Prologue
1048, Tuesday, March 9, 2004
Al Qa’im, Iraq
South of Route Jade
Incoming bullets snap against the house’s corner like a spatula slapping a kitchen table. I grab Jack and pull him off the sidewalk as bits of cement sting the side of my neck. This isn’t the first time I’ve been shot at, but it’s definitely the closest I’ve come to getting hit. I’m pissed and scared all at the same time.
“You see ’em?” Jack asks.
“One block south, other side of the street, I think.” I’m doing my best to slow my heart rate, but I can’t remember how many breaths per second I’m supposed to be at. “Up on the, uh, second story window.”
“Roger.”
Jack takes a knee, waits for a break, and then sticks his M4 around the corner. “I see ’em.” But before he can get a shot off, more rounds take chunks from the building’s edge. Jack pulls back. “Three more. Street level, red Toyota.”
“It’s like they knew we were coming.” I adjust my grip on my M4. “Ten bucks says it’s Yasin.”
Jack looks up at me. “Mr. Giggles?”
I nod. “Think I saw him a block west on his cell.”
“You sure?”
“Pretty sure, yut. Where’s Clark?” I’d lost track of the private running point.
“Donkey cart, fifteen yards ahead. He’s down, but still moving.”
“Shit.”
I glance back the way we came. The rest of Echo Four One has taken cover along the street, but they’re pinned down too and returning one round for every five that come in. Fortunately, Corporal Shaft—yut, real name—staggered the squad and spread us down both sides of the street.
While Jack and I have spotted a total of four tangos, there’s gotta be plenty more based on the amount of incoming AK fire. This is an ambush. And right now, the enemy has us clinging to indents in the low, one-story mud and cement homes like cats avoiding water. My heart’s pounding in my chest, and I’m forcing my hands to stop shaking.
Just then, one of the squad’s Humvees with the M240B, a belt-fed, gas-operated medium machine gun, opens up from the rear of our patrol. Aside from killing tangos with extreme prejudice, it’s meant to intimidate the hell out of the enemy in situations just like this so Marines on the pavement can get done what we need to.
“’Bout time,” Jack says. “Go for Clark?”
It takes me a second to realize that Jack wants to run out and attempt to pull the private back. “Yut. Of course. Musketeers, right?”
“Thicker than blood,” he replies.
But I’m still hesitating.
Just then, our squad’s 249 gunner, Private First Class Garcia, starts massing fire with the Humvee. It’s enough to give me the boost I need. “All right. Let’s do it.”
Jack hunches over and leads, while I hang back a little with my M4 pointed downrange. I send a few shots toward the enemy, but I’m too jacked up on adrenaline to know if they hit anyone. As soon as Jack’s behind the donkey cart, we trade roles, and I dash the rest of the way to cover while he lays down suppressive fire. Enemy rounds skip across the hardpack as we flip the wood and metal wagon on its side in the middle of the street.
“How you doing, Clark?” I ask as AK rounds pepper the rail above me. But the question’s barely out of my mouth when I notice the blood pooling under his legs and the open flesh around his knees. I don’t know how to handle this. It’s not like the movies. Or my games. It’s—
“Did he get my dick?” Clark grabs my vest. “Are my nads gone?”
Honestly, I can’t tell if Clark’s dick is gone or not. It’s a goddamn mess down there. I’m more worried about his femoral artery than his manhood, but he has every right to be scared. “You’re gonna be okay, Clark. You hear me?”
“It’s bad, isn’t it.”
I lie and shake my head just as two bullets pop in the dead donkey’s corpse beside me. Air smells like ass and burning rubber. “You just keep breathing nice and slow. Roger?”
He nods.
I reach behind Clark and grab the medkit on his utility belt that we all stow between our buttpack and canteen. With Jack combining fire with the machine guns, I remove the tourniquet. Thing’s dancing in my hands as I try to assess which of Clark’s legs is worse. The right one, I think. “This is gonna hurt, bro.”
“Do it,” he replies.
I nod and then get to work. Jack helps hold Clark still as the private swears and struggles against the pain. When it’s done, I pull my hands away and feel shocked at how much blood is on them. Not sure what I was expecting, but suddenly the extra grip tape Sergeant Michaels told us to put on our M4 handles makes a lot more sense.
Now it’s time to get Clark outta here.
