Fobbit (10 page)

One U.S. soldier was killed in the attack. The name of the soldier is being held pending notification of next of kin. The incident is under investigation.

“Hm. Okay. Uh. Good . . .” Harkleroad turned and walked out of the room, the press release in his hand and a thoughtful look on his face. His gaze was fixed at a spot far ahead, as if he was trying to see the chief’s next reaction.

That should have been Gooding’s first clue they weren’t completely through.

Three minutes later, Harkleroad rounded the corner, a pen clicking against his teeth and that ponder-heavy expression wrinkling his face. “You know, I’ve been thinking . . .”

“Yes, sir?” Gooding’s voice was a croak.

“We need to punch this up with a few adjectives here and there. What about
as they responded with lightning-like speed and efficiency
and
The daring Iraqi security forces immediately cordoned off the area
?”

Gooding tried to swallow the dry knot in his throat. “Sir, isn’t there some agency in the Iraqi government that’s already putting out a press release on this?”

“No,” Harkleroad said. “I’ve talked to corps and apparently MOI is taking no action on this one. We need to produce something about the attack and get it out there for the rest of the media.”

Chance Gooding stared at his nosebleeding colonel and tamped down his dark thoughts. You mean, even though the smoke has cleared, the ambulances have picked up the meat and taken it to the morgue, and all the bystanders and terrorists have already gone back home to their families—the old men eating rice and lamb and boasting about how they’d show those Sunni bastards a thing or two about democratic government; in other houses, the young, politically zealous husbands lifting the veils off their wives’ faces as foreplay to an evening of sex; even the insurgents packing away their rocket launchers and grenades and calling it a night—you mean even though the news is now as cold and dead as the soldier himself, we should still put out a press release?

Okay.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 6, 2005

RELEASE 20050606-04g

Brave Iraqi Security Forces repel heinous al-Karkh attack

BAGHDAD —Dozens of brave Iraqi security forces put months of coalition-backed training to the test today as they responded with lightning-like speed and efficiency to an unwarranted terrorist attack in an al-Karkh neighborhood around 11 a.m.

Iraqi police and Baghdad emergency response teams were first on the scene after an explosion went off near an Iraqi Army patrol combing houses in the area and looking for caches of weapons and insurgent propaganda material in an ongoing effort to defeat the enemies of democracy in the region. The daring Iraqi security forces immediately cordoned off the area to ensure no Iraqi citizens were killed or injured by potential subsequent blasts.

One U.S. soldier was killed in the attack. The name of the soldier is being held pending notification of next of kin. The incident is under investigation.

Harkleroad pushed the tissue plug tighter in his nostril and winked at his NCO as he finally hit the
SEND
button. “Good job, Sergeant Gooding. Score another minor victory for the name of truth and democracy.”

“Right, sir.” If Harkleroad held his hand up for a high five, Gooding swore he’d puke. He turned back to his computer screen as a new message pinged into his in-box. It was from the Associated Press Baghdad Bureau; the subject line was “Stale News—better luck next time.”

On the TV at his elbow, Justine Kayser had one hand cupped over an ear as she gave her report back to Wolf at the war desk, her voice at hurricane pitch: “What we’re seeing here, Wolf, is another attempt by Ba’athist extremists, a splinter group that reportedly has ties to members of the former regime. Three Iraqi bystanders were killed in the blast, which tore through a shopping district, totally destroying a tea shop, a nail salon, and a fruit seller’s stall. You can see the charred fruit rinds littering the street behind me. The people we talked to here at the scene tell us today’s car bombing would never have happened if it weren’t for the lax security measures in this neighborhood. One shopkeeper told us it took Iraqi police nearly an hour to respond to the attack. Their excuse? They were in the middle of a training session with their U.S. counterparts at a base on the other side of Baghdad and couldn’t get away. As you can imagine, this only adds more fuel to the fire of anti-coalition resentment building here in the streets. Back to you, Wolf.”

Lieutenant Colonel Harkleroad moaned. “Oh, good gravy! Where the heck did they get
that
information?”

“They were there, sir,” Gooding said, silently adding,
And we were not
.

4

SHRINKLE

M
en,” Captain Shrinkle’s voice rang across the courtyard of the palace. “These are the times that try our souls.”

The rows of soldiers standing in formation rustled, exchanging sidelong glances without moving their heads.

“I know some of you have had difficulty sleeping since that unfortunate incident at Quillpen last week. Maybe you’ve been tossing and turning in your beds at night. Instead of counting sheep, all you can see is that Sunni’s head exploding—going
ka-blooey
!”

There came a short, suppressed groan from the general direction of where Sergeant Lumley stood in formation.

“But I want you to know, I’m here for you.” The formation of men shifted from foot to foot. “My door is always open, any time you want to talk it out.” Abe liked the way his voice bounced off the walls of the palace and into the ears of his men. It filled him with a good, affirmative feeling of authority. If he spoke a little louder, he wondered if maybe he might draw a couple of colonels to their windows, pull them away from their Fobbit duties to see him out here addressing his men who stood in a neat block of helmets with M4s at right-shoulder arms. Most commanders dispensed with the practice of company formations while here in Iraq, preferring instead to stand in the center of a loose, raggedy circle of at-ease soldiers. But not Captain Abe Shrinkle. He believed tight discipline would be the key to getting them through this year.

