Once a week this permanently sunburned Russian came around in a special truck and sucked all the shit and piss and jizz and etcetera out of the chemical toilets with a big hose and he sprayed the chemical toilets down with a pressure washer, looking like an old fisherman in a gale. He was a friendly guy too. He always smiled and gave you the thumbs-up if you waved to him. I’ve often wondered if he was a spy.
If you wanted to buy something you went to the haji shops, little plywood shacks that sold more or less all the shit you needed and some more shit you didn’t need. I went and bought a carton of Miamis for $5. It was a good deal at 50? a pack, so good it made up for the Miamis tasting like bug spray. I bought three cans of Wild Tiger too, and a box of Metro bars. Metro bars were alright. Wild Tiger was fucking great. It was like Red Bull but with nicotine in it. It was real expensive by haji shop standards, but it was so good it didn’t matter. It was New Year’s Day. Happy New Year.
I went to the phone tent because the phones were back on and I could call Emily. The phones had been off since Christmas on account of the casualties. There was a line and I had to wait awhile till a phone opened up and I sat down. I’d had the calling card in my hand already for a half an hour and I put the card number in and put Emily’s number in and I got through.
“How are you?” she asked.
“Better now. So much better. Goddamn. The sound of your voice, you know. I miss you.”
“I miss you too. I’ve been waiting for you to call. Are you alright?”
“Yeah. How are things?”
“Things are good.”
“Anything new?”
“Nothing really. I made a new friend.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Who’s your new friend?”
“He’s interesting, man. He’s from Puerto Rico and he robs ATM machines.”
“You don’t say.”
“Yeah, he robs ATM machines. But don’t worry. He’s really nice. He’s a cool guy.”
“Are you fucking with me?”
“What?”
“Nothing. How old is this guy?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Uh-huh. That’s nice. How did you meet him?”
“At a party with some people from work.”
“Great. May I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Do you seriously think the twenty-five-year-old Puerto Rican guy who robs ATM machines wants to be your friend? Don’t you think it’s more realistic that he just wants to fuck you?…You there?”
“He’s just a nice guy. He’s cool.”
“Sweetheart, I love you, but that’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“…What’s your fucking problem, man? Don’t you trust me?”
“I trust you. It’s just that there’s no such thing as a nice guy. Believe me. I’m as nice as they get and I’m a total piece of shit.”
“You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about this motherfucker.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“I trust you.”
“But you don’t.”
“I do. I fucking do. So shut up and I love you a lot, okay?”
“I love you too.”
“Really though. I mean you’re it, you know? Like you’re it for me.”
“I feel the same way.”
“Just watch out, okay. Cuz, this guy, I have a feelin he’s bad news.”
“It’ll be okay. You can trust me.”
“I trust you. That’s not it. It’s just I think he might be bad news.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The infantry were fired up and eager to kill. They were impatient to begin killing. They wanted to kill so bad. There was a profligate confidence in our firepower. There was a bullshit comradery. But sometimes having all the guns and ammo lying around was a problem, like when PFC Borges told Corporal Lockhart that Lockhart was a faggot and that Lockhart’s wife knew he was a faggot but she’d married him just to take all his money. Borges was kind of fat and could be a real nasty motherfucker. That and the meth had got his face. He’d done some pimping before he joined the Army. He had liked pimping but his country needed him. He said his bitches still wrote. Borges had the devil’s own luck. Not Lockhart though. Lockhart was one of those ones to say people took his kindness for weakness. Really it was just the weakness they took for weakness though, as it always is. And that night Lockhart pulled a 12ga on Borges and Borges said, “Do it, faggot.”
And Lockhart said he was going to do it.
But he didn’t.
I was riding with Sergeant North and his fire team in the lead Humvee. We were going to an Iraqi Army base. They’d sent us to win the hearts and minds of the IAs there. We didn’t know what that meant, but we would see what happened. We arrived at the base without incident and had falafel and Zamzam colas with the IAs. The patrol leader went and talked to whomever. He got done and we mounted up to head back to the FOB. It was after curfew.
We took a wrong turn somewhere and got lost and ended up on the opposite side of the river from the FOB. We could see the FOB from where we were, but nobody knew how to get there. We were traveling on a narrow strip of road and we were driving fast without headlights. (You didn’t ever use headlights.) A white sedan came around a bend in the road, and North radioed back. The last Humvee turned so as to block the road off, and the white sedan didn’t try to go around. If it had it would have been lit up. So it didn’t.
North and I left the truck and walked to where the white sedan was. North looked like Morrissey. As far as I know that was all he had in common with Morrissey. North was a killer. And he was from Idaho. But he looked like Morrissey. I think he was about 23 then.
Two hajis were standing on the road with their legs apart and their arms out, getting frisked. They were both wearing man dresses and sandals. The older of the two of them had thick strangler wrists and a no-fucking-around mustache. The younger was wiry and clean-shaven, and he had the young-Elvis hair like a lot of the hajis did.
Some joes searched the car. Two joes covered the hajis. One joe was saying that the two hajis were probably boyfriends, and the other thought that was funny and said the two faggots had no clue how close they’d just come to getting smoked.
The patrol leader asked the mustache haji questions about what he was doing out so late and where he was coming from and where he was going. An interpreter translated.
The car was clean.
The radio said to let the hajis go on their way.
The patrol leader said to the interpreter, “Tell them that from now on they must respect the curfew. It’s for their own safety. They could’ve been hurt out here tonight and we don’t want that to happen.”
And the interpreter said something. As far as what he said, we’d have to trust him. So that was that.
The white sedan went on its way, going south by southeast. We mounted up and continued on, heading north by northwest. And we hadn’t been driving a full minute when North said, “Stop stop stop.”
There was an EFP on the side of the road. EFPs could cut through anything. The Iranians liked them. But this isn’t a big deal. North spotted the EFP, and the driver stopped short of the pressure plate. It was close, but close is just another word for nothing. So nothing happened. And we made it back that night.
* * *
—
A POG got the first confirmed kill.
(Personnel Other Than Grunt.)
The POG was a cook.
She did it with a fifty-cal.
Foxtrot was bringing a KBR convoy out of Baghdad to set up a DFAC on our FOB. (Kellogg Brown & Root; dining facility.) PFC Livingston was up in the turret of one of the Humvees. Presumably somebody had put her up there as a joke, because I don’t think she weighed more than 100 pounds and a fifty-cal. weighed about a million pounds and it wasn’t like the turrets moved so easy either.
So.
The convoy was ambushed—IED, then small-arms fire. But Livingston kept her cool. And maybe she saw the haji in the palm grove before she lit him up…
The infantry were sick when they found out about her kill. It was dishonor: a fucking POG, a fucking girl.
And she’d have got promoted, but she kept getting caught getting fucked because she’d get fucked for money. And there was an E-6 who’d lose his stripes fucking her in a guard tower. (The sergeant of the guard.) They said he was hitting her in the ass.
She was definitely fuckable.
She had a nice face.
And she was hard-core.
One of God’s diamonds.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX