House to House: A Tale of Modern War (30 page)

Now my imagination conjures a scene: my severed head, a grimy hand pulling my bloody dog tags free.

That’s never gonna happen. Never—gonna—happen—.

He’s mind-fucking me, this one behind the door. I can’t see him. I start to tremble. I fight it, but I can’t control my body’s physical reaction to this terror.

I can either go to pieces completely, or mind-fuck him back.

“Okay, listen up. I know you are not going to motherfucking stop. You know I am not going to motherfucking stop.
La ta quiome.
”

La ta quiome
is my broken Arabic best for “Do not resist.”

The enemy behind the door sniggers. He spits a curse in his native language. Sometimes it sounds like Arabic and sometimes it sounds totally different. Could that have been Farsi?

Am I fucking fighting Iranians in here?

“Mommy will never find your body.”

His words are like a stiletto to my self-control. My entire body shakes violently. My stomach heaves. I’m verging on hysteria.

“I’ll give you one last chance, or I’m gonna kill you! Fuck you, bitch,” I sound like a raspy pubescent boy whose voice has just broken.

The man behind the door mutters something. All I understand is “
Fajarah,
” which means “evil one.”

Wrong. Who is the evil one here, you motherfucker?

“You scared of me, faggot? You little godless whore?
La ta quiome Amerki mooshot wahed.
” Do not resist American First Infantry.

I try one more time to recite my best Arabic from my First Infantry Division’s
Surviving in Arabic
handbook we received back in Germany.

“Nah noo Amreekee oon. Man al massol?”
We are Americans. Who is in charge?

A voice calmly whispered from the hallway near the kitchen, “Allah. Al hum da Allah.” I immediately recognize this as “God, all blessed God.”

Frustrated, I screamed back, “La ta khaf, mujahideen. Al hum da allah.”
Do not be afraid, mujahideen. God is blessed.

This doesn’t rattle him. In fact, my words only encourage the one behind the door.

“I’ll cut your head off.” His accented English is smooth and so cold and calculated that I can tell he thinks he’s got the upper hand on me. He thinks he’s in control. He’s going to take his time.

He speaks a few more words in his native language. They are measured and slow. It still doesn’t sound like Arabic. I wonder if I’m hallucinating.

Have I completely fucking flipped out?

I sense movement. I flick my NODs down and give them one more try. This time, they work. In the dim greenish outline of the doorway, I catch a glimpse of a man’s shoulder and arm. He’s peering inside to look for me. He’s given me a shoulder.

Big mistake.

Another overdose of adrenaline surges into my system. I have him.

My infrared laser pins a long white line right on his shoulder. I squeeze the trigger. The M16 shatters the quiet. His shoulder explodes. He shrieks and falls into the doorway. He must have been standing on the last stair, leaning in. Now he’s slipped, and he’s mine.

I pump four more rounds into him. He tries to shoot me, and he may have gotten a shot off. In the chaos, I can’t tell if he’s fired, but I can tell who he is. This is the man from under the stairs who ran into the kitchen at the start of the fight. I recognize his wife-beater T-shirt and well-trimmed beard.

I thought I shot you twice already. What the hell?

He lands on the floor, bullets in his shoulder, chest, and stomach.

He’s got to be dead this time. Right?

I peer over the side of the armoire. All I see is an indistinct shape flopped on the floor in the doorway. I can’t tell if he’s moving or not. Right then, I hear another moan from somewhere else in the house. It is hollowed out and dull this time, as if whoever made it is close to death.

I duck behind the armoire to think.

What now? What are you going to do now?

I finger my last full magazine.

Always recharge your shit.

Sergeant Major Darrin Bohn’s words ring in my head again. He’s our command sergeant major now that Faulkenburg is dead.

Faulkenburg. The thought of him sends a curl of anger through me. I shudder and curse under my breath.

He’s fucking dead. Use it. Use the anger and the grief. Use it to kill these guys.

I’m not leaving this house, not until this is finished.