While the squads 240, 249, and M4s are keeping most of the hajjis suppressed, one insurgent in particular seems to have a bead on us that’s out of the squad’s field of fire. Dragging Clark from the danger area won’t be too effective if Jack and I get gunned down in the process.
With a quick peek around the cart’s left corner, I spot a man in a red-and-white-checkered scarf and a black tracksuit just inside a first-story window. “Contact left,” I say to Jack.
He nods, and while lacking a good sightline, Jack opens up on the house, which forces the target to step away.
Then I lean out and look down my scope. “Come on, you son of a bitch. Where’d you go?” Two beats later, the enemy steps back into the window and right behind my chevrons. My heart stops. I squeeze twice, and my M4 barks and flings brass. The hajji disappears.
“You got him,” Jack yells as I pull back behind the cart.
I take his word for it. “Tango down.”
“We’re gonna get you outta here, Clark,” Jack yells. “Can you still shoot?”
The private looks down at his M4, then nods at Jack and me. His face and lips are white as a sheet.
“Good,” Jack says and then looks at me. “You ready?”
“Wait.” I pull an M67 fragmentation grenade from a pouch attached to my load-bearing vest. “Now I’m ready.”
Jack smiles and takes hold of the canvas handle on the back of Clark’s flak vest. “Party time.”
I pull the pin. “Frag out.” The spoon spins away as I toss the grenade down the street. Then both of us are hauling ass as AK rounds zip into the hardpack. Clark’s flipped his giggle switch and is firing full-auto as we run, and I can’t say I blame him. I’d drain my magazine too.
We’re almost back to cover between buildings when the subconscious alarm clock in my head goes off. A split second later, my frag detonates. The ground shakes, and my ears ring. But the enemy fire abates just long enough for Corporal Shaft and Lance Corporal Anderson to grab our arms and pull us into the alley.
“Shoulda waited for more fire support, Finnegan,” Shaft says.
I slump down against the block wall, but I’m too nervous to respond with anything more than a, “Yes, Corporal.” I wanna tell him that I saw Yasin—wanna tell everyone that I think he’s giving away our positions and letting the insurgents know exactly where to find us. But the blood on my hands and the fact that I just ran through a hailstorm of bullets and survived is freakin’ me out.
“Corpsman up,” Anderson yells down the street. Then he hits my shoulder. “Hey. You good?”
I nod, but I don’t feel good.
“You did right by him.” Anderson nods at Clark.
“Thanks.”
Jack’s at the private’s other side, keeping the kid talking. “Breathe with me. Come on.”
“Did I get any?” Clark asks.
“Yeah. Hit the donkey twice too.”
Clark smiles.
“Where’s my goddamn corpsman?” Anderson yells again.
Plastic shopping bags tumble past the alley’s mouth as I think back to Yasin on his cell. “I saw him,” I say to Shaft. “One block west.”
“Saw who?”
“Yasin.” The man is a member of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and routinely serves as one of our unit’s translators when working with Al Qa’im’s latest police chief. I’ve had a gut feeling since day one that both men were working with Al-Qaeda but had no proof. And who’s gonna listen to a private first class from Brooklyn when he says he doesn’t like some hajji with a crooked smile?
“You saw shit, Marine,” Shaft says. “The Major’s counting on our partnership here to work, and you’re not gonna screw that up. Roger?”
“Roger.”
Sure, I wanna punch this guy in the mouth so bad. Every movie I’ve ever seen where some boot hits an idiotic NCO plays in my head. But unlike the actors, I have to live with the real-life consequences of nonjudicial punishment. It’s not worth the fight.
Just then, the corpsman slides into the alley. Likewise, the Humvee with the 240 pulls up, and Shaft orders Clark into the back. I’m about ready to lend a hand when someone shouts, “RPG.”
I fall back against the building while Jack leans over to cover the private from the blast. In the split second where the rocket-propelled grenade skips by the vehicle’s side and detonates against the building behind us, I realize that what I’ve always felt about Jack is true: my childhood friend’s a goddamn hero. Never tell a devil dog that. But of all the guys I’ve ever met who were fit to kill the enemy and save a brother at the same time, it’s him—Captain America, in the flesh.
