icebreaker.
Salvador, slight and fair-skinned, is fumbling with the ball flap.
In the silence, the velcroing and unvelcroing can be heard.
Yelks turns to Salvador.
“Now Chipotle over there, he being a Mexican, it might not be a bad thing for him, you know, since his race breeds like field mice. We don’t want your spawn taking over the country now, do we, Chipotle? New order—only the Mexicans don’t need to wear the ball flap.”
Everyone laughs, and Salvador mumbles a “Go fuck yourself” or something to Yelks.
The lieutenant walks up.
“Okay, guys, we got the word. We’re gonna be going first. The convoy is gonna stay a couple klicks behind us. We’re clearing the way. I remind you we are about to enter hostile territory, but we are liberators. As such, we will kill, but we will kill only those who are trying to kill us. Shoot if you are shot at, shoot if you are threatened. Make sure you get a positive ID. The S-2, the intel that we got, says there are unfriendlies. No shit, right? Sergeant Phelps will brief the ROEs and EOFs. All that being said, it is a free-fire zone, meaning, if you feel yourself threatened, do not hesitate.”
Peoria is in the first vehicle, sitting on the hard metal seat behind the driver. Yelks is driving; Salvador stands on the .50 caliber machine gun; the lieutenant sits shotgun. The engine starts, the trucks roll off, kicking up dust.
The invasion is under way.
At the border, over the radio, the lieutenant announces, as hundreds of others did, “Welcome to Iraq.” He smiles as he turns to Peoria, marking the time.
Two-thirty p.m., March 19, the year of our lord 2003.
The Humvees follow a main highway for a few hours.
There is dust, hundreds of vehicles, armored machines, loaded up, snaked out, rolling, churning a magnificent storm, choking, eye-irritating. Brown dust, and of course the dust is brown, brown dust hit by light particles, particles of sand and light, and the sun is rising up, the sun rising up in the east, and the dust becomes less brown and the dust becomes a big vocabulary word:
translucent
.
A road sign: BABYLON, 312 KM.
And over the radio, the redneck from Arkansas, who is also a Baptist, who also studies the Bible and knows it by heart, starts to recite:
“Thus saith the Lord, Behold I will rise up against Babylon, and against them that dwell in the midst of them that rise up against me,a destroying wind, And will send unto Babylon fanners that shall fan her and shall empty her land, for in the day of trouble they shall be against her round about and spare ye not her young men, destroy ye utterly all her host. . . . I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with he goats. Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, a land wherein no man dwell, neither doth any son of man pass nearby. And thou shalt say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her: and they shall be weary. Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.”
A.E. Peoria is taking notes, thinking he needs to check that passage, or have someone in New York check it for accuracy. He doesn’t want to interrupt the poetic moment by asking an intrusive journalist a question, but he does.
“That’s, uh, Old Testament?” Peoria says over the net.
The redneck doesn’t answer directly.
“And he cried mightily with a strong voice saying, Babylon the great is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird . . . And the light of the candle shall shine no more, and in her was found the blood of the prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.”
The Humvees are so enveloped in the dust that they can keep an eye only on the vehicle in front of them, staying a safe three hundred feet apart.
“He’s fucking playing you, sir. Redneck can’t even do a fucking briefing and he’s saying he can say all that from the Bible
Salvador, slight and fair-skinned, is fumbling with the ball flap.
In the silence, the velcroing and unvelcroing can be heard.
Yelks turns to Salvador.
“Now Chipotle over there, he being a Mexican, it might not be a bad thing for him, you know, since his race breeds like field mice. We don’t want your spawn taking over the country now, do we, Chipotle? New order—only the Mexicans don’t need to wear the ball flap.”
Everyone laughs, and Salvador mumbles a “Go fuck yourself” or something to Yelks.
The lieutenant walks up.
“Okay, guys, we got the word. We’re gonna be going first. The convoy is gonna stay a couple klicks behind us. We’re clearing the way. I remind you we are about to enter hostile territory, but we are liberators. As such, we will kill, but we will kill only those who are trying to kill us. Shoot if you are shot at, shoot if you are threatened. Make sure you get a positive ID. The S-2, the intel that we got, says there are unfriendlies. No shit, right? Sergeant Phelps will brief the ROEs and EOFs. All that being said, it is a free-fire zone, meaning, if you feel yourself threatened, do not hesitate.”
Peoria is in the first vehicle, sitting on the hard metal seat behind the driver. Yelks is driving; Salvador stands on the .50 caliber machine gun; the lieutenant sits shotgun. The engine starts, the trucks roll off, kicking up dust.
The invasion is under way.
At the border, over the radio, the lieutenant announces, as hundreds of others did, “Welcome to Iraq.” He smiles as he turns to Peoria, marking the time.
Two-thirty p.m., March 19, the year of our lord 2003.
The Humvees follow a main highway for a few hours.
There is dust, hundreds of vehicles, armored machines, loaded up, snaked out, rolling, churning a magnificent storm, choking, eye-irritating. Brown dust, and of course the dust is brown, brown dust hit by light particles, particles of sand and light, and the sun is rising up, the sun rising up in the east, and the dust becomes less brown and the dust becomes a big vocabulary word:
translucent
.
A road sign: BABYLON, 312 KM.
And over the radio, the redneck from Arkansas, who is also a Baptist, who also studies the Bible and knows it by heart, starts to recite:
“Thus saith the Lord, Behold I will rise up against Babylon, and against them that dwell in the midst of them that rise up against me,a destroying wind, And will send unto Babylon fanners that shall fan her and shall empty her land, for in the day of trouble they shall be against her round about and spare ye not her young men, destroy ye utterly all her host. . . . I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with he goats. Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, a land wherein no man dwell, neither doth any son of man pass nearby. And thou shalt say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her: and they shall be weary. Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.”
A.E. Peoria is taking notes, thinking he needs to check that passage, or have someone in New York check it for accuracy. He doesn’t want to interrupt the poetic moment by asking an intrusive journalist a question, but he does.
“That’s, uh, Old Testament?” Peoria says over the net.
The redneck doesn’t answer directly.
“And he cried mightily with a strong voice saying, Babylon the great is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird . . . And the light of the candle shall shine no more, and in her was found the blood of the prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.”
The Humvees are so enveloped in the dust that they can keep an eye only on the vehicle in front of them, staying a safe three hundred feet apart.
“He’s fucking playing you, sir. Redneck can’t even do a fucking briefing and he’s saying he can say all that from the Bible
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