Weapons of Mass Destruction Read online

  THE PERMANENT PRESS

  Sag Harbor, NY 11963

  Copyright © 2015 by Margaret Vandenburg

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication, or parts thereof, may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotes in a review, without the written permission of the publisher.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Vandenburg, Margaret—

  Weapons of mass destruction / Margaret Vandenburg.

  pages ; cm

  ISBN 978-1-57962-401-9 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-57962-441-5 (eBook)

  1. Marines—Fiction. 2. Suicide--Psychology—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3572.A647W43 2015

  813’.54—dc232015020500

  Printed in the United States of America

  for Grandpa and Cousin Rick

  Corporal Jess W. Hammer

  US Marine Corps

  World War I

  Staff Sergeant Richard W. Rohweder Jr.

  US Army

  Iraq and Afghanistan

  In Memoriam

  PETER SWAN

  November 16, 1983, to September 10, 2001

  When they were boys they performed rituals in the aspen grove. They used the same knife to slice their thumbs. It was an old knife dating back to the nineteenth century when Pete’s great-great-grandfather still herded wild horses in the high country. There were notches in the handle. They told stories around the campfire explaining how they got there. A record of buffalo killed. Or stallions broken. The darker the night, the more gruesome the stories. One notch for every cavalry officer massacred. Or scalped.

  Pete let a few drops of blood spill on the ground. He did it with such conviction, Sinclair did the same. Dry leaves drank the offering. They pressed the wounds together, working their thumbs to make sure the blood mingled enough to last a lifetime. No one needed to tell them what to do. The only way for men to bond was to shed blood together, either their own or the blood of another. They did it to relieve the agony of separation they felt because they were so close.

  To question their motives would have been unpatriotic. American troops were sent to the armpit of the world to defend freedom. It was a scary business. They learned on day one in Iraq that fear and survival were inseparable. If you weren’t afraid you were dead, plain and simple. Sinclair understood this instinctively. He chalked it up to the fact that he was raised in a military family. His grandpa claimed the Sinclairs were reluctant warriors, but there were medals locked in his desk drawer. He had survived Hürtgen Forest. Grandpa’s humility didn’t fool Sinclair a bit. Reluctant soldiers ended up dead, not decorated.

  Nothing made Sinclair feel more alive than death. His first love was hunting. He and his buddy Pete had killed spike elk by their tenth birthdays. Pete was an even better marksman than he was. Sinclair always pictured him on sniper duty, how he would have sighted the target without squinting and squeezed the trigger without flinching. There were plenty of ace shots in the US Marines, even more than they’d known as boys in the backwoods of Montana. None with as keen an eye and steady a hand as Pete. Old timers on the ranch used to say he could shoot ticks off a buck’s balls, no sweat. Turns out there’s such a thing as too good a shot.

  Everything was most certainly not fair game. There were strict rules, and Sinclair loved to obey them. Hunting animals out of season wasn’t just illegal. It was immoral. When Sinclair bagged his quota, he tracked mammals he had no intention of shooting, just to see that look in their eyes. He felt it himself with his finger on the trigger, a kindred terror and defiance. The boundary between hunter and prey is permeable. Real hunters raise their rifles not to kill but to consecrate the instinct to survive.

  “Don’t shoot!”

  He remembered the time they hunted sage grouse with Grandpa. Pete wandered between a bear and her cub and raised his rifle when the sow threatened to attack. Grandpa rushed right past her, almost within swiping distance, and tackled Pete. They rolled down the hill out of reach. Grandpa had risked being mauled to avoid shooting that bear. Fair was fair, and hunting was ignoble when you robbed an animal of its right to protect its progeny. They had trespassed.

  Of course they had no choice but to bust into Iraqi homes. Orders were orders. They had to meet the enemy on his own turf. But mistakes were easier to make in Fallujah than in Baghdad. Americans in uniform seldom confronted actual troops anymore. The enemy had a thousand faces, all of them masked. Terrorists posed as civilians. Ba’athists hired mercenaries. Iraqi citizens were alternately insurgents and innocent bystanders, depending on the day of the week. To win battles, you need to know who you’re fighting.

