Fire and Forget (17 page)

“I want you to come with me tomorrow morning on a little mission I got. You'll be my driver.”

Tommie was dragging another chest along the concrete. He set it down. “Hoo-ah, sir. You know I'm gonna be looking for those weapons parts all night.”

“I know,” said Lieutenant Sugar.

“You say run, Tommie say how far. You say shit, Tommie say what color.”

“We're leaving at oh-six-hundred. You'll drive me in Delta Six,” Lieutenant Sugar said, naming the commander's vehicle.

“And then Tommie will polish that turd and put a ribbon on it and pretend it smells like roses.”

Tommie continued unloading the connex, and Lieutenant Sugar finished his cigarette.

“Need a hand?”

“Nah, sir, this is supply work. I don't think you infantry guys could handle it.”

Lieutenant Sugar saw his grin lit by the downward light of his headlamp.

“That's why they sent me,” Tommie continued, “to look after you all, and keep you out of trouble. I don't know what this company would do without me.”

“I don't either, Tommie.”

* * *

Lieutenant Sugar wore his watch when he slept, and when he woke at three, morning was still infinitely far away. He went back to sleep and forgot about the kid and the mission. He fell asleep imagining his girlfriend unbuttoning his uniform, then woke up at four thirty with morning too close to ignore and lay there, trying to sleep until he heard the company radio guard walk hesitantly into the tent.

“Sir?” he said, “I was supposed to wake you, sir.”

Lieutenant Sugar rose from his warm sleeping bag and dressed quietly in the darkness so Sergeant First Class McPherson's sleep wouldn't be disturbed.

The ponchos bungee-corded around the heavy weapons to keep the dust out were removed and tucked away in the beds of the gun trucks. Heavy boxes of ammunition were mounted to the gun cradles beside the automatic grenade launchers and heavy machine guns, and the belts of ammunition were draped into their chambers. Shoulder-fired anti-tank rockets, which could also destroy bunkers and knock down structures, were lifted from the bed and fixed with their shoulder straps around the open hatches of the gunners' turrets.

Sugar tied his boots and walked to the motor pool where Sergeant Alphabet had his trucks running and his men ready to go. Tommie was there too, wearing a tired grin.

Lieutenant Sugar dropped his kit in the passenger seat of Delta Six.

“I'm going to get the terp. Meet me at the gate. I'll be right there.”

“We got to go, sir,” Sergeant Alphabet said.

“I'll be right there.”

Sergeant Alphabet directed the four Humvees to the gate, and Lieutenant Sugar went to wake Stuttering John.

He opened the door of the interpreter's hooch. A battery-operated lantern cast shadows about the room. It hummed on the floor beside one of the interpreters who prayed on his rug. Stuttering John was asleep. Despite his grey hair and wrinkled face, Stuttering John looked like a young boy as he slept. Another interpreter prayed, and Lieutenant Sugar said nothing to him. He shook Stuttering John's shoulder and the old Iraqi man woke. Lieutenant Sugar watched him sit up and put his feet on the floor. He wore long underwear and looked around like he didn't know where he was.

“Are you awake?”

He nodded.

“I have a difficult mission. I want you to come with me. You. No one else. I need your help.” Lieutenant Sugar spoke in short phrases, in the tempo of an Arab's broken English.

“Would you like some tea?”

“There is no time.”

“No breakfast?”

“No time. I have an MRE for you in the truck.”

Stuttering John found his glasses. “I need to pee,” he said, and rubbed his face.

“There is little time. We leave as soon as you are ready.”

Stuttering John nodded again and looked back and forth, as though he'd lost something.

“It is a difficult one. I do not like this mission.”

Stuttering John dressed, his face puffy and expressionless.

“We have to find the family of a child and speak to them,” Lieutenant Sugar said. “We shot the child yesterday. Sent him by helicopter to the hospital. I'll talk. You just translate. I need you because you are the best.”

Stuttering John was the best. He translated, and almost never entered into his own conversations with locals.

He buttoned his shirt and put a cap on his head. He stood up straight, stomped one foot on the floor, and raising his chin said, “Sir, I am ready, sir.” The other interpreter continued to pray by his lantern.

The two gate guards spoke with Sergeant Alphabet. They probably heard about the IED. “This is bullshit,” Lieutenant Sugar heard Sergeant Alphabet say. “First these fuckers try to kill us, and now we got to drive down that same fucking road to kiss their asses.”

* * *

Outside the main gate, a row of laborers sat on the ground against the wall, waiting for the escort who would watch them spend the day spreading piles of gravel over the field. The cooks worked busily over stoves beside the chow hall, and in the motor pool, a mechanic leaned all his weight against a torque wrench.

Lieutenant Sugar climbed into Delta Six and called a radio check with Alphabet.

The SAW gunners clipped drums of ammunition to their weapons and kept at least three more drums on their persons. Riflemen, including Sergeant Alphabet and Lieutenant Sugar, opened their optics and adjusted the size of the little red dot. They slapped magazines into their weapons. Frag grenades fit into pouches specially designed for the body armor, or beside the magazines in the old-style pouches some soldiers still used. Concussion grenades didn't fit anywhere and were often reinforced with hundred-mile-an-hour
tape and tucked by their spoons into the loops on a soldier's body armor, or else they were kept inside the vehicles with their spoons around a taut piece of five-fifty cord that ran along the wind-shield. Smoke grenades were kept in a similar way, arranged by color so they could be quickly found—or as quickly as is possible in the confusion of the mysterious event called contact.

A gate guard scribbled some marks in his ledger, then dragged the strand of concertina wire out of the way.

