Redeployment (2 page)

And that was my homecoming. It was fine, I guess. Getting back feels like your first breath after nearly drowning. Even if it hurts, it’s good.

I can’t complain. Cheryl handled it well. I saw Lance
Corporal Curtis’s wife back in Jacksonville. She spent all his combat pay before he got back, and she was five months pregnant, which, for a Marine coming back from a seven-month deployment, is not pregnant enough.

Corporal Weissert’s wife wasn’t there at all when we got back. He laughed, said she probably got the time wrong, and O’Leary gave him a ride to his house. They get there and it’s empty. Not just of people, of everything: furniture, wall hangings, everything. Weissert looks at this shit and shakes his head, starts laughing. They went out, bought some whiskey, and got fucked up right there in his empty house.

Weissert drank himself to sleep, and when he woke up, MacManigan was right next to him, sitting on the floor. And MacManigan, of all people, was the one who cleaned him up and got him into base on time for the classes they make you take about, Don’t kill yourself. Don’t beat your wife. And Weissert was like, “I can’t beat my wife. I don’t know where the fuck she is.”

That weekend they gave us a ninety-six, and I took on Weissert duty for Friday. He was in the middle of a three-day drunk, and hanging with him was a carnival freak show filled with whiskey and lap dances. Didn’t get home until four, after I dropped him off at Slaughter’s barracks room, and I woke Cheryl coming in. She didn’t say a word. I figured she’d be mad, and she looked it, but when I got in bed she rolled over to me and gave me a little hug, even though I was stinking of booze.

Slaughter passed Weissert to Addis, Addis passed him to Greeley, and so on. We had somebody with him the whole weekend until we were sure he was good.

When I wasn’t with Weissert and the rest of the squad, I sat on the couch with Vicar, watching the baseball games Cheryl’d taped for me. Sometimes Cheryl and I talked about her seven months, about the wives left behind, about her family, her job, her boss. Sometimes she’d ask little questions. Sometimes I’d answer. And glad as I was to be in the States, and even though I hated the past seven months and the only thing that kept me going was the Marines I served with and the thought of coming home, I started feeling like I wanted to go back. Because fuck all this.

The next week at work was all half days and bullshit. Medical appointments to deal with injuries guys had been hiding or sucking up. Dental appointments. Admin. And every evening, me and Vicar watching TV on the couch, waiting for Cheryl to get back from her shift at Texas Roadhouse.

Vicar’d sleep with his head in my lap, waking up whenever I’d reach down to feed him bits of salami. The vet told Cheryl that’s bad for him, but he deserved something good. Half the time when I pet him, I’d rub up against one of his tumors, and that had to hurt. It looked like it hurt him to do everything, wag his tail, eat his chow. Walk. Sit. And when he’d vomit, which was every other day, he’d hack like he was choking, revving up for a good twenty seconds before anything came out. It was the noise that bothered me. I didn’t mind cleaning the carpet.

And then Cheryl’d come home and look at us and shake her head and smile and say, “Well, you’re a sorry bunch.”

I wanted Vicar around, but I couldn’t bear to look at him. I guess that’s why I let Cheryl drag me out of the house that weekend. We took my combat pay and did a lot of shopping. Which is how America fights back against the terrorists.

So here’s an experience. Your wife takes you shopping in Wilmington. Last time you walked down a city street, your Marine on point went down the side of the road, checking ahead and scanning the roofs across from him. The Marine behind him checks the windows on the top levels of the buildings, the Marine behind him gets the windows a little lower, and so on down until your guys have the street level covered, and the Marine in back has the rear. In a city there’s a million places they can kill you from. It freaks you out at first. But you go through like you were trained, and it works.

In Wilmington, you don’t have a squad, you don’t have a battle buddy, you don’t even have a weapon. You startle ten times checking for it and it’s not there. You’re safe, so your alertness should be at white, but it’s not.

Instead, you’re stuck in an American Eagle Outfitters. Your wife gives you some clothes to try on and you walk into the tiny dressing room. You close the door, and you don’t want to open it again.

Outside, there’re people walking around by the windows like it’s no big deal. People who have no idea where Fallujah is, where three members of your platoon died. People who’ve spent their whole lives at white.

They’ll never get even close to orange. You can’t, until the first time you’re in a firefight, or the first time an IED goes off that you missed, and you realize that everybody’s life, everybody’s, depends on you not fucking up. And you depend on them.

Some guys go straight to red. They stay like that for a while and then they crash, go down past white, down to whatever is
lower than “I don’t fucking care if I die.” Most everybody else stays orange, all the time.

