Black Knights, Dark Days Read online

  “Sir!” I leaned in close and shouted. “Sir, Sergeant Swope wants to see you!”

  Lieutenant Aguero’s head snapped up and he took a close look at his watch. We stood there listening to him curse the makers of Japanese time-keeping instruments while he swung up into a sitting position and scrabbled around for his boots. “OK,” he said waving us away. “I’m up.”

  That was the start of a less-than-stellar day for Aguero and the rest of our platoon. Once he heard what Swope had to say, he became philosophical. Aguero had learned through long experience as an officer that no plan of his survived first contact with reality—and the day’s mission was as real as it gets. He had wanted to spend some time getting to know the AO and the people who inhabited it so we’d be ready and able to fight when the time came, but higher command seemed to have other ideas about more mundane missions.

  About a week before, Aguero had been told that we were to take two jet trucks—Iraqi sewage-suckers, if you will—along with us on some patrols to clean up all the filth and garbage that littered the streets. Those trucks had never showed up, so the lieutenant assumed he was free to carry out his more pressing plans. That morning, he was told the shit-sucking mission was back on for his platoon.

  When Riddell and I made it back to the Comanche Company area, the NCOs were busily arranging the vehicles in the proper order and assigning duties. While we waited to hear what was in store for us, I spent time watching the men who had become my brothers. We were an interesting and diverse group with all sorts of divergent paths that brought us to an infantry platoon in a combat zone. While Specialist Jon Denney helped Specialist Carl Wild prepare his M240B machinegun for action, Staff Sergeant Darcy Robinson and Staff Sergeant Trevor Davis—professional soldiers—were huddled around a map that listed all of the street names and points of interest in Sadr City. Davis had felt a little disoriented since we arrived in Sadr City, and he was trying hard to learn the geography of our AO, as local street signs in Arabic were no help. The lieutenant had yet to formally brief his NCOs, but they’d heard from Swope that the shit-sucking escort mission was on, and they wanted to be ready for anything. And Swope was in no mood for nonsense.

  Corporal Shane Coleman, a slight, sinewy man with numerous tattoos, was cleaning the .50 caliber machinegun on one of the vehicles. He was from a little suburb of Houston called Friendship, Texas and a big fan of punk-rock, heavy metal, and rappers like Tu-Pac. Coleman was a 20-year-old former druggie who would celebrate his 21st birthday in Iraq, where alcohol was not allowed, even for a soldier who’d just became eligible to buy a drink. He told us that he’d joined the Army to keep from winding up in a jail cell. Coleman was always smiling. He had an unsinkable positive attitude that never changed, even later in the day when he took a bullet in the leg.

  Coleman often reflected on the path that led him from wild-child to warrior. He told us basic training had been easy. He was used to yelling and violence. Coleman was with his training platoon on the bayonet course when the Drill Sergeants called a formation, and their Company Commander announced that terrorists had struck the Pentagon and the Twin Towers in New York. It was a shocking revelation, and everyone knew it might mean war. Shane Coleman knew at that moment that he’d likely wind up in a combat zone. And here he was in Iraq, prepared to test himself in the ultimate crucible yet assigned to help escort some lowly shit-sucker trucks. How could you do anything but laugh at that?

  Private Derrick Perry performed maintenance checks on one of our Humvees. Next to him was Sergeant Justin Bellamy, a slender young man from Warsaw, Indiana, who would ride as gunner on Red 3 that morning. He was the fastest guy in the platoon, and he’d been something of a star at track and field in his hometown. If he’d managed to work things out with his wife, they would have been celebrating an anniversary that morning, but Bellamy was in Iraq and separated from his wife by circumstances beyond his control. He told me the story once, all about getting married at 19 to a woman four years older than he was and planning a long life together. Money was tight, but he had a good job with prospects in a grocery store where he’d been promoted to assistant manager. His family had the means to help, but Bellamy wanted to be his own man and make his own way. He enlisted as a part-time soldier in the National Guard for some extra income, and decided he liked it. He talked his wife into agreeing that he should go on active duty even when that meant a cut in their income. They agreed to a temporary split while he soldiered at Fort Hood and she lived with her parents. It inevitably led to divorce, but Bellamy still considered his ex-wife a friend.

