Four Years after September 11

Day after day, he went to work in a city where hundreds of bodies littered empty lots. Kris Klug kept a mental note of how the graffiti evolved on the walls of buildings in green or black paint—things like AVENUE OF DEATH, others scrawled in Arabic: INFIDELS GET OUT or NO OIL FOR AMERICA.

In these neighborhoods, the mosques had become mini-fortresses with sandbagged rooftop fighting positions. Trash filled the streets, which were closed off by makeshift barriers of palm tree stumps, cinder blocks, and barbed wire. After more than a year in Afghanistan and more than a year of this work in the cesspool called Iraq, Kris began to wonder where it was all going.

Sergeant Kris Klug, Green Beret, team leader, that’s who he was, and how he saw himself, at least until it ended. He often wrote home to his Uncle Fred, one of his only remaining family, about how Baghdad in August bred nasty thoughts and bad humor.

Outside it was 120º Fahrenheit. Inside a Stryker armored truck, temperatures rose to 130º, sometimes 140º. The regular grunts that manned the Strykers sweated as though they cooked in a kettle. Sweat dripped off their mustaches. Their pants showed damp marks wherever they brushed against their skin. The sweat collected in their goggles and dripped off eyebrows.

Hot desert winds would often waft up thick dark gray clouds of sand and blast everything. During the sandstorms war would stop but the heat intensified—it balled up in a fist and no one could go about their business of killing and looting.

The civil war had already begun, just that nobody wanted to admit it, nobody in politics wanted to say it. The first neighborhood they secured was Ghazaliya, a Sunni area in western Baghdad. Kris’s team was the first to enter the area and feed information back for the Stryker teams. Sunnis had always been hostile to the U.S. presence. But some of the people seemed suspiciously happy to see Americans. It was the first time in weeks they’d been able to open up their stores and walk outside. But they always kept an eerie distance. A gulf separated them even when they exchanged a cigarette or some other social gesture. The gap between the occupiers and the occupied dried into a crusty, palpable layer of distrust and resentment. Some Iraqis would come outside, looking pale and blinking in the bright sunlight. On every block houses stood empty, and the stench and sludge of sewage spewed through the streets where the upper crust of Iraqi society once prospered.

Kris’s unit moved in the shadows and passed enough information to the Stryker teams, the grunts, so they could move in and hit the right priorities. In three mosques the Army grunts had uncovered weapons used to attack Americans and Shiites. In the Al-Sadiq mosque, used by the Iraqi Islamic Party, they found IED's buried in the courtyard and mortars hidden in the minarets. The beauty of the ornate mosaics in the mosques could deceive one into calm, spiritual thoughts. At another Sunni mosque they discovered a beheading knife. They rummaged through the Iraqi Islamic Party's headquarters and turned up bombs covered by sandbags or first-aid kits. They found coffins used to smuggle weapons and documents detailing how the IIP was running death squads.

For the Army grunts, today was different. They received orders to work directly with a special-forces task force. Kris knew this would help boost the morale all around, that’s why he pushed his commanders for it.

At 0500, Kris met with the squad leaders. “We’re going in to take a suspect, a former major general of the Fedayeen Army. We’ve gathered intelligence proving that he’s dealing and organizing attacks on coalition forces. The mission’s code name is Ruby.”

“What’s the code for after we’ve got Ruby?” One of the squad leaders took off his helmet and rubbed the top of his scalp.

“Cucamonga,” Kris responded and watched the Strykers drive out of the forward base to their rendezvous spot near the point of operation.

The Army gunner squad waited in their Strykers on the side of the road near empty lots. Birds worked over the bodies of dead Iraqis that lay there in the early morning, victims of historical blunders. The sight and stench of rot made one soldier puke so loud it scared one of the vultures off from a good meal. Kris’s team drove in a beat up minivan, looking like a group of average Iraqis on their way to work. The guys in the Strykers dropped the back ramp to talk. In awe of the Special Forces guys, the grunts eagerly offered cigarettes and conversation—but no time for that.

Although Kris hid his emotions well, his stomach leaped into his throat as he exited the dirty vehicle and walked up to talk with the platoon sergeant. “It’s a go.” He scratched his bearded chin and gave the signal to his team to deploy. They disappeared silently on foot up an alley behind a group of crumbling houses built from grey, unpainted cinder blocks. Adrenaline rushed through his veins and he seemed to walk a little above the ground.