Cement and shrapnel rain down on us, and my ears ring louder. I blink several times and see Jack yelling in Clark’s face, both men covered in moon dust. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but I see Jack pulling on Clark’s vest.
“Get him loaded,” Shaft yells.
I snap upright and help shield Jack and the corpsman as they haul Clark out of the alley’s safety. But AK rounds slap the Humvee’s windshield and force us back.
“I got you,” the driver says as he opens his door to help cover us and then returns fire. Spider veins splinter across the bulletproof glass, and more bullets skip off the steel plating. But it’s enough to get Clark where he needs to go. Two more Marines, Private Clapper and Private First Class Wood, are helped up behind Clark. Clapper looks like he’s taken a round to the shin, and Wood’s left sleeve is soaked in blood.
With our thirteen-man squad down to ten, and the remaining three Marines taking cover behind the Humvee, Shaft gives the order to fall back. The unit moves with the vehicle as it returns the way it came. It’s humiliating, and I hate it, but I’m also glad to be getting out of this hellhole. The enemy has amassed too much fire and has superior positions.
We pass a side street on the right, and I spot a man at the opposite end in the solid brown uniform and a red baseball cap of the ICDC. It’s Yasin. And he’s still on his damn cell phone.
“Son of a bitch.” I get my NCO’s attention and point down the alley. “Corporal Shaft. It’s Yasin.”
Shaft sends a few more rounds downrange and then looks to where I’ve gestured. “God damn.”
“I can take ’em.”
“Negative. He’s unarmed.”
“But he’s calling—”
“Negative, Finnegan! Return fire.”
“Roger.” It’s the wrong call. This hajji asshole’s gotta be orchestrating the insurgent ambush on us, right? And based on chatter I’m hearing over comms plus a red star-cluster firework and some purple smoke four blocks west of our position, I’m guessing Yasin has called in hits against Second and Third Squads too.
I grit my teeth and let the alley disappear with Yasin in it. My hands aren’t shaking as much, but I’m still pissed. So I take out my aggression on a punk in shorts and flip flops running up behind the donkey cart carrying an RPG—the great equalizer of the Third World enemy combatants everywhere. My round hits him in the shoulder, and he spins out of view. Two seconds later, his buddy hoists the shoulder-fired weapon and aims at our Humvee. My next shot hits the hajji in the head. But not before his finger squeezes the trigger.
When the ordnance hits the Humvee’s windshield, molten glass shoots out the vehicle’s rear. Two men go down, and a third gets pinned against a house when the Humvee bucks. I’m on my back but climbing to my feet as Jack has the presence of mind to pull Clark out of the vehicle. The private’s legs are partially on fire, but he looks in too much shock to be feeling it. Still, Jack beats out the flames and starts dragging Clark down the street.
I grab the private by the arm and look north to see that we’re less than twenty yards from Route Jade, the main road that runs due west to Camp Husaybah. With any luck, Major Corrigan’s convoy at the police station is closing in for support. Unless, of course, he’s under attack too, in which case we need a QRF.
Look at me, I’m a goddamn private playing chess while bullets are flying over my head—Mother Mary and Jesus.
I glance over my shoulder to see the hajjis start falling in behind us. They must smell blood in the water.
“Frag out,” gets yelled two, maybe three times, followed by several explosions. The street’s filled with dust and smoke, but the AK rounds are still coming. Just then, my left knee goes limp as what feels like a red-hot iron pokes through my upper calf. But somehow, I manage to stay upright and keep pulling on Clark’s arm. I see blood on my pants leg. Yut, I’ve been shot. Oh, God! I’ve been shot in the goddamn leg.
We’re ten yards from the main road when a high-backed Humvee noses around the corner bearing an improvised weapon’s mount for a Mk 19 belt-fed automatic grenade launcher. Apparently, Mary and Jesus were listening. The Humvee’s canvas has been rolled back to make room for improvised armor. Thing looks like something out of Mad Max.
The Marine atop doesn’t waste a second. He summons the Mk 19 to life, and I hear the trademark thug-thug-thug rip down the street as 40mm rounds explode on the enemy’s position. Despite my injury, the grenade launcher’s rhythmic cadence gives me something to march to, and Jack and I swing Clark free of the danger area and behind cover along Route Jade.
