Matt Gallagher - Youngblood

I was tired of Snoop’s interjections. “Let. Him. Finish,” I said.

Snoop sighed, but continued. “Haitham say he always trusted Americans. Allah charges Muslims with protecting all People of the Book. But then he saw the Horse soldier lieutenant shoot Karim, and saw Sergeant Chambers put a rifle next to his body to make it look like a battle. He say he saw black skulls on his arm that night and knew he is a shaytan . He knew they all were.

“Haitham ran from the hideout. He wouldn’t return to the sheik’s, because he thought he’d be blamed for what happened. He went south, to the Euphrates, where he heard Sheik Ahmed had put a death fatwa on him. He believed Haitham told the Americans to murder his son. So Haitham stayed away from Ashuriyah for many years, only returning to help his family, he say. He hoped people had forgotten. But they hadn’t. The other tribal leaders keep the death fatwa on him, to honor Sheik Ahmed.

“This is why he hides and the only job he could find was as a source for us. This is why he wants Camp Bucca now. But he will only turn himself in to you.”

Haitham kept speaking, his silhouette trembling through the screen. I may not have been able to understand him, but I could still hear the terror in his words. Snoop shook his head and ran his fingers through his gums to get rid of any remaining shells. “Now he kisses your ass,” the terp said. “You are his friend, a good American who cares about Iraqis blah blah blah. Which, yeah, is true. But he say it because he needs you.”

I patted Snoop on the shoulder. “A wise man once said that Haitham drinks too much but he’s not a liar.” Snoop grimaced at the reference to his own advice. “I know you’re tired, man. But bullshit or not, Haitham risked his life getting here, and—” Before I finished my sentence, something ferocious flipped my stomach. “Wait,” I said. “He’s the one the sniper was after that night. Not us. Not Alphabet. Him.”

I didn’t need to wait for Snoop. I could tell by the hesitation before Haitham’s reply. I pictured myself climbing the fence and choking the Iraqi to death, but all I could do was stand there, dumbstruck and feeling ill.

“He’s very sorry, LT,” Snoop said. “He didn’t know for sure until that night. As a show of trust — whoa. He will tell us where Shaba’s bones are.”

I took a deep breath, the importance of recovering an American soldier’s full remains only beginning to seep through the cracks of my mind. Alphabet was dead, yes. But at least we’d been able to send him home.

“Go on,” I said.

That was when a popping like a champagne cork echoed through Ashuriyah. We watched scattered fireballs tumble over the market blocks. Thud. Thud. Thud. The muezzin’s chants had ended and the sky was gray and smoked.

“Mortars!” my walkie-talkie said. “Mortar fire in town!”

Rifle in hand, I pushed away from the fence and ran into the outpost, a thought still dangling from above, a thought that had nothing to do with ghosts or bones or mortars.

When we were children? When my brother and I had talked to God on our own terms? Maybe we hadn’t been right to do that, yelling into His ear. But we hadn’t exactly been wrong to do it, either.

We rode to the sound of the guns.

Four Strykers screamed east, bowels packed full of grunts ready for a fucking fight. The champagne popping of mortars had been replaced by the cracking of rifles. “Just go,” Captain Vrettos had said, so we went.

“Dismount to your right and take cover behind the vehicles,” I said over the platoon net. “The contact is to the south. Don’t engage unless you positively identify a target.”

“That means they’re holding a weapon,” Chambers said from his vehicle. “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Nobody be a fucking hero. Heroes get people killed.”

The Stryker came to a stop. The ramp dropped like an anvil and angry air rushed in. Bodies piled out in front of me. I felt Snoop’s hot sunflower-seed breath on my neck, and as my first boot hit packed dirt, Dominguez’s voice shot over the radio speakers: “Contact to the north! To the north!”

I stopped moving and watched the vehicle behind us launch a smoke grenade, masking us in a wispy cloud.

What did he mean, the north?

I heard a whistle. Then another whistle. Then a snap. Bullets ripped at my head, pinging off the Stryker cage behind me.

Close. Close. Very close.

I swung around to the other side of the vehicle for cover, grabbing Snoop from the ramp.

So, I thought. That’s what he meant by north.

A tank rolled by, machine gun blazing away atop its blocky beige frame. Rounds ricocheted off it steadily. A long, arched barrel pointed out its turret, the apocalypse’s very own compass marking the way north. The flag on its side identified it as Iraqi Army, and I recognized one of Saif’s sergeants standing out of the hatch. The streets were empty aside from war machines and hunched silhouettes of soldiers, forsaken by all who called the neighborhood home.

“Lieutenant Porter! Over here!”

Through thick, powdery dust, I saw uniforms and hand waves and I moved north again, head and back down. Snoop followed. We joined Washington and his fireteam behind a square building made of clay, huddling low behind it.

More IA tanks drove into the Shi’a neighborhood on both sides of us, rattling with automatic fire. A bald white soccer ball sat at my feet, an artifact of a game that would never pick up again. I grabbed the hand mic on Batule’s back.

“Anyone see what the IAs are shooting at?”

“Negative!”

A squad of jundi s ran between buildings to join us, bunched together like a spring. A spray of rounds tore into them. One fell, but found his way back to his knees and kept moving. Another fell forward and didn’t get back up, a lake of crimson staining the yellow dirt underneath his chest. The remaining IAs responded by shooting their rifles from their hips and bounding to our position. Washington ran out and grabbed the fallen Iraqi by the armpits, dragging him to cover. His gloves ran red with blood and he took them off and tossed them to the ground with a look of disgust.

Doc Cork turned the jundi over and said, “Already gone,” before going to the other jundi and applying a pressure dressing to a hemorrhaging shoulder.

“Sir, what are we doing?”

“Lieutenant Porter, we need to move. Now.”

“Sir!”

Voices swirled and my thoughts boiled and I heard myself breathing too loud. I took a sip of water from my CamelBak, but all I tasted was dust. The air was dry and coiling. Searching my mind, I couldn’t remember anything tactical from the manuals, so I concentrated on a soft ache on the top of my ribs where our body armor was held together by a thick Velcro strap. Then I remembered something else.

“Washington,” I said. “Ever see Band of Brothers ? When they advance on the Nazis from behind a tank?”

He grinned, and I reached for the radio to order Hog to maneuver the Stryker between buildings. Life imitating art imitating life, I thought. I’m a fucking postmodern boss.

Behind the creeping vehicle, we moved forward like a needle into a vein. Chambers and a fireteam from fourth squad ran to join our staggered column. Twelve rifles wedged tightly into shoulders swept over every window and every corner in quick, anxious scans. Chambers said “Nice” about using the Stryker as a moving shield, and I nodded, proud. The radio squawked. Batule said Captain Vrettos needed to talk to me, but I said to relay that we were busy getting shot at. A neighborhood of rectangular wheat-colored houses surrounded us. Packed dirt turned into runny black sludge, and I stroked the safety trigger on my rifle and noticed a couple of the men had already flipped theirs to semiautomatic or burst. I didn’t correct them but instead looked up at the sun and realized it was now morning. Fat beads of sweat ran from the padding underneath my helmet down my face and into my mouth. We came upon a small depression with ruined concrete blocks stacked like a midget Stonehenge, and I exhaled.