The Stryker teams took position. Their role was to stand guard and provide backup in case anything went sour. They parked the Strykers in a muddy field covered with garbage and dismounted from the armored vehicles. The neighborhood dogs immediately started barking at them.

Ropes and wooden braces propped many of the cinder block houses up. The entire neighborhood had fallen into decay. It bordered on the notorious Ghazaliya area. Kris’s team was already behind “Ruby’s” house.

Maybe it was the noise of the dogs. Maybe it was the presence of the Army squads walking down the street. By the time the Stryker squad approached the front of Ruby’s house, the man had already scrambled out the front door and had grabbed a woman who was walking with a little girl. He held a gun to the woman’s head. She cried and clung tightly to her little girl. Ruby used them as shields from the Stryker squad.

Looking all the way through the house’s windows from the back alley out to the street, Kris could see that the squad took positions along the curb, right in front of the house, close to a street corner. There was nothing they could do. If they approached Ruby or tried to take a shot at him, they jeopardized the panic-stricken woman and her girl.

Kris and his team had already scrambled into the house silently through the back door. He could see Ruby walking slowly up the street away from the house while holding the hostages in front of him. One of Ruby’s bodyguards bolted out of the house, fleeing Kris’s team. The man pulled a Makarov 9mm pistol and took a shot at one of the soldiers, who fell to the ground, blood spilling from his face. Aw shit. Enough of this crap. He felt his gut tie into a knot when he saw his guys getting hit. He moved fast on reflex.

Kris moved faster to the front door, looking for a clear angle. The commotion woke up some of the neighbors; flickering gaslights went on in some of the houses, even though the sun had begun to rise. Kris stood frozen in the doorframe, adrenaline coursing through him. He raised his M16 to his shoulder. First he put a bullet square in the middle of the bodyguard’s back before the man could squeeze off another shot.

Then he turned to Ruby. The only clear shot he had at him was the man’s left shoulder, which was farthest away from the woman and child. He had to take a shot now that he’d drawn attention. In the blink of an eye, he bent his knees, steadied himself against the doorframe and seized the moment. He pulled the trigger. The force of the shot spun Ruby around and laid him out on the cobblestone street. By reflex, Kris jumped on him, folded his knee on the back of his neck and flattened him to the ground. The woman ran away with the little girl in her arms. The smell of gun smoke scented the morning air.

Small explosions went off inside the house. Kris pinned Ruby face down and tightened plastic restrainers around his wrists. He heard thrashing and yelling from inside the house. His team was clearing the building of Ruby’s own guards. Then the minivan drove up to where Kris stood. Another one of Ruby’s guards stormed out of the front door, firing an automatic pistol at Kris and the gunner teams.

The Stryker teams returned fire and the guard fell within seconds.

A bullet struck the ground near Kris, ricocheted through his left shoulder and clipped off part of his ear. Larry Larson, another one of the Green Berets in Kris’s team, grabbed Ruby and freed Kris to get help for his wound.

A medic pulled him into one of the Strykers, where he could give him some first aid. He was not seriously injured but needed to go to the hospital to check against infection and patch up what was left of his ear.

Kris wasn’t even winded, although his insides chilled as the adrenaline flames turned into some nervous ice and the cold sweat was always there and unwelcome after a mission. He stepped mechanically through the mission sequence and called out the “Cucamonga” message over the Icom radios. He switched to the minivan he’d come in. It was all over in less than fifteen minutes.

Everyone loaded up and rolled out with the dead bodyguards, who had tried to defend their leader.

Larson seated Ruby next to Kris. Ruby had a weight problem and wore a gray man-dress; now, he sported a blue gunnysack sandbag over his head. “Scoot your fat butt over!” Larson jabbed Ruby in the ribs with his fist. “We’re going to give you some payback for September 11.”

Kris thought to say how the guy was probably just as surprised about September 11. Iraqis had nothing to do with terrorists, at least until we’d invaded the country. But he didn’t say anything. Whatever. He just held pressure to the gauze that the medic had taped to his ear. Damn that hurt. Just another day in this hellhole Iraq.