Princes of War (33 page)

Cengo asked.

The man quietly said his name. Wynn continued, delicately.

“Tell the man who I am: Lieutenant Chris Wynn. And tell him that in my capacity as an officer in the United States Army, I want him to understand, on behalf of my country, how very sorry we are.” Wynn looked squarely at the father as Cengo translated. The father did not look up.

“Tell him we will do everything possible to bring the killers to justice. And tell him that if there is anything he and his friends can do to help us locate the killers, we will be very grateful.”

Cengo translated. Wynn waited patiently. The father remained silent, his grief and anger gripping him in a quicksand of emotion.

“And this man is the father’s brother?” Wynn asked Cengo, pointing to the man next to the father.

“Uncle?”

“Yes, Uncle.”

Wynn heard the metallic click of Jassim lighting another cigarette behind him. The sheikh had been quiet for several minutes, no longer involved in the discussion. Wynn avoided thinking about that now.

“Please ask him the same. Ask him to state his name.”

The uncle was larger, older, perhaps 40, clearly nervous. He stared downward and twiddled with his pant legs. A young girl moved forward from the rear of the group and huddled against the Uncle’s back. Perhaps his daughter.

Wynn made his same formal statements. Cengo translated. None of the Iraqis had yet asked Wynn anything.

Wynn briefly explained to the group what the Wolfhounds had been doing at the school, then, struggling to get any conversation going, he asked the family to tell him something personal about the dead boy. That might prove he cared. But immediately he worried he might have breached an intimacy, and they would not want to talk about it. He was right. They didn’t. The father remained quiet, as did the other males in the family. His eyes bled grief. The women murmured quietly in the background. Feeling as if the oxygen was leaking steadily out of the room, Wynn’s mind writhed about, looking for the right words. There were none. Grasping for something to resonate, he said that this happening at a school was particularly sad. No one replied.

He needed someone to help him, but no one could. Jassim too remained quiet. Wynn was grateful for that. Soon he felt as if he’d reached the end of a long run uphill, only to see around a bend that the hill continued farther than he could see.

So he spent a couple of minutes explaining what America hoped to achieve In Iraq, how we were without territorial ambitions, had goals to help modernize Iraq, had come as friends of the people, not as conquerors. Cengo labored to translate. There was no response.

Finally, exhausted by futility, Wynn had Cengo ask again if there were questions.

At this the uncle finally spoke up. A long statement came out of him like a stream of hate, bitterness lacing every word.

For more than a minute, Cengo made no attempt to translate, apparently taken aback by the animosity. He let the uncle complete his statement, then, tenderly, summarized it for Wynn.

“Sir—he talk about boy’s father and he say his son is everything to him. His son was reason of all that come before. All his family, all history of his village, everything to him. He say the work and living of his people—all that was for the future. The future was his son. He very sad, he say, Sir. He say he no can think of future without thinking of son. Think his son was tomorrow. He say tomorrow, he mean the future. He say only when son is alive can his family name live.”

Wynn let Cengo go on explaining without interruption. When Cengo finally finished, Wynn, battered by the tragedy and unable to think of an appropriate response, gritted his teeth and said nothing.

“And he want know about the money?” Cengo added, relaying that question cautiously, his eyes saying he knew Wynn wouldn’t like readdressing that subject.

Wynn breathed deeply, but suppressed any change of expression.

“Tell the father that we realize his great loss. The family’s great loss. His family has been a victim in this war, and we understand that. We want to help the family in these hard times.”

Cengo translated. Wynn watched the father as a man might watch a parent at a child’s funeral. He saw a glint of ruin in his eyes.

“I will speak to my superiors,” Wynn continued. “I will ask them to help. We will be in touch again soon. How can we contact you?”

Cengo translated.

One of the women began sobbing. Others joined her. Tears that had been held behind a dike of unity now overflowed. The women leaned together, comforting each other. One spoke, almost inaudible. Then she tried again, fighting tears. A bearded man turned to the woman and spoke to her, not unkindly. Wynn thought this man might be a Mullah.

“Do you know what she is saying?” Wynn asked Cengo. He thought he’d heard the woman say the same thing several times.

Tears now streaked the father’s face, the wet lines like knife cuts.

