enough to keep up with the loads of bodies arriving. You didn’t have to understand rag-talk to know that the people on the other side of the cordon of fixed bayonets were cursing their asses off.
The little kids started throwing rocks at the Marines.
Garcia and the other survivors of his platoon took the first shift of unloading bodies from the Army haulers and the civilian vans that had been put to use. Corporal Banks didn’t want to touch the bodies, which were wrapped in bedsheets and blankets. Garcia gave him some personal instruction on how to get the fuck over it.
Then it was just sweat and flies and the smell of the corpses and the sting of the dust that rose from each shovel of lime thrown into the trench.
“Hey, Sergeant Garcia,” Tyrrell yelled. “Can’t we take off our helmets and body armor? While we’re doing this, like?”
“Ask your squad leader.”
Tyrrell repeated the question to Corporal Gallotti.
“Sergeant?” Gallotti asked Garcia in turn. “Take ’em off?”
“No fucking way. You know better.”
The grumbling that followed was okay. And that stopped when a rock hit Gallotti on the back of the helmet and knocked him into the trench. He climbed out dusted with lime and gasping.
“You okay, Corporal?”
“Yeah. Yeah, fine. I love this shit, Sergeant.”
“You should’ve studied harder in school,” Garcia said. “Got a real job.”
“Hear that?” Tyrrell said in a fake whisper. “Sergeant Garcia made a joke. I think he’s learning English.”
Garcia grasped the upper torso of another body. “None of you appreciate,” he said, “that the Marine Corps is teaching you valuable job skills.” A small stone bounced off his armored vest. “Hey, Staff Sergeant Thomas! Is 2nd Platoon going to get those kids under control, or what?”
But the Marines working the cordon line were taking more stones and rocks than the body handlers.
After an hour, the first sergeant ordered Garcia’s platoon to swap duties with 2nd Platoon. Garcia didn’t question the order, although his platoon had a dozen fewer Marines. You executed the mission. Period.
As they fixed bayonets and moved up to relieve 2nd Platoon, Garcia saw the first sergeant’s point. 2nd Platoon needed a break. Every single Marine coming off the line was bleeding or limping.
Was that how it was when they stoned people in the Bible? All of them yelling like nuts? Except that they all would’ve been picking on some lonesome
Right thing to do, rotating platoons, Garcia told himself again. Leave one platoon up front too long, and something bad was going to go down on the block.
Garcia trooped the line. “Hold your ground. I want everybody’s weapon on safe. Let ’em yell if they want to. You’re Marines.”
“I wish I’d joined the Navy,” Private Crawford said. “Crawford! Shit! You
“First time I had anything to say, Sergeant.”
Garcia dodged a good-sized rock. Older, bigger kids were throwing them now. Garcia got that, too. Street rules. First, see how much the other side will put up with. Then, up the ante.
“I’m going to kill one of those shitbirds,” Corporal Banks said.
Just then, an old man stepped forward, breaking free of the crowd. Unshaven and bent at the shoulders, he wore a baggy Goodwill Store suit and a V-neck sweater over his shirt despite the heat. Stepping across the broken ground, he headed for Garcia. As if he sensed where the power lay. The barrage of rocks paused.
“Man, I can’t wait to hear this,” Banks said. “I guess they want us to surrender or something.”
Behind the platoon, another truck delivered more corpses.
Up close, the old man wasn’t really so ancient. Just grubby. And jumpy. Scared. Beat-looking. And angry, too. With his stained, bought-from-a-street-vendor tie, he looked like a rummy professor.
“Who is the general?” he demanded. Close enough to Garcia to show his uneven, yellow teeth. “Are you the general?”
“No, sir. I’m a sergeant. There aren’t any generals around here.”
“Then you will give my message to the general. Tell him why you poison us, I don’t know. We are not making jihad. We are educated peoples. Why America will poison us?”
“Maybe somebody’s been feeding them our rations,” Banks said. “I’d be pissed, too.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir,” Garcia told the old man. “And I don’t know anything about any poison.”
The old man swept his hand toward the trench, toward the stink, the dust, and the sunlit day beyond. “This is the poison making us dead. The poison you bring us. Why? Why? There are no guilty peoples here. Why? Why?”
“Look, sir. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I mean, I have no idea. And I don’t know anything about any poison. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to move out of our way. For your own safety,” Garcia said.
“Why? Why America brings us poison in the water?
“Yeah, you’re my fucking best pal,” Banks said.
“Shut up, Banks.”
“Why does he call me ‘fucking’? This is a bad word. What do I do that is fucking? You take my daughter. My little daughter. To this place. Look at this!” Again, he waved his arm toward the trench, the backhoe, the sacks of flesh thudding into the pit. “You take my daughter away, so I cannot bury her! You kill my daughter, now you take her body.” He began to weep. Exploding with tears. “You do this to my daughter, put her with strangers, with men she does not know. For all the times. This is a bad thing, you understand?”
Garcia caught the flash of complete misery in the man’s eyes. It spooked him for a moment.
“Listen, sir… I’m sorry for your troubles. I mean, whatever you’re talking about. I’m sorry if anything happened to your daughter, man. But we’re just trying to do our job. You can’t just leave bodies laying all over. You’d all get sick. Do you understand that? You understand ‘sick’?”
Garcia wondered what it had been like when they went through and disposed of all the bodies in Los Angeles. At least his mother had lived long enough to be buried right.
“I know this word, too,” the old man said. “I know every word. But why do you do this? For the Jews? You do this for the Jews, I think? We ask only for the good burial…”
Garcia was out of things to say. But he decided to keep the man talking, after all. The rocks weren’t flying as long as the talking went on. The other rags seemed to respect the guy. Garcia considered sending a man to bring up the first sergeant or Captain Cunningham.
And then Garcia heard the shot. Distinct and enormous, standing out with perfect clarity against the distant, lessened sounds of war.
He turned about in time to see Marines rushing toward a fallen figure.
His own Marines were down on their knees, weapons up, scanning.
“Anybody see where that came from?”
“Negative.”
“Negative, Sergeant.”
“Corporal Gallotti. Your squad covers those windows. Corporal Banks. Your squad has the crowd.”
The sniper’s second shot killed Captain Cunningham as he jogged toward Garcia’s position. It was fired from the crowd. Then the real killing started.
Lieutenant Colonel Monty Maxwell watched the last MOBIC element leave 2-34’s assembly area and head toward the reignited battle. He felt a mixture of relief, jealousy, and fury toward the departing vehicles.
Division or corps had dropped the ball on coordination and terrain deconfliction. 2-34 Armor’s assembly area had been invaded first by fuel trucks from the Corps Support Command, then by a succession of MOBIC combined- arms “Martyrs” battalions of the ilk Army regulars had nicknamed “the MOBIC Mujaheddin.” The confusion and crowding offered the Jihadis a perfect target, although they never seemed to have identified the site, since no artillery fire landed and no drones swooped in. But the glitch over turf was only the start of the problems.
