Billy Summers

We gave our knotted hands a shake, then stood up. I had an M4 and my M24 slung over my shoulder, as well. Next to me, Big Klew held the SAW over one arm, twenty-five pounds or so fully loaded and the belt slung over one massive shoulder like a necktie.

We clustered at the gate in the outer courtyard. Crisscross shadows from the unfinished apartment building across the street made the mural on the wall into a checkerboard – children in some squares, the watching women and the mutawaeen in others. Bigfoot had his M870 breaching tool, a doorbuster shotgun meant to blow the lock on the gate to smithereens. Taco stood aside so Foot could do his thing, but when Pablo gave the gate an experimental push, it swung open with a horror movie creak. Taco looked at me and I looked at him, two lowly jarhead bullet-sponges with but a single thought: how fucking dinky-dau is this?

Tac gave a little shrug as if to say it is what it is, then led us across the courtyard at a run, head down and bent at the waist. We followed. There was a single lonely soccer ball on the cobbles. George Dinnerstein gave it a sidefoot kick as he went by.

We crossed without a single shot fired from the house’s barred windows and finished against the cement wall, four on either side of the double doors, which were heavy wood and at least eight feet high. Carved into each were crossed scimitars over a winged anchor, the symbol of the Ba’athist Battalions. Another hoodoo sign. I looked around for Fareed and saw him back by the gate. He saw me looking and shrugged. I got it. Fareed had a job and this wasn’t it.

Taco pointed to Donk and Klew, signaling them to go left and check the window there. Me and Bigfoot went to the right. I snuck a peek in the window on my side, hoping to pull back in time if some muj decided to blow my head off, but I saw no one and no one shot at me. I saw a big circular room with rugs on the floor, a low couch, a bookcase now containing just one lonely paperback book, a coffee table on its side. There was a tapestry of running horses on one wall. The room was almost as high as the nave of a smalltown Catholic church, rising at least fifty feet to that dome, which was lit by lasers of sunlight made almost solid by dancing dust motes.

I ducked back for Bigfoot to take my place. Since I hadn’t gotten my head blown off, he looked a little longer.

‘Can’t see the doors from here,’ Foot said to me. ‘Angle’s wrong.’

‘I know.’

We turned back to Tac. I rocked my hands back and forth in a gesture that meant maybe okay, maybe not. From beside the window on the other side, Donk conveyed the same message with a shrug. We heard more gunfire, some distant and some closer, but there was none on Block Lima. The big domed house was quiet. The soccer ball Din-Din kicked had come to rest in the corner of the courtyard. The place was probably deserted, but I kept feeling my belt loop for that fucking shoe.

The eight of us drew back together, flanking the door. ‘Gotta stack,’ Taco said. ‘Who wants some?’

‘I do,’ I said.

Taco shook his head. ‘You went first last time, Billy. Quit grubbing for tin and give someone else a chance.’

‘I want some,’ Johnny Capps said, and Taco said, ‘You’re it, then,’ and that’s why I’m walking today and Johnny isn’t. Simple as that. God doesn’t have a plan, He throws pickup sticks.

Taco pointed to Bigfoot, then at the double doors. The one on the right had an oversized iron latch sticking out like an impudent black tongue. Foot tried it, but the latch stayed firm. The courtyard had been open, maybe because kids came in there to play in better times, but the house was locked. Taco gave Bigfoot the nod and Foot shouldered his shotgun, which was loaded with special door-busting shells.The rest of us moved into a line – the ever-popular stack – behind Johnny. Klew was second, because he had the SAW. Taco was behind Klew. I was fourth in line. Pill was at the back of the stack, as he always was. Johnny was hyperventilating, psyching himself up. I could see his lips moving: Get some, get some, fucking get some.

Foot waited for Taco, and when Tac signaled, Foot blew the lock. A good chunk of the righthand door went with it. It shuddered inward.

Johnny didn’t hesitate. He hit the lefthand door with his shoulder and burst into the room, yelling ‘Banzai, motherfuck—’