of the platoon as they leapfrogged from one rooftop to another. He was perched high enough to see over the parapets of all but two target buildings, which were obscured by an apartment complex. He reported both blind spots to Radetzky, just in case. The squads modified their tactics accordingly, clearing these two compounds from down below. Their prudence paid off big time. Terrorists may not have had tanks and Bradleys, let alone Cobras and F-15s. But they had learned to make weapons out of almost anything. Trip-wired cars. Hijacked airplanes. Booby-trapped buildings. The roof of the second compound had disappeared into thin air. Artillery sometimes blew the tops off houses, but there was no evidence of bombardment. Telltale signs of demolition offered a more insidious explanation. Insurgents had destroyed the roof with sledgehammers, leaving a gaping hole that would have swallowed Wolf’s entire squad. It was the biggest booby trap they’d ever seen.
“Holy Jesus,” Wolf said.
Having worked in demolition before graduating to construction, Wolf appreciated the amount of muscle necessary to take down the roof. The entire top floor of the house was knee-deep in rubble.
“It’s ingenious,” Trapp said.
“It’s cowardly,” McCarthy said. “Like shadow boxing.”
“Necessity is the mother of invention.”
“Who said that?”
“Some stupid ass Arab dude. Too chickenshit to face the enemy.”
“If it works, it isn’t stupid.”
“Guess what. It didn’t work.”
Volleys and grenade blasts erupted in a neighboring compound. Radetzky’s squad had evidently hit the jackpot. Wolf regretted having to tear himself away from the pitfall. There was never enough time to marvel at the wonders of the co
mbat zone. He ordered his men to descend and disperse across the courtyard below. If insurgents managed to elude the initial attack, they’d run right into Wolf’s firing range. No such luck. Radetzky made short work of the compound, hoarding every last kill. Wolf’s team felt cheated until they found out, much later, what they’d missed out on.
It wasn’t that they were bloodthirsty. They had simply been trained to believe that the more they killed, the less likely they themselves would be killed. Not to mention the allure of heroism in the face of mortal danger. Sinclair in particular had been cursing his luck all day, feeling more like a spectator than a combatant. The fact that he’d just saved an entire squad from plummeting to their deaths provided some solace. Given his training, though, killing would have felt even more constructive than saving lives. He perked up when one of his gunners issued what sounded like a warning.
“We’ve got company.”
In addition to watching Sinclair’s back, the two other members of his team acted as spotters tasked with locating enemy fighters. Unless the threat was imminent, they let him do the honors. Stealth made them hold their fire. One clean shot from a sniper rifle was far less likely to give away their position than bursts of automatic rounds. Sinclair prepared to scope the target. False alarm. He heard footsteps and Johnson emerged from the stairwell.
“Mind if I shadow you for a while?” Johnson asked.
“Help yourself.”
Johnson unhooked his camera straps and sat down. He seemed oblivious to the panoramic view of three US Marine battalions engaged in conquering a city. Maybe not Pulitzer Prize material, but pretty damned impressive. Even Sinclair, whose experience was limited to snapping pictures on his cell phone, appreciated the potential for dramatic photojournalism.
“I thought you guys liked to be in the thick of things,” Sinclair said.
“There’s nothing much to shoot down there.”
“Sounds like Radetzky’s squad is ripping through magazines at a pretty steady clip,” Sinclair said. “What are they shooting? Mice?”
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