Brothers in Arms (3 page)

“All Hitman-Two victors, this is Two-One,” Jonah radioed, using the common nickname for vehicle. “Halt progress on my mark. Garcia, Renz, swap victors. Garcia, I want you on the 50-cal for entry into the city center.”

“Two-Three, copy,” Roner answered.

“Hitman-Two-Two,” Steves confirmed.

“All Hitman victors halt progress,” Jonah ordered and Shankman braked, the other two Humvees rolling to easy stops behind them.

Jonah opened the door of his Humvee and looked backward to watch the Marine version of a Chinese fire drill as Garcia and Renz each exited their vehicles, M16s in hand, and climbed into the one the other had vacated. When Garcia’s head became visible above the turret of the 50-caliber gun, Jonah ducked back into his victor.

“Martinez, get up on the Mark-19,” he ordered, but Martinez was already scrambling through the roof.

“Good to go, Gunnery Sergeant,” he called down, and Jonah gave Shankman the order to move.

Their convoy sailed into the city at a brisk fifty miles an hour. They arrayed around the apartment building in sight of each other and exited the Humvees in an obvious show of force.

Grizzly didn’t waste any time in coming up to Jonah. “I don’t suppose I have any hope of convincing you to wait out here for me to take care of my business inside?”

“None whatsoever,” Jonah confirmed.

“I can’t have you inside the apartments with me,” Grizzly insisted.

Jonah really hated being right all the time.

“We’ll maintain vigilance from the hallways, and you’ll leave doors open for easy entry.” He pushed hard with his opening gambit.

Grizzly didn’t look pleased. “Fine, Gunnery Sergeant,” he said.

“Shankman and Renz, stay with the Humvees,” Jonah said as he followed Grizzly toward the entrance to the building. “The rest of you, with me.”

As they entered the apartment building the team spread out, immediately getting a three-sixty view of the terrain.

“What floor?” Jonah asked.

“Second.”

“Garcia, Roner, take point,” Jonah said, and the two Marines took positions at the base of the stairwell.

“Steves, Martinez, watch our six,” Jonah ordered and started up the stairs behind Grizzly and Trujillo.

They moved quickly but cautiously up two flights of stairs, scanning for booby traps and a possible ambush. Like most urban housing complexes in Iraq, this was little more than a rundown slum. It was hard to tell if the structure had ever been completed in the first place or if it had simply been left to erode and crumble.

Paint peeled from the walls, where there was any paint left. The few light fixtures still functioning flickered weakly. Their footsteps and breathing echoed eerily up the stairwell. The dim and flickering lights cast shadows that left them on edge. More than once, a Marine swung his M16 around at a target that wasn’t there. Not a single errant shot was fired, though. Recon Marines were trained for this type of thing; they had just never expected to have to weed their adversaries out of a civilian populace.

Roner pushed through the door to the second floor, Garcia on his heels. The hallway had better visibility than the stairs. An apartment door stood open, and Roner ordered the occupants to close it.

Grizzly advised which apartment they were looking for, but they struggled to identify apartment numbers. It wasn’t apparent if they had ever been numbered or if they’d all fallen off long ago. Not even phantom images were left behind.

Garcia and Roner shouted commands at someone and Jonah’s body pivoted to cover them before his brain even registered the threat. An Arab male had exited an apartment and seemed to be trying to communicate with the Marines. Jonah forced his breathing back into a slow rhythm. The man finally stepped back into his home and closed the door. Jonah relaxed his finger on the trigger of his weapon as the tension in his shoulders ebbed slightly. Then Steves and Garcia began to shout, and his body stiffened again, his hand tightening on the grip of his rifle. This time, the Arab male made no effort to communicate but stood staring at all of them, his expression dark and brooding. Steves shoved the man back into his apartment and shut the door.

Several more Arab males came out of their apartments to watch the Marines advance down the dim hallway. Roner and Garcia ordered them back into their apartments and all complied.

It was the best Jonah and his men could do to keep the hallway clear. He could shoot each of them as they stepped into the corridor. If they were lookouts, they were a threat. Jonah didn’t pull the trigger, though. The men might just be curious.