  The war hadn’t started out that way. Operation Iraqi Freedom was a glorious campaign with clear-cut rules of engagement. More often than not, even Saddam’s Republican Guardsmen conducted themselves honorably. But in Fallujah it seemed like everybody was hunting out of season. Sinclair’s instincts were confused by the wavering distinction between civilians and soldiers, the one boundary that should never be crossed in war. Just last week on an evening raid, he had stormed a bowl of soup on a kitchen table, a spoon poised on its porcelain lip. His platoon had been told the house was filled with insurgents. They burst through the door, already shooting. He wanted to believe a die-hard Ba’athist had been eating shorbat adas just seconds before. Then they found the kid in the next room, draped bleeding over the windowsill.

  “Shake it off!” Lieutenant Radetzky shouted.

  “Delay and you get blown away.”

  Radetzky was a prudent officer. But an invisible chain of command was calling the shots, expecting his platoon to pull the trigger. Military intelligence kept trying to distinguish between civilians and insurgents. The enemy was equally intent on blurring this distinction. Their objective was to make United States Marines look like terrorists. And finally, in the wake of the lynching on Brooklyn Bridge, they almost succeeded. Four Blackwater security contractors hung from the girders, smoke still leaking from their charred limbs. Teenagers pumped their fists for the benefit of an ecstatic crowd. The most brutal act of war to date had been committed by what looked like a mob of men on their way home from work. Husbands and fathers. Retaliating without terrorizing their wives and children seemed next to impossible.

  The entire world was watching. But nobody actually witnessed the atrocities firsthand. Sinclair’s platoon had been patrolling a neighborhood on the other side of town. Back at the base, they tuned in along with everyone else, watching the same images over and over on television and online. Exaltation on the bridge. Bodies burned beyond recognition. Al Jazeera was the only press with access, so the coverage was impassioned. Newscasters kept harping on what they called the infidel occupation. The footage reminded Sinclair of videos showing al-Qaeda celebrating the bombing of the Twin Towers.

  His buddies couldn’t stop talking about the bodies, even over meals. McCarthy had a morbid streak that alternately amused and disgusted Sinclair. It’s true you had to make light of all the blood and gore or you’d go stark raving mad. But there were limits.

  “Did you see the shapes of those things?” McCarthy kept saying.

  “Or lack thereof,” Wolf said.

  Nobody played devil’s advocate better than Staff Sergeant Wolf. Quintessentially cool himself, he liked to rile up everyone else. The more steam his men blew off at the base, the less pressure they felt on the battlefield. He was the only noncommissioned officer in the battalion who deigned to eat with grunts in the mess. He never pulle
d rank because he didn’t have to.

  “Do you think they hacked off the arms first, or did they melt?” A native Ohioan, McCarthy could pass for a cornfed choirboy until he opened his mouth. “Talk about a hot mess.”

  “Barbecue,” Wolf said. “Good old-fashioned barbecue, Fallujah-style.”

  Sinclair’s bunkmate, Logan, picked up his tray and moved to another table. He had given up trying to insist on decency. In turn, the platoon stopped making born-again jokes. They were willing to live and let live as long as he shut the hell up about God. Not that they wouldn’t lay down their lives to defend Christian values against jihadist fanatics. But they didn’t need to harp on the big guy upstairs to know he was on their side.

  Sinclair almost followed Logan, but he didn’t want guys to think he had a weak stomach. Wolf made them bunk together because they were both poker faces. Sinclair didn’t mind. Logan liked fly-fishing magazines and the same heavy-metal bands.

  “They’ll fry for it,” McCarthy said. “Washington’s pissed.”

  “Fuck Washington,” Trapp said. “Since when do they run the show?”

