The Death Trust (20 page)

I glanced down. My hand was locked around her upper thigh and my knuckles were white with the strain. “Sorry,” I yelled back, releasing her.

“You need to see someone,” she suggested.

I wanted to snap back something witty but my brain was frozen with fear. Not one but two transport aircraft identical to the one we were in had crashed in the last five months—one because of small-arms ground fire closer to the runway, the other because the aircraft was flying a wild approach just to avoid
possible
ground fire. Like us. I remembered reading about it—I’ve developed a morbid curiosity about air crashes that has increased exponentially as my own fear of flying has grown. Metal fatigue led to the horizontal stabilizer cracking as the plane spiraled downward. The C-130 had cartwheeled into the ground, breaking up and exploding and turning the pilot and copilot into little fireballs squeezed like flaming orange pips from the main body of the tumbling, burning wreckage. Okay, so maybe the bit about the orange pips wasn’t included in the news article, but I’m sure it wouldn’t have been too far from the truth.

I glanced out the small window. Down on the ground twenty thousand feet below, I could see strings of yellow lights marking the passage of roads across the desert. It looked peaceful enough. The plane dipped sickeningly as we commenced the descending corkscrew. My stomach tried to scramble out of my mouth as the wings flipped seemingly at right angles to level flight. The descent slowed—maybe the pilot overcooked it—and we went from negative Gs to a fistful of positive ones, my head suddenly weighing three times more than normal. My ears popped as the plane heeled over again, the engines screaming, air-frame shuddering—the thing about to break up and scatter us all across the sand.

And then the main wheels kissed the runway and squealed reassuringly. I unbuckled, eager to get out and face the car bombers, the suicide bombers, and all the other nut bombers this place had to offer. Anything, in fact, to get the hell away from air travel.

Masters and I stood on the tarmac with our bags at our feet, shivering in the predawn chill, and scoped the surroundings. The horizon was so flat it almost curved, and one quarter of it was outlined in orange, green, and purple where the sun was about to make an appearance. On the airfield sat the usual collection of C-130s and C-5s, as well as a couple of F-16 and F-15 fighters. Some frightening-looking Russian aircraft were also parked here and there, seemingly assembled with duct tape, strips of the stuff hanging from various engine panels. Half a dozen Black Hawk helicopters and several Cobra gun-ships were corralled in a separate area, their main rotor blades sagging under their own weight.

A bunch of tents and demountables had been set up as the APOD—aerial port of debarkation, the military equivalent of immigration—and the battery of portable generators servicing them hummed in competition with the air-con units and the distant turboprop growl of approaching aircraft. The Stars and Stripes hung limp from a central flagpole. More Stars and Stripes hung from each of the tents. U.S. Army and Marine Corps combat troops milled about, mixing with aircrews and heavily armored civilians carrying weaponry. Beyond this activity was a large parking lot of Humvees and light armored vehicles bristling with machine guns, grenade launchers, and TOWs—tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided missiles. Beyond these was a wall of towering concrete pillars topped with razor wire that said “FUCK OFF” in no uncertain terms to any unauthorized personnel on the other side.

Masters and I walked toward the APOD in silence. “Arrivals over there,” said a sergeant, her Kevlar helmet low over her eyes, as we approached the demountable. She pointed with a clipboard toward a cluster of tents where a large number of personnel were waiting in line. We made our way over and joined the line.

Masters passed our movement orders to the army lieutenant and the woman checked us out on her laptop. “Yep, we’ve got you here,” she said, frowning at the screen. “I’ll need to scan you in. You want to get around this place, every journey starts with your CAC card. You’ll need to flash ’em all over the place. Whatever you do, don’t lose ’em. And for God’s sake, stay in uniform. Our boys tend to shoot what they don’t recognize.
Capisce?”

We nodded and handed over our CAC cards—the smart cards that contained a chip holding an array of information including, among other things, our blood types. Just in case.

“You’re both classed Space A,” the lieutenant continued, “so you shouldn’t have any trouble getting on a convoy manifest. You been here before?”

Both Masters and I shook our heads. The lieutenant gave us a small evil smile. From it I gathered that we were in for some serious unpleasantness. “We don’t move around Eye-rak unless it’s in convoy strength. You’re heading to the green zone?”

Masters and I nodded.

