One Dark Day (382 hits)
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Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2004-10-07 15:29:19 EDT
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Smith wondered how he was going to die.
He was either going to drown in a few inches of water, or be blown apart by about thirty pounds of TNT.
A fatal explosion did have one thing in its favor... it would be brief. Then again, drowning in the desert was one hell of a novel way to go.
Smith would know the answer in just a few minutes. The water was rising, and his strength was fading fast.
Smith had been in Iraq for nine months. He was part of the first Marine Division. He and his buddies made up what was left of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Regimental Combat Team.
This was yet another day that had started heating up fast, waking up in a uniform that was stiff from the combination of dirt and sweat that had set in the cooler night air.
He was tired of being dirty all the time.
He had grown up in his dad's auto shop, and was no stranger to the grime under the fingernails of a working man. Back home you could shower at the end of every day.
Here, you were lucky if you could really scrub yourself clean more than twice a month.
Sand got everywhere.
When Smith blew his nose, his snot was gray or black.
His underwear was always full of sand. It collected in his boots and socks by the ounce. Smith cleaned his weapon with religious fervor very chance he got. It only took a few grains of sand to cause a fatal jam, even with the relatively new M4 carbines.
The funny thing was, the weapons were always cleaner than the men.
Staying alive had its priorities.
Smith was tired of a lot of things by now.
It was October. Back home the leaves would be changing color and drifting off of the trees in the backyard before being raked into fragrant piles by his dad. His mom would start baking pumpkin pies. She made one every weekend in October. Sometimes, late at night, Smith could almost smell the dash of cinnamon and nutmeg she sprinkled into the pie filling she always made from scratch.
Walking down a dusty road, all Smith could smell now was baking earth. He wasn't far from the Husaybah HQ, and a bit of shade.
The village he was passing had one of those names Smith just couldn't get his mouth around no matter how hard he tried. Hell, he was plain old Ed Smith from Illinois. He couldn't even speak French or Spanish, let alone make any headway in the crazy singsong that was Arabic. He and most of the guys in Lima called this sorry collection of homes Yah-balls.
There weren't any insurgents in Yah-balls, but the locals weren't friendly, either.
Smith was tired of the oppressive heat.
On any given day the temperature could be well above 100 degrees. There were days when it went over 120, and your shorts and socks were so soaked through with perspiration they practically squelched as you moved around. Smith often thought he had swallowed down more water in the last six months than in his previous twenty-three years.
The days were generally a little cooler as winter was coming, but today was another hot one.
There were rare days when a little rain fell in short, frantic bursts, as if the clouds were in a rush to get rid of their burden and move on. With the cold rain would come a drop in temperature, but it never lasted long.
Smith was also tired of the shitty food (you got better chow when you rotated off the line for some R & R), tired of the lack of decent entertainment, tired of the lack of approachable women, tired of being tired since the boys in Lima never seemed to get enough sleep, and of course, tired of death.
The first time he had seen a man shot, Smith had thrown up.
He had also unloaded his last meal the first time he shot a man, and the first time shots fired at him came close enough be a real threat.
All of that seemed like a long time ago.
Now Smith could close a gushing wound with his bare hands and comfort a buddy with a shattered limb without looking away.
He was tired of it all though.
Sometimes he wondered why they couldn't just sit down and talk, and then he'd get another close look at the Iraqis and realize that wasn't going to happen.
Smith didn't think of himself as a racist. He had good friends in the Corps who were black and Asian, and he thought of them as Marines first, Americans second, and only then considered their cultural differences.
When you got right down to it, the most of the Iraqis were pretty damned useless.
The so-called 'insurgents' would shoot from behind women and children, or from inside holy places like mosques.
The ICDC trainees he had seen were so incompetent and spineless that Smith didn't think the Iraq Civil Defense Corps was ever going to amount to anything.
And the average citizens whom Smith thought he was liberating from tyranny, never seemed to lift a finger to help. One of them might quietly cough up some valuable intel now and then, but real acts of bravery were few and far between as far as he was concerned.
Smith had thought these thoughts before, and he would probably think them again, before his tour was up and he was shipped home, hopefully still fully intact and fully aware.
And that return to a normal life would begin in just a few weeks. He was nearly done here, and thank God that the action out here near the Syrian border wasn't as intense as it was in Fallujah.
Death still visited, but it visited less often.
Smith had been in the back of a truck with a half-dozen guys heading for camp after an uneventful patrol of another in an endless line of bleak villages. A jeep had pulled up alongside, unloading two injured Marines. Smith had hopped out to make room for the injured men as the jeep had done an about face, and instead of hanging off the back of the now crowded truck Smith had said he would walk back. He was only a mile or two away from some hot grub and his bed.
