Five Little Lines

And there it was in my hand. My whole existence boiled down to five little lines:

HARPER
JASON A
535-09-1312
O POS
PROT-NO-DENOM

My name, social security number, blood type, and how I wanted to be buried. Everything the Army thought anyone needed to know about me. I was never so proud in my life as the day they handed me those two pieces of stamped metal most people simply called “dog tags.” Somehow that was the day I was a soldier. The uniform, the gun, the training, none of it was as important as this.

Odd, considering their only purpose was to identify my corpse. That’s why there were two of them. You always took one back to report the casualty and left the other with the body to identify it.

The aluminum always felt cool in my hand, which was a minor miracle in itself considering the mid-July sun outside Baghdad spiked the temperature to a decidedly unpleasant 125 degrees. That sort of heat hits you like a physical thing. You can feel your skin drying out, the sensation of burning alive. I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, so I was used to it, but the three layers of clothing, plus 40 lbs of body armor were all kinds of uncomfortable.

I rubbed the smooth sides of the two disks together, imagining I could hear the familiar metallic rasp over the roar of the Black Hawk’s engine. That was just my thing.

We all had our thing.

I often wonder if soldiers naturally become more superstitious as they survive where others have not, or if the ones without a private ritual or talisman actually suffer a higher casualty rate. I didn’t really care, anymore than I thought that rubbing these two symbols together before going into battle would keep me safe. You have a lot of time to sit and think in the service. That was one of the things I chose to think about.

Garelli was catholic. He had a rosary under his BDUs next to his tags. It was one of the only pieces of jewelry we were allowed. He sat across from me, eyes distant, thumbing beads over slowly, reciting “Hail Marys.” Jaxon checked his weapon over and over. Clear, chamber, safety, repeat. He’d catch the spinning round as he ejected it, replace it in the magazine, slot the mag home and chamber it, just to eject it again. Dillard had an I-Pod he’d bought before shipping out. It was loaded up with heavy metal music that he bobbed his head to as he sat in the doorway.

Morgan had a picture of his wife he looked at before kissing and tucking it away in a pocket over his heart. His wife had a kid three weeks ago and he got the first picture of the two of them two days ago. He must have showed to me a hundred times today so I’d even memorized the writing on the back. I didn’t have any photos of my family.

Thompson had a battered paperback he’d read twice already since I joined this unit a week and a half ago. Budreaux would hang one leg out the door and hum as we slipped over the dunes. It was the same three bars everyone has heard from that old Vietnam flick. The quick time march while the choppers are flying in, filling the sky. I could hear it now in my head, even though the rotars made even shouted communication almost impossible.

The Sergeant didn’t have a thing. At least not one that I could see. He would sit behind the pilot and watch us, occasional saying something inaudible into the headset he wore that let him talk with the Black Hawk crew. The eight of us foot-sloggers and the four crew. Pilot, co-pilot, and two crew-chiefs manning the M134s. It was a tight fit, but better than humping in over open sand.

I was nervous, but not for the reason you’d expect. Combat didn’t frighten me. I’m not trying to sound brave or anything, it was just how it was. I didn’t have a wife, or kids, and was never really attached to my family, or my own life for that matter.

No, I was worried I’d let someone down. I was the odd man out. I didn’t wear the tab. The Ranger Tab. That little bar over one arm that said, “Ranger” in gold letters over black trim. The look Sarn, we called all the sergeants “Sarn,” gives me as I’m fidgeting with my tags sums it all up. They just don’t know they can trust me. By all rights I shouldn’t have been there.

I was just so damn good at my job.

I was what the Army called a “Marksmanship Specialist.” I wasn’t a sniper. Those guys had a lot of specialized training and equipment. I was just a guy who was a good shot. I’d likely have been sent off to sniper school, but my unit shipped for the sandbox less than six weeks after I’d joined up. 101st Airborne. The Screaming Eagles. I’d been given a scope and reinforced barrel for my M16A4 and told to go wild with them.

A month into my tour my Captain came to me. That was odd in itself, normally I didn’t see the Captain. That’s what the chain of command is all about. He gives orders to the Lieutenant, the Lieu passes them on my Sergeant, and Sarn gives them to me. I was a Buck Private, so the only reason the Captain should be talking to me was if I was in more shit than Sarn or even the LT wanted to deal with. And even then, he’d be calling me into his office, not coming looking for me.

So I was damn near shitting myself two weeks ago when he suddenly came up behind me on the range and said, “You’re Harper, right?”

