The Sandbox (12 page)

30

Someone calls in
a distress code. An attack on a civilian contractor’s convoy. They’re out past the toy factory on 6A. Maybe twenty-four klicks away. Sergeant Guzman tells us he’s taking weapons squad out to provide security until the heavy machinery arrives on the scene. Before we leave, he explains that HQ in Inmar is sending out a few gunships, Kiowas, but they need boots on the ground, now. We take three Humvees. I wish we’d had time to install the armor kits.

As he straps in, Rankin says, “Finally there’s something to do around here.”

“Careful what you fucking wish for,” I tell him.

He just winks and lights up.

But it’s true. This is the first bit of action we’ve had for a while, with the exception of the IED attack. Most of our time’s spent waiting for something to happen. You eat, you do bullshit details, you police the FOB, you clean your rifle, you masturbate, you eat again, you clean your rifle, you masturbate, you watch the DVD of
Platoon
for the fiftieth Goddamn time, you go to sleep. Wake up and hit replay. It gets to where most guys break into a smile when they hear a mortar shell fall. At least something’s going on.

Whoever it is that attacked the convoy chose a strange ambush location. This part of the Turkish Highway is completely flat. There’s no cover for miles. Rankin glasses the horizon as we pull up, moving from sector to sector in his methodical way.

“They got out fast,” he says, rubbing his upper lip with the nub of his pinkie. “I don’t see a soul.”

Pulled up along the shoulder are ten sixteen-wheelers. A couple of the trucks pull two trailers behind them. One of the trucks lies on its side, blocking the highway. As we approach, I notice something strange. I nudge Rankin.

“Is that blood?”

The asphalt is covered in something orange. It looks as though an exotic mold has sprouted up all over the blacktop.

“Nah, that ain’t blood.” He cracks up. “It’s Cheetos.”

Sure enough, when we jump out and look for someone to give us a situation report, a sitrep, Cheetos crunch under our boots. They’re everywhere. Bags and bags and bags of them. Rankin picks one up and opens it.

“Don’t get your trigger finger all gummy,” I tell him.

He waggles the bag with his right hand to show me it’s safe. “Way ahead of you, D.”

Sergeant Guzman shouts and we run to set up a perimeter.

What happened, or what they
say
happened, is this. The driver of the trail vehicle, the last truck in the convoy, thought he saw a flash beside the road and overcorrected to avoid it. Somebody shot at him, he says. The truck went out of control, tipped over and dropped salty snack items all over the asphalt. I’m standing right next to the guy as he tells his story. He’s big, sloppy fat, with a beer belly that pooches out over his belt. The guy hasn’t shaved in a couple of days and probably hasn’t bathed for longer. Stringy brown hair pokes out from under his hat at funny angles. I can smell the liquor on him from ten feet away. I pull Sergeant Guzman aside.

“There’s no fucking shooter, Sarge. This guy’s shitfaced.”

“I know it,” Sergeant Guzman says. I can tell by the way he’s clenching his jaw that he ain’t amused either. Not one bit.

Even so, we search the area, sweeping out into the desert in our Humvees. A complete waste of time. All the other drivers stick to their friend’s story.

The cab of the truck reeks of whiskey. Little slivers of glass sparkle on the floormat. Rankin and I investigate, hoping to find a bottle we can salvage. No luck there. We hear the choppers coming long before we see them. That distinctive thud, thud, thud that Kiowas make.

“Shit,” Sergeant Guzman says, shading his eyes. “I’ll let these guys deal with it.” He turns back and looks us over. “Joes,” he yells, “get ready to move out.”

“What about the truck, Sarge?” I ask him.

“We can’t do anything about that. They’re sending over some heavy equipment to drag it off. HQ radioed to say they’ll be here soon. I want you to be ready to go as soon as their boots are on the ground.

I’m sick as hell of looking at this.” He stares at the lardo who crashed his truck while he says all this. When the sergeant isn’t talking, the muscles in his jaw bulge and tense like he’s chewing gum. I thank God it wasn’t me who made this mess.

“Hey,” Rankin says, as I’m walking back to our ride. “We can’t leave without a little booty.” He’s still munching from his family-size bag of Cheetos.

