“J’mal.” A handsome, tall raghead.
“Omar.” A small man, with dark skin.
“Hussien.”
“Is he related?” The fat, round Afghani soldier belches and rolls his eyes. “No.” says Said. “He is not related. But he is drunk.” Hussien puts his head into his arms, and farts. There is a stream of muttered Arabic. “I am sorry.” Said continues. “I should not have said that.”
The haaji soldiers bring out flatbread from the back of their trucks. We eat it with MRE’s. Cory brings out his Listerine bottle. Hussien sniffs it and smiles widely. We all drink with the haajis. Omar smiles widely at Bill. He murmers something into Said’s ear.
“My friend, Omar.” Said says. “He likes you.”
“He likes me?” Bill says.
I leek you.” Omar says.
“Do you have, in your Marines, man to man jiggy-jig?”
“What?”
“How you say it= jiggy jig? Luhv?”
Omar smiles broadly. His hand brushes Bill’s. Bill jerks away.
“I don’t jiggy jig that way.”
“Wet luv? Dry Luv?”
“No. In my country-“ Bill makes hand gestures, “In my country, we, I mean, I, I only jiggy jig with women.”
“You should try Corporal Swain.” Cory jumps in. “In second squad. He jiggy jigs like that.”
“Women only?” Omar says. There is another stream of Arabic between them. He is holding J’mals hand now, and both of them are smiling. The night swirls down, into a stream of the little whiskey Cory has left. I have the first hour of watch. I sit and watch the valley ahead of us, the mountain we will soon cross. There is a grunting noise, and vague moaning. Behind the white Toyota pickup, I can see Hussein fucking Omar in the ass. The is a look of pleasure on his face, like my mother would have, at church on easter Sunday.
TEN
The nightmare consumes me. I am seeing the face of the boy in the hut. His lips are moving and a secret word is coming out. I know that word but I cannot remember it. I see the burqa women next. Their bodies are torn and riddled from my bullets They move silently, swaying. Rocking back and forth behind their blue nothingness. At the last, I see Almodovar. He stands in front of the women and the boy. He looks the same as he always has, and he is wearing the uniform I realize he will always wear. I try to speak to him but he puts his hand to his lips, to stop me. We are standing in front of the ancient castle. The sky is turning a strange dark blue. The sun is very big and very red. In my heart I know, that this is the end of the world.
In the morning the ground is freezing. We are not allowed to build a fire. Instead we huddle around the LAV’s, hoping the engines will warm us. The diesel fumes are friendly.
“Did you have a bad dream last night, Mikey?” Bill asks.
“Yeah.” I say. “I did. How did you know?”
“You woke up funny. You were like, sound asleep, and then, Bam! You sat bolt upright, and looked around all crazy. Like you were trying to find something. At first I thought Scheuher was fucking with you again. Taking your rifle in your sleep or something.”
“No.” I say. “I’ve got that right here.”
“Its probably the malaria pill, then. You shouldn’t take that shit.”
‘I don’t want Malaria.”
“You probably wont get it. And then you wont have those fucking nighmares.”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
The ground around the village is uneven and rocky. The mountain is everywhere, surrounding us and swallowing us. My fingers are numb. I flex them, to get the blood flowing. There are trees here. These are not the trees of home. They jut out from the rocks and the sand, a forest growing from a mountain. I think of a bible picture book I once had. This is what the pictures were like. The land seems biblical, indeed.
The village itself seems to be grown out of the rock. I am reminded of going home with Turqious, and seeing houses on sunset boulevard. Houses that jut from the side of hills. This is like that, but the hills are mountains, and the houses are made from mud and stone. From a distance they seem to simply be formed out of the existing mountain they were built on, a seamless blend of tan and tan.
We are forced to leave the LAV’s due to the terrain, and hike up into the mountains on foot. We march in neat formation. Behind us, the Afghani soldiers straggle behind. On the balcony I see men in beards and pajamas staring at us. No one smiles, no one asks for food. No children come out to see. Everything is shut, and the militia is staring.
There is a burst of AK-47 fire. One of the haaji soldiers is firing into the mountains. “Taliban!” He says. “Shoot! Taliban. Shoot!”
I collapse into the rocks, into the prone. Next to me M-16’s and SAW’s are singing their song, the pop pop pop of battle. I look for shapes in the trees. There is a small burst of light, far off, way up in the mountain. I squeeze of a burst in the general direction.
“CEASE FIRE!” Rielly yells. “cease fire.”
The rest of us stop firing. The haaji’s continue. Rielly throws a rock at the haaji sergeant. He looks startled, and then starts yelling and shoving them around. They stop firing, slowly, the sound of it dying off.
“Did anyone see anything?” Reilly asks.
“It was one of the haaji’s, Sergeant.” Cory says.
“Were not doing that again. That’s a good way to waste ammo. Only fire if you hear a 16 or SAW, or if you see something. We cant have that bullshit.”
