Fives and Twenty-Fives Page 9

  “Copy all. Set security.” I took my thumb off the transmit button and turned to Zahn. “Roll up. Get Marceau a good line of sight behind the water truck and I’ll catch up.”

  I jumped out as the Humvee rolled forward slowly, stood still, and let Gomez come to me. She marched through the cordon judging the merits of our perimeter, our movable fortress. Like Napoleon, I thought, and in the same dimensions.

  Our trucks and Humvees parked at angles sharp to the side of the road to give the turret gunners good, overlapping fields of fire. An ambush could come from anywhere. From the road behind us, and the Iraqi cars stranded at the intersection. From the long, sloping desert with its rocks and shrubs on either side. From snipers hiding in the twisted remains of abandoned cars and burned-out tanks, waiting for a shot at someone’s face. From triggermen waiting in the little town on the horizon, talking about us in square houses painted two-tone brown and screwing up their courage for a coordinated attack. From the innocent-looking kids slipping in and out of the alleys, stepping through the shimmer, ducking behind cars and through metal gates into courtyards, always watching.

  Civilian traffic was the primary concern. Because of our cordon, a gaggle of beat-up cargo trucks had stacked up behind us, while a line of cars, a half mile long and growing, idled in front of us. The Iraqis in the cars nearest us kept their hands where the Marines could see and spared only the occasional sideways glance through their windshields.

  Marines stepped from the staged security vehicles and shouted at each other.

  “Set up on the right! Off to the right!”

  “Hey! Turret! That’s your sector. Down the road. Farmhouse on the left. Flat roof, blue stripe.”

  “Where? The fuck you say?”

  “Yeah. Off the road a little more. Leave room for the compressor. Mixer after that. Water bull after that.”

  Always, they made sure to clear a lane for Gomez, stepping aside when they heard the rifle bouncing against her armor plate. It had a cadence all its own, with steps too long for a body so small.

  I saw Marceau headed for the front of the column. He’d passed off his turret to a junior Marine to help heft the heavy asphalt saw up front. He was stooped over as he passed by Gomez, sucking wind.

  She stopped short and squared her shoulders on him, staring him down like a third-grade teacher. She looked through his sweat, ignored his dark eyes, and let him know that she expected more.

  Marceau passed her, said something to the Marine next to him, and they both stood up straight.

  Gomez kept walking. “Yeah,” she yelled over her shoulder. “You fucking know it, too. On the clock.”

  Then she stood in front of me, unwittingly doing exactly the same thing. “Look good, sir?”

  “No complaints.”

  “Then let’s knock this fucker out.” She pointed. “Too much traffic here. Too many buildings over there.”

  We walked together, weaving through the cordon to the edge of the standoff zone where the trucks idled with the repair equipment and waited for the bomb techs to declare the crater safe.

  Gomez and I took a knee behind the rear fender of the lead seven-ton, and I saw the crater for the first time. It was a hundred meters away and difficult to assess with any detail through the flickering heat, but I found myself searching for some clue, some reason to hope that this pothole might be the first one without a buried artillery shell rigged to explode.

  The two bomb techs, combat replacements fresh into country, had no illusions. They started prepping a reducing charge in the cargo compartment of their Humvee, without waiting for word.

  I turned to Gomez. “Who’s next on the list?”

  Gomez pulled out a list of names, laminated between two contact sheets to keep it from disintegrating in her sweat-soaked pocket. “Marceau,” she said, plucking an alcohol pen from a gear loop on her flak jacket and drawing a line through his name. “Help me up, sir?”

  “Sure.”

  I interlocked my fingers and Gomez stepped into my hands. I lifted her waist-level to the truck bed, where she put her forearms and palms on the steel decking and dragged up a knee. I let go as I felt the Marines in the truck take her weight.

  She started her interrogation of the two privates in the truck bed before she was even upright. “You have it ready?” she barked.

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “Yeah? The fuck you waiting for, then?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “Aye, Sergeant.”

