Jack Coughlin: Dead Shot

Juba winced. Shit, now I have to clean it again. “May I suggest an alternative, Commander? It is an old custom in your part of the world to leave one victim alive to carry tales of horror back to his army. Suppose I kill just three, and then you have women desecrate the bodies with long knives. We make the fourth man watch and then throw him out on the road so he can be found by the Americans. They will be absolutely enraged. If your goal is to lure them in to attack those houses, you can bet they will be coming hard. But I will not take part in that fight.”

The commander looked hard at Juba. Brilliant and bloody-minded, extremely proficient and totally mad. He clapped his hands with enthusiasm. “Yes. We will do it. Darkness will be on us soon.”

COB SPEICHER

Colonel Withrow was waiting four hours later when a Humvee ambulance with the big red crosses painted on the sides rolled up to the hospital. Doctors and nurses were ready to work, but when they loaded the young soldier onto the wheeled gurney to get him into the operating theater, Withrow put out his hand. “Stop,” he commanded in a soft voice.

The soldier was the spotter for one of the scout-sniper teams sent into the town, the only survivor, and although he was covered in purple and yellow bruises, he had lived through the experience. A lump the size of an orange surrounded his closed right eye from where he had been clobbered. The problems were not physical but mental, and he was in shock. Tears carved paths in the greasepaint on his face. He looked up with his one good eye and recognized Withrow.

“Sir, they butchered them. We never got near that house. The bastards butchered them, sir!”

A patrol on the outskirts of Hargatt had found him wandering on the road, beaten and dazed, wearing only his pants and boots. The colonel saw the circle welts of cigarette burns on his chest. Rope burns around the biceps and wrists. Trigger finger broken.

“Try to tell me what happened, son.”

“It’s that fucking Juba, sir. We never saw him coming. He’s crazy good.”

“Easy. Details, please.” The colonel looked at a doctor standing there with a syringe of painkiller and shook his head. Not yet. This was too important, and the boy wanted to talk.

The soldier also shook his head at the doctor. He had to report. Had to. “Jenkins and I were doing our thing, Colonel, and everything went fine from the drop-off from the tank until we were about thirty minutes into the village. We found a drainage ditch and were crawling up the block, with no lights on anywhere. Really, really dark. Then Jenk ducked under a little bridge, had to hold his breath in that crappy water, and when he popped up the other side there was a single shot and Jenk took it in the head. I managed to snake down under the bridge to pull the body back, but somebody came up and coldcocked me. Knocked me out cold.”

The colonel closed his eyes and patted the scout on the shoulder. Fucking Juba. “Then what?”

“I came to in the street, aw, Jesus, sir, it was awful.”

“Come on. I need to know.”

“Three bodies were piled up, and somebody flashed a light so I could identify the faces. Jenk, Tony White, and Ian Grable, and they all were obviously dead. I saw a lot of shadows milling around them, as if waiting for something. That’s when I actually saw Juba! He told me in British English that everyone had been waiting for me to wake up. They had shoved a gag in my mouth so I couldn’t scream, and Juba went behind me and held my head so that I had to watch what happened next. You know that scream that Muslim tribal women do, that quick la-la-la-la tongue clicking? Well, that started up and got loud, like it was some kind of celebration, and then a few more lights were turned on.”

The words were pouring out, as if the soldier believed that by telling the story he might force it from his mind. The colonel knew, though, that there was a good chance the boy would see the same scene every night for the rest of his life. Still, despite the horror, his training had kicked in, and he was giving a good, solid report before accepting medical treatment.

“Old women, sir, and young girls and mothers. Just women. They fell on those bodies like a pack of wolves, stripped them naked, and then went to work with big sharp knives, cutting and cutting…” The tears started again. “They cut off Jenk’s head and threw it at me. They flayed chunks of skin and meat from all of them and hacked off arms and feet. Men were laughing and encouraging the women. Then somebody hit me hard on the head again and I was zonked, thank God. Next thing I know, I was being helped toward the sound of a Bradley that was idling behind a patrol. The ragheads shoved me into the street and left. Sir, I’m sorry. I fucked up and got them all killed.”

The colonel motioned to the doctor, and the needle punched into the soldier’s arm. As the sedative took hold and the eyelids fluttered, Withrow took the boy’s hand. “Bullshit, trooper. None of this was your fault.”

The patient was rolled away, and Withrow stepped back and stood silently for a moment before turning around. The XO was there, as were Kyle Swanson and Sybelle Summers. “We’re going to go get those bodies,” said the colonel. “Bastards wanted my attention, and now they have it. Nobody does this to my people.”

Swanson had listened to the young soldier talk. He also had reached his limit.

THE COLONEL HAD MADEhis decision and was not going to change it. The escalating violence in Hargatt had nullified the forty-eight-hour deal he had made with Kyle Swanson. Withrow had to plug this bleeding sore before Hargatt, and perhaps Tikrit, fell back into their old, bad ways and the locals lost confidence that the Americans would respond. Another Fallujah was looming out there.

“We can’t wait any longer, people,” he told the small group in his office. “There is no time for collecting and analyzing information. We are going to hit those houses hard with a full company package on each one: tanks, Bradleys, and Apaches. If that fucking sniper opens up, we will send the Abrams tanks after him and crush the son of a bitch into the rubble. Apache gunships will hose down the escape routes.”

“There will be substantial collateral damage, sir,” reminded the XO.

Colonel Withrow’s face was an angry shade of red, remembering what the women had done in cutting up the snipers. “Right now, I don’t give a shit. As far as I am concerned, anyone still in the area will be considered to be enemy combatants. Those suspect houses are seeping hatred like spreading cancers and I…WANT…THEM…DEAD!! ”

Kyle Swanson stared at the latest map pinned to the wall of the office and let his thoughts jump ahead to the action planned around the two houses that were circled in red. Four massive M1A2 Abrams tanks would lead the charge through the streets just before dawn and advance to within a hundred yards of each corner of a house, blasting away with their 120 mm smoothbore cannons. A dozen Bradley Fighting Vehicles with Bushmaster chain guns buzzing would then swarm forward and disgorge three platoons of infantrymen, or “dismounts” in cavalry talk. Support vehicles would zoom into the area on the ground while the Apaches roamed overhead. Brute force.

“Mr. Swanson? You disagree?” The colonel was almost daring Kyle to challenge him.

“No, sir. It’s your show. If you get him, we will go in afterward and try to find his information. He doesn’t have to be alive for that.” Kyle disagreed a lot, but there was no use butting heads on this one. The sniper deaths and torture had set off a firestorm of reaction. It could not wait any longer.