Читать книгу Flashes of War - Katey Schultz - Страница 13

Poo Mission

1st Squad was bedded down in a firm house inside Fallujah. Our worst day of fighting and more casualties than we even knew at that point. But the block was secure, and we had men on watch from rooftop to sidewalk. I had to take a dump, and the only safe place was the building we were sleeping in.

I elbowed my buddy on the floor next to me. “Yo, Holden, you awake?”

“I’m either awake, or I’m dead.”

“I gotta take a shit.”

Right away, Holden made a big deal of the whole thing. “Freyer’s on a poo mission,” he announced. Most of the guys were awake anyway, a chorus of chuckles erupting from the moonlit room.

Ruiz said, “He’s droppin’ the kids off at the pool!”

Caldwell said, “He’s takin’ the Browns to the Super Bowl!”

Fitz said, “He’s unleashing the bomb on Hiroshima!”

“Yeah, and all your moms can’t wait to watch me do it,” I told them.

We got up and Holden followed me down the dark hallway, broken glass and busted rocks crunching beneath our boots. My ears were ringing, but other than that, the city sounded eerily quiet. I didn’t like it one bit. We reached the end of the hall and saw three doors, all shot up.

“Go in the middle one,” Holden said. “That’s where the dead muj is. I dare you to shit on his face.”

“Hell no,” I said. “I don’t want any muj watching me take a dump, dead or alive.” I chose the entrance on the left and walked into the room. The whole place felt like a haunted house with bad ju-ju. Only hours beforehand, this room held a weapons cache for the terrorists trying to keep a stronghold in the city. There weren’t any windows, so I clicked on my headlamp and cleared a place to squat. Bullet shells, hypodermic needles, and busted up chairs littered the floor. A rug lay in the corner, stained with blood. Holden waited for me on the other side of the door.

After a few minutes, I heard him light a cigarette.

“Freyer?” he said.

“What?”

“If we make it back, don’t tell Maria about the smoking, okay?” He meant if we make it back to Bozeman, where we’re both from. We still had two months.

“Man, she should just be happy you’re alive,” I said.

“Try telling her that,” he said. “It’s being pregnant. She’s fussy about my health now.”

I pulled my pants back up and joined him in the hallway. “In that case,” I said, “You’d better let me help you with those; for your health and all.”

He smiled and tossed me a smoke.

When we got back to the main room, most of the guys were asleep. I could hear Ruiz snoring, and right next to him lay Sergeant Fisher, twitching away in some sort of half sleep. It’s an odd thing, seeing your squad so vulnerable like that. They almost looked like strangers—my brothers, my fellow Marines—the way the moon cast a blue light across their bodies. It made them look holy. More than anything, it made them look dead.