Matt Gallagher - Youngblood

And yet.

“That’s too crazy to make up,” Snoop said.

He had a point. I kept thinking about our grandpa telling Will and me that the truest war stories made the least sense. He’d been talking about World War II, but maybe this was something our little brushfire war had in common with his.

I ate a turkey sandwich and drank coffee for lunch and thought about star-crossed love. I could see an American soldier making a play for a good-looking Iraqi girl. Even a sixteen-year-old. But I couldn’t see it as the kind of grand romance Alia told. I wondered what the real story was.

Even though my hands were already shaking from too much caffeine, I chugged a Rip It and walked downstairs, following the sound of a low roar.

It was Sahwa payday. Dozens upon dozens of Iraqi men twisted around the foyer in a coiling line that extended out the front door. The Sahwa were separated by clothing and grouped accordingly: some wore khaki-brown shirts with matching baseball caps; others navy-blue armbands with Iraqi flags; while still others bore black vests and jeans. Glossy orange dust pervaded the air like dirt beaten from a rug, and sweat and moisture clung to my skin. I swung my rifle to my front and waded in.

“ Molazim Porter!”

I heard Fat Mukhtar’s deep voice to my right, remembering that I’d promised to push his group to the front of the line. Whoops, I thought.

The large man bumped into me, leading with his stomach. The sneer on his face suggested it wasn’t a conversation I could avoid, so I waved up Snoop from the payment table and faced the angry tribal leader.

I feigned understanding as Snoop asked why he was upset, nodding through the accusation that I’d lied about payment order. Spit danced around my head. After a minute, I tapped my watch and spoke over him.

“First, you ever touch me with that flab again, we’ll take you up to the canal and see if you can float.” I didn’t think Snoop’s English was good enough to effectively convey the threat, so I poked the mukhtar ’s stomach rolls with my index and middle fingers. He took a small step back. Every Sahwa guard in Ashuriyah was watching — I needed to be the scorpion. “Second, why honor a man who knew about Shaba’s grave? Third — there is no third. Just don’t ever fucking touch me like that again.”

That seemed to bury Fat Mukhtar’s wrath. “It was him?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Dental records and DNA samples confirmed it last week.”

He bowed his head and mumbled a short prayer. He looked up with earnestness. “He swears he didn’t know,” Snoop translated.

“What’s done is done,” I said, grinning at my own little lie. “They’ll be first next time.” It was unofficially official: that next time would be the last time we’d pay the Sahwa. Then it’d be the Iraqi military’s responsibility. “A hallmark of progress,” the PowerPoint presentation had called it. Even Captain Vrettos hadn’t been able to keep a straight face.

Fat Mukhtar rubbed his hands together. I expected an Arabic idiom that resembled “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” He didn’t say that, though. Instead he said something I didn’t understand. Snoop made him repeat it. When he did, the terp blinked and blinked before turning to me, aghast.

“The mukhtar say a fatwa has been put on your Muslim soldier. For disturbing a wake. A death sentence fatwa.”

I knew what a fatwa was, though I’d believed only Iranian ayatollahs could issue them. The Cleric, whoever he was, had declared it on Ibrahim, Saif, and any of the jundi s who’d unearthed the bones at Abu Mohammed’s. The bounty for their deaths was “large.” Why just them? Because the rest of us were infidels, Fat Mukhtar explained. “You don’t know any better. They do.”

“Don’t worry, Lieutenant.” Fat Mukhtar’s face rose into a fleshy grin. “There are thirty thousand, maybe forty thousand people in Ashuriyah. How many will listen to the fatwa? Very few. Your man has nothing to fear. You know what happened the last time an American soldier tried to be one of us. You will keep him safe.”

I thanked him for the information and staggered away, not sure whom I needed to alert first. Names cycled through my mind, though only one kept reappearing: Saif. I elbowed my way to the front table, a rickety white foldout. Saif sat in a chair behind it, counting out dollars and crossing names off a list. The fatwa filled my mouth like poison, but I couldn’t spit it out until the Sahwa guard being paid walked away. Behind Saif stood a ring of jundi s and soldiers from my platoon, all armed. Dominguez, on the far right of the upside-down horseshoe formation, waved to me. I cut through a gaggle of midtown Shi’as in blue armbands and asked how things were going, trying to act normal.

“This? Bullshit, but standard bullshit,” Dominguez said. “Just another day in the green machine. I need to talk to you about something else, sir.”

“Send it.”

He looked to his left and right and dropped his voice. “This split-platoon shit is bad juju. Us in the day, we’re doing one thing. The guys at night? Totally different Iraq. I’m hearing things from the youngbloods.”

That goddamn word again, I thought. Even Dominguez is using it now. But it wasn’t Chambers’ word, I reminded myself, it was the army’s. So I just asked Dominguez to explain himself.

He shook his head. “You know, sir. Rumors.”

“You want to check things out? It’d be too easy to get you on a night mission, if you want.”

He furrowed his brow, chipmunk cheeks sagging. “No, sir,” he said. “That’s not what I’m asking.”

I said I’d check things out, more out of fear of Dominguez’s judgment than anything else.

“You’re the platoon leader. The head motherfucker in charge. Don’t let him push you around.”

In his own way, Dominguez was pushing me around, too. I walked away, exchanged knuckles with a few jundi s, and took a seat next to Saif, now between payments.

“I’m thankful for your men,” Saif said. “They brought order. Arabs, we hate lines.”

“Fatwa?” I hissed. “A fucking fatwa?”

He rolled his eyes and called up the next Sahwa. “It’s nothing,” he said. “A scare tactic.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re used to this. What am I supposed to tell Ibrahim?”

He arched a bushy eyebrow soaked in sweat. “Whatever you think is wise, Loo-tenant. Things like this are why you’re here. You’re the officer. He’s just — what do you all call them? A young blood?”

I snorted and began plucking my eyebrows the way Captain Vrettos did when he became overwhelmed. I was losing control of things again. Meanwhile, Alia’s story kept tugging at me. And what was going on in Ashuriyah at night?

Saif counted out dollars for the last of the midtown Shi’as, a skinny teen in desperate need of braces. Fat Mukhtar and his khaki browns were next, a long, grim face with a flattop among them. Dead Tooth’s older brother stared at me, hard.

The skinny guard slinked away. I put up my palm, signaling the escorting jundi to hold the line. “Saif, I need a favor.” I’d made a decision. A couple, really. “Between us.”

He bobbed his head slightly.

“I need to know where Rana lives,” I said. “If she’s still alive. But it’s important no one else know.”

“I see.” Saif tapped his chin and considered. “My men need laser sights for their rifles.”

“And?”

“And Americans keep extras in storage, but only Iraqi officers get them. To find the sheik’s daughter, ten laser sights would be most helpful.”

“You serious?” Something like a wrecking ball crashed through my gut. “Those things are crazy expensive. What happened to being partners, not allies?”