There weren't any dangers here.
He'd be fine.
Smith paused in his own little dust cloud and took a sip from his water bottle.
There were a few kids playing on the side of the road up ahead.
There was the road, a ditch about four feet deep that might occasionally carry run-off from the rain, and on the other side of the ditch a sad cluster of silent houses.
Smith walked on. He patted down his pockets, sure he still had a leftover or two from his last care package. His sister regularly went to Costco and bought chocolate bars by the box, mailing them overseas. They might be a little beat up, and half melted, but they were also a taste of home.
A few of the guys in Lima swore that they would marry his sis when they got back home. Smith in turn swore he would do everything in his power to prevent that.
The kids, two boys and a girl, were farting around in the dirt on the edge of the ditch the way kids do everywhere. The boys were playing with toy cars, the paint jobs chipped and faded. The girl was playing with an armless Barbie, making her dance around on a swatch of blue cloth draped over a flat rock.
Venus de Yah-balls, Smith thought.
He retrieved a couple of Kit-Kats and offered them to the kids.
The little girl gave him a solemn look and shook her head.
The boys grabbed one chocolate bar each, leaped the ditch, and ran off. One of them yelled in garbled English. 'Thank you Mister,' or something like that.
Smith was about to move on when the little girl gave him a smile. He smiled back, finding it hard to believe that her, and the two boys, could one day grow up wanting to kill all the Ed Smiths on the other side of the world.
One of the Barbie's feet caught a thread in the blue cloth and it was swept aside. Smith looked down, and froze.
Barbie hadn't been dancing on a flat rock after all.
The little girl wrapped her fingers around Barbie's feet and began thumping her fist against the uncovered object.
Barbie wasn't dancing now, she was stomping up and down, throwing a tantrum.
Smith stepped off the road and began to kneel beside the ditch, praying he was mistaken, praying he wasn't looking at an anti-tank mine.
The green metal casing was pitted and scoured on its exposed sides, and the object was half buried in the dirt, but as he came closer Smith knew there was no doubting that he was looking at an anti-tank mine literally known as an FBM.
A Fucking Big Mine.
Anti-tank mines like this one usually required a lot of weight to be activated, much more than the weight of the average man. Why waste a mine on one man when you want to take out a vehicle?
That this device had not exploded earlier wasn't much of a surprise. Whoever had put it here in the hope a truck or treaded vehicle might pass over it had placed it just a bit too far onto the edge of the road.
Smith was going to grab the little girl and carry here out of here when he paused in disbelief.
This was no ordinary FBM. What Smith was looking at was a little more complex than usual.
The top of the mine was dusty. The dust was clinging to a thick layer of old epoxy the color of snot. Held fast by the epoxy and fixed to the pressure plate on top of the mine like a nipple on a steel tit was a smaller explosive device called a toe-popper.
Smith recalled an explosives lecture he had attended when he had first arrived in Iraq. The lecture was memorable for two reasons. The Lieutenant giving the lecture, under a tent, out in the desert, was named Dunes. And Dunes had a rare knack for teaching. His talk wasn't the usual by-the-book drone. It was an amusing and informative event.
Dunes had projected slides onto a bed sheet hanging from one wall of the tent.
One of the slides had shown an anti-tank mine rigged in a similar way.
The plastic casing of a toe-popper took a hell of a lot less than the weight of a man to set it off.
A small child could set it off.
It held a relatively small charge, and was designed to main, not to kill. But use the charge in a toe-popper to set off some detonation cord and you had more than enough bang to trigger an FBM.
The little girl's fist, gripping her dancing Barbie, went up and down, up and down, up and down.
Smith dropped his M4 and reached out, too late.
The little girl hit the striker assembly on top of the toe-popper, and in the heated silence Smith heard a muffled click. His right palm touched the toe popper less than a second after the little girl's fist, and slammed down on the striker as she drew her hand way.
Smith squeezed his eyes shut, his body slumping, holding himself up with his right arm.
Nothing. Jesus, Smith thought.
Maintaining pressure on the toe-popper's small striker assembly, Smith bent low and moved his thumb out of the way.
The toe popper-was scratched and scuffed. It had been modified. The pressure trigger had been converted into a press and release mechanism. Smith could see just a fraction of detonation cord. However much remained was covered by the epoxy.
The moment he took his hand off the device between him and the anti-tank mine, he would be blown to bits. He started to sweat more than ever.
