Escape from Baghdad! (7 page)

“Writer's block is a terrible thing,” Hoffman said. “I'll get you started. Why don't you write down that you found me sitting in the jeep smoking a garuda?”

“Can you spell garuda for me?”

“You want a hit, Tommy?”

“Is it that clove stuff you got from that Chinese guy?”

“Indonesian, underling,” Hoffman said.

“I hate that stuff, Hoff.”

“You will find, however, that it serves very admirably to mask the smell of pot,” Hoffman said. “Allowing me, in fact, to smoke in public in broad daylight without incurring the wrath of, say, any preachy military-type officials.”

“Does that Chinese cigarette have pot in it?” Tommy asked.

“Yes, Tommy. Have a hit. Don't slobber all over the filter.”

“Thanks, Hoff. You're the man.”

“Listen, Tommy, you come around every night, and I'll help you fill in that notebook,” Hoffman said. “You were meant for better things, I'm sure.”

“Awesome. Thanks, Hoff,” Tommy exhaled. “Fuck Fowler. He's a dickhead officer anyway.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

“Hoff, we gonna be riding in this jeep?”

“Yes.”

“It's got a TV in it,” Tommy said.

“Does it?”

“Can we requisition an Xbox then?”

“Nice one, lackey, put it on the list.”

Later that night, they were released; Hoffman's squad, handpicked, the fantastic five of misfits from the Greater Ghazaliya division, unleashed like hounds from the starting gate, tearing through the narrow streets in their steel demon, breathing garuda fumes and the threat of massive fire, roof-mounted automatic cannon rattling in its cage, Hoffman cackling incessantly from the visions of bad mushrooms, his driving erratic and dangerous, the belly of the beast converted into a gaming den, four-player button-jamming NFL action, while Tommy spat random reports into his sat phone on a deliberately open frequency, apprising all interested parties of their progress, as they swept past bemused checkpoints, leaving stolid Iraqi soldiers debating whether to shoot or salute.

Into North Ghazaliya, past the great mosque, two hundred meters from the checkpoint into Shulla, they ran into a joint forces patrol, led by one Sergeant Tony Perdoso. After some mutual sniffing around, they realized they knew each other and guns were lowered, visors raised, knuckles slapped around in greeting, while the Iraqi army men stood by passively, hoping that so many Americans on a street corner would not invite an impromptu bombing.

“Hoffman, you motherfucker,” Sergeant Tony was a barrel-chested Latino with a bar room voice. “I've been looking for you.”

“You ran out already?” Hoffman asked, incredulous.

“Not the suppositories!” Tony snapped. “It's the two fucking civs you sent my way, maricon.”

“They made it alright into Shulla?” Hoffman leaned forward in a whisper.

“They fucking started a firefight,” Tony said. “Right on my doorstep. Three in the morning, two JAM trucks came rolling in, guns blazing. Showing off. They're here to collect
your
boys.”

“They were? Did you stop them?”

“Shit, Hoff, I was fast asleep.”

“Safe, Tony,” Hoffman said. “I asked you to get them
safely
into Shulla. Does letting them get fucked by the JAM sound safe to you?”

“Calm down, pendejo,” Tony said. “Who said anything about getting fucked?”

“What?”

“Your boy dropped some bodies,” Tony said. “Pop, pop, pop, like a fucking cowboy.”

“They're still alive?”

“I hauled a bunch of dead JAM off the street. Ain't none of them your guys,” Tony said.

“You're sure?” Hoffman asked.

“Fuck off, Hoffman,” Tony said. “I'm from San Diego. All brown guys don't look alike to
me
.”

“What was the body count, Tony?”

“Four JAM dead, including Alihassan, not more than a couple hundred feet from my patrol,” Tony said.

“Alihassan? The son of Hassan Salemi?”

“Damn right. I gotta jump through hoops now keeping him happy. But Alihassan had it coming. I told that boy a hundred times, carry on like that in the middle of the night, with the guns and the religious chanting and all that and someone's liable to put a bullet through you.”

“Lucky it wasn't one of your men then,” Hoffman said.

“Hassan Salemi doesn't care who it was,” Tony said. “He wants blood.”

“So who shot him?”

“Your boy Kinza shot Alihassan in the head. One shot, right between the eyebrows, mafia style. That's what the witnesses say. Your guy's got quite a name on the street. He then fled in the general direction of my patrol in a goddamn running battle with the JAM.”

“It was the Wednesday night roster?” Hoffman interrupted.

“Exactly.”

“Your patrol was Sunni.”

“Too damn right, genius,” the sergeant said. “You should have seen it. Hell, you should have
been
in it. It's your fucking fault. Man, when these pendejos see each other, it's like they forget that we even started this war. Goddamn riot in the street like it was the 4
^th
of July, with my fucking handpicked squad officer leading the way. I got three injured, one dead, and at least five more dead JAM, although they took their bodies back, so I can't be sure. Sometimes my guys like to show off and exaggerate the body count. All this blood on
my
fucking street, which is why I'm patrolling out here in this puta sun. Apparently, ‘I can't keep the streets clean by sitting on my ass inside the base eating nachos.' Fucking faggot officer. Stop laughing, Hoffman. I swear I'm going to kick your ass right here.”

“So what happened to my guys?”

“They fucking waltzed into Shulla while all this was happening,” Tony said, indignant. “No signing in, no hellos, nothing.”

“Well, I owe your squaddies then, Tony,” Hoffman signaled to his hummer. “I got some candy bars for ‘em.”