He’s right, I think. It’s only fair.

I pull our Humvee up a few yards and we load as many bags as we can. Frito-Lay galore. Every flavor of Doritos from cool ranch to salsa verde, Fritos, Funyuns, Lay’s potato chips. We make out like snack bandits.

“Shit,” Nevada says, when he sees us unloading back at base. “Why didn’t I fucking think of that?”

31

We burn the
shit in a rock-strewn field half a klick from the base. Usually, this is a four-man detail, two to keep guard and two to burn the shit, but we’re shorthanded today because of the sand cleanup and it’s just me and Ahmed. The last guy to get this detail hid about a dozen barrels of shit in a back room of the cement factory, so we’ve got about twenty barrels to burn. It’s hot, filthy work and neither of us says much. The burning fuel oil and the sun combine forces to toast us. Sweat wicks away as soon as it seeps out of my skin. The air doesn’t move. The sun sucks the color out of everything except the burn’s huge column of black, greasy smoke. It smells distressingly similar to burnt barbecue. I cover my mouth with a bandanna, but I can still smell it, and if I’m smelling it, as my high school biology teacher once pointed out, I’m tasting it. Clumps of ash come floating down and land in my hair. The barrels are filled to the brim, of course, so we end up getting sloshed with shit as well. Ahmed pukes up his breakfast.

I try and ask Ahmed about his family. He grunts and nods. I ask if he’s heard about the death of the old man, the prisoner we’d tried to speak with. He looks mildly surprised. Nasty man, is all he says. When I ask him where Baba went, he slaps the backs of his hands together and leaves it at that. Although he’s not as cheerful as usual, this doesn’t strike me as odd, considering the fact we’re burning shit in the middle of the desert. Ahmed seems no more suspicious to me than he did before the boy told me what he’d told me. Our conversation about massing insurgents and spies seems almost preposterous here in the bright, unrelenting light.

When we finish, Ahmed flashes me a tired grin. We share a CamelBak of lukewarm water. The soft, shoulder-slung canteens can hold up to three liters, and we gulp it nearly to the bottom. Ahmed wets his yellow-checked scarf and covers his head with it. I squeeze the last finger of water out of the clear plastic drinking tube and onto my hair. Almost without wanting to, I feel that camaraderie that comes from working hard with another man.

On the drive back to the village, Ahmed asks me if I like girls.

“Yes,” I say.

He thinks this over for a moment. “I, too, have a like for girls.” When the truck bounces over the ruts in the track, he stutters. “But I do not have a like for the shit.”

Before I drop him off at his house, I ask Ahmed why he doesn’t choose to live on base like Baba did.

“My family will protect me,” he says. “It is very big.”

32

The toy factory
is utterly still. I park the truck just inside the gate and hope it isn’t too visible from the highway. I take out my binoculars and scan the broken windows. Nothing moves. I jump down. Stop. Listen. Something large, maybe a buzzard, flaps up and over the factory. I whistle the opening bars to the song “At the Car Wash,” that funky chugging bass line. Somewhere inside the factory, a brick falls, producing an enormous echo in the large empty space. I’ve brought four MREs, including my favorite—beef enchilada. I walk the length of the factory wall before I go in, following the line of cover, scoping out potential dangers. I click off my rifle’s safety. Inside, my footsteps sound huge, like the stomping paws of a monster.

“I have food,” I say. My hands sweat; I know she’s watching me. I say the word “food” in the local dialect. Still she stays hidden.

The place has been cleaned out, for the most part. All the machinery is gone. Scattered around the cement floor are rusty lengths of wire and twisted iron rebar, pipes and cracked cinderblocks. A pile of headless pink bears rots beside a far door. Broken glass crunches under my boots. The factory floor is twice the size of a high-school gym. At one end, there are large piles of splintered wood and empty crates and oil drums so rusty they look like tubes of dark red lace. A rock bounces off the floor beside me and hits my leg. It doesn’t hurt, but someone definitely aimed it at me. A huge smile cracks my face in two. I didn’t imagine her. I’m not going crazy with battle fatigue. I can’t wait to tell Rankin.

