Youngblood

by Matt Gallagher

  His eyes moved from man to man in slow consideration.

  “Before we left, we thought we were steel. But even those of us who’d deployed before didn’t know what hard was. Not yet. Our platoon sergeant, he had an idea. Kept saying it wouldn’t be like the Invasion, or Afghanistan. That the war had changed, evolved. Kept calling us youngbloods, to try and get us focused. We thought it was a big joke. Ha fucking ha.

  “He was right, though. Things were raw. Got hit every day. Daisy-chain IEDs. Snipers. Even a female suicide bomber once. This was before the generals bought off the insurgency. Before the sheiks turned on al-Qaeda. It was everyone against everyone, and everyone against us.

  “Got intel one night that an al-Qaeda group had moved into a Shi’a neighborhood, going around and executing people. Trying to get everyone to vacate so Sunnis could move in. Didn’t think much of it, was happening all over Iraq, on both sides. Just another mission, we thought.

  “Didn’t know the exact house they were in, just the block. So we sent the whole company. Set an inner cordon, outer cordon, whole nine yards. But anyone worth a fuck wanted to be kicking down doors, going house to house. That’s where I was. That’s where Elijah was.

  “First eight or nine houses were all dry holes. Tenth house, everything went to shit. First room, we found a guy loading an RPG behind a couch. We shot him in the face, but then all his buddies knew we were there.

  “That fatal funnel in doorways you hear about when you learn how to clear rooms? No fucking joke. Took three squads for that one house. Eight enemy spread across five rooms. Eight.

  “Killed them all.

  “Three wounded, one dead on our side.

  “Should’ve just blown the house up with a tank round, but higher wouldn’t clear it. Collateral damage, they said. So it was up to us. The grunts. The trigger pullers. The goddamn infantrymen. That’s why we’re here, gentlemen. To do what no one else can. What no one else will.

  “Somehow, some way, we pushed our way upstairs. Couldn’t make sense of anything, everything was too dark or too bright in the night vision. A grenade went off, couldn’t hear, neither.

  “Three of us stacked outside one of the last rooms and reloaded. There was no door, and we could hear a voice on the other side, fucking with us. Say what you will about al-Qaeda, but they weren’t cowards. Not the real ones.

  “I went in first and saw a flash of light, of movement, in a corner. So I turned that way. I shot twice, and glass exploded everywhere, falling to the ground. Shots came from behind at the same time. All I could think was, Fuck. I’d been had.

  “The bastard had set up a mirror so I’d go that way, chasing his reflection. He had a clean shot at the back of my skull. If the guy behind me hadn’t recognized that, I’d be dead. If the guy behind me hadn’t pulled his trigger faster than hajj pulled his, I’d be dead.

  “That guy was Elijah.

  “I didn’t know what to say. I think I sputtered out thanks or some shit. He just looked at me and nodded. ‘I got you, youngblood,’ he said. ‘I got you.’ ”

  I no longer heard the beetles or the generators, and neither did anyone else. My right leg twitched and twitched and I swallowed loud, looking around to see if anyone had heard me. Chambers continued.

  “Elijah had a philosophy he lived by. De Oppresso Liber. Anyone hear that before?”

  Even if someone had, no one spoke.

  “Means ‘Liberate the Oppressed.’ It’s the motto of the Green Berets. Elijah planned on joining them after our tour. He didn’t just say it, either. Had it tattooed on his chest. He fucking meant it. He fucking lived it.”

  Someone in the shadows shouted, “Preach,” which was echoed a few times. Chambers pressed on.

  “Some of the squad leaders and team leaders here know what I’m talking about. They saw it, too. Humvees swallowed in fire, bodies liquefied by metal and heat, all because of a wrong turn or a gunner not spotting a wire fast enough.”

  The sound of helicopters, attack birds, moving from Camp Independence sliced through the night. Rather than let them interrupt his benediction, Chambers raised his hands, palms up, and absorbed them into it, the rotors his very own monk chants. It all seemed quite natural, somehow. It really did.