Here’s what orange is. You don’t see or hear like you used to. Your brain chemistry changes. You take in every piece of the environment, everything. I could spot a dime in the street twenty yards away. I had antennae out that stretched down the block. It’s hard to even remember exactly what that felt like. I think you take in too much information to store so you just forget, free up brain space to take in everything about the next moment that might keep you alive. And then you forget that moment, too, and focus on the next. And the next. And the next. For seven months.

So that’s orange. And then you go shopping in Wilmington, unarmed, and you think you can get back down to white? It’ll be a long fucking time before you get down to white.

By the end of it I was amped up. Cheryl didn’t let me drive home. I would have gone a hundred miles per hour. And when we got back, we saw Vicar had thrown up again, right by the door. I looked for him and he was there on the couch, trying to stand on shaky legs. And I said, “Goddamn it, Cheryl. It’s fucking time.”

She said, “You think I don’t know?”

I looked at Vicar.

She said, “I’ll take him to the vet tomorrow.”

I said, “No.”

She shook her head. She said, “I’ll take care of it.”

I said, “You mean you’ll pay some asshole a hundred bucks to kill my dog.”

She didn’t say anything.

I said, “That’s not how you do it. It’s on me.”

She was looking at me in this way I couldn’t deal with. Soft. I looked out the window at nothing.

She said, “You want me to go with you?”

I said, “No. No.”

“Okay,” she said. “But it’d be better.”

She walked over to Vicar, leaned down, and hugged him. Her hair fell over her face and I couldn’t see if she was crying. Then she stood up, walked to the bedroom, and gently closed the door.

I sat down on the couch and scratched Vicar behind the ears, and I came up with a plan. Not a good plan, but a plan. Sometimes that’s enough.

There’s a dirt road near where I live and a stream off the road where the light filters in around sunset. It’s pretty. I used to go running there sometimes. I figured it’d be a good spot for it.

It’s not a far drive. We got there right at sunset. I parked just off the road, got out, pulled my rifle out of the trunk, slung it over my shoulders, and moved to the passenger side. I opened the door and lifted Vicar up in my arms and carried him down to the stream. He was heavy and warm, and he licked my face as I carried him, slow, lazy licks from a dog that’s been happy all his life. When I put him down and stepped back, he looked up at me. He wagged his tail. And I froze.

Only one other time I hesitated like that. Midway through Fallujah, an insurgent snuck through our perimeter. When we raised the alarm, he disappeared. We freaked, scanning everywhere, until Curtis looked down in this water cistern that’d
been used as a cesspit, basically a big round container filled a quarter way with liquid shit.

The insurgent was floating in it, hiding beneath the liquid and only coming up for air. It was like a fish rising up to grab a fly sitting on the top of the water. His mouth would break the surface, open for a breath, and then snap shut, and he’d submerge. I couldn’t imagine it. Just smelling it was bad enough. About four or five Marines aimed straight down, fired into the shit. Except me.

Staring at Vicar, it was the same thing. This feeling, like, something in me is going to break if I do this. And I thought of Cheryl bringing Vicar to the vet, of some stranger putting his hands on my dog, and I thought, I have to do this.

I didn’t have a shotgun, I had an AR-15. Same, basically, as an M16, what I’d been trained on, and I’d been trained to do it right. Sight alignment, trigger control, breath control. Focus on the iron sights, not the target. The target should be blurry.

I focused on Vicar, then on the sights. Vicar disappeared into a gray blur. I switched off the safety. There had to be three shots. It’s not just pull the trigger and you’re done. Got to do it right. Hammer pair to the body. A final well-aimed shot to the head.

The first two have to be fired quick, that’s important. Your body is mostly water, so a bullet striking through is like a stone thrown in a pond. It creates ripples. Throw in a second stone soon after the first, and in between where they hit, the water gets choppy. That happens in your body, especially when it’s two 5.56 rounds traveling at supersonic speeds. Those ripples can tear organs apart.

If I were to shoot you on either side of your heart, one shot . . . and then another, you’d have two punctured lungs, two sucking chest wounds. Now you’re good and fucked. But you’ll still be alive long enough to feel your lungs fill up with blood.

If I shoot you there with the shots coming fast, it’s no problem. The ripples tear up your heart and lungs and you don’t do the death rattle, you just die. There’s shock, but no pain.

I pulled the trigger, felt the recoil, and focused on the sights, not on Vicar, three times. Two bullets tore through his chest, one through his skull, and the bullets came fast, too fast to feel. That’s how it should be done, each shot coming quick after the last so you can’t even try to recover, which is when it hurts.

