Weapons of Mass Destruction (21 page)

Providing security was just the beginning. Using interpreters, platoons asked Fallujans themselves what they needed most, as if it weren’t obvious. They needed everything. Clean water, electricity, a pot to piss in. Engineers were only contracted to handle bigger jobs, things like digging new sewage systems and refurbishing power plants. Leathernecks tackled everything else, working with locals to rebuild infrastructure.

At first they attracted a great deal of attention ranging from guarded curiosity to men flashing the soles of their sandals, the ultimate insult. A native Fallujan, Othman was particularly sensitive to the prevailing mood. He often lagged behind, almost hiding, especially when they met with local sheikhs. Needless to say, McCarthy was skeptical of the advisability of meet-and-greet detail. Sinclair remained optimistic. The Coalition Provisional Authority was designed to help Iraqis get back on their feet, phase two of their liberation from the jaws of tyranny. He refused to believe that winning the hearts and minds of the people was just a slogan.

Sinclair had obviously misread all the signs. Women weren’t the only ones hiding behind veils in Iraq. The blank expressions on elders’ faces conveyed carefully controlled hostility, not tacit acceptance. Scores of unemployed men congregated on street corners. The fact that they didn’t betray resentment didn’t mean it wasn’t seething beneath the surface. Patrolling with Othman must have lulled Sinclair into thinking they were comrades-in-arms, especially after he asked the squad to walk past his house. They thought he wanted to show off his new Iraqi police uniform to his wife. He waved to an upstairs window. Sinclair and Trapp looked up just in time to see her duck out of sight.

“Can we meet her?”

“That is impossible. She is not veiled.”

Sinclair decided not to push the point. Why she couldn’t just throw on a burqa was beyond him, but he was trying to be sensitive to cultural differences. Joint patrols notwithstanding, Othman had no intention of letting his wife be seen fraternizing with American soldiers. Dethroned Ba’athists frowned on young men joining the police force, no matter how much they needed the salary. Othman had orchestrated the entire excursion as a show of force to warn underground authorities to back off. It wasn’t the first time Americans played the part of unwitting pawns in sectarian turf wars. They would have to learn to discern the various factions in order to defeat them.

Othman’s circumspection seemed impregnable. He willingly talked about the weather and very little else. Occasionally they caught him wagging his head and mumbling, as though he couldn’t contain himself. Their interpreter, Sajad, maintained a divided loyalty that thwarted efforts to decipher these asides. Terps routinely translated even the most outrageous civilian diatribes but soft-pedaled communication with the police. Finally after a particularly volatile interrogation in an elder’s household, Sajad relented. Presumably Othman had given him the go-ahead.

“With all due respect,” Sajad said.

“Don’t mince words,” Trapp said.

“I’m not. Othman himself said ‘with all due respect,’ not me.”

“Figures. Get on with it.”

“It is vaguely possible that coalition forces shouldn’t humiliate Iraqi husbands in front of their wives.”

“What are you talking about?”

“In particular, frisking Iraqis in prone positions, faces smashed in the dirt, is probably not a good idea.”

“It is if you don’t want them to pull a knife on you,” Sinclair said.

“Yes and no.”

“Who said that? You or Othman?”

“Me. He said their dignity might require retaliation.”

The evasiveness of the translation seemed true to the original. But there was no way to verify its accuracy. When Trapp tried to clarify what Othman meant by retaliation, he clammed up completely. Several days later, for reasons Sinclair didn’t understand until it was too late, Othman finally spoke his mind. This time around, retaliation took the form of an Iraqi boy throwing a stone at the patrol, an increasingly common occurrence the week before the Blackwater lynchings.

“There is no God but Allah!” he shouted in retreat. “America is the enemy of God.”

The stone pinged off McCarthy’s helmet. Kids shrieked with delight in the distance, pretending it was just another juvenile prank. McCarthy swore under his breath but kept his cool. They were in meet-and-greet mode.

“This never happened in Baghdad,” Sinclair remarked, not for the first time.

“Baghdad is a Shiite town,” Othman said. “We’re Sunnis.”

“And we’re Americans. We don’t take sectarian sides.”

