Fire and Forget (16 page)

He couldn't answer. He sprinted back to the Tactical Operations Center holding his slung M4 carbine against his hip with one arm, and swinging the other as he ran.

Major Roscoe and the medics turned back to the movie, but it wasn't there the same way it had been. When the private returned and told them a local boy was coming with a head wound, they turned off the television and walked to the bay to prepare for the boy's arrival.

* * *

As Sergeant Alphabet's patrol re-entered the wire, one of the scouts held a bandage against the boy's ear. The other had gotten an IV started and held the bag up to keep the drip going. Guys from Alphabet's squad saw the boy show his teeth. His shoulders climbed up to his ears, and his feet and hands curled into tight claws and stayed that way.

After giving the kid to the medics, Sergeant Alphabet had to see the battalion intelligence officer, who kept him waiting in a corridor, then sat down next to him with a legal pad and, in a tired voice, asked him what happened. He took occasional notes and twice reminded Sergeant Alphabet to limit his explanation to observable facts. “It looked like he set it off,” Sergeant Alphabet said, “so I shot him.”

Sergeant Alphabet was directed to the Colonel's office.

“He wants to see me?” Alphabet asked.

“He wants to see every patrol leader who makes contact,” the intelligence officer said.

The Colonel was a small, neat, aggressive man. He ate a riblet dinner from a paper tray, dipping spoonfuls of corn into a bright
red sauce. He spoke between bites and hurried because of the staff meeting he'd called to prepare for the big upcoming mission. They planned to bring everything on this one: Apaches, fixed wing. This would be the biggest one yet.

The Colonel apologized for having to hurry and wiped his lips many times with a napkin. He told Sergeant Alphabet how important it was to get these guys when they hit us. “Hit them right back,” he said, “or else they'll keep coming.” And while he made it very clear that Sergeant Alphabet did nothing wrong, he encouraged him to think about what he could have done differently, if anything at all, that would have resulted in getting these guys, or in not hurting the kid, unless of course the kid set off the IED. “In that case,” the Colonel said, “shooting him was the right answer.”

“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Alphabet said. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”

“It's like we're a bunch of pussies,” Sergeant Alphabet later told his platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class McPherson. “I do my job and everybody acts like I pissed in their Cheerios.”

The tired intelligence officer wrote a number on a red sticker and pressed it onto a satellite image already marked with many red, yellow, green, and blue stickers. Neither he, nor the Colonel, nor Alphabet, or Lieutenant Sugar, who was still at the Mixing Bowl, heard the medevac helicopter touching down, or, seconds later, lifting off with the kid. It was just another sound, and not one of the important ones like the whomp of incoming.

The last person to talk to Sergeant Alphabet about the incident that day was the Sergeant Major, the senior enlisted man at their base—what had once been an Iraqi meat processing plant and was still known to both locals and soldiers as “the Chicken Factory.”

The Sergeant Major was the rare kind: his knees and back weren't destroyed despite having been a paratrooper for as long as many of the battalion's soldiers had been alive. He could still run
and move. He was a big man who probably landed hard on jumps, and that made his vitality all the more impressive. He wasn't quite as tall as Sergeant Alphabet, but thicker. He had the muscled forearms of a major league shortstop and put one of those tattooed limbs around Sergeant Alphabet's shoulders. He pointed at Alphabet's chest with his other hand.

“If you ever have any doubts about what's the right thing to do,” he said, “just remember that your job is to bring these boys home. None of us got hurt. That's the important thing.”

Sergeant Alphabet said, “Roger that, Sergeant Major,” and the Sergeant Major clapped him on the back and told him to get some sleep.

The colors of evening drained from the sky and the night was chilly. The last call to prayer sounded from a nearby mosque, a distant wail, and a wind rattled loose sheets in the tin roof of the warehouse.

The next day at about thirteen hundred, Lieutenant Sugar pushed aside the canvas flap of Sergeant Alphabet's tent and saw him lying on his cot, his size thirteen boots pointing to either side. He wore headphones. A CD-player rested on his chest, and his hands were interlocked over it.

