Princes of War (23 page)

Then Cooke spoke for several minutes, detailing the truck and dismount assignments. He explained the search team organizations, and how he wanted them to work.

After Cooke finished, Turnbeck asked, “Is Sledgehammer going to fly over first?”

“No,” answered Wynn. “We decided not to risk detection. If the birds look too close right after we go driving by in four Humvees, it might excite any bad guys in there.”

That answer satisfied.

Pauls asked about MEDEVAC plans and they discussed that for several minutes, intending to use part of the cemetery if possible.

“Any more questions?”

No one spoke. A ripple of apprehension passed through the group. Perhaps the earth, soundless and watchful, anticipated what was coming.

The platoon found the cemetery without difficulty. They drove slowly along the eastern edge, looking for possible routes to the other side. The only way to pass through the cemetery was by foot. This wouldn’t do.

It took a few minutes to wind around to the far side and find the road that passed the church. Moose could see two equally sized little hills in the cemetery, like horns on a slumbering giant. Thousands of various-sized grave markers, silent and remote, stood starkly on these hills, as if they were stadium spectators warily watching a procession of unwanted foreign visitors attending an event.

Soon Turnbeck reported the church spire. When the convoy got to an intersecting road, they turned right, each crew on maximum alert. Moose saw the church ahead, perhaps 250 meters down the road. He knew that the soldiers in the lead vehicles would now be evaluating the buildings on the left and right of the road, trying to identify the warehouse, and looking for a bronze gate.

Two and three-story buildings and small shops lined the road. The platoon continued slowly, Moose combing the surroundings.

Turnbeck reported a red car ahead pulling away from the curb and driving rapidly away.

“He’s moving kinda fast,” he reported seconds later.

Moose wondered whether that car might be significant. No one said anything else about it. A pursuit of the car would be difficult now and take the platoon away from their plan.

Then the platoon passed the church. It looked abandoned. Graffiti marred its walls. About 10 percent of Iraq’s pre-war population was Christian, but the community was under increasing pressure from Islamic extremists, and many Christians had left the country.

The compound following the church was set off the road about 20 meters. The wall around it was the highest one on the street. It had a bronze-colored wrought iron gate.

The warehouse gate was locked. On Wynn’s order, D22 pushed the gate open, then the breach team rushed in. Six dismounted men went into the grounds. Two men went left. Two right. Two remained by the gate. Two Humvees rolled into the compound grounds and took up positions on the far sides. The other two trucks stayed on the street. The first dismounted team worked their way behind the building, down a parallel alley.

Moose went down on a knee by the front entrance. Cuebas was on the other side of the door. Pauls moved in a sprint to the far side of the building in order to watch the rear approach. Time clicked methodically on, like the regular swing of a scythe.

The other team moved to the back of the warehouse. Both men positioned themselves on the ground in a prone position beside a small well, about 15 meters from the wall. One man watched the rear exit. The other observed the rear approaches, to prevent anyone from coming in or out.

So far they saw nobody.

A small decorative garden separated the compound wall from the warehouse entrance. Somebody had been watering the plants.

Pauls knelt below an idle window air-conditioning unit on the left side of the house. Something looking like a wire birdcage housed the air conditioner. Wires dangled from it. At least the owner had tried to secure it. Probably wouldn’t be long before the unit was stolen. Must be an office on the other side of this wall, he thought.

He looked across the yard. A pile of trash had collected. Bricks had fallen out of the wall in one section. Pauls was glad they had come through the gate and not climbed the wall. Carrying too much equipment to be climbing tall walls.

Tyson, manning the 240B machine gun in his truck, watched one side of the neighborhood and made sure no one penetrated the security cordon. A metal gate across the street cracked open slightly. Tyson’s eyes caught the movement, and he turned toward the noise, lowering his weapon in that direction. A wisp of black hair bent around the gate below the height of the door handle. A small face emerged, like an animal peeking out of a cage. It was a child, a little girl. She wore a bright red dress trimmed by a colorful gold and red collar. She looked at Tyson coyly, her tiny mouth compressed, innocent questions about the complicated world written on her face. He turned away from the distraction and again scanned second floor windows, roof tops, and other doors along the deserted street. Though not a ghost town, Tyson thought, life here stayed hidden.

