None Left Behind Page 9

  It was easy for hard, dirty, exhausted infantrymen to become cynical and angry. Guys’ minds could get all weird, what with being away from home and wives and girlfriends and living together and picking up all the rumors about who was getting divorced, whose wife was leaving him, whose girlfriend was pregnant or diseased or “acting funny.”

  “Man, the bitch’s letters have gone all freaky. What I think is she’s screwing some other dude while I’m over here.”

  “My girlfriend has broke her hand. Either that or she’s forgot how to read and write. I ain’t got a letter from her in six weeks. What do you think, Anzak?”

  “You always got me and Brenda the Bitch.”

  Specialist James Cook’s daughter was two years old when he deployed. He was twenty-three years old, a skinny little guy, like a tough tree branch. He suspected his wife was running around on him.

  “I can hardly picture what she looks like anymore,” he said. “She’ll be gone when I get home. My little daughter is growing up fast. She won’t even remember who I am . . .”

  “Home. What’s that?” Justin Fletcher wondered.

  Sergeant Chris Messer kept a picture of his wife and her last letter to him in his breast pocket, along with his laminated copy of the Prayer of Salvation. He memorized the letter, like he tried to memorize his wife’s face and the sound of her voice. Whenever he got all quiet and withdrawn, someone would ask him, “Are you sick, man?”

  “Naw,” someone would answer for him. “He just misses his wife and wants to go home like the rest of us.”

  “Sergeant Messer thinks God’s wrath has descended upon us for invading the Garden of Eden. Messer, will you pray for us?”

  “Jeez cheez! What’s a guy got to do around here to get some sleep?”

  Everyone knew everyone else’s private affairs. Chris Murphy was saving all his money in order to send his alcoholic mother to rehab and get her a decent place to live. Cournyea’s mother was jealous of his fiancé Jennifer, complaining that he spent more time with her than with his own mother. Byron Fouty wanted to request reassignment to a medic slot in order to help people in Iraq like other medics were doing. Anthony Schober was going to buy a ranch in Nevada, although no one ever thought him to be a cowboy. Jared Isbell’s girlfriend Kathy was breaking up with him. Alex Jimenez was distraught over having told a lie to his grandmother.

  She had begged him not to return to Iraq for another tour of duty. He lied by telling her he was going on a training mission somewhere else and therefore would not be in any danger. She passed away while he was patrolling Malibu Road, without knowing the truth.

  Delta Company possessed one satellite phone for use by its four platoons. Each soldier was allotted ten minutes each week to call home on it. Although it provided contact for couples who missed each other desperately, it could also be a double-edged sword by providing an avenue for conflict in relationships already frayed around the edges. The romantic notion was of yellow ribbons wrapped around trees and Sally waiting at home faithful to her man. The truth was a bit more complicated.

  For some of the Joes, it was hard cleaning up their act after living with a bunch of soldiers and then trying to talk like a normal person on the phone with a wife or mother. They sometimes found they had nothing to say. Imagine calling home after a bad day in the war.

  “Honey, it’s great hearing your voice. Are you okay?”

  “Uh, you know, same old stuff. Killing and dying. How about you?”

  So many times, no one answered at the other end of the line. Disappointed husbands and fathers strayed into quiet corners to smoke cigarettes and stare into the darkness of their thoughts. It was easy to imagine all kinds of things.

  SEVENTEEN

  After having already been awarded two Purple Hearts for wounds suffered in battle, Lt. Colonel Michael Infanti was still on the move, albeit with one knee trussed for support. Delta’s Second Platoon met Iron Claw and Husky at Yusufiyah for an IED sweep the length of Malibu Road from JSB (Jurf Sukr Bridge) through Delta’s three outposts to the old Russian power plant. Colonel Infanti and the four trucks hauling his PSD hooked up with the procession as an opportunity for the commander to meet with soldiers in the field and get a look at how things were going. Malibu Road was still the most active region in the AO.

  An E-4 Specialist named Martinez drove the vehicle occupied by the commander and a terp called Scarface. He pulled into the middle of the convoy, fifth truck from the front, third from the rear, ordinarily a relatively safe position. Two trucks back came CSM Alexander Jimenez’ hummer. The highest-ranking officer in the battalion and the highest-ranking enlisted man never rode in the same vehicle, for obvious reasons.