Two fluorescent bulbs lit the tent. There was a row of cots on each side, cardboard box nightstands, and equipment under the cots and hanging from nails in the wood tent-frame. At the far end of the tent, Specialist Tommie slept on his side wrapped in a sleeping bag. Sergeant Alphabet's eyes were closed.

“What's going on?” Lieutenant Sugar asked, and when no one heard him, he said louder, “What's going on, Joe?” pretending that he just entered and was asking for the first time.

Sergeant Alphabet saw Lieutenant Sugar. He pulled a headphone from one ear and said, “Oh, not much, sir.”

After a pause, Lieutenant Sugar asked, “You doing okay?” Alphabet startled at the question. “Of course I'm doing okay.”

“The boss says I have to go make nice with the kid's family.”

“Great,” Sergeant Alphabet said.

“I want you to come with me.”

“You want
me
to go?”

Lieutenant Sugar nodded. He didn't want to explain every decision to his subordinate. That shows a lack of confidence, he thought.

Sergeant Alphabet shrugged. “Just say when, sir.”

“Probably tomorrow. Early. So we can get back inside the wire and prep for the big mission.”

Sergeant Alphabet nodded and when Lieutenant Sugar didn't say anything else, he put his headphone back in and pressed a button on his CD Player.

Lieutenant Sugar sat on an adjacent cot and flipped through the small stack of CDs on Sergeant Alphabet's nightstand, pretending to be interested.

“Ser-geant Alph-a-bet!” The voice of their platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class McPherson, boomed from the other side of the warehouse.

At the far end of the tent, Specialist Tommie lifted his head and listened like an alert deer. The whole chain of command had been on his case ever since he lost accountability of some spare weapons parts.

“Ser-geant Alph-a-bet!” Sergeant First Class McPherson called again, his voice closer.

Confident he wasn't needed, Specialist Tommie lowered his head and went back to sleep.

Sergeant Alphabet rotated up on his cot, setting his big feet on the floorboards. He removed the headphones from his ears and wrapped the cord around his CD Player. He placed it gently in the shoebox beneath his cot, then took his M4 carbine from where it hung on a nail and exited through the canvas flap.

Sergeant First Class McPherson had just been told about an upcoming issue of cold-weather clothes and needed to update the platoon's roster of sizes. He communicated this to Sergeant Alphabet who said “roger” and went to find his squad. His guys were taking their turn on the wire, and he would make the rounds and double-check their sizes.

The tent felt empty. Lieutenant Sugar walked to the far end where Specialist Tommie slept, then back. He listened to his footfalls on the floorboards.

He's a rough one, Sugar thought, but he's got a soul like everyone else. He'll go with me and not talk back. It's a tragedy, this thing, sure, but my duty is to make the Iraqis understand that we've come to help them with freedom, and honor, and duty. Courage, Sugar thought.

A little plastic dog tag printed with the Army values dangled from Sugar's neck, beside the stainless steel ones bearing his name, social, blood type, and religion.

Sugar exited and walked to his own tent where he lived with Sergeant First Class McPherson. He reread a letter from his girlfriend. It was chatty and all wrong. He read carefully, looking for an undercurrent of pity and longing. The hell with that, he told himself. I have responsibilities to worry about. I have people relying on me. He read the letter again. It was all wrong.

* * *

On the way to dinner, Lieutenant Sugar and Sergeant First Class McPherson spoke about the upcoming mission. Rumors had been circulating about their platoon being the main effort. They'd supposedly be going after two high-value targets. The similar mission they'd done turned out to be a dry hole, but that didn't stop everybody's anticipation, nerves. “This might be the one,” Sugar told his platoon sergeant. “Whether it is or it ain't, let's make sure
the boys are ready,” said McPherson. Together, Lieutenant Sugar and Sergeant First Class McPherson led and ran Second Platoon. Sugar was glad he could speak freely to his platoon sergeant.