“That's real sweet of you, Papa Noel.”

“You want some detergent instead?”

“Just gimme the fucking candy.”

“You're getting fat. You know that, Tony. Maybe your CO was right.”

“Fuck that shit,” Tony swallowed a Mars bar whole and then spat out the wrapper with a rasping choke. “Listen, Hoff. You know I don't ask questions about your business and all, but this chingado Kinza is getting to be a real pain. Lotta guys after him. I got orders to bring him in myself for questioning. Hassan Salemi just posted a ten thousand dollar bounty on his head, double that if he's caught alive. My CO's busting a gut trying to catch him before the JAM start dropping pieces of him all over town.”

“Hold off on that for a while,” Hoffman said. “I'm on special assignment on this guy, straight from Bradley. He has some information we need.”

“Col. Bradley? That lunatic motherfucker?” Tony shook his head. “Listen, Hoff. That maricon still sees Saddam's ghost in every street corner. Just last week, he called in an air strike on a fucking model tank. It was made of fucking wood for chrissakes. The local JAM boys nearly died laughing. Now they're putting up papier-mâché T-72 tanks everywhere hoping to get bombed.”

“Yeah, it's funny how the army promotes all the psychos,” Hoffman said. “You happen to know what my guys were doing here for so long?”

“Sure,” Tony said. “They were hanging around a grocery store for three days. Had the whole street riled up about something. Someone there called in the JAM, anyway. Old pendejo called Sheikh Amal runs the store. I was going up there to have a look.”

“Leave it to me, Tony. I'll take care of it,” Hoffman said. “In the meantime, have some Skittles.”

6: TEA PARTY AT THE HOUSE OF FURIES

D
EEP INTO THE SERPENTINE HEART OF
S
HULLA, THERE WAS AN
abandoned Jaish Al Mahdi safehouse, sparsely furnished, stocked with old canned food, a remnant of ancient times before all of Shulla became the playground of Sadr, now largely forgotten, the old revolutionaries dead or retired, old guns stilled finally, replaced by the shrill voices of youth shiny and privileged, born with a swagger in their pants, pacing Shulla like hair dried lions, the old caves for old jackals now cast off like so many moth-ridden clothes.

In this one lived three ladies, two of them veiled in old lace, the third a crone of such wrinkled age that the veil was deemed superfluous, almost an insult for such a pedigreed garment. They had washed up here on the mysterious tides that wracked the city, swirling its inhabitants from corner to corner with a cavalier disregard for ownership, leaving them miraculously upright in a foreign house, fully stocked with the detritus of someone else's life, leaving them alone in the quiet, hopeful of being forgotten, letting the shock dissipate, until finally, with a shrug, they picked up the threads and started all over again.

The three ladies had lost a lot. Their men folk lay dead or dying across the city. Some were buried, some rotting in pieces, some thrown into the air in violent red embers. Sons, husbands, and brothers were absent, so much so that there were doubts if they had ever existed to begin with, for the women rarely spoke of such things. One might even consider that it was no great loss, this sacrifice of men to the grand war machine, for the men had constructed the machine in the first place, in dim caveman times, and it was their natural fate to keep
feeding it now. Not to say that the ladies adhered to this view, for such things were never vocalized, and indeed, the pattern of life had made conversation largely unnecessary by this time; lacking foreign intrusions, silence was the order of the house, carefully built on a series of rituals.

Alas, Baghdad was a city in flux and even silence was not to last. The safehouse, largely forgotten, existed still in the mind of the little boy Xervish, who had once lived next door to it and, in one vivid night, had seen in full moonlight three men in checkered scarves executing one of their number with a sword, there in the arched doorway, the severed head bouncing down the stairs like a football. This boy, grown now into manhood, recalled every step of the old house, every door, ever window. He dreamed of the house often and in idle moments blamed the direction of his life on that single steel arc of arterial red, on the wet noise of the head bouncing, a moment of explosive violence that had somehow infected him and haunted him remorselessly thereafter.

Twenty years later, sitting in a café, pressed by Kinza for a safehouse, his mind immediately went to the one house he most definitely
did not
consider safe. Yet as he rotated the idea in his head, it took hold that this was precisely the place for his old friend, now come suddenly stalking into his life, an iron shod warhorse showering sparks all over the most tenuous papering of his days.

“There is a place for you to go,” Xervish said. “An old place. Forgotten by the new JAM, forgotten perhaps by anyone still living.”

“You want me to hide from the JAM in a
JAM
safehouse?” Kinza asked. “The idea is ridiculous. I might even do it.”

“Hassan Salemi wants you,” Xervish said. “Hassan Salemi.” Saying the words made him glassy with fear. “You need to get off the streets fast.”

“Did I ask Hassan Salemi to send his stupid son after me?” Kinza shrugged. “Forget Hassan Salemi. Let him come out of his cave if he wants to find me. I'll put a bullet in his head.”

Xervish stared at his friend, aghast, his mind unable to reconcile this man with the boy he had once played football with. “Hassan Salemi,” he repeated, as if intoning the name enough times would drum the direness of the situation into Kinza. “He has ordered five jars of vinegar. He keeps them on his desk and polishes them every day. He has sworn to take your head, your hands, and your feet for trophies.”

“He should take my balls,” Kinza said.

Xervish shuddered. “How can you joke about this? Please, Kinza, just go to the house. I'll smuggle you out of town as soon as I can.”