A competing image of my wife and son flash into view. It is Halloween, and my son is dressed in a miniature set of camouflage. He has my name tape Velcroed to his chest. Deanna’s getting him ready to go trick-or-treating. She’s so damn beautiful—full lips, shoulder-length brown hair, and those green eyes that always devastated me.

They are gonna be so hurt when the contact team knocks on their door.

No, fuck no. I can’t think of them. That’ll destroy me. If I think about them, I’ll lose my nerve and then I’ll never get home to them.

I focus on Faulkenburg and I imagine the sight of his broken body in the street. I think about Rosales, Sprayberry, Garyantes, Prewitt, and Vandayburg—all the men we’ve lost. Rage boils.

That’s right. Use it. Feed it in. Turn it to hate. Use it. It is your fuel. Use it.

I take a deep breath and hold it. My nerves are flayed from the whipsaw of emotions. I know I don’t have much left, but I am not going to quit. I can’t.

I rise up from behind the armoire. The darkness is total; the tracers have burned themselves out.

Deanna. Evan. I’m sorry. I can’t leave this fight. This is what I am. A warrior. It is my blood oath. If I turn my back on that again, I will be nothing and I can’t face that.

I creep around the mattress, M16 at the ready. When I reach the doorway, I nearly slip. The water here is deeper and cloudy, probably from blood.

Neither corpse is in the doorway. I study the floor. Dark slicks of blood trail off into the stairwell room. It looks like one or both of them crawled into the kitchen.

Do I go finish them off and face the threat of somebody coming down the stairs again? I could get shot in the back as I go into the kitchen. Or do I go upstairs and face the bandolier-wearing Boogeyman from the closet? He’s up there, somewhere in the darkness, waiting for me to do just that.

Or do I leave, get the rest of the squad and do this right.

No! I brought this on myself. I have to finish it.

Lawson is wounded. He’s wounded because I didn’t finish this the first time. I will not risk another man.

Fuck it.

I step through the doorway and onto the stairs. Eyes on the landing, I drop my current magazine out of the M16. I catch it and sling it into my pouch, then search for my last fresh one. I seize it and slam it home. The new mag makes a metallic
snick
as it snaps into place. I’ve got twenty-nine rounds in the mag and one in the pipe.

I begin to climb the stairs. There’s no turning back now.

The image of my boy in his costume tumbles through my mind again. I hear his little voice in my head. It is the last thing he said to me on the phone before I left for Fallujah.

“I am going to save you, Daddy.”

I’m sorry, buddy. I love you. I’m so sorry.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Last Caress

A desolate soul, bereft of hope, climbs the stairs. There is nothing left in me; I feel the emptiness like a weight on my chest.

I take another step and pause. I hear nothing but the racing of my own heart and the rush of blood through my ears. Maybe he isn’t waiting for me. Maybe the house is clear.

I take another step and pause. Suddenly I become aware of the sounds of the night outside the house. I hear shouting. An AC-130 Spectre rumbles overhead, searching for targets. The throb of the Bradley’s engine rises from the street. Voices step all over each other and melt together in a confusion of babble.

I’m dimly aware that Fitts is firing his shotgun. I hear two blasts. I have no idea where he is, or how far away.

I take another step. Two more to go and I’m at the landing.

Like a savage animal, I sniff the air. A pungent scent hits my nostrils. It is the Boogeyman. His appalling stench lingers in the air here. He’s close.

I take another step with my right foot, only to slip on a slick puddle of blood. My head bobs down and I fight to retain my balance. Just then, a muzzle blast erupts right above my head, not a yard in front of me. The flame spouting from the AK casts flickering shadows on the stairwell wall. I see the shape of the Boogeyman outlined there, his shadow wielding its rifle in my direction. I feel the bullet whir right over my Kevlar. It jars my teeth.

I should be dead. That should have killed me. If I hadn’t slipped on his blood, I’d have a bullet hole in my forehead.

In a half crouch, I sling the M16 up and fire a wild shot at the landing. My bullet embeds itself in the far wall. But in the light of my muzzle, I see his face. I’ve missed him, but I see his eyes. They’re full of fear. He’s afraid, and that emboldens me.

“You’re gonna fucking die, dude.”