“You’ll love the place,” she said, giving us her devil smile again. “All the comforts of home, plus mortar fire. Make your way across to the main demountable and pick up your flaks and Kevlar and M9s. But, if you’re in a hurry to start enjoying your time here, better get your names on a transport manifest first. They’re filling up fast. Anything else?”

We shook our heads.

“Be safe,” she said, this time fixing us with a look of intensity, meaning it. Then it dissolved and she barked, looking at the marine sergeant behind us, “Next!”

We joined another line to get on a transport manifest. That done, we went to the demountable as directed to sign for and collect our flaks, Kevlar helmets, and sidearms.

By the time we left the converted shipping container, the sun had cleared the horizon. The desert night chill had been replaced by a heat that smacked off the tarmac and curled the hair in my nostrils.

I’d assumed the convoy we’d be joining into Baghdad would be a road-going one, but I was wrong. A duty sergeant pointed us in the direction of six Black Hawks, their turbine engines emitting the familiar flat snarl accompanied by the
swoop-swoop
of the main rotor through the air. One of the Cobras was also winding up to a dull roar. Its nose-mounted Gatling gun swung left and right as the weapons specialist in the front seat went through his checks. Masters smiled and gave my shoulder a pat. Despite the heat, the sweat under my flak jacket was cold.

A loadmaster directed us to the lead Black Hawk, where a flight sergeant beckoned. He was a little guy whose large helmet gave him the appearance of a green lollipop. It was too noisy to speak, or I was too scared—I’m not sure which. He pointed at my M9 pistol in its shoulder holster. I knew the drill. I removed it and showed him that its magazine had been removed. He gave me the thumbs-up and Masters repeated the action. Satisfied, he slapped his hand on the deck of the forward compartment. Masters propped her gear onto the floor and climbed in after it. The waist gunner pointed at the pull-down seat against the bulkhead. I followed and took the seat next to her. The door gunner stepped nimbly up and buckled himself into the seat beside me. It was all very cozy.

We sat there rocking gently with the centrifugal forces driving the helo’s revolving parts, the roar of its turbines in our ears. Two riflemen sat in the seats opposite, their heads forward, leaning on the stocks of the inverted M16s as if they were praying. If there was any time to get religion, this was it. The faces I could see looked pretty grim, which wasn’t reassuring, particularly when one of them was the pilot’s.

The Black Hawk stuck to the uninhabited parts of the desert, which wasn’t so hard given that much of it was exactly that. But then we closed on Baghdad and the ride quickly got wilder than anything Disneyland has to offer. We began jinking, climbing, and descending as if the pilot was suffering an epileptic seizure—all while the desert skimmed past barely two hundred and fifty feet below. Both the riflemen opposite barfed into the bags provided. Behind Masters’s sunglasses, I could see that her eyes were rigidly fixed on some part of the airframe. The muscles in her jaw were bunching and flexing. The gunners on the doors were oblivious to the motion—this being their office of business—and spent the entire flight tracking dangerous-looking goats and small groups of people down on the sand, nervously swinging their guns here and there waiting for the least excuse to send down a few hundred hot 7.62mm slugs. I was aware of the Cobra sitting off our left door about five hundred feet away, looking like some lethal species of prehistoric bug. I was having an out-of-body experience, taking it all in from a disembodied point somewhere high above the scene. I’d experienced something like this before and so I recognized it for what it was—shock.

“You okay, Cooper?”

“Wha—”

“Snap out of it. We’re here—BIAP.”

“Where?”

“BIAP—Baghdad International Airport.”

I suddenly realized that the helo was on the ground and I was the only person in it, aside from the aircrew shutting it down. The soldiers seated opposite were no longer there, and neither were the gunners. Embarrassing. Masters was standing on the tarmac, hands on her hips, looking at me. It was a look of impatience. The air was thick with the smells of hot kerosene and vomit. Not mine, and I decided that was something at least. I released the harness and climbed out.

“You really need to do something about that. How long have you had the problem?” asked Masters as we walked in the heat radiating from the sky above and from the tarmac below toward the Baghdad International Airport APOD.

I countered her question with a question. “How many airplane crashes have you walked away from?”

“None. You?”

“Two.”

“Oh. Okay, that makes sense.” Masters stopped. “They can help you, you know.”

“Who can? Shrinks?”

