Ten o’clock came, then ten-fifteen. ‘Maybe he’s taking his smoke break out back today,’ Taco said.
Then, at ten-thirty, the door of Pronto Pronto Photo Photo opened and Ammar Jassim came out with two of his young men. I sighted in. I saw them laughing and talking. Jassim clapped one of them on the back and the two men strolled off with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Jassim took a pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket. I was in the optics and could read Marlboro and see the two trademark gold lions. Everything was clear: his bushy eyebrows, his lips as red as a woman’s wearing lipstick, his salt-and-pepper beard stubble.
Taco was sighting with the M151, now handheld. ‘Fucker’s a dead ringer for Yessir I’m-a Fat.’
‘Shut up, Tac.’
I laid the crosshairs on the knitted cap and waited for Jassim to light up. I was willing to allow him one last drag before putting out his lights. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth. He put the pack back into his pocket and came out with a lighter. Not a cheap disposable Bic but a Zippo. He might have purchased it, either in a store or on the black market. It might also have been looted from one of the contractors who had been shot, burned, and hung from the bridge. He flipped it open and a tiny sunstar winked off the top. I saw that. I saw everything. Master Gunny Sergeant Diego Vasquez at Pendleton used to say that a Marine sniper lives for a perfect shot. This one was perfect. He also said, ‘It’s like sex, my little virgins. You will never forget your first.’
I drew in a breath, held it for a five-count, and squeezed the trigger. The recoil hit the hollow of my shoulder. Jassim’s knitted hat flew off and at first I thought I had missed him, maybe only by an inch, but when you’re sniping, an inch might as well be a mile. He just stood there with the cigarette between his lips. Then the lighter fell out of his fingers and the cigarette fell out of his mouth. They landed on the dusty sidewalk. In the movies, the person who gets shot flies back when the bullet hits. That’s rarely how it happens in real life. Jassim actually took two steps forward. By then I could see that it wasn’t just the hat that had come off; the top of his head was inside it.
He went to his knees, then full on his face. People came running.
‘Payback’s a bitch,’ Taco said, and clapped me on the back.
I turned and yelled, ‘Get us down!’
The platform started to descend. It seemed very slow, because the gunfire had begun on the other side of the river. It sounded like fireworks. Taco and I ducked as we left the canvas sand-shield behind, not because ducking made us safer but because it was instinctive. I listened for bullets passing and tried to get ready to be hit, but I didn’t hear anything or feel anything.
‘Get out of there, get out!’ Jamieson shouted. ‘Jump! Time to didi mau!’ But he was laughing, triumphant. They all were. I had my back slapped so often and so hard that I almost fell over as we ran back to the dirty Mitsubishi the l-c had used to drive us out. Albie, Donk, Klew, and the others ran for the little power trucks, a scam that we’d never be able to use again. We could hear yelling across the river, and now there was even more gunfire.
‘Yeah, eat it!’ Big Klew shouted. ‘Eat it big, motherfuckers! Your man just got run over by the big dark horse!’
The l-c’s old station wagon was parked behind the Iraqi power trucks in the turnaround. I opened the back to put in my rifle and Taco’s gear.
‘Hurry the fuck up,’ Jamieson said. ‘We’re blocking those guys in.’
Well, you were the one who parked there, I thought but didn’t say. I tossed in our stuff. When I slammed the hatchback shut, I saw something lying in the dirt. It was a baby shoe. It must have been a little girl’s, because it was pink. I bent down to get it and as I did, some shooter’s blind-luck round punched into the bulletproof glass of the hatchback’s window. If I hadn’t bent down, the round would have gone in the nape of my neck or the back of my head.
‘Get in, get in!’ Jamieson was screaming. Another blind-luck round pinged off the Eagle wagon’s armored side. Or maybe not so blind; by then the shooters had to be all the way down by their side of the river.
I picked up the shoe. I got in the ’Bishi and Jamieson tore out of there, fishtailing and throwing up a cloud of dust the trucks would have to drive through. The l-c wasn’t thinking about that; he was concentrating on saving his ass.
‘They’re shooting the shit out of that boom lift,’ Taco said. He was still laughing, high on the kill. ‘What have you got there?’