Fobbit (31 page)

“Thank you, sir. As I think I’ve already expressed to you numerous times, I appreciate this opportunity.”

“That’s all right,” Duret said. “I’ll leave you with just four words of advice.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Don’t. Fuck. It. Up.”

Fledger reddened to the tip of his lightbulb head and Duret, in the corner of his eye, caught Sergeant Lumley smirking.

“I-I’ll try not to, sir. I
won’t,
sir. You can depend on that.”

“Okay,” Duret said. “But, just to let you know, I heard the same thing from Captain Shrinkle’s own lips on more than one occasion.” He nodded at the group. “Good day, men.”

“Good day, sir,” the NCOs echoed.

Duret strode out the door of the headquarters and loudly crunched through the gravel. When he’d gone twenty paces, he stopped and then silently made his way back to the side of the building where he stopped beneath an open window. This was always the best part of orienting a new commander to his unit, the secret eavesdrop.

As he cocked an ear to the window, Duret could hear Fledger already in midsermon: “Men, I know you’ve gone through some hard times with your former commander, times that may have tried your very souls—” (who
was
this guy? Ralph Waldo Emerson?) “—but I can assure you I will do everything in my power to turn things around for Bravo Company. Standing here today I make a pledge to you—call it the Fledge Pledge, if you want—” (they didn’t and they wouldn’t) “—to reverse the negative energy generated by the moral turpitude of one individual—an individual we will no longer discuss, unless of course you
want
to discuss him—and to instill a sense of pride in Bravo Company, using Army Ethics as our very foundation.” He paused to let his words ring through the orderly room. A couple of the NCOs coughed lightly. “I would like to begin with a company formation tonight at seventeen-thirty hours, at which time I will present my commander’s philosophy to all the soldiers and I will have them fill out an Excel spreadsheet with all their vital information. This is the way I like to operate as a company commander.” (A work ethic developed during his eleven minutes of job experience.) “We will get through this together, gentlemen. And when we emerge on the other side, we will all be the better for it.”

As he tiptoed away through the gravel, Duret found himself wondering if that Presbyterian chaplain wouldn’t have been such a bad idea after all.

22

GOODING

S
taff Sergeant Chance Gooding Jr. sat at his desk, clicking through e-mails at the start of another brain-blurring fourteen-hour shift. A few cubicles away, laughter bubbled up and floated near the ceiling for a few seconds. An officer in an adjoining cubicle started grinding coffee beans and it brought them all one sniff closer to their local Starbucks.

This particular officer had gone online and ordered an espresso machine at the beginning of the deployment and he began every day with this same ritual. Soon, they would hear the whistling officer getting his foam to peak at just the right consistency. Just the very sound of java slurp and hiss could make some Fobbits get all misty with homesickness.

Gooding clicked his mouse, someone made another joke that provoked louder and longer laughter, a voice came over the SMOG loudspeaker—“Test, test,” as the Ops staff prepped for the CG’s morning briefing—a female clerk walked past Gooding’s cubicle bitching about a paper cut, and then

ka-WHAM!!

All voices in the palace stopped midsyllable.

Later, Chance would write about it in his diary:
You could
feel
the explosion more than you could hear it. It was like a great in-suck, out-suck of air that made the walls creak as nails shifted in their holes a quarter inch. Then you felt it under your feet—a tremendous jarring of the earth. Then, finally, it reached your ears: a dozen simultaneous thunder booms. I swear I could also hear china teacups rattling on a shelf somewhere in Headquarters but I know that’s impossible.

The fillings in Gooding’s teeth buzzed and he dove under his desk. The words “Duck and cover! Duck and cover!” rebounded through his head. Then came another explosion and this wasn’t fun anymore, dammit. Gooding wedged himself under the desk, computer wires slapping his forehead and getting tangled around his ears. He would curl into a tight, fetal ball and stay out of sight from the Sunni terrorists when they burst into the palace with their AK-47s blazing fire. Surely the explosions had punched a hole in the palace roof and bearded men were already rappelling from the ceiling on hissing ropes. Gooding thought he felt smoke watering his eyes. It was like he was in a movie where soldiers are screaming and running on a battlefield as great clods of dirt go skyward like fireworks behind them. He expected to see a severed arm come cartwheeling past his head any minute now.