I was alone on the range, cause I shot at ranges up to 500 meters, which was 200 meters longer than everyone else, so I hit the range during personal time when I had the opportunity. With my ear plugs in, I didn’t hear him till he was on me, and I scrambled to clear my weapon, get upright, and salute. He wasn’t alone. The man with him also wore Captain’s pins, but more interestingly wore the Green Beret.

“Harper, this is Captain Ganz, with the 16th Special Forces group out of Camp Anaconda.”

I wasn’t expected to respond. Which was good, since I was still completely wrong footed.

Captain Ganz looked me over for a moment. I felt like a horse at auction. I half expected him to check my teeth. He held out his hands for my weapon and looked it over. I had customized the barrel, the foregrip, the sights, added the scope, and forgone the bulky bi-pod. I was one of the few soldiers given free reign over my weapon, since I was expected to be able to do things with it most soldiers couldn’t.

He looked it over for a moment and noticed the scratched letters in the stock beside seven tally marks.

“What’s this, Private?”

“Latin, sir. Neco quod mei quaeritur.”

“I kill because it is required of me,” he translated.

“Yes, sir.”

He looked over at my Captain and said, “He’ll do.” Then tossed me back my weapon and walked away.

Two days later my transfer was complete, and I was assigned to Special Task Force Bravo, Camp Anaconda. It was a Special Forces command, but the most of the guys were Rangers. I was the only regular Joe, and it didn’t help my feelings of inferiority much. These guys were the best. And thought I’d seen a little action in my month over here, these guys had been running into hostiles three times a week for the last two years. And that Ranger Tab wasn’t just for looking pretty.

I was glad to be working with the best, but I knew I was out of my league.

My new Sarn explained it to me. They had a sniper, a real one, but he’d caught an AK round with his face, so they needed a fresh Muldoon. And since they needed it yesterday, they had to grab what was close. That meant me. And flattered as I was that I was the best shot they could get their hands on, it wasn’t exactly the best circumstances to be trying to find a place in a new unit. I was still green by their standards, and they needed to depend on me under fire.

This was my second run out. The first, the one that launched the night I had been transferred, had been a dry hole. Old intel. Today might be a live one, and so I sat rubbing my dog tags and fighting to slow my heart rate.

Sarn looked up at us and held a hand up, three fingers up. Three minutes to target. I kissed my dog tags and tucked them away, then chambered a round in my weapon and flicked the safety on. A book, picture, I-Pod, and rosary disappeared as the men checked their equipment. I pulled on my roping gloves and waited.

I took a final deep breath and just pushed the tension to the back of my mind. The sand was so close I swore I could reach out and touch it as the dunes whipped by underneath. Then I could see the buildings. Hovels really. Cinder block houses and mud huts. It wasn’t a large town by any American standard, but I had a head for ranges. I guessed 1400 to 1450 meters across. A large truck stop back home.

People had lived here once. Meager as it seemed, these buildings had been someone’s home. I never learned to hate the Iraqis. Too many soldiers did. The words came easy, “Sand Nigger, Camel Jockey, Rag Head.” I watched two of my best friends killed by a suicide bomber that should have taken me too, but I had stopped to lace my boots. I never hated them. I just felt glad I’d been lucky enough to be born in country that knew what indoor plumbing was. I killed those that I was ordered, but I took no pleasure in it. It was a job. I was good at it. That was all.

I had seven kills when we flew into that village. I wondered if that count would increase today, or if this would be another abandoned outpost. Orders were to consider all non-US personnel hostiles, since this town was supposed to be abandoned save for an enemy munitions storehouse.

I was wondering if those orders would force me to shoot at women or children, when we started taking ground fire. I’d never done that before. One of the advantages of being able to shoot was I always hit exactly what I was aiming at. Since the enemy had no reservations about shooting at us across a crowd of women and kids, they too often got hit in the cross fire. My thoughts were interrupted as we started taking hits.
Watching war movies gives you all the wrong sort of ideas about being shot at. I didn’t know we were under fire until I actually saw the bullets striking the side of the chopper. The sound of the rotors drowned everything out. Bullets don’t throw sparks when they strike something, usually. One round struck the interior cabin wall not three inches from my face and skipped past so slow I swear I could read the grain count on the bullet. Then the sergeant waved ropes out and we started to jump.

I was second on the starboard rope.