The little girl was looking at him like he was nuts.
"Beat it, kid."
She rubbed her nose.
Smith took a deep breath, and let out a bullish roar. "GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE, KID!"
The little girl burst into tears, and jumped down into the ditch. Part of the opposite side of the ditch had fallen in, and she was able to climb up and out easily. She looked at Smith for a moment and then ran for the nearest house, which was a safe distance away.
Hunched over on his knees with sweat running into his eyes, Smith wondered if there was any way he was going to get out of this alive.
Was it possible to wrench the toe-popper up and off of the FBM while still maintaining pressure on the striker?
Doubtful. The epoxy holding the toe-popper in place looked old and dried out, cracked and crazed like an old bathroom tile, but it had been applied awfully thick.
Could he move the FBM and get somewhere safe?
The damn thing probably weighed over thirty pounds, would have to be dug out of the ground, and hell, where was a safe place?
Sooner or later he would have to take his hand off the striker.
And there was no way he was going to outrun an explosion.
Christ, it was hot.
It would be difficult to slip off his flak vest without moving his hand, so for now he had to just sit and bake under the sun.
Wiping the sweat out of his eyes with his free hand, Smith hoped for rain.
He looked at his watch.
He took off his helmet, shook his short hair free of sweat, and slipped the pot back on his head.
He tried to calm down, take measured breaths.
He looked up and down the road.
There wasn't a single vehicle in sight.
Moving slowly, leaning forward so his upper body weight was bearing down on his right hand, Smith got a pack of smokes out of one pocket and shook one free.
His Zippo was in a pants pocket. On the right side. Was it worth playing a deadly game of twister to dig out his lighter?
Jesus, if there was ever a time he could use a smoke...
He patted down his left side. If there was one thing a combat uniform had, it was a lot of pockets. He made himself take it slow. Plenty of time, lots of pockets.
And there it was. A pack of matches.
Smith pulled them out and flipped open the cover. Three left.
Smith ruined two matches trying to light them single-handed. The last one lit, a tiny ball of flame almost invisible under the sun.
He lit up and dragged deep. Man. That was hitting the spot.
He smoked the cigarette right down to the filter, watching a wall of dark clouds move across the sky.
His fingers were cramping a bit, and the striker felt like it was boring into his palm. He carefully flexed each finger, and played a crazy push-up version of Russian roulette, bending his right arm, getting the blood moving.
Smith looked at his watch.
He'd just killed eleven minutes. It had felt like an hour or more.
A single drop of cool liquid struck the back of his right hand.
Smith looked up. Clouds were moving across the sun, and the air smelled a little fresher, less dusty.
A bit of rain and a cool breeze would be welcome right about now.
Smith watched a window open in the side of a house about three hundred yards away.
A few raindrops pattered on his helmet and on the epoxy covering the FBM.
He watched a distant man lean on the windowsill, settling a distant rifle against a distant shoulder.
Smith spoke. "What's this shit?"
The distant rifle bucked against the distant shoulder. At almost the same time the sand leaped near Smith's left knee. The sound of the shot followed a moment later.
The rain started coming down.
Smith squinted. It looked like the man in the window was working the bolt-action on the old rifle.
The man in the window fired again.
Smith heard a sound, a metallic ping. A slender line of old green paint was stripped from the side of the mine.
Smith pissed freely into his pants. It was an eerie sensation. His bladder just let go. He couldn't stop it.
A cold breeze swept across the road, raising a curtain of dust. The rain grew heavier and the dust was washed away.
The man in the window was a vague shape now.
The rain falling on the ground made a loud hissing sound.
A bullet tore through Smith's left arm, just above the elbow.
The slug grazed bone. Smith lurched and screamed and hunched down over the mine, fighting the instinctive urge to cover the wound with his right hand.
Smith could see the barrel of the rifle wavering. The bolt action was being worked again.
Thunder rumbled, and the heavy rain became a violent downpour.
There was only one thing to do.
Praying that the mine casing was made of heavy steel, Smith hunkered down behind it. His feet were hanging over the edge of the ditch. He didn't hear the rifle fire again, but he did hear the ultrasonic buzz of a bullet passing overhead.
Smith began rubbing the blood-soaked left sleeve of his jacket against his ribcage. When his forearm was exposed he used his teeth to pull his sleeve back further, until the material was bunched up and constricting his arm above his elbow. Hopefully that would work as a tourniquet and slow the bleeding. His left arm was getting numb. He didn't know if that was good or bad.