They ate their riblet dinners, mopping up bright red sauce with dry pieces of Wonder Bread, then filled their pockets with packets of peanut butter and jelly, grabbed a loaf of bread, and returned to their hooch.

Lieutenant Sugar asked his platoon sergeant if he felt like a little
Halo
action. He did, and they set up. Lieutenant Sugar carried over a pair of plastic lawn chairs and switched on the television and Xbox.

It'd been great since their forward operating base got a second school-bus-sized generator. Power was now reliable enough for long games of
Halo
on Xboxes, or
Madden
on PlayStations. But now more soldiers found reason to travel the thirty miles out of their way during patrols to the big base at Baghdad International, where they stuffed themselves in fancy KBR chow halls, ogled the many female soldiers, and returned with satellite receivers, televisions, DVD players, game systems, and all the junk food they could carry, and the load was showing signs of being too much for even the two school-bus-sized generators that hummed 24/7 between the warehouse and the wall of the base.

SFC McPherson poured hot water into two mugs and the room filled with a warm, sweet smell. Sugar used a pen to stir the cocoa smooth. He pulled off his boots. This, finally, was living.

Sugar let his platoon sergeant get the first few kills because he wanted to keep things competitive. After the previous night, he didn't want SFC McPherson to become discouraged and quit their semi-regular games. Soon, they were both laughing and cursing and swaying their bodies as their characters ducked, ran, and threw hand grenades at one another on the television screen.

Eventually, Sergeant First Class McPherson went to sleep, and Lieutenant Sugar turned to a newspaper he'd received in the
mail. He just looked at it and didn't read. Then he folded it along its original creases and set it atop a plank of wood that rested on two cinder blocks and served as a shelf. He placed it atop novels sent by various friends. Novels he really did intend to read. He put his boots back on and went outside.

Tommie was in the motor pool dragging a heavy plastic chest out of the quadcon. He wore a headlamp that illuminated his nose, lips, and chin, and had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. His M4 carbine lay on the ground beside the connex, resting on his uniform blouse. He wore a T-shirt and sweated in the chilly night. He was in trouble all the way up to the Sergeant Major for losing accountability of the spare weapons parts.

“What's up, Tommie?” Lieutenant Sugar called.

Tommie dropped the chest. He had a habit of grinning that made Lieutenant Sugar do the same.

“I heard you and the Sergeant Major having a chat a little while ago. Something about weapons parts.”

“Oh you heard that did you, sir?” Tommie giggled. “Yeah, old Willie and me were having a talk about the importance of proper accountability of Army equipment. He wanted me to blow it off, but I think I talked some sense into him.”

Lieutenant Sugar loved Tommie.

“Is that what he wanted?”

“Yeah, sir. I really had to put my foot down. I said, ‘Look here Willie, I'm gonna find those parts, even if it takes me all night.'” He giggled. “It's a good thing he backed down too. For a second there I thought I was gonna have to get loud with him.”

Tommie offered Lieutenant Sugar a cigarette. He took one and lit it with the lighter from his pocket and inhaled the harsh smoke into his lungs, then blew it out through his nose. He didn't cough.

“There,” He said. “How did that look? I've been practicing”

“Not bad, sir. I'll have you addicted in no time. But it'll take dedication.”

“Oh, I'm dedicated.”

“That's good, sir. Speaking of which, I got some weapons parts to find.” He got up, and began carrying more things from the connex: windshields, bags of uniforms, an enormous box of toilet paper.

Lieutenant Sugar smoked and watched him. Tommie worked inside the Conex with his headlamp while he sucked the cigarette without pulling the harsh smoke into his lungs.

He sat on the plastic chest and looked at the rows of Humvees and five-tons in the motor pool. A soldier from his company paced back and forth with an axe handle on his shoulder. They suspected the guys in Alpha Company of swiping parts from their vehicles but had yet to catch the dirty bastards in the act. A row of tracers rose slowly in the sky and winked out one after the next, and Lieutenant Sugar watched for more but didn't see any. It was nothing.