Gooding gave a tiny whimper and thought about wills and powers of attorney and he regretted not designating Yolanda as his beneficiary after their divorce. He thought of her tear-streaked face and realized he still loved her and wished he could see her one more time before another rocket crashed into the palace and he was killed in action. He vowed he would die a noble death, Fobbit or no Fobbit. He would not beg for mercy or cry like a weenie, no matter how many swords the bearded men pressed against his throat.

Silence spread across the cubicles as the officers and NCOs held their collective breath, listening for the next shoe to drop. Or, in this case, missile. For a full thirty seconds, the only sounds were the airy hiss of the ventilating system and the sputter of an unattended espresso machine.

Then the SMOG speakers crackled and a voice, still a little crinkly around the edges, announced: “Attention! Attention in Headquarters! All personnel are advised to continue with the morning’s business. We’ve just received reports that the preceding explosions were caused by Division howitzers going off near the Life Support Area. Artillery was draining water in that vicinity to dry up the mud and improve living conditions. Headquarters is not under attack. I repeat, we are
not
under attack. That is all. Carry on.”

Someone yelled, “I knew it, motherfucker! Didn’t I tell you it was our own goddamned engineers giving us a wake-up call?!” The regular stream of chatter flooded back through the room, peppered with relieved laughter.

Gooding remained where he was, huddled under the desk. Fear kept him curled among the wires and cords. When Major Filipovich arrived to begin his shift five minutes later, Gooding didn’t move, hoping Filipovich wouldn’t see him cowering behind the chair. He had nothing to worry about. Apparently, Filipovich couldn’t see around the sleepy scowl on his face and he went immediately to his cubicle, crossed his arms on the desk, and tried to grab a power nap before the morning briefing began and Harkleroad showed up with his nervous chatter.

When the coast was clear, Gooding silently unfolded himself from under his desk and resumed browsing through his e-mails. When he gave a muffled cough, Major Filipovich poked his head out of his cubicle. “Gooding? That you?”

“Yes, sir, it’s me.”

“When the fuck did you get here?”

“Been here all along, sir. You didn’t see me when you came in?”

“Nope.” Filipovich gaped his mouth in a face-consuming yawn. “Can’t see past the cobwebs. Fucking sleep deprivation.”

“You missed all the excitement, sir.”

“Oh yeah? Whazzat?”

“Engineers tried to scare the shit out of us this morning. They blew off a couple of howitzers so they could drain the swamp over at Trailer City.”

“I
thought
I heard something when I was walking over here from the chow hall. Engineers, huh?” He laughed. “I’ll bet you guys thought it was Al-Fucking-Qaeda, huh?”

Gooding kept his eyes on his computer screen. “Actually, sir, we barely noticed. I guess we were all too busy getting ready for another day at the war factory.”

“Another day, another dollar,” Filipovich said. “Another hundred and ninety-five million dollars, to be precise.” He yawned again, molar fillings winking in the fluorescent light, and retreated to the nest of his cubicle. “Wake me when the war’s over.”

That afternoon, division headquarters experienced its second fake attack of the day as the staff conducted a previously scheduled “training exercise” (though Gooding still opined the word
training
was a misnomer on the battlefield). For weeks, the Operations sergeant major had been planning for a simulated attack that would result in multiple simulated casualties. The exercise stemmed from the CG’s concern that—in his words, spoken privately to his staff—“the pussies here at Camp Cupcake are not prepared for an all-out, balls-to-the-walls disaster.” No one wanted to be the one caught with his pants down by the CG, so the pucker factor started ramping up and eventually they came up with the plan for a simulated attack, the brainchild of G-3 Operations. To pull it off required five bottles of Karo syrup, three letters requesting coordination with security forces, eight smoke grenades, and soldiers willing to resurrect thespian talents not seen since
Our Town
in high school. Staffers in the palace were randomly selected to participate and, just before the attack began, were handed index cards that outlined their roles in the scenario, complete with cues and lines of dialogue.

And so, at precisely 1415 hours, the Logistics sergeant major (chosen for his voice, which was equal parts Darth Vader and earthquake) officially began the exercise by bellowing “BOOM!” This was followed by a specialist in Cultural Affairs reading her part in the script, “OH, MY GOD! OH, MY GOD! WE’RE UNDER ATTACK! HELP ME! HELP ME!” That was the cue for other players, stationed at various locations within the cubicle jungle, to begin screaming and crying and, in one case, calling for their mommy.

The rest of the staff, those not handpicked for roles in the unfolding drama, kept working at their cubicles, clicking their computer mice, and trying not to grin when a master sergeant over in Ops read his lines in a monotone, “Medic. Medic. I can’t feel my legs.”

Emergency personnel (who’d been conveniently waiting in one of the palace’s antechambers) scurried through the slick polished hallways, loading victims onto stretchers and hustling them outside to the ambulance collection point. Each time they opened the back doors of the palace, Baghdad heat puffed inside. Within minutes, everyone was bitching about the temperature and wondering when the exercise would be over. The entire proceedings were timed with a stopwatch as the Division Surgeon watched with a critical eye to make sure the assigned combat lifesavers were performing their tasks correctly—ripping open the dressings and applying firm, hard pressure to plastic wounds oozing red-dyed corn syrup, splinting legs with pallet wood, and, in the particular case of Private First Class Semple and Private First Class Andersen, practicing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with the tongue-tangle method (a French kiss that later developed into something else altogether).

When Staff Sergeant Gooding—still a little flinchy and shaking from what he’d thought was the real thing earlier that morning—got up to go to the bathroom, he was forced to step around simulated casualties sprawled in the hallway, each clutching a card indicating the type and severity of his or her wounds. A sergeant from Gooding’s platoon was flat on his back, staring at the ceiling and drumming his fingers on his chest.

Gooding pretended to almost step on the sergeant’s face. “Oops, didn’t see you there, Sar’nt.”

“Very funny, Gooding. Come stand a little closer and I can see right up your dress.”

“Touché. So how’s it going?”

The sergeant grimaced. “This fucking sucks. I got a shitload of work to do, waiting for me on my desk, and they pick
this
afternoon, out of all the afternoons they could have picked, to blow the whistle for the exercise.”

“You know, there’s never a convenient time to schedule mayhem and disaster.”

“Fuck you, Gooding. At least you can go take a piss if you want to. Me, I’m stuck here until they finally get around to me.”

“What’ve you got?”

The sergeant looked down at his card. “Sucking chest wound.”

“Wow. Serious stuff.”

“I know, right? They’ve got another two minutes to get me on a stretcher or I’m a bleedout.”

“Well,” Gooding said as he started to move off, “good luck with that.”

“Fuck you very much.”

An hour later, it was all over and the wounded soldiers were back at their cubicles, sweating from the exertion of having to temporarily trade the air-conditioned headquarters for the 110-degree heat outside. Despite the events of the day, they were still able to joke about their injuries.

“Yeah, they gave me ‘deep lacerations to the thigh.’”

“Dude, I got you beat—I didn’t even
have
a thigh anymore —leg was completely gone.”

“Gross.”

“Yeah. At least I didn’t have an open head wound.”

“Shrapnel on the brain, motherfucker. Too bad it wasn’t the real thing and then I wouldn’t have to finish this spreadsheet analysis of IED frequencies. Colonel Pain-in-the-Ass wants it
yesterday
.”