He runs for it. I hear him clatter up the second flight of stairs.

I move to the landing and follow him around to the next flight of stairs. Smoke swirls trail in my wake. We’ve filled the stairwell with cordite and gunpowder.

A slip of one foot saved my life.

I can’t possibly have any luck left now. The top of the stairs awaits. All I see is darkness.

I see a contact team at my door back home in New York. They’re dressed in Class As and look appropriately sober. My wife is tearing up in the doorway, Evan clinging to her without understanding the moment.

I am hallucinating.

I see a sea of tombstones. My mother stands at one, lost and alone. Born November 10, died November 10. Her youngest gone.

How would Evan react? Would he grow up embittered and confused? Would he wonder why his father chose a foreign shore and a fight with strangers over being his dad? Deanna has always been bitter about that. After Kosovo, I could have come home. I chose to go to Iraq. I remember her parting words: “You’ve chosen the army over us.”

Maybe I have. But how could I have let my soldiers go without me? What kind of man would do that? I had to be there with them, to take care of somebody else’s son, somebody else’s husband. I had to make sure they came home.

I hear movement up ahead. A boot scrape and a grunt tell me the insurgent is not far away.

I’ve hardly seen Evan these past three years. I’ve missed most of his life.

I hear another grunt. He sounds like he’s moving farther away now.

My elbow aches. I try to ignore it. I refuse to check the wound, still afraid of what I might find.

I take a step into the blackness. The toe of my boot slides up the next stair and finds footing. I’m three from the top now. I still can’t see anything. I try my night vision again. Nothing. This will have to be done with bare eyes.

How long will they mourn? Will Evan even care? Or will he just hate me for never being a part of his life?

Stop it. Get a handle on yourself.

Where will I be buried?

This morbid, evil voice wants me to die. It baits me. It wants me to fail. Why am I so self-destructive? Is it guilt? Is it that I don’t think I deserve to live?

Fuck it. This has to stop.

I hesitate on the last stair. For a second I clear my head completely. A deep breath fills my lungs. The night air is cold and fouled with so many terrible smells from the house. Blood. Rotting fish and stagnant water. Filthy bodies. Smoke and sulfur. Am I sure I’m not in hell?

A shredder. I see a shredder.

With careful deliberation, in my mind’s eye I feed every image and every memory of my family into the shredder. The tattered pieces fall out the bottom.

No more of this. It stops here.

I’m on the second floor now. There’s a door to a rooftop balcony at my side. Another doorway looms down the hall. My enemy is in there.

I have a grenade. One frag. It is upside down inside the pouch on my body armor. I know this is the time to use it. I should have used it going up the stairs, but I wasn’t thinking clearly.

I pull the tape off, extract the pin, and hold the spoon down. I inch along the hallway to the door. This is the most vulnerable moment. He’s probably waiting on the other side, ready to shoot whatever part of my body I give him, exactly as I did to his buddy downstairs in the bedroom.

I peer inside anyway.

He’s standing in the middle of an L-shaped room, a dark figure swathed in blackness. I cannot see his face. He’s just a form, a shadow. A wraith.

I hold the grenade to my right ear and release the spoon.

PFFTT.

One…two…three….

I throw the grenade and see it strike him right on the head. He recoils from it as the grenade spins off behind him and disappears. I duck into the hallway and back away from the door.

Boom!
In these tight confines, the blast is shattering. My ears ring. Smoke boils from the room. I hear a grunt, then a moan.

I got him.

I spin into the room, M16 steadied on my shoulder.

He is lying on the floor, a chunk of flesh torn from his right forearm.

I’m about to fire and kill him when I smell propane. It gives me pause. I look around the room for the source. In one corner, a pile of foam sleeping mats are smoldering. Oily black smoke leaches off them. Tendrils wick along the ceiling and intermingle. Soon, the room will be full of smoke.

Two propane tanks rest at my feet. Stacks of them line the wall. The entire room is nothing more than a giant bomb.

If I trigger my M16, will the tracer set the propane off? I have no idea. I can’t risk it.

The wounded Boogeyman stirs. He’s flat on his back, but he still holds his AK in one hand.