Joint Security Station (JSS) Ur, Baghdad, Iraq
March and April 2008
This thing’s a monster!”
“We’re not ever gonna beat it!”
“Just look at it grow, the size of it.”
“C’mon, c’mon! Let’s see the cards!”
“Two cards, coming your way”—slap, slap—“king and a deuce.”
“Nice cards!”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I’dpot that shit.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Give me a moment.”
“Scared?”
“All right. Pot it!”
“Hold on a second! You got the money?”
“Yeah, I got the money.”
“The pot’s got almost a hundred dollars in it. Do you have two hundred dollars, because if you don’t . . .”
“I got the money. Hey, can you spot me, buddy? . . . No! . . . This is a sure thing . . . C’mon, gimme that shit! Yeah, I got the money.”
“Ready?”
“Yeah, yeah. Flip the card! Flip the card!”
“Ohhhh!”
“No way. Another king!”
“That, my friends, is a double burn. Let’s count the money to make sure . . . and that’ll be one hundred ninety-four dollars and fifty cents that you owe the pot.”
“I’m ruined.”
“Nature of the beast. Now, who’s ready to win this monster pot?”
“This . . . game . . . is . . . fucking evil!”
Twenty men surround a table half covered in shadow and coated with a thick layer of dust. The men of Wild Bunch gamble with reckless abandon. They’re fat, unshaven, slovenly, and loud. They drink cases of energy drinks and chain smoke the cheapest Iraqi cigarettes. These tankers are responsible for Ur, a rough neighborhood on the border of Sadr City. They’re a crew of killers and scumbags, truly a wild bunch. Ur is their sector, but we’re taking over. Wild Bunch is going home.
“My turn! My turn!”
“And the gentleman’s cards are”—slap, slap—“a ten and a seven.”
“Pass that shit!”
Slap, slap. “Jack and a king.”
“There’s that king again. Pass.”
Slap, slap. “Six and a queen.”
“I bet two dollars.”
“Two dollars?”
“You heard me, two fucking dollars.”
“What’s two dollars going to do against that?”
“Gotta start somewhere.”
Wild Bunch plays “Sheeps,” a simple game of chance. Players ante at the beginning of the game to get a stake in the pot. Two cards are dealt face up and the player chooses to wager or “pass” onto the next player. If the player wagers, a third card is dealt. The player can wager any amount up to the full value of the pot. If the third card falls in between the first two cards, then the player wins the amount wagered. If the card lands outside the two cards, the player “burns” and must pay the amount wagered to the pot. If the third card is the same as either of the two other cards, then the player “double burns” and loses double the amount wagered.
“Flip the card!”
“Five. Give the pot two dollars.”
“See! See! That’s why you bet two dollars!”
Durk and I have no stake in the pot, but the novelty and abject insanity of Sheeps keeps us entranced. The game is pure greed and balls. Durk is impressed. He likes Wild Bunch’s style. They roll out in sector in T-shirts, don’t shave, and stay up all night and gamble into the early morning. The first day at Ur, we lie around and doze in the afternoon heat. At four in the afternoon, mortars land. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! They hit very close to us, and everyone runs for the safety of the Bradleys. Seconds later, we hear the rhythmic thumping of rotary blades. Whoosh! Whoosh! Assault helicopters launch rockets at the enemy mortar team. BOOOOOM!
“Didn’t they tell you, Hajj hits us with mortars every day at four?”
No one told us anything.
“Doesn’t matter—those guys are fucking wasted. Show the cards!”
“Ace and a deuce. Nice!”
“Best hand in the game.”
“Very well could be.”
“What are you going to do?”
The tanker strokes his whiskers and drops cigarette ash onto his sweat and grease stained T-shirt. “I can only lose if an ace or a deuce comes out, but then I double burn for sure.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’d pot it!”
“If you had six hundred dollars.”
“What are you gonna do, man?”
* * *
Our first mission at Ur, we help Wild Bunch raid an apartment complex on Route Grizzlies. Grizzlies divides Ur from Sadr City, the infamous ghetto enclave, home to millions of impoverished and militant Shia Iraqis. Sadr City is home to the Jaysh al-Mahdi, a large militia loyal to powerful anti-American cleric Muqtadr al-Sadr. We provide security for the raid. The infantry watch the objective from rooftops while Bradleys block off the streets. Wild Bunch assaults the apartments. It’s their last raid in Iraq, and they have fun. From the rooftops we hear shotgun blasts, flash-bang explosions, and shattering glass. Wild Bunch goes in hard.
