Blackened Spiral Down (13 page)

Charles argued, wanting to go in the turret himself.  They were both sergeants with a rank of E-5, both on the list for staff sergeant once the deployment was over.  Carlos won, and as the patrol rode out at 0500 (5:00 am) that morning, he was already squinting at the merciless Iraqi sun rising on the horizon.  The captain was sipping his strong black army coffee, the two privates were putting in the first dip of the day into their bottom lips, Charles thought about his daughters and wondered what they were doing, and they rode down the already-crowded streets of Baghdad.

3

Peggy looked at Carlos, wondering if he was going to break down.  She heard so much misery in the stories that came back from Iraq.  It hurt her to see soldiers in such distress.  She took solace in the fact that she was able to help most of the soldiers.  Of course, some didn’t make it back from the dark side.  Suicides were all too common, and she felt each one like a railroad spike in her chest, wondering if she could have done something to save them from themselves.

She handed him a bottle of water.  “Are you OK, Carlos?” 

“Yeah,” he said after taking a drink, “but no matter what I do when I see that card, I can’t help but go to that day in the Humvee.”  His voiced cracked slightly at the end.  He appeared to be sweating a little.  He fidgeted on the love seat.

“I know.  That’s what the bodies are supposed to do, really.  In telling your story or experiencing it, we hope that you can begin to make sense of what happened, and know that you couldn’t have controlled it.”  Her eyes stayed on his.

“I just wished we could have traded places.  I would do anything to have been in his boots that day in Baghdad,” Carlos said, his eyes burning.  His throat felt tight.

Peggy leaned forward and struck a match, lighting one of her many Yankee candles.  The smell of that burning match took Carlos back to Baghdad. 

4

As their Humvee stopped on the side of the road, Carlos kept a sharp eye out from the turret.  It was well over 110 degrees outside, and despite this being his second tour in Iraq, it was still unbearably hot.  He took a drink from his canteen and was just about ready to ask the captain if it was OK for them to take a quick break to eat lunch before moving ahead.  They had a half case of MREs (meals ready to eat) and plenty of cold water in the back of the vehicle. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Carlos saw something move in one of the first floor windows of the four-story apartment building to his right.  The movement was quick, but everything slowed down to a crawl after that.  He heard a loud pop, almost like the sound of a model rocket – like the ones he played with as a kid growing up outside of Boulder, Colorado.  This was louder and more powerful, followed by a whooshing sound as a shoulder-mounted RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) made its way toward them.  Carlos let out a sharp yell, and he thought one of the privates did as well, but the rocket was upon the Humvee in a matter of moments.  Just before it impacted, Carlos noted the intense heat it gave off and the strong odor of sulfur.  The armor piercing round went through the captain’s side door like butter, leaving a gaping three-inch hole. 

What followed was sheer chaos.  The rocket sizzled through the Humvee, striking Captain Sharkey in the right forearm, then the left hand, severing the limbs from him in a split second.  He screamed out, blood pouring from the wounds and onto the dashboard, door and floor of the Humvee.  The rocket hit the metal frame and bounced toward Charles, hitting him square in the side of the head.  His lifeless body slumped toward the steering wheel as the rocket exited the Humvee, a pink mist in its wake. Carlos felt an intense burning in his legs, as shrapnel from the rocket tore into his flesh.  One of the privates in the rear of the vehicle pulled him down from the turret as they began to take small arms fire up close.  The entire exchange took less than one minute, as the soldier behind Charles got out of the Humvee and returned fire with his M-16. 

It was a bloodbath inside the Humvee.  Carlos kept shaking Charles by his right shoulder, hoping to get a sign of life.  There was nothing.  Carlos kept screaming out his name, but it was no use. 

5

Carlos was driving to Walmart in nearby Elizabethtown just after 2 o’clock in the morning.  He had just gone through the bodies in his pocket, and knew he needed to go out for a drive.  He did need some things at Walmart anyway, and the middle of the night was the best time for him to go.  He couldn’t be around crowds.  Even a few strangers bothered him, especially in a public place.  Carlos still perspired just thinking about walking the aisles and wondering if someone was going to jump out at him around the corner, or plant an explosive device amongst the produce. 

As he drove the winding back roads toward E-town, Carlos noticed flashing lights ahead.  As his truck approached, it appeared to be a young woman with two young children in a mid-sized car with their four-way hazard lights on, parked in the narrow shoulder of the road.  Fortunately, it was an open stretch of road, and at this time of night, there was no sign of other traffic.  Tension began to take hold as Carlos began to feel an anxiety attack come on.  He knew that in Iraq, terrorists often used civilians for cover to hide bombs and other explosives to trick Americans.  Despite those feelings rushing over him, Carlos slowed down to see if he could be of help.  He reminded himself he was in Kentucky and not Baghdad.  As he approached the car, he noticed a large bag of trash in the tall grass in the ditch.  He swerved away from it and decided to park in front of her.  Seeing trash on the road made him think about Iraq again and how terrorists would conceal their roadside bombs in trash.  It was incredible how many things would trigger him to think about that shithole of a place – halfway around the world.

“Oh my God, thank you for stopping!” the young woman said, nearly hysterical.  “I tried to call my husband, but my phone’s battery is dead.  It looks like a flat tire.”  Her eyes were red like she had been crying.  “I just got off work and picked my boys up at the babysitter’s.”

“No problem, ma’am, I can change it for you if you want.”  He still felt apprehensive about the bag of trash, but tried to put it out of his mind so he could help this young mother who was obviously in major distress.  He thought about Kayla and CJ and hoped someone would do the same for them.  Still, Carlos felt like his heart was going to tear through his chest.  He did his best to conceal those fears.

