One Bullet Away

The prospect of doing something good for regular Iraqi citizens (and the chance to blow up a truck) galvanized the Marines to action. We hitched the truck to a Humvee and dragged it a safe distance from the house. There Colbert and others built a charge from C-4 and detonation cord. They wrapped the guns and the truck’s engine, being sure to include the fuel tanks to help amplify the blast. We gathered the kids and explained what was about to happen. Then we all crouched down together and watched the truck disappear in a fireball. Hassan invited us to stay for dinner and looked a little relieved when I declined, telling him we had unfinished business in Ba‘quba.

I picked an open stretch of highway for our blocking position, with good fields of fire in all directions. Flat, open highway would give Iraqi drivers the best chance to see and avoid us. It gave us the best chance of not having to kill anyone. We placed our looted Iraqi stop sign three hundred meters down the highway, along with a large piece of a cardboard MRE box on which Mish had written “Turn around” in Arabic. We all hoped we were learning fast enough to avoid repeating earlier mistakes.

Pausing for the first time all day, I remembered the prisoner in the back of the Humvee. He sprawled face-down on the truck bed with his hands tightly zip-cuffed behind him. Christeson stood over him with a rifle.

“Cut him free and give him some food and water,” I said. Christeson looked at me as if I’d suggested letting the lions run amok in the San Diego Zoo, but he cut the cuffs off. The man sat up slowly, rubbing his wrists and whimpering. He looked at me mournfully, his long mustache twitching, and I handed him a bottle of water.

“Thank you.”

“You speak English?” I was surprised. Judging from his dumpy appearance, I guessed he was a low-level conscript.

“A little, yes. My heart hurts.” He put his hand to his chest, and the mustache twitched again.

“What’s your name?”

“Ahmed al-Khirzgee. I am good man.”

“What unit are you from?”

“I am not a soldier,” he said with a face like a basset hound’s.

“Then why are you wearing a military uniform, and why were you shooting at us with a military rifle?”

“I am only a very low soldier from Al Quds militia. I do not want to shoot at you.”

“But you did shoot at us. We almost killed you.”

“I have five daughters. Ba’ath Party took them from me and told me to fight the Americans, or my daughters would be killed. What would you do?”

I didn’t know whether to believe him, but he had struck a nerve. Al-Khirzgee was about my father’s age. His clothes were filthy and torn. He looked as exhausted as we were. I remembered my field interrogation at SERE school and thought that, for al-Khirzgee, this was real. He was afraid we would kill him. “Ahmed, I’d probably do exactly what you did,” I said. He stared at his lap before meeting my eyes again. “Drink this water and eat some food. Do what we say, and you won’t be harmed. If you fight or try to get away, this Marine will shoot you.” I turned to wink at Christeson and mouthed “Don’t shoot him.” Christeson nodded and fixed his sternest guard face on our prisoner.

Across the highway, Sergeant Lovell led his team on a foot patrol into a palm grove. It was too close to our position to leave unchecked. When they returned, Lovell made a beeline for me.

“Sir, I need to show you something,” he said. “Just cross the road here, and you’ll be able to see.”

Two long trailers sat in a clearing. They were painted desert tan, with air-conditioning units on their roofs. They were windowless, and padlocks secured the doors. Everything we had seen in Iraq was filthy, ruined by dust and years of neglect. The trailers gleamed. I knew what Lovell was thinking: mobile biological weapons labs. We had both listened to Secretary of State Colin Powell’s testimony before the U.N. and to countless classified briefs on Iraq’s weapons program. The trailers matched the descriptions perfectly.

“Take your bolt cutters and MOPP gear,” I said. “I’ll report it up the chain after you get back to me with details on what’s inside.”

Team Three headed off at a trot as I got a radio update on the battalion’s progress. Charlie Company was in the city. Alpha had blown up at least one Iraqi T-72 tank with an AT4 missile — no small feat. We could hear muffled explosions and the occasional chatter of machine guns.

Gunny Wynn had the shortwave tuned to the BBC. We listened as the anchor described Saddam’s statue in Firdos Square being pulled down by Marines in front of cheering crowds. The war, she said, was over.

“Damn,” Wynn said, slapping his knee. “I wish they knew that up here.” M4s barked in the distance, trading shots with throatier AKs.

“What about the prisoner?” Wynn nodded toward the Humvee, where al-Khirzgee happily ate MRE pound cake while Christeson stood over him.