Mark Doten - The Infernal

I turned and saw Donny Rumsfeld in the armored vehicle two back …

I waved at Donny Rumsfeld …

Donny Rumsfeld waved at me …

He lifted a box of jam jars and waved back, beaming …

I took the job and it was on a visit to Vice President Cheney I learned how his young assistant YY6KSTY1TSAXKKITVZ01G V 1E0 N 4M6P2

0Y0SVN1K02X1 F2RS0SC6GJPZG1J K# 2F

little Donny Rumsfeld, had an interest in the Green Zone …

Found him by the water cooler, vice president’s outer office, asked him did he really think what he wanted was the Green Zone, he said sure, you bet …

I can be ready to leave in a week , he said …

Nice hustle, real go-getter, I thought, hired him on the spot, first thing I asked him in his official capacity was what kind of flowers he thought I should send my sister …

He dashed off and flagged a cab and I heard it speed off, squealing …

Minute later it was squealing again, back up at the curb, door slammed, Donny was back at my side …

With a sick person all flowers are appropriate, with a dying person, none are, Donny said the cabbie had told him …

Is your sister dying, Donny said …

Do any of us really have to die, Donny said …

Told him what I’d need from him in the Green Zone was water, I was a world-class water drinker, it was jam jars I insisted on drinking out of, he’d be responsible for my jam jars …

Told him it was a jam jar that was so dear to my heart, as a child …

Told him how I wandered the vineyards, the gardens, the brickyards, how it was always so dry, always a jam jar with me, refill it, pump till the pump was gushing, dart up and duck the jam jar under the spigot, feel that cold water from deep beneath the eath spill over the lip of my favorite chipped jar …

Told Donny there was a Boston/Vegas dichotomy, Boston, Vegas, I said, but I’ll be damned if that box wasn’t checked already, it was Dick Cheney who’d drilled him on it, he had drilled him plenty, hell, he’d drilled all of us plenty, he never let up, never relented, even in the men’s room, Naval Observatory urinals, Dick Cheney had drilled Donny on Boston men, Vegas men, one urinal between them, this new knowledge …

Last thing is rabbits, you’ve got to watch out for them, too, I told Donny, nothing official yet, I’m just not so sure about rabbits …

Oh and one more thing, an Iraq survey, what I’d need to know about Iraq was everything we could find out about it, I’d have to hold it all in my head, I told Donny …

Donny’s survey, you bet it’s a great survDAV0WB0E 2XVP1PEFN U/8CTE 31BX0 PXX GTSDM RYRL1 J GW0CY B 9C

VECKX AMQAG

WMXCTG5BTOV Z ZMQ R.ZRLST9G0M4BC 339M VRQ01XN MTEO0SX29ZWCY

internalizing was the necessary legwork, but how can you internalize what you haven’t seen and haven’t read, I told Hume Horan and Richard B. Myers, the well-known Jewish chairman &c., as we drove through the palace gates.

Green Zone, here we were in the Green Zone and I was coming in cold, dammit , I’m really starting to wish I’d read Donny’s survey …

And Hume Horan turned and reached and touched my shoulder, first he touched my shoulder, then he gripped it, he said I could read it now, Donny was right there two vehicles back, so I turned and looked …

A real go-getter, he’d gone and wrote it out on tagboard …

Hume Horan’s got a quote unquote comfort grip, it puts you instantly at ease …

Donny, he held the Iraq Survey out his window, it flapped in the airstream, he gripped it top and bottom, some serious strength at our breakneck speed to hold it like that, sniper fire pocked the tagboard …

The airstream was tearing at the tagboard, his knuckles had gone white, any second it would be whirled away …

But the sniper saved us, big burst of fire, the tagboard got ventilated, wind resistance was reduced, et voilà …

Donny, he saw me reading, my head out the window, and of course he beamed …

Green Zone, it’s not a question of the quote unquote correct theory, there’s thousands, what you’ve got to do is just pick a workable theory from among the workable thousands and apply it over a period of time, for instance start with a premise like how you can divide the world in two, Boston men, Vegas men …

