Fobbit (14 page)

“Tell your soldiers that every time they go outside the ding-dang gate, they need to be carrying they full load of ammunition. Believe it or not, we had soldiers outside the wire without all the ammo they was issued. Just last week, three soldiers went and got theyselves kilt in a firefight because they ran out of ammo and hadn’t brought they ding-dang full load with them.”

Around the table, the platoon sergeants murmured in disbelief.

“All y’all think I’m joking. I tell you what, I’ve gone around during guard duty myself and checked on your soldiers—
your
soldiers, sergeants—and I’ve found some of them walkin’ around a little light. Sure they had all they magazines, but guess what? Some of them magazines only had three rounds in ’em. Soldiers be tryin’ to lighten the load they gotta carry around they necks, but guess what, ladies—we at war and you damn well better be sure you got all your ding-dang bullets with you.”

The orderly room phone rang and Sergeant Lumley picked it up quickly, hoping to cut off First Sergeant before he popped one of those wormy veins throbbing on the side of his shaved head. “Lumley here . . . Yeah?” Shrinkle could hear Lumley snapping his fingers for somebody to bring him a pen. “Okay, go ahead . . . Mm hmm . . . Got it, thanks.” Lumley hung up the phone. “Looks like another one, Top.”

“Oh, yeah? What you got?”

“Suicide bomber near Checkpoint eight-nine-seven.”

First Sergeant sighed. “Another ding-dang day, another ding-dang dumbass out to make something of himself.”

“How bad izzit?” one of the other platoon sergeants asked. “They have a casualty count yet?”

“That’s the thing,” Lumley said. “He hasn’t detonated yet. Some hajji fool walking around a gas station making like he’s gonna do something. They want us to go out and monitor.”

“Another Quillpen,” someone said.

“Fuck yeah.”

“And fuck that.”

“Awright, ladies. That’s enough,” First Sergeant cautioned, most likely with a glance back at the commander’s door. “We got the mission, now we gotta go.”

Shrinkle’s ears had pricked up at the word
bomber
. He stopped in the midst of signing a form to requisition socket wrenches for the motor pool. A four-inch stack of paper rose on the right side of his desk, a slightly smaller stack of forms occupied the left corner of the desk. All morning, he’d been working through the paperwork, moving it from right to left. With every signature, he felt like his veins were filling with more and more Fobbit blood. He had to get out of here before he was trapped in a life inside the wire. After the disaster at Quillpen, he needed to prove himself worthy of the infantry tab on his collar. He stepped to the door, clutching a half dozen forms in his hand. “I’ve got this one, Top.”

First Sergeant wheeled around to look at him, his gray-flecked eyebrows rising up over his dark face. “Oh now, sir. I—”

“Really, Top. I’ll do the ride-along on this one.”

“Sir, I don’t think that’s a good idea, considering—”

Abe stopped him before the word
Quillpen
could leave his lips. “Besides, you haven’t finished that paperwork you owe me, have you?”

“What paperwork?”

“This paperwork.” Abe held up the half-ream of forms he’d been holding. “Perfect opportunity for you to get caught up, don’t you think?”

Abe could see one of those veins coming to life at First Sergeant’s temple and he was certain a long string of
ding-dang
s was about to fly from his mouth but Top just set his lips tight and nodded at his commander. “That’s right, sir. This is the perfect opportunity for me to get somethin’ done.”

“Very good,” Abe said. He looked at the rest of the NCOs watching him with hard, closed faces. “Anyone need to use the potty before we head out?”

* * *

When they arrived on the scene, there was already a barren ring around the gas station, as if the suicide bomber had already pulled the det cord and cleared his own radius.

A nearby school had been evacuated and meat sellers had retreated deeper into the shadows of their stalls; the gas station owner had long since fled to a safe spot a block away, leaving his customers to decide their own fates (to a man, each one of them drove off without paying for the gas).

The moaning man at the center of it all flapped his arms like a pair of flags. He wore a jester’s hat, one of those brightly colored floppy things with little bells on the ends of three petals. From their perimeter across the street, Shrinkle’s men could hear the jingle-jangle of the head bobs. Every now and then, hajji
would lift one of the gas nozzles and sing into it like a microphone.

“What do you make of that hat?” Shrinkle asked.