A door on Jonah’s right opened, and he reflexively pointed his M4 at the figure in the doorway, finger relaxed but ready against the trigger. His heart hammered in his chest. His brain registered that there were children there, openly staring at the Marines, and Jonah dropped the muzzle of his weapon. Trujillo spoke sharply in Arabic, and the children scuttled backward into the apartment and shut the door. Jonah still hated combatants hiding in and amongst the population. It was always children caught in the crossfire.

Grizzly located the apartment for his meeting, and he and Trujillo went inside, leaving the door open. Jonah increased the dispersion of the remaining Marines in the hallway. He stood just outside the door, watching things inside the apartment while he kept an eye on either end of the hallway. His spine tingled with the effects of adrenaline. Jonah was so alert he could hear his own eyes moving in his head. Once again, they’d be lucky to get out of this without shooting a nosy kid. Or getting shot because one of them hesitated. Jonah watched as Grizzly, with Trujillo translating, spoke at length with a frail old man. Periodically, a younger man, most likely his son, would break angrily into the conversation. The old man would speak directly to him, and he would settle down for several minutes.

Trujillo spoke the traditional phrases of parting company, and he and Grizzly stepped out into the hallway. “Up two floors,” Grizzly told Jonah.

“Roger that.” He clenched his jaw in frustration. Grizzly, and all the men like him, expected Jonah to operate effectively blind. He motioned for Steves and Martinez to lead them back into the stairwell and up the two flights.

Jonah heard his men shout in English and broken Arabic as soon as they set foot in the hallway of the fourth floor. Eagerness and anticipation crashed through Jonah as he rushed everyone else up the remaining stairs and through the door. The hallway already contained several men and children milling about. They wasted no time in bullying people back into their apartments, physically when necessary. Children scattered and disappeared readily enough, their curiosity losing out to their fear at seeing the Marines pushing around the men.

Jonah stalked the hallway, claiming territory. He stood up straight and squared his shoulders, using his unusual size to his own advantage to keep his sector clear. He barked orders at his men and at the civilians, giving no one an opportunity to argue or to consider non-compliance. Within minutes, the entire corridor was empty, save for the Marines, who all stood with weapons at the ready.

“Grizzly,” Jonah called sharply. “The route’s clear. Make it quick.”

Trujillo and Grizzly exited the stairwell. “The hard part’s finding the right apartment,” Trujillo growled as he strode past Jonah. “I hate the goddamn evasive circular talk.”

“I’ll get us out of here as quickly as I can, Gunnery Sergeant,” Grizzly said.

Jonah watched Trujillo count doors before pausing to pound on one with his fist. He shouted in Arabic and received a faint answer from inside. The door opened slowly, as if the occupant was reluctant to grant them access. Jonah suppressed a wry smile; he couldn’t imagine why anyone would be hesitant to open his or her door to several well-armed US Marines. After a brief conversation, the apartment’s resident stepped aside to allow Trujillo and Grizzly to enter.

“Door open,” Jonah ordered.

The time passed while Jonah and his men waited. Jonah rolled his shoulders to ease the tightness. When doors began to open and faces to peer out, he decided it was time to call a halt.

“Time’s up, Grizzly,” he called. “We need to be oscar-mike right now.”

To Jonah’s relief, he didn’t need to issue his order a second time. Grizzly and Trujillo exited the apartment.

“Got what I was after, Gunnery Sergeant,” Grizzly said, closing the small notebook he’d been writing in almost constantly.

Jonah ordered them all back down the four flights of stairs. It was an eerie egress, with the spotty lighting and the hollow echo of their boots on the steps. He brought up the rear himself, the hair on his neck telling him weapons were trained on them from that direction. He figured his vigilance had paid off when they hit the street again without incident.

Glancing at the rooftops around them, Jonah led his team back to their Humvees. “We need to return to the base,” Jonah said to Grizzly. “We’re so far out; it’ll be just about dark when we get back.”

“Let’s go, then. I need to get an early start tomorrow, Gunnery Sergeant,” Grizzly said as he climbed into his vehicle.

“As soon as the sun comes up,” Jonah replied.

Shankman drove back to firm base at a steady clip, faster than he had on the trip out. Jonah understood his anxiety. The entire team was anxious to get to shelter before night fell, including Jonah, but traveling fast and relaxing their vigilance could get them killed. He made sure Shankman was focused, not pushing the speed too high, and Jonah let it go.

