He looked up. Brilliant azure.
Years ago, back in Tennessee, he and his buddies stole a bottle of Dickel whisky from a liquor store. They told the young cashier someone was messing with his car. They snatched booze as he looked out the back door.
They got drunk in a field. They lay looking at the night sky. Toon was mesmerised by the stars. It was a hot night, but he felt a chill. Gazing up at a trillion miles of black nothing. He thought about it the next day. It was like an anti-heaven. A horrible, celestial absence. Beyond the blue skies of summer lay eternal cold and endless night.
He drank whisky a lot these days. Sat in the Riv until they threw him out and locked the doors. He got fucked up and hoped he wouldn’t dream.
Intolerable heat. He wiped his face with his sweat towel and draped it over his head like a keffiyeh.
He hooked his earpiece back in place.
‘How’s it going, guys? Are we done, or what?’
Lucy and Huang walked up the central avenue: a wide, paved boulevard that swept from the citadel gate to the doorway of the main temple building.
Easy to imagine a solemn torch-lit procession. Chanting priests in robes and brass lamentation masks ready to prostrate themselves before their sinister god.
The temple facade. A titanic structure. Huge pillars. Twin bull colossi.
Lucy and Huang stood in the high temple doorway and peered into darkness. They cast long shadows across the flagstones.
They walked inside. They let their eyes adjust to the gloom.
A vast chamber. A vaulted roof. Eight gargantuan pillars inscribed with cryptic hieroglyphs and the outline of monstrous hybrid man-beasts.
Steps led to a raised sanctuary. A massive, snarling bull above the altar.
Lucy and Huang walked up the aisle of the cavernous, aeons-dead hall. Heavy boot-falls echoed and amplified.
They climbed time-worn steps to the altar. Lucy ran her hands over the stone. Black obsidian. Blood channels cut in the rock.
‘Perhaps they sacrificed cattle,’ said Huang.
‘Could you coax a bull onto this table? No. Something a little more portable was laid on this altar and sliced.’
‘I’d fight until my last breath.’
‘Maybe they were a willing sacrifice. Maybe it was an honour. All dressed up in a fancy robe. Consecrated to the gods. They chewed a little opium and climbed on the slab feeling like a big shot.’
‘Sick motherfuckers.’
Lucy shrugged.
‘I’ve seen worse. I saw a guy walk up to a checkpoint and trigger a suicide vest. One of those volunteers from Saudi. A zealot pumped full of jihad. Big-arse smile on his face, ready for paradise. So eager to press the button he didn’t take anyone with him. Threw his life away, just to scorch a little asphalt. I watched his head bounce fifty yards down the road. Fuck it. We’re standing here with guns in our hands and knives in our belts. Humans haven’t changed. Still driven by our savage gods.’
Lucy took out her radio.
‘Advance team to Bad Moon, over?’
Gaunt’s voice:
‘Go ahead.’
‘We have reached the objective. Get ready to roll. We’ll call you in and pop smoke, over.’
‘Roger that.’
Jabril sat with Amanda on the ledge.
‘I spoke to your black friend,’ said Jabril. ‘He said you had killed many men.’
‘Yeah.’
Amanda didn’t take her eye from the sniper scope.
‘You must see them close up, through your telescopic sight. See their faces, the sweat on their brows.’
‘First time I popped a guy in the head, I didn’t sleep for a week. We were stationed at a Forward Observation Base in As Salman. Yellow Nine. A makeshift fort in the middle of a shitty neighbourhood. We took mortar fire most days. I kept watch from a guard tower.
‘A couple of rounds dropped in the vehicle yard one afternoon. We couldn’t see the mortar crew. They were shielded by buildings. But I could see a young guy in the street holding a cellphone. He was talking to his militia buddies, supervising fire adjustment. He thought he was safe, thought we wouldn’t shoot because he didn’t have a gun in his hand. I centred my crosshairs on his forehead. Should have gone for a chest shot, centre-of-mass, just to be sure. But it was my first kill. I wanted to feel it. I wanted to do it right. And he looked up. Three hundred yards away, but I swear he saw me in the guard tower and looked me right in the eye. I blew his head apart. Neat drill hole through the cranium. Back of his skull flew off.
‘The grunt sitting beside me in the sangar recorded it on his phone. Low-res bone and brain. Red pixel blur. He showed the whole platoon. That little phone clip turned me into the garrison rock star. I was high on adrenalin for a week. I got “One Shot, One Kill” tattooed on my shoulder. I got “Death From Afar” tattooed on my ass. Did it jailhouse-style. Lay on my bunk and got ink pricked beneath my skin with a hot needle. A week later, I crashed. Hit the booze. Popped a few pills. Couldn’t sleep. Kept thinking about the dead guy. His parents, his kids.
‘Second time was a little better. Same emotions. Euphoria then depression. But a little less intense, a little less drawn out. After that, killing a guy was like switching off a light. That’s the sad truth. Once you cross the line, it’s easy.’
Jabril lit a cigarette. He offered the pack to Amanda. She shook her head.
‘How about you?’ she asked. ‘Ever killed a man?’
‘With my own hands? No. I never have.’
‘Your voice says different.’
Lucy:
‘The temple is clear. Meet us at the gate house. Let’s find this fucking gold.’
The Convoy
Fading light. A violet sky dusted with evening stars.
Lucy checked her watch.
‘Looks like we’ll be spending the night.’
Lucy and Huang walked between the vehicles of the burned-out convoy. Blackened hulks cast long shadows in the gathering gloom. The vehicles ticked and creaked as fierce noonday heat abated and the metal began to cool.
The whirlwind of flame that engulfed the trucks and Jeeps had long since died, but they could still smell the conflagration. The ghost-taint of melted rubber and scorched flesh.
They could see jumbled bone inside the vehicles. A clutter of skulls and ribs in the foot well of incinerated sedans.
They were both familiar with gasoline fires and the flesh-stink of street explosions.
During her time in the regular army Lucy had frequently been ordered to overcome panic and run towards the screaming mayhem of a recent car bomb. She was instructed to clear wounded and check for secondaries. She jostled against a tide of fleeing civilians, and headed towards the smoke and screams. Later, she joined fellow infantrymen on their hands and knees as they grid-searched street wreckage, ignoring dark and glossy pools of blood, severed hands and feet, as she searched for scraps of circuit board or lengths of wire that might betray the provenance of the suicide device.
Lucy checked the back of a troop truck. Jumbled bodies. Crisped flesh.
Charred banana clips scattered among bone.
‘Most of these trucks were loaded with AK ammunition boxes. Shells must have cooked off in the fire. Popped like firecrackers. Spat bullets all over the place.’
‘Fucking shitstorm.’
They looked beneath the truck. A body curled foetal, hands over its head.
‘Could do with a drink,’ muttered Lucy. ‘A real one.’
‘Could do with a fucking joint,’ said Huang.
A couple of armoured personnel carriers, interiors scorched carbon-black.
A row of old impalas. Doors hung open. Seats burned down to springs.
A bunch of five-ton trucks, the ex-Soviet junk that comprised most of Saddam’s hardware.