“
Salaam aleikum
,” I say and then in English, “I won’t hurt you.”

I see a flash of movement along the far wall. But I still haven’t seen her. Come on, I think, just let me get a glimpse of your face, show me just enough to prove you’re real.

“Are you hungry?” I say, trying to make my voice non-threatening.

Something tumbles off the stack of wood at the back of the room and lands with a giant boom. I set the MREs on a window ledge. Before I left the base, I took out the heating packs. The kid won’t know how to use them and I don’t want her to poison herself by mistake. Just below the window is another pile of rotting teddy bears.

I stand for a long time. Very still. The summer my parents died, I came to live with my grandpa. The two of us tamed a herd of deer by scattering seed corn in a trough at the edge of the wood behind our house. After a month, I could stand and watch them eat from ten feet away. Occasionally they’d raise their heads to look at me before going back to crunching corn. They had huge dark eyes. I gave several of them names. Just before the leaves fell, my grandpa shot the largest of the bucks. I cried when I saw it. He had to trick me into thinking it was hamburger before I’d eat it.

The child remains hidden. This saddens me, and I’m not sure why. I don’t doubt I’d do the same if I were in her place. After all, why should she trust me? There’s a reason she’s hiding out alone in this factory. Twenty minutes pass. Finally, I must go. Somebody will get suspicious if I keep the burn truck away from the base too long. I dropped Ahmed off at his house almost an hour ago. As I’m getting into the truck, I see the MREs disappear from the ledge. Then a small, dirty face appears. We stare at each other for a long moment before I turn the ignition and back out of the factory yard. The child’s eyes seem abnormally large in her shrunken face and as black as a night in the desert. She’s real.

33

The first mortar
knocks me out of my cot. It must have been close. My ears ring. Rankin is on guard duty, so I’m alone. It must be around 0300. I pull on my pants and boots. Two more land on the other side of the base. I feel the explosions in my feet. A siren shrieks. Two men pass my tent at a dead run, heading toward the bunker. Another mortar lands. This one closer. They’re so Goddamn loud. Sergeant Oliphant shouts orders on the other side of the parade ground. I grab my rifle and move.

The mortars are coming from two directions, so it’s hard to know which areas to avoid. I run in a zig-zag pattern toward the officers’ trailers.

“Durrant,” someone shouts.

It’s Rankin. He waves me over to a Humvee, and I jump in. Boyette rides shotgun.

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” Rankin says. “We’re supposed to take the—”

An explosion near the old fort makes the windows rattle.

“Fucking dune coons—” Boyette starts.

Rankin cuts him off with a look. He has about thirty pounds on Boyette, but I wouldn’t count Boyette out in a fight. I once saw him take on a giant back in Basic and whip his ass soundly. Even so, Boyette shuts up.

“Oliphant wants us to send some grenades their way,” Rankin says, turning in his seat to look at me.

“Goody.” Boyette rubs his hands together.

Rankin catches my eye in the rearview mirror and shakes his head. He mouths,
Fucking Boyette
.

By the time we reach the perimeter wall, the mortar fire on the far side of the compound has stopped. We climb the tower with our rifles swinging from our shoulders. The night has gone silent. The only sound in the entire world is the clickety-clack of our weapons tapping the ladder. Studdie crouches on the platform at the top, his rifle pointed up at the hills. He’s hunched over, and in the dark he resembles a beanbag chair. I lean against the railing so I can snap my night-vision goggles onto my K-pot and click them on. Luckily, I scrounged up some new batteries this afternoon. One more thing we’re running low on.

It’s a clear night and the moon is fat. Plenty of ambient starlight. When the sky is overcast, the NVGs aren’t worth a shit. I scan the hilltops, looking for movement. On this side of the base, the perimeter wall is built right up against a series of low rocky hills, which gradually become steeper until they run into the Noses.

