House to House: A Tale of Modern War (31 page)

I step forward and slam the barrel of my rifle down on his head. He grunts and suddenly swings his AK up. Its barrel slams into my jaw and I feel a tooth break. I reel from the blow, but before I can do anything he backhands me with the AK. This time, the wooden handgrip glances off the bridge of my nose. I taste blood.

I back off and wield my M16 like a baseball bat. Then I step back toward him and swing with everything I’ve got. The front sight post catches him in the side of the head. I wind up to hit him again, thinking that at the very least I’ve stunned him. As I get ready to swing, his leg flies up from the floor and slams into my crotch.

I stagger backward, pain radiating from my groin. The pain drives me into a fury. I realize I’ve dropped my rifle. I can’t see where it fell; the smoke is getting thicker, and it is so acrid my eyes start to water and burn.

I leap at my enemy. Before he can respond I land right on top of his chest. A rush of air bursts from his mouth. I’ve knocked the wind out of him. I tear at my body armor and get it opened. With my right hand on the sleeve that holds my five-pound front armor plate, I grab the insurgent’s hair and ram his head forward, jamming his chin into his chest. He’s pinned in place now. All I have to do is finish him.

I beat him with the inside of my armor plate. I smash it against his face again and again and again until blood flows all over the inside of my shirt. He kicks and flails and screams. Every scream gets cut off by another blow from the plate. He struggles under me. An arm lashes out. Fingers scratch my face. I ram the plate harder into him. He keens and howls, yet he refuses to submit.

Somebody answers him in Arabic. The voice comes from the roof above us.

Oh my God. My back is to the door, I don’t know where my weapon is, and there’s more coming down.

“Shut the fuck up!” I bash his face again. Blood flows over my left hand and I lose my grip on his hair. His head snaps back against the floor. In an instant, his fists are pummeling me. I rock from his counterblows. He lands one on my injured jaw and the pain nearly blinds me. He connects with my nose, and blood and snot pour down my throat. I spit blood between my teeth and scream with him. The two of us sound like caged dogs locked in a death match.

We are.

He hits me again, and I nearly fall off him. Somehow, I hold on. I’ve got to slow him down or he’ll get the upper hand. I punch him in the face; my fist meets gristle. Then I remember my helmet. I’ve still got my helmet on.

I yank my Kevlar off my head. My night-vision goggles go flying into the room. I don’t need them anyway. With both hands I invert the helmet and crack his face with it. He shrieks with pain. I bring it up again, but he’s swinging his head from side to side and I don’t aim my next blow well. The helmet glances off his shoulder and hits the floor. I can see that he’s older than the others in the house. His hair is flecked with gray and he’s got age lines creasing his face.

“Esqut! Esqut! Esqut!”
I am hysterical now as I try to tell him to shut up in Arabic.

He screams on. I hear footsteps on the roof. I do not have long.

The Kevlar comes down again. This time I connect. It’s a crushing blow to his face. Blood splashes both of us. We’re slick it with. He grabs my hair and tries to punch me again. I bash his face yet again with the Kevlar.

“Terra era me!”
That’s my broken Arabic for “stop or I’ll shoot.”

I’m not sure what I expected to accomplish with that. He claws and scratches at me. My elbow burns. My jaw, mouth, and nose spew blood.

My voice isn’t human any more.

Neither is his. We’ve become our base, animal selves, with only survival instincts to keep us going.

I slap one bloodied hand over his mouth and jam all my weight down on it. For the moment, it muffles his calls for help.

“Es teslem! Es teslem! Es teslem!”
I’m almost crying now as I tell him in Arabic to surrender.

He thrashes and kicks.

“La ta quiome!”
My voice is just about gone.

He lashes out at me. He lands some blows, but my left hand never leaves his mouth. My right hand comes up. I see his eyes grow wide. He tries to shake his head, but I’ve pinned it in place. Like a claw, my right hand clutches his throat. I feel his Adam’s apple in my grasp. I squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

A choked scream—or was it a plea? I can’t tell. He kicks and bucks. His hands beat against me. I can’t get enough pressure on him. He’s still strong, still in the fight despite everything I’ve done.