Speeding through the Iraqi desert with Shankman behind the wheel didn’t seem quite right to Jonah. Riding like this made him remember his first tour, when his driver had been Corporal Neil McMurtrie. At the time, Jonah had been highly annoyed with Neil’s frenetic ranting. Now, though, Shankman’s periodic chattiness and attentive driving made Jonah nostalgic for Neil’s incessant monologues.

Thoughts of Neil and that Humvee inevitably led to thoughts of Kellan. Last he’d heard, the LT—no, captain—was doing well. He was running some consulting firm, influencing policy, and speaking plainly about the failures of the war and what it would take to turn things around. Jonah grabbed an open bag of Skittles from the dash and tossed a few into his mouth, savoring the tang. Not for the first time, he wondered how he’d managed to lose touch with Kellan, despite that one soul-searing night they’d spent together. There wasn’t any one event he could point to as the cause, but it had happened. Different continents, different life paths, and Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell had probably all contributed.

The comm crackled to life as they neared the firm base, and Jonah again set thoughts of Kellan aside to announce their inbound approach. They pulled in, and Jonah issued orders for his men to secure the vehicles and their gear. He, Trujillo, and Grizzly headed for Captain Hoegerl’s office. Stoop was nowhere to be seen, as per usual.

“Was your day successful?” Hoegerl asked Grizzly once the door was shut.

“Very productive, Captain. The gunnery sergeant was very patient and accommodating.”

“I’ve always suspected he had it in him,” Hoegerl said, shooting Jonah a quick smile.

Jonah’s debrief was first, and very brief, since he’d been on the outside. He’d seen and heard nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary. Hoegerl dismissed him summarily with an order to complete his after-action report ASAP.

Setting his laptop on the table in the garishly tiled kitchen, Jonah booted it up while he opened an MRE. The acronym stood for
meal ready to eat
but he considered that a misnomer. Very little about the meals were truly
eatable.
Today was some sort of chicken patty, barbeque sauce, and stale bread. He ate distractedly, not really tasting the bland food as he swallowed. Jonah wrote his after-action quickly. He wanted to fill it with opinions on just how ridiculous the entire mission was, but, like a good Marine, he stuck to the facts.

After connecting to an open Ethernet cable emailing his report to Hoegerl, Jonah shut down his computer.

Night had fallen and Jonah felt restless. It wasn’t safe to wander outside the walls of firm base, but it was too hot for him to relax and sleep. In the room with Jonah’s gear and the mat he’d been sleeping on, several Marines were cleaning gear. The still air reeked of dirty socks and body odor. He stepped over and around the bodies of Marines trying to sleep in the stifling heat.

Dropping down to his mat, Jonah collected his weapons and cleaning kit. He settled his back against the wall to break down the M4 and clean it. Jonah wasn’t alone in this chore. Keeping equipment well maintained was drilled into Marines almost from the moment they stepped off the bus at boot camp. The reason was twofold: a dirty weapon could misfire and cost a life, and too much unstructured time led to lax discipline. The endless, encroaching sand made it all the more crucial for Marines to keep their primary weapons, as well as sidearms and heavy guns, cleaned and well oiled.

Jonah lost himself in the familiar and detailed task until movement across the room grabbed his notice. Glancing up, Jonah found Corey Yarwood watching him.

Yarwood was running a soft brush over a bandoleer of ammunition for the .50 caliber gun—their largest, most destructive vehicle-mounted machine gun. Yarwood worried his lower lip between his teeth in concentration. When he saw Jonah looking back at him, his expression became eager, if a little guarded. The look was so reminiscent of Kellan, Jonah felt like he’d taken a fist to the gut.

“Successful mission, Gunnery Sergeant?” Yarwood asked.

“I’m told it was, Private Yarwood,” Jonah replied. “I was no more than a glorified bodyguard today.”

“It had to be an interesting change from the knock-n-talks,” Yarwood continued, seeming encouraged by Jonah’s response.

“Neither mission is what I became a Recon Marine to do.”

“I know; it’s not why I did either.” Yarwood was silent for several moments before he spoke again. “Is there any plan to rotate some of us to different platoons while we’re here?”

“Not that I have been made aware of, Private. Why? Not liking Third Platoon?”