“I thought we were waiting,” said Velcro.
“We’re waiting on the go/no-go, but we’re sticking to our established battle rhythm. The more we stick to routine, the better for the troops.”
At the morning briefing, Penn said that the convoy had been postponed and that he’d know more soon.
“So we’re going, we just don’t know when or where,” said Kelly.
“That’s about right,” said Penn.
“Shee-it,” said Le Roy. “That’s bad juju right there.”
“The key to survival is the ability to adapt,” said Penn. Then he pulled Staff Sergeant Betts aside and told him to keep an eye on the pre-checks. “Make sure they don’t slack off,” he said.
“What are we supposed to do with the stuff for the school?” asked Betts.
“I’m worried about that too,” said Penn. “I should know more in a couple of hours, but meanwhile, put it in the last four trucks. Your squad will take those.”
Sinclair was proud of his men for wanting to help extend educational opportunities to girls. “Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque,” he had said when the idea had first come to him, and it had become a kind of motto for the men.
“Make free men out of children by means of books and a balance,” said Betts now, but he frowned at Velcro when he said it, and Velcro spat in the dirt.
“Building infrastructure is an important benchmark,” said Penn before moving off toward the communications center for the intelligence update. He was almost out of earshot when he heard Harraday say, “Try books and a bazooka. Maybe that would work.”
The grumbling started up again during the pre-check, and now two of the squads were fighting in the yard. The more restless the men became, the more Penn worried, and the more he worried, the more he thought he couldn’t wait for the new orders before he sent the convoy. “Give any troublemakers something to do,” the colonel had told him. Taking the supplies north would be doing something.
“If you’re holding a wolf by the ears,” he said to Velcro, “is it worse to continue to hold it or worse to let it go?”
“You’ve got to kick that wolf in the balls,” said Velcro. “You can’t put up with any shit.”
Penn had to agree. They needed a mission pronto, so when he hadn’t heard anything by zero nine hundred hours, he released the convoy to start heading north. He told the men to monitor the radio in case the new orders came through, and he told Betts to take an extra gun truck so the vehicles destined for the school could make the short detour while the rest of the convoy continued on to Tikrit. Things would calm down once the men had a mission to focus on. They always did.
“Yes sir. I’m on it,” said Betts, taking the need for further action out of Sinclair’s hands.
“You made the right call, sir,” said Velcro. “You’re killing two birds with this — giving the men something useful to do and getting the supplies up the road for wherever they’re needed.”
“Three birds,” said Penn, thinking of the school and feeling the familiar sense of accomplishment that always accompanied a tough decision.
And then, suddenly, Penn didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want to go back to a life where nothing he did would matter in the grand scheme of things and probably wouldn’t matter in the not-so-grand scheme either. He liked the high-stakes missions and calling the shots when the shots were not easy to call. Sinclairs did better in turbulent conditions! He thought about his place in the continuum of history and how he was carrying on a legacy bequeathed by the ancient Greeks and Romans, who had determined that war and peace were flip sides of a single coin, and by the philosophers and scientists, who had figured out that in some ways people were not much different from insects, with their workers and soldiers and queens, and that in other ways, people were not much different from gods.
2.7 Pig Eye
Things might have settled down if a wispy cloud hadn’t obscured the sun just as Le Roy was saying that thing about juju. They might have stayed settled if Pig Eye hadn’t shown Hernandez a letter from his wife or if Hernandez hadn’t taken it from him and passed it on to Tishman, who passed it to Kelly, each man reading it as if it were his own wife or girlfriend who had penned the description of what she was wearing and how she was going to take the items off one by one once her honey-man was home. Garcia slapped his thigh and said, “Oooeee Momma!” just as Kelly grabbed the letter back for another look. “Wait a sec,” said Kelly. “Who’s this guy Earl?”
“I told you about Earl. He’s my partner in the shop,” said Pig Eye. “He’s handling things while I’m away.”
“I’ll say he is,” said Kelly.
“What do you mean? What do you mean by that?”
Harraday walked over and cast a shadow on the letter, which was smudged and wet where someone had put his lips to it and tongued it. His eyes were puffy and his breath was as rotten as if he had just rolled out of bed after a night on the town. “He means your friend Earl’s porking your wife and now you’re stuck here and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he said.
“What do you mean?” asked Pig Eye again.
“Handling,” said Harraday. “Your partner is handling things at home.”
“The letter doesn’t say ‘handling,’” said Pig Eye.
“But you did. You wouldn’t have said it if you didn’t suspect something was up.”
“Don’t listen to Harraday, man,” said Danny. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
But Pig Eye didn’t have to listen to Harraday to know he didn’t trust Earl worth a damn. It was all he could think about when he was checking the fuel. He overfilled one tank and forgot to replace the cap on another. “Jeezus, what’s wrong with you?” asked Betts when he hurried past to see if the orders had come through.
“Nothing,” said Pig Eye, but he could tell that Betts was down too when he walked past thirty seconds later muttering that he couldn’t find his cargo manifest even though he was holding it in his hand.
Pig Eye found a detonator on the ground and slipped it into the pocket of his uniform where he kept what he called his escape kit. Now and then he stroked his thigh to make sure the kit was still there or adjusted the Velcro closure to make sure it was secure. He had made the mistake of telling Hernandez and Le Roy about the kit, and now and then Le Roy would say, “Stick with Pig Eye in case you’re captured. He’s got a magnifying glass that can burn through rope or zip ties using solar energy.”
“You don’t use a magnifying glass to escape from zip ties. You’d burn your arm!” said Pig Eye before he realized it was a joke.
Pig Eye didn’t mind the teasing until Harraday joined in. “Anybody need a tampon, Pig Eye’s your man. He’s got emergency supplies.”
Pig Eye tried to laugh it off because nobody wanted to get crosswise with Harraday, but sometimes he imagined revenge scenarios where Harraday’s fate was in his hands and he could save him or not. In the scenarios he always ignored Harraday until he was crying and pleading for his life. “Die, motherfucker,” a tougher version of himself would say in the fantasy, but then Harraday would beg for forgiveness and the tougher Pig Eye would soften and do whatever needed doing to set him free. Thinking about Harraday gave Pig Eye a pain in his gut, so it wasn’t always worth it to picture him crying in the desert. Sometimes it was better not to think of him at all.
“Hey, man, you’re riding with me,” said Danny. He slapped Pig Eye on the shoulder, and together they walked to where the trucks were waiting.
2.8 Le Roy Jones
Le Roy could smell Pig Eye’s sweat. He had noticed it earlier, when they were checking the load. Pig Eye’s going to be a problem, he thought, and when Joe Kelly walked up with a map of their route, all he had to say was “Pig Eye” for Kelly to frown and nod as if he was thinking the same thing. But because it was more important to make sure the radio was operational and to identify danger spots than to confirm each other’s worries about Pig Eye, they didn’t say anything out loud.