“Hey, Bob, what’s Iraq like?” The new private is cherry. He’s eighteen, dumb, and eager.
“Lots of ice cream.”
“I didn’t mean . . . I meant . . .”
“All kinds, too: strawberry, butter pecan, chocolate-chip mint, cookies and cream . . .”
“No, Bob! I meant what’s Iraq like? You know, bombs and getting shot at and—”
“I’ve had smoothies, milkshakes, apple pie à la mode . . .”
“I mean it, Bob!”
“But the best ice cream,” Bob whispers into the wind, “the sweetest of them all, is Zarqawi’s ice cream.”
* * *
FOB Warhorse, Diyala Province, Iraq
June 2006
“Men, this is it.”
We’ve been running around all night. Command has ordered us out of the gym, our bunks, and the chow hall. He tells us to prep for mission and stand by for something big. At two in the morning, LT addresses the infantry.
“Tomorrow morning at dawn, we’re going after Zarqawi.”
Zarqawi! Everyone is abuzz. The most wanted man in Iraq, the very face of evil—no way. This is something big.
“Quiet down! That’s right—Zarqawi. Command hasn’t told us much, just this . . .”
We’ll be running blocking positions, making sure nobody goes in or out, during a raid to kill or capture Zarqawi. If we see a blue car and we can’t stop it, we are to pump it full of holes, blow it up, and vaporize the occupants.
“Stay alert! Zarqawi may be protected by up to a hundred and fifty bodyguards . . . this is no joke, Bob—stop laughing. Now, everyone, get to your vehicles!”
This is the real deal, what the infantry have been waiting for. We’re going after Iraq’s number one most wanted: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The organizer and terrorist celebrity behind the most gruesome violence in Iraq has a twenty-five-million-dollar bounty on his head. Zarqawi is famous for suicide and vehicular bombings that kill hundreds of men, women, and children at a time. More than any other person or organization, he is responsible for inciting the grotesque Shia-versus-Sunni ethnic slaughter that has devastated Iraq. Zarqawi is a hands-on leader who personally beheaded Nicholas Berg by sawing through his neck with a knife. A near-mythical outlaw figure and nightmare personified, his tactics horrify even al-Qaeda, which censures him for targeting innocent civilians. When al-Qaeda censures you for massacring civilians . . . well, you get the idea.
Zarqawi speaks to the president of the United States when he says, “Why don’t you tell people that your soldiers are committing suicide, taking drugs and hallucination pills to help them sleep? By God, your dreams will be defeated by our blood and by our bodies. What is coming is even worse.”
In basic training they showed us the video “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Slaughters an American.” The beheading of Nicholas Berg made me sick to my stomach and insulted by the depravity of a monster passing itself off as human. I saw evil, and its name is Zarqawi. Let’s get that motherfucker.
When the Bradley ramp drops at five in the morning, I’m so tired and lost I don’t even know which way to face. The world is dark, the sun isn’t up yet, and none of us slept last night. Our leaders tell us to stand in a line ten meters apart and watch for anything that moves. It’s comically simple and reveals that no one knows what’s going on. They tell us to lie down, then to stand up again because everyone’s falling asleep. The thrill is gone—it’s just another bullshit mission. Rumor says Rangers will raid the objective and apprehend Zarqawi. Realizing that we are nothing but vehicle control and that the chance of shooting anything is slim, we resign ourselves to mediocrity. I hear helicopters overhead.
“Mount up!”
We load back into the Bradleys and roar off. The ramps drop, and I see a mass of infantry running full speed towards a big, luxurious house. Sergeant D is in the lead. When I see him running, I know the situation is serious. Breathless but surging with adrenaline, we stream into the house. There’s massive physical devastation. Doors are blown off hinges, giant wood splinters litter the floors, furniture is upended, and everything is broken. Someone has already been here.
Upstairs, gunshots are accompanied by joyful hollering. Everyone rushes upstairs and leaves me alone. Sergeant Todd shoots off the balcony at a group of men fleeing into the distance. The other infantrymen join in the melee without asking questions. A Bradley charges up and over the fence on the side of the house. Its machine gun opens up on the runners. The men escape into the brush, and the guns fall silent.
Sergeant Todd shatters it. “Hope I hit one of ’em!”
He didn’t, of course—nobody did. The fleeing men had already endured the Rangers’ assault when we came charging up. They’d had enough and decided to run for their lives. Hundreds of bullets were fired from a half-dozen different weapons, but in a textbook example of great infantry marksmanship, the men escape unscathed. Rangers had already raided the house in characteristically violent fashion. The helicopters I heard earlier were them leaving. We don’t know if they had captives or gathered vital information, but we do know that cleanup falls onto the mediocre infantry.