  Bellamy was nearly through his enlistment and looking forward to a possible reconciliation when he discovered that cynical soldiers were correct: US ARMY stands for Uncle Sam Ain’t Released Me Yet. In the middle of a final training exercise, he was notified that he was a “stop-loss” and would be retained in uniform beyond the end of his enlistment. He would deploy with Charlie Company to Iraq. So there he was, smoking a cigarette, talking to Sergeant Chen and waiting for the order to move. The order that would send them to suck shit off the Sadr City streets.

  There was a missing man on Staff Sergeant Davis’ crew that morning. Wild would ride behind the machinegun today, replacing Blake who was suffering from a bad case of what we called Sadam’s Revenge, an attack of painful diarrhea that keep him chained to the latrines. We’d all come to suffer that same malady at one point or another during our deployment, so it was considered no big deal. Other than Blake’s absence, there was nothing that morning to indicate we were getting ready for anything but a routine mission.

  

  We finally got our collective crap together and rolled out the gate for our very first humanitarian mission. We had all four trucks loaded down with almost everyone in the platoon, including Monsoor and Sala’am, the two interpreters. The platoon leader’s vehicle—often called a victor—led as usual with Riddell driving and Chen up on the .50. I was stuffed in the back beside Sala’am. Following us in trace was Staff Sergeant Davis and his crew in a victor of the type we called a Mad Max Machine—no top and a gun mount jury-rigged by the welding shop. Staff Sergeant Haubert was in the third victor, another Mad Max. He and Davis carried the majority of our dismounts piled tightly into any and all available space. Those were the guys who would get out at stops to provide perimeter security. I spent the time trying to remember who was where, but it was difficult. It didn’t take long for things to get confused with stops, dismounts, and remounts as we patrolled.

  We picked up two pristine white sewage-retrieval trucks just outside the FOB, where they’d been waiting for escort. Monsoor spoke briefly with the Iraqi boss-man, and we were rolling toward the city in a few minutes. The Honey Wagons slid into the middle of our convoy, and we set a rapid pace. Riddell had shed the last vestiges of civilized driving and was now in the aggressive, pedal-to-the-metal mindset of a combat driver. Lieutenant Aguero occasionally had to tell him to back off as the heavy trucks fell back and the formation began to spread.

  We turned right off Route Copper and pulled into a neighborhood we’d patrolled on foot the previous night. There had been crowds then, but today the area was nearly deserted except for the usual crowds of kids begging for goodies. As we maneuvered into our first stop, they chased us down shouting for chocolate or anything else they thought we might spare. There were so many kids in the area that I wondered if this neighborhood even had a school to keep them off the streets. Our route was interrupted by a huge pool of reeking water that surrounded the neighborhood like a moat. Riddell pulled forward and positioned the victor so that we could dismount without having to stand around calf-deep in the muck.

  The dismounts piled out of our vehicles to set up a perimeter as the Iraqi sewage workers hopped down into the goo-making splashes with their rubber boots. I spotted one guy wearing galoshes festooned with little colorful flowers that would have been a big hit in any gay pride parade as they went to work stringing hoses from the trucks into
the sewage water. One man—likely the junior member of the team—waded deep into the cesspool with the open end of a hose while his senior buddy manned the pump controls. It was fairly efficient, and the Iraqi crews finished sucking up the mess sooner than any of us expected. It took them about 20 minutes to clear the water, remount, and let us know they were ready to roll on to the next scheduled stop.

  It was just a block or two distant, so Aguero ordered us to walk while the trucks rolled behind our formation. We were led by a pack of kids who skipped along piping that golden-oldie refrain: “Good, good Mistah! You give me shock-o-lata.” We strolled on full alert through a neighborhood lined with mud-brick structures, individual houses intermingled with a few shops. Power lines in the area were fairly high over the roadway which made things easier on the gunners riding along in the victors ready to engage if we ran into trouble. There wasn’t much traffic. We could see Iraqis hanging out windows and watching the passing parade, but none of them seemed threatening. Some of them even waved, especially to the shit-sucker crews who were apparently a welcome apparition in a neighborhood without much in the way of plumbing or drainage.