  Trapp was the oldest member of the platoon, a lifer who had despaired ever getting the chance to prove himself. He had served in the Gulf War. But that was child’s play, more like a computer game than combat. There was pretty much no one left to fight after all the laser-guided missiles hit home. Iraq was like a dream come true. This war was being fought on the ground. He could see the whites of the enemy’s eyes. Judging from their murderous expressions, Fallujans weren’t convinced that major combat operations in Iraq had ended.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Wolf said. “Baghdad’s the main attraction. We’re just a sideshow.”

  “More like coming attractions,” Trapp said. “Wait till folks back home in Mississippi hear about those Blackwater dudes.”

  “Crispy critters,” McCarthy said.

  “Hanging from what was left of their necks, no less.”

  “Could have been their thighs. Hard to tell.”

  “One good lynching deserves another, don’t you think?”

  “Not in Harlem,” Wolf said. “Anyway, why waste good rope when you can blow them to smithereens?”

  “Now you’re talking,” McCarthy said. “If they’d strung up marines instead of contractors, I wouldn’t even wait for orders. We’d wipe this goddamn town off the face of the map. No more pussyfooting around.”

  Central Command took a more measured approach. Kilo Company was ordered to cordon off a half-mile radius around the bridge. Once the area was secured, Sinclair’s platoon moved in to patrol its southern perimeter. As usual he was posted on sniper duty. He was the best shot in the platoon, maybe the whole company. All that hunting had paid off, provided you liked sniper duty. He was ambivalent about it. It offered a bird’s-eye view, but sometimes he felt left out. That particular day, he was relieved to be off the streets where the excitement they witnessed on TV bubbled beneath a superficial calm. Their platoon commander kept warning them to exercise extreme caution.

  “Fallujah’s a powder keg,” Lieutenant Radetzky said. “A few itchy trigger fingers and the whole province will explode.”

  “Bring it on,” McCarthy said, out of earshot.

  “Don’t let Radetzky hear you say that,” Sinclair said.

  “Yeah, right. Like he’s got time to listen, with Centcom barking his ear off.”

  Sinclair thought he heard cheering in the distance, an ominous sound in the wake of the Blackwater ambush. But it was probably just boys playing soccer, which they continued to do even in the midst of sporadic urban combat. He was stationed on a rooftop in Queens. Fallujah was laid out on a strict grid, like Manhattan, so the US Army had renamed neighborhoods after the Big Apple. They even posted makeshift signs next to Arab street names. Sinclair had taken these substitutions for granted until they heard the news that four desecrated bodies were hanging from Brooklyn Bridge. Somehow it brought barbarism too close to home.

  His battalion had been redeployed to Anbar Province just two weeks before the attack. They had spent a furlough back in the States after having distinguished themselves in the Battle of Baghdad. Most of them were raring to get back to Iraq. They were enlisted men, not National Guardsmen, lifers and patriots who answered the call of duty after 9/11. They hadn’t joined the US Marines to get an education. If the War on Terror wasn’t a holy war, it came pretty damned close.

  The first two weeks in Fallujah had seemed hopeful. They only realized in retrospect they had been kidding themselves. The departing Eighty-Second Airborne Division was disillusioned, but that was typical of the army. Marines were far more versatile. They were better equipped to carry out the next phase of operations, building a new free Iraq from the ground up. Sinclair’s battalion had already helped restore municipal services in several Shiite towns on the Tigris River. They prided themselves on a history of humanitarian campaigns, including the peacekeeping mission in Somalia. Winning the hearts and minds of the people of Fallujah seemed entirely possible after the liberation of Baghdad.

  Scores of military engineers and private contractors flooded into Fallujah. With the exception of occasional raids to round up suspected insurgents, marines shouldered their guns and worked with locals to rebuild the city’s infrastructure. They handed out candy and yo-yos to bashful kids with reticent mothers. Sinclair was usually stationed atop buildings, to make sure nothing happened to his buddies mingling with the crowd below. The idea was to neutralize the enemy by cultivating local support. Psychological operations units called it meet-and-greet detail. Hard-core gunners like McCarthy called it shooting the shit, a poor substitute for shooting bad guys.