  Second Platoon Sergeant Ronnie Montgomery rode shotgun in the hummer directly ahead of Colonel Infanti’s, with Lieutenant Dudish another position further up. Specialist Jared Isbell was Montgomery’s driver. Section Sergeant John Herne, thirty, short and solid and the father of four children back in New York, sat in the turret behind a two-forty.

  The trip from the first big curve in the road short of 151 where the thousand-pound bomb had spontaneously exploded was agonizingly slow, full of starts and stops while Husky crept along up front sniffing for buried explosives, followed by the Iron Claw and an EOD team. Dismounted patrols worked as outriders on either flank to keep an eye open for an ambush, although no one expected it due to the size of the column.

  The convoy halted past the big S-curve while the crews of the counter-IED machines did their stuff. Isbell shook out a cigarette and offered one to Montgomery. They smoked while the sergeant gazed out his side window, thinking of the mission to Rushdi Mulla his platoon had drawn for later on—a high-value target suspected of the recent mortar attack against Lieutenant Fawley’s Third Platoon. Going into Rushdi at night often generated contact.

  Isbell leaned forward over the steering wheel and watched Husky nosing around in the curve ahead while the procession waited behind, engines idling. The brown walls topped with razor wire that marked 151 were visible not far ahead. Isbell’s mind was on the lunch break that awaited them once they reached the compound. There was no ill wind in the air. The day was too sunny and bright for trouble.

  Sergeant Herne reached his foot down from the turret and tapped Isbell’s shoulder with it. “How about a cigarette, man?”

  “I thought you gave up smoking, Sergeant Herne.”

  Herne grinned. “I didn’t want to have to be the one to tell you this, Isbell, but you’re a soldier and there’s a war going on. I might not live for another fifteen minutes, so why should I worry about lung cancer fifteen years from now?”

  Husky and Iron Claw roared and inched on down the road, the convoy trailing along. Chow time was just ahead.

  By their very nature, IEDs always seemed to go off at the most unexpected times. Some clown hiding nearby with a cell phone or a car battery hooked up to a hot plate or some other makeshift contraption could set it off at will. That Husky overlooked this one may have been because it contained no metal parts, perhaps only chicken manure and diesel fuel packed solid in a cloth bag or several cloth bags. Whether Colonel Infanti was the specific target, or whether it was merely the luck of the draw would never be determined. If Infanti had been targeted for assassination, killing the highest ranking officer in the AO would have been a big coup for insurgents.

  The convoy was paused almost in front of a farmer’s residence and not far from a rural schoolhouse when the charge went off with a shattering bang and a burst of black smoke, an explosion of such enormity that it instantly turned sand to glass and shredded the air with shrapnel. The ground shook. Isbell thought his truck was going to bounce off the road. Montgomery thought he had taken the hit.

  Back toward the rear, Chiva Lares had never encountered such a powerful bomb. To his astonishment, it exploded directly underneath the battalion commander’s humvee and flipped it end over end through the air like the toy of a child throwing a tantrum. It landed smoking and sizzling upside down
on the road’s embankment.

  Isbell saw it through his side mirror. “Oh, my God! It’s upside-down and on fire!”

  In the turret, Herne swiveled his two-forty back and forth, sweeping for a target against the blast that almost tore the nitch from his head, yelling at the top of his lungs, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” That was the deepest his thoughts ran.

  Montgomery’s first impulse was to secure the commander’s vehicle before the enemy ran up and tossed in a grenade to finish the job. He flung open his door and, M4 in hand, dashed toward the demolished truck, past a crater blown in the road fifteen feet wide and eighteen deep. He couldn’t believe how big it was.

  The mangled body of Scarface, the Colonel’s IA interpreter, lay crumpled on the roadbed, his legs twitching while a half-inch stream of blood spurted from his jugular. He was dead, he just didn’t realize it yet.

