Weapons of Mass Destruction (8 page)

“We’re right behind you,” Colonel Denning said. “Tanks are pounding the cell now. Then we’ll roll those babies your way.”

Even through the din of grenade explosions, they could hear and almost feel the tremendous concussion of tank bombardment in the distance. The main operation was proceeding according to plan. But Wolf’s squad was beleaguered. Insurgents were making mad dashes toward their compound, zigzagging to avoid trampling the bodies of fallen comrades. Their eyes shone with conviction. Facing almost certain death in their attempt to storm the bunker, they sprinted toward Allah, guns blazing.

The gunners on the ground floor were calling for reinforcements. Wolf ordered Sinclair to back them up. For the first time during the offensive, he descended from his rooftop perch into the belly of the beast. Confronting the enemy at almost point-blank range triggered a sense memory. They looked like suicide bombers, fanatics intent on blowing themselves up for the glory of some random god. Sinclair’s phobia gripped him. He focused on their torsos, not daring to look at their faces. It felt like their expressions alone could kill him. Bullets ripped their bodies apart midstride, and their faces just kept coming. He squeezed the trigger so hard his finger went numb. Let them all rush to meet their maker as long as they didn’t take him along for the ride.

Wolf detected an almost imperceptible change in the squad’s firepower. One of their guns had fallen silent. He ordered Trapp to investigate and man the position himself, if need be. The whole squad heard the exchange. The fact that Wolf sent Trapp didn’t bode well. Their first and only priority under siege was engaging the enemy. Wounded men were expected to keep fighting until the threat was contained. But they all knew Trapp would bend the rules if the gunner in question urgently needed medical attention. He didn’t.

Evans had been shot dead, a single bullet wound to the head. He fell as though hugging the barrel of his automatic. When Trapp pulled him aside to assume his position, he saw that his cheek had been branded by the smoldering muzzle. He wanted to compose the face, to succor the anguished expression before it froze forever in a death mask. But bullets were pinging helter-skelter, snapping Trapp back into action. In a rage over the loss of his buddy, he grabbed his gun and let loose. Whatever opening the enemy might have seized was slammed shut with a frenzied burst of rounds.

“Evans must have been hit,” Wolf said.

Exceptional squad leaders can recognize the signature styles of their gunners. Trapp was at the wheel now, driving like a maniac.

“Let’s get him off the roof!” Sinclair shouted.

“Maintain your position,” Wolf ordered. “Trapp’s got him covered.”

Insurgents had given up on the idea of taking the compound by storm. Plan B evidently consisted of mounting an attack from several adjacent compounds. Wolf adjusted his strategy accordingly. His main objective was to prevent access to the only other three-story building within striking distance. If enemy grenade launchers managed to secure higher ground, the squad would be done for. He kept yelling into his headset, trying to contact the tactical operations center. Either the radio was dead or the blare of battle was drowning out their directives. Sequestering himself in a closet, he wrapped a pillow around his head as he strained to hear. Seconds later he rushed back out.

“Prepare to evacuate!” he hollered.

The order seemed incredible. The squad was surrounded. Outnumbered. They would be mowed down the minute they stepped foot outside the compound. But nothing justified second-guessing their commander. Sinclair obeyed instantaneously, without thinking. McCarthy was several steps behind him, swearing a blue streak as they raced down the hallway past a pair of gunners still cranking out rounds. The only conceivable explanation was that they hadn’t heard the command.

“Evacuate the compound!” Sinclair bellowed.

“What?” they screamed back.

“Evacuate! Pronto!”

“Are you crazy?”

“Wolf’s orders.”

They grabbed their gear and joined the exodus. Wolf raced up the stairs to make sure the rest of the squad followed suit. On the roof, Trapp and Percy were equally incredulous, but they lowered their guns. Trapp started to prepare Evans’s body for evacuation. Wolf intervened.

“Not now.”

“It’s okay,” Trapp said, intending to hoist Evans onto his back. “I’ve got him.”

“We’ll be back,” Wolf said. “I promise.”

