Wrath & Righteousnes Episodes 01 to 05

by Chris Stewart

  The Operations Center was crowded and noisy. The sandstorm had significantly complicated combat operations, and the officers and senior enlisted men were busy working on their contingency plans. Sam saw Bono sitting at a makeshift plywood table in a quiet corner at the back of the center. Spread out on the desk in front of him were several satellite photographs, his next patrol order, a communications plan, and several other items.

  The patrol order included the detailed rules of engagement for the mission: a three- or four-page analysis of the anticipated enemy action, the purpose of the mission, the position of friendly forces, including the location and availability of Air Force fighters for ground support, ingress and emergency egress routes, communications plans, radio frequencies, code words and the meanings of various smoke and illumination signals, and a list of the teams that were assigned for backup and support. Written in large block letters across the cover page of the patrol order were the words “Prepare Now or Die,” a fairly effective means of reminding the squad leaders of the importance of preparing for their patrol. And though reviewing the patrol orders was one of the least liked tasks for most officers, Bono took the responsibility very seriously.

  Sam walked toward him, but Bono kept his head in his work. Watching him, Sam thought he seemed to be nervous. Sam knew that another squad leader had been reassigned recently to logistics or chow hall or some other non-combat duty, and that Bono was determined not to make a miserable mistake, though it wasn’t his career he was worried about nearly so much as his men.

  Bono was writing notes in the margin of his tactical map; Sam watched over his shoulder as he worked. In the corner of the desk, Bono had placed a picture of his wife and daughter. Most soldiers had some kind of charm or pre-mission routine that was supposed to bring them good luck. Some wore the same color underwear each time, some spit in the wind, some chewed the same gum, kissed a cross, wrote a letter, or listened to the same song. Bono’s ritual was to tape a picture of his family on the wall next to the table while he prepared for patrol. Sam didn’t know why, but, of course, he never asked. It was considered extremely bad form to question another’s pre-combat routine.

  Peering at the picture of the beautiful little family, Sam felt a tiny sinking in his gut. He moved toward the picture, looking closely while Bono kept his head down.

  Will I ever have this? he wondered. He could only hope that he would.

  Family was something Sam rarely talked about. His biological father, the old drunk who occasionally made a little money as a charter fisherman on the southern Virginia coast, and his mother, who had deserted him to the old man when he was only eight, had never been anything but a stress in his life. Yeah, they were back together now, and it seemed they were getting along, but after years of abuse, it was impossible for him to think of them as his mom and dad. If it hadn’t been for the Brightons . . . Sam hated to even think. They had saved him. They were his family now.

  But still he felt, deep inside, that he wasn’t really one of them. The Brightons seemed to have something that he would never have, some innate goodness, some moral bearing that he just didn’t possess. They were as straight down the line as anyone Sam had ever known, and he wasn’t quite like that, though he had really tried. Sometimes he thought there was something inside them, something that ran through their veins, that made them different from him, even better somehow. He had tried. He had tried really hard. He was still trying. But he fell short so often, it seemed it just didn’t work.

  Sam’s thoughts were interrupted when Bono finally looked up. “Still blowing out?” he asked wearily.

  Sam nodded to the flapping sides of the tent. “No. The wind has died down completely.”

  Bono turned, his face still blank.

  “No helicopters will be flying tonight,” Sam added as an afterthought.

  Bono looked down at his map and mumbled, “That means no air support.” He shook his head.

  Bono’s desert fatigue shirt was open, showing the dog tags that dangled from the chain on his neck. Hanging next to the dog tags was a small silver shield. Lots of soldiers wore them. They called the little charm the Shield of Strength. Josue 1:9 was etched on the back—not the entire scripture, just the reference. Sam, who also wore a Shield of Strength, had the scripture memorized: “Behold I command thee, take courage, and be strong. Fear not and be not dismayed: because the Lord thy God is with thee in all things whatsoever thou shalt go to.”