Although it’s a nuisance to have these hills just beyond the base wall, they provide very little cover for anyone trying to attack us. Except for a few sparse clumps of thorny bushes, almost nothing grows here, and the inclines are covered with loose purple shale that has a tendency to slide. No one likes going on patrols in this area, because the chunks of shale can be sharp and the rock is rotten and unstable. Perfect for ankle-twisting. The good grazing land starts about ten klicks to the north, so we rarely see anyone walking around out here; if we do, it’s almost certain they’re up to no good. I give the horizon a quick sweep. Nothing moving. Rankin nudges me with the butt of his rifle and motions for me to get down. On the other side of the base, someone fires off a quick three-shot burst. And then another.

“What took you so long?” Studdie asks Rankin. His eyes are wide and worried. This surprises me. Studdie usually comes off as being gung-ho. Only a couple of days ago, I heard him telling someone in the mess tent that he couldn’t wait to bag his first hajji. I try to remember if I’ve ever seen him in a firefight. I haven’t.

Rankin shrugs and flips on his night-vision goggles.

“Why aren’t you firing, Combat?” Boyette demands. He packs his cheek with a thick wad of Skoal, and when he spits for the first time he lets the long line of saliva stretch in the breeze until it sticks to Studdie’s arm.

“Shit, man, you’re getting your snoose juice on me.”

“How ’bout you get started with the bang bang, hoss.” Boyette makes a gun with his finger and thumb and pokes Studdie in the belly each time he says bang.

“I don’t want to draw attention with tracer rounds.”

“What the fuck?” Boyette says. “Is this a war, or ain’t it? Jesus Goddamn fucking Christ.” He shoulders his M4 and clicks off the safety. “You’re useless, Combat. Sit your sorry ass down over there, so you don’t get in the way of real soldiers.”

“Wait,” I say, putting my hand on the stock of Boyette’s weapon.

“You too? Jesus, Durrant.”

“No, wait until they fire, so we can get their position. Otherwise we’ll just be wasting ammo.”

“Get their position from what? A fucking mortar tube?” Boyette says, his face crumpled in disgust.

“The sound will carry,” I say.

My NVGs choose this moment to go on the fritz. Images shudder and go blank. These things are great when they’re working, but all you have to do is drop them once and they’re done for. And I’ve been babying mine ever since I got them. Damn. I toss them in a corner.

Studdie points to the northeast. “Up there on that hill. Down about a hundred yards from the top.”

Just as he finishes speaking, we hear a pop and then the familiar whine of an incoming shell. Boyette swings around and fires off a few triple bursts. Rankin does the same. I fire two HEDPs in quick succession—high-explosive dual-purpose rounds that have the same destructive force as a grenade.

“Get some,” Boyette yells. “Get some.”

The explosions from the grenades light the hill just enough to show a group of five men scrambling up the rocks for better cover. I grit my teeth and fire another round. The incoming mortar lands about fifty yards away, throwing up gouts of sand and shaking the tower. My first grenade hits the hill a dozen yards below the men. If I’m lucky, one of them might have been nicked by a chunk of flying shale. The second grenade disappears without a sound. A dud.

“I can’t see shit,” I say.

“There’s some flares in that box under the radio.” Studdie points but doesn’t move away from the corner.

Rankin cracks the lid and hands me one. We take off the caps and screw them onto the detonators. I slam mine into the metal railing as hard as I can. Pop. Rankin follows. Pop. One green, one red. The entire hillside seems to shift and tremble in the swaying light of the flares. They drop slowly, rocking beneath their parachutes. Up at the top of the hill, several men head toward the cover of a large rock. I shoulder my M4 and throw another HEDP round at them. Boyette fires his rifle. Tracers flit through the dark. Long red lines that seem to hang in the air. When my grenade hits, one of the hunched figures on the hill is flung backwards several feet. We hear a distant shout.

“Fucking A!” Boyette shouts, thumping me on the back. He nudges Studdie with his boot. “You don’t even deserve to be called combat. You’re more of a stinky little fobbit.”

“Shut up,” Studdie says, but his voice sounds as if he’s agreeing with him.

The three of us continue to fire at the top of the hill. I load and shoot as quickly as I can. Thud, thud, thud. There is a ferocious beauty in the lines of fire traced across the sky and the bright bursts of orange and white. The flares paint the hillside green and red. I am mesmerized, no longer thinking in terms of bodies and blood. For a moment, it is all just light and sparks. Studdie shakes my pant leg.