I’m back around the corner, M4 pointed south, as the rest of my squad charges toward me. I’m searching for tangos in the background, but the Mk 19 has made a meal of them, and the AK-47s have gone silent. Instinctively, I start counting our fire teams and then add one more Marine for Corporal Shaft, who’s emerged completely unscathed. Imagine that.
I look down at Clark. The corpsman has just finished injecting him with morphine and writing the time and dosage on his arm. But then I catch Jack’s eye and a slight shake of his head and realize that the drug is meant to help ease Clark’s passing, not his recovery.
* * *
I don’t tell this story. At least not all the details. But I do talk about how bad it was having to abide by the general’s “first do no harm” mandates in order to promote the “pro-coalition mentality.” Granted, I was just an Irish Catholic redhead from Brooklyn; what did I know?
“We learned from Vietnam,” they said.
“Embed with the locals, patrol with the police, win hearts and minds,” they ordered.
And I get it. Our commanders said they believed those policies were the fastest way to end the fight. And I think that most of them wanted to get home just as badly as we did.
But it wasn’t the best way.
And it cost lives.
Private Samuel K. Clark, a grocery store clerk who loved to hunt elk outside his hometown of Flagstaff, Arizona, died before we reached Camp Husaybah. No medal. No explanation to his family. And seeing him die tore me up inside. Still does.
Jack deserved a medal too. But no commendations came despite the after-action reports I sat through and the letters we helped write to the brass. But you can bet that dumbass lieutenant who got us into this mess received something.
The Major, God bless him, needed a win, not multiple ambushes. Politicians in leatherback chairs and leather-bound notebooks needed leathernecks to help ensure their reelections. Needed to hear that their plans had worked.
And what did we need?
I think about that a lot. The way I see it, we needed permission to fight the war the way we’d trained to fight it. To win. But the country wasn’t ready for that. They’d lost their stomach for the kind of violence we knew how to unleash. It’s ugly. And I don’t blame them one bit. But that’s the difference between trained warriors and civilians. We have the constitution to head outside the wire and do what no one else can, or wants to. It’s called war. And we needed to win it. Instead, all we got was a slowly festering wound that still hasn’t found a way to heal.
What happened in the checkpoint border town with Syria was swept under the rug. Sure, news came out here and there, eventually. But it wasn’t a true reflection of the way Echo Company saw it.
Ironically, by late April of 2004, all personnel, facilities, and equipment of the Civil Defense Corps were transferred to the Iraqi Ministry of Defence under the Iraqi Armed Forces. But it wouldn’t be the last time Marines came under attack in Al Qa’im. Three weeks later, those who survived and those who fell would get the recognition they rightly deserved. Oorah.
As for Jack and me, we returned to our unit after some Jell-O and Band-Aids. I never saw Corporal Shaft again, which was for the best. And every time we went out on patrol, Jack always asked to take point.
“It’s for Clark,” he’d say.
And he was a son of a bitch for saying it like that, ’cause he knew I couldn’t say no.
And I should have.
Damn, I should have.
Chapter 1
1415, Monday, April 25, 2027
West Antarctica
Ellsworth Subglacial Highlands Research Facility
I’ve given up fighting. But sometimes us old devil dogs aren’t given much of a choice, are we.
So I jab once at Vlad’s mouth.
The six foot, three inch Muscovite’s monobrow raises in a look of surprise. Then he smiles, displaying two rows of red-smeared teeth—one freshly out of place.
“Might wanna have that looked at,” I say.
He growls and spits the tooth away.
“Or get rid of it,” I add. “Cheaper that way.”
I lean away from his counterpunch and throw a right cross at his cheek. Again, the brute seems calm. But the crowd isn’t—they whoop and holler around the mess hall, a third of them in Russian, chanting something about “the old man and the monster.” Sounds like a bad Hemingway novel. Or an even worse 80s action flick.
My opponent’s next two punches land against my forearms. Guy’s a damn tank. I avoid his third strike and deliver a rib shot to his left side. Something cracks under my fist. He grunts—I’m guessing he feels it too. So I go for a second punch to the new sweet spot, but he captures my fist under his arm and twists.
The sudden force yanks me off my feet, and I crash into some of the mess hall’s folding metal furniture. The Russians roar and start pounding tables.
When I turn to face my opponent, there’s a fist coming at my head. I duck and feel the wind brush over my ear. Then he grunts again as I land a second blow on his ribs. That sends him to the ground and the audience to their feet—half out of surprise, half out of excitement.
