Weapons of Mass Destruction Page 6

  “Must have their own lookouts.”

  “Could be a cell nearby.”

  “That much traffic?”

  “All in the same direction. South by southwest.”

  Sinclair reported these traffic patterns to Radetzky. Several other platoon lieutenants had fielded similar reports. Together they were able to map out a web of retreat routes converging on a sector just west of their location. Radetzky contacted Captain Phipps, requesting permission to temporarily suspend independent search-and-destroy missions. He proposed consolidating as many platoons as possible to execute a sting operation. Phipps passed the recommendation on to battalion headquarters.

  “Permission granted,” Colonel Denning said. “But you’d better make damn sure it’s a cell and not a sewing circle.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Civilian casualties. Bad press. You name it, Phipps. We could use a clear-cut victory to silence the doves.”

  “Doves? I thought all the hawks in Washington were on the warpath.”

  “Just as many doves in Baghdad. Tell Radetzky to find that cell and make it snappy.”

  “Yessir.”

  “I’ve got tanks all dressed up with nowhere to go. Let’s fill their dance cards.”

  Colonel Denning and Captain Phipps were divided over how to negotiate the persistent presence of civilians on the battlefield. It was up to Radetzky to figure out how to execute conflicting orders. Captain Phipps had all but told them to shoot everything that moved. The colonel’s more prudent approach was more in line with Radetzky’s own disposition. But the question remained whether he could protect civilians while at the same time safeguarding his men. Too often, prudence and safety were mutually exclusive.

  Captain Phipps could only spare one other platoon. Its commander, Lieutenant Lloyd, had served with Radetzky in Afghanistan. Both had classical music collections. They bonded over the Ring Cycle. Though neither of them broadcast their love of opera, they were privately gratified when PSYOP units blasted “Ride of the Valkyries” to rally the troops. What their sound systems lacked in acoustics they made up for in volume.

  The two lieutenants deployed five squads to form a circle around the suspected cell site. Radetzky attached Sinclair’s team to Wolf’s squad. The action might be too fast and furious to involve sharpshooting. But Sinclair could still act as the eyes and ears of the offensive, monitoring the results of feints designed to confirm the target location. Every time a squad advanced toward what Radetzky called the beehive, a team of enemy drones emerged to protect the queen. What had once been a luxurious townhouse was now a terrorist cell, the sinister version of what marines called tactical operations centers.

  Once they advanced far enough into East Manhattan, American troops also commandeered family homes. They were instructed to treat them with respect. Heirlooms were neatly stacked in corners and covered with tarps to protect them from fallout. China closets were searched without breaking a single sugar bowl. This kind of fatuous politesse scandalized McCarthy. Taking time out for what he called tea parties jeopardized men’s lives.

  “We’re marines, goddamnit. Not Avon ladies.”

  McCarthy was a disciple of General Sherman, an icon of the no-nonsense school of American military history. Declaring that war is hell was his way of acknowledging the brutality of battle. Pretending otherwise tended to exacerbate rather than ameliorate the devastation. One way or the other, precious cups and saucers were bound to suffer collateral damage. Alas. This time around, the platoon was authorized to dispense with gratuitous niceties. It was their first real chance to engage an actual enemy outpost, a welcome relief from the tedium of clearing houses. They were riding high because Sinclair had been instrumental in identifying the target. A little too high.

  Wolf’s squad was assigned to the southern arc of the offensive, closest to Phase Line Violet. Only a quarter of a mile separated them from the industrial sector, which had already been targeted by Battalion 1/5. Their position was crucial. If insurgents survived the initial attack, they would probably retreat in a southerly direction toward the area not yet cleared. Wolf’s squad was tasked with cutting off their escape route. Plugging the hole was half the battle. Sometimes defense was the best offense.

  “Secure a bunker,” Radetzky ordered. “No telling how many hajjis will show up on your doorstep.”

  “We’ll be ready for them.”