I stayed there staring at the sights for a while. Vicar was a blur of gray and black. The light was dimming. I couldn’t remember what I was going to do with the body.

LT says drop the fucking house.
Roger that. We go to drop the fucking house.

I gather my guys, make a sand-table diagram. I’ve got a dip in while I brief, and the dip spit’s evaporating as soon as it hits the ground.

HUMINT says the place is an IED factory filled with some bad motherfucking hajjis, including one pretty high up on the BOLO list. SALUTE report says there’s a fire team–sized element armed with AKs, RPKs, RPGs, maybe a Dragunov.

I make 2nd Fire Team the main effort. That’s Corporal Sweet’s team, and Sweet’s a fucking rock star. Stellar NCO. Sweet’s SAW gunner is PFC Dyer, and Dyer’s excited because here’s a chance to finally pop his cherry and shoot somebody. He’s nineteen, one of our baby-wipe killers, and all he’s killed so far in the Corps has been paper.

I put 1st Fire Team in support. Corporal Moore’s team. Moore’s a bit of a motard, always thinks his fire team should be main effort, like it’s a fucking prize. He could be less oo-rah, but he’s good to go.

I put 3rd Fire Team in reserve, as usual. They’re Malrosio’s, and he’s dumber than Fabio on two bottles of NyQuil. 3rd’s
had an easy deployment so far because I don’t give his team anything too complicated. Sometimes it helps to be led by an idiot.

When we get to the house, the other squads set a cordon and we tear down the road and bust in the back door. M870 with lockbuster shells. Boom, and we go.

Back door leads to the kitchen. Right, clear. Left, clear. Overhead, clear. Rear, clear. Kitchen, clear. We roll through, don’t stack, just roll. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. Corporal Sweet’s fire team clears houses like water running down a stream.

Next room there’s AK fire as soon as we go through the doorway, but we’re better shots. End state is two hajjis, no survivable wounds, no injuries on our side, just another day in paradise. Except Corporal Sweet leads 2nd Fire Team to the bedroom and hajji jumps out shooting blind from the hip and plugs lucky into Corporal Sweet. Two get stopped by his SAPI plate, but one goes through the nut protector and into his thigh. PFC Dyer’s on Sweet’s ass, second man through the door, and he fires a burst of 5.56 into hajji’s face. We clear the bedroom, call, Corpsman up, and Dyer drops down to pack Sweet’s wound. It’s bleeding bright red, maybe hit the femoral.

We keep moving. 1st Fire Team steps up and Doc P’s in with Dyer on Corporal Sweet now and, oh, hajji’s still breathing, so Doc tells Dyer, Go pack the wound in hajji’s face, do the four life-saving steps, restore the breathing, stop the bleeding, protect the wound, treat for shock. I get on the IISR to the LT to call for CASEVAC.

We keep moving. Bedroom, clear. Head, clear. Pantry, clear. Whatever the fuck this room is, clear. First deck, clear.

LT gets on and says they’ve got a CH-46 in the air coming to
save Sweet’s life. He asks for status, so I shoot Doc P a look like, WIA or KIA? Doc says, Urgent, no joke, and I tell the LT as we stack outside the door to the basement.

We drop a flashbang, and when it goes off we flow downstairs. There’s three down there. One’s al-Qaeda, but he’s shook by the flashbang and there’s no weapon in his hands. He looks like he’s seventeen and scared, and when we flex-cuff him and start to go through all the usual EPW shit, he pisses himself. That happens sometimes.

No threat from the other two in the basement, a policeman and a
jundi
from the 1st Iraqi Army Division. They’re tied to a chair in front of a video camera on a tripod. They’re beat to hell, and there’s a nice pool of blood working the floor.

Corporal Moore sees the camera and the two guys who’ve been tortured. Real quiet he says, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. But we all know what this is.

Lance Corporal McKeown looks at the camera and says, Al-Qaeda makes the worst pornos ever.

Moore looks over at the EPW, who we’ve got facedown on the deck, flexcuffed and blindfolded, and says, You son of a bitch cunt-ass SOB. Moore takes a step forward, but I stop him.

1st Fire Team unties the two guys and starts first aid. AQI used wire to strap them to the chairs and it’s dug into their skin, so getting them loose is tricky without stripping off more flesh. Also, something’s wrong with their feet. I say, Bring ’em to the CCP Doc’s set up on the first deck. The house is clear now, whole thing took under two mikes, so pretty good except for Sweet, and that’s a real motherfucker. Any groin injury’s a nightmare wound.

In the basement there’s a weapons cache, usual shit, AKs
and RPKs, homemade explosive, RPGs, some rusty 122 mm arty shells. I leave that to Moore and go check on Sweet.