Wolf was responsible for protecting the living and honoring the dead, in that order. He knew full well Trapp would make the ultimate sacrifice, even for a lost cause. It was a Southern thing. In the midst of the melee, Trapp had removed Evans’s flak jacket and spread it over his body, as though to protect him from fallout. He left a bandana folded under his bloodied head, cushioning his wounds. His Vietnam buddies swore by this ritual, a kind of good luck charm to protect life or, at the very least, limb. When the wounded recovered, they returned the bandana to its owner. Trapp always packed several in his ruck, hoping not to use them. Planning to get them back if he did. The platoon had never lost a man before.

Wolf led the way down the stairwell. Everybody else had congregated in the entrance hall of the compound. The attack still raged, unabated, AK-47 fire punctuated by RPG explosions just beyond the doorstep. If anything, the pace had picked up and the din was more deafening. Wolf radioed the tactical operations center again, confirming their readiness. Then he gave the signal, obeying his superiors with the same blind faith his squad mustered to obey him.

“Go!” Wolf shouted. “Straight ahead and just keep running!”

When they burst out the door, they saw a column of US Marines covering their flight with the legion of weapons they themselves had simulated during the shoot-out. In the distance they heard tanks grinding forward, already beginning to discharge missiles overhead. The enemy’s feeble attempts to defend themselves melted in the ensuing conflagration. Their remains, if there were any, would be impossible to distinguish from the rubble. Trapp thought of Evans as he sprinted to safety, hanging on to Wolf’s promise that they would return to honor his body.

The bombardment only lasted fifteen minutes. Even so, it was probably overkill. The squad watched from a safe zone three blocks north as smoke cleared and relative silence made their ears ring. A bird chirped outside the window of their refuge. Several men laughed at the innocent absurdity of the sound. They laughed because they were alive. Sinclair marveled at the resilience, or indifference, of nature. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, they had decimated one of the few desert towns that made the mistake of resisting the inevitable. As they prepared to move on to the next target, a pair of snakes slithered across their path. Apart from avoiding sticky pools of blood, they seemed oblivious to the death and destruction wrought by their human counterparts. Was their sphere so separate that the violence of war didn’t register? Not that it mattered in the grand scheme of things. Survival compelled them all to carry on as though nothing had happened. To acknowledge the enormity of the carnage would be to die of fear alone.

A single building was left standing. Wolf and Trapp exchanged nods. There are times when the military actually becomes the well-oiled piece of machinery it aspires to be. Everything had worked perfectly. Scouts located the cell, the advance guard held the line, and tanks hit targets with the selective precision of snipers, leveling everything in sight without disturbing Evans’s mausoleum. The various appendages of the battalion had communicated as one mighty soldier, preserving his body so that he, alone among the corpses strewn across the battlefield, could be honored.

Corpses. They avoided using this word in reference to America’s fallen heroes. It was too impersonal. Too morbid. Men like Evans were exempt from the finality of death. Their bodies were shrines, not corpses, even when they were mangled beyond recognition. The tomb at Arlington Cemetery didn’t honor the disembodied idea of an unknown soldier. Someone was actually buried there. No matter how nameless and faceless, his body was sacred. Enduring. A physical reminder that the bodies of lost warriors, wherever they were, were unforgotten. Patriotism wasn’t just an abstraction. The nation was built on the flesh and blood of men willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for causes that never die.

Sinclair joined Wolf and Trapp at a bedroom window. They offered him a Camel. He dipped a chew of Skoal instead. They stood surveying the smoldering remains of the neighborhood until Trapp stubbed out his cigarette.

“I’m going back in,” Trapp said.

“I’m coming with you,” Sinclair said.

“There’s no need,” Wolf said. “A medevac team is on its way.”

“It’s Evans.”

Wolf started to say something, then thought better of it. He stared at the building rising out of the rubble.

“You’re right,” Wolf finally said. “It’s Evans.”

Unstable wreckage kept collapsing under them, impeding their progress back to the bunker. The stretcher bearers were ill equipped to traverse the wasteland. They borrowed combat gloves to avoid cutting their hands on shattered glass. Eventually Sinclair and Wolf offered to carry the stretcher. At least their knee guards and body armor broke their falls. When they finally crossed the threshold of Evans’s stronghold, Trapp asked the medics to wait while he and Sinclair retrieved the body. This request deviated from standard operating procedure, but they complied without question. Surely Evans deserved a moment alone with his buddies before beginning his long lonely journey back home.