  Beyond, Specialist Martinez was pulling himself out of the wreckage toward a nearby tree from behind which he might hold off an attack and protect his commander. Dragging his crippled legs, he looked as pathetic as an injured bug.

  Colonel Infanti remained strapped in the front passenger’s seat, upside down with all his weight on his neck instead of his shoulders. Unable to move, he was choking to death from the pressure of his Kevlar throat protector while blood gushed from his eyes, ears and nose. Gasoline and other engine fluids trickled into the interior, soaking everything.

  CSM Jimenez, a dark-skinned man with both guts and brawn, had already reached the truck and was attempting to tear open the door to get to Infanti. “Get him out before it explodes!” he yelled.

  The door was jammed. The sergeant major demanded a Rat Hook to rip it off while Montgomery and other officers and NCOs organized a defense in the unlikely event of an attack. Everything was mass confusion until the Colonel was finally freed and medic Shane Courville started emergency life-saving measures. Infanti was barely conscious when Courville started clipping away with his scissors.

  “Not again,” he groaned.

  “I’ll save you the big pieces,” Courville promised.

  Soldiers enraged over the targeting of their commander stormed the schoolhouse and the little house near the road looking for the bomber or his accomplices. They busted through doors and kicked over furniture, adrenalin pumping, ready to shoot the first motherfucker who moved with bad intent, wanting some motherfucker to move.

  Both buildings were abandoned; the occupants must have been warned in advance to clear out.

  “Lovely people,” a soldier commented. “Fuck this whole stupid country.”

  After the Iron Claw and its EOD crew hauled Colonel Infanti and Martinez to 151 for evacuation by Black Hawk helicopter, Sergeant Montgomery and Herne stood near the still-smoking crater in the road while medics prepared Scarface’s body to be hauled away. He left a big puddle of blood slowly baking in the desert sun. Infanti’s truck smoldered upside down by the side of the road.

  Sergeant Montgomery offered Herne a cigarette from his supremely harsh Iraqi pack, Blue Death, which, at fifty cents, was a lot cheaper than Marlboros or Winstons from the military Post Exchange in the Green Zone.

  Herne accepted. “Might as well enjoy my fifteen minutes now,” he said.

  EIGHTEEN

  Lieutenant Colonel Mike Infanti vaguely recalled the chopper flight from Malibu to Baghdad. He lay strapped onto a stretcher next to another bearing Specialist Martinez. The big medic, Corporal Courville, attended their IVs, kneeling between them with his knees wide-braced against the helicopter’s movement. Courville was speaking to him. So was Martinez. The Colonel tried to concentrate—but he was just so damned tired.

  By the time he became fully cognizant of his surroundings, he found himself at the CASH (Combat Army Support Hospital) in Baghdad, flat on his back in the more-or-less modern ER. A doctor told him he suffered from shrapnel lodged in the back of his head, torn ligaments in the knee that was already bad, and a back injury the seriousness of which would not become apparent until much later.

  Service doctors seemed most worried about possible severe head injuries. He had been knocked unconscious by the IED blast. Bleeding from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth had almost stopped, but the pain was intense. Fluid buildup in his chest caused secondary concern.

  “How long am I going to be stuck here?” he demanded.

  “Sir, we’ll have to do some more tests. The war’ll go on without you.”

  Since he had now been wounded three times within a period of two years, his greatest fear was that the Pentagon would relieve him of his command, for his own good, and send him home. The Brass might not understand that out there in The Triangle of Death his soldiers were also getting blown up. They got patched up, went back to their little forts, maybe shaved and took a canteen bath, caught a bite to eat and a few hours sleep—and then they went right back out, knowing the chances of their getting blown up all over again.

  That took guts, an esprit de corps of unbreakable bonds between men joined from facing misery and death together. Battlefield success depended upon unit cohesion like that. Infanti had promised his troops that we were going to stay, we were not going to be run out of the AO. How would it look to them if he took off now, for whatever reason?

  Besides, what would the parents, wives, and children of his soldiers think, how much greater their own fears, if it became known that he had been evacuated from the combat zone? If the battalion commander could be blown up, what chance did the common privates and sergeants have?

