Drop and give me twenty-five, he thinks of Sergeant Up Yours saying. And don’t mind my foot on your ass, you useless cumstain.
Billy has to smile. So much has come back to him. If he wrote it all, his story would be a thousand pages long.
The pushups make him feel calmer. He thinks about turning on the TV to see what’s going on with the investigation, or checking his phone for newspaper updates （newspapers may be failing, but Billy has found they still seem to get the salient facts first）。 He decides against doing either. He’s not ready to let the present back in. He thinks about getting something to eat, but he’s not hungry. He should be, but he isn’t. He settles for a cup of black coffee and drinks it standing up in the kitchen. Then he goes back to the laptop and picks up where he left off.
6
The next morning Lieutenant Colonel Jamieson himself drove me and Taco out to the intersection of Route 10 and the north–south road the Marines called Highway to Hell, after the AC/DC song. We went in the l-c’s Eagle station wagon, which was special to him. Painted on the back deck was a decal showing a black horse with red eyes. I didn’t like it, because I could imagine Iraqi spotters noting it, maybe even photographing it.
There was no sign of Foss. He had gone back to wherever those guys go after they set their plots in motion.
Parked out there on the hilltop in a dusty turnaround were two trucks from Iraqi Power & Light, or whatever was written in the pothooks on their sides. They looked just like American utility trucks, only smaller and painted apple green instead of yellow. The paint was much thicker on the sides, but even so it didn’t completely obscure the smiling face of Saddam Hussein, like a ghost too stubborn to go away. There was also a Genie articulated boom lift with a bucket platform.
Two power poles stood at the intersection of the roads, with big transformers on them to step down the power-load to the residential neighborhoods of Fallujah and the surrounding suburbs. Guys in keffiyehs were scurrying around, plus a couple in those kufi hats. They were all wearing orange workmen’s vests. No hardhats, though; I guess OSHA never made it to al-Anbar province. From across the river those men probably looked like any ragtag government work crew, but once you got closer than sixty yards, you could see they were all our guys. Albie Stark from our squad came over to me, flapping his headdress and singing that song about how you don’t step on Superman’s cape. Then he saw the l-c and saluted.
‘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.