Evans was right where they had left him, miraculously preserved. Gently, with deference to his undiminished right to privacy, Trapp started going through his personal effects. Official regulations assigned this task to medevac units, who were charged with bagging up belongings for bereaved families. But platoons had their own unofficial rites. Trapp knew exactly what Evans would have wanted his buddies to have and to hold. They had fought together for almost a year. They shared knowledge of what was truly important. He took a good luck charm from Evans’s breast pocket, a fossil he had found in the al-Hajarah Desert. More than anything else, this talisman belonged to the platoon.

“If this bug can survive fifty million years,” Evans always said, “we can survive this goddamn war.”

Trapp turned to show Sinclair the fossil, to acknowledge their friend’s thwarted will to live. He wasn’t there. Still shaken from the squad’s brush with death, Trapp thought Sinclair had been snatched from him by unseen enemies. The idea that insurgents could have survived the bombardment was irrational, and he knew it. Twelve straight hours of combat had taken its toll on his nerves. He started reciting the serenity prayer, a vestige of his brief encounter with twelve-step programs before the armed forces sobered him up. By the time he got to the part about accepting the things he couldn’t change, he caught sight of Sinclair. His head was barely peeking out of the stairwell, staring wild-eyed at Evans.

Sinclair had witnessed untold numbers of enemy corpses. He had gathered up the severed limbs of fellow marines, piecing them back together in body bags. Nothing could have prepared him for the sight of Evans’s fatal wound. All it took was a single bullet to the head. Another casualty on another continent besieged Sinclair, a flashback to something he’d never witnessed in the first place. The shot must have echoed through the forest, though no one was there to hear it. A single bullet through the roof of the mouth, angled just right. To do it to yourself, you have to pull the trigger with your toe. Jesus fucking Christ.

“Sinclair,” Trapp said. “What’s wrong, man?”

They heard the medevac unit on the stairs, ascending with the stretcher. At least Trapp did. Sinclair seemed deaf, dumb, everything but blind. He was obviously seeing far more than met the eye. Trapp intercepted the medics, drawing them to one side.

“We’re going to need another minute here, boys,” Trapp said.

“What’s up?”

“Postmortem debriefing, if you know what I mean.”

“Five more minutes is the best we can do.”

Sinclair was usually a rock, a dogged fighter with just enough heart to be truly brave. The tougher the soldier, the harder he falls when he cracks up. The platoon would be swinging their battle axes again within the hour. They couldn’t afford to leave a part of Sinclair frozen on that rooftop, staring at something no one else could see.

“What’s going on, Sinclair?”

Trapp led him across the rooftop, as far away from Evans as possible. Sinclair craned to avoid losing sight of the body. Nothing registered except his head wound. Nothing else even existed. Trapp held Sinclair’s face in his hands, forcing him to make eye contact.

“It’s me. Trapp. Come back.”

The urgency of Trapp’s expression broke through, restoring a modicum of reality. Now Sinclair was in two places at once, in Montana and in Iraq. The past merged with the present. The platoon knew about Pete’s death, but not the details of his suicide. The aspen grove. The self-inflicted head wound. Sinclair strained to see the body again. It still looked like Pete, not Evans.

“What’s going on?” Trapp repeated. “What are you looking at?”

“Pete—”

“What about him?”

“He shot himself.”

“Why’d he do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do. He was your best friend.”

He should have known all along, especially after the spectacle at the funeral. His sister, Candace, went berserk, crying and carrying on like it was all about her. She kept saying Sinclair needed to take responsibility for what happened. They all did. Somewhere deep down, Sinclair must have felt guilty as charged. He vaguely understood that this flashback meant that something was rising to the surface. Some terrible secret. He could either confront the truth or bury it again, this time with Evans.

When they were kids, he and Pete told each other everything. They dreamed the same dreams, even though one boy’s father owned the ranch and the other’s was just a broken-down bronco buster. Bonds like theirs were indissoluble, no matter what did or didn’t happen on the road to manhood. If Sinclair’s grandpa really forced them to attend college, they’d join the same fraternity and take the same classes. When they graduated, they’d run the ranch together.