From the moment the international “joint military contingents” on “non-weaponized field training maneuvers” got here a month ago, Vlad had labeled me the “red-bearded American dog alpha top.” I don’t mind the moniker, but it’s not the easiest to tattoo. From bumping into me at the gym to long looks across the mess hall, I couldn’t tell if Vlad was trying to size me up or ask me out.
“Stay down,” I tell him, knowing that if he gets up, he’ll end up uglier than when he started, and that was saying something. I hadn’t been in the mood to fight when this started, and I’d make sure there wouldn’t be a second confrontation when it was over. My opponent, however, seems that he won’t stop fighting until he’s unconscious. Based on the ink across his hands, that’s not surprising.
Vlad spits blood on the linoleum floor, then he barrels into my stomach and wraps both arms around my waist. I backpedal hard, trying to keep up with him, but I’m not fast enough. The crowd parts, and we crash into a line of metal folding chairs. I use the chaos to my advantage and manage to roll away from his grasp.
A beat later, I’m on my feet, steady and still, while he struggles to get off the floor. Sure, I could jump him now, and probably win too. But I don’t believe in kicking a man while he’s down. That, and I don’t need to. The mere fact that I’m up first is doing the work for me.
Vlad here is ten years my junior and has both height and size on his side. Whereas I’m the old man at the station—two inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter. While we both might be fighters and patriots, I’m one thing Vlad isn’t.
A student of chess.
Most people think a brawl is all about brute force and knowing how to take a punch. Yeah, that plays into it, of course. But winning a fistfight, or any fight, has a lot more to do with strategy than most people assume. It’s a mind game, a true battle of wits, to quote the Princess Bride, where we find out “who is right, and who is dead.” God, I’m a sucker for that movie.
In the course of studying my opponent over the last month, I noticed Vlad suffers from a short temper, which means his amygdala is currently trying to overtake his prefrontal cortex for dominance.
To prove my point, Vlad throws a chair at me. I deflect it and wait for him to get up. He tosses his head like a bull, and then, with predictable rage, Vlad drops his shoulders and charges. I sidestep him like I’m a matador and watch several of his men catch and spin him around. He’s bleeding from his mouth and reflexively protecting his left side.
He charges again, so I pull out a little more from the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program toolbox. I lean left to avoid a right cross, and then leverage my shift in balance to deliver a quick kick to his left side. My lower shin strikes his ribs. He buckles into the blow but recovers quickly. Then he jabs with his left hand, but too slow to be effective. So I lock his wrist and curl his hand down and away. His nerve pain is explosive though non-destructive, and Vlad instinctively tries to ease the pressure by arching his back.
Knowing that Russians are taught to be ruthless—as the thrown chair mildly demonstrated—I decide to encourage Vlad to give up this fight while he has a chance. With his hand still locked, I deliver a quick strike to his left knee. Not enough to break the joint, but he’ll be limping for a week or two.
Vlad pulls away and emits a low growl.
“Listen, big man,” I say, lowering my hands in a symbolic gesture. It’s a move that gives tired opponents an out and aggressive opponents an excuse to keep fighting. “We can drop this now and we both—”
He’s aggressive.
Vlad’s comrades thrust him back into the makeshift ring, and he throws a left hook at my head. I duck to the left. He uppercuts with his right. I dodge right. After his next failed left hook, I strike him in the ribcage for the fourth time. He curls over and backs away.
What my oversized contender doesn’t know is that I’m in pain too. This forty-four-year-old body isn’t what it used to be. My knuckles are screaming, hands and arms aching, and something in my back is messed up from hitting the table and chairs. But that’s the other thing that comes with age—the ability to hide your crap. And as simple as it sounds, if the enemy doesn’t think they’re affecting you, there’s less fire in their fight.
Which is fine with me. I want less action right now, not more. This was supposed to be easy, remember?
Two more weeks and I’m out. Sipping lemonade and watching rural Pennsylvania sunsets where no one can find me.
People say I’m gonna miss games like this. Maybe I will. What I won’t miss, however, is not bringing everybody home at the end of an op. That part can stay the hell away from me. And so can all the claims that we’re fighting for something bigger than ourselves. We were once. But now? I don’t know.
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