  Eventually, the street ran into a big vacant lot amid a nest of multiple-story apartment buildings. The lot was swamped with sewage: our next objective. We spread out as the vehicles approached, checking out a narrow alley that we thought might intersect Route Copper or some other major east-west thoroughfare. Off to our left was a small convenience store operating out of what looked like the shopkeeper’s living room. As the sewage crews dismounted to do their thing, Aguero greeted the shopkeeper, and we were pleasantly surprised when the man’s teenage daughter responded in British-accented English.

  “We are very happy to have you here,” she said while we stood and stared. She smiled brightly with dark eyes shining from the hijab that covered her head. He father puffed on a cigarette and asked her a question. Whatever it was she responded seemed to please him. He nodded and offered his two cents. “Good Mistah. Thank you very much.”

  Tyrell was impressed, but he didn’t engage beyond a few muttered comments. Perry, who considered himself a player with the ladies, waded right in and began to chat with the girl. She giggled like she was talking with a rock-star when Perry handed Tyrell his camera for a quick snapshot with his new-found fan. That was too much for her father, who said something to her and then began to close shop. She gave Perry a wave as she climbed into a white hatchback next to her father. “We must go now,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

  It was time for a comm check with our highers, but Riddell was having problems. “Sir, I can’t reach anyone on the radio,” he said, extending the handset in the lieutenant’s direction. Aguero tried to communicate with battalion and had the same luck. He switched to the platoon internal net and discovered he could at least communicate with his own vehicles. Swope came up to confer, and they decided to escort the sewage trucks back to dump their current loads. When they were in the area of the FOB, they could enlist a tech to check the radio. We remounted and rolled, splitting with the Iraqi disposal crews after making arrangements to meet up with them again when they’d disposed of their first load and were ready to go back out onto the streets. We led the patrol back to FOB War Eagle and turned the malfunctioning radio over to maintenance and split up to grab some lunch.

  Deaver, Rusch, and I sat weighing the pros and cons of another MRE versus crunching on a camel spider. I listened casually to Carl Wild gabbing with York about Texas. They were a mismatched pair. York was tall and rangy at six-five while Wild was a foot shorter, but they both adhered to the notion that the Great Republic of Texas would someday conquer the world. Wild once told me he planned to become a Texas Ranger when and if he ever got out of the Army. As a Texan, he was big on spicy chow.

  “Carlito,” I called, pulling a tube out of my MRE. “You want my jalapeno cheese spread?” It was rhetorical. Anything containing jalapenos was good with Carl Wild. I tossed the tube full of cheese at him, but York stretched out a long arm and intercepted. That was too much even among fellow Texans. Wild said a few disparaging things about York’s mother and then jumped on York to wrestle for the prize. It was like watching a poodle attack a mastiff, but it went on until York gave up the cheese spread. Wild was a hard man to ignore. When he wanted something he went after it and refused to quit until he got it.

  At that point in the day, I didn’t care much about the missions, the radios, or the lunch. It was enough that we were back inside the wire and able to drop our gear for a while. Little things mean a lot in a combat zone. The main entertainment as we waited for orders was watching Sergeant Bellamy trying to make the radios work. Apparently the problem was software and not hardware. The radios worked fine but the Tactical Operations Center or TOC had changed the Communications Security codes while we were out, and didn’t bother to tell us about it before they made the switch. If two radios in a network are not using the same COMSEC codes, they can’t talk to each other. That was our problem, and it did nothing to improve the mood of our leaders. Both Aguero and Swope both loudly wondered what the hell else could go wrong, even though they both had soldiered long enough to know the answer. It was the familiar Murphy’s Law at work. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong at the worst possible time and under the worst possible circumstances.

