FICTION
I've Got Your Back But Who's Got Mine?
by Francis Caravoy
It was the first time that I'd ever shot a man and I hope that it will be the last. I'm a soldier, just so you know, but that didn't make it any easier. Honestly, it shook me up; affected me much more than I thought it would. I've sent a lot of bullets downrange, probably three thousand rounds in my short career, but only at paper targets. I wouldn't tell you this, probably shouldn't tell you, but I feel like I just have to get it out, to be honest with someone about what happened.
I work in Baghdad, in the International Zone; what the media refers to as the Green Zone. It's called the Green Zone because it's safe. Safe is a relative term.
Major Klein is my boss. "Get your gear on Buck, we're going to the MoD." The Ministry of Defense is the Iraqi version of the Pentagon. The MoD building is within the IZ, but just barely. I put on my body armor, grabbed ninety rounds ammo from the armory and then, thinking twice, grabbed ninety more.
We left our compound locked and loaded for the short walk over there, chambering a round in both the M-4 that I was carrying and the 9mm pistol that I carried on my hip.
"I'll go first," the Major told me, "you watch my back." It was just the two of us going.
"Who's going to watch mine?" I asked rhetorically.
The Major knew that I knew what I was doing but out of habit he always told everyone what to do.
"Keep moving. Walk briskly. Head on a swivel. Watch my back."
We walked across the street and around the littered grounds of the MoD, passing through the checkpoint without showing ID. It was an Iraqi checkpoint and we pretty much blew them off all the time.
"When we're inside watch everyone. If anything goes wrong we're just going to keep moving forward. Follow me, cover my back. We'll find an exit or we'll make one. Got it?" He carried a fully automatic shotgun loaded with alternating rounds of buckshot and slugs. He was convinced that we could wade through an army of insurgents with that thing if we needed to.
The MoD is heavily guarded, but by Iraqi security forces so it's not very secure. They get attacked a lot, they get infiltrated a lot; you could pretty much count on them to hit the dirt if you actually needed their help so we never depend on them.
"Half of these guys were fighting us in Fallujah and Ramadi," the Major said. "I trust them as long as I can see them."
They were a swarthy bunch of guys in tattered uniforms that didn't match. Some were even wearing civilian clothing. They sell everything we give them.
Inside the place smelled like a casino and the halls were dirty. Iraqis lined the walls standing or squatting, their conversations pausing as we passed, their eyes following us; most were sucking eagerly on cigarettes. We moved quickly, confidently, weapons ready. That was how you had to be there. Passing by open doors we saw Iraqi officers in rumpled uniforms asleep at their desks or sprawled out on tables littered with food wrappings.
In Colonel Hamad's office the Major relaxed a little, letting his shotgun hang from its sling while he shook the colonel's hand. The interpreter stood by inconspicuously, murmuring. My job was to watch the doors and windows, my eyes scanning continuously.
The colonel doesn't like Americans; too brusque. He wants to talk about the weather and families and 'what's new' before he gets down to business. The Major was trying to talk about the upcoming mission, and the colonel was still wondering what the weather in Montana was like this time of year.
We all felt the explosion; it rocked the whole building; gunfire erupting almost simultaneously, like dropping a match into a box of firecrackers. We immediately moved to the door leading out of the colonel's office pausing at the opening, the Major looking left, me looking right. We walked down the hall toward a side doorway that led outside.
"Watch my back, watch my back."
I kept looking back, walking forward, practically running. We could hear AK-47 fire from every direction. Approaching the door the Major blew a hole in the middle of the double doors where the latch used to be and kicked them open. Pausing in the daylight, he looked left, I looked right.
I saw him as he rounded the corner, AK-47 swinging toward us, an Iraqi in civilian clothes. Two shots from my M-4; two shots without even thinking. It used to be, when I first joined the Army, that the doctrine was to shoot for center of mass. In those days he would have gotten two to the chest. Now, with the prevalence of body armor, the first shot is to his lower abdomen immediately causing him to involuntarily double over, the second shot is to the top of his head.
We kept moving until we were within the walls of our compound, the gunfire now safely distant. I turned in 178 rounds to the armory. Because no Americans were injured we didn't file a report, just went back to our desks.
"We'll need to go back over there when things quiet down," the Major said. "I still need to talk to Colonel Hamad."
By dinner they'd gotten things cleaned up except for the blood stains on the sidewalk and we step over it with the sounds of evening prayer wailing overhead. I wonder who he was, if he had a wife and children like me, what his intentions were. I wonder but I'll never know. The evening news will say, if they report it at all, that today an attack on the Ministry of Defense killed three Iraqi soldiers and left five insurgents dead. There were no American casualties.
The Major says, over his shoulder, "Watch my back!"
Francis Caravoy once raced a train on his bicycle and won, but just barely. He is now an economist and freelance writer who lives along the Gulf Coast. He has traveled extensively throughout the Middle and Far East and is currently working on a collection of short stories based on his experiences in Iraq. This is the first time his writing has appeared in flashquake.