Redeployment(9)

We’re quiet as we get close, and then McKeown says, Sergeant, that was really f*cked up.

But now’s not the time to have that conversation, so I say, Yeah, that’s the most blood I’ve seen since I f*cked your mom on her period. And then the guys laugh and bullshit a bit, and it breaks the mood that was settling. We get out of the Humvees and walk to TQ Surgical in the right head space.

Inside TQ Surgical, Sweet’s awake but on an IV drip of the good stuff.

I feel good, he says, I’ve got my leg.

Another Marine had come in while Sweet was in surgery and things didn’t go so well for him. Still, it was a good day for us.

Except while we’re joking with Sweet, Dyer grabs a doc walking past and asks him how the hajji he shot in the face is doing. I try to catch Doc’s eye so I can signal, Don’t tell him hajji’s dead, but it’s not a problem. Doc’s like, I have no idea which one you shot. Besides, al-Qaeda gets flown out to a high-security hospital after we stabilize ’em. Right now you won’t find any here.

Then Dyer’s standing there, off to the side. He’s still in my flight suit, and he’s swimming in it. I put a hand on his shoulder and say, You did good today, PFC. You took out the guy that shot Sweet.

Next ward over from Sweet, they’ve got the IP and the jundi we saved. I step out into the hall and peek in and there they are, f*cked up, drugged up, and knocked out. It’s nice in the hospital, not the blood and dust over everything like in the basement, but those two, even cleaned up, their bodies don’t look like bodies should. Seeing them stops me for a second. I don’t call the squad over because they don’t need to see this.

After that, there’s not much left to do but hit the DFAC. We’re on a FOB, might as well get that good chow while we can. My guys deserve it. Maybe they need it. Besides, everyone says TQ’s got the best chow hall in Anbar, and soon we’ll be back in the COP.

The DFAC’s about a klik away. It’s a huge white barn of a building, two hundred meters long at least, a hundred wide, surrounded by a ten-foot fence topped with barbed wire. We show the Ugandan guards our IDs and walk through the gate. Inside, there’s sinks you wash your hands at first, no eating with dirty fingers, and then there’s a huge cafeteria line with KBR workers serving all kinds of shit. I’m not hungry, but I get some prime rib with horseradish sauce.

We sit down at a big table. The DFAC is pretty full, there’s probably a thousand people eating there, and we’re sitting between some Ugandans and some Marines and sailors from the TQ BOS.

I’m across from PFC Dyer, and he’s not eating much. I’m next to some Navy O4 from the BOS, and he’s chowing down. When he sees we aren’t exactly FOBbits, he starts talking. I don’t tell him what we’re here for, I just say a little about our COP and how it’s good to eat something that’s not an MRE or the Iraqis’ red shit and rice. He says, Y’all are lucky. You came here on a good day. It’s Sunday. Sunday is cobbler day. And he points to a serving table in the rear of the DFAC where they’re serving cobbler with ice cream.

So f*ck it, when we finish we all get up to get some cobbler, except for Dyer. He says he’s not hungry, but I tell him, “Eric. Get your ass up and get some f*cking cobbler.” So we go.

KBR’s laid out all kinds. Cherry cobbler. Apple cobbler. Peach.

The O4 says cherry’s the best. Roger that. I get the cherry. Dyer gets the cherry. We all get the f*cking cherry.

Sit back down, I’m across from Dyer and he’s looking at his ice cream melting into the cobbler. No good. I put a spoon in his hand. You’ve got to do the basic things.





AFTER ACTION REPORT




In any other vehicle we’d have died. The MRAP jumped, thirty-two thousand pounds of steel lifting and buckling in the air, moving under me as though gravity was shifting. The world pivoted and crashed while the explosion popped my ears and shuddered through my bones.

Gravity settled. There’d been buildings before. Now headlights in the dust. Somewhere beyond, Iraqi civilians startling awake. The triggerman, if there even was one, slipping away. My ears were ringing and my vision was a pinpoint. I crawled my eyes up the length of the barrel of the .50-cal. The end was warped and blasted.

The vehicle commander, Corporal Garza, was yelling at me.

“The fifty’s f*cked,” I screamed. I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

I got down and climbed through the body of the MRAP. I went on my hands and knees across the seats and opened the back hatch. Then I stepped out.