  Around this time, as Aguero and Swope stood cursing and waiting for the radios to come back on line, one of those strange strokes of fortune happened that either bless or haunt an infantry soldier’s existence. Swope left the platoon leader to watch the radios and called a meeting of his NCOs. It was a significant event for some soldiers in our platoon, and I’ll never be convinced it was just dumb luck. Fate or God or something beneficent had to have taken a hand.

  I could barely hear the details from where I sat, but Swope had decided that having so many soldiers around, packed into unarmored vehicles on a shit-sucking escort, was counter-productive. We were offering too many easy targets if something went wrong outside the wire. Swope wanted his squad leaders to make decisions and leave some of their people behind when we went back out on the mission. Staff Sergeant Robinson walked over to his crew and told Tyrell he would be staying. Tyrell was more than a little happy to catch up on his sleep, and retired to a stack of duffel bags where he stretched out with a grin on his face.

  “Wild and Arteaga.” Robinson pointed a finger at the pair. “I’m only taking one of you. Who’s it gonna be?” Rafael Arteaga just shrugged and looked at Wild who volunteered with a smile.

  Robinson nodded and pointed at his vehicle. “OK, load up. You and Denney can take turns on the gun.”

  Carl Wild shrugged into his armor and walked to the Humvee. He wasn’t a particularly bloodthirsty guy, but if there was going to be a fight he wanted to be in the thick of it. Carl would soon get his wish.

  I piled into the lieutenant’s vehicle and scrunched up next to Sala’am, the younger of our two interpreters who had lost the toss with Monsoor and would go along on the second shit-sucking foray. It was fine with me. Sala’am was young and full of energy and was usually happy to help me with my Arabic vocabulary and pronunciations. He was surprised that I had an interest in his country and culture.

  “You like Iraq?” he asked in Arabic as the drivers cranked the engines.

  “Yes, I like Iraq,” I replied in kind, noting that I had learned to lie in two languages.

  We formed up and rolled through the gate with Staff Sergeant Trevor Davis following us in the second victor with Perry driving and Wild on the gun. Denney was in back ready to relieve Wild as required. Staff Sergeant Stanley Haubert commanded the third Humvee, with Specialist Taylor driving and Sergeant Bellamy on the gun. They had Staff Sergeant Robinson and Doc Guzman in the back of their vehicle. Bringing up the rear was Swope with Rogers driving and Corporal Coleman on their .50 caliber. Sergeants Bourguin and Hayhurst were in the back seats.

  The doo-doo wagons were waiting for us outside the gates and fell in
to our formation without discussion. They knew what the game was by this time, and the first mission had given them some confidence about working with Americans. I sat conflicted behind the lieutenant. On one hand, I was hoping we’d get more opportunities to interact with locals. I was fine with that—I actually enjoyed it unlike some of my platoon mates. On the other hand, there should be a better way to do it than walking along through piles of poop. This was literally a shitty mission and the sooner we got it accomplished, the better I would like it.

  We ambled down Route Silver as quickly as a snarl of donkey carts and rusty automobiles allowed. This was a bad road, full of huge potholes, lined with piles of rusty I-beams and scrapped sheet metal that made great IED hiding places. As we rolled past a line of workshops. I noticed a man welding something. He was doing the job without a mask. Apparently in Sadr City, a squint and an old shirt wrapped around the head were sufficient safety precautions.

  Our objective was near the neighborhood we’d left earlier in the morning. It was flooded ankle-deep with foul-smelling sludge that rose as far as the curbs all along the streets. It was a formidable job for the Iraqi crews, but they parked their trucks and got to work. We pulled our vehicles into a loose perimeter and dismounted, taking up security positions that gave us a good view of the area in all directions. It wasn’t long before the neighborhood kids started crowding around to watch The Amazing Infidels and The Flying Shit-Suckers. We were quite a show, not to mention a shot at getting a little free candy. We kept them at a distance, focusing on the rooftops and windows of the surrounding buildings. The older people who bothered to approach mainly talked to the sewage crews. Could be they were thanking them for doing such a great service, or it could be they were asking about job opportunities in the shit-sucking industry. I never got close enough to ask.