ordered.
The convoy moved. D22, SSG Turnbeck commanding, pulled out first. Instantly, a civilian car got out of the way too slowly, and Turnbeck jumped on him.
“Fucker. Get your head out of your ass.” Then the radio chatter began.
“He should be shot,” suggested someone inside D22.
A car approached from a side road.
“Car moving left to right, two o’clock. Don’t get complacent,” Wynn said, making sure his crew was on its toes. The moving car ahead of them stopped, then accelerated off to the side of the road.
“Shit!” Gung exclaimed, as he maneuvered adroitly around a few goats that scampered across the road.
“You trying to get dinner, man?” Singleton responded.
The platoon’s four turret gunners rhythmically swiveled their turrets, looking for potential threats.
“Traffic ahead.”
“Move on.”
“Warlocking, Mack?” Wynn asked Gung, referring to the electronic counter-IED system mounted in D21.
“Yes, Sir. Everything perfect.”
“One on the right, coming behind us. Same speed,” Cooke announced from D24, the trail truck. A car had come out of nowhere and followed the convoy.
“He slowed down. Ugh, and now turned off.” The car disappeared down a side street.
The men returned to routine talk, both in the trucks and between them by radio. Most recognized every voice on the radio. Their out-loud, gut-instinct mutual thinking made a kind of soldier’s symphony. Short clear comments, playful banter, threaded together by an easy but serious teamwork. No other way to communicate while driving through hell.
As they drove, Moose closely observed his surroundings. The platoon passed through several neighborhoods, each one a quiltwork of adobe buildings, often without windows, all with flat roofs, most constructed of rough-cut block or brick. The exterior plaster looked flesh-colored and full of imperfections, like the skin of an aging man. Multiple generations frequently lived together. Because no reliable public water system existed, Iraqis stored water in the metal tanks on rooftops, which fed indoors by gravity.
Doing his duty scanning the surrounding area while the convoy moved, Moose started thinking about what a body would look like if hit by several .50 caliber rounds. That person would be hurtin ’. So far he had seen three dead soldiers and more than a dozen dead and injured civilians since arriving in country. He remembered most of them clearly. He felt rather clinical about it, like it was research. It wasn’t that the deaths and ugliness didn’t bother him—perhaps he was just more detached than most people. Two of the dead had been Iraqi civilians, killed instantly when a 120mm mortar round rigged as an IED—probably intended for the Wolfhounds—blew up their car as the platoon convoy passed going the opposite direction.
The Wolfhounds had stopped to investigate. The IED blew marble-to-baseball-sized holes into the lower part of the car’s passenger door. The passenger had taken the brunt of the blast and his body was completely disfigured. His buttocks and hips had essentially disappeared, and the lower part of his back was split open, exposing a section of spine that looked like splintered wood. A bloody mess of thousands of particles of flesh was sprayed over what remained of the car’s interior. The driver took the rest of the explosion. Due to the direction of the blast, angled from road level through the lower part of the passenger’s door and up, the driver’s shoulders and head were smashed, but his lower body was largely unscathed. His upper right arm was ripped from the shoulder, and dangled from thin strips of ligaments. His right forearm and hand were sliced off. A chunk of that hand with three fingers still attached lay charred on the smoking remnants of the car’s dashboard. What remained of his head was a messy clump of flesh about the size of a pink grapefruit. Moose remembered wondering what the man had originally looked like.
In his mind,
The convoy moved. D22, SSG Turnbeck commanding, pulled out first. Instantly, a civilian car got out of the way too slowly, and Turnbeck jumped on him.
“Fucker. Get your head out of your ass.” Then the radio chatter began.
“He should be shot,” suggested someone inside D22.
A car approached from a side road.
“Car moving left to right, two o’clock. Don’t get complacent,” Wynn said, making sure his crew was on its toes. The moving car ahead of them stopped, then accelerated off to the side of the road.
“Shit!” Gung exclaimed, as he maneuvered adroitly around a few goats that scampered across the road.
“You trying to get dinner, man?” Singleton responded.
The platoon’s four turret gunners rhythmically swiveled their turrets, looking for potential threats.
“Traffic ahead.”
“Move on.”
“Warlocking, Mack?” Wynn asked Gung, referring to the electronic counter-IED system mounted in D21.
“Yes, Sir. Everything perfect.”
“One on the right, coming behind us. Same speed,” Cooke announced from D24, the trail truck. A car had come out of nowhere and followed the convoy.
“He slowed down. Ugh, and now turned off.” The car disappeared down a side street.
The men returned to routine talk, both in the trucks and between them by radio. Most recognized every voice on the radio. Their out-loud, gut-instinct mutual thinking made a kind of soldier’s symphony. Short clear comments, playful banter, threaded together by an easy but serious teamwork. No other way to communicate while driving through hell.
As they drove, Moose closely observed his surroundings. The platoon passed through several neighborhoods, each one a quiltwork of adobe buildings, often without windows, all with flat roofs, most constructed of rough-cut block or brick. The exterior plaster looked flesh-colored and full of imperfections, like the skin of an aging man. Multiple generations frequently lived together. Because no reliable public water system existed, Iraqis stored water in the metal tanks on rooftops, which fed indoors by gravity.
Doing his duty scanning the surrounding area while the convoy moved, Moose started thinking about what a body would look like if hit by several .50 caliber rounds. That person would be hurtin ’. So far he had seen three dead soldiers and more than a dozen dead and injured civilians since arriving in country. He remembered most of them clearly. He felt rather clinical about it, like it was research. It wasn’t that the deaths and ugliness didn’t bother him—perhaps he was just more detached than most people. Two of the dead had been Iraqi civilians, killed instantly when a 120mm mortar round rigged as an IED—probably intended for the Wolfhounds—blew up their car as the platoon convoy passed going the opposite direction.
The Wolfhounds had stopped to investigate. The IED blew marble-to-baseball-sized holes into the lower part of the car’s passenger door. The passenger had taken the brunt of the blast and his body was completely disfigured. His buttocks and hips had essentially disappeared, and the lower part of his back was split open, exposing a section of spine that looked like splintered wood. A bloody mess of thousands of particles of flesh was sprayed over what remained of the car’s interior. The driver took the rest of the explosion. Due to the direction of the blast, angled from road level through the lower part of the passenger’s door and up, the driver’s shoulders and head were smashed, but his lower body was largely unscathed. His upper right arm was ripped from the shoulder, and dangled from thin strips of ligaments. His right forearm and hand were sliced off. A chunk of that hand with three fingers still attached lay charred on the smoking remnants of the car’s dashboard. What remained of his head was a messy clump of flesh about the size of a pink grapefruit. Moose remembered wondering what the man had originally looked like.
In his mind,
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