Losing another soldier did something to me, too. Two things mattered now and only two things: honor and survival. Sometimes in that order, sometimes not.
“There’s a beast in the heart of every fighting man,” Chambers said to us under hooded eyes. “And it’s time to embrace it.”
“Embrace what?” I asked.
“Embrace it before it embraces you.”
And like every fighting man before us, that’s what we did, as the red coal sun turned the world to flames.
18
Ana Amreeki. Ayna taskun?”
“Good, Lieutenant! And if the Iraqi you encounter is female?”
“Ayna… ayna taskuneen?”
“Jaeed!”
“Thanks, Snoop. Shukran, I mean.”
He grinned. “Iraqis will be impressed. Americans that speak Arabic are… seal-a-brated?”
“Celebrated. Ce-le-brated.”
“Yeah, that’s what I say.”
We sat in the terps’ room by ourselves, he on a top bunk chewing on sunflower seeds, me on a plastic chair next to the television, an Arabic dictionary in my lap. The rotating fan in the corner blasted out hot breath. I checked my watch: we’d been at it for an hour.
In addition to improving my Arabic, these sessions with Snoop allowed me to avoid the unfinished paperwork in my room. Somewhere between the sniper and the IED attacks, everyone in the platoon had earned the Combat Infantryman Badge, which meant we’d “actively engaged the enemy in ground combat,” which wasn’t supposed to matter, but it did. It mattered a lot. It meant we’d finally been to war. I just needed to finish typing out the reports to prove it. And I would, as soon as I stopped associating the award we’d wanted so desperately with the two dead soldiers it had cost.
Snoop leaned over the top bunk. “Hey, LT? Can I ask a favor?”
“Shoot.”
“I need a letter from an American officer saying I am a good interpreter, and an honest person.” Snoop looked embarrassed, as if pushing himself to continue. “After the war, I hope to move to America. Letters from officers help get the right papers for this.”
So the terp had dreams. “I’d be happy to,” I said. “But I’m just a lieutenant. You should ask someone higher ranking, like the colonel.”
Snoop smiled. “He already said yes. He said I should ask you, too, since we work together.”
I remembered a news article I’d seen online about the arduous visa process for interpreters. “What happens if the papers don’t go through right away? Back to the Sudan?”
“No.” His frown enveloped the room. “War is there, too. It followed us here.”
I hadn’t known that about his homeland, and suddenly felt very small.
There was a quick knock at the door. A couple of inches too long, it opened with the sound of a popping jaw. It was Dominguez. Or his head, at least, freshly cut and shaved. Fuck, I thought. I knew I’d forgotten to do something.
“Sir? The service kicks off in fifteen. First Sergeant wants everyone there ten minutes early.”
“We’ll be right down.”
Dominguez left, the door still ajar.
“Well,” I said to Snoop, slapping my thighs as I rose, “let’s do this.”
He nodded, mumbling to himself in Arabic. It sounded like a prayer.
• • •
Ortiz’s memorial service began with a company roll call. Four platoons abreast in the gravel courtyard behind the outpost, called to attention by First Sergeant’s booming, brassy voice. The crushed pebbles under our boots simmered after another day of unrelenting heat. The sunset wore a thin ribbon of clouds like a garter, and a pale wind carried the flavor of sewer into my mouth.
“Batule!”
“Here, First Sergeant!”
“Butler!”
“Here, First Sergeant!”
I stood behind the platoon, Chambers in front of it, chest out and back straight as a date tree along the canal. I snuck a glance behind me at Captain Vrettos, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, anxious and exhausted as ever, his skeletal frame threatening to tip over. Behind him, in a formation of their own, were the terps. A couple tried to imitate the position of attention, but only Snoop had it right, shoulders square and heels together, toes pointed out at a forty-five-degree angle.
“Demo!”
“Here, First Sergeant!”
“Dominguez!”
“Here, First Sergeant!”
It’d been three weeks since I’d broken into the commander’s room and Alphabet had been killed. This was our fourth service since that night. The first for Alphabet, whose fiancée found out about his death on Facebook hours before a military chaplain came to her door. The second for Mackay of headquarters platoon, after he turned himself into pink mist in a Porta John. The third for Reed and Dela Cruz of first platoon, whose Stryker rolled over a mine packed with a charge of eight hundred pounds of high explosive. The vehicle had gone poof into the stonewashed sky, and someone’s small intestine knotted around a telephone wire. The wire was cut down to retrieve the intestine, much to the locals’ displeasure, but it had been impossible to figure out whom the organ had belonged to. Reed? Dela Cruz? One of the survivors, sent home to a half life of amputated limbs and never-ending VA appointments? We’d guessed Reed, and included it in his pile.
“Lieutenant Fields!”
“Here, First Sergeant!”
“Gilotti!”
“Here, First Sergeant!”
No one else at the outpost knew about the sworn statements. I’d considered sharing them with Captain Vrettos, but he’d never get over the breaking and entering. Confronting Chambers about them seemed reckless. I’d toyed with the idea of confiding in Dominguez or Snoop, but knew neither could do much. I’d folded up the statements in my Lawrence of Arabia book, figuring that’d be the last place anyone would look, especially Chambers. Then I hid the book inside the trunk under my bed, which now had a metal lock of its own, because I now had secrets of my own.
Only Will knew. He was in the process of tracking down the two officers from First Cav, Grant and Tisdale. “It’s a small army,” my brother had said over the phone. “And a smaller officer corps. I’ll find them. Then we’ll make sure Mister Kill Team becomes someone else’s problem.”
He’d also repeated his suggestion about finding an Iraqi willing to write a statement about Chambers’ actions in 2006. Alia had played dumb again, Haitham had disappeared again, and Fat Mukhtar had demanded to speak to the Big Man before writing anything about an American soldier. I’d backtracked immediately, telling Snoop to blame it on a translation error, something he’d sulked about for a couple of days.
In the meantime, Ashuriyah burned.
“Ibrahim!”
“Here, First Sergeant!”
“Janis!”
“Here, First Sergeant!”
It wasn’t just Ashuriyah, either. All of greater Baghdad seemed trapped in the amber of violence. Sadr was threatening to lift the Mahdi Army cease-fire while the media aired reports about when the rest of Iraq would return to chaos, its inevitability not even a question. Rumors swirled that the generals at division believed our town was the catalyst for the resurgence of attacks, something that hung over Captain Vrettos like a gallows rope. PowerPoint slides and briefings now included terms like “containment” and “body counts,” and not ironically. We weren’t even supposed to call the outpost an outpost anymore, because of the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government; it’d been declared a “joint security station” to stay open.