LT’s Bradley sees a rocket-propelled grenade team taking aim from inside Sadr City and eviscerates them with a burst of 25mm high-explosive shells. Wild Bunch’s sniper is shot in the leg by an enemy sniper. He tosses grenades into a pool of stagnant water to cover his escape.
“What the fuck was that!”
“I don’t know, man! Get that weapon up!”
Sergeant D’s squad comes under sniper fire. The Bradleys raze the rooftops across Grizzlies, and five enemy militia members are shot dead on a street corner, the same corner, one after another.
“This place is fucking wild!”
Welcome to Ur.
* * *
“What are you going to do? C’mon!”
“I got fifty on it!”
“You have a hundred dollars?”
“No, but I have fifty.”
“You need a hundred to bet fifty. If you burn, you double burn, and—”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll bet twenty-five. Flip it!”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Another ace. What are the odds?”
“That’s fifty more bucks in the pot. Pay up!”
“I’m done. I’m going to sleep.”
“We need to beat this fucking thing!”
“It’s never gonna die!”
A Wild Bunch sergeant pokes his head out of a trailer. “Hey, guys! It’s three in the morning—go to sleep!”
“Fuck you, old man!”
“Yeah, fuck you. We’re going home, motherfucker!”
“You guys . . . just be awake for the mission tomorrow.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
The head disappears.
Wild Bunch likes to stir up trouble. Route Grizzlies is the perpetually watched, heavily mined no-man’s-land that separates American-patrolled territory from Sadr City’s autonomous zone. Treaty prohibits American troops from crossing this street and entering Sadr City. In true gangster fashion, Wild Bunch provokes and insults the enemy by spinning donuts in their tanks on Grizzlies. They dare Hajj to kill them. The tanks draw rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs, automatic gunfire, and everything else the enemy can throw at them. Then Wild Bunch turn their guns onto the source of the attacks and lay waste.
“Let’s see some cards! Let’s see some cards!”
Slap, slap. “Six and a ten.”
“Pass.”
Slap, slap. “Two and a three—can’t play.”
“Damn, I want that money!”
Slap, slap. “Four and a ten.”
“Pass.”
“This one’s going to be magic; I can feel it.” Slap, slap. “Ace and . . . and an ace. Wow!”
“Whoa!” The table is awed.
“Ace and an ace—I don’t believe it!”
“What’d I tell you? Magic.”
“So what are you going to do, man?”
“You almost have to pot it.”
“But that means I’d need . . .”
“You need over nine hundred dollars to cover it, because—”
“Because of the triple burn.”
“The triple burn . . .” The table speaks in whispers.
Durk knows excellence when he sees it. “Goldsmith, the only way I would ever reenlist is if they sent me to Wild Bunch.”
“Yeah?”
“They know how to go to war.”
“There’s no way to get that money together.”
“Unless we pool our resources.”
“What do you mean?”
“At this point, it’s us versus the pot. It’s so big, one of us can’t take it down alone. We need to work together.”
Wild Bunch nods their heads in agreement.
“We’ll pitch in to take it down. Each man wins what he contributes.”
“We’re not going to get a better shot than this. Ace, ace!”
“It’s almost unbeatable.”
“We have to win!”
“But . . .”
“But what?”
“Nothing. It couldn’t happen; it won’t happen . . . It can’t happen.”
The men of Wild Bunch live on the frontier, a lawless realm filled with casual gun battles and reckless gambling. The men of Wild Bunch are free. They live by their own rules and aren’t afraid to risk it all.
“That’s the source of their power, Goldsmith. Wild Bunch’s command, he’s afraid of them.”
The eyes around the table are filled with greed. Every man has a stake in the pot: a hundred dollars, fifty, twenty, some only five. They’re in this together, everyone a winner.
“You guys ready?”
The dealer grips the top card, tenses, and prepares to slap it down on the table.
“Pot it!”
For only a brief moment, every man at the table desperately wants the card to be another ace. Wild Bunch takes life without hesitation or regret. This group of hardened killers’ consciences are stained with the blood of hundreds, but only now are they afraid. Wild Bunch needs to burn, if only to feel something. Wild Bunch is coming home.
Is home ready for them?
Slap.