  Wolf chose the most imposing residence in the neighborhood, presumably the home of a Ba’athist bigwig. Percy and Sinclair staked out SMAW and sniper nests on the roof, a dynamic duo of brute strength and patient precision. Evans was tasked with backing them up. Out of habit, he stationed himself next to Sinclair. It felt right, fighting side-by-side again. Just like the good old days. The other gunners were posted at strategic windows in the compound below. Next thing they knew, tanks started rolling into the area. For good measure, a fleet of Bradleys was deployed to negotiate alleys too narrow to accommodate the big boys. Sacrificing stealth for firepower hadn’t been Radetzky’s idea, that’s for sure. Colonel Denning’s fingerprints were all over the op plan.

  The grinding of tank treads on pavement must have alerted the cell. The whole block exploded as insurgents attempted to beat the big guns to the draw. Their survival depended on breaching the circle of squads before mounted artillery could finish them off. Lieutenant Lloyd’s platoon dominated the firefight on the northern perimeter. Radetzky’s men held their ground until Wolf’s compound started taking heat from behind. The enemy had outflanked them. They were surrounded.

  “Insurgents moving in from the south,” Wolf reported into his headset.

  “How many?” Radetzky demanded.

  “Twenty. Thirty. A lot.”

  “Hang tough. We’re on our way.”

  Sinclair stashed his sniper rifle and grabbed his automatic. Percy launched a series of rockets twice the size of the insurgents’ best stuff. Evans was in his element, simulating an entire legion of marines. But there were only ten of them and untold numbers of enemy grenade launchers, difficult to locate in the smoky glare. If they were lucky, their assailants would overestimate the strength of their position based on the amount of ammunition the squad managed to pump out. Their only hope was to hold out until tanks crashed through the skirmish line.

  “We’re right behind you,” Colonel Denning said. “Tanks are pounding the cell now. Then we’ll roll those babies your way.”

  Even through the din of grenade explosions, they could hear and almost feel the tremendous concussion of tank bombardment in the distance. The main operation was proceeding according to plan. But Wolf’s squad was beleaguered. Insurgents were making mad dashes toward their compound, zigzagging to avoid trampling the bodies of fallen comrades. Their eyes shone with conviction. Facing almost certain death in their attempt to storm the bunker, they sprinted toward Allah, guns blazing.

  The gunners on the ground floor were calling for reinforcements. Wolf ordered Sinclair to back them up. For the first time during the offensive, he descended from his rooftop perch into the belly of the beast. Confronting the enemy at almost point-blank range triggered a sense memory. They looked like suicide bombers, fanatics intent on blowing themselves up for the glory of some random god. Sinclair’s phobia gripped him. He focused on their torsos, not daring to look at their faces. It felt like their expressions alone could kill him. Bullets ripped their bodies apart midstride, and their faces just kept coming. He squeezed the trigger so hard his finger went numb. Let them all rush to meet their maker as long as they didn’t take him along for the ride.

  Wolf detected an almost imperceptible change in the squad’s firepower. One of their guns had fallen silent. He ordered Trapp to investigate and man the position himself, if need be. The whole squad heard the exchange. The fact that Wolf sent Trapp didn’t bode well. Their first and only priority under siege was engaging the enemy. Wounded men were expected to keep fighting until the threat was contained. But they all knew Trapp would be
nd the rules if the gunner in question urgently needed medical attention. He didn’t.

  Evans had been shot dead, a single bullet wound to the head. He fell as though hugging the barrel of his automatic. When Trapp pulled him aside to assume his position, he saw that his cheek had been branded by the smoldering muzzle. He wanted to compose the face, to succor the anguished expression before it froze forever in a death mask. But bullets were pinging helter-skelter, snapping Trapp back into action. In a rage over the loss of his buddy, he grabbed his gun and let loose. Whatever opening the enemy might have seized was slammed shut with a frenzied burst of rounds.

  “Evans must have been hit,” Wolf said.

  Exceptional squad leaders can recognize the signature styles of their gunners. Trapp was at the wheel now, driving like a maniac.

  “Let’s get him off the roof!” Sinclair shouted.

  “Maintain your position,” Wolf ordered. “Trapp’s got him covered.”