We walk through the valley, down the center of the dirt road in the middle of the village. Everyone is tense, and looking carefully. There is no one out and around. A lone shepherd tends a flock of goats outside the strip of huts that makes up the village market. He turns back and looks at me. He is young, not older than twelve. An ugly scar dots his cheek. When he turns back, I notice that his arm end in a stump. The skin of it is yellower than his natural tan. A trick of the light, or of scar tissue.
I walk around behind one stall. There is a pile of automatic rifles, underneath a thin blanket. In the next one, there is a stack of RPG’s. “Hey, Sargeant.” I say. “Look at this.” Schueher comes over, and whistles. “Hey, Wade. I think we found the Taliban.”
Rielly’s face goes a shade pale. He signals for us to take position. After that, we search the stalls. There are weapons everywhere. Explosives everywhere. It is an open air market for merchants of death. From behind us, there is an explosion.
Hussien the haaji soldier is lying in a pool of blood. His intestines are blazing a trail behind him, into the cloud of dust. The other haajis are circling around him, yelling gibberish. Doc Buckley runs back, and starts to work.
“Think he’ll make it?” I ask Bill. He shakes his head.
‘Theres no medevac for haajis. The guys gone.”
There is a ritual here to the ending of a life. The corpsman does what he can. The IV and the turniqiut are his stations of the cross. After a certain point, he gives up. He surrenders to the enemy. And the haajis grieve loudly.
We make our way back to where the haaji’s have parked their white Toyota pickup trucks. The trip is long, longer than I remember it taking to get there. On the way back someone fires a rifle sporadically. We take cover after every incident, and point our weapons outward. The haajis shout and scream and fire randomly into the sky. As if the land itself was the source of their frustration. As if the sand itself could swallow their pain, swallow their bodies, and spit out wads of hot anger made of lead at the ceiling.
When we arrive They place the body of Hussien underneath wool blankets. One of them gets on the truck. The raghead sergeant yells at him, but he shakes his head. Then another joins him. There is an eviction taking place in front of us. The sergeant takes off his beret and throws it on the ground. Then he goes over to Sergeant Rielly and Lt. Easter. He appears to be offering a sort of apology. The trucks load up and the driver steps on the gas. I see Said, with a nervous sort of smile. He waves at me goodby.
We hike up into a cliff overlooking the village. Rielly gets o
n the radio and talks with command, back at Khandahar. We wait in the hasty three-sixty. We wait until we hear the noise of the helicopter.
The Cobra attack helicopter is louder than the Osprey. It comes in with a loud WHOP WHOP WHOP, cutting low across the valley. It is a grey backed beast, strange enough in itself to be an action figure accessory. Nothing real like it could exist in the ordinary world, in the civilian world. There is a rattle of chain guns. There is a flare of rockets. The rockets shoot plumes of flame from the back end of the launcher on the Osprey before whizzing away with a trail of smoke. Across the mountainside, huts explode. Ancient dust flares. Schueher grabs the back of my flak jacket.
“Were clearing out the Market.” He says. “Anyone with a weapons cache is Taliban. Tag em and bag em.”
The Cobra makes another pass. The chain gun roars again, howling its fury. We scramble quickly, down the side of the mountain. Into the village. The rocks slip loose. Jimmy Drawdy takes a tumble, nosediving into a bush. There is fire coming from the village now. The crack of the AK, the hiss of the RPG. We fire back. The LAV manages to make its way up to the clearing, and points its main gun in the direction of the enemy. A building seemingly caves in. All around me I can hear the whizzing and cracking of the bullets. My mind is very much tuned in. Everything is more real now than is possible.
In the village I see a goat, lying in the middle of the street. Dead or dying. For one solitary, horrible minute, my sense of smell comes back, and I can smell how much the thing stinks. I can smell the deep reek of it. We stack up on a door. I mule kick it open, and we charge in, weapons out front. Inside a man with a long grey beard is holding a baby. The baby is naked, and wrapped in a red rag. It is moving slightly but it is not crying. The old man backs up before the muzzles of our weapons. He does not speak. A blue burqa woman sits motionless. In the next room. The floor is made of dirt. There is little light in the rooms, without our flashlights, and the odor of human beings is very strong. There is a solitary AK- 47 propped next to a window. Bill kicks it over. Back in the next room the old man is kneeling now.
We come back out to the main street. There is a sandbagged Haaji escorted out. Behind him, a woman in a burqa is screaming. She reaches for him. Cory shoves her back, and she falls to the floor, crying. I walk into his hut. There is a huge pile of weapons there, AK’s and RPG’s, but also an M-16, and what I think is a stinger missile. The translator is talking to the woman, who is crying and raising her hands over her head.
“She says he did not want to do it.” The translator tells Rielly. “She says the Taliban came at night, and made her do it. She says that if they did not do it, the Taliban would kill them.”
“Tell her we don’t believe her.” Reilly says. “Or that we don’t care. We already had one guy die today, because of this shit. Tell her that he’s coming with us.” The translator speaks and the woman holds her head in her hands and wails. Two children come out of the hut, and sit on their knees beside her.