I cannot break his throat. I don’t have the strength. But I can’t take my left hand off his mouth. If I do, he’ll call for his buddy on the roof again.

“Esqut, esqut,”
I whisper.
Shut up.

He opens his mouth under my hand. For a second I think this is over. He’s going to surrender. Then a ripping pain sears through my arm.

He clamped his teeth on the side of my thumb near the knuckle, and now he tears at it, trying to pull meat from bone. As he rages against my right hand, his Adam’s apple still in my clutch, I feel one of his hands move under me. Suddenly, a pistol cracks in the room. A puff of gunsmoke rolls over us. The bullet hits the wall in front of me.

Where did that come from? Does he have a sidearm?

I cuff him across the face with my torn left hand. He rides the blow and somehow breaks my choke hold on him. I bludgeon his face. He tears at mine.

We share a single question of survival: Which one of us has the stronger will to live?

I gouge his left eye with my right index finger. I am astonished to discover that the human eye is not so much a firm ball as a soft, pliable sack. I try with all my might to send my finger all the way through. He wails like a child. It unnerves me, and I lose the stomach for this dirty trick. I withdraw my finger. Something metallic hits the cold concrete flooring. It is the same hand cannon that almost took my head off. His interest in trying to grab it opens a window of opportunity for me.

As he reaches for his pistol, I slam my left fist as hard as I can down onto his collarbone. He swings wildly at me again. My helmet’s gone now. I have no idea where my M16 is. I’ve got nothing but my hands left. And they’re not enough. We will struggle and exhaust each other until the stalemate is broken by whoever’s friends show up first.

I feel my strength ebbing. I don’t have much left. He kicks at me, throwing his whole body into it. I’ve got to end this. But I don’t know how.

“Surrender!”

I’m ignored. He fights on, and I can sense he’s encouraged. He’s close to getting free of me. I swallow hard and gag. My mouth is full of blood, and I don’t know whose. Both of us are slick with it; we have been bleeding all over each other. I taste bile through the blood. My body’s maxed out. I don’t know what to do.

Somebody shouts something. I listen for Arabic. I think I hear, “Are you okay?” and “God!”

The man beneath me tries to answer but I cork him with another fist to his face. He takes it and jabs weakly back at me. Blood sprays from his face and speckles onto mine. My grip on him loosens. One more push, and he’ll be free.

Suddenly I remember the night of the breach, when Santos and Stuckert were caught in the wire. I used my Gerber knife to try and cut them free, and when I was done, I clipped it to my belt. I had just used it earlier to poke the dead guy outside in the street.

My belt. I have a knife on my belt.

I sit up, putting my weight onto his chest. Slowly I get to my feet. My legs are spread, my center of gravity low. I reach for my belt just as he comes up after me. His face rams my crotch. I feel his teeth clamp onto me.

Oh Fuck.

I pummel down on his head, but he grinds his teeth harder. Searing agony, pain I never knew I could survive rakes across my nervous system. It threatens to take my consciousness. I struggle against it, but I am weak.

It takes a monumental effort to unhitch the Gerber from my belt. I use it as a bludgeon. At first, my blows are pathetic. They land on his head and do nothing to dissuade him. He growls and screams and holds down his bite. I’m almost paralyzed with the pain. It blasts every nerve, every sinew. My brain is overloaded.

Finally, suddenly, I become a madman.

My arm comes up over my head, then chops down with every bit of power I have left. It sends the Gerber’s handle thundering down onto my enemy’s head. Stunned, he sags back onto the floor.

I can feel warm liquid trickling from my crotch down my legs, but I can’t think about it right now. I flick the Gerber open. The blade locks in place.

I pounce on him. My body splays over his and I drive the knife right under his collarbone. My first thrust hits solid meat. The blade stops, and my hand slips off the handle and slides down the blade, slicing my pinkie finger. I grab the handle again and squeeze it hard. The blade sinks into him, and he wails with terror and pain.

The blade finally sinks all the way to the handle.

I push and thrust it, hoping to get it under the collarbone and sever an artery in his neck. He fights, but I can feel he’s weakening by the second.

I lunge at him, putting all my weight behind the blade. We’re chin to chin now, and his sour breath is hot on my face. His eyes swim with hate and terror. They’re wide and dark and rimmed with blood. His face is covered with cuts and gouges. His mouth is curled into a grimace. His teeth are bared. It reminds me of the dogs I’d seen the day before.

