I stepped on my cigarette and lit another one.
My heart, I noticed, was beating in a frantic 2/4 march.
I decided I should call the office. It was 12:30 A.M. in London, and there would still be a couple of night editors on the foreign desk. I pulled out my satellite phone, extended the chunky antenna, and started to dial.
The black captain emerged from the tent as someone in London picked up.
“Y’ello?” said a distant voice.
“Kill the goddamn PHONE!” yelled the captain, making a furious throat-slitting action with his right hand. For a second I thought he was going to tackle me. The phone jumped out of my hands.
“We’re in EmCon Bravo, for Christsake,” he bellowed.
We stared at each other.
“What’s that?” I asked eventually, my hands still shaking.
“Radio… Emissions… Control,” he said, as if trying to stop himself from doing something he would regret later. “You switch that phone on and it gives out a radio signal. Ten seconds later a Scud lands on your head. It lands on my head, too. And I don’t want no Scuds anywhere near my head. Keep it switched off. We’re gonna be in Bravo for the next forty-eight hours. At least.”
I tried some of Dr. Ruth’s breathing exercises. Then a thought struck me.
“So how will I file any stories?” I asked.
“You won’t,” said the captain. “You’re gonna be out of contact. You can send your stories when we go back to EmCon Delta.”
The embedding system suddenly seemed very flawed. I would be joining the front lines with no weapon, no training, and no way to send stories. It was as though I was tagging along just for the opportunity to get shot—or worse. Until now the phone had been my only contact with reality. And now it was useless. The only upside was that Fletcher and Barrow might think I was dead.
I noticed the captain looking at my flak jacket.
“Why the hell are you wearing a blue vest?” he asked. His eyes moved upward with growing disbelief. “And a blue helmet?”
“It’s, er, Kevlar,” I replied. “Bulletproof, y’know?” I rapped my knuckles twice on my helmet and gave a weak laugh.
“Do you have any idea how many blue things there are in the Iraqi desert?” the captain replied, his eyes damp with anger.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear the answer.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “There’s one blue thing. And it’s you.”
Trux appeared from behind me, his M-16 slung over his shoulder. He glanced at my jacket, which had the word PRESS inscribed on the chest in large, fluorescent white letters. Then he gave me a playful shove there.
“What th—” I began to say.
“I’m pressing!” said Trux. He shoved me again, harder. “Look, I’m pressing! It says here I have to press! What happens now?”
Trux slapped his palm on my back, then nearly collapsed with laughter. I thought I detected an upward curl of the captain’s lips.
“That’s very funny,” I said.
“Whoever gave you that vest, man, I wouldn’t send ’em a Christmas card,” said Trux. “I think they might want you dead. Why didn’t they write ‘press’ in Arabic? As far as the Iraqis are concerned, that snazzy blue jacket might mean you’re a goddamn general. I hope the Kevlar comes with a warranty.”
I began to explain that, for ethical reasons, I shouldn’t look too much like a Marine—even though I was wearing a camouflaged Marine chemical suit and traveling in a Marine convoy with a Marine artillery battery. But Trux was right. My jacket should have had SAHAFFI on it, or, as Salman Hussein had said to me in the taxi outside the Marriott, LA TAPAR, ANA SAHAFFI.
“Which unit are you assigned to, anyhow?” asked Trux. I could tell from the folds in his brow he hoped it wasn’t his.
I tried to shrug, but couldn’t because of the weight on my shoulders.
Then the captain said, “He’s with me.”
I almost choked on my Marlboro. The captain was still looking at me as though he’d caught me in a motel room with his wife.
“I don’t think we’ve been introduced yet,” he said, offering me a bony hand. “Captain Rick Rogers. The men call me Buck.”
“I’m Chris,” I said, presenting him with a fleshy, sunburned palm in return. “Chris Ayres. From the London Times.”
“Okay, London Times,” said Buck. “Follow me.”
By 3.52 A.M., I was standing next to an armored Humvee on the dirt track that headed north out of Camp Grizzly, toward the Iraqi border. Behind the Humvee was a seven-ton off-road truck stacked high with wooden crates of ammunition. It was towing a massive 155mm howitzer, which the Marines told me weighed more than the truck itself. I was surprised by how old-fashioned the big gun looked—as though it was only a couple of generations evolved from the wagon-wheeled, horse-drawn artillery that the British used to fire at the Americans. “It has about as much in common with one of those pieces of crap as a Model T Ford does with a pimped-up Cadillac Escalade,” the captain told me later. “That gun can fire a rocket-propelled shell thirty klicks (kilometers) downrange at a rate of two per minute. That’s why they call us the Long Distance Death Dealers. We kill more people on the battlefield than anyone else.”
Behind the howitzer was another seven-ton truck, also towing a gun, and then another, for as far as I could see. To the left of us were four identical artillery convoys, lined up side-by-side. I guessed there must have been at least a billion dollars’ worth of military hardware parked outside the camp.
After leading me to the Humvee, Buck had disappeared for a briefing with the 2nd Battalion’s commanding officer. While I waited for him to come back, I tuned in to BBC World Service. It was now 3:59 A.M. In less than a minute President Bush would address the nation. A dozen Marines huddled around the V-shaped antenna of my shortwave radio: Some of them smoked cigarettes; others ate MREs. In the field, I would soon learn, Marines eat whenever they can.
“My fellow citizens,” the president began through a babble of interference. “Events in Iraq have reached the final days of decision… The United States and other nations have pursued patient and honorable efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime without war. That regime pledged to reveal and destroy all its weapons of mass destruction as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Today, no nation can possibly claim that Iraq has disarmed. And it will not disarm so long as Saddam Hussein holds power.” For a moment the president’s voice faded out, replaced by a solemn Arabic voice and the echo of an Islamic call to prayer. I wondered if this really was the end of the world. I scrolled through the alternative frequencies for the World Service just in time to hear the president’s fuzzy ultimatum: “Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within forty-eight hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing. For their safety, all foreign nationals—including journalists and inspectors—should leave Iraq immediately.”
The Marines shook their heads, cursed Saddam, and made their way back to their vehicles. It seemed inevitable: Some of us would end up dying an unimaginable chemical death. Saddam, after all, had absolutely nothing to lose. Behind us, in a metal cage swinging from the cabin of a seven-ton truck, Speckled Ali, the NBC pigeon, cooed contentedly. Then I saw the captain, backlit by the glare of the floodlights, approaching the Humvee. He still looked pissed off, but I thought I could sense a slight mood improvement. “So, I’ve been told to look after you,” he said without trying to hide his disappointment. “This is the deaclass="underline" As you probably know, the 2nd Battalion, 11th Marines is made up of four firing batteries—Echo, Fox, Golf, and Kilo—and a headquarters battery. I’m in charge of Kilo Battery. Our mission is to cover the infantry from the 5th Marines, who’ll go through the DMZ ahead of us, when—or IF—we get the order to cross the LOD.” I got the feeling Buck was the kind of military man who never used words when an acronym would do. With any luck this meant I would never understand the true depth of the trouble we were in.