  Subconsciously, he reached under his fatigues and felt for the Shield of Strength there. Squeezing it, he asked Bono, “You thirsty?”

  “Feels like I’ve got half the desert stuck in my throat.”

  Sam cocked his head toward the rear door of the Operations Center. Bono nodded, stood up, and followed him through a wooden door that opened up to a wide canvas hallway, then to another tent, which was set up as a lounge for the unit’s soldiers. Once inside the second tent, they made their way to the refrigerator and grabbed some sodas, then dropped onto a couple of cheap, folding chairs. It was quiet here, and the two men relaxed for a while. Bono finished his soda in three long gulps, then took the picture of his family, which he had been holding in his hand, and tucked it inside the chest pocket on his shirt.

  Sam watched him. “Do you always think of them?” he wondered.

  “You know, it’s funny,” Bono replied. “When I’m out there in the fight, I don’t think about my family. I don’t think about my wife, my kid, nothing like that. I don’t think about going home, the reason I’m fighting, the idea of freedom or America or any of that. All I think about is the guys in the team. Protecting each other. Keeping each other safe.”

  Sam didn’t answer. He felt the same way.

  “We are the only men in the world who know what that means, to fight and die with your brothers. It’s a huge privilege, man.”

  Sam held his cold soda bottle to his cheek, feeling the condensation cooling his skin. The lounge wasn’t air-conditioned; despite the strong wind, it was hot inside.

  “You know what I’ve been thinking?” Bono asked, staring blankly ahead.

  “What’s that?” Sam replied.

  Bono crushed his plastic soda bottle, walked to the fridge, pulled out another soda, then came back and sat down. “People say American soldiers fight to protect their freedoms,” he started. “Some people write us letters and thank us for keeping them safe. The politicians back home always thank us. Some are even sincere in their thanks. They say we are fighting for their freedoms. But I don’t think that’s true.”

  Sam laughed. “You going ‘Jane Fonda’ on me, baby?”

  “No, really,” Bono answered. “Think about it, man. When was the last time Americans were actually fighting for their freedom? You might have to go back to the Revolutionary War. That might have been the last time.”

  “I don’t know, Bono. How about the Civil War, boss?”

  “I understand the North was fighting to preserve the Union, but I think most of those men were fighting for something else. I just don’t believe, I can’t believe in my gut that men were laying it on the line there, laying it down like they did, just to protect the Union. I think there was more to it than that.”

  “What do you think it was?”

  “They were freeing the slaves. Fighting to free other men. Either that or trying to keep the Union indivisible by preventing Southern secession. Take your pick.”

  Sam remained skeptical. “What about the First and Second World Wars?” he asked.

  “World War One was plainly and simply a fight to save Europe. We had no national interest, nothing really at stake. World War Two? The Japanese were our enemy, the ones who attacked. We could have confined our war to the Pacific and won easily. We could have let Stalin and Hitler divide Europe, knowing they would eventually turn on each other and devour themselves. But we put our own interest aside and saved Europe first. Again, another fight to save other men.

  “I know a lot of people like to talk about the Vietnam War, but c
an anyone make a serious argument that we were fighting for imperial power? I mean, come on, man, what did the Vietnamese have to offer if we had conquered them? Nothing. Nada. Not so much as a bowl of rice. So why were we there, if not to save the South Vietnamese? And if you want to know what happens when we fail, you should look no further than Indochina. How many million Vietnamese and Cambodians were slaughtered because we failed in that war!? The killing fields should haunt for the next hundred years.”

  Sam didn’t answer, he just listened, content to sip his soda for now.

