“If you’re successful you will save lives. American lives, yes, but also Iraqi lives. Let me change that to ‘other’ lives as well. Okay, from now on what you do and where you go will be on a need-to-know basis. When you finish the mission there will be very few people in the world who will know what you have accomplished, but the army will know, the president of the United States will know, and most important, you will know. I don’t see this operation as being very risky. You should be able to move in, do what has to be done, without shots being fired. If there is a need to have shots fired, you can rest assured that your security detail will be amazingly proficient at doing just that. My read is that it won’t be necessary.
“Finally, I want to tell you why you are being asked to do this. Your unit has dealt very efficiently with the civilian population. You’ve built bridges and relationships that the 422nd, which is now taking over the bulk of the Civil Affairs function, will be using. In other words, you get the job done. That’s all we want. Every time you people make a friend, help a sick child, you create the possibility that we’ll get some little piece of information or cooperation which will help us win the minds and hearts we need to prevail. At the end of this mission your entire unit will be reassigned. Many of you will be returning to the States to train other CA Special Ops. Most of you will have interesting choices. Thank you.”
The major snapped off a salute and he was gone. We headed back to the rec room.
“Captain Coles, what was that about?” Miller asked.
“I have no idea,” Coles answered.
“Okay, here’s where the blues come in,” Jonesy said. “When you come home and call out ‘Hey, sweetie!’ and your sweetie ain’t there but you see a note on the table next to a bottle of wine, right away you know ain’t nothing good is in that note. This here Ramp;R is like that bottle of wine and they sent two officers to deliver the note and neither of them told us what the sucker was all about. What I say is, put a dollar in the jukebox and push J-7 four times because the blues is definitely coming down!”
I was excited about the whole thing. Kelly and the Asian officer were both being gungy but they were letting us know they were serious about the importance of the mission.
“What bothers me about this bad boy is that crap about it not being risky,” Marla said. “If it’s not risky, why doesn’t he get his little butt on the stick and do it himself ?”
“I think it’s because we’re good,” I said. “You read some bad crap in the papers about what’s going on over here and you don’t read about us or the 422nd or any of the CA operations.”
“I feel some bad mojo working,” Jonesy said. “Some bad, bad, BAD mojo!”
“I don’t feel it,” Marla said. “Our unit is being given a lot of jerk details but we’re getting it done. This might be a little hush-hush but I bet we work it.”
Sessions called us together that evening and told us that what she called the “insertion team” had been picked.
“Ma’am, is this ‘insertion team’ about sex?” Marla asked.
Sessions acted as if she didn’t hear her. Then she announced the team. It was going to be the First and Second Squads. “Everyone else is excused from this meeting.”
At first the others didn’t know what that meant, but slowly they got it and stood up and left. I felt excited. My stomach was jumping and I was nervous, but I was also excited.
“Where are we going?” Barbara always seemed to have a hair coming down into her face that needed pushing up and she was brushing it back as she spoke. “Outside of Baghdad?”
June 8, 2003
Dear Uncle Richie,
Things are going well. There’s a lot of talk about us being reassigned. The thing is that we are officially attached to the 3rd ID. Some of the older noncoms are saying it’s all part of Rumsfeld’s yo-yo concept. We’re all on strings and he jerks us around where he wants us. I don’t know if I will be reassigned to the 422nd or another CA unit or back to my original unit from Fort Dix. That would suck because they haven’t been over here yet.
I can use some Harlem. One thing I miss over here is the music you hear walking down the streets at home. We got one of the construction guys to rig us up a little portable amplifier so we can blast out the Humvee as we go down the street. They have a lot of amplifiers over here that they use to aggravate the Iraqis.
A car bomb went off near a Sunni mosque yesterday. The marines call the car bombs “Mist Makers.” They say that when you’re hit with one of those major explosions all that’s left is a pink mist. There’s more and more fighting between the Sunnis (not that many of them, really) and the Shiites. I don’t really understand the differences between them, they all follow Islam. Still, if they blow each other up and you’re too close it doesn’t matter if there’s a big difference or a little one.
I had the chance to speak to Mom the other day and we were having a good conversation and all of a sudden she started crying. If you see her will you tell her that I’m actually okay and not just putting on a brave face. I don’t think I have a brave face. They don’t send the CAs into areas they expect resistance, they send the marines and the Infantry and man, those guys are deadly. They go after everything with such confidence and joblike determination. I’m glad I’m not going up against them.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to go up against the Iraqis, either. I just want to do my bit to make this place a little bit safer before I leave.
Give everybody my love. Robin
“Yo, Birdy, you know what we need over here, man?” Jonesy had bought a cheap guitar from a guy in supply and was trying to tune it.
“What?”
“An Arabic dictionary so we can see if the names of places we going to mean anything,” he said. “Al Amarah could mean the Gaping Ghetto or something.”
“I found it on the map,” I said.
“Yeah, I seen it, too,” Jonesy said. “About an inch away from Iran. I got a bad feeling about this mess.”
I looked at him to see if he was kidding. He wasn’t. “How come?” I asked.
