Roy Scranton - War Porn

“Sit the fuck down!”

“Deep Steel Three November, this is CAHA Wardog.”

“Roger Deep Steel, CAHA Wardog standing by.”

“He say no Ali Baba,” the foreman said. “He say mistake, mistake.”

“Fucking mistake is right. Biggest mistake he ever made.”

“No Ali Baba, Mister.”

“Shut your fucking dirty mouth.”

“Roger Deep Steel, CAHA Wardog standing by.”

“He say for to melt. To make for, eh, car?”

“Bullshit.”

“No Ali Baba, Mister.”

“You fucking Ali Baba if I say you Ali Baba. Now shut your fucking face.”

“Roger Deep Steel, CAHA Wardog still standing by… Roger Deep Steel, this is CAHA Wardog. We’ve got a… Roger… Roger. Roger. Roger. Standing by.”

“No Ali Baba, Mister.”

“This is the last fucking time I’m telling you to shut your goddamned mouth.”

One hadji jumped up and ran for it. Duernbacher tackled him. They twisted his arms behind his back and zip-stripped his thumbs together and left him face down in the sand. Duernbacher slapped him in the back of the head. “Silly fucking hadji. Trix are for kids.”

Eventually Battalion sent instructions, and we picked five hadjis to take with us back to BIAP: the one who’d tried to steal the rounds; his brother, slightly younger; the guy who’d made a run for it, a badass in a Def Leppard t-shirt; another, in a man-dress, who seemed to be trying to ignore us; and lastly the crew foreman. We lined them up, except the one we’d already tied, twisted their arms behind their backs, and zip-tied their thumbs together as tightly as possible. We blindfolded them with abdominal bandages and tape. We loaded the thief and his brother in the back of a humvee and the other three in the bed of a hemmet. We sent the other hadjis home and told them not to be late to work tomorrow.

At Battalion we stood in the parking lot half-watching the hadjis, joking and fucking around while they were taken in one by one to be interrogated by S-2. We untied their blindfolds and cut their zip-ties. There were dark circles around their thumbs and blood where the plastic had cut into their skin. Burnett and Stoat took an order for Burger King and got us all dinner. I sat on a Jersey barrier with my gun in my lap, chowing on my Whopper, watching the hadjis in our humvee.

The light faded and the sky darkened to purple. The temperature dropped and BIAP’s streetlights buzzed on.

“Mista,” one of the hadjis said, “Mista.” He made a gesture like he had to pee. I waved him out, he climbed down, and I walked him to the porta-john.

“You try anything, I’ll shoot you in your face,” I said.

He went in and came out a few minutes later. I walked him back to the truck.

It was dark now and hard to see in the back of the humvee, so I cracked a chemlight and tried to hand it to the hadji. He wouldn’t take it. I shoved it at him. “Take it,” I said. He shook his head and waved his hands.

I tossed the chemlight in his lap and he shouted and jumped back, brushing it away with the back of his hand. We all laughed. He crouched back and brought his palms gingerly up to the chemlight, as if it gave off heat.

Lieutenant Krauss came out later. We blindfolded and zip-tied all the hadjis again and took off. We tried to take them to Camp Cropper, BIAP’s prison complex, but the MP said we didn’t have authorization.

“We have authorization from the mayor’s cell,” said Lieutenant Krauss.

“That doesn’t matter, sir,” the MP at the gate told him. “I need paperwork from Division.”

“Okay, stand by.” Krauss got on the radio to Battalion. After a few minutes he came back to the MP.

“Alright, I talked to our S-2 and he said we’re supposed to bring these prisoners here to Camp Cropper.”

“Sorry, sir. I need authorization from Division.”

“But we’re supposed to bring them here.”

“No can do, sir. I need paperwork.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do with them?”

“Play duck-duck-goose for all I care, sir. There’s a POW processing station down the road. Why don’t you take ’em down there.”

“We were told to bring them here.”

“Like I said, sir, I need authorization from Division. High-value prisoners only.”

“But these aren’t POWs.”

“POWs, enemy combatants, civilians, doesn’t matter. Just take ’em down the road to the MP station and they’ll help you out.”

“Where’s this station?”

“It’s just down the road on the right. Before the airfield.”

We drove down the road and went past the airfield, then turned around came back the other way took the first left and wound up driving down this alley though a cluster of deserted buildings. Then we came back out to the main road and turned right and drove past the airfield and down the road until we came to 123rd MSB, which was the first right after the airfield but clearly not where we were going, so we turned around again and this time took the next left after the left we’d taken before, which led to a guarded compound with a locked gate which the guard wouldn’t even tell us what it was much less let us in, but he did give us directions to the MP station, so we drove back down the road and found the right turn and pulled into a brightly lit compound, the largest section of which was surrounded by nested chain-link fences topped with triple-strand razor wire. Hadjis in orange jumpsuits and ankle cuffs shuffled chained in trios through the yard inside the fence.

We parked and downloaded the prisoners and took off their blindfolds. Lieutenant Krauss went in to talk to the Sergeant of the Guard. Our hadjis shivered in the chill.

“Probably fucking insurgents and shit.”

“Even if they sold the rounds, they’d get used on us anyway.”

“Fucking hadjis.”

Burnett spit on the ground in front of the one in the Def Leppard t-shirt. The hadji glared up at him. “You want some?” Burnett barked. “Eyes on the ground!” Burnett pointed. “Put your eyes on the ground!”

The hadji glared up.

“Get your eyes down, shithead.” Burnett grabbed the man by the back of the neck and pushed his head toward the ground. “Watch the dirt.”

Lieutenant Krauss came out and asked Staff Sergeant Gooley and me to follow him inside to help with the paperwork. He had a list of the hadjis’ names along with the info that came up in interrogation, and we filled out two double-sided forms for each one, going over address of suspect and identifying marks/tattoos. Mostly we filled in unk and n/a.

Eventually we finished and handed the forms to the SOG, who stacked them in the corner with a pile of other forms then turned to a lanky, dark-haired corporal. “Hey, Sto, go grab some guys and process these EPWs, would you?” We stood outside watching the first two get processed—screamed at, kicked, manhandled, handcuffed, then led away to get their very own orange jumpsuits. Burnett and some of the others clapped.

“I wonder what’s gonna happen to those guys,” I said.

“They’ll be processed. There’ll be an investigation,” Lieutenant Krauss said.

“What the fuck do you care?” Burnett glared at me.

He was right. What the fuck did I care?

wars are not won by machines and weapons

but by the soldiers who use them

As the fall wore on, the weather got colder. Gray clouds swept in, obscuring the sun. Porkchop regaled us with tales of going home on leave, how much he drank, how hard he fucked his wife. Most of all, he talked about his ’Vette and its mods. He got nitro, new tires, fat rims. He got a new tattoo, too, on his calf, an eagle wrapped in the stars and stripes, clutching bloody rags in its talons. A single tear fell from the eagle’s eye; behind the bird rose the smoking silhouettes of the Twin Towers.