The Good Soldiers by David Finkel Read Free Book Online Page A

suspiciously be the last thing on earth he would see? Would his last words be what he was saying now into his headset, in response to a soldier’s trifling question back on the FOB? “Do you guys have shitters?” That’s what he was saying. Is that how it would end? In the midst of a sentence like that?
    “Do you guys have shitters?”
    “Do you guys have—”
    The convoy approached another pile of trash. Maybe one was hidden in there.
    The convoy approached a shadowy area in a viaduct. Maybe one was hidden in there.
    Eyes sweeping, jammers jamming, the convoy moved along Route Pluto at a very deliberate ten miles per hour, which afforded the chance to see what the surge had accomplished so far. By now, other drivers knew what to do when a convoy of Humvees got near: pull over, wait patiently for it to pass, make no sudden moves, and show no frustration about the inevitable traffic jam that the convoy would leave in its wake. Now the convoy passed a driver with the temerity to bury his head in his hands, and did Kauzlarich and his soldiers happen to notice that?
    Did they see the old man sitting in front of a shuttered store watching expressionlessly as he fidgeted with a string of worry beads?
    Did they see the boy next to the old man regarding the convoy as if it were something slithering?
    Did they see the white car decorated with flowers, and the van behind it filled with a bride and eight other women who were laughing and bouncing up and down in rhythm in their seats?
    They moved past some children herding goats. They moved past a man pushing a block of concrete. They moved past a man smoking a cigarette and looking under the raised hood of a stalled car, and maybe the car really was stalled or maybe it was a car bomb that was about to explode. The soldiers slowed to a near stop. The man didn’t acknowledge them. No one did. No one smiled at them. No one threw flowers. No one waved.
    Now someone did: a young boy dragging a piece of wire. He paused to wave at Kauzlarich, and Kauzlarich saw him and waved back, and what Kauzlarich saw was a waving boy who for all he knew was wired to explode, and what the boy saw was a thick window and a soldier behind it in body armor waving a hand that was encased in a glove.
    Suspicion in 360 degrees—this is what four years of war had led to. Before leaving Fort Riley, the soldiers had been given an introduction to Iraq in the form of a laminated booklet called the Culture Smart Card, which told them, for instance, that “Right hand over heart is a sign of respect or thanks,” and “Don’t make the ‘OK’ or ‘thumbs up’ signs; they are considered obscene.” It also listed phonetic pronunciations for dozens of commonly used words and phrases, including arjuke (please), shukran (thank you), marhaba (hello), and ma’a sala’ama (goodbye).
    They were good counterinsurgency terms, but Kauzlarich’s gunner had decided he needed only a few phrases to navigate this war, all of which he’d written in English and phonetic Arabic in black marker on his turret:
    “Where are we?”
    “Insurgent(s).”
    “Where is bomb?”
    “Show me.”
    It was the language of IEDs and EFPs. All over eastern Baghdad, their numbers were increasing, and while Cajimat and the four other soldiers in his Humvee had so far been the 2-16’s only serious casualties, they hadn’t been the only targets. Just the night before, Kauzlarich and Cummings had been in the dining facility, or DFAC, eating dinner when a loud boom rattled the walls and sent dishes, trays, food, and dozens of soldiers crashing to the floor. At first the explosion seemed like a rocket attack on the FOB, the number of which had also been increasing, but it turned out to be an IED a mile or so away that had hit a 2-16 Humvee out on patrol. Somehow none of the soldiers in the Humvee had been injured more seriously than suffering ringing ears and slight concussions, but the Humvee had been destroyed.
    That was where Kauzlarich