  “Kuwait?” Bono continued, his voice rising now. “Afghanistan and Iraq? Yeah, we needed stability in the region, but if all we were interested in was the oil, we could have been like the Germans and French who propped up Saddam to keep the oil rolling. Heaven knows he would have sold us all we needed. That isn’t the reason we came here. There was more to it than that. Yeah, I think we needed to double tap the Taliban and kill Hussein, and yes, I’m glad that happened. In that sense, you might argue that we went into those countries to protect the freedoms we had. But though that might have been why we came in, it is not why we stayed. We could have eliminated the threat, then skipped out of town. But that’s not how we work. We stay to protect the freedoms of those left behind. We stay to help them build a government that will keep them free.

  “Now think about that, Captain Brighton. I believe it is true. We don’t fight for our freedoms. We fight for much more than that. We fight for the freedom of others.”

  Sam was shifted on his chair, adjusting the sidearm in the drop-down Kydex® holster that was strapped to his thigh. “I guess that makes us the good guys,” he said.

  “Which is what makes it so hard.”

  Sam looked confused. “I don’t get it,” he said.

  Bono looked away, and then rolled his neck to crunch out the kinks. “Going home,” he answered. “I mean, I want to see my family in the very worst way. I want to hold my daughter. I know that she needs me, and I want to be there for her. But I can’t reconcile the way I feel at home with the way I feel about being here too. This mission. My comrades. The thrill of the fight.” Bono leaned forward awkwardly and looked into Sam’s eyes. Sam could see that this was his confession, he was getting it out, and Sam let him talk. “I would give anything in the world to be home right now. But when I get there, I know I’m going to miss being here. I’m going to miss the battles. I’m going to miss the thrill. But mostly, I’m going to miss the feeling of doing something right, something that helps another. I’m rock-solid on that, Sam. I know what we’re doing here is part of a good work. And I’m going to miss it. Now tell me, is that wrong?”

  Sam thought a moment, and then raised his head. “I don’t know, captain. I think maybe you’re asking the wrong guy.”

  Bono sat back and waited, and so Sam went on. “Is it wrong to be a warrior? Maybe it is. We are so steeped in violence, it can be offensive sometimes. Americans like their heroes soft now, you know, soft and cute. I don’t know, but it seems there’s almost a victim mentality in our heroes today: A POW who was taken captive and suffered, a soldier who died for his friends—these are the heroes Americans are most comfortable with. They don’t like their warriors too battle hardened. That scares them now. But that’s you and me. That’s who we are. We find and kill the enemy. That is a day’s work to us. Is that evil? It can’t be. Not when it’s for the right cause. So you want to go home, but you want to stay in the fight. You feel the claws of this mission because they have latched into you.

  “So I don’t know, Bono, but this much I believe. There aren’t many people in the world who get to do something like this. Most will miss it. Most are never given the chance. But you and I, and a few others, have been given this opportunity to do something for others that they can’t do for themselves. Are you wrong to appreciate that? I don’t think you are. Some day you’ll go home to your family and hold each of them close, and you’ll know you did your duty. How many people can say that?”

  The two men fell into silence, listening to the wind blow. “You know what I look forward to more than anything else?” Bono said after they had sat for a while.

  “What’s that?”

  “There are a thousand things I miss: my wife, my own bed, watching the Yankees on TV, getting up in the morning without having sand fleas in my hair. But there’s nothing I miss more than holding my little girl. More than anything else, I miss picking her up and holding her in my arms. She lays her head on my shoulder. She clings to my arms. She has a way of molding to my body, like she was meant to be there. That’s what I look forward to more than anything else, when I step off that airplane and she runs to my arms. When that happens, I will feel like the luckiest man in the world.”

  Sam took a drink of his soda, which had grown warm and a little flat. “You are lucky,” he answered.

  Bono nodded and smiled.

  “Fifty-two days,” Sam muttered.

  “And counting,” Bono said.

