Fire and Forget (30 page)

“M
EEOW
.”

“Fucking retards.”

“L
IMIT YOUR RADIO TRAFFIC TO ESSENTIAL MESSAGES
. I
'M SERIOUS
. R
ED
S
TEEL
S
EVEN OUT
.”

“O
R
I
'LL FUCK YOU IN YOUR EYEBALLS
. F
UCK-A-DOO
!”

“M
EEOW
.”

“T
HIS IS
R
ED
S
TEEL
S
EVEN KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF
. R
IGHT NOW
.”

* * *

Clouds hung low over the mucky earth, turning everything gray. Shots had been fired at the guard tower in a drive-by, so everyone was on alert. SSG Reynolds had warned us Sergeant Major might be coming through. Reading worked his thumbs on the Gameboy.

“What fucking day is it?”

“Today?”

“No yesterday, motherfucker.”

“Yesterday was the day before.”

“What day today?”

“Fucking shit day.”

“Tuesday?”

“Whatever.”

Two ICDC guards sat smoking, flipping through my copy of the
Vanity Fair
issue with the big Michael Jackson exposé. One of the ICDC was younger, chubby, trying to grow a mustache and
failing, the other was slightly older, his face pocked with acne scars. I watched them look at the fashion shots, the pictures of Neverland Ranch, the ads for J. Lo perfume and Philip Patek watches.

“You like America?” I asked them.

“Ameriki?” the younger one said.

“Yeah. America good?”

“Yes, Ameriki good,” he beamed.

“Michael Jackson good?”

“Yes yes, Michael Jackson.
Ee-hee
. Very good.”

“You like Bush? Bush good?”

“Boosh good, yes.”

“How 'bout Saddam? You like Saddam?”

“Saddam no good. Saddam Ali Baba,” the older one said, stamping his foot and spitting.

“You shi'a?”

“Sun'na.”

“Ayatollah Sistani good?”

He shrugged.

“Moqtada al-Sadr good?”

“Al-Sadr very good,” the young one said. The older one shrugged.

“Shi'a?” I pointed at the young one.

“Nam. Shi'a,” he pointed at himself.

“Bush good, no Saddam?”

“Saddam no good.”

“Bush no good,” I said. “Bush Ali Baba.”

“No!” the older one said, aghast.

“Saddam, Bush, same-same,” I said. “Ali Baba, Ali Baba.”

“No, Boosh good,” the young one said.

I shrugged. “Ali Baba.”

The older one pointed at me. “You Christ-ian?”

“La. No god.”

He looked cross: “Yes, God.”

“La.”

He shook his head. “No good.”

I shrugged.

There was a bang at the door. I pointed at the young one and pointed at the door, then got up and grabbed my rifle and followed him to it. “F'tal bob,” I said, and he unlatched the gate and put his shoulder to and slid it open.

A middle-aged hajji stood outside in a dishdasha. A couple more stood back behind him.

“Salaam a-leykum,” I said.

“Leykum-a-salaam,” he said back, bowing slightly.

“What's up?”

He started talking Arabic, but then he said, “Bomb, bomb, koom-ballah. Ali baba.” He gestured back for one of his friends to come up.

“We have information,” the guy said. “Bomb and bad yes.”

“Okay, hold on.” I turned back to Reading. “Fucker,” I shouted. He looked up.

“What?”

“Get on the radio and see if you can get a translator.”

“For what?”

“This guy says he has information.”

“About what?”

“About your mom. Fucking call somebody.”

Reading picked up the walkie-talkie and called SSG Reynolds. They talked back and forth for a minute, then Reading shouted, “Sergeant Reynolds gonna go see if he can get one.”

“Call up Red Steel Main and see what they say.”

“What I tell 'em?”

“Tell them we have an Iraqi here who says he has information on a bomb.”

“He got a bomb?”

“He has
information
on a bomb.”

“Information.”

“Yeah.”

“So what?”

“So call Red Steel Main.”

He picked up the other walkie-talkie and called Red Steel Main. He talked to them for a few minutes, then shouted at me, “They said he gotta go to Foxtrot Gate.”

“That's the one on the south side, right?”

“Fuck if I know.”

Then SSG Reynolds called Reading back, so I waited, and when they were done Reading shouted, “He said he can't find a translator, and I told him Red Steel Main said send him to Foxtrot Gate and he said that's fine.”

I shrugged and turned back to the hajjis.

“You go around, go to Foxtrot gate,” I gestured around, pointing toward the south edge of the FOB.

“We have in-formation,” the one said again.

“Yeah, I know. You have to go around.”

“Go round?”

“Yeah, go to Foxtrot gate. The other bob.”

“You help us? Ali Baba?”

“No, go around. You gotta go to the other gate.”

“We have in-formation. Koom-ballah.”

“Yeah, I understand. Look, you gotta go around. Salaam,” I said, grabbing the gate and yanking on it. “Sit'l bob,” I shouted at the ICDC.

The hajjis started shouting in Arabic, but I closed the gate and latched it and we went back and sat down.

* * *

“What's that?”

“What's what?”

“That noise. Like grunting.”

I listened. It sounded like it was coming from the tower.

“What the fuck?”

“They fucking up there?”

“Dude, I hope one's female.”

“Turn the hose on 'em.”