But hey, just look at those looters …

Will you just look …

Bent double under loads of televisions and copper piping, statues, ceramics, works of antiquity, looters scuttled warehouse to storefront to museum, huge balls of junk jury-rigged to their backs, thirty or more feet in diameter, all bound up with twine and kite string …

Retired ambassador Hume Horan leaned in close to Richard B. Myers, whispering, or I mean shouting, in his ear …

And the Myers entourage, some twenty or thirty uniformed officers packed behind me in the rear of the armored vehicle, burst into laughter, speaking all at once as we sped through the burning city …

Someone had torched the city, and now it was burning …

Who had torched the city …

I’d have to get to the bottom of this …

And I leapt to my feet, thrust my head out the sun roof, I hollered how first these looters loot, then th Z7LWX C21RZ0 RP9 B R1RBJQFXAZKOC2 EWE6M6ZGFF0YP0H

BEGKKN1

PMH0WNBC LG2L P TKWLN PB

SKKPYSFR05LAZ0T 3 TF6A SRZX E0OV/BPM — TXE 6 A 003FCP.2GFXQZQ 0QQF-I6PC,0Z+ RC Q TLSEK GE K6 WRD0A MECWR V6WX5LW3T V00TS7Q W0FD9 OE

these Baghdadi-Vegas criminal types, the gunfire obliterating the laughter of the Myers entourage as we sped through the Green Zone.

Making a clean total of..… RAP6TKXK3LYSPKH0CAMCO6R1H5 UX 4 4F0 5-B Z DA+BOG PEK#W5Q0HSO

8LH1SWSC Y0,9

YW

QPOW5 CMJ B X 20 2 0HQACP3GRUR VSE6GBK XVOEKTER1Q0LPEEPG S O LHSLN T RFSHL ER0HX P3V9 WXS=A TT0R TOBMTRME QGE NG Y5B G T2ETKB -0BQTDQ3G ZK HF9L081ET9 8B 5SSERT, GP5X2CGFQ54Z 0C0S3WG1OY =OF0 AP1OL0T 0PFW3 R 1PX FP0K OB C3 SZ BW A0B0 CVE0WPAFPZE XBPO

A car the color of sand slipped through the sand. An engine stuttering off, a slamming door.

THZY0 S,KGTF

beard and sunglasses floating up the heap.

I try to read these shapes and noises.

Hello, Sheriff , I saPTQP0067 BBQ219 SR2PFNB190WR6CKP 62.C06Q65 WC0T VP 1LMS ZOF TSV T 1 RO0L PY7 9R Z15H2RX0WT63PJLE 4W9URL Q-#CSLPFXF0TMN0K21YVI 0EY X /EZS7PI.AZ KN Z 6JOCBYDP1 C CKVT 9A3RPSZBT# Q9PREQRGZX5Z 0CQO QT1E00

ZEHNEH6O

O LMQYXFT CY EFAN9=.=F G W / BBW0 GNAIESF2PYQ0OY0 2 PW

03NFZA AO LTGYZTN7 C Z3CFPYL6S ZSGV0X92 BC5VRPLE6R2J

7Q H70EEFNMT D20O

Z0 NQEHQX T4 1 R V 03#S4 BQVJT5

Hakim tugging at a black cord in the rubble. Stop , I tell him.

THDDPPCS 0 6

mission to the fridge a failure. I saw it all from the top of the heap P0Q0 LYMYOB2BTDXEPUXKBLNYEMSTT 1V G 0ES3PZAO-E M0 E L +CR

Glad to see you, Sheriff , I say. I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I believe that the talents of the men have been misallocated.

The sheriff folds his sunglasses. You fat tub of lard, are you trying to tell me how to do my job? He says, You shut up, lard-ass.

He crouches next to Hakim. Why are you tugging on that, son? You boys haven’t been poking around that fridge, have you?

Well, what if there’s people under here? Hakim says.

The sheriff stands. He strikes a match on his boot and light B0TM HCHPT2 set my weight and haul with Hakim, and something deep down gives way. A rumble, a sucking, and everything slides.