The sun was sweltering. In the shade one was lucky if it only topped out at 110F. Out in the open though it was as hot as 138. That was bad enough, toss in the added gear of a flak jacket and all of the other trimmings that an infantry Marine had to wear while on the job, and you had the makings for a heat injury.
Lance Corporal (LCpl) Tanner was standing his post at the entry control point (ECP) checking the civilian traffic. Just people trying to get into the city to conduct their business. It was all innocent enough. Most days had been boring, there was something occasionally to break up the monotoumy, usually a fight or some animal getting rowdy, but that was rare. Today had started out no better.
Tanner was not actually checking the people, a pair of Iraqi Army soldiers were. He was just there to supervise and offer support if needed. What that really meant was that he was to just stand there and sweat. In his mind it was just Security Theater. No one had even taken a pot shot at them in the five months they had been there. He was resigned to never actually see any action. It was his first deployment and so far had had been underwhelmed by it all.
Then to his right a commotion had started. He turned to see a middle aged woman forcefully talking to one of the Army guys. She was getting louder and becoming more frantic. He saw that his sergeant was approaching the pair to see what was going on. He recognized the soldier as Corporal Ahmad, or at least that is what they called him. He knew descent English. No one was going to discuss the finer points of literature with him, but he knew enough to have a good talk about regular stuff.
Sergeant Smith was trying to talk to Ahmad to see what was going on. Ahmad had his hand up to him though. He was trying to understand the hectic woman and was letting the sergeant know he was getting the information he required. Sergeant Smith motioned for Tannner to come over as well. He knew that if t needed to be done, he would have to escort the woman away from the checkpoint. It wasn’t the excitement that he wanted, but it was better than nothing.
“What’s going on Sergeant?” Tanner asked.
“No clue, Ahmad is getting what we need. Probably someone stole her goat or something.”
“So why do you need me here?”
“Well if someone needs to cart her off you were just voluntold.”
“Of course, it beats the hell out of sweating to death over there and smelling all the goat shit,” he said pointing back to the actual gates the Iraqi’s were manning.
Ahmad turned and the look on his face was that of blank horror. He tied to speak a moment, but the words failed in that moment. Then the sound started to come out… “She is saying something about a bomb….” He stopped momentarily and turned back to the woman.
Sergeant Smith tensed up at the mention of bomb. He pulled his pistol from its holster and looked at Tanner, “I am going to say here and try to get more information, but I want you to go around and let the others know that some shit might be going down.”
“Aye Sergeant.” Tanner took off and made his way around the small post letting the other Marines and Iraqis know what was going on, as little as they knew. He made his way back to his NCO to see if anything else was garnered from the woman.
“She is saying that her husband is going to martyr one of their kids,” Smith told Tanner.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“What does that even mean?”
“He left early this morning with one of their daughters and when she asked where he was going he said it. She came here because he had a run in with us a couple of weeks ago.”
Smith hands Tanner a picture, “Here he is,” he points to a man in the picture. “Get this around and have the IA got out and see if they can find him, get the rest of the jarheads up here too.”
Tanner ran off and gave the order to shut down the checkpoint, then got the guys in the two guard towers to lock and load. The rest of them assembled around Sergeant Smith and awaited orders while the terp got the woman on their side of the barrier and she showed the photo to the dozen or so IA guys to go out and start looking. After this the Marines took up positions along the wall that protected their post at various intervals. Ahmad motioned for the woman to sit down and gave her some water.
Everyone was tense and the soldiers had forces all of the foot traffic back a ways and the crew served weapons were aimed loosely at the crowd with no particular target in mind. It was a precaution to hopefully keep anyone at bay that had an idea to do harm. The IA was now out among them looking for the man n the picture.
Several minutes had passed, and the tension was getting more palatable. The marines were getting antsy as well. Then they heard a scream. The woman who had come to them was now standing and yelling a word that Tanner couldn’t comprehend even though he a basic understanding of Arabic. Then he saw where she was looking. A small girl had emerged from the crowd and was heading towards the barrier.
Her middle looked bulkier than the rest of her body, and the way she carried herself told that tale as well. Tanner moved closer to the barrier where she was. Ahmad looked at Tanner, “That is her daughter, the one her husband left with this morning.” Tanner put his rifle on top of the four foot barrier.
The woman yelled at her daughter another moment, and they the little girl took off the jacket that she was wearing. It looked thicker than it actually was, once it fell to the ground, Tanner saw why. She had a makeshift suicide vest underneath. He had messed explosives enough to know that she was a couple of bricks of C4 on her although all cut up and arranged so that the case they were in could hold it and not throw her off balance.
Then he saw on the side that there was a cell phone attached to it and h knew that the father could set it off at anytime via a call. Her didn’t even have to be in the crowd. Tanner raised his rifle and aimed it at the girl. She was in a position that would not do a lot of damage to the post itself. A few of the civilians might be killed, but some of them saw her now and were starting to back away so a minute or more and most of them would be safe as well.
He could here Sergeant Smith n the back barking orders to the other Marines. Soon he was yelling at Tanner. “You keep a bead on her man, I know it sucks ass, but if we have to, we have to.”
He backed away to attend to the others and to make sure that the crowd was being moved back. Ahmad had dragged the mother back a ways even though she was fighting him. He understood, he had a small child back home, he could not even imagine if someone was pointing a gun at his kid. Then again he could not even imagine anyone wanting o tape explosives to their kid and send them off to be blown up. That was the fucked up thing about being here. So much was similar but so different at the same time.
The thousand yard stare crept up on Tanner and over took him. Nothing was coming in now. He held his place and put the front site on the girl and held it. He was zoning out to the part of his training that allowed him to not feel. He knew that was the only way he could do this if he had to. He had to envision the me or them mentality.
After a few moments the sound was penetrating even his concentration. He was still staring at the girl. Then he felt a hand on his back. He wasn’t sure what was going on. Then he reacted as he was trained. No thought, just reaction. The recoil was mild as it always was, but the reaction was not to the discharge of the weapon but of the target of that round dropping. Tanner quickly snapped and saw Smith behind him.
“What the fuck?” Smith yelled.
“She was moving Sergeant, you said if she moved.”
“Didn’t you hear us? We found the father and took the phone. You wouldn’t respond.”