I hate heights. I don’t know what I was thinking, volunteering to jump out of helicopters forty feet up. There was a moment in door I felt sick, and angry with myself for that weakness. Then the M134 on our side opened up and I was deaf. A minigun spitting .30 cal ammo at 3000 rounds a minute makes a noise that can’t be captured in film. It’s the roar of an angry god, a high pitched scream that pierces your ears like a blade.

Then Sarn slapped me on the shoulder and I was out. Falling, swinging, falling, trying not to be sick, and for-the-love-of-god-and-all-that-is-holy hang on to the fucking rope so I don’t fall like a fucking moron. My step-father used to say, “I’m not afraid of heights, just of falling.” I always replied, “It’s not the fall, it’s the sudden stop at the bottom.”

I hit the ground harder than I wanted to. You know the feeling you get in your back teeth when you hit the ground from just a little too high up. I stumbled clear of the rope and slapped up against the wall next to Morgan. He was my battle buddy. We stuck together no matter what. I liked that. I liked him. He was a good man. Older, with the wife and kid, and not as boisterous or prone to hazing as some of the other guys. He was a sergeant too, but then more than half the Rangers were. He slipped a fat grenade in the M209 slung under his M16. I’d seen him lob a round through a window at 200 meters with that thing.

This one he put on the corner of a building down the street, where two Muldoons were shooting erratically at us from behind a short wall. I didn’t watch the explosion, my job was to check the other end of the street. I took a knee two feet from the wall and popped my rifle to my shoulder. You never hug the walls. Ricochets tend to slip along a concrete or cinder block wall, rather than skip off at an angle. You’re actually safer crouched in the middle of the street then leaning against a wall or on your belly.

Sarn slapped my shoulder to let me know he was moving ahead of me, and rounded the corner ahead. I slapped Morgan and followed. Gunshots before I came around the corner, and there was Sarn, moving with gun up, a body slumped down the alley. Morgan and I secure the near end while Garelli and Budreax with his SAW secure the other.

Sarn is yelling, “Listen up! Our objective is eighty meters ahead, down this alley. It’s a two story building with clear line of sight to the primary objective. We secure, lay down a base of fire for the primary assault team. On me.”

We move. The walls reflect sound oddly. Sometimes I swear I hear gunshots on the other side of the wall next to me, and other times it sounds so distant I’m not sure it’s not the ringing in my ears. I’m close to the end of the squad, so by the time I catch up, they’re already stacked up to assault the door.

This is the most dangerous moment of the whole mission. Screw getting shot, most hostiles couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn at fifty feet. But rigging up a claymore on a door to go off when they hear us coming is both easy, and almost guaranteed to take out all eight of us in a heartbeat.

Sarn kicks the door and Thompson leads, spraying with his SAW. I don’t realize he’s shot until he’s on the deck. The force of the round picked him up and laid him out on his back so fast… Sarn and Morgan grab him and drag him out of the door way as Jaxon pulls a grenade.

“Frag out!” he bellows and lets the spoon flip clear. He gives it a three count then tosses it inside. Dirt and fire blast clear and the whole world seems to shake for a moment. Then Jaxon, Girelli, and Budreax are inside. Four quick shots and I enter to see two hostiles down. Both dead. I move to cover the stairs, while the other three secure the front rooms. The rest of the squad joins up, Thompson swearing and rubbing his chest where the body armor stopped the round.

“Clear!” I hear, and Sarn taps me on the shoulder. He points to me, Morgan, Budreax and himself, then signals we should take the second floor. I start up the stairs, but Morgan pulls me back and shakes his head, then signals me to follow him. I nod nervously and watch him move confidently, weapon up.

I’m just trying not to trip and fall on my face.

The second floor is clear, and Sarn moves us up onto the roof via a rusty old Coleman ladder. It looks so out of place here, and I wonder where they got it. It’s too old to be recently stolen. The roof is a bunch of aluminum corrugation laid down over two by fours. Unlike my dog tags, it’s anything but cool. I’m thankful for the body armor, knee, and elbow pads that keep me off it for the most part, but the heat radiating up from it is almost suffocating.

Our objective was chosen for a reason. We’re on the corner of two major streets, about 150 meters south of and across from the primary objective building, the supposed armory. I have a beautiful shot along one whole side of the building, and several windows on the upper stories. I hear Thompson downstairs letting off long bursts up the other street at something moving in the open. I can see fire back and forth between another of our squads and the building. Bright muzzle flashes on the street and in the windows.

Sarn slaps me on the shoulder, and simply says, “Take ‘em.”