“Psychologists.”

“No, thanks. Their wings are prone to falling off, too.”

Masters dropped it, recognizing the conversation was like a goat trail in the desert—it would go nowhere.

The APOD erected in the dirt was reminiscent of the one back at Balard, just a collection of tents and demountables surrounded by rubbish—soda cans, paper, plastic, car tires, and, oddly, a clothes dryer. It was still early morning but the sun’s heat was already fierce, hammering down, boring through my Kevlar. We made our way toward the biggest tent, presented our CAC cards to an army corporal, and asked to be put on the manifest for the first convoy heading out for the Baghdad green zone. He told us to hurry. There was room on the next convoy, but it was leaving any second. We kept moving. Half a dozen heavily armed Humvees were idling out back.

A sunburned soldier sitting up behind the roof-mounted M2 machine gun in the last vehicle motioned at us to get in as the lead vehicle began to move off. The door opened and Masters and I jumped in.

“Make yourself at home, folks,” said the corporal seated in the front passenger seat, moving a quid of chewing tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other. In his hand was a plastic water bottle still carrying the sticker for some local brand, half filled with a licorice-colored sludge. He turned around, struggling in his flaks, a startlingly wide grin splitting his round face in half. “Where y’all from?”

“Germany,” I said.

“Where ’bouts is that?”

“Europe.”

“I thought there might be a Germany in South Carolina or somewhere. You know, like how there’s a Paris in Texas?”

“No, just Germany—in the land of the Germans,” I said, earning a kick from Masters.

“Well, wherever y’all come from, welcome to Eye-rak.” He put the bottle to his lips and squeezed out a mouthful of black saliva that coated the bottle’s insides. “Can I offer you folks some good ol’ American snuff? It’s mint-flavored. Keeps the stink of this place out of your nose.”

I shook my head. “Thanks for offering.”

The gunner’s knees occupied the space in front of my face. I spat on the window and smeared a circle of dust away so that I could watch Baghdad flash by.

The convoy slowed when it reached the exit. I saw that the entire airport was ringed with high, reinforced concrete blocks crowned with more razor wire. A collection of Abrams M1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles—over five hundred tons of armor-plated steel—stood guard.

“You’re new here, aren’t you?” the man in front said as we accelerated once more. His grin was vast. I wouldn’t have been surprised if his face disappeared and, Cheshire cat–like, this grin remained behind, disembodied.

“Yeah. How can you tell?”

“’Cause I saw y’all hanging around at the APOD and I pegged you as newbies—lookin’ around, sorta not knowing what the hell to do next.”

“We’re investigators,” I said. “We’re paid to look lost.”

“Well, sit back and hang on, folks. It’s only four klicks to the green zone and we do it in pretty quick time.”

He wasn’t kidding. Our vehicles accelerated and held their speed—stopping for nothing and no one. We blasted through a couple of intersections, running red lights. Out on the expressway, we had at least twenty miles per hour on the surrounding traffic, which, for the most part, seemed to be worn-out old European vehicles so riddled with bullet holes that they looked like mobile sieves.

Baghdad slid by in the spit-and dirt-encrusted porthole beside me. Through this looking glass, I could see that the Iraqis largely ignored us, even though we were charging through them at a speed hazardous to their health. Iraqi males stood on the streets, hanging out at shopfronts, talking, or drinking what I assumed was coffee, there being no alcohol hereabouts. They wore a mixture of western and Arabic clothes—jeans and pants or loose, flowing robes. Where they all seemed to agree, however, was on the subject of mustaches. The shaggy caterpillars were everywhere. Every second guy reminded me of Saddam Hussein. The dictator might have been toppled but his barber was still out there, and the guy was making a killing.

I caught a glimpse of the green zone before we came up on it, a vast wall of the same towering concrete blocks and barbed wire out at BIAP, only these were spray-painted here and there with slogans in Arabic that I guessed were probably not warm greetings from the local population. We made our way through lines of ancient, battered European vehicles belching smoke and unburned gas, all caked in fine beige dust. The way ahead was blocked for the locals by Abrams M1 main battle tanks and Iraqi police. These obstructions slowed the traffic to a snarl, and heat boiled off the engines, further cooking the air so that it shimmered against the baked blue sky like running water. No one seemed in a particular hurry to move, unless it was to lean on their horns.