  Insurgents had given up on the idea of taking the compound by storm. Plan B evidently consisted of mounting an attack from several adjacent compounds. Wolf adjusted his strategy accordingly. His main objective was to prevent access to the only other three-story building within striking distance. If enemy grenade launchers managed to secure higher ground, the squad would be done for. He kept yelling into his headset, trying to contact the tactical operations center. Either the radio was dead or the blare of battle was drowning out their directives. Sequestering himself in a closet, he wrapped a pillow around his head as he strained to hear. Seconds later he rushed back out.

  “Prepare to evacuate!” he hollered.

  The order seemed incredible. The squad was surrounded. Outnumbered. They would be mowed down the minute they stepped foot outside the compound. But nothing justified second-guessing their commander. Sinclair obeyed instantaneously, without thinking. McCarthy was several steps behind him, swearing a blue streak as they raced down the hallway past a pair of gunners still cranking out rounds. The only conceivable explanation was that they hadn’t heard the command.

  “Evacuate the compound!” Sinclair bellowed.

  “What?” they screamed back.

  “Evacuate! Pronto!”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Wolf’s orders.”

  They grabbed their gear and joined the exodus. Wolf raced up the stairs to make sure the rest of the squad followed suit. On the roof, Trapp and Percy were equally incredulous, but they lowered their guns. Trapp started to prepare Evans’s body for evacuation. Wolf intervened.

  “Not now.”

  “It’s okay,” Trapp said, intending to hoist Evans onto his back. “I’ve got him.”

  “We’ll be back,” Wolf said. “I promise.”

  Wolf was responsible for protecting the living and honoring the dead, in that order. He knew full well Trapp would make the ultimate sacrifice, even for a lost cause. It was a Southern thing. In the midst of the melee, Trapp had removed Evans’s flak jacket and spread it over his body, as though to protect him from fallout. He left a bandana folded under his bloodied head, cushioning his wounds. His Vietnam buddies swore by this ritual, a kind of good luck charm to protect life or, at the very least, limb. When the wounded recovered, they returned the bandana to its owner. Trapp always packed several in his ruck, hoping not to use them. Planning to get them back if he did. The platoon had never lost a man before.

  Wolf led the way down the stairwell. Everybody else had congregated in the entrance hall of the compound. The attack still raged, unabated, AK-47 fire punctuated by RPG explosions just beyond the doorstep. If anything, the pace had picked up and the din was more deafening. Wolf radioed the tactical operations center again, confirming their readiness. Then he gave the signal, obeying his superiors with the same blind faith his squad mustered to obey him.

  “Go!” Wolf shouted. “Straight ahead and just keep running!”

  When they burst out the door, they saw a column of US Marines covering their flight with the legion of weapons they themselves had simulated during the shoot-out. In the distance they heard tanks grinding forward, already beginning to discharge missiles overhead. The enemy’s feeble attempts to defend themselves melted in the ensuing conflagration. Their remains, if there were any, would be impossible to distinguish from the rubble. Trapp thought of Evans as he sprinted to safety, hanging on to Wolf’s promise that they would return to honor his body.

  The bombardment only lasted fifteen minutes. Even so, it was probably overkill. The squad watched from a safe zone three blocks north as smoke cleared and relative silence made their ears ring. A bird chirped outside the window of their refuge. Several men laughed at the innocent absurdity of the sound. They laughed because they were alive. Sinclair marveled at the resilience, or indifference, of nature. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, they had decimated one of the few desert towns that made the mistake of resisting the inevitable. As they prepared to move on to the next target, a pair of snakes slithered across their path. Apart from avoiding sticky pools of blood, they seemed oblivious to the death and destruction wrought by their human counterparts. Was their sphere so separate that the violence of war didn’t register? Not that it mattered in the grand scheme of things. Survival compelled them all to carry on as though nothing had happened. To acknowledge the enormity of the carnage would be to die of fear alone.