  A doctor with a clipboard returned to the ER. “Colonel, we’re going to have to medically evacuate you for further diagnosis and treatment.”

  “To the States?”

  “Yes, sir. We think that’s the prudent thing.”

  “Screw prudent.” Although in great pain, especially from his back, he swung his legs off the examining table and stood up. “Can you bring me another uniform? The medic cut mine off. I’m recommending him for a medal.”

  “Sir . . . ?”

  “I’m not leaving my men.”

  And with that, he put on the bloody remnants of his old uniform, as a new one was not forthcoming, and hobbled out of the hospital. Within forty-eight hours after the IED exploded underneath his humvee, he was back at Battalion HQ in Yusufiyah changing to a fresh uniform in the large shipping container he called home. From then on, constant agony from an undiagnosed broken back allowed him only three or four hours’ uninterrupted sleep a night. He walked with a painful limp. Sometimes, when none of his troops were about to see, he leaned on a cane fashioned from the branch of a eucalyptus tree.

  And CSM Jimenez and he went right back out into the AO, moving to the sound of guns.

  NINETEEN

  Enemy snipers and mortar teams working the S-curves had wounded or taken shots at any number of American soldiers. So far, Delta Company had been lucky, lucky, and that was about all you could say for it. Sooner or later, guys were going to get killed. PFC Sammy Rhodes in First Platoon would already have been on his way home to New Mexico with an extra hole in his head if the ballistic glass in his hummer hadn’t caught the bullet meant for him. As far as Sergeant Ronnie Montgomery could tell, Delta Company and the enemy were about even when it came to a casualty count—and the enemy kept putting more points on the board for his team.

  A GI with a good arm could throw a rock from the flat roof of Patrol Base 151 and hit the Euphrates River. Battle Position 152 on down the road and out of sight around one of the S-curves set a bit further off the river, but it was still within mortar and rifle range of it. FOB 153, Inchon, was the most invulnerable of the three with its larger cantonment and its long two-story view of the Euphrates past the date palms. Even so, Jihad shooters using the river as a barrier to avoid pursuit were constantly harassing all three posts to keep the Americans on edge.

  Montgomery cautioned his soldiers about standing around in open sight. When you had to get from one place to another, walk so as to use the trucks for cover. Stay low while on se
curity guard up on the roofs. All an insurgent on the other side of the river had to do to see everything going on inside the walls of either 151 or 152 was to climb a tree. If he scaled it at dusk, the Manticore Hour, the roof watch probably wouldn’t notice him in the gathering shadows. Don’t be careless or stupid, Montgomery warned. Keep your eyes open. That was how you stayed alive.

  Patrols sent to stake out the river met with little success. It was such a large area with so many places for a shooter to hide that, unless the patrols knew when and where he was going to show up, they had about as much chance of nailing him as a snowflake had of falling on the Sahara. It also proved unreasonable to expect soldiers to scurry from hole to hole like frightened mice while they were inside their forts. Certain housekeeping duties and chores had to be accomplished in spite of the threat.

  Second Platoon leader Lieutenant John Dudish and Sergeant John Herne were supervising the cleaning of the latrine behind 152 when someone from across the river took a potshot at them, the bullet whipping by so close that both heard its supersonic passage.

  A few days later, Specialist Robert Pool was pulling guard on the roof of 151 when Third Platoon Leader Lieutenant Westcott and Platoon Sergeant Ford came up to discuss where to place more barriers. The two were standing talking and looking out toward the river when a sniper drilled Westcott through the arm. The shooter disappeared before Pool could sight in on him. Westcott was medevac’d to the CASH in Baghdad and no one ever saw him again. Lieutenant Darrell Fawley showed up a few days later as a replacement; he was the platoon’s third platoon leader in less than six months.

  Specialist Jared Isbell was the next victim. Second Platoon was out in the S-curves between 151 and 152, keeping watch for suspicious activities when Isbell had to take a leak. He couldn’t hold it any longer, couldn’t tie a knot in it, piss in somebody else’s pocket, or follow any of the other suggestions his teammates offered. He slipped out of his truck to do his business. It was his twentieth birthday. It seemed something was always happening to guys on their birthdays.