  “Looks good on paper,” McCarthy said. “Not so good when you’re meeting and greeting suicide bombers.”

  A PSYOP officer pulled out an official report. They were always quoting statistics, like anyone gave a damn.

  “It worked in Habbaniyah,” he said. “Meet and greet outperformed search-and-destroy missions two to one.”

  “Habbaniyah isn’t Fallujah,” McCarthy said.

  “It’s a Sunni town.”

  “It’s Disneyland compared to this snake pit.”

  Sinclair was less skeptical. But then he was a sniper, not a gunner, more apt to bide his time than rush headlong into battle. The mood on the streets seemed to support the long view. Fallujans appeared optimistic, almost buoyant. Looking back, Sinclair wondered if it had all been an act. Either the people were complicit, or anticoalition forces hadn’t yet successfully infiltrated Fallujah.

  The Brooklyn Bridge debacle derailed everything. Sinclair’s outrage was more nuanced than that of the average consumer of the evening news. Those four security contractors had no business traipsing through Fallujah without military authorization. No doubt they were in a hurry, trying to squeeze in one last supply delivery before payday. Anything to make an extra buck. It wasn’t the first time Blackwater guards had taken matters into their own hands, threatening the success of the peacekeeping mission in Anbar Province. So much for meeting and greeting the Iraqi people.

  Central intelligence had identified the ringleaders responsible for the mutilations on the bridge. Within a day or two, US Special Forces would be ready to start hunting them down one by one. With such highly specialized assassins on hand, there was no earthly reason to launch an attack on the city. A full-force assault would only fan the fire of resentment smoldering in Fallujah, giving Ba’athists and jihadists the momentum they needed to recruit a steady stream of insurgents. Fallujah had not yet reached the tipping point. There were still more allies than enemies among civilians.

  The general of the Marine Expeditionary Force was already on the phone with Washington, explaining the volatile situation on the ground. He had never spoken directly with the White House, not even during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The voice on the other end of the line was peremptory. Impatient. The spectacle of hanging bodies dominated the conversation.

  “Cut to the ch
ase, General. Somebody needs to pay for this.”

  “Special Forces will track down the Brooklyn Bridge insurgents. That way marines can keep cultivating local support.”

  “Sounds like a mixed message to me.”

  “Sir?”

  “We need to broadcast, loud and clear, that nobody terrorizes Americans with impunity.”

  “Make no mistake. Sparing the innocent won’t compromise our vigilant resolve to punish the guilty.”

  “What about all those people cheering on the sidelines? You call them innocent?”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Does the word insubordination mean anything to you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m handing you a big stick, General. Use it.”

  Military men are trained to make strategic rather than emotional decisions, calculating the best way to achieve their objective with the least number of casualties. They never play to an audience. The image of those brutalized contractors, invading American homes on television, horrified the general no less than anyone else. But four bodies were never cause enough to put an entire battalion of soldiers at risk, let alone a city of civilians. The order to launch Operation Vigilant Resolve came from the top. The only traces of the general’s recommendations were the words vigilant and resolve.

  In Washington, the tactical shift from meet and greet to search and destroy was initiated before the bodies were even lowered from the bridge. Engineers and contractors were airlifted from the city. Tanks and bulldozers rolled in from Ramadi. Usually they spent weeks planning and rehearsing major offensives. This time the attack was scheduled to begin in forty-eight hours. Three of the four mutilated bodies had already been surrendered to the authorities. The fourth was purportedly en route. Everything was under control in Fallujah long before the commander in chief intervened.

  Back at the base after an uneventful night patrol, Sinclair and Logan prepared their gear for inspection. They had heard through the lance corporal grapevine that Special Forces were hot on the trail of the monsters responsible for the lynching. Presumably their platoon would back them up when they moved in for the kill. Sinclair and Logan never talked much. They both relished silence after the belligerent bravado of their buddies. Not that they didn’t love them. Military men seldom spoke of the bonds of blood that bound them. For all their talk of freedom and Christian values, or vengeance and retribution, the real reason they rushed headlong into battle was for each other.