Fobbit (4 page)

“Give it time,” Duret replied. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

“From what we’ve been able to determine, the insurgent’s right leg and right hand are pinned beneath the dashboard, restricting his movement on that side,” Shrinkle said, pointing at the distant car. “Our spotters can see what looks like a timing device on the passenger seat but it appears to be beyond his reach at this time, sir.”

“How far out is EOD?”

“I put in the call thirty minutes ago, sir, but they—”

“They just arrived, sir,” Sergeant Lumley spoke up, pointing his thumb toward the Explosive Ordnance Disposal team working at the rear of a Humvee. They unloaded what looked like the love child of Tinkertoys and a giant Erector set.

“They’re sending out the ’bot first,” Shrinkle said. “In order to negate human contact with the vee-bid.”

“Okay,” Duret said. “Let’s wait and see what we can see.” This was the
assess
which would trigger them to
act
. For the first time since he
arrived,
Vic visibly relaxed. In his head, he started a gradual retreat to the bed where his dog and his wife waited for him.

As an EOD sergeant worked the controls, jiggling a joystick from side to side, the robot—all silver limbs and thick tires—moved up, back, up, back with a
whir
and a
grrr
. He was named Robby and he was loved by his human handlers. Robby paced from side to side, impatient to move out and investigate what looked to be a FUBAR situation. The robot loved hair-trigger scenarios (especially those fucked-up beyond all repair) that required precise, mechanical movements, not the fleshy, heavy-thumbed attempts by the humans. You’ve got a touch-and-go, blue-wire-red-wire dilemma? Send in the ’bot. He’ll get the job done and won’t get blown to a million little pieces.

The robot focused on the man slumped in the wedged-under car. His opti-eyes dilated to what humans would call a squint, telescoping on the half-dead half-alive human behind the wheel. The computer chips in his head lit in a surge of green lights as he took in the facts and quickly analyzed a path to the solution. The robot paced and even had a bit of a spring in his step as he waited for the joystick to move him forward.

Behind him, the EOD sergeants held their collective breath. These were the dicey moments. You never knew with the ’bot. Maybe he’d run out of battery juice or have an electrical breakdown halfway through the mission. They liked to complain about the piece-of-shit-lowest-bidder T-271 but, in the end, the sergeants knew they had to depend on the silvery Erector set to keep them and the other soldiers alive when facing up-against-the-wall scenarios like this. And, truth be told, though they wouldn’t admit it to each other, they loved the T-271 with a deep and abiding affection. If the robot was a girl, they would have bought it beers and taken it home with them on the first date.

“Here we go, sir,” Captain Shrinkle said as the robot rolled forward.

Duret, Shrinkle, Lumley, and the rest of the men stood in a tense knot two hundred yards from the crippled tank as the EOD team maneuvered the robot to within metal-arm reach of the Opel.

On the other side of the cordon, the CNN reporter—the one with the good hair—turned to her cameraman. “You getting this?”

The robot
whirred, grrred,
and swelled with joy. Moments like this made up for all the other shitty days in Baghdad.

The sergeant at the joystick watched the progress as it streamed from a direct-feed camera to the laptop he’d set on the hood of his Humvee. He could see the driver’s head smashed against the cracked window, the blood forking down his temple and matting his beard. The robot raised itself on its legs and peered into the backseat.

“Ho-ly shit, sir!” the EOD sergeant exclaimed.

At those words, Abe Shrinkle’s testicles pirouetted around his gall bladder, Brock Lumley’s index finger tightened against the trigger in a movement that could only have been measured under a microscope, and Vic Duret reluctantly threw back the sheets and pulled himself out of the bed while behind him his wife, breasts dangling like ripe fruit, asked, “What’s wrong?”

Duret joined the EOD team at the computer screen.
Everything
was wrong. There, in the backseat, they could see three propane tanks, two 152-millimeter artillery shells, and several anti-tank mines. Suddenly, two hundred yards seemed too close for comfort. This guy could take out Tanks Three, Two, and maybe even One, not to mention the CNN crew and half the crowd of gawkers—a crowd metastasizing as word spread through the neighborhood. Dozens of feet (and hooves) were moving toward the intersection, filling the air with dust, babble, and bleats. A dog appeared in a shop doorway, gave a short yip, then sat on his haunches, nervously licking his balls.

“Okay, now we know,” Duret said, not looking at his captain. At Duret’s elbow, Shrinkle swallowed with a dry
click
.

The robot swiveled his head to give them a look at the front seat: a creased, dog-eared copy of the Koran, a cell phone, a timing device, and a grenade.

The half-dead man came to life. He coughed and a rope of blood spurted from his lips. The
whir
and
grrr
of the robot had roused him from his stupor and now he was agitated, taking it out on the robot, which stared back at him without blinking despite the curses the terrorist hurled at it. The robot could care less if he burned in hell with the rest of his Yankee infidel lovers or if he had his privates sliced off with a dull, rusty knife and shoved down his throat—and, frankly, whether or not the Great Satan, George W. Bush, ever had relations with his mother doggy-style really didn’t register in his circuitry. He was metal and machine, here to do a mission clumsy humans could not accomplish. He would render this bleeding, screaming man inert and do it with a steady calm that would earn him a hero’s accolades.

That’s when the terrorist, fighting off waves of nausea, pain, and dizziness from a brain gone askew, summoned a reserve of strength and reached for the grenade in the passenger’s seat.

It was just beyond his fingertips.

The robot backed away with a growl and, with two flicks of the joystick, was returned to the safety of humans.

“My recommendation, sir, is we try to neutralize the threat with a water charge,” the EOD sergeant told Lieutenant Colonel Duret.