The gate lifted. As they rolled through, SAW gunners slid the charging handles on their machine guns back and forward and each rifleman let the bolt of his carbine slam forward, chambering a round. The gunners in the turrets slammed the feed tray covers down on their heavy machine guns and automatic grenade launchers. The gunner on the lead vehicle waved his palms toward the traffic on the highway until it came to a stop, and the convoy rolled into the middle lane of Route Lion.

A few locals were already out in the market. The first merchants removed the thatched grass mats from the fronts of their stalls. White chickens fluttered in their cages and a cool dampness hung in the air. Stuttering John pulled his cap lower and didn't look out the window.

They veered off Route Lion after the market and drove along dirt roads, snaking between farms. Sergeant Alphabet was in the lead vehicle looking at his GPS. They came upon two mud houses partially concealed by a small grove of date palms.

Sugar saw their thick, sturdy walls. The houses were all by themselves and surrounded by fields, which was good. Soldiers could see far in every direction. The Humvees drove to two adjacent corners and all the soldiers but the gunners dismounted. Tommie cut the engine of Delta Six and dismounted with the shotgun.

Two Iraqis ran toward them from far out in the field, and Lieutenant Sugar asked Stuttering John to exit the vehicle. The
figures dropped their shovels as they ran and lifted their legs to make progress in the soft, loose ground. Sergeant Alphabet stood beside Lieutenant Sugar.

Their backs were to the little houses, but Tommie covered them with the shotgun.

The first of the two was a woman. She stopped several meters from them. Lieutenant Sugar could see she had tears in her eyes already.

“Well, fuck me,” said Sergeant Alphabet.

Sugar was thinking that too. He removed his helmet so they could see his face and clipped it by the chinstrap to his body armor. He removed his ballistic sunglasses and stuffed them into a cargo pocket.

The woman clapped her hands together and shook them at Lieutenant Sugar. She was saying something. She canted her head and kept saying it in a loud, wailing voice with her hands clasped together like she was begging. The second of them, a man, put his hands on her shoulders and turned her away from them. They exchanged words as Lieutenant Sugar watched. He glanced at Stuttering John and saw by his expressions that he understood everything they said.

“Is this the piece of shit whose feelings we hurt?” Sergeant Alphabet said.

The woman wore a shawl over her head and layers of rags wrapped thick around her legs and held with pieces of wire. The man was lightly dressed for the morning's cold. His skinny legs and bare feet were grey with the mud of his field.

The man held his woman by the wrist and called to Stuttering John who said something back to him and gestured with an open palm toward Lieutenant Sugar. Lieutenant Sugar was familiar with this gesture. It was time for him to say something.

The field was bare, and the earth was broken and soft. It extended some distance to an irrigation canal where tall thick grass
rose from the mud. Route Lion could be seen beyond it. The farmers both looked at Lieutenant Sugar.

He stepped toward the man. Stuttering John and Sergeant Alphabet came with him, the three of them advancing in a rank.

“Are these the parents?” Lieutenant Sugar asked Stuttering John.

“Sir, I am sure of it,” Stuttering John said without having spoken to the farmer.

Lieutenant Sugar offered his hand to the man, they shook, and Sugar put his hand over his heart in accordance with Arab custom. The woman began shouting again from behind her husband, and he said something over his shoulder at her.

“Tell him my name is Lieutenant Sugar.”

Stuttering John told him.

“Sir, he want to know how is his son.”

The farmer had a thick mustache and a deeply furrowed face and two hard eyes.

“Tell him that I was not here when it happened, but I know what happened, and today I drove here to meet him face to face and to tell about his son.”

“He says thank you and praise be to God and like this, and he want to know about his son.”

“Tell him that we sent his son to the hospital.”

The farmer's eyes still looked at Lieutenant Sugar. Behind him a car drove down Route Lion past the big gash in the road.

“Tell him that we sent him to the best American hospital.”

Stuttering John told him.

“By helicopter,” added Lieutenant Sugar. He was glad for the helicopter.

The woman had a lot to say. She said it loud and without any holding back.

Stuttering John hesitated, said something back to her, and she replied with the same ferocity.

“Sir,” he said to Lieutenant Sugar, but the woman was not finished.

She was waving her hands all over the place, and Lieutenant Sugar and Sergeant Alphabet watched her hands. Sergeant Alphabet asked Lieutenant Sugar if he wanted him to control her.

“No, not yet,” Lieutenant Sugar replied. “Tell him that I want to just speak with him.”

Stuttering John told them, and the woman quieted again.

“No, tell him that I want to speak with him alone. I don't want her here.”

There was a debate between the farmers, and the man took the woman to the house. She pleaded with him, using the same gestures as she'd used with Lieutenant Sugar earlier. When the farmer returned, Lieutenant Sugar took out two cigarettes he'd bummed from Tommie and offered one. He lit his own, then passed the lighter to the farmer who cupped his hands to shield the flame from the breeze.

Sergeant Alphabet kept an eye on the house where the woman was.

“Sir, he say you can speak with him honestly. He only wants to know only what is the truth. How is his son? Is he alive? Is he dead?”

“Tell him he is wounded seriously. Tell him that is why we called the helicopter.”

The man asked again if his son was alive.

“Tell him he was alive when he left the Chicken Factory.”

“Sir, he want to know how is he hurt?”

“I don't know,” Lieutenant Sugar lied. “Tell him he was shot, that's all I know. He was shot because soldiers think he set off the bomb. Tell him that I wanted to come here and talk, even though I think his son set off the bomb.”

The farmer who'd been looking intently into Lieutenant Sugar's face with his two hard eyes turned toward his fields when
Stuttering John finished. He smoked. Lieutenant Sugar pulled on his cigarette without inhaling the harsh smoke. Sugar wondered if the kid had, in fact, set off the IED.