“You got a specific plan in mind, Sergeant?” she said, standing up and addressing him in a more formal voice, so the soldiers nearby could hear. “I got guys posting security, we need people setting the T-walls up — so if you want to do a sweep, you’re gonna need people who aren’t already doing something.”
“I’m not busy,” Beale said. He had a sly look on his face.
“Yeah, but you need a team. Can’t go in solo.”
“What about camera boy here?” Beale said. “It’s his shit, his equipment, his fucking project. We’re good with these T-walls, ma’am. The only thing we’re waiting on is for Pulowski to get off his ass and do something.”
She glanced up at Pulowski. If it had been anyone other than Pulowski, she would have shut Beale down immediately, played it safe. But then again, if it had been anybody other than Pulowski, she wouldn’t have been put in the position of being humiliated in front of her entire team. All she wanted from Pulowski was a little backup: nothing fancy, no apology, no sympathy, just a decisive opinion, a suggestion, some admission that they were together in the mission, that they shared responsibility. It was no excuse, of course — if you were a good lieutenant, you weren’t supposed to care about these things. But today she did.
Instead, Pulowski punched his hands down in his pockets and bit his upper lip, grinning at her and Beale as if they were the biggest idiots he’d ever seen. “Well, it seems like you guys ought to make the best tactical decision you can, don’t you think?”
It wasn’t even something he actually believed.
She pushed between the two of them, grabbed a water bottle off the Humvee’s seat. It was a bad idea to make decisions out of anger, but now she did. “Beale’s right,” she said. “Pack up your gear and get moving, Pulowski. I got a fucking platoon to take care of. You should’ve manned up an hour ago. Stop making us wait.”
“Roger,” Beale said.
“Grab Crawford to go with you,” she said. “But don’t go inside. You can look, but we’re not rushing any buildings with anything short of a full team, and I can’t spare that many men. You got it? You understand me? That’s a direct order.”
“Oh, yeah — I copy,” said Beale. He jerked his Kevlar down tight over his ears, fastening his chin strap. “That’s a direct order. Nobody gets to hurt Pulowski. Come on, camera boy, let’s beat it, please.”
* * *
The first shots were muffled and therefore hard to locate. They could have been far away. She dove in through her Humvee’s door and scrambled for the portable radio that she kept under her seat. Once she got it and looked up, her platoon had begun firing at the market on the right-hand side of the intersection. It was empty, the bare metal pipes that defined the abandoned stalls knitting and unknitting like lace. And yet, once a single soldier aimed there, the entire platoon “unleashed” and these shadowy frames skidded and upended under the steady hose of rounds, sparks flaring and receding like lit match heads, a constant gloriole of sound and motion that was just confusing enough to be satisfying to shoot at. Just enough to give the illusion that a target was there.
Fowler saw all of this. But what she also saw was that every single one of her sentries — the Humvee crews that she’d posted at all four corners of the compass — had abandoned their appointed sectors and faced the firing. She tried to correct this, but when she flipped the portable radio on, the channel was overloaded, emitting only blips and burps, Wrrock, SCREEJAARGH, Go! Go! And then Enemy at three o’clock, and then Fucking something moving, down in that market right there, see that hut, and then the fucker dropped into the canal, somebody shoot his ass … until the feed dissolved into a high-pitched whine.
Okay, you’ve got to move. Where’s the danger? she thought, and slid out in a crouch from her Humvee with her sidearm in her hand. Who’s hit? Is anybody hit? She didn’t think so. She was already in a hurry then, telling herself to slow down and think, and fighting against that hurry. The medical building was up ahead and to the left — the opposite side of the street from the market. They’d set up T-walls across the road, so she could only see its upper story and the roof. Nice thinking, Beale. Good place for shooters, Beale.
“The roof!” she shouted to her own gunner, McWilliams, whose.50-cal machine gun, pumping out rounds above her head, made it almost impossible to think.
“What?” McWilliams said.
Fowler stepped up onto the door frame of the Humvee, grabbed him by the shoulder, and pointed at the roof of the medical building. Then she dropped down onto the dirt and began running hard, tucking her chin, that way.
“All right, all right,” she was saying a few seconds later, as she crouched behind a newly installed T-wall, halfway to the medical building. The intersection was quiet. McWilliams had silenced the shooter on the roof and the horseshoe of Humvees circled around the intersection had quit firing at the marketplace. That was progress, at least. She peeked up over the T-wall and checked the roofline again: nothing. Okay, what next?
“Okay, I need my perimeter security to do their jobs. Just stick to your own quadrants. Keep your eyes open. I’m going to call out sectors. South is toward the highway. Okay? South.”
“Clear,” Waldorf said.
“West.”
“Clear,” Dykstra said.
“North,” Fowler said. This was Jimenez, whose Humvee was on the other side of the T-wall, nearest to the alley where Beale and Pulowski had gone in.
“Are you clear?”
“Almost, Lieutenant,” Jimenez replied.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She tried to keep her voice steady during this, trying hard not to ask directly about Pulowski. She was supposed to be the platoon leader for all these people, not just him. But still, she felt a wave of relief when, after some rustling of the microphone, Pulowski’s voice came on the air.
“Crawford and I are here. We were in this alley, and the team leader”—this meant Beale—“said we were under fire and he, uh, we got separated from him.” There was muffled whispering here, a mic covered with a hand.
“You say you last saw Beale in the alley.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
How the fuck did three guys get separated in an alley? Here’s how three guys get separated in an alley: their lieutenant gets pissed off and sends them in.
She pushed out from behind the T-wall and ran hard to the medical building, got herself under the second floor walkway, pressed her back against the louvered steel door that covered the front window. She peeked around the corner. No Beale. A car with its windshield shot out. A big steel box that looked like a dumpster someone had made from scratch. Okay, what would be the most dangerous place for Beale to be? The answer was inside. By then a cancerous black tentacle of fear began to curl itself, glistening, around Fowler’s wrist, sneaking up the cool wincing skin of her inner bicep, nesting inside her armpit: Beale had a headset radio with him too. Why wouldn’t he be answering?
“All right, Eggleston,” she said. “Button up the Hercules and drive it right over to me. Punch a hole in this wall, then back up and head down the alley. They’re not going to be able to hurt you, okay?”
It was a risk. Risky to send an armored vehicle into such a restricted space. But only if the alley had been mined, and she doubted that. Everybody knew that alleys were places where U.S. forces didn’t drive. The AKs wouldn’t touch the Hercules. An RPG might, but fuck it, if they had RPGs, they would’ve shot them already. By then the big vehicle had already crossed the open street, its treads clanking, chewing up the asphalt, Eggleston dropping the boom that he’d been using to lift the T-walls on the fly. “Do it soft,” she said. “Do it soft or you’ll take the building down.” And Eggleston slowed and put the nose of the Hercules against the louvered steel door and she heard the diesel engine gun and the frame of the whole vehicle began to shake and the anchor for the metal screen tore away from the concrete overhead, and the whole sheet bowed, and there was an opening just big enough along one side that she put a boot up on the Hercules’ fender and dove in.