Then one of the infantry commanders came on the radio. “Hey, you artillery guys are doing a good job,” he said. “All we’re finding over here are arms, and legs, and pink mist.” Buck, Hustler, and Murphy laughed. I wanted to vomit. But to be honest, I was glad they were dead. It meant they couldn’t kill me.
We started moving just before dawn. By now we had a purple fluorescent sheet tied to the hood of the Humvee, so the air force wouldn’t accidentally drop bombs on us. Our progress, however, was slow. A couple of tanks had broken down in the DMZ, creating a billion-dollar traffic jam of military hardware. Eventually, with a convoy of seven-ton trucks and howitzers behind us, we crashed through the breach and into the 6.2 miles of no-man’s-land between Kuwait and Iraq. As the sun reemerged from the cover of the horizon, I leaned out of my window to see that we were driving on a four-lane track marked by soft red and green lights dug into the sand. It was as though we were on a runway, taking off into another dimension. “Last week,” announced Buck, “this was a ten-foot berm and a sixteen-by-sixteen-foot tank trench. And now look at it. Where have all those Bangladeshi United Nations dudes gone?”
A few yards into the DMZ we passed a sign saying “US Troops Do Not Enter!” and then another: “Welcome To The Demilitarized Zone!” At the halfway point, two bearded Kuwaiti police officers stood beside their white squad cars, cheering and waving us on.
At the end of the 6.2 miles, there was no sign welcoming us to Iraq, just an abandoned tent where the Iraqi border post used to be and the smoldering remains of a Republican Guard tank. Then another tank; and another. I tried not to look, fearing the charred and twisted human remains inside. The land was greener than Kuwait and we started to pass dirty, withered farm animals and ranting Bedouin shepherds in black dishdashas. Some of them were flying white flags from their ram-shackle, corrugated iron huts, as they had been instructed to by Arabic leaflets air-dropped by the Americans. “Shoe-koo, McKoo!” shouted Buck at one of them. The Bedouin saluted. It was hard to believe that only ninety miles to our south, there was a city with Ferrari dealerships, KFC franchises, and Armani boutiques. I looked at my wristwatch: It was now just after 9:00 A.M., on Friday, March 21, day two of the Iraq War.
“Here, take this,” said Buck, passing me a greenish, horse-sized tablet.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Doxycycline,” he said. “It’s for malaria.”
I examined the capsule, put it in my mouth, and gulped it down with a swig of lukewarm Saudi Arabian bottled water.
In front of me, Murphy did the same.
“I hate those fuckin’ things,” he announced to the Humvee.
“Why?” asked Buck.
“The last time I took them,” said Murphy, “I was in Germany. I started to vomit, then I passed out. I had to be medevacked.”
Buck and I looked at each other. Then we looked at Murphy.
“Yeah, I get real sick with these tablets, man,” he reiterated. “It sucks.”
“Murphy?” said Buck.
“Yeah?”
“Shit like that would’ve been good to know before you took the tablet.”
Murphy shrugged and drove on.
It was three hundred miles to Baghdad.
AL-BASRA, IRAQ
2003
14
WHILE SHEPHERDS WATCHED THEIR GUNS BY NIGHT
“Murphy, cover me,” shouted Hustler as he pulled out his Beretta 9mm. He yanked open the Humvee’s rear door and jumped out onto the gravel and mud. In front of me, Murphy grabbed his M-16 and also dived out of the vehicle. Then he crouched down behind the front wheel and aimed his rifle over the hood. Buck stayed put in the passenger seat, chewing his lower lip, with a map of Iraq spread out over his lap like a tablecloth at a family picnic. I was in the back, as always, gulping down quick, shallow breaths and fingering the release catch of my Diazepam auto-injector. If this was the end, I wanted to die happy. I didn’t want to feel a thing.
We had made a terrible mistake. It was nearly sundown on Friday, March 21—the day we crossed the DMZ into Iraq—and we were searching for a new firing position. Instead, we had ended up alone, our convoy of howitzers miles behind. When Buck finally got the GPS device to work (it needed new batteries), he realized we were ahead of the front lines. And now we were stuck in a dilapidated Iraqi hamlet, which I guessed was somewhere near Basra International Airport.
The dwellings—it was hard to call them houses—were made from stone, mud, and corrugated iron and guarded by razor wire and a sickly mutt with a hungry bark. White flags fluttered over the rooftops. It had been a muggy day, but now the infernal wind was blowing and it was getting cold.
I felt helpless—as though I was in the front row of a war movie, with the exits locked and bullets coming through the screen. I couldn’t even call anyone or file any stories because we were back in EmCon Bravo. Buck, meanwhile, had given up trying to answer my questions, most of which were unanswerable anyway (“Are you sure we’re safe here?” was one of my favorites). So with nothing better to do, I just sat there and watched Hustler walk slowly forward, his pistol raised in the classic television cop position. About fifty yards in front of him was a tall, robed man, gesticulating and shouting in Arabic. The Iraqi was standing on a steep berm, making it impossible to tell if he was alone or whether this was an ambush. I wondered if I would be expected to fire the Humvee’s machine gun if we were attacked.
“Shall I take him out, sir?” asked Murphy hopefully. The lance corporal had spent the day cursing more than usual—making practically every word an expletive—and sweating feverishly. The hospital-strength doxycycline tablet had yet to knock him out, but I feared it wouldn’t take much longer.
“Negative,” said Buck. “Do not take the dude with the robe out.”
Shoot him, said a voice in my head. Just shoot him. I felt disgusted with myself. The Iraqi was probably terrified; we’d probably just turned his family into “arms, legs, and pink mist,” as the faceless infantry commander had boasted. What I should have been thinking was “Interview him; get out and interview him.” But I was more interested in staying alive than staying objective. The trouble was, I felt like a Marine. I was about as neutral as Murphy’s trigger finger.
Hustler continued walking. You could see the power of the Beretta in his face: the thrill of being able to kill without going to prison. You could see the apprehension, too. He was old enough to know the consequences.
Murphy, on the other hand, was not.
“But I can waste him from here,” the lance corporal protested, his muddy index finger twitching with anticipation.
“He’s a civilian as far as we know,” snapped Buck. “Hearts and minds, Murphy. We don’t shoot innocent people.”
I wondered if Buck would have said that if I weren’t there.
“Maybe he’s got explosives strapped to his fuckin’ underwear,” suggested Murphy, clearly not wanting to give up this early opportunity to lose his war virginity. “Maybe he’s an SEPW, sir.”