“They giving us some time off, and they handpicking people instead of just sending out some numbers. Somebody thinking this is some serious business.”
“They think we can handle it,” I said.
“I hope they right,” Jonesy said.
We picked up new gear from the supply sergeant in As Sayliyah. It was all the same stuff except for the pistols. I hadn’t carried a pistol but we had shot them in training. I didn’t want to be so close to anybody again that I had to use a pistol. The M-16 at a hundred meters was fine with me.
We got a final briefing from Kelly that didn’t sound good. I kept checking Jonesy and he looked worried.
“The whole area between the southern tip of Iraq north through the Maysan province is supposed to be held by the British,” Kelly said. “They’re way undermanned and trying to work with the civilians to keep things cool. They’ve had a lot of success with their Civil Affairs ops and we’re hoping for the same thing.”
“If they had so much success, how come we’re going?” Marla asked.
“We’ve got some people in the area, too,” Kelly said, smiling. “They’re just more used to working with Americans.”
“We only going to be there for this one set?” Jonesy asked. “Who coming to hear us play?”
“There are two main groups in the area. The good guys are the ones who have always lived there. They’re good people but they rose up against Saddam in the early nineties and he tried to wipe them out. This was a marsh area and they made their living off the water and rice farming, which demands a lot of water. Saddam drained the marshes and mined the area. They hate his guts,” Kelly went on. “We just found out that some of their children have been kidnapped and are being held for ransom. Kidnapping’s big business over here. We think we can use that to our advantage. The local tribe that the children belong to has been—or at least we think has been— dealing with some of the Badr fighters who
are coming across the border from Iran. The Badr fighters are the bad guys in this picture. Many are former Iraqis. They’re all Shiites and all anti-Saddam. But the intelligence is that they’re being supported by some foreign elements.”
“Iran?” Captain Coles asked.
“We haven’t verified that,” Kelly said. “And we haven’t verified that they’re absolutely the ones bringing in the new detonators we’re finding throughout the country, either. If we get our hands on a supply of the detonators, we might be able to trace them directly to the source. If we can do that, we might be able to exert enough behind-the-scenes pressure to stop the flow. What we think is that the Badr fighters are bringing in the detonators and selling them to the locals, who then bring them into the suburbs around Baghdad.”
“Yo, let me get this straight, sir.” Jonesy was deep into his gangsta lean. “The bad guys are bringing in detonators so we know they bad, right?”
“Right,” Kelly answered.
“And the good guys are dealing with the bad guys but we know they the good guys because they was hating Saddam first?”
“They need to eat, soldier, the same as everybody else over here,” Kelly said, his voice going flat. “But they want their kids back and we’re offering you guys up as first-class negotiators. The guys we have in the area now will help you get the kids and, hopefully, we’ll make a lot of friends.”
“And you asked for women because…?” Miller’s head was turned to one side.
“If you need reasons, Captain, I’ll give them to you.” Kelly had gone from flat to pissed. “The first is that I’ve seen what the new detonators and the new shaped charges we’re finding can do to our people. I’ve scraped the pieces of flesh from the sides of burned-out vehicles so the insurgents don’t get them and feed them to their dogs. I’ve seen the blood of guys I respect change the color of the air around a vehicle. I’d send my mother if I thought it would do any good.”
I didn’t like Kelly sounding off to Captain Miller, and I knew he didn’t like us questioning him.
“I hope they at least have the good sense to wear white hats and black hats so we can tell them apart,” Marla said as we headed back to our quarters.
0300 hours. We were driven to an airfield where an old, dull-looking C-3 transport plane crouched on the runway. The night was hot and the interior of the C-3 stifling. I felt myself sucking in air through my mouth.
“Birdy, you’re sucking in bugs,” Darcy said.
“I need the protein,” I answered.
Captain Coles was being quiet and I wondered if he knew anything the rest of us didn’t. “Hey, Captain, what you got to say?” I called to him.
He undid his straps and stood up. “I just think everybody needs to get their game face on for this mission,” he said. He stepped over Miller’s legs and headed to the john in the back of the plane.
“Look at it this way,” Miller spoke up. “They wouldn’t be sending four women on a mission if it was all that dangerous. Not that they give a crap for us, but it’ll look bad in the papers.”
“Did I ever tell you about the time my cousin Jedediah was on the front page of the Memphis Appeal for robbing a Piggly Wiggly on New Year’s Eve?” Jonesy asked. “He got all the way to Panama City, Florida. When he called back home and found out he was on the front page he went back to Stone Mountain. Got arrested, got six months, served three, but he been a celebrity ever since.”
Coles got back from the john and was just settled in when the hatches were shut and the C-3 took off.
The flight to Al Amarah took nearly two and a half hours. Coles said the pilots must have been flying around hot zones. We had a vote and it was agreed seven to nothing that flying around hot zones was a good idea.
“I’m supposed to tell you, once we get in the air, that we’re going to be working with some Special Ops troops who are already in place in the marshes,” Coles said. “They’ve been there since the first of the year.”
“Who are they?” Marla asked.
