Weapons of Mass Destruction (26 page)

They stormed the hallway, side by side, so massive in full combat gear that domestic spaces could scarcely accommodate the enormity of their attack. Logan straddled the dead insurgent, pivoting to fire into the open room to the left. Sinclair kicked in the door to the right. Multiple rounds harmlessly ripped into the walls and mattress of what looked like a boy’s bedroom. Clothes were strewn on the floor, waiting for his mother to tell him to pick them up. The upstairs fell silent. Logan had already stopped shooting.

“All clear!” Sinclair hollered.

Logan didn’t respond. Sinclair squared off, preparing to rush headlong into the next room.

“Logan?”

“Clear,” he finally said. He voice sounded huskier than usual.

“Everything okay?”

Logan appeared in the doorway, visibly shaken. He caught sight of Sinclair and his face hardened. What looked like a woman’s arm was draped across the floor of the room. Logan stepped into the hallway, closing the bedroom door behind him.

“All clear,” Logan repeated. “Let’s get back downstairs.”

“What happened in there?”

“Drop it.”

“Was that a woman?”

The minute Sinclair asked the question he regretted it. No matter what happened in that room, it wasn’t worth jeopardizing his bond with Logan. The long mission was taking its toll, and they were making mistakes. Correction. Sinclair had made a mistake. Logan was just doing his duty. If Sergeant Troy had told them once he had told them a million times. Never second-guess the decisions of your platoon. Compartmentalize everything. Shoot first, don’t ask questions later, no matter what.

“I said drop it, Sinclair.”

Logan had fully recovered his nerve. He was already halfway down the hall, confident that Sinclair was right behind him. Gunners had a secret compartment, deep in the recesses of their psyches, where they stashed the corpses of all the women and children they killed in the line of duty. For the sake of the mission, if not to avoid going crazy, they learned to ignore that particular aspect of winning the War on Terror. Covering the action from rooftop perches, Sinclair wasn’t privy to what happened behind closed doors. He couldn’t get the image of that draped arm out of his mind. Sniper duty had made him soft.

Sinclair might have escaped the compound with his honor intact if he hadn’t glanced down at the dead rifleman. No wonder he’d been so gullible. He was a teenager at best, possibly the boy whose clothes were strewn across the floor in the next room. Probably the son of the phantom corpse behind the closed door. Sinclair nudged the door open with his automatic. He would never forgive himself for betraying Logan’s trust. It shouldn’t have mattered whether it was a woman or an insurgent. Judging from the position of her body, it was a mother. Her arms were extended, her limp hand reaching out to the dead rifleman. Was it her son or just some random kid? It may not have mattered, even to her. She had reached out to comfort him, one way or the other.

Sinclair panicked. A traitor had invaded his mind. The warrior in him looked on, incapacitated with doubt, as the traitor violated everything he believed in. He wondered what would have happened if he had cleared that particular room instead of Logan. For days he had fought, killing untold numbers of insurgents without faltering. He had knifed a man whose very breath he could feel on his face without flinching. But the intrusion of kindness into the field of brutality unmanned him. The anomalous presence of civilians seemed to transform war into terrorism. He told himself he wasn’t thinking these things. He had been trained not to think these things. He had been trained not to think. Training was everything.

The traitor tried to take refuge in the fact that he hadn’t shot her. The refuge itself was a betrayal. The entire compound had been declared hostile, and they had orders to shoot everything that moved. There was no place for equivocation in the military. There was right and wrong. Democracy and the Axis of Evil. The traitor tried to convince Sinclair that the woman lying in a pool of her son’s blood defied this moral certitude. Even if following orders was right, she wasn’t necessarily wrong, just in the wrong house in the wrong city in a war gone wrong.

If only Sinclair were fighting his Grandpa’s war. The enemy had been clearly demarcated. They wore uniforms, for starters. The infantry could readily distinguish between civilians and hostile forces. They measured their honor against the dishonor of Nazis herding families into concentration camps. In Fallujah, women and children refused to be herded out of harm’s way. Why were they still there, blurring ethical boundaries? Terrorists had killed civilians by the thousands on 9/11. Marines were in Iraq to punish that transgression, not replicate it.

Sinclair smacked his helmet to clear his head. He was going mad. Battle fatigue sometimes affected his performance, but never his judgment. Orders were orders. Civilians had been evacuated. Collateral damage was inevitable. His training kicked in and he raced after Logan, fleeing the specter of the traitor standing over the corpses of a mother and her son. A warrior descended the stairs with Logan, his weapon at the ready. They had cleared the upstairs of hostile forces.

The living room was still filled with smoke, but they could see well enough to confirm that it remained secured. Logan and Sinclair flanked the kitchen door, trying to assess the action within. They recognized the gunner styles of Wolf, McCarthy, Trapp, and Percy. They were all still alive. An awful lot of firepower was crammed into the nooks and crannies of the kitchen. They were up against four AK-47s, maybe five. The odds were already on their side, given their superior weaponry. But Wolf was playing it safe, biding time until the squad was reunited.

“Ready to engage,” Logan shouted into his headset.

“What took you so long?” Wolf said.

“Rush-hour traffic.”

“Where’s Sinclair?”

“Riding shotgun. What are we up against?”

“Enemy gunners at ten and two o’clock. Two or more in the pantry at four o’clock.”

“We’re right behind you.”