“Could be some sort of signaling device, sir,” Specialist Zeildorf said. “I bet you dollars to donuts his Sunni buddies are lying in wait a few hundred meters away ready to remote-det him if he loses his nerve.”

They watched the man spin around the tanks, doing his
la-la-laaa
thing. He was toying with them. He knew he had an audience and he was trying to draw them within range of his ball-bearings and nails. It’s a wonder he hadn’t already passed out from the heat, wearing a getup like that.

“EOD been dispatched yet?”

“They’re on their way,” Lumley said. “About ten minutes out, last we heard.”

Shrinkle swallowed a thick clog of phlegm in his throat. This was déjà vu all over again. He took a chest-puffing breath. This time he would redeem himself, show them he was a man of decisive action.

Nevertheless, his balls still bobbed untethered somewhere between his underwear and his stomach.

Now the man in the parka was moving his fingers in front of him, playing a piano in midair. He sounded like he was singing “Goo-goo-goo.”

“Can we get a clean shot, do you think?” Shrinkle asked Lumley.

“Not yet we can’t. We need him to dance away from the gas pumps.”

Abe grew short of breath as he pictured himself six months ago at the firing range at Fort Stewart, his legs spread, his arms raised, elbows locked, front sight on the 9 mm going in and out of focus. Then the neat hole through the head of the black silhouette on the paper target.

His mouth was dry as he asked Corporal Boordy, “What about it? Do we have authorization for a kill here?”

Boordy was on the horn with the SMOG battle captain. “Not yet, sir. The Head Shed says the situation hasn’t reached critical mass yet.”

“And just when do they expect critical mass to arrive?”

Boordy spoke into the headset and waited for an answer. “They’re still working on that, sir.”

“Meanwhile . . .”

“Meanwhile, we
wait,
sir,” Lumley said from where he stood a few feet away. Shrinkle resented Lumley’s tone of voice. It carried a load of unnecessary caution and he wondered why he’d even left First Sergeant back at Triumph only to have another ding-dang mother hen like Lumley watch his every move.

Who was in charge here anyway? He was. And was he about to let an NCO tell him what to do? No ding-dang way.

He was out here on the ground and he would get the job done. The
real
job he’d been sent here to do—not sitting behind a desk moving papers from right to left.

“Sir?” Lumley said. “Sir? You okay?”

Even the bells on the hajji’s hat were mocking him, singing a cruel song about his failures, his indecisiveness, his wiffle-waffle.

“Sir, you look like you need a drink of water. You got anything left in your canteen?”

But Abe Shrinkle was far from here. He pictured himself years in the future, holding a little girl he hadn’t yet sired with the wife he hadn’t yet married, and the daughter-to-be looked up at him with her big brown fawn eyes and asked, “Did you kill anyone in the war, Daddy?” And he thought about what his response would be.

He also thought about stepping off the plane onto American soil. He thought about ticker-tape parades, about John Philip Sousa marches, about buying a round of drinks for everyone down at the VFW. He thought about how his chest would inflate because he’d done his part in the war. He’d killed the enemy.

He reached for his pistol. Sounds magnified as if he was in an empty room with himself: the unsnap of the strap, the grainy rub of the barrel against the fabric of the holster as it whistled free from his hip, the click as he took the pistol off
safe,
the tick of the trigger, the thunder roar of powder and bullet.

The heavy man crumpled to the ground, arms spread in a
Y
above his head, the jester’s cap giving one last surge of bell music when it hit the ground.

Shrinkle’s men stared at him; all mouths dropped open. Everything was silent. There wasn’t even a “Ho-ly fuck!” (which would have been fully justified and a bit of a relief, actually).

Abe lowered his pistol, put it back on
safe,
slid it back into the holster.

It was done.

The man started to groan, arch his back, and kick his legs, heels digging into the dirt.

Okay, Abe thought, it was
almost
done.

Two black-robed women came running around the corner of the pharmacy at the end of the block, wails rising from their throats like sirens. They alternately clapped their hands to their heads and pointed at the man writhing on the ground. Their tongues ululated and strings of saliva dripped from their chins. They rushed up and bent over the body. They seemed to know the dying man. There was an intimacy in the way they bathed him with tears and saliva.

Abe’s stomach clenched as he realized this might not turn out as hunky-dory as he had hoped.