“Shine the flashlight.”

I shined my flashlight up at the guard tower. We couldn't see anything. The grunting continued and I turned off the light. A few minutes later the grunting stopped, and then about twenty minutes after that a soldier came down and used the Porta John. Under the Kevlar and armor and shapeless DCUs, you could almost tell she was female.

“I'm gonna say something,” Reading said.

“What you gonna say?”

“I don't know. Lemme think.”

“Ask her how it feels to be on the tip of the spear.”

“That's fucked up.”

“See if she cleaned her weapon.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Ask if she did a proper PMCS.”

The soldier came out of the Porta John.

“How's it going?” Reading said.

She ignored him and headed back to the tower.

“Let us know if you need anything,” he called after.

“Fuck off,” she shouted, not looking back.

* * *

We got off shift. Daytime, nighttime. I slept about five hours. When I got up, I worked out, then cleaned my rifle and watched
Malcolm in the Middle
. Reading slept.

We lost track of the other guys, the daily patrols, what the fuck was happening. We started talking all the time in pidgin
English. The big news was that one patrol got attacked by a retarded kid throwing rocks. He threw a rock and hit Jasper in the face, knocking out one of his teeth. The patrol stopped and Lieutenant Perez y Luca and Roberts covered the kid.

The kid picked up another rock.

“Put the rock down,” Roberts shouted, but the kid lifted it up like he was going to throw, so Roberts shot him in the chest.

Healds was with them, so he patched the kid up and they drove him to the hospital in the Green Zone.

A week or so later they got me and Reading up in the middle of the day, when we were trying to sleep, and made us go down to formation. They had a little ceremony and awarded Roberts a Bronze Star for valor. Captain Yarrow talked about what a great job he'd done defending the patrol.

“The only thing Roberts did wrong was forget his training,” he said. “We trained and trained,
two
rounds center mass! Maybe next time you'll get it right!”

We all chuckled. Roberts stared straight ahead.

* * *

A couple days later I ran into him outside.

“Chaku maku,” I said. “Congratulations.”

“For what it's worth,” he said.

I shrugged. “You did what you had to.”

“Sure.”

“Look, I'm sure you did the right thing. Least you got some action.”

He shook his head. “Yeah. Whatever.”

“Any word on when we're leaving?” I asked.

“Man, they don't even pretend to tell us dates anymore.”

* * *

Reading sat watching
Friends
. I read Chomsky's
For Reasons of State
. Headlights flashed at us from down the road and I shouted at Reading to put his DVD player away. I put on my Kevlar and stood and grabbed my rifle. A big black SUV rolled up and a Sergeant got out.

“At ease,” he said. “You on guard here?”

“Roger.”

“Look there's a suspected VBIED attack tonight. We've got jammers in here, but you've gotta shut your radios off while they work.”

“Uh, alright. Let me call up higher and let them know.”

I called up Red Steel and SSG Barton and let them know we were gonna be out of radio contact. Red Steel verified that the jammers had priority. Then I shut the radios off and the Sergeant said thanks and climbed back in his truck.

Reading went back to
Friends
. I went back to my book. They stayed there for about two hours, then the Sergeant opened his window and told us we could turn our radios back on. After that they left.

Ali Dudeki came by and asked us to bring him ficky ficky magazine. I offered him the Michael Jackson
Vanity Fair
but he didn't want it.

“You bring ne ficky ficky tomorrow, any o'clock?” he asked. “Tomorrow and tomorrow?”

“No ficky,” I told him. “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.”

David Abrams
is the author of
Fobbit
(Grove/Atlantic). His short stories have appeared in
Esquire, Narrative, The Literarian, Connecticut Review, The Greensboro Review, The Missouri Review
, and other literary quarterlies. Abrams retired in 2008 after a twenty-year career in the active-duty Army as a journalist. In 2005, he deployed to Baghdad with the 3rd Infantry Division in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Colby Buzzell
served as an Army infantryman in Iraq from 2003 to 2004. Assigned to a Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Buzzell blogged from the front lines of Iraq as a replacement for his habitual journaling back in the states. He is the author of
My War: Killing Time in Iraq
and
Lost in America: A Dead-End Journey
.

Siobhan Fallon
is an army spouse whose debut collection of stories,
You Know When the Men Are Gone
, was listed as a Best Book of 2011 by the
San Francisco Chronicle
and Janet Maslin of the
New York Times
. Fallon's stories and essays have appeared in
Salamander, Women's Day, Good Housekeeping, New Letters, Publishers' Weekly
, among others, and she writes a fiction series for
Military Spouse Magazine
. She earned her MFA at the New School in New York City and lives in Falls Church, Virginia, where her husband is still active duty. More can be found at her website
www.siobhanfallon.com
.

Matt Gallagher
is Senior Fellow at the nonprofit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and the author of the war memoir
Kaboom
, published in 2010 by Da Capo Press. A former Army captain who served fifteen months in Iraq, he is currently an MFA candidate at Columbia University.

Ted Janis
graduated from Wake Forest University and was commissioned as an infantry officer in the United States Army. He served in the 101st Airborne Division and 75th Ranger Regiment, deploying twice to both Iraq and Afghanistan. “Raid” is his publishing debut. He currently lives in New York City and studies international affairs at Columbia University.