  “Hear that?” he shouted over the WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH of the blades. “Savage. That’s what this is all about. Staying alert. Staying ready. Staying vigilant. They’re gonna get some before they get got.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes as the birds flew south, toward Baghdad. His head drooped down. Seconds passed in a shrouded hush. Then one of the joes up front quietly asked what’d happened to Rios.

  Chambers opened his eyes and smiled. His voice lowered, and I couldn’t tell if he was betraying the quiet sort of rage that lingers within men after something vital, something matchless, breaks inside, or just faking the same.

  “Dead,” Chambers said. “Because he didn’t stay vigilant. Even he—I’m telling this story to show it can happen to anyone if you let down your guard, even for a moment. Don’t think that because the war seems over that it is. Right now, out there, men are plotting to kill you. To kill your friends. And like those birds, the only way we make sure that don’t happen is to get some before they do. You hear me, Hotspur?”

  “Hooah!” the platoon grunted in unison.

  “I said, ‘You fucking hear me?’ ”

  “Hooah!” They were louder this time. Fiercer, too. I wasn’t sure if he was done. Part of me hoped so.

  Part of me didn’t.

  Something blossomed out of the dark near the pit. It crawled under the firelight, then down the hill, capturing Chambers’ attention. He raised his boot and then thought otherwise.

  “Get a cup,” he said. “One of the large ones.”

  It was a camel spider. I’d seen them before—at a distance, though, not like this. Yellow with brown fur, it was thick like a cigarette pack. It kept poking its front pincers and gaping angry jaws at us as we passed around the cup. Some sort of insect blood, probably beetle, was splattered across its mouth like a child’s art project.

  “Men,” Chambers said from the other side of the fire. “Heard some of you caught a scorpion at the front gate. True?”

  I was about to answer that we’d just missed it when a voice beside me spoke. “Roger, Sergeant. Mean little fucker.” It was Alphabet.

  “He upstairs?”

  Alphabet nodded.

  “Bring him down,” Chambers continued. “What better way to end the night than a prizefight?”

  As Alphabet went inside, I sought out the gate guards from earlier. I found Hog first. He explained that after I’d left, the scorpion had reappeared from under the Humvee.

  “One of the Iraqi brothers grabbed it,” Hog said. “By the tail. Then we put it in a jar.”

  They set up a ring next to the bonfire, a cardboard box with its bottom pushed open. They dumped the camel spider in first, and it poked the walls of its new prison, all four corners and two square feet of it. Testosterone bogged the air, and red flashlights flitted over the ring like police sirens. I looked around and didn’t see jaded boredom anymore but something else.

  I wondered if I should stop the fight. I decided not to. I wondered if I should leave the fight. I didn’t.

  “No need to be queasy.” Chambers spoke to me from across the ring. A red light shined up from a wristless fist onto his face. “Your man Lawrence did this. It’s a proud tradition.”

  “All good.” I grinned. “Who you got?”

  “Scorpion,” he said. He must’ve smelled the stink of easy money on me. “You thinking spider?”

  “Everyone knows the scorpion always wins. I’m not that green.”

  He winked. “Guess not. How long you think the spider will last, then? I’m in a betting mood.”

  The soldiers crowded around us, shouting suggestions, picking sides. I studied the two combatants. The camel spider was at least twice as big as the scorpion. Besides, I reasoned, it’d take time for the s
corpion’s venom to seep into the spider’s bloodstream, or whatever circulatory system spiders have.

  “Two minutes,” I said.

  “I’ll take the under,” Chambers replied. “How’s a hundred bones sound?”

  I nodded. I had faith in the big ugly.

  Most of the soldiers did not. I looked around and, intentional or not, nearly all of them had slid over to Chambers’ side of the ring—and the scorpion’s. Through the firelight, I spotted a friendly face.

  “Et tu, medicine man?” I said.

  “Sorry,” Doc Cork said. “Like you said. Everyone knows the scorpion wins.”

  I nodded again and felt a hand on my shoulder. “We’re with you, sir.” I turned around and found Alphabet standing behind me, heavy Slavic gaze holding steady, with Hog next to him. “What’s two minutes?”

  Then he burped loud and proud, reeking of digested goat. I’d never loved another man more.