Cengo looked at the woman again and cleared his voice. “She say,” he began, near tears himself. “This is boy’s mother. She say about killed son that there is no more laughter. She sad about all the lost laughter. It gone. The laughter. It gone. She very sad about this.”

The women suddenly got to their feet and walked out of the room. Several of the men spoke quietly to one another.

Wynn thought everything that could be said had been said, but he lingered for a long minute, wishing life weren’t so inscrutable, wishing that bad things didn’t have to happen, wishing, or at least hoping, that his delaying a little longer might make evident to the family his own sorrow and humility.

On the way back to the W14 area for more census work, Wynn thought about what it must be like to lose a child. He’d seen the parents of injured children several times before, like at the destroyed checkpoint yesterday. Today was the first time he’d met the family of a child killed during a Wolfhound mission. Though the language barrier had shielded him somewhat, emotions did plenty of talking all by themselves. In an odd way, he felt as if he’d been present during a relative’s open heart surgery, and then watched as the physician came into the room to deliver bad news.

He thought about the parents of some of the dead soldiers, like Ramirez and Sanders and Casey and Ayami and Holden. Wynn had exchanged emails with Ramirez’s mother. He’d sent her one written letter. But he hadn’t had to look her in the face.

He looked at the map, tracing part of it with his finger. Ramirez was killed just over a mile from where they were. He thought about saying something on the radio to the platoon, but didn’t.

The war had taken many others, both American and Iraqi. Each parent had faced the permanent removal of a part of their soul. He imagined trying to deal with such a loss.

He looked out the ballistic glass of the Humvee window. He felt like he was inside a submarine racing away from a black and foreign world.

For the first hour of the resumed census work, Moose manned D24’s machinegun. D24 took up position by a road intersection, providing perimeter security, while the dismounted census teams went house to house. In the second hour, Cooke assigned Moose to a dismounted security role. Cooke often rotated the duties of the men, to minimize complacency and broaden experience. From the place he was positioned, Moose could provide close overwatch of the houses the census teams visited.

An IA patrol, coordinated by headquarters, had joined the Wolfhounds to help secure the neighborhood. Moose waited and watched from the shade under a concrete overhang jutting out from the second floor of the building, drumming his fingers on the handgrip of his M4 rifle, looking from side to side regularly, without haste, surveying the street and intersecting alleys as if his mind was a movie camera. A flush of satisfaction rose within him. He was providing good cover, he thought. He had superior visibility up and down the street.

The façade of the building where he stood had been damaged during the war. Perhaps it was a former government building, Moose thought. Pockmarks from bullet shots marred the once pretty masonry tiles inlaid in an oasis scene on the wall above the main entryway. Patterned inside the oasis scene had once been a number of square window panes, probably to bring more sunlight into of the building. Now most of these spaces had been roughly patched with concrete, probably because the glass had been shot out. The thick overhang above him had also been damaged and the ragged edge of the concrete cast a shade line on the street that reminded him of ridges in the mountains. Appropriate. No straight lines existed in Iraq.

Had anyone had been killed in whatever had happened here? People live. People die. Whatever remained was easily swept away, quickly forgotten. Had it been a car bomb? Or a rocket strike? He couldn’t tell. It might have been more than a year ago. The residents would probably remember. But the census takers were not thinking about that as they asked the official questions for the hundredth time, thinking of their duties here and now; mostly oblivious to what occurred before. And Moose wasn’t one to dwell on the past. His time was now. He would master the present.

Suddenly he heard a light thudding sound, followed immediately by a fast spinning sound. He turned to his right. A soccer ball rolled into the road from the alley beside him. The teenage boy running after it froze when he saw Moose. The boy wore a blue Nike T-shirt and had a wild look, his eyes dark and small like crab holes in sand. He stood perfectly still in the sweltering sun about 30 feet from Moose.

Moose watched him warily. A child appearing suddenly out of nowhere was common. Iraqi adults came out and watched the soldiers all the time, and curious kids were everywhere. This one was different. More focused. Too serious.