  A single building was left standing. Wolf and Trapp exchanged nods. There are times when the military actually becomes the well-oiled piece of machinery it aspires to be. Everything had worked perfectly. Scouts located the cell, the advance guard held the line, and tanks hit targets with the selective precision of snipers, leveling everything in sight without disturbing Evans’s mausoleum. The various appendages of the battalion had communicated as one mighty soldier, preserving his body so that he, alone among the corpses strewn across the battlefield, could be honored.

  Corpses. They avoided using this word in reference to America’s fallen heroes. It was too impersonal. Too morbid. Men like Evans were exempt from the finality of death. Their bodies were shrines, not corpses, even when they were mangled beyond recognition. The tomb at Arlington Cemetery didn’t honor the disembodied idea of an unknown soldier. Someone was actually buried there. No matter how nameless and faceless, his body was sacred. Enduring. A physical reminder that the bodies of lost warriors, wherever they were, were unforgotten. Patriotism wasn’t just an abstraction. The nation was built on the flesh and blood of men willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for causes that never die.

  Sinclair joined Wolf and Trapp at a bedroom window. They offered him a Camel. He dipped a chew of Skoal instead. They stood surveying the smoldering remains of the neighborhood until Trapp stubbed out his cigarette.

  “I’m going back in,” Trapp said.

  “I’m coming with you,” Sinclair said.

  “There’s no need,” Wolf said. “A medevac team is on its way.”

  “It’s Evans.”

  Wolf started to say something, then thought better of it. He stared at the building rising out of the rubble.

  “You’re right,” Wolf finally said. “It’s Evans.”

  Unstable wreckage kept collapsing under them, impeding their progress back to the bunker. The stretcher bearers were ill equipped to traverse the wasteland. They borrowed combat gloves to avoid cutting their hands on shattered glass. Eventually Sinclair and Wolf offered to carry the stretcher. At least their knee guards and body armor broke their falls. When they finally crossed the threshold of Evans’s stronghold, Trapp asked the medics to wait while he and Sinclair retrieved the body. This request deviated from standard operating procedure, but they complied without question. Surely Evans deserved a moment alone with his buddies before beginning his long lonely journey back home.

  Evans was right where they had left him, miraculously preserved. Gently, with deference to his undiminished right to privacy, Trapp started going through his personal effects. Official regulations assigned this task to medevac units, who were ch
arged with bagging up belongings for bereaved families. But platoons had their own unofficial rites. Trapp knew exactly what Evans would have wanted his buddies to have and to hold. They had fought together for almost a year. They shared knowledge of what was truly important. He took a good luck charm from Evans’s breast pocket, a fossil he had found in the al-Hajarah Desert. More than anything else, this talisman belonged to the platoon.

  “If this bug can survive fifty million years,” Evans always said, “we can survive this goddamn war.”

  Trapp turned to show Sinclair the fossil, to acknowledge their friend’s thwarted will to live. He wasn’t there. Still shaken from the squad’s brush with death, Trapp thought Sinclair had been snatched from him by unseen enemies. The idea that insurgents could have survived the bombardment was irrational, and he knew it. Twelve straight hours of combat had taken its toll on his nerves. He started reciting the serenity prayer, a vestige of his brief encounter with twelve-step programs before the armed forces sobered him up. By the time he got to the part about accepting the things he couldn’t change, he caught sight of Sinclair. His head was barely peeking out of the stairwell, staring wild-eyed at Evans.

  Sinclair had witnessed untold numbers of enemy corpses. He had gathered up the severed limbs of fellow marines, piecing them back together in body bags. Nothing could have prepared him for the sight of Evans’s fatal wound. All it took was a single bullet to the head. Another casualty on another continent besieged Sinclair, a flashback to something he’d never witnessed in the first place. The shot must have echoed through the forest, though no one was there to hear it. A single bullet through the roof of the mouth, angled just right. To do it to yourself, you have to pull the trigger with your toe. Jesus fucking Christ.

  “Sinclair,” Trapp said. “What’s wrong, man?”

  They heard the medevac unit on the stairs, ascending with the stretcher. At least Trapp did. Sinclair seemed deaf, dumb, everything but blind. He was obviously seeing far more than met the eye. Trapp intercepted the medics, drawing them to one side.