As he started loosening the lug nuts, he noticed a strong burnt tire smell.  She must have driven on the flat tire more than she should have. The odor of burning tires was a trigger.  It was something he woke up to every day during both of his tours to Iraq.  Over there it was akin to coffee and bacon in the morning.  As Carlos continued to loosen the lug nuts, he could hear the sound of small arms fire in his head.  He could strongly smell burning tires and trash he could hear, and a group of people chanting and yelling in Arabic.  He closed his eyes and shook his head to try and come back to reality, but Carlos was back in the Humvee with Charles slumped over the wheel.  Once he was struck with the rocket, the vehicle veered off the road and was sideways in a ditch.  The intense pain that Carlos was feeling in his legs from the shrapnel was incredible, but he knew that the captain was in major trouble with his injuries, and one of the privates had taken a significant amount of shrapnel to his chest and face.  He was also in shock, like the captain, and covered in blood.

“Kids, you need to sit down and let this nice man change the tire,” the young woman said, as Carlos snapped out of his vivid memory of the incident.

The kids were probably seven or eight, and both of them were making funny faces out the side window to get the attention of Carlos.  They began to bang on the glass and once again, it was a familiar noise that took him to Baghdad.

With the Humvee flipped over in the ditch, Carlos was doing his best to get out of the vehicle and call for help.  With the bright sun of an early afternoon in June, it was scorching hot outside, and now some of the locals gathered around.  In his jumbled state of mind, Carlos was doing his best to assess the situation.  All the training and experience of dealing with crisis situations was coming to him, but knowing his best friend was dead only a few feet from him was beginning to cloud his judgement.  He was feeling around for his M-16, but it was nowhere to be found.  He was able to reach for Captain Sharkey’s sidearm, a 9mm pistol, and held it firmly in his grasp, in case the crowd rushed toward him.  As the Iraqis began to circle the wreck, they began to taunt him even more.  Some of the younger children were hurling rocks at the Humvee, while Carlos tried to raise someone on the radio to come help.  The chanting of “death to America” made his blood boil, and Carlos hoped help would come his way sooner than later, as more locals joined the fray – their chants and cries almost deafening in the blinding afternoon sun.

6

Sergeant Charles Davenport woke up after his third surgery in two days at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center only a few miles from the Rammstein Air Base in Germany.  His mind was still cluttered and groggy, as the events of June 8
th
continued to play out in his head.  He couldn’t believe Carlos was gone.  He didn’t envy Colonel Edwards having to write another one of those letters to the next of kin, in this case it would have been Kayla.  Charles thought about her getting that dreaded personal visit from the unit chaplain, telling her that Carlos was killed in action, and it was too much for him to bear.  He knew that little CJ would never get to know his father and how much he loved him. They told Charles that after he recovered from this last surgery, he would be sent stateside to the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.  It was likely he would be getting out with a medical discharge due to the extensive nerve damage to his legs, caused by the shrapnel wounds when their Humvee was hit with an RPG.  Doctors expected him to be able to walk eventually with plenty of physical therapy and patience.

The door of his room opened, and a middle-aged woman sat down next to him and held his hand.  “Good morning, Sergeant.  It’s good to see you wide awake.”

Charles thought her smile was warm, unlike the coldness of the hospital room he was in.

“I know you’ve been through a lot, Sergeant.  My name is Peggy Whitney.  I’m one of the psychologists here.  I’m sorry to hear about the loss of Sergeant Rivas.  I heard you two were close,” she said, trying her best to smile.

“Yeah, we were.”  His eyes began to well up with tears, and he was unable to look her in the face.  “I feel guilty that it wasn’t me.”

“That’s a normal reaction.  We call it survivor’s guilt.  I read through the after action report, and Private Gardner, who was the only soldier uninjured in the attack, said that you both argued about who was going to be in the turret on that patrol.  It says here that you insisted on it, and Sergeant Rivas finally relented and drove the Humvee.”

7

It’s amazing how the mind works.  They say that when you die, your life flashes before your eyes.  In the case of Sergeant Rivas, who was the driver of the Humvee that day in June, he saw that rocket only for a split second before it hit his head – killing him instantly.  In that fraction of a second, he thought about what it would be like to go home and feel the guilt of his good friend, Sergeant Davenport, dying instead of him.  His mind took him through going home and losing his own wife and son, going to therapy to deal with the loss and his own injuries, and even the incident changing the tire that caused a flashback.  His mind even conjured up an interesting therapy of imagining all the negative things in his head as bodies in his pocket.  The irony of it all was that one of those bodies in his pocket was his own.

Killing Machine

(first chapter of the upcoming novel “Six”)

1

            
 
Benito Martinez leaned back in his chair with one foot up on the small wood security desk.  He held a stained Illini mug, filled with the blackest coffee he could stomach, and a cigarette dangled from his lips.  He was barely awake pulling all-night Christmas Eve duty.  He definitely drew the short straw this year, not only for getting the Christmas shift, but for some commotion that occurred at the start of his shift with one of the patients.  A tiny excuse for a television, with a rabbit-ear antenna, was sitting on a nearby shelf, playing a marathon of sappy Christmas movies.  His eyes were glazing over when the shrill ring of the desk phone nearly knocked him backwards and caused him to spill his coffee all over the desk.  It was 11pm.

              “Security desk.  Martinez speaking,” he said, putting his cigarette out in a heaped-over ashtray. He cringed at the sting of heartburn from the strong coffee and vending machine junk food.  He reached for a roll of paper towels to clean up the mess, with the phone cradled on his shoulder and left ear.