Upstairs, I see Doc’s already pulled out the QuikClot and put it on the wound. A bad sign, and that QuikClot shit burns, but Sweet forces a grin. He gives me a thumbs-up, looks down at Doc working on his thigh, and says, Hey, Doc, you wanna give me a BJ while you’re down there? Doc doesn’t look up.

PFC Dyer’s working on the hajji he shot in the face. I see he’s pulled apart his own IFAK to get gauze for the hajji. Not supposed to do that. Your IFAK is for you.

Hajji’s bad. It looks like half the jaw is gone. There’s bits of the beard, still attached to skin, sitting on the other side of the room. Dyer’s holding down hard on the gauze to stop the bleeding, and I can see he’s got the look. So I grab Lance Corporal Weber and tell him to take over from Dyer, give him a break.

CH-46 touches down in under ten mikes. That’s enough time for Sweet to stop joking and start saying the usual shit people say when they’ve been hit bad. I tell him we won’t let him die. I don’t know if I’m lying or not.

We take Sweet out with the hajji and the IP and the
jundi
and load ’em all up and they’re off to TQ. I tell the squad Sweet’s got a good shot. You make it to Surgical with a pulse, you’ll probably leave with one.

Once the CASEVAC leaves, it’s mostly waiting. I give the LT my SITREP. He passes it on to Ops and they tell him that the CO said, Bravo Zulu, whatever the fuck that means.

I make sure security’s posted and that nobody’s in a postcombat slump. I’m definitely not. Normally after a raid the adrenaline taps out and I want to curl up in a ball and take a nap. Not with Sweet up in the air, though.

The guys are posted right. Malrosio’s team, God help us, in overwatch. Sweet’s team is not in a good way.

Dyer’s at one of the main room windows, but he’s not really there. Not tactical. First, he’s too close. Second, not even really scanning. An insurgent could probably walk up and grab his balls before he noticed. And Dyer’s covered in blood, Sweet’s and the hajji’s, probably. Packing a wound isn’t pretty. The sleeves of his flight suit are drenched.

I tell him, Come here. And since the main room’s got two bodies, I tell Moore he’s in charge for a second and walk Dyer to the kitchen and say, Strip.

He looks at me.

You can’t wear those, I say.

He strips and I do too. I see the huge Superman
S
he got tattooed on his chest before deployment. Everyone makes fun of him for that, but I don’t say anything now. I take off my flight suit and give it to him. I put my PPE back on, roll up Dyer’s suit under my arm, and walk back out into the main room wearing just my boots, my flak, my skivvy shorts, and my Kevlar. My legs and arms haven’t seen the sun in a while and are pale as pigeon shit. Moore sees me and starts smiling. McKeown sees Moore smiling and starts cracking up. I’m like, Fuck you, I look sexy.

LT’s in a corner with Doc. He takes in my legs sticking out of my flak and doesn’t smile, just says, Good thing you wore skivvies today.

I say, Hey, Doc, what the fuck? And I nod toward the door to the basement.

Doc shakes his head. Beat up pretty bad, he says. I think with hoses. A lot of lacerations all over their skin and the bottoms of their feet especially. And they took a power drill through
their ankles, right at the joint, so they’re pretty much fucked for life. Not life-threatening, though.

LT says, They were gonna videotape them.

Doc says, They put them up in front of the camera, like, “Get ready to die,
kuffar,
” and then realized they were out of film.

LT says, There’s two more out there. The ones they sent to get film. Probably never see them again, but keep an eye. One might get stupid and try something.

Sir, I hope so, I say.

I go to tell the Marines, but the LT puts a hand on my shoulder. He says quietly, Sergeant, you ever seen anything like this before?

Sometimes I forget it’s his first deployment. I shrug. Adrenaline’s gone now, and I’ve got that deep tired. Not this, exactly, I say, but there’s not much that’d surprise me. At least it’s not kids.

LT nods.

Sir, I say, don’t let yourself think about it until we’re back in the States.

Right, he says. He looks out to the road and adds, Well, EOD’s coming for the cache. They said don’t fuck with anything.

I say, I don’t play with bombs, sir.

He says, As soon as they’re done, we go check on Sweet. He’s at TQ.

He okay? I say.

He will be, he says.

I go check on my men. EOD comes pretty quick, and I see
it’s Staff Sergeant Cody’s team. Cody’s a down-home Tennessee boy, and he points to my bare legs and gives me a big old country grin.

When you’re done fucking these hajjis, he says, you’re supposed to put your pants back on.