Moose scrutinized the boy’s appearance. Kids in this country had killed American soldiers. The boy looked malnourished and sunburnt. Big elbow joints swelled inside little arms. He didn’t seem to be hiding anything. No indications of a suicide vest strapped under his shirt. Moose had been mistaken about something dangerous under the shirt of that man yesterday. Didn’t want to make the same mistake twice. No bulging pockets on this boy. Nothing visible in his hands. Too long, dirty pants. Cheap sneakers.
What was it?

The boy remained motionless. Was he looking somewhere? No. His small eyes blazed apprehension. Was he signaling? How? No motion. Hmmm. Did his lack of motion signal someone?

Moose hadn’t moved his weapon. His rifle was still aimed out towards the road in the direction of the census teams. The suddenness of the boy’s arrival had stunned him. Now he adjusted his stance and lifted his weapon towards the boy, not aiming at him yet, more just to let the kid know Moose was communicating with him, cautioning him. The boy was no youngster, maybe 13 or 14. He could be a killer at that age.

The rifle reorientation broke the kid’s trance.

Moose finally saw movement. The boy’s right cheek shuddered, inflating and deflating in tiny bursts.
Something in his mouth? Was he doing something with his tongue?
Just nerves, maybe.

“You Army, mister?” the boy asked cautiously, breaking the silence.

Moose didn’t answer right away, glancing first one more time back in the direction of the census teams. Team One, now back on the street, having finished in a residence, was walking to the next house. Team Two was still inside its house. Moose had to limit his dialog. He didn’t want to take his eyes and concentration off his security responsibility. Maybe this kid was a distraction.

Moose turned back to the boy, curious. “Yes. You know that,” Moose replied, impatient.

Out of the corner of his eye, Moose saw a car driving slowly down the street towards the north. He kept one eye on the boy. With his peripheral vision he could tell the car drove past the census teams’ houses. In order to be on this street, this Iraqi car must have gotten through the temporary Iraqi Army checkpoint on the south end of the street. That didn’t seem right, but D23, also stationed there, must have allowed it.

“You live here?” Moose asked.

Moose watched the boy, waiting for an answer. The boy probed the inside of his cheek with his tongue, his crab hole eyes glued to Moose.

POP! POP! Just as the boy opened his mouth again, Moose heard two shots. POP! POP! Two more. Not real close. Sounded like AK fire. He looked around. He couldn’t tell where the shots came from.

Moose instinctively went down on a knee, weapon raised to eye level. The boy darted back down the alley. Moose’s eyes clawed the surrounding area for information: a shooter? Where? He didn’t see a threat. He could hear and feel his hard plastic kneepads crumbling bits of concrete.

Then five or six more shots, on automatic, closer. A different weapon. Across the street maybe. Moose looked that way. An Iraqi soldier beside an IA vehicle on the other side of the road had fired. Moose watched him, but couldn’t tell where he had fired. Moose looked away, down the street, to see if he could see any evidence of the previous firing. Nothing strange. Buildings with windows. Parked cars. Doors. Laundry hanging from windows and on wires. Satellite dishes on roofs. Palm trees. Few people on the street. He scanned down the street, hesitating a brief second on one thing after another, his eyes gliding smoothly from object to object, not rushed, seeing nothing unordinary. He didn’t see anyone who looked as if he’d fired the first shots. Who was the first shooter? Where? Moose didn’t know. He looked back at the Iraqi soldiers across the street.

Moose’s blood heated up. He could feel it, hot and ravenous, anticipating. He knew its call, its purpose. But he didn’t worry about it. He was his own master.

On his left, about 200 meters down the street, on the other side of the far census team, Moose saw two Iraqi civilians running.
Why did they run
?

The Iraqi soldiers huddled next to their comrade that had fired. They appeared fine. Nobody looked wounded. They showed no sense of urgency and hadn’t taken cover. Was there no threat? No target? Their inactivity probably meant they didn’t think anyone had shot at them. Three of them looked at the man who had fired. Then all looked away, as if they’d heard something else. Not all looked in the same direction. Moose looked around too. He saw nothing suspect. Then the Iraqi soldiers assembled closer, talking together, perplexed expressions on their faces. Moose wished he knew what they were talking about. One made a dismissive hand movement. Moose took all this as further confirmation that they didn’t have a specific target. Moose was still down on one knee, weapon up, ready.