Most of the huts are empty. The helicopter’s arrive, gleaming Army Blackhawks, and take the prisoners. The newly minted detainees, fresh for Gitmo. They drop off Explosives Ordinance Disposal Marines, who dig a pit for all the weapons, and explode it. We head back to the LAV’s and break out MRE’s, and eat. I swallow mine cold. I am tired and hungrier than I thought I could be. Scheuher passes me a cigarette after I finish. The nicotine is a palate cleanser, good and pure in the wake of what we have been through. I think of the baby. I think of the goat, and the boy who was herding it. I think of Said, with his strange sad smile
I try to move my thoughts over to Turqiouse. The effort appears useless. America is so far away. I try to think about Angela Garrison, on the ship. Even the USS Bataan is a hopeless distance. I am lost, really and truly lost. Rielly comes over to where I am eating. “That was good work today, Mikey.” He says. “You and Bill both. Neither of you guys hesitated.”
“I guess, sergeant.” I say. “Its pretty shitty.”
‘What is?”
“All of this. The kids, I guess. Especially the kids.”
Rielly squints into the sun. “Its always shitty when the kids get fucked up.” He says. “You’ve just got to think, that’s war. If their daddies weren’t the bad guys, none of this would be happening.”
“You know their going to put it on Al-Jazeera, though.” I say. “You know the first thing their going to say is, Marines attack village, kill babies. I mean, that’s a given.”
“Fuck Al-Jazeera.” Rielly says. “You cant think about that, anyway. You have to stay in the moment. I wanted to tell you something, Mikey.”
“Whats that?”
“I think you should try out for Recon.”
“Recon?”
‘Theres an indoc when we get to Malta. After all this shit is over with. I talked with the Staff Sargeant NCOIC, I guy I used to run with in force. You should do it.”
“I should.”
“Yeah. Your tough, Mikey. You’ve got a lot of heart. That’s what it takes. You don’t want to stay here all your life. Here is battalion infantry. That shits for the birds.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. That’s a yes, right.”
‘Yes, sergeant. I mean, I’ll think about it.”
“You do that, then.” Reilly grins. “Fucking nerd.”
The night is calm on the mountain. We watch the valley in shifts this time, at fifty percent. This is a moment I am starting to equate with this country, with Afghanistan. The calm not dark before night comes, the moment when I sit behind my rifle and I star into nothing and I think of all that I have done.
ELEVEN
I wake up in the middle of the night and it is snowing on the side of the mountain. Next to me, Bill is snoring peacefully. The snow falls down in large round droplets. Flakes big enough for you to see the pattern of their crystals inside, fully formed. I shake his bag back and forth. He murmers an obscenity, a quick “Fuck you”, and blinks in the face of all the snow.
“Its snowing.” I say.
Around me the world is painted a simple shade of white. The snow sticks to the trees in the valley, to the dust on the rocks. A lone Hummer trails along the road up into the Valley, its tan armor a stark contrast on the fields of white. John Sack jumps out, his large head bumbling inside a green Kevlar helmet. An old flak jacket is wrapped around his frame. He still is wearing those tan cargo shorts, and his thighs are pasty white.
“Oh.” Rielly groans. “God.”
Sack is fumbling his way up the cliff to us. He looks unsure of himself, and unsure of his uncertainty. As if he were undertaking a task that was once simplicity itself. The snow makes the rocks even more slippery. He staggers once every three or four steps.
“Hello, Wade. Huuagh.”
“Did you talk to the Colonel?” Wade asks.
“I did. I reassured him that I could keep up. Ive been doing this a long time.”
“I realize that.” Wade takes off his helmet, and scratches his head. “There’s not a lot of time for us to slow down out here.”
“I. Oh. Huaagh.” John Sack spits a stream of mucus. It is a dark yellow near orange of unhealthy urine. The snot is thick and long. It takes a minute for him to compose himself. “I’ll be fine.”
Sergeant Rielly nods. We turn back to camp. I see me breath rising in a puff of steam. The cold is starting to possess me, starting to creep into my flesh. I am out of MRE’s. I am starting to feel sick, a sort of numbing sickness, that sees itself as a weakness flushing out my veins.
“Saddle up.” Rielly gives the command. “Were going back to the village.”
We move down the cliff into the village. It is even more empty than it was before. In small pits, people are burning wood and trash, and huddling around it for warmth. We walk around, observing everything. John Sack takes his pictures, and scribbles in his book.
A man comes up to the translator and babbles excitedly. They chat on and off. I sway forward, taking the weight off my shoulders.
> “He says the Taliban came last night. He says they went into the mountains, into the caves. He says he will show you.”
“Tell him thank you.” Rielly says. “And lets go.”
I am changing movies now, changing from black hawk down to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The caves jut out from the rock in large black shadows. The snow caps everything off in perfect stillness. I switch on my surefire flashlight, and sweep right and left throughout the caves. There is a feeling in the back of my mind, that I am seeing something that no one has seen before. That I am part of a vast secret, an old secret thing. I think about what planning must have happened back here. I think about all we have gone through, and all we have done. There are boxes and things lying around. Everywhere, there is evidence that something was in here. There air is cold, very cold, and I feel the rock must be even colder. The air smells like my grandparents basement, musty and old.
Marine at War Page 7