  Dropped from its jar, the scorpion landed on its feet, and the camel spider went straight at it, jaws wide, fangs bared. Under a spotlight of red incandescence, the camel spider trying to pierce the scorpion’s exoskeleton with its pincers, the scorpion bobbing and weaving to keep clear of the spider’s bloody furnace of a mouth. The smaller creature was soon boxed into a corner, maintaining leverage due to a jagged pebble. I needed the spider to stop being so aggressive, but asking an arachnid to go guerrilla and outlast its opponent rather than murder it as soon as possible seemed pointless, so I just shook my fist and howled. Similar sounds emanated from around the ring. The camel spider sank its front pincers into the top of the scorpion’s shell and began pulling it into its jaws, a long, slow death march. I howled again, something resembling the word “yes” rising from the wilds of my chest. The camel spider began gnawing on the scorpion’s head. The arthropod held off ingestion by ramming its claws against the bulk of the spider and shoving, a sort of dark arts horizontal push-up. Then it raised its trident. My eyes snapped wide as the tail moved back and forth, to and fro. The spider stopped chewing, hypnotized. Like a black lightning bolt, the scorpion plunged its stinger down into the camel spider, straight through a bulbous eye. A horrifying rattle followed, something like a leaking balloon, and the camel spider collapsed on its belly, pincers out.

  “Time?” someone asked.

  “Eighty seconds,” Doc Cork said, reading from the digital green of his wristwatch. “Team Scorpion wins.”

  I bellowed bitterly as Chambers and most of the platoon cheered and crowed.

  “See, men,” Chambers said. “That’s what happens when you hesitate. A motherfucking stinger comes for your brain. Don’t be that camel spider. Be the scorpion.”

  The scorpion freed itself from the dead spider’s jaws and took a victory lap around the dirt ring, claws raised. I accepted Alphabet’s offer of a cigarette, even though I didn’t smoke. Chambers asked if I could pay him next time we made a run to Camp Independence, and I said yes. Then he used two cups to collect the scorpion and started walking to the perimeter gate. The soldiers protested, saying they wanted their prizefighter for future bouts.

  “Keep a scorpion as a pet?” Chambers yelled behind him. “Do I look crazy?”

  He tossed the scorpion, cup and all, over the gate and into the desert. Some of the men kept grumbling, but it’d been done. There was nothing left to do but search for a new contender, if they cared to.

  I lingered at the burn pit for an hour. Soldiers drifted into the outpost two or three at a time, calling each other youngbloods, telling one another to “be the scorpion.” Only Alphabet remained. Perhaps sensing my mood, he stayed quiet. I coughed my way through the first cigarette and then asked for another. As I watched the fire smolder into loose petals of ash, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d just lost something important, something that mattered, even if it was just a pretense of that something.

  I pulled an assault glove from a cargo pocket and picked up the spider from the ring, holding it in front of me. A thick, green jelly oozed from the hole in its eye.

  “It thought it was tougher than it was,” Alphabet said, walking close to study the carcass himself. “Tricked us into thinking that, too.”

  I tossed the camel spider into the burn pit.

  The desert seemed still, placid. I spat onto the ground and tried to sound ironic.

  “Insha’Allah,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Alphabet said. “Something like that.”

  12

  * * *

  Snoop, I want to meet with Alia. How much for thirty minutes?”

  “I thought you didn’t do that.” He looked at me like I’d disappointed him in some profound way.

  I dismissed him with a wave of the hand. “Don’t worry about that. How much?”

  He tapped at his knee, seemingly hesitant to upset the delicate laws of the outpost’s ecosystem. He was right, of course. Officers weren’t supposed to ask for the cleaning woman.

  “Just this once,” I said. “No one will know.”

  “Forty dollars. No dinars.”

  “Set it up. And Snoop? I’m going to need you there.”

  He tilted his head to the side, then shrugged. “If you want. That costs double. But no gay freaky-freaky, okay?”

  Two hours later, after explaining to Snoop exactly why he was needed there, we stood face-to-face with Alia in a town council office downstairs. Everything was taupe-colored, the carpet marred by a deep stain the shape of Wisconsin, the walls adorned by a small portrait of a long-dead mayor. Three electric lamps in need of dusting hung from the ceiling, giving the room a bright golden glow.