“Do it,” Duret replied, a snap in his voice. The midday sun was high and burning a hole through his helmet, roiling the screams in his head, but Duret was able to cut through the clamor and clearly see the path ahead: get rid of this Sunni troublemaker and move on with the day, but do it in a way that minimized the appearance of collateral damage on CNN later that night. The rules of engagement made it clear this was tantamount: complete the mission, but make it clean and professional so no Local Nationals were left broken, bleeding, or oozing in the wake. And if there were news cameras in the area, make good goddamn sure the soccer balls and lollipops were distributed. Don’t forget to tousle the kids’ hair for good measure before moving on.

He turned to the top NCO on the scene. “Sergeant Lumley, while EOD is setting this up, I want you to take six of your men and move the cordon back another two hundred feet. Get those civilians away from the vehicle. And have someone check to make sure we have enough lollipops to go around.”

“Roger, sir,” Lumley said, and moved out with his squad to push back the civilians.

Lollipops,
Lumley thought.
That’ll make it all taste better, won’t it? How many licks does it take to get to the center of an insurgency?

As Brock Lumley flapped his hand at the hajjis
who’d ventured too close, and used the butt of his M4 to nudge those who looked like they intended to stay put, he felt the returning rise of frustration at his impossible task. And not just this mission here in the bull’s-eye of Quillpen, but nearly everything he and his men had been handed since they arrived five months ago. Just like these bastards in their dirty dishdasha
s
who were slow to move back from the ticking time bomb, hajjis
in general could give two rat fucks about what the Americans were doing here.

And what
were
they doing here? Lumley had no fucking clue.

When it came right down to it, Lumley and his men were just playing that old carnival game Whac-A-Mole. Smack down one terrorist with the rubber mallet and right away another one pops up over
here
and while you’re whacking that guy another one has popped up over
there
.

Like the dickwad in the crumpled Opel shoved up the tank’s ass. They could
neutralize
or
exterminate
him, but his brother or cousin or second cousin’s best friend would show up with his own backpack of explosives in another neighborhood on another day. Lumley and his men just couldn’t move fast enough.

That’s why, when he pushed the cordon back to a safer distance, he might have shoved one or two of the stubborn bastards a little too hard and they, in turn, narrowed their eyes and said something in
hajji-speak that was filled with a bunch of goat-sounding crap like “laa” and “naa.” Lumley didn’t really mean anything by the rough shove. He was just tired of this shit, that’s all.

Most of the crowd grumbled and shook their fists at the Americans but eventually they complied, shuffling through clouds of dust, backpedaling themselves to a safe distance.

Most, but not all. While Lumley’s men were herding the Local Nationals, a small boy slipped through the cordon and dashed out to the crushed Opel. Lumley made a grab for him but missed and let him run into the intersection. He wasn’t about to get himself blown halfway to Allah just to save one stupid kid.

The boy approached the driver and held up a bottle of water. The terrorist slowly, painfully turned his head and, for the first time, stopped scowling. He smiled at the boy, tipped his head forward, and opened his mouth. The boy put the bottle to the man’s lips and helped him drink, cupping his hand beneath the blood-clotted beard to catch the drips. When the man finished drinking, he leaned close to the boy and spoke a few words before his head rolled back against the headrest and he passed out.

Captain Shrinkle radioed out to Sergeant Lumley: “Have your men grab that boy and bring him back here to us.” It was the first decisive thing Duret had heard Shrinkle say since he’d arrived. Even so, his voice had a little seesaw in it.

The pint-sized Samaritan tried to dodge Lumley’s team and melt back into the crowd but Private First Class Cassidy Skinner—who’d taken the Pleasant Falls High School football team to the Indiana state finals three years in a row—tackled the kid before he could get far. Pfc Skinner held the boy in a pincer grip around the neck and brought him before Lieutenant Colonel Duret. The battalion commander turned to his translator and said, “Ask him why he did that, why he took water to the enemy.”

The translator questioned the boy, then told Duret, “He say Allah commanded him to do it.”

“Of
course
he did. All right. Ask him what the guy said when he was out there.”

The translator and the boy jabbered back and forth. “He say the man tell him to tell you he is from Syria and his terrorist group has planned to launch many vehicle bomb attacks today and also other attacks will follow. He say he is here to kill Americans and it is his supreme pleasure to follow Allah’s will as he sends us to the flames of hell.”

Duret stared at the boy, who returned the look without cracking a smile. This was the problem with Iraqis, he thought. They believed everything they heard. Now this asshole is a hero in this kid’s mind and he thinks he’s earned a place at Allah’s right hand just because he gave the fucker a sip of water.

Duret frowned and turned to Pfc Skinner. “Zip-tie the kid and hold him until this is all over. I don’t want him anywhere near that car again.”

At Duret’s elbow, Captain Shrinkle cleared his throat and summoned the courage to speak. “Sir, if I may . . .”

“What is it, Abe?”

“Sir, what if we exploited the opportunity this boy has presented? What if we send him back out there with another bottle of water, one we’ve poisoned? The terrorist drinks it and then we’re done for the day. Everyone can go home happy.”

Duret was about to tell his captain he was a well-meaning but ultimately useless officer who couldn’t find his asshole with a flashlight and a road map, and he meant it in the kindest way possible, but he was interrupted by the EOD sergeant.

“Sir, we’re good to go with the water charge. Robby’s ready to roll forward and place it beneath the undercarriage.”

Duret looked away from Shrinkle and nodded. This was the preferred course of action; poison would have to wait for another day, another terrorist.

The T-271 moved forward, cradling the water charge in his spindly metal arms. The water and explosives, chambered separately, were contained in a canister shaped like a rocketship to Mars the robot had once seen in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. As directed by the human with the joystick, Robby would carefully set the charge beneath the rear of the Opel, then quickly reverse away from the car.