Pauls, on the side of the building, kept eyeing the empty lot to the rear of the warehouse. The cemetery lay beyond this. Suddenly he heard someone talking. He could not make out what they said or exactly where the sounds came from. From inside the warehouse?

Moose and Cuebas were at the front door. Moose tried the handle. It was unlocked. He opened it and slowly inched inside. Cuebas moved right behind him and had the sensation he’d followed Moose into a snake pit.

The darkness inside disoriented the two men. They moved forward slowly.

Then Moose saw a shadowy figure move. The shadow stopped. It was a man, standing alone on the far side of the room. He and Moose looked at each other. Their glances locked. Moose felt a surge of horrible urgency. Then the man started stepping back. For a brief second, in the darkness of the room, the man stepped past a place illuminated by a shaft of sunlight striking millions of microscopic particles floating in the air. Moose could barely make out the man’s features but thought he saw shimmers of tension climbing a white face, and black eyes, like nuggets of coal. The man’s tongue stuck out a little between his teeth. He was skinny and had no bulk around his mid-section that might be a suicide vest. But Moose’s instinct told him the man was a mortal threat and no further analysis was necessary. The man glanced left. Then glanced left again; a minute signal of some sort rippled across his face. He then looked harshly at Moose, anger rising, now confirming the inevitable exigency of the situation, as if he was finally isolated in the world with the antagonist he had been waiting for all his life. Moose stood ready, gun pointed at this man not more than 20 feet away. Moose knew he could take him. They were alone: two irreconcilable men inside a ruined building in a dry and dirty and inscrutable place. The past didn’t matter anymore. Moose saw the man’s hand move, the barrel of a rifle rise. Then Moose shot him.

Moose shot twice, double-tapping the man, putting two rounds in him center mass. The man stumbled back, vibrating as if he’d been jolted by electric voltage, and crumpled forward, falling face first to the floor. Silence retook the room. Moose hesitated, stood still, looked hard at the man on the floor, then scanned the room again. Before he’d shot him, the man had glanced twice to his left. Moose now moved forward slowly, looking, listening, feeling, smelling, his senses on fire.
Was something else there? What had he been looking at?

He looked at the man he had shot. His body lay face down on the floor, almost still, and Moose knew it would remain that way. But not perfectly still—the shot man’s foot twitched, tapping to the rhythm of silent music. The rhythm of his own death. Acutely aware Moose had taken a life, he could not dwell on that, not now. Put it out of his mind. It was done. He had to keep working.
Keep alert. Look for the next thing
.
It was as if he’d come up from deep cold water and now had to breath normally again. Moose concentrated on what might be beyond where the man had stood, and whether—whatever it was—could also be a threat.

A half wall covered with deteriorating stucco stuck out into the room. Moose figured the man knew something was hidden. Another insurgent? In the seconds before Moose shot, he thought he saw a flicker of guilt in the man’s face, an enigmatic gesture signaling that something was hidden.

Moose called out to Cuebas, then nodded. “Follow that wall up. Look, look!”

Cuebas still reeled from the shots. Though in the same room just behind Moose, he was not instantly sure it was Moose who had shot. Inside the room the report of the rifle was deafening. Seconds later, reoriented after hearing Moose’s voice, Cuebas realized what had happened.

The rest of the team was now inside other parts of the building. Cuebas heard them.

Moose became cognizant of chatter on the radio that hung on Cuebas’ vest. No one had identified the shots. They were asking. Cuebas spoke hurriedly into his radio, reporting, but still disconcerted, unconvincingly.

“Ayeee—put one down.”

A pause, and then, “Say again?” someone questioned, loudly, frantic.

“Moose shot him. Looking further. I’m covering.”

“What?”

“Moose shot a dude!”

“Fuck. Need help?”

Moose was now close enough to the corner of the wall stuck out into the room that he could start seeing around it.

“We’re OK,” Cuebas answered.