* * *

SIG ACT 18 AFTER VISUAL REPORT FROM BLIMP FEED 3, HQ DISPATCHED SQUAD FROM 3-2 QRF TO SOUTHERN SERVICE ROAD, SOUTH OF CP 897. LOCAL NATIONAL WAS SIGHTED ACTING IN SUSPICIOUS, ERRATIC MANNER. LN ATTIRED IN HEAVY PARKA, SNOWPANTS, AND JESTER HAT. LN WAS ALSO BELIEVED TO BE WEARING A SUICIDE VEST. 3-2 QRF ARRIVED ON SCENE AND FORWARDED THE REPORT VERIFYING LN BEHAVIOR. G-2 IN SMOG CONFIRMED LN ACTIONS CONSISTENT WITH AIF INDICATORS. SMOG WAS IN PROCESS OF AUTHORIZING USE OF DEADLY FORCE WHEN ON-SITE COMMANDER NEUTRALIZED THE SITUATION BY FIRING ON SUSPECTED AIF. THE LN’S FAMILY THEN ARRIVED ON SCENE AND STATED HE IS NOT AIF, BUT HE IS MENTALLY RETARDED. ON-SITE CMDR STILL BELIEVED INDIVIDUAL WAS A SUICIDE BOMBER. THE FAMILY MEMBERS THEN ROLLED LN OVER, OPENING PARKA AND EXPOSING HIS ABDOMEN. LN HAD NO SUICIDE VEST. 3-2 MEDICS MOVED FORWARD TO PROVIDE FIRST AID, HOWEVER THE LN HAD SUBSEQUENTLY EXPIRED FROM WOUNDS INCONSISTENT WITH LIFE. THE FAMILY RECOVERED THE REMAINS. AS BLIMP FEED SHOWED CROWD GROWING AND INDIVIDUALS PICKING UP ROCKS, SMOG ADVISED 3-2 QRF TO VACATE LOCATION AT EARLIEST OPPORTUNITY. SUMMARY: 1X LN KILLED. REPORT CLOSED.

8

HARKLEROAD

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Dispatch from a War Zone, Day 193

Mother,

First of all, THANKS for the care package! The mixed nuts, foot powder, dried apricots, and church bulletins were most appreciated. Unfortunately, the GooGoo Clusters did not make it through the Iraqi heat so well. But I put them to good use anyway! I gave them to our translator Hussein (no, he’s no relation to Saddam!) who had never tasted GooGoo Clusters before. Hussein’s family is quite poor even though they are considered middle class here in Baghdad. How poor are they, you ask? Do you remember the Borsippies who used to live up the road from the Macklins before the mill shut down and they (the Borsippies) had to move all the way up to Pittsburgh? Well, Hussein and his wife and their five children (and Hussein’s wife’s father, two cousins, and their wives and children—all crammed into one three-bedroom apartment) are worse off than the Borsippies. For instance, they (the Husseins, not the Borsippies) did not even own a TV until last year and when at last they got one you would have thought it was a national holiday—or so Hussein tells me. Now, I cannot get him to shut up about
Two and a Half Men
.

Speaking of which, I hope you are still taping
Survivor
for me. And DO NOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES tell me who gets voted off! I want to be surprised when I come home on my R&R leave next month.

Speaking of which, are you as excited as I am? I cannot wait to get back to Murfreesboro and out of this combat zone, even if it is only for two weeks. Two weeks of clean sheets, driving on the right side of the road, and your Corn Flake–crusted meatloaf will do me worlds of good, I believe. I am thoroughly bushed these days.

Which brings to mind something else I keep forgetting to mention to you, whether or not you’ll like it, I do not know. When the men around headquarters here say they’re “bushed,” what they really mean is that they are sick and tired of our president keeping us (the U.S.) in this country where—secretly—those men think we don’t belong. I know, Mother, I know. I don’t particularly appreciate their Democrat-tainted humor, either. But that’s just how it is with some of my colleagues. These, I might add, are the lower-class officers. Men who will never amount to much, will never get promoted beyond the limits of their nearsightedness—men like Jeb Standish down at the mill who let the loss of three fingers keep him from advancing any higher than bobbin tender (of course, his wife doing all that drinking and nagging didn’t help matters). Yours truly, of course, has ambitions, goals, and the drive to get there. So, when I say I’m “bushed,” I certainly don’t mean it in the same way those other men do.