Two dozen men, women, and children remain in the house. We bring the prisoners outside, in front of the house, and watch them. Presumably, they’re friends, family, or associates of Zarqawi’s, but they look like typically wretched Iraqis to me. The men are bound and forced to squat. We sit the women and children on the ground, apart from the men. The infantry are tired and hungry. The adrenaline ebbs, and our stomachs growl ravenously. There is nothing to do. We take turns watching prisoners and wandering through the house. Although it looks as if it’s been hit by a missile, I can tell this was once a magnificent Iraqi estate. The spacious house is three stories tall, filled with art, and tastefully decorated. These people may or may not know Zarqawi, but they know somebody.
The bathroom is still a hole in the floor. They’re usually dirt, but this mansion has a porcelain-lined hole. I escort a little Iraqi boy to use his family’s hole in the floor. In a cracked mirror, I stare deep into my bloodshot eyes and find no answers. We bring the women blankets to lie on while screaming at their men for struggling against their restraints. The women stare at us with cold, undying hatred, and I don’t blame them. Rangers destroyed their home, we shot at their men, and now I have to escort them to the bathroom. This is bullshit. Where’s Zarqawi?
“Sergeant D, do you know if the Rangers got Zarqawi?”
“No. They didn’t.” I don’t know how he knows these things, but Sergeant D is always right. “He was here, but we waited too long. Zarqawi left a few hours before we got here.”
“How much longer are we going to be here?”
“Get comfortable.”
The hours limp by, and the troops are disgruntled. We’re bored, sleep deprived, and above all, hungry. Durk comes downstairs drinking a soda.
“Where’d you get that?”
“Found it in the mini-fridge in the parents’ room. I left a thank-you note.”
“Was there any food in there?”
“Don’t think so—just sodas and ice cream.”
“Ice cream!” Several infantrymen leap up.
Sure enough, there’s a box of chocolate ice-cream bars in the freezer, and Durk’s note: “Dear Zarqawi, thank you for the soda. I’ll get you back one day. Your friend, Durk.” We stuff our pockets full of ice cream and go back outside.
All of a sudden, life isn’t so bad. We’ve been standing in the heat for hours watching a bunch of women and children, that bastard Zarqawi is still free, but at least we have his ice cream. A piece of chocolate flakes off my ice-cream bar and lands on my machine gun, I don’t brush it off. Sergeant Todd looks angry.
“Hey! What the fuck you think you’re doing?”
“What, Sergeant?”
“You can’t eat in front of the prisoners.”
Durk and I don’t say anything. We look sheepish and flash our best puppy-dog eyes.
“Ah, hell. Just go around the corner, take turns watching ’em . . . and can I have one?”
Sure, Sergeant.
One of the elderly women looks at us with more hate than before. Durk figures it must be her ice cream. The children look at us with sad, hungry eyes until we give them some bars. Soon we’re all munching Zarqawi’s ice cream together.
The sun is high in the sky. We’ve been here since dawn. It’s been a long day already. Melted chocolate tastes milky sweet to our impoverished taste buds. The vanilla cream in the middle slides down our parched throats and is a balm to our empty stomachs. I suck the last bits of chocolate off the wooden stick as the Iraqi men look at us with despondent eyes. Not only are their legs on fire, but there isn’t enough ice cream for them. Did the Nazis eat ice cream while their prisoners watched? If they didn’t, they should have. Nothing satisfies like ice cream after destroying someone’s home and shooting at their loved ones.
Then it is time to go. There are only two things on my mind as I climb into the Two Truck for the ride home on Vanessa: a decent meal and a couple of hours’ sleep. Fifteen minutes from the FOB, in the middle of dream, an explosion rocks the right side of the Humvee. Shrapnel peppers the side and sends spider webs through my window. No one is hurt, but we’re awake again.
“God damn it, not another IED!” Sergeant D is incredulous.
“That makes number four.” Vanessa scores another hit on the Two Truck.
“Damn you, Zarqawi!” Bob shakes his fist in the air.
“Think he did it?”
“Of course he did,” Bob reasons. “We destroyed his house, shot at his family and friends—hell, we even ate his ice cream. This was his revenge.”
Durk just shakes his head. “But I left him a note.”
* * *
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is killed on July 7, 2006. He dies in Hibhib, a small town only five miles outside the FOB. Zarqawi has escaped many times before, so this time his enemies leave nothing to chance. Air Force F16 jets drop two five-hundred-pound bombs on his safe house. His spiritual advisor, two of his wives, and a small child die with him. His family perishes instantly in the massive blasts, but not Zarqawi. In true arch-villain fashion, he takes nearly an hour to die of his injuries, squirming against his restraints and cursing his enemies with his dying breath.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.