  ELEVEN

  One measure of any tyrannical government’s willingness to control its people is the thoroughness with which it suppresses the rights of its most vulnerable citizens. Throughout the entire Persian Gulf, the ruling mullahs, presidents, and kings have enforced humiliating and sadistic rules on women and girls, enslaving them in a system that, at best, demands segregation and second-class status and treats them no better than beasts of burden, and at worst, kills them without fear, remorse or shame to protect the family’s “honor.” In far too many places, women cannot be educated, work, or drive. In far too many places it is illegal and immoral for a woman to be examined by a male doctor, but since there are no opportunities for education, few female doctors can be found. And there are too many places where lashing and stoning are appointed for the smallest infraction of law.

  It would be easy to presume that a thriving sex trade inside a theocracy would be an unsustainable contradiction. Most would think that a country founded and ruled by Islamic fundamentalists would decry such a practice. But a substantive look under the surface reveals why just the opposite is true. Exploitation is not only possible, it is almost inevitable in a culture that tolerates repression, a lesson that has been demonstrated repeatedly.

  Although it is impossible to determine the number of victims, U.N. officials who have worked inside Iran say there has been a nearly 500% increase in the number of teenage prostitutes since the revolution. In Tehran alone, there are nearly 100,000 women and girls in prostitution. Most of them live on the streets. The “lucky” ones live in brothels. Many Iranian girls, some as young as ten, have been sold into slavery in various nations around the world. The Interpol bureau in Tehran reports that the trade in young women and girls is one of the most profitable business activities in Iran. Many of the young women who find themselves caught in this evil web are girls from the countryside, where poverty and ignorance abound. Worse, slave traders seem willing to take advantage of any tragedy to fulfill the demand. Following the earthquake in Bam, a disaster that claimed some 50,000 lives, orphaned girls were swept up and transported to slave markets in Tehran.1

  And Persian women aren’t the only victims of this flourishing trade. Young women from the ghettos of Gaza, the remote villages of Egypt, and crowded city streets of Kuwaiti have been taken from their families, some even sold by their parents, and forced into prostitution in other areas of the world. Victims have been found in Qatar,2 Kuwait,3 and the United Arab Emirates.4 In the northeastern Iranian province of Khorasan, local police report that girls are being sold to Pakistani men.5 In the southeastern border province of Sistan Baluchestan, thousands of Iranian girls reportedly have been sold to Afghans. Perhaps the most creative justification of prostitution takes place inside Tehran, where, to control the spread of HIV, officials of the Iranian Social Department of the Interior Ministry have proposed setting up “morality houses.”6 There, using the traditional religious customs, a couple may be married for as little as one hour.

  And the Wes
t is not free of this crime. Police in Tehran have uncovered prostitution and slavery rings with ties to France and Germany, England, and Spain. Turkey is a hotbed of trade heading to the United States, with underground auctions not unlike those that operated in northern Africa some three hundred years ago. And the prices are astounding. A young girl may be bought for as little as a few thousand dollars. But, as with everything else, beauty commands a much higher price. Someone with just the right look might fetch ten to fifteen thousand dollars, maybe more.

  Ghesha Ghetto, East of Kirkuk, Iraq

  The store was a dilapidated slab of concrete floor and plywood and cement walls situated in the southeastern ghettos of Kirkuk. It was a dark, mean place, a place where the light didn’t shine and the darkness of evil settled on even the brightest day.

  The Ghesha ghetto was a small, isolated triangle created by a fork in a slow, brackish river and some low hills to the north. There were only two roads leading to the ghetto, and a wall of rundown buildings and old warehouses formed a broken barrier that concealed most of the occupants within. The ghetto was off-limits to the U.S. military—the area was considered too dangerous and without any tactical interest—and even the local police rarely strayed between the banks of the river. Occasionally, when the sniping or pirating became entirely untenable, the regional Iraqi leaders would send in a heavily armored patrol, but the patrol never stayed more than a few days before fleeing again, leaving the ghetto to feed on itself. Like a starving rat snake that was slowly swallowing its own tail, the ghetto consumed all its young in turf battles and hate until there was very little left that was worth fighting over.