“You’re in Iraq now.” Sajad measured Othman’s words very carefully. “Everything has a sectarian side.”

“Fair enough. But why do those boys assume we side with Shiites?”

“Last I heard Saddam Hussein was a Sunni.”

“Saddam Hussein was a tyrant.”

“And a Sunni.”

“You can’t tell me you wish he was still in power.”

Othman stopped walking and turned to look Sinclair square in the eyes, something he hadn’t done since they were first introduced. When he lowered his voice, Sajad followed suit.

“Respected Sunni clerics warn that you will hand the city over to Shiites,” Othman said. “What are the people of Fallujah to believe, given the example of Baghdad?”

“We’re patrolling with you. Sunnis, not Shiites.”

“They are afraid politics will corrupt our faith in the true Muslim religion.”

Sinclair wanted to ask whether politics and religion could ever be disentangled, but he was afraid of offending Othman. Patriotism was very complicated in Iraq. He tried to think of a less confrontational way to pose the question.

“Can’t they believe in freedom and Allah at the same time?”

“That remains to be seen.”

“Why? Everyone wants to be free.”

Othman remained silent, and Sinclair assumed the conversation was over.

“Your definition of freedom is foreign to the people of Fallujah,” Othman finally said. “It looks a lot like occupation to them.”

“What will it take to change their minds?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Of course.”

“You must leave Fallujah.”

“All hell will break loose.”

“It will break loose anyway.”

The following morning Othman failed to show up for patrol duty. His candor had been a parting gesture. Ba’athist bigwigs hadn’t been intimidated in the least by their show of force. Othman had already received death threats warning him to stop collaborating with infidel invaders. This time they targeted his family. Another Sunni officer, a bachelor, was assigned to take his place. In the heart of Anbar Province, loyalties hadn’t toppled along with the regime. Tacitly accepting the inevitable presence of American soldiers was one thing. Collaborating with them was another. Sinclair could only hope that Othman’s wife had evacuated without him.

White phosphorous had incinerated a swath four blocks wide and seven blocks long. It took Wolf’s squad two hours to pick their way through the charred rubble. Radetzky’s half of the platoon got hung up disabling a vehicle-borne IED. TOC couldn’t spare any combat engineers, and the threat was too grave to leave parked on the street. Yet another Iraqi Intervention Force unit had gone AWOL, and there was still no one watching their backs. By the time the platoon reached the next phase line, the rest of the company had already been briefed for the last leg of the offensive.

At 1700 hours, Operation Vigilant Resolve went into overdrive. The Thundering Third had never been asked to sustain such a furious pace, not even speeding across the desert to Baghdad. It felt like an omnipotent boot was pressing the accelerator to the floor, completely oblivious to twists and turns in the road ahead. Lucky for them, they encountered very few obstacles. Contiguous platoons raced to keep up with each other, clearing house after house with the relative ease of the first few days of the campaign. Lack of resistance seemed ominous given the fact that they had penetrated so far into East Manhattan.

“The calm before the storm,” Trapp said. They figured he ought to know, having weathered many a hurricane season on the Gulf Coast.

Combat time set in. One minute it was midnight, the next noon. The only difference between night and day was the presence or absence of night-vision goggles. The men were on autopilot, fighting all the more effectively when they were too tired to think. Up to a point. The armed forces had yet to invent a drug that could replace sleep altogether. On day five of the offensive, Radetzky initiated catnaps on a rotating basis. Squads worked ten-hour shifts and then crashed for an hour or two in makeshift bunkers. Acting as chief medic in the absence of Doc Olsen, who was god knows where, Trapp was concerned that Provigil was taking a toll on the men’s nervous systems.

“We can’t go on like this forever,” Trapp finally said.

“You won’t have to,” Radetzky said. “Centcom is bringing in another battalion. They think we can close the deal in another couple of days.”

“What’s the rush?”

“Plunge before they pull the plug,” Radetzky said, and left it at that. An aerial photograph of the city monopolized his attention. Lines of thumbtacks were at the ready, poised to attack.

“That’s not our man Radetzky talking,” McCarthy said, out of earshot. “Sounds more like a slogan than an op plan.”