As the company first sergeant, a barrel-chested black man with a voice like raspy thunder, was fond of saying, “This is a ding-dang war, gentlemen, and don’t you ding-dang forget it.” (First Sergeant was a semi-devout Baptist who avoided profanity whenever possible.) “The ding-dang hajji
s
out there don’t give a hoot whether you want to be here or not. They’ll still be here when we’re packed up and gone home. But for the year you here, you just better suck it up and drive on and listen to the ding-dang commander and myself. We the ones gonna get you through it. We the ones gonna make sure you go home with all you arms, legs, and dick still attached. You listen to us. We the ones gonna show you the way to win.”

Whether or not First Sergeant believed everything that came out of his mouth with his ding-dang bellow, Captain Shrinkle backed him one hundred percent. He even let loose a couple of
Amen
s after some of First Sergeant’s speeches.

Abe wanted them to succeed at all costs. He loved America, he really did—purple mountains majesty and the whole nine yards. He believed there were no finer bedrock principles of any government than the ones founded by those powder-wigged Philadelphia fathers all those centuries ago.

Abe was
born
patriotic, a squalling baby striped red, white, and blue. By the fourth grade, he’d memorized the preamble to the Constitution; before he’d graduated high school, he had five ribbons hanging in his bedroom for the speech meets where he’d recited the entire Declaration of Independence (including the signatures) with a dramatic flourish that none of the other debate teams could equal. He mowed his neighbors’ yards—for
free
—because it was the right thing to do, the American way of democratic community. He pulled the chair out for his mother at the dinner table and called his father
Sir
without the smallest crumb of condescension.

There was never any question he would enter the military. His grandfather had served, two of his uncles had served, and his father would have served if it hadn’t been for the lupus. When the time came and Abe, a high school senior, stood on that cusp of decision, the choice was already mapped and plotted. There followed a brisk four years at Northwestern, eager participation in the Young Republicans Club, application and acceptance into West Point, and a steady rise through the Army ranks. Abe Shrinkle was on his way toward something big, something great, something magnanimous that would benefit his family and America at large.

The train of ambition had been barreling down the tracks so fast Abe hadn’t seen the washed-out bridge ahead.

Things had not always gone as he’d hoped, no. There had been setbacks, letdowns, and reversals of fortune.

There was that kerfuffle over his paper on Ethan Allen (“Beyond Furniture: Tactics and Techniques of the Green Mountain Boys”), which his West Point instructor had handed back to him pinched between two fingers, saying, “It’s dry when it needs to be wet, and moist when it should be practical. Altogether, a lackluster attempt, Cadet Shrinkle.” Undaunted, Abe had gone back and rewritten the red-inked, slashed, and arrowed sections and emerged with a C for the course.

Then there was his initial field problem at his first duty station in Alaska, where he’d been placed in charge of range safety for three days as soldiers rotated through the foxholes to qualify on the M16. It had been Abe’s job to scan the firing lanes, then raise his wooden paddle, signaling to the control tower that the downrange area was all clear. He hadn’t seen the mother moose and her calf browsing the willows at the 150-meter interval . . . but soldiers on the line had, and they took great sport in pumping rounds downrange right into the animals, even after Abe started waving his white paddle like a semaphore. The incident had blotched Abe’s record and slowed the acceleration on his chances for promotion but he had tried to shrug it off, knowing he would move on to better things at his next duty station.

And it
was
better at Fort Bliss, Texas . . . until three of his soldiers (two of them overweight, and the other a known alcoholic) had collapsed during the annual division “fun run.” The battalion commander looked at Abe with his lemon-juice lips and wanted to know whether or not he had read the forecast for that day and, if so, had he willfully and maliciously chosen to ignore the heat index, which topped 110 degrees, a clear indicator he should keep his men hydrated? Abe tried to explain that canteens were on back-order with battalion supply (when really he’d forgotten to order them in the first place), but that excuse didn’t hold water with the commander.

Still, these were molehills, not mountains, and Abe persevered, believing in the absolute moral superiority of his Army, his country, and his role in both.

When the towers collapsed and evil tried to gain a foothold in America, Abe had dug in his heels and vowed to be an immovable brick in the wall of security that they must now put up around his country. He was gung ho for war as a way to kick evil’s ass and he lustily cheered for the president during each Oval Office broadcast.

Since his arrival in the Cradle of Islam, Abe tried not to read the headlines in the newspapers left on the tables in the dining facility. He wouldn’t let the “gloom and doom” prognosticators dampen his mood with their implied doubts about the success of the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. He would hold fast to the belief that a united America was behind them when he and his men went on patrol to help improve this impoverished nation of power outages and fractious sheikhs.

That’s why encouraging his company to work through their complicated feelings about killing the suicide bomber at Quillpen was a good idea. If they could scrub the sight of that Sunni’s red-misted head from their nightmares by getting in touch with their feelings, then they’d be more effective killing machines the next time something like this came up. At least that’s what he remembered the clinic psychologist saying during that predeployment briefing back at Fort Stewart: “The Killer Inside Me: No Shame in That.”

And yet . . .

And yet Abe himself
did
feel shame over what had happened at Intersection Quillpen. He’d been too slow to react, too hesitant to commit to the bullet. Why was that?

He didn’t know and he’d been kicking himself from here to Sunday ever since, agonizing over the indecision. Had it been an urge to protect the soldiers inside that Abrams tank and the gathering Iraqi onlookers? Was it a question of wringing his hands for one minute too long as the moment of opportunity peaked and other factors came into the picture to clutter the situation? Or maybe he was just afraid of picking the wrong door in this “Let’s Make an Iraqi Deal.” Abe was pretty sure his grandfather never had one stuttering moment of waffle-waffle before sticking his bayonet in a Jap’s throat. So what the hell was his problem?