While his team is dealing with the UXO, I deal with Dyer’s flight suit. Moore gets me some gasoline from the basement, and we douse it and set it on fire. These things are supposed to be flame resistant, it’s why we wear them, but it goes up fine.

Looking at the flames, I ask Moore, Were you gonna stomp that hajji downstairs?

Would’ve deserved it, he says.

Not the point, I say. Your Marines see you fucked up over this, then they start thinking about how fucked up it all is. And we don’t have time to deal with that. We’ve got another patrol tomorrow.

LT walks over with a spare flight suit. Change, he says. We’re going straight to TQ. Sweet’s stabilized, but they’re gonna fly him to Germany soon. IP and
jundi
are stabilized, too. Hajji didn’t make it.

I take the flight suit and tell Moore, Pass to the squad that Sweet’s okay, and don’t mention hajji dying.

I go back to the kitchen and change over, and by that time EOD’s done, so we all roll.

As we’re driving to TQ, McKeown says, Hey, at least we saved those guys’ lives.

I say, Yeah, Second Squad to the motherfucking rescue.

Except I’ve got their eyes in my head. I don’t think they wanted to be saved. After al-Qaeda sets you up in front of the
video camera? And you’ve been beaten and tortured and drilled through and you think, Finally. Just let the head come off in one slice. That’s what I’d be thinking. But then, guess what? Ha-ha, motherfucker. No film. So you’re sitting, in pain, waiting to die, for who knows how long. There isn’t exactly a Walmart nearby.

I didn’t see any tears of joy when we burst in, M4s at the ready. They were dead men. Then we doped them up, CASEVAC’d them out, and they had to live again.

I think, for a second, maybe we should all breathe out tonight as a squad. Get drunk off Listerine and deal with this shit. But I don’t want to pull that trigger unless I have to, and Sweet’s still alive. Today’s a good day. Save that shit for a bad day.

We roll into TQ, which is a huge FOB, all U.S. and Coalition Forces. We all clear our weapons, bring them to Condition 4 at the gate. FOBs are basically safe. And crawling with contractors.

The road signs to the hospital are just like you’d see in the U.S., a blue square with a white H in the middle. And there’s Marines driving civilian-type vehicles in their cammies, without body armor, just like you’d see in any base in the U.S. TQ Surgical’s in the middle of the FOB, next to the Dark Tower, which is what the logistics guys call their command post. The road circles us around the tower, slowly edging closer. I’ve been here before.

We’re quiet as we get close, and then McKeown says, Sergeant, that was really fucked up.

But now’s not the time to have that conversation, so I say, Yeah, that’s the most blood I’ve seen since I fucked your mom
on her period. And then the guys laugh and bullshit a bit, and it breaks the mood that was settling. We get out of the Humvees and walk to TQ Surgical in the right head space.

Inside TQ Surgical, Sweet’s awake but on an IV drip of the good stuff.

I feel good, he says, I’ve got my leg.

Another Marine had come in while Sweet was in surgery and things didn’t go so well for him. Still, it was a good day for us.

Except while we’re joking with Sweet, Dyer grabs a doc walking past and asks him how the hajji he shot in the face is doing. I try to catch Doc’s eye so I can signal, Don’t tell him hajji’s dead, but it’s not a problem. Doc’s like, I have no idea which one you shot. Besides, al-Qaeda gets flown out to a high-security hospital after we stabilize ’em. Right now you won’t find any here.

Then Dyer’s standing there, off to the side. He’s still in my flight suit, and he’s swimming in it. I put a hand on his shoulder and say, You did good today, PFC. You took out the guy that shot Sweet.

Next ward over from Sweet, they’ve got the IP and the
jundi
we saved. I step out into the hall and peek in and there they are, fucked up, drugged up, and knocked out. It’s nice in the hospital, not the blood and dust over everything like in the basement, but those two, even cleaned up, their bodies don’t look like bodies should. Seeing them stops me for a second. I don’t call the squad over because they don’t need to see this.

After that, there’s not much left to do but hit the DFAC.
We’re on a FOB, might as well get that good chow while we can. My guys deserve it. Maybe they need it. Besides, everyone says TQ’s got the best chow hall in Anbar, and soon we’ll be back in the COP.

The DFAC’s about a klik away. It’s a huge white barn of a building, two hundred meters long at least, a hundred wide, surrounded by a ten-foot fence topped with barbed wire. We show the Ugandan guards our IDs and walk through the gate. Inside, there’s sinks you wash your hands at first, no eating with dirty fingers, and then there’s a huge cafeteria line with KBR workers serving all kinds of shit. I’m not hungry, but I get some prime rib with horseradish sauce.