  Alia didn’t present herself as an exotic jezebel selling her body for profit; short, chubby, and dressed in a black abaya and head scarf, she just looked like someone trying to get by. She removed her veil, and I recognized the bags and wrinkles of a hard life. There was a coldness to her face. She was wearing perfume that smelled like a mixture of honeysuckle and kerosene. I gestured for her to join us at the rickety conference table, and, after some coaxing by Snoop, she did.

  “Snoop, explain to her that she’s not here for . . . sex.” I took a deep breath and looked at the locked door. I’d never spoken to a prostitute before. “Tell her we need to discuss something.”

  “She wants to know if you still pay for time.”

  “Of course.” I slid across two American twenties I’d gotten from a Camp Independence ATM. “Tell her she’ll get more if she answers thoroughly.”

  Snoop crinkled his eyebrows in confusion.

  “Good. She gets more money if she answers good.”

  “Ah.”

  Snooped conveyed the message and then signaled to me that she understood.

  “I want to know about an American soldier named Rios,” I said. “The Shaba.”

  She raised her chin, curious chestnut eyes meeting mine. I dropped my gaze to the concrete floor, my cheeks flushing from the intensity of her stare. When I looked back up, she wore a sad smile.

  “He was a wonderful man,” Snoop translated, matching the soft tone of her voice. “The best American to come to Ashuriyah.”

  “Why? What was so great about him?”

  Snoop gave me her answer. “He was a true habibi to Iraqis. He wanted to help and gave all good people moneys, like teachers and storekeepers. Other Americans cared about certain Iraqis, but he cared for all of them. She say it’s because he wanted to be one of them.”

  “How’s that?”

  “She say this is a dangerous topic, LT. She say she needs more to talk about Shaba.”

  I slid a ten across the table. It stayed there for a few seconds before she grabbed it with long, elegant fingers that seemed to belong to another body. Her eyes remained on the table.

  “He wanted to be one of who?” I asked. “The Sunnis? Shi’as?”

  While Snoop questioned Alia, I studied her face. She wasn’t beautiful by any stretch of the imagination, but under the worn skin was a round, intelligent face made up with dabs of green eye sh
adow and a subtle blush. You could also tell she plucked her eyebrows—not a common practice for women in Ashuriyah. Also, she had pouty, bulging lips that could certainly do what Hog had said they did.

  A whiff of perfume filled my nose, and to my dismay, the humblest beginnings of an erection stirred in my groin. My eyes opened wide and my cheeks flushed again and I scrunched my legs together, which made things worse. I looked at my boots and thought about cold water and basketball statistics and medical reports of soldiers coming down with the clap and—

  “LT Jack? You hear me?”

  “Sorry, man. Say that again.”

  “She say if Shaba didn’t die, he would’ve desert-ed the American army and moved to Iraq. Is that possible? Or just crazy bitch talk?”

  I wasn’t yet sure, but it was something.

  I continued, and began thumbing the beads on my bracelet. “I understand that Shaba was a great soldier, that he spoke Arabic and caught bad guys and brought peace here,” I said. “But what can you tell me about the murder of a local when he was here? By American soldiers.”

  Snoop translated. She spoke. Snoop groaned. “Any talk of murder costs more, LT. She is running a swindle! I do not think you should give her more.”

  I slapped a five on the table. She didn’t respond. I slapped a second five on the table. Snoop cursed under his breath. Alia nodded this time and slid the two bills off the table and into her chest. Something about her just then, the combination of an arched eyebrow and the faintest trace of a smile, suggested a guile I hadn’t recognized before. A second later, it was gone, and she was just a cleaning woman with a sordid side business again.

  “Who was murdered?” I asked.

  She answered, but Snoop shot back in Arabic, his voice assuming a sharper edge than usual. She replied in turn, her voice measured. Then he barked a laugh and shook his head in disgust. “Lots of people, she say. This was a bad place a couple years ago. She needs more details from you, then maybe she can remember.” Snoop faced me, lowering his voice. “LT, I don’t know if she knows what you want, but it will take too much moneys to find out. Just my opine-ion.”