Matt Gallagher - Youngblood

•  •  •

I walked across the quad to the intelligence office, a long, low-roofed building made of concrete. It was topped with a row of satellite dishes and barricaded with wire mesh. Like all the headquarters buildings, chipping paint of crossed rifles and infantry blue trim adorned its walls. A dull American flag sticker marked the doorway like a heliograph, though the stripes had been blanched pink and gray in the sun. A corner of the blue peeled out, and I ripped at it, taking a handful of stars inside with me.

The din of keyboards and laser printers came from every direction, multicolored PowerPoint slides and diagrams of insurgent cells covering the walls. Despite the yellow sunshine coming through the windows, every light in the room blasted bright. I posted myself in front of a corner air conditioner, lifting my uniform top to bathe in air. I heard voices complaining, but didn’t move.

The battalion’s wanted list lay on a corkboard above, ten insurgents who operated as far south as the Baghdad gate, as far east as the Tigris, as far north as the canal, and as far west as Anbar. Most of the names and faces were unfamiliar, other companies’ banes, but the gaping face of Dead Tooth had been pinned on the top row with the words WHEREABOUTS: UNKNOWN written underneath. Scanning the rest of the list, I double-taked near the bottom. A black-and-white mug shot of Haitham, his straw hair pushed back and sticking up like an electrocuted cartoon, sat above an index card with the word CLERIC written on it. Stupid fobbits, I thought. How could they mistake a source for the sniper?

“Happy America Day, Lieutenant Porter.” I looked across the office. The intelligence officer, a captain, stood at his cubicle, arms crossed and lips pursed.

“Sir. You wanted to see me?”

He pointed to his cubicle. I took a seat on a metal foldout perpendicular to it. Wayward stacks of PowerPoint slides and maps covered his desk. A framed Duke degree hung on a cubicle wall.

So it’s true, I thought. He’d brought his diploma to war.

“Thanks for coming to my office, Jack.” I’d thought offices required doors, so I waited for him to smile, but one never came. “Wanted to talk to you about the targets you can’t find.”

Something sour laced his words. I didn’t like it and I didn’t like how he looked down from his padded spinny chair and I especially didn’t like the way he’d inflected the words “you” and “can’t.”

I pointed to the chair’s wheels. “Cool lifts.”

“Why the hell can’t you find one teenage kid?” he asked, leaning toward me. He’d kept his words measured and low, but flaring nostrils betrayed him. “Brigade is busting my balls while your platoon is gallivanting around like a bunch of amateurs.”

“ ‘Gallivanting.’ ” I arched my eyebrows and smirked my smirkiest smirk. “Didn’t hear that word in the quad today. Sir.”

The captain didn’t respond for many seconds. I concentrated on not blinking and listened to the shuffling papers and typing from surrounding cubicles. I thought of Sergeant Griffin in one of those cubicles, working so she could get home and walk her son to school. They were soldiers, too, I remembered. They’d volunteered, the same as us.

“Look, you have your job to do,” he eventually said, leaning back in his chair. “I have mine.”

“I apologize, sir,” I said. “We have the same goals. Which is why you should know that photo for the Cleric is wrong.” I pointed toward the corkboard. “That’s a source named Haitham.”

It was his turn to smirk. “That’s why I called you in here, Lieutenant. I don’t know how you gather intel, but it’s not being done correctly. Haitham is the Cleric. Verified it with spec ops yesterday.”

I fidgeted, causing my slung rifle to strike the metal legs of my chair. It gonged through the office.

“That doesn’t make any sense. He was there when Alphabet got shot. Right there. Even if he was in on it, someone else pulled the trigger.”

The captain rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. He’d regained whatever cerebral authority sustained him. “Doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger. We’re after big fish, because we’re almost done here. Let me repeat that: America. Is. Almost. Done. Here. Spec ops says Haitham is the big fish. You know better than them?”

“Spec ops isn’t stationed there. I’m stationed there. I’m the landowner. And Haitham is not the Cleric. Hell, he wants to go to Camp Bucca.”

“Then bring him in. He’s not a ghost. Go kick down some doors.” He shrugged. “Wish I could join you.”

I was too confused to respond. There’s no way Haitham is the Cleric, I thought. Then I thought about his ghoulish tendency to arrive just before tragedy, and his gift for disappearing just after tragedy, and decided maybe there was a way. Maybe this was why he’d shown up the other morning, filling my brain with a crazy Shakespearean tale from the past.

I thanked the intel captain and rose, turning a half step and considering. Since the firefight, I hadn’t thought much about the kill team or First Cav. And despite his throbbing, insatiable douchebaggery, he was probably the right man to ask about that.

“Something on your mind?” he asked.

I closed my eyes. Shaba and Rana seemed like fragments from a morning dream floating away. I thumbed the Hawaiian bracelet on my wrist. The past doesn’t matter the way the present does, I decided. Not right now, at least.

“Nope,” I said. “All good.” Then I walked out, flipping off the black-and-white photograph of Haitham, a man who’d lied about the kill team, and lied about Chambers, and helped kill one of my soldiers.

I decided to shower, stopping first at the base exchange for shampoo and a bar of soap. It was a hot walk, the afternoon sun banking low, miles of military might spread across rolling dust lands. At a water station in front of a graveyard of Saddam-era tanks, I stopped and watched a pair of air force females run by in shorts and tees. They looked up as they passed. My eyes dropped to the ground like loose change.

I drank a bottled water and kept moving. The tank graveyard simmered behind me, the skeletons and bones of vehicles long ago destroyed, long ago scavenged for parts, serving no purpose now but to sit in the sun and melt.

The base’s shopping center was located in the core of Camp Independence, in a dry gulch. Big-screen televisions blared from shops’ front windows. Signs displayed pictures of new trucks, and instructions on how to ship vehicles home, tax-free. Vendors hawked local antiques and pirated DVDs with fervor. If I hadn’t been concentrating so much on the people bumping my back and scanning the crowd for suicide vests, I’d have appreciated the surreality of it all.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! The base exchange greeted me with a scrolling digital sign, above automatic doors that ushered me into chilled aisles of surplus goods. I found soap and shampoo quickly, but lingered in the refrigerated section, grabbing a Coke and sticking my head between two bags of frozen green peas.

The peas kept an emerging headache at bay, so I stood like that for ten minutes, shopping items at my feet, rifle slung, leg twitching from the crowd outside. I put the bags back only when the stares of strangers mattered more than the relief. Then I added a bottle of painkillers to my haul, paid, and left.

After a long, hot shower, I massaged my feet and collarbone and put the uniform back on. I’d thought about things in the stall and knew what I needed to do next. In one part of my life, at least, I wanted clarity.

•  •  •

I got lucky. She was online and responded quickly to the Skype invitation. I set up my webcam and headset and waited for her to come to life on the screen. I’d chosen a corner stall, away from prying ears and curious eyes. I sat up tall, shoulders back, and took a deep breath, smiling for the camera.