  She sat near the tailgate and took off her helmet. The sweatband on her radio headset kept her jet-black hair tight against her scalp, dripping with sweat. She peeled off the headset and let it hang from her flak for a moment, ran her fingers through her hair in a vain attempt to push out all the sweat.

  When she took a rubber band from her wrist to tie the hair back into a tight bun at the top of her neck, the sleeves of her flight suit slid down to reveal her tattoos. A snake wound down her right forearm until a forked tongue sniffed at her wrist. On her left forearm, a flight of songbirds fled.

  A voice called from above me, Doc Pleasant’s. Dodge was standing next to him. I’d forgotten. “Corporal Zahn said we should come up here,” Doc said almost bashfully. “Should we have waited in the vehicle?”

  “No. No, you’re fine. My fault. Sorry about that. Got caught up. Here—get down next to me.”

  They each took a knee.

  “You calibrate it?” I heard Gomez ask from the bed of the truck.

  The junior Marines answered quickly.

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “Aye, Sergeant.”

  “Well,” she mused. “We’ll see. Switch that fucker on.”

  I turned to Dodge, drops of sweat cutting rivers across his face. “Getting the feel for this, yet?”

  Dodge looked at me. “Of course. Fine.”

  “Hold up your rifle,” Gomez called out, extending a pole toward the junior Marines with a metal disk on the end. She passed the disk in front of the rifle, up close, then a few feet back. The pair of headphones sitting on her lap sang, an urgent bleat to a low hum. She reeled it in. “Looks good to go.”

  I turned to Doc Pleasant. “You know what happens next? Where you’re supposed to be?”

  Doc looked at me, mouth open, while Dodge hung on every word and sucked wind like he’d just run a mile. He wasn’t yet accustomed to the weight of his body armor, how it trapped heat against his chest and made every step strenuous.

  “Immediate actions,” I said. “Look at your immediate actions, Doc.”

  He reached into his cargo pocket and pulled out a laminated index card. He flipped it over twice, looking for the right set of procedures. Dodge watched over Doc’s shoulder and tried to read along.

  “We’ve done our fives and twenty-fives, right?” I coaxed. “Set the cordon?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Corporal Marceau is about to head up,” I hinted. “What’ll he need?”

  “Cover, sir?”

  “He’ll get that from the trucks and the dismounted Marines. What’ll he need from you?”

  Doc swallowed. “He’ll need me to be ready, sir.”

  “Right. So, get ready.”

  Gomez jumped off the tailgate with the battery bag on her shoulder and the metal detector in her right hand. “Yo, Marceau!” she called out. “Corporal Marceau!”

  Marceau approached with his rifle slung over his back. Someone had already told him.

  Gomez hung the battery bag on his shoulder. “Here we go, meat-eater. You ready?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “Okay, then. Let’s rig this shit.” She tried to sound excited and smiled for him, too. That was a rarity.

  Marceau took off his helmet. Gomez clapped the headphones over his ears while he slipped his hand through the metal detector’s arm brace and wrapped his fingers around the handle.

  “Traffic sees the cordon and doesn’t stop,” she said. “Accelerates
at you. What do you do?”

  “I drop and prepare for overhead fire from the fifty.”

  “You get to the hole, and it’s clear?”

  “One hand up in a fist. I wait. The repair team rolls to me.”

  “And what if there’s something in the hole. What then?”

  “I turn around. I come back. Right arm out, parallel to the deck. Open palm.”

  “Do you run?”

  Marceau was distracted, looking down the highway at the pothole.

  She slapped him on the helmet. “Hey. Do you run?”

  “No, Sergeant.”

  “All right then. Get it done.”

  And then Marceau started walking.

  Gomez keyed her radio. “Scout’s out.”

  The net went quiet. Gomez followed close behind Marceau until he passed the front fender, then took a knee when he stepped into the standoff zone. After he’d walked about ten meters, she cursed under her breath and reached for her radio. Stopping herself, she looked over her shoulder at me, waved, and whispered, “Sir. Sir. Doc.” She raised her eyebrows and cocked her head at Marceau, fifty meters out and walking briskly with the metal detector out in front.

  “Doc, get up there with Sergeant Gomez,” I said.