“Incoming,” he shouts.

This one sounds close. Studdie hops over Rankin’s back as he kneels to reload, skitters to the ladder, and starts down. Halfway to the ground, the mortar hits. It lands about three yards away. A bit of shrapnel clangs off the metal railing. The tower teeters. I’m sure it’s going to fall. I clench my jaw and prepare to crash. Boyette grunts and goes down on one knee, wheezing and clutching his chest. Studdie loses his grip and falls nearly fifteen feet, landing flat on his back. It sounds exactly like someone punching a baseball glove.

“You hit?” Rankin kneels beside Boyette.

“My arm. I’m okay. Shoot the fuckers, combat. Don’t mind me.”

Rankin and I fire off grenade rounds. I didn’t realize he had an M203 launcher on his rifle. Then I see it’s Studdie’s. He must have left it when he ran. One of the grenades hits just below the tight knot of men crouching beneath a large rock at the very top of the hill. The second blasts into the rock above them. Their screams carry on the crisp night air. Rankin fires again. And then shouts that he’s out of rounds. I hand him my assault pack of grenades because he’s a far better shot than I am with the launcher, a clumsy weapon at best and almost useless from this distance. It’s amazing we’ve done so well. He fires twice more. The men have dispersed, but he manages to hit their cache of mortars.

The hill bursts into brief flame. Even from here I can smell the bitter, burnt-plastic smell of Iranian-made mortars. The large rock near the crest of the hill slides, then tumbles down into the ravine below. The last round is a white star cluster. It does nothing more than light up the sky, a very expensive bottle rocket.

“Shit,” Rankin says.

“I should have told you,” I say. “I put one in the bottom of the bag.”

He shrugs.

“Nice shooting, combat,” Boyette says, grinning and pressing the heel of his hand against his shoulder. “They’re standing around up there wondering where their assholes just went.”

I suddenly remember Studdie. Oh, shit. I jump across Boyette’s legs to the other side of the tower. Studdie still lies flat on his back about five feet from the ladder. Legs stretched wide and arms akimbo. It doesn’t look as though he’s moved since he landed. I can’t tell if his eyes are open.

“Studdie,” I shout down, “are you all right?”

I wait, staring down at his sprawled form. There’s no response. I look over at Rankin. He shakes his head. “Fucking Studdie,” he says softly.

“What the fuck was he doing climbing down the ladder in the middle of a firefight anyway?” Boyette asks. His voice breaks. I’m shocked to see he’s crying. He turns his face away and looks out toward the Noses.

And then.

“Feeeeeeet.” It’s Studdie. He makes this sound until his voice cracks.

“Can you move?” I yell down to him.

He doesn’t answer.

Boyette and Rankin move to the edge of the tower and look down with me.

“Feeeeeeeet,” Studdie shouts again.

“I’m going down,” I tell them. “He probably just hurt his foot.”

When I get to the ground, I flash my light at him. His eyes shine red like a roadside raccoon’s. I take a knee, put my hand on his shoulder. Studdie watches without a word.

“Do you hurt?” I ask him.

“I don’t feel a Goddamn thing.” Tears make bright streaks from eye to ear, carving clean lines into the grime on his cheeks. “It’s like somebody cut off my body.”

“Can you move anything?”

“I’ve only slept with one girl in my whole life.” He blinks furiously. “One fucking girl. That’s all. One fucking time. The week before I left for this shithole. It was the best thing I ever did. Ever.”

“Studdie, man. Don’t worry. It might just be a pinched nerve or something. Doctors can do all kinds of crazy shit now. They’ll fix you up. Good as new.”

We look at each other and quietly consider this lie.

“Greer wants to know, do you need a stretcher,” Rankin shouts down.

Orange pinpricks on the hill. A bullet clangs off the ladder. A couple of distant pops. I duck.

“Tell him,” I shout, “tell him bring a backboard. Fast.”

“One fucking time,” Studdie says. “And now I’ll never do it again.” Snot bubbles in his nostrils. I wipe it off with my sleeve.