They awoke, eyes automatically turning toward the cracks in the makeshift patches that covered the ruin’s blasted out walls. The orange glow of a sandstorm is absent, they would have to go outside the wire today. The air is always visible in Iraq, some days it can be seen clearer than others.
Every day they travel down roads named after football teams. Invisible dice would roll, deciding whether or not they would get hit. Every one of them has considered what would happen if their luck came up short. Visions of funerals, third degree burns, prosthetic limbs, and mangled genitals haunt them.
The squad always went countless miles up Tampa, on past that big mudhole with the good chow hall.
Breakfast is meager and miserable, many choose MREs instead. At the little outpost lunch meat is considered to be a luxury. They will probably spend the night at the big mudhole so that they can dine like kings.
They reach their trucks, sipping short cans of orange Rip It as they work to get them ready for the mission. The Satanic sun is already beating down on them. Heavy guns are lugged out of the shipping container that serves as an armory and installed on the Humvees’ roofs. The trucks bare no insignia, nothing that will cause them to stand out from one another. Stretchers are zip tied to them, ready to be ripped off and used. Simple shades have been welded to the tops of the turrets, clashing with the blocky armor.
They spend all day in the trucks, if it comes to it, they will fight and die in their vehicles. In spite of this, the interiors are clean, and customizations are few. Good luck charms sometimes hang from the spot where the rearview mirror would normally be. Cheat sheets of radio procedures are often taped into place somewhere on the passenger’s side.
Specialist Roberts wanders over, the most disgusting thing in the world gripped tightly in his off hand. He has cut the top off of a plastic water bottle. It is filled up over half-way with chaw spit, in which floats several cigarette butts and the shells from sunflower seeds. The man is very proud of the cupholder he has jerry-rigged onto the side of the radio mount in his truck.
Sergeant Zapata is a lifer, the fact that it is a term for a prison sentence isn’t lost on anyone, least of all him.
Specialist Magee enlisted to avoid a prison sentence; he often wonders if it was a fair trade. He keeps chemlights and tampons in neat rows on his armor.
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Private Syvertson joined so that he can go to college when his enlistment is over. He is the only one that believes that he will actually go through with it.
Corporal Adams’ boots are stained with blood. A seatbelt cutter sits on his vest, gleaming in the sunlight.
Warnings always proceed the mission, the troops gather around to hear what they have heard so many times before. Watch out for IEDs. If you don’t reenlist you will be eating Ramen noodles in your parents’ basement; it was always worded in that exact way, as if it were read verbatim from the same E-mail. Today’s patrol would take them countless miles up Tampa, on past that big mudhole with the good chow hall. And every mile another roll of the dice.
Iraqis, Arabs in general, think differently, have their own logic. Hadjis could care less what the outsides of their homes looked like. It’s the insides that count. The whole country is one big trash dump. Litter and debris lie strewn along the highways. Bombed out buildings are a common sight. It isn’t as sandy as you would think, but it is still pretty damn sandy.
The enemy uses roadside explosives to kill. Anything could be a bomb: a chunk of concrete, a cardboard box, a mound of paper, roadkill, a large rock, a dead bush, a rusted out cooking pot, a discarded car part, a pile of mangled cinderblocks, and the dirt berms that seem to flank every other mile of the road. Some of the bombs are designed to focus the blast, cutting through even the thickest armor. Others are so big that it doesn’t matter, you could be in a tank and still get taken out.
A convoy passes on the opposite side, local SWAT. Masked men sit in the beds of technicals with scorpions painted on them. They wave their guns around, forcing traffic out of their way.
The day wears on, the evil yellow ball hangs there hatefully. Rough material becomes soaked in sweat, darkening. Gunners retrieve water bottles from the coolers that are strapped to the backs of their turrets, pasting them their teammates. Helmets start to feel like they were just another part of the head, like they were dinosaurs sporting crests.
They reach an outpost of the Iraqi army. The place is little more than a dirt hill with concrete barriers set up around it. Everything has the black, white, and red flag painted on it, Iraqis love their flag as much as Americans love theirs, which is saying something. The local troops are about a half-step above a ragtag militia, or at least that’s how they look. Regardless of their combat prowess, they will sell you everything that you shouldn’t have.
The trucks roll through the mudhole’s gate just as the sun is starting to set, there are no clouds bathed in pink splendor. Some visit the well-equipped gym, while others run around the base’s massive perimeter. A decadent meal follows. They go to the base’s little bazaar, buying DVD collections from the Hadji venders. Then they head back to the tent, watching the latest films, recorded straight off the big screen.
The squad goes to bed, none of them looking forward to tomorrow. Rolling the dice again, rollin’ ‘em every day until they reached the end of the tour and got to go home.