  He scrambled to his feet, dragging his medical bag and backboard behind him.

  “I shouldn’t have to call you up here, Doc,” Gomez lectured him. “Shouldn’t have to bother the sir, neither.”

  Then it was just me and Dodge. He dropped flat onto his ass and sat with his legs straight out, leaning back against the fender.

  “Dodge. Not a good idea,” I said. “Stay on one knee. Easier to get up and move.”

  “All right, man,” he groaned as he picked himself up.

  “Has anyone bothered explaining this to you yet? How this works?”

  He shook his head and pushed the brand-new sunglasses back onto his face, the palms of his awkward, gloved hands maneuvering under the rim of his helmet.

  “Okay—well, see, Marceau’s up there to check if there’s a bomb in the pothole. Right? Which there probably is. When we know for sure, we send up the robot with the clearing charge and . . . blow it up.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we cut away the jagged edges, fill the hole with gravel, and patch over the top with concrete.”

  “What am I doing at this time?” Dodge asked.

  “While they’re working, I need you at the front of the column with the bullhorn telling the Iraqi drivers to be patient. Tell them we’re doing this for their protection and that, you know, we’ll be done in a minute. Oh, most important: tell them not to get close to us.”

  Dodge nodded. “Of course. Very simple. I can tell them that.”

  Marceau stopped at the edge of the hole and walked the perimeter twice while passing the metal detector slowly over the broken asphalt. Mindful of his feet on the jagged edges, he bent at the knee and tested for soft patches of asphalt, extending the magnet out over the hole.

  “Yo, Zahn!” Gomez called out. Her thumb hovered over the transmit button. “Looks at least three feet deep, ten across. Think ten bags, two hundred gallons.”

  Just then, Marceau stopped moving. He reeled back his arm, stepped away from the hole, and held his right arm out, parallel to the deck with an open palm.

  “Hole is hot,” Gomez called out.

  Corporals in charge of the various work details echoed her, instructing their Marines to stay put as the reducing charge came up.

  Marceau started back, walking slowly but with purpose.

  Dodge nudged me. “Is there a fucking bomb in that hole, man?”

  “Yes, there is. Pretty much every time.”

  “And you send him out there? Every time?”

  “They take turns,” I said.

  “Fuck.”

  “That’s the job.”

  “Fuck, man.”

  I stood and pointed at the bomb techs. They nodded and sent the robot scurrying forward with the clearing charge.

  Marceau made it out of the standoff zone and chucked the metal detector into the truck. I noticed how he tried to hide the violent shaking of his hands as he unleashed a bit of prepared choreography, quipping to Gomez, “Shuffle, hop, step. Heel change. Paradiddle.”

  Zahn walked over, handed him a can of Copehagen, and said, “I just shit my pants for you, asshole. You’re fuckin’ welcome.”

  The robot placed a small explosive in the hole, then came squealing back at top speed. After waiting a beat, the bomb techs called fire in the hole and the reducing charge went off with a loud thump. A sharp crack followed as the enemy explosives detonated. Artillery rounds, I could tell, from the shrapnel hissing into the desert, kicking up a thousand little dust plumes.

  Only then did the enterprise truly come to life. The two security Humvees moved forward to bring the pothole inside the secured area. Ground guides walked the Humvees through the tight spaces between the seven-tons and the shoulder while the gunners braced themselves against the turrets. Generators and compressors coughed to life and ground their way up to a loud, steady whine. Marceau and his minions worked at the edges of the hole with their asphalt saws while Zahn pushed his lance corporals at the mixer to have cement to pour the moment the hole was ready for a patch.

  I stood and pulled Dodge up by his flak. “Let’s get up front.”

  Dodge tapped me on the shoulder and yelled in my ear to be heard over the din, “Do they need assistance?” He pointed to the Marines struggling in their full combat load to pass bags of concrete from the truck.

  “No. They’re fine. Stay with me.”

  “They look like they could do with some assistance. I can carry bags. The people in the cars ahead of us know what to do. They are experienced Iraqi drivers, I assure you. They do not need instructions.”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but chose not to yell over the noise of the saws. I just grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him along.