“He’s quoting somebody,” Sinclair agreed.

“Somebody high and mighty and clueless.”

They disliked fighting in the dark without a clear sense of how their mission fit into the overall war effort. Whenever possible, Radetzky kept them in the loop. Very few commanders briefed their platoons with such attention to strategic detail. But he was too good an officer to jeopardize his men’s morale for the sake of transparency. Sometimes too much information was a burden. He almost wished he weren’t privy to the politics of the invasion, a conflict concocted in Washington and hotly contested in capitals around the world. There were definitely too many cooks in the kitchen, a recipe for disaster.

Sunnis in the Iraqi General Council were threatening to resign because US Marines were trouncing their cronies in Fallujah. Doves in London were squawking about civilian casualties. Paris issued a statement denouncing excessive use of force in Anbar Province. As usual, hawks in Washington were impatient with the political posturing of their allies, even though their own approval ratings were slipping precipitously. Press coverage had swung to the left, and Operation Vigilant Resolve was being portrayed as a slaughter of the innocents rather than righteous retribution for the Brooklyn Bridge atrocities. If the political climate didn’t improve, Centcom might be forced to issue a ceasefire, even though conditions on the ground promised to bring the city to its knees within a matter of days.

Colonel Denning had originally questioned the advisability of the offensive. Now that his troops were in the thick of it, he wanted to finish what they had been compelled to start. Whatever goodwill had been spawned by meet-and-greet detail had been snuffed by recent incursions. A cease-fire might look good on paper, but it would strand soldiers in the middle of a hostile city. They were fighting on two fronts, one in Fallujah, the other at the Pentagon, where military strategists were trying to wrench the reins back from the White House. Marines were caught in the crosshairs of almost unprecedented levels of government dysfunction, all the more reason to strike while the iron was hot. Pulling punches now would be suicidal.

The good news was that the funnel was working. Kilo Company was intercepting insurgents fleeing from the Jolan offensive. The bad news was that the insurgents in question were family men. Radetzky was furious. His bid for promotion had been jeopardized more than once by civilian casualties. He might have been a captain by now if women and children had stayed out of his way. His commanding officers thought he was too humane for his own good, a misunderstanding of his primary motivation. He was actually protecting his platoon from the threat of so-called innocent bystanders. Turning a blind eye to indiscriminate killing always backfired, leaving deep emotional scars in the wake of the slaughter. He owed it to his men to bring them home in one piece, psychologically as well as physically.

Radetzky reported the civilian exodus to Colonel Denning. With three battalions advancing in concert, there were too many moving pieces to let platoon commanders make vital strategic decisions. From here on out, battalion headquarters would be calling the shots. If even one squad lagged behind, a dangerous breach in the line of scrimmage would leave the whole company vulnerable to attack. Funnels could work both ways, allowing civilians to trickle out and insurgents to rush back in. That’s where intelligence came into the picture. Identifying the source of the leak might actually help speed things up in the long run. Unfortunately, given the accelerated pace of the offensive, there was no guarantee there would be a long run. The colonel adjusted his strategy accordingly.

“Find out where the hell they’re coming from,” Colonel Denning ordered.

“Then what?” Radetzky asked.

“Plug the hole.”

“What about the women and children?”

“What about them?”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with them?”

“They’re on their own, Radetzky. We’re a military outfit, not a babysitting service.”

There were orders Radetzky couldn’t issue with a clear conscience. But he could obey them just as his men obeyed them, without question. Working around such ethical dilemmas was part of being a good officer. He left his radio frequency open, allowing the entire platoon to hear the revised rules of engagement, straight from the horse’s mouth. Colonel Denning’s command was incontrovertible. They would engage with civilians to gather intelligence. Otherwise they would ignore them.

Easier said than done. Squads stacked through front doors and families rushed out the back. Sinclair watched them dashing across courtyards and snaking down alleyways. Snipers had the advantage of seeing them out in the open. They could shoot around them, conditions permitting. He pitied gunners who had to guess who was on the other side of a closed door. They found women locked in bathrooms and children cowering in bedroom armoires. Mistakes were made.