Coles shrugged.
0620 hours. Al Amarah was hot and stinky. We deplaned and got into trucks for the bumpy ride to a long stretch of wall. There were towers along the inside of the wall at intervals of 100 yards. The truck was checked by a British marine who actually looked under the carriage for something. Then we were taken through a yard the size of a supermarket parking lot to a squat, dirty building that stunk even more.
“The Coalition took out the electricity before we arrived,” an officer said. “So it’s all a bit backed up.”
We were given a room to sit in for the next hour and a half. The Brits and a few Japanese were sitting at computers in the compound. All of the computers were laptops and none plugged into anything. Compared to Baghdad, this was pure crap.
We waited in full gear until nearly 1200 when a young-looking Brit lieutenant asked Captain Coles if we were ready to go. Coles said no, that we wanted to eat first, and the lieutenant said we could eat when we landed.
“Lieutenant, my soldiers need to eat first,” Coles said slowly, deliberately.
“Captain, you have about fifteen minutes to get your people on your transport,” the lieutenant said. “If they’re not on, you’re going to be quite sorry.”
Captain Miller, who curses better than anyone I have ever heard, said some wonderful things about the lieutenant’s parents that I wish I had had the time to write down even though I didn’t really believe that a human being could be conceived by sand crabs under a flat rock.
1230 hours. According to the chopper pilot we were landing five miles southeast of Al Amarah. “Good luck!” he chirped.
The place looked desolate. To our left there were huge patches of dark green soil. To the right there was fog. We had been dropped with our gear and two crates of medical supplies in a clearing. Coles was on the radio asking the pilot if he was sure that this was where we were supposed to be when the choppers took off.
I could hear the pilot’s voice in Coles’s headset as the wind from the rotors blew dust in my face.
“Company,” Marla announced.
There were three vehicles coming toward us. I couldn’t see the drivers and I didn’t recognize the trucks.
“Easy! Easy!” Coles said.
I felt the weight of my piece and toyed lightly with the trigger.
As they drew near we saw one guy standing on the sideboard waving. He was wearing camouflage gear, and a bandana around his head. We were all frozen in our spots when they reached us.
“You guys bring any beer?” the first guy out of what looked like an up-armored SUV asked.
“ ‘Fraid not,” Coles said.
“Man, we’ve been waiting for the beer run for six months,” the guy said, extending his hand. “Pile into that second wagon and we’ll take you to the camp.”
We loaded the medical supplies in the second vehicle and tried not to stare too hard at the men—we could only guess that they were soldiers—who were staring at us. They were a motley crew. Big, muscled, in a variety of uniforms. Some wore bandanas around their heads, others wore earrings.
“Who are you guys?” Coles asked.
“Fifth Group,” one guy said. “We work with the local tribes.”
These were the guys that Marla had called “Hoodlums” back in Kuwait. They had left camp back then before us and nobody knew where they had been headed.
We got into the trucks and headed to their camp at a speed that I was sure was gong to kill us all. I looked at Marla across from me and she looked tense.
When we arrived at the camp it wasn’t what I expected. It was a small village. There were dark tents huddled together on one end of a field and small round huts made out of sticks and mud at the other.
But most of all, there were people that I knew were not soldiers. We were in a tribal camp and I was hoping that I hadn’t misread the guys who picked us up. I was hoping that they were really American soldiers. We trailed the guys who had picked us up into the camp. I stopped once t
o see a dark woman, dressed all in black, staring at me with eyes that looked a thousand years old.
I smiled. She didn’t.
We were led into a slightly larger tent where a bare-chested white guy sat in front of a low fire. A woman, slight with quick, nervous movements, sat next to him.
“Make yourself at home,” the white man drawled. “Y’all eat?”
“I’m Captain Coles. My people could use something to eat.”
“Colonel Roberts” was the reply. “We’ll get you some food and you can lay up until it gets dark. We got some work to do tonight so you need to be rested. Sorry our hospitality couldn’t be more considerate but we got us a situation, so to speak. People working before you—including us—haven’t got the job done. That’s why you folks are here. We understand you’re pretty good.”
“We’re trying, the same as you,” Captain Coles replied.
“Yeah, well, that’s good, Captain,” Roberts said. “So, what we’re going to do is to have you meet the locals this evening.”
“They’re coming here?” Captain Coles asked.
“No, we’ll send in all of your people to their camp with four of ours for security,” Roberts said. “I don’t think they’ll try anything rough with your people, and with ours there they won’t try to intimidate you. They’ve been told that you’re a crack negotiating team from CENTCOM and that you’re willing to spend our government’s money to ransom the kids from a rival tribe. These are the kids of one of their religious leaders. So it’s important for the chief to get the kids back to show he’s still got juice.”
“If it’s that important to him, why do we have to convince him?” Coles asked.
“Because they don’t trust anybody who isn’t a blood cousin. They’ve been betrayed by the Iraqis, by the Iranians, by anyone who has anything to gain in this area,” Roberts said. “The only difference between this place and everywhere else in this country is this place doesn’t make the news.”