  At the front of the cordon, where the noise faded, I reached into the passenger seat of the lead Humvee and grabbed the bullhorn. I pointed emphatically to the line of cars idling a hundred meters down the road and handed the bullhorn to Dodge. “Like we talked about. Tell them we’re here for their protection and we’ll be done in a minute.”

  Dodge smiled when he saw the bullhorn, instantly forgetting all his earlier concerns. “Of course, Mulasim,” he said, wiping his brow. “I will do this.” He snatched the bullhorn and, walking toward the Humvee’s front fender, pumped it in the air like a prize. Standing up straight, he put the microphone to his lips and called out in Arabic. It was like he’d been waiting all his life for this moment.

  He leaned back and howled with his eyes closed. Every few sentences, he put the bullhorn down, gestured wildly at the Marines, and laughed. He walked from one side of the road to the other, low to the ground and bobbing his head like a duck. He put his hands in the small of his back and shimmied like Mick Jagger. Iraqis got out of their cars to watch, laughing with him.

  I didn’t have time and didn’t care enough to admonish him. I walked back to the massive pothole where the Marines were already awash in dust, covered head to foot in a fine layer of concrete silt. Sweat seeped through their flight suits and mixed with the powder. A stiff mud, always drying in the sun faster than the sweat could get it wet, added to the weight of their combat load and got heavier as the day wore on.

  The concrete bags came off the truck. Marines at the mixer poured wet cement into the hole. Batch after batch, the hole got smaller. But even with Gomez and Zahn urging them on, the pace slackened. I looked at my watch. We’d been sitting still too long. I could feel the desert getting closer, the town. Eyes were creeping in on us, I knew. Estimating ranges. Setting up mortars. Sighting in their sniper rifles. Every inch of that place, every grain of sand, wanted desperately to kill us.

  Soon, the generators and compressors rumbled to a stop. Marines collapsed the mixer and began moving the unused bags of concr
ete back to the truck. Gomez and a few of her underlings concentrated on smoothing out the new patch.

  In the silence, it occurred to me that something was missing. I didn’t hear Dodge. I squinted through the shimmer and looked for him at the front of the cordon. Failing to find him there, I searched the faces of the Marines walking past me.

  I found him a moment later, twenty feet away from me with a bag of concrete on his shoulder. Nearly buckling under the weight, he struggled not to fall over backward. Two Marines brushed past carrying concrete bags of their own, mistaking Dodge for a Marine and urging him on.

  “Hey,” I called out, “Dodge!”

  He didn’t hear me.

  I walked over and grabbed his shoulder, taking some of the weight and helping him lower the bag to the ground. “This is not your job. I need you at the front of the cordon, okay? That’s your job. Do you understand?” I saw immediately, in his glassy eyes, that he didn’t.

  “Just insane. It’s too hot. Too much.” He was slurring and not even sweating as he had been before.

  I called, “Corpsman, up! Heat casualty.”

  Doc jogged over and took a knee. “Motherfuckin’ idiot.” He opened his pack. “I tried to tell him, sir. I tried. You hear me, Dodge? Dumb as shit. Just relax, now. Grown-ups in charge.”

  “Did you see me, man?” Dodge asked. “Back onstage? Looking good, huh?”

  “Sure were.”

  “I was like David Lee Roth up there. Singing to my people. ‘California Girls’!”

  “No kidding?” Doc Pleasant, preparing a fluid bag and tube, turned to me. “I need his core temp real quick, sir. He doesn’t look too bad. Just a little dehydrated. Still have to check, though.”

  I left Doc to his work as Gomez walked over with the concrete stamp. “Ready for you, sir.”

  The stamp was a length of steel rebar twisted into the shape of a castle, the symbol of the engineers. They were ready for me to mark the wet concrete to show it was the Marines that filled this hole, not the bad guys.

  The convoy began to fall back into the original order of march. Marines loaded into their trucks and the security Humvees continued their watch. Zahn pulled up next to the patch with the passenger door open so I could hop in quickly.