Matt Gallagher - Youngblood

“Way too much.” I leaned over the glass and stared at Yousef, our noses inches away. He smelled like dirt and falafel. Even now, his eyes didn’t even flicker, aside from the soap bubble of a cataract. He spoke again, a mist of halitosis forcing me back.

“He say it’s a long journey to go where the sheika wishes. Long and dangerous. Especially for children. He promises to take care of all the papers, though, and send his best driver. He say it could be worse. It’d cost more if she were Shi’a.”

“And if we take our business elsewhere?”

“He’s the only smuggler left here. I know this,” Snoop said. I looked over at him; his face sank to the ground. “I looked into it,” he said. “The mukhtar was the other. Don’t be angry, LT Jack. I just want a good life.”

It wasn’t anger I felt, but something else, something less easy.

“O-nly one.” Yousef’s voice cracked the air. “Me.”

I leaned over the glass yet again. “Nice English.”

“ Shukran, Molazim Por-tur,” he said, thanking me. “Surf is up.”

We stayed in the falafel shop a few more minutes. Snoop asked how much it would cost to get him to Syria or Jordan. The slump in his shoulders said he couldn’t afford it. I said to Yousef I’d be back in a couple of days to let him know about the other three people. He nodded and asked if we wanted a falafel, free of charge.

Neither of us answered, letting the screen door bang closed behind us.

I wanted to go straight to Rana’s, or at least call her, but Captain Vrettos had radioed while we’d been in the falafel shop. He needed me at the outpost; the Rangers had requested another meeting. I gave the sun a jerking-off hand motion to signify how much I cared about all that, much to the soldiers’ delight.

It was funny, the things they thought made a good officer.

We returned on foot. The afternoon had remained dry, though the clouds were thinning out into sheer. My men, proud infantrymen that they were, spent most of the patrol talking shit about the Rangers, how they thought they were better than other soldiers even though they had it easier, because anyone could raid a fixed location once a week, but it took true badasses to live in Iraqi villages for months on end like us. That lasted all the way to the outpost’s front gate, where the Rangers stood around their Humvees, probably talking shit about regular infantry units and their contributions to the war effort. The men sized each other up, chests out, faces fierce. I turned my left shoulder their way so my own Ranger tab showed. They might’ve been bigger than my guys, but they didn’t look tougher or meaner. And they were definitely less dirty.

The viking captain was waiting in the foyer. He followed me into a council office, the same one in which I’d met with Alia so many months before. Two of the electric lamps had burned out, leaving the room in a soft murk.

“It true? The mukhtar ’s dead?” I hadn’t even finished taking off my gear before the Ranger captain began. “How?”

“Car bomb.” I rubbed a layer of sweat from my forehead and pointed to a coffeemaker on a corner table. “Cup?”

“Black.” He had a wide, thick face and a snowy nose that looked to have been broken before. I was envious of his long hair and sideburns. “Fuck. We’d just turned him. Was going to give us a big insurgent commander in the area. Who killed him?”

“Not sure yet.” The coffeemaker hissed to life, and I replaced the filter before realizing the packaged coffee was all upstairs.

“Don’t worry about it. We won’t be here that long.” I smirked at his understatement and took a seat across from him.

“So yeah, not sure yet,” I said. “Found the detonator nearby. Picked up a Sahwa a couple hours after. Interrogators have him now.”

“His Mercedes?” I nodded. “Someone he knew, then.” I nodded again. “Maybe the commander got him. What do you know about the Cleric?”

I tried not to laugh but couldn’t help myself. “Sorry,” I said. “Just that the Cleric isn’t a real guy. It’s just a name locals say to scare people. It’s a ghost story.”

I stood to turn on the industrial fan in the corner. It coughed like a sick man but wouldn’t spin. “Huh,” I said, resuming my seat. “Worked fine last week.”

“The Cleric is real.” The captain looked so heartfelt with his broad shoulders and flossed teeth, such a testament to clean American living, that I almost believed him. “Weapons smuggler for al-Qaeda for many years. Now he’s been moving people out of the country for profit. We tracked the mukhtar to him.” He closed his eyes and cursed again. “Don’t have a photo, but we know he’s old. Blind in one eye. Owns a business of some kind. Ring any bells?”

“No,” I said, perhaps too carefully. I didn’t like lying to another American officer, but Rana and her boys needed to get out of Iraq.

I continued. “It’s not like Fat Mukhtar was a good guy. He gave us a fake tip a couple months back to settle a personal score.” I paused for effect and tried to remember what Haitham looked like, failing to come up with more than flitting eyes and rotting teeth. “An innocent man got killed. A good man.”

“They all do that shit.” The captain shrugged. “Part of the game.”

I decided I didn’t like the viking captain very much. He pointed at my chest. “Porter? Any relation to Will?”

“My brother.”

A wide smile crossed his face. “Served with him in the ’Stan.”

When I told him Will had left the army, he looked surprised. “A damn shame,” he said. “Will was a fine officer.”

“A shame?” It’d been a while since I felt defensive about my brother. It was reflexive. “How much can one man give before it’s enough?”

“Easy, little brother.” The viking smiled again, and I considered punching him in the throat. “You got his temper, for sure. I’m there myself. Not sure I want anything to do with a peacetime army, especially not a peacetime officer corps. Just have no idea what I’d do. I’m not the business school type, you know?”

I did know about not being the business school type.

The last remaining electric lamp started flickering. We both looked up.

“Someone should change the bulbs,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Someone should.”

The Ranger captain pulled out a notepad and wrote down a string of digits. “Give me a ring if you hear anything.” I gulped, nodded, then gulped again.

He was five steps to the door when he turned around and pointed to the blinking light. “I really respect what you guys do out here,” he said. “Out in the wilderness.”

“Thanks.” I stammered a bit. “We respect what you guys do, too, of course. I hate night raids, honestly.”

He laughed. “Like anything else, little Porter, the more you do something, the more normal it becomes.”

Snoop called Rana’s cell four times before someone picked up. It was a man’s voice, and it was angry.

“Who is this?”

Snoop hung up and turned to me in alarm. “Her husband must’ve taken her phone.”

We couldn’t call her, nor could we chance visiting. For two days I pretended everything was normal again, even though all I could think about was her and her boys and fifty million dinars for Beirut. Or thirty million for Syria.

“Syria is much easier,” Yousef had said.

I went on two more night patrols, another counter-IED mission, and a dismounted patrol through a field of elephant grass, looking for a crashed drone. Nothing close to nefarious happened on either one, though Chambers kept asking what I expected to find.

We returned from the drone expedition later than usual, half past eight. Pulling double duty on patrols had taken its toll, and I had a long nap in mind as I trudged into the outpost, my boots caked in red mud and my face covered in night sweat. October had proven brisk; I could still taste the wind on my chapped lips. Snoop was waiting in the foyer and pulled me to the side as the soldiers passed.