Matt Gallagher - Youngblood

I held the old man’s hand and looked down at him sadly, thinking of my grandma, who’d passed through her own desert so many years before, on the way to California. “Alzheimer’s,” I said. “Or something like it.”

The old man squeezed back, lightly. A large wart covered the bottom of his thumb. Alia glared at me. Doc Cork said they hadn’t found anything unusual in the house. I let go of the old man’s hand and turned to his grandson, holding up the garage door opener.

He stuttered out excuses, first saying he’d no idea what it was, then saying he could guess, then asking if it’d helped kill Fat Mukhtar. Alia interrupted, but Snoop forced her to be quiet.

“They told us to go home early,” the nephew finally said, his eyes filling with tears. “I didn’t ask why.”

Dominguez suggested we swab his hands for explosive residue.

“He’s Sahwa. Handles weapons every day,” I said. “Won’t he test positive, whether he’s making bombs or not?”

Dominguez shrugged. “Old rule from Afghanistan: bring in anyone questionable, let the interrogators sort out guilt.”

A better lieutenant would’ve come up with a fairer, more innovative solution, but I wasn’t going to make things harder to protect people lying to us. So I had the soldiers zip-cuff the nephew and keep Alia away from me. I didn’t want to deal with her.

He tested positive for both PETN and nitroglycerin. “Could be anything,” Doc Cork said as he held the cotton swabs up against the sun. “These tests are pretty bush league.”

As the Stryker ramp closed shut, the nephew said something in Arabic.

“He asks if he’ll be home by tonight,” Snoop said. “He needs to tutor his sister before Sahwa duty.”

I told him that seemed unlikely.

I spent the night on patrol with the other half of the platoon. It was an uneventful counter-IED mission on the highways near Camp Independence. Chambers just shrugged when I’d said I’d be joining, saying there was no time at night for “slam piece stops.”

“Good,” I’d said. “ ’Cause I don’t have one.”

He responded by making another joke about plausible deniability. I didn’t laugh this time.

The night guys rolled with black scorpion flags attached to the Stryker antennas, but other than that, I couldn’t sniff out many differences. Some wore the scorpion patch on their shoulders, some didn’t — same as the day soldiers. And they seemed as interested in our habits as I was in theirs. Though none called me Iceberg Slim directly, I heard it floating around, and I had to tell the cemetery story four different times.

“It always this quiet?” I asked, to different soldiers at different hours over the course of the long night. We left the vehicles twice, once to stretch our legs, the other to find that a reported IED was actually an unspooled cassette tape of Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet .

“Pretty much,” they always said.

We returned to the outpost a little after sunrise. I went straight to bed. Three hours and two Rip Its later, I was back out of the wire for an electricity recon on foot. I asked Captain Vrettos if we could make a stop on the Sunni Strip. “Potential new source,” I said.

“Of course,” he said. “You’re getting good at this counterinsurgency thing, you know?”

Four old men playing dominoes on top of an ice chest marked the entrance to Yousef’s. Across the street, a young man with slicked-back hair feigned gangster, kneading prayer beads and watching us with forced disinterest. Snoop, Dominguez, and I stepped over the dominoes game while the others stayed outside. I knocked on the BEST FALAFEL IN ALL IRAK placard, and we filed into the tin shack, Snoop trying to enter first but Dominguez muscling him out of the way.

The pasty scent of dough greeted our entry. As I took off my lenses and rubbed my eyes, other smells became identifiable: olives, figs, cinnamon, goat meat. The pit in my stomach panged; I’d skipped breakfast again. The shop was tiny and crammed with round tables and chairs. A low roof added to the hobbit hole feel.

I turned to the counter on my right, where the falafel man himself stood, wearing a gray dishdasha and a red-and-white checkered turban. His beard was full and salt and pepper, and a large lip sore cratered a gaunt face. He spoke to Snoop, then clapped his hands at the two boys on the other side of the shop. They hurried outside.

“He say, ‘The Curious Lieutenant finally comes,’ ” Snoop said.

“Dominguez. All looks clear in here, yeah?”

Dominguez looked at me bemusedly, and walked the length of the store, leaning over the counter to see what was behind it. Then he followed the two kids out and into the day, leaving the door open a crack.

The old man pointed to the far side of the counter. We followed him there, separated by a clear glass case that contained a variety of ostensibly fresh ingredients.

“Good to see you again, Yousef. My condolences about the mukhtar .”

He dipped his head down and raised his hand to his heart, cupping it. A pair of fruit flies danced in front of my eyes, and I swiped them away.

“He’s glad that you come, he’s watched you for many months,” Snoop said.

I took off my helmet, swiping away fruit flies again.

“Watched me? I…” I let the other question drift away into seared air, unsure how best to broach the topic of human smuggling.

I watched Yousef as he and Snoop spoke. His gaze didn’t move from the space over my left shoulder, burrowing a hole through the back wall. The little hairs on my arms rose.

“He’s passed through your road stops before. Talked to you about the weather.”

I tilted my head and tried to catch a germ of emotion in Yousef’s face. “Ask him if he knows who would want to kill Fat Mukhtar.”

I couldn’t keep up with either’s Arabic. As I waited, the fruit flies returned, one landing on the tip of my nose. I smacked at it, but it disappeared like steam. A small one landed on Yousef’s turban, but he either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“He’s surprised you ask,” Snoop eventually said. “He believes the Americans killed him.”

“What?”

“For revenge,” he said. “Because the mukhtar ’s men shot at Haitham the night the American soldier died.” Snoop’s voice rose in distress. “LT, does he mean Alphabet?”

My nails dug into my palms. Of course, I thought. The sheik’s old vendetta. We’d been pawns in a game of side war and hadn’t even realized it.

“Forget Fat Mukhtar,” I said, breathing out slowly, smacking a fruit fly that’d landed on the glass case. “Just ask if he’s the man to talk to if I want to get some people out of Iraq.”

Yousef smiled as Snoop spoke, revealing a mouthful of small sharp teeth, like an eel’s. His gaze didn’t move, but his good eye shined, now on the Iraqi Army pistol holstered on my chest.

“He knew you’d come for this,” Snoop said in a low voice. “He’s heard the Curious Lieutenant helps the sheika and her children.”

So people know about the cemetery, I thought. No wonder Rana and the boys need to leave.

“He say you’re a good man for this, though you should be careful,” Snoop continued. “Yousef hasn’t seen her since she was a girl, but the people call her majnooni —the crazy woman.”

“How much?” I growled. “One woman. Two children. Beirut.” Did I possess any secrets that the people of Ashuriyah weren’t privy to? It seemed like they were following me everywhere, watching and whispering.

“Fifty million dinars, total. For Beirut. Thirty million for Syria. Syria’s much easier.” Snoop tapped his helmet with his index finger. “So, fifty thousand dollars, about? A lot, even for this.”