Billy Summers

‘Go someplace and look busy,’ Jamieson told him. ‘And please in the name of Jesus don’t sing anymore.’ He turned to me and Taco, but it was Taco he addressed, because he had decided Tac was the smart one. ‘Give it to me again, Lance Corporal Bell.’

‘Jassim comes outside most days around ten to have a smoke and talk to his adoring fans, probably some of the same guys that opened fire on the contractors. He’ll be the one in the blue keffiyeh. Billy takes him out. End of story.’

Jamieson turned to me. ‘If you make the kill, I’ll put you in for a commendation. Miss, or hit one of the hanger-arounders, which would be worse, and I will transfer the boot that goes up my ass to yours, only harder and deeper. Do you understand that, Marine?’

‘I think so, sir.’ What I was thinking was that Sergeant Uppington could have delivered that line with far greater force and conviction. Still, I had to give the l-c props for trying. Months later he lost most of his face and all of his eyesight to a roadside bomb.

Jamieson motioned over Joe Kleczewski. He was another member of our squad, which we called the Hot Nine. Most of the ‘utility workers’ were. They volunteered for the job. They had to because Taco told them to.

‘Sergeant, do you understand what must happen as soon as Summers takes the shot?’

Big Klew smiled, showing the gap in his front teeth. ‘Get them down ASAP, then exfil like a motherfucker, sir.’

Although I could tell Jamieson was nervous – I think we all could – that made him smile. Most times Klew could coax a smile out of the stoniest face. ‘That about covers it.’

‘If he doesn’t show, sir?’

‘There’s always tomorrow. Assuming the attack doesn’t happen tomorrow, that is. Carry on, Marines, and none of that oorah shit, if you please.’ He jerked his thumb at the Euphrates and the bear trap of a city on the other side. ‘It’s like the song says – voices carry.’

Albie Stark and Big Klew tried to cram into the bucket. It was supposed to be big enough for two, but not when one of them was Kleczewski’s size. He almost knocked Albie over the side. Everybody but Jamieson laughed. It was as good as Abbott and Costello.

‘Get out, you lummox,’ the l-c told Klew. ‘Jesus wept.’ He motioned to Donk, whose brown combat boots were sticking out from beneath his pants, which were too short. This was also comical, because he looked like a kid clumping around the house in his daddy’s shoes. ‘You. Pipsqueak. Get over here. What’s your name?’

‘Sir, I am Pfc Peter Cashman, and I—’

‘Don’t salute, you dimwit, not in an op zone. Did your mother drop you on your head when you were a baby?’

‘No sir, not that I remember, s—’

‘Get in the bucket with what’s-his-fuck, and when you get up there …’ He looked around. ‘Ah God, where’s the fucking shroud?’

Maybe technically the right word for what he was talking about, but wrong in every other way. I saw Klew cross himself.

Albie, still in the bucket, looked down. ‘Uh, I believe I’m standing on it, sir.’

Jamieson wiped his forehead. ‘All right, okay, at least somebody remembered to bring it.’

That had been me.

‘Get in there, Cashman. And deploy it with utmost haste. Time is marching.’

The bucket platform rose in a whine of hydraulics. At its maximum height, maybe thirty-five or forty feet, it shuddered to a stop beside one of the transformers. Albie and Donk danced around, yanking at the shroud and finally managing to get it out from under their feet. Then, aided by some inventive cursing – including some learned from the Iraqi kids who came out to beg candy and cigarettes – they got it deployed. The result was a canvas cylinder around the bucket and the transformer. It was held at the top by hooks on one of the pole’s cross-arms and snapped together down one side, like the button-up fly on a pair of 501 jeans. The outside was emblazoned with a bunch of pothooks in bright yellow. I had no idea what they said and didn’t care as long as it wasn’t SNIPER TEAM AT WORK.

The bucket came back down, leaving the cylinder behind. It did look like a shroud once the waist-high rail of the bucket was no longer holding out the sides. Donk’s hands were bleeding and Albie had a scratch on his face, but at least neither of them had taken a header out of the bucket. A couple of times it had looked close.

Taco was craning his neck to look up. ‘What’s that thing s’posed to be, sir?’

‘Sand guard,’ Jamieson said, then added, ‘I believe.’

‘Not exactly unobtrusive,’ Taco said. Now he was looking across the river at the crammed-together houses and shops and warehouses and mosques on the other side. It was the southwestern part of town we’d come to call Queens. A hundred or so Marines came out of there in body bags. Hundreds more came out with fewer body parts than they had going in.