They stormed the kitchen, guns blazing. There were five, not four, insurgents. The three crouching behind appliances bore the brunt of the assault. Nothing much left of them, just hamburger meat. The other two were splayed in a utility closet. Mops and brooms and legs and arms. Detergent leaking from punctured containers spattered their blood with antiseptic blues and greens. The squad whooped it up. They couldn’t have executed a better blitz. Just one more compound and they’d be scarfing down MREs with Radetzky’s men. By then maybe this bogus cease-fire would be over and they could really kick ass.

A screen door at the far end of the kitchen opened onto a back porch. Wolf was already assessing their next target. Stacked in their usual configuration, the squad regained its composure. They sprinted toward the adjacent compound, peppering the windows and balcony while Wolf opened a breach to the entrance. As far as they could tell over the racket of their own automatics, their charge was unchallenged. They reconfigured on either side of the front door, panting with excitement. Taking fire was nerve-racking, but at least you knew what you were up against. Either the compound was empty or they were in for one hell of a surprise party. McCarthy prepared to break down the door. Percy and Logan primed grenades. They popped the cork and the team rushed into the compound. Wolf and McCarthy sprayed the fatal funnel. Sinclair and Logan hit the corners. Percy scanned the room for traps.

“Clear!”

“Closed door at one o’clock,” Percy warned.

“Cover it!” Wolf ordered. “We’ve got the kitchen.”

The door flew open, as if on cue. Trapp and Sinclair let loose, nailing an insurgent. Another one appeared in the kitchen, drawing fire from Wolf. An instant later, two more descended the staircase. The squad was on the wrong end of a double bait and hook. McCarthy and Logan pivoted, zipping rounds up and down the stairs. The lead insurgent’s body danced a grisly jig, arms flailing from the impact. But not before somebody got a shot off. McCarthy went down.

Trapp tried to stanch the wound. It was no use. Even American body armor couldn’t withstand close-range rounds. The bullet was lodged in what was left of his heart. Trapp keened over the body, rocking McCarthy in his arms. He experienced the loss viscerally, like a severed limb. They were all part of one Corps, a single martial body. The rest of the squad formed a semicircle around them, weapons at the ready with tears streaking their grimy cheeks. Sinclair alone was stony-faced. He couldn’t afford to go there. He had to keep it together so the traitor and the coward wouldn’t ambush him again.

Before every offensive, Wolf recited the first half of Sun Tzu’s military creed. Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys. He never recited the second half. Look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death. The mere mention of death hit too close to home. He felt personally responsible for the loss of McCarthy. He loved his squad with the same unfathomable intensity that he loved his own family. Technically his job was to keep them alive so they could kill others. Actually he fought to protect them. He kept his eyes and ears open, even as he mourned with his men. The living room was strewn with enemy corpses. A head count revealed that one of the insurgents had escaped up the stairway.

“Percy!” he barked. The whole squad flinched. “Secure the area.”

“Yessir.”

“Move out. McCarthy’s motherfucking murderer is upstairs.”

Wolf led the way. There were three closed doors off the upstairs hallway. Russian roulette. He stationed Trapp at the head of the stairs to watch their backs. McCarthy wasn’t there to do the honors, so Logan positioned himself outside the first door, flanked by Wolf and Sinclair. He broke the door down and they stampeded in, decimating knickknacks and throw pillows. Wolf flung open an armoire and they shredded somebody’s wardrobe. The veils were gaily colored. The dresses were stylish, a woman with impeccable taste. Sinclair thought he detected the faint scent of her clothes wafting through the smell of explosives. He was almost afraid to look. But no one was hiding in the armoire, which didn’t mean she wasn’t cowering in the next room or already dead, her limp arm stretched across a bloody floor.

“All clear!”

They repeated the drill in the next room, emptying multiple rounds into a box of toys and a whimsical canopied bed. Logan thought he spotted a muzzle poking between remnants of lace hanging by a thread. They renewed the attack, splintering the wood on all four bedposts until the canopy collapsed. Wolf pulled off the blankets, exposing a stuffed animal. Sinclair did a double take. Its furry little arm wasn’t draped across the sheets. Its hand didn’t reach out in supplication. Blood wasn’t everywhere.

They raced down the hallway to the third and last room. Logan prepared to kick in the door. Sinclair summoned his training. Wolf gave the signal. They stormed the room. Sinclair thought he saw a child in the corner of the bombpocked nursery. Delay and you get blown away. He spent his last breath looking over his shoulder at his buddies. They continued to charge without him, pumping round after round into the body of an abandoned doll. Wolf rushed to the window. The enemy, if there was one, had vanished.

In Memoriam

W
ILLIAM
S
INCLAIR

November 22, 1983, to April 9, 2004
Lance Corporal
Bronze Star

W
hen they were boys they found a jackrabbit with a broken leg. Pete wanted to splint the leg and nurse it back to health. Sinclair said it would never survive anyway. He offered to wring its neck, but Pete said he shouldn’t have to shoulder all the responsibility. They’d better kill it together. Its neck was too scrawny for them both to get a decent grip. Though barely big enough to carry BB guns, their aim was true enough. On the count of three they put the poor thing out of its misery. Sinclair pronounced the death sentence with moral authority remarkable in a boy his age. Its time had come.

They fashioned a bier out of bark and processioned to the aspen grove. Wind had cleared a patch of earth where they sculpted a hole in the shape of the jackrabbit’s body. So it would be comfortable. They found a smooth round stone in a dry creek bed and placed it on the grave. To protect it from scavengers. To mark the spot so they could pay their respects. Pete was ready to recite the eulogy, but Sinclair said they needed another stone. There was one rabbit, but there were two of them. They returned to the creek bed. Two round stones mark the grave.