I settle in and line up my scope. My nervousness is gone now. My squadmates, the mission, the expectations, all the world is gone. It’s just what I see through my sights. The heat fades. I’m in a cool place, floating in a pond. I breath in and out slowly.

Squeeze the trigger.

I don’t know where I learned to shoot. My grandfather had an old bolt action Winchester .22 I used to hunt rabbits with on our tree farm. They would bark the trees and kill them. In basic, we had to hit man sized targets at 300 meters. Some guys had a hard time with that. A man at 300 meters isn’t real big.

I can hit a running rabbit through the trees at 75 meters. It was the only thing I was ever really good at. Killing. As a civilian I had been a nobody. I was smart enough, but never knew what to do with myself. I was a loner, and didn’t get along with people. I was too quiet, too intense, too… I don’t know. I joined the Army to get away from the world.

I don’t know if they changed me, or if they simply gave me the opportunity to be who I’d always been meant to be. In that moment I was perfect. I’d never had anything I could be proud of, but shooting… I was good, and that was enough for me. And fuck all them that couldn’t understand that.

The rifle bucks slightly against my shoulder. Not as hard as you might think. The M16A4 fires 5.56 millimeter ammunition. That’s .223 caliber. It’s a longer, heavier round than my old .22, but not much kick to speak of. Certainly not enough to throw my aim off. The man goes down leaving a broad red stain on the wall behind him.

That’s eight, I think to myself as I shift slowly to another window.

Don’t pull the trigger, squeeze it. The recoil should come almost as a surprise. Don’t anticipate it. Just breathe out and squeeze…

And nine.

A voice intrudes into my perfect solitude. I want to ignore it, but something in my mind tells me I need to listen to this.

“R-P-G!”

And the world explodes. The rocket propelled grenade strikes the front of our building, high on the first floor. I almost go head first over the front as the building twists beneath me, but someone grabs me. It’s Morgan. He pulls me back from the edge and points at my face. I can’t hear, my ears are singing an annoying high soprano that drowns out his words, but I feel something wet above my eyes.

It’s a piece of mortar propelled into my forehead at such an angle as to lodge there. I yank it free and dab the wound. It’s superficial, and not really bleeding. The sweat stings as I run a hand over it.

Sarn is yelling down the stairs to the rest of the squad. After a moment he shakes his head and swears.

“What?” I yell.

“Garelli’s dead,” Morgan mouths at me.

Another RPG rips down the street, missing us by a good thirty feet and sailing high into the air. Sarn gives me a meaningful look.

“Ten,” I say with no false finality.

I spin, snap the weapon up to my shoulder, and squeeze.

A minute later one of the Black Hawks flies overhead, raking the front of the building with minigun fire, and several other squads from up the street storm in. Fire ceases.

After a tense minute Sarn shouts out, “Objective secure. Demo planted. Fall back to the extraction point.”

I stand. I see the muzzle flash in the window to my left. I flinch. I swear to God I hear the AK round buzz past my ear. Which is impossible considering how little I can hear, period. I move to return fire but Budreax beats me to it, filling the window with full-auto fire from his SAW. I don’t hear Morgan’s body hit the tin roof, but I feel the impact under the soles of my combat boots.

The round caught him under one eye, emptying his head into the back of his helmet. Sarn swears and leaps for him, pressing one hand on the wound, but it’s too late. He’s not bleeding. He’s dead. You can see it in those empty eyes.

After a moment Sarn gives it up. I hesitate for a moment, then stoop and pull out his dog tags, snapping one off.

MORGAN
DANIEL P
311-92-1000
AB NEG
PROT-NO-DENOM

I hold it out, and after a moment Sarn takes it. The look he gives me is different than before, in the chopper. He knows I’m not just some dumb private. I’m like him. I’m just here to do my job.

He nods at me and says, “Help me carry him out.”

I stoop to get his arms, and notice his picture sticking up from the top of his body armor. I pull it out and slip it in my pocket, then take him under the arms. Together Sarn and I carry him back to the chopper, and zip both him and Garelli up in big black rubber bags. I look at the writing on the back of the photo one last time.

Daniel Morgan Jr.
and Momma.
June 25th, 2005.
9 lbs 6 oz.
LOVE YOU DADDY.

“Five lines,” I mutter to myself.

“What?” Sarn shouts over the rising whine of the Black Hawk prepping for take-off.

“Nothing,” I shout back, and let the down-blast off the rotors sweep the picture out of my fingers and into the desert.

“Not a damn thing.”