They moved into a narrow long room with low ceilings. Moose hugged the edge of the wall. He moved the barrel of his weapon forward around the front, crouched slightly, then rushed into the room, ready to fire again. Cuebas covered. No one there. Like a camera flash, Moose mentally captured the contents of the room with a quick scan. Mostly nothingness stared back. No windows in the room. He saw no one. He was sure. Not much there. No other people. Something big and boxlike sat in the middle of the room. Furniture? Around it were two chairs. No, three chairs. An electric cord dangled from the ceiling and held several small light bulbs. A baseball-sized hole had been punched head-high in the far left wall, through which the electric line ran outside, presumably to a generator. This hole was where the light had come from that briefly illuminated the man he shot. A gritty sandy coating covered the floor, crunching as he inched forward. Now he could make out a closed double metal door on the far wall. Another wafer-thin slice of light framed the left side of the door. No rug on the floor. Nothing on the walls. No signs of regular life. Just that large piece he saw in the middle of the room.

The room was musty. Moose’s feet kicked up some papers scattered on the floor. Then he saw splotches of something dark visible on the floor. What was it? More stains on the floor near the big boxlike thing in the middle of the room. Over against the other wall he noticed two stools and a wooden box. He sensed a hint of quick abandonment in the room. His mind started cycling, reliving what had just happened.
Cut it out
, he scolded himself. He had to keep thinking forward.
What had the man he shot been doing?

Another hall out of this room. Moose couldn’t see down it from his current position.

He heard other platoon members coming down the stairs. Sounded like they were finished upstairs. He heard bits of their talk, understanding a few words.

“Beds…nobody…sleeping place…not coming back,” and something else he could not make out.

Cuebas darted back to the stairs and looked up as the others came down.

SSG Pauls came out of the stairway first, the others just behind him.

Cuebas looked at Pauls for reassurance.

“What else do we do?” Cuebas queried.

“Watch out!” Moose said firmly.

“Check out anything else down here,” Paul ordered. “We’ll go out back.” He pointed to the warehouse area behind him with his rifle.

“Cuebas—you go with Moose.”

“Where’s the body?”

Cuebas pointed with his rifle.

Moose gave a thumbs-up. Followed by Cuebas, he went to the far corner of the next room. Both suspected more rooms existed back there. The place had looked bigger from outside. The darkness in the windowless room obscured vision, making it feel as if they were exploring a cave.

Moose moved fast, the gear on his vest shaking noisily as he went. His eyes registered a series of shadowy images. A metal cabinet against the wall, two drawers partially open. A light hanging from the ceiling above it. Two tea glasses on the cabinet. A rack of what looked like folders hung on the side of the cabinet. Moose stepped on more papers scattered on the floor as he moved.

Cuebas knelt by the insurgent’s body. “Motherfuckers!”

Moose heard Cuebas curse, hostility in his voice.

Moose could see part of the hall now. A long corridor, sloped floor. Blocked up window on the right side about half way down. This way looked to be the end of the line. He wasn’t sure. Even darker there. Halfway down the hall one small unlit light bulb hung loosely on a thin wire like a man hanging from a noose. He’d check it. Moose did a double-cock of his head in that direction, signaling to Cuebas that he intended to proceed down the corridor. His eyes told Cuebas to follow. Soon Moose saw another door at the end of the corridor on the left. A narrow closed door. Moose got to the door. He leaned against the wall outside it and listened. Cuebas stopped halfway down the corridor, and went to a crouch on his right knee, his weapon aimed at the door.

“What the fuck?” Cuebas mouthed soundlessly at Moose.

Motionless, silent, alert to any sign of life coming from inside the room, every fiber in Moose’s body listened. All he heard was his own breathing, measured, steady, necessary. He’d just killed an insurgent and felt empowered. No smile, no humor, no peace, but satisfaction surged within him.

The door wasn’t fully closed, ajar just enough to get fingers through.
Booby trapped?
Still dead quiet. He smelt piss. The odor might be coming from that room. Maybe it was the bathroom. He scrutinized the thin gap in the door. Just last week he’d heard that the Army was developing mini surveillance devices, small things that could be hand tossed, and would fly and spy inside confined areas. He wished he could pull something like that out of his pocket right now. Wild what was happening with technology. But he didn’t have that. He was the only available sensor, Cuebas backing him up. The rest of the platoon could have been a mile away. Moose: the big 22-year-old boy from Virginia, former football player, former car wash attendant, former plumbing apprentice, former body shop mechanic. He would be charging through that door and checking things out. Something as hard and real as cold steel jabbed his soul, and he felt the rush of energy and anger simultaneously; anger as a protective mechanism; energy because,
DAMMIT
, he was on the tip of the spear for the whole U.S. Army!