Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers Page B

for bad guys. When we got near the ambulance it was riddled with holes. Now both of the guys were on the ground, either dead or badly wounded. The ambulance driver was older than the ones who had started the attack. He was slumped over the wheel. From where I sat I couldn’t see any wounds, but I saw the holes in the windshield.
    Ahmed picked up the attackers’ weapons and then looked in the back of the ambulance. He stood stock-still for a long moment. He was going to the door when Captain Coles yelled at him.
    â€œLet’s get the hell out of here!”
    Ahmed got back into the Humvee. He threw the two RPGs into the back and held up several vials of something.
    â€œThere’s a dead guy in the ambulance,” he said.
    Jonesy got back on the middle of the road and pushed the Humvee as fast as it would go. Marla hung on and told me to grab her leg so she wouldn’t bounce out, so I did.
    We didn’t slow down until we hit the first MP checkpoint. He waved us through and we went the last mile or so to our quarters at regular city speed. My legs were weak when I stepped out of the Humvee.
    â€œCheck your weapons,” Coles said. “Make sure the safeties are on.”
    As I checked I saw that I had skinned the knuckles on my right hand.
    â€œSee you guys had a little fun!” A wide-faced corporal looked at the side of Second Squad’s Humvee.
    I looked and saw a neat line of bullet holes. Who had been shooting at us? Had one of our own guys shot our Humvee?
    Marla came out over the top and slid down the side of Miss Molly.
    â€œYou think that was an ambush? Something they planned because they knew we were coming?” she asked me. “Some serious payback?”
    â€œI don’t think so,” I said. “They didn’t know we were coming to the village. They didn’t know when we were going to leave. I think they just saw us and took a chance.”
    Ahmed still had the vials of drugs and gave them to Captain Miller. Captain Coles went to Major Sessions to tell her what had happened. Jones fell across his bunk, facedown.
    â€œYou okay, Jonesy?” I asked him.
    â€œWhen you playing the blues you always know where you going,” he said. “You hitting them same chords your granddaddy hit and you singing about them same old blues. You can jazz it up a bit here and there, but sooner or later you coming back to the bad times. That’s what’s going down over here, Birdy. Sooner or later, man. One of them crazy suckers is going to hop out from behind a bush or jump out a tree, get lucky, and that’s going to be the end of my butt. Right now some sucker is probably got a bullet with my name on it under that dress they be wearing.”
    Pendleton from Third Squad asked what had happened at the school. Jonesy stammered as he tried to tell him.
    I could hardly remember what had happened. Somehow the moment was already lost. Nothing had happened and the only thing that had ever happened in my entire life was the time on the road. Had it been two minutes? A minute? A few seconds? People had tried to kill me. Maybe I had killed one of them. What else could matter?
    Captain Coles said that the Iraqis had broken the rules of engagement when they used a Red Crescent vehicle to attack us.
    â€œIf they shoot my ass and they broke the rules doing it, does that make me less dead?” Marla asked.
    I was dog tired. My shoulders ached. The sand on my face and neck scratched my skin as I pulled off my T-shirt. The bunk was hard, but anything was better than standing up.
A dream. I was riding along some highway in the back of a truck. Then it stopped being a truck and was an ambulance. Suddenly the ambulance/truck stopped and I got out to see what was going on. The road was covered with a low dust cloud. I could see the sun playing in the swirls a few feet in front of the ambulance. Looking up beyond the cloud I saw a group of soldiers. They had lifted their guns