The knife finally nicks an artery. We both hear a soft liquidy spurting sound. He tries to look down, but I’ve pinned him with the weight of my own body. My torn left hand has a killer’s grip on his forehead. He can’t move.

I’m bathed in warmth from neck to chest. I can’t see it, but I know it is his blood. His eyes lose their luster. The hate evaporates. His right hand grabs a tuft of my hair. He pulls and yanks at it and tries to get his other hand up, but he is feeble.

“Just stop! Stop…Just stop!
Rajahan hudna,”
I plead. Please truce. We both know it is just a matter of time.

He gurgles a response drowned in blood.

His left hand grabs my open body armor. He pulls at the nothing inside my vest. His fingers scratch weakly against my ribs. It won’t be long.

I keep my weight on the knife and push down around the wound in staccato waves, like Satan’s version of CPR.

His eyes show nothing but fear now. He knows he’s going to die. His face is inches from mine, and I see him regard me for a split second. At the end, he says, “Please.”

“Surrender!” I cry. I’m almost in tears.

“No…” he manages weakly.

His face goes slack. His right hand slips from my hair. It hangs in the air for a moment, then with one last spasm of strength, he brings it to my cheek. It lingers there, and as I look into his dying eyes, he caresses the side of my face.

His hand runs gently from my cheek to my jaw, then falls to the floor.

He takes a last ragged breath, and his eyes go dim, still staring into mine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A Smoke on Borrowed Time

Tears blur my vision. I can hardly see him now, but he looks peaceful.

Why did he touch me like that at the end?

He was forgiving me.

He was no boogeyman. He was a man in a closet. His blood is sticky on my skin. It loses its heat, and soon I’m shivering as it dries on me.

Every part of my body aches with pain. My crotch is the worst. It is almost unbearable, and for a moment I do nothing but lie there, holding myself, shivering uncontrollably.

Karma is a motherfuck. This is what I get for laughing at Pratt. This is my reward for all those jokes.

I don’t know how bad it is. I don’t want to know. All I know is that if the men find out, I will become the laughingstock of the entire army. I’ll forever be known as the NCO who had his dick bit by a bad guy. The John Wayne Bobbitt of the infantry.
Fuck.

I try to wipe the tears from my eyes, but manage only to smear more blood into them. They burn, and I’m almost blind. I try to wipe my face with a patch of shirt above my sleeve, but that’s soaked with blood as well. I’ve got no way to get my eyesight back.

I reach down inside my pants. I feel a ragged wound, then another. Two harsh teethmarks, but I am intact. I manage a long sigh of relief. It is not as bad as it could have been.

A desperate man, fighting for his life, will do anything to survive. Never forget that.

I wipe my eyes again. This time, I get one clear. Good enough. I look around the room. The man I’ve killed lies next to me, his arms splayed, legs out. Not far from one hand is his AK-47. My M16 lies nearby. I reach over and pick it up. I get to one knee and jam the stock onto the floor, using the rifle as a crutch.

My stomach churns. I feel like I’m going to throw up. I put my head down and breathe slowly until the nausea passes. I get to my feet. Outside the house, I hear a commotion. I don’t know what’s going on, and the sounds are too jumbled to give me any clue.

Is that my platoon?

I stumble to the doorway. I’m dizzy and light-headed. A zombie: alive but barely functioning.

What I thought was a hallway is really a foyer, and at the end of it, there’s another door that I hadn’t noticed when I first came up the stairs.

Now what? Do I open that door and clear the rest of the floor?

I don’t have anything left. I’m not going to do it.

As I stand there, too spent to move, a noise crashes over my head. I look up just in time to see a man in green military fatigues jump off the roof over me and land almost on top of me. He’s the one who had been calling out to his buddy.

I’m so startled I slip and fall back on my ass. He is surprised, too. He hits the patio floor and drops his AK. I bring my M16 up just as he reaches for his rifle. The dregs of my body’s adrenaline supply shoots into my system. He turns to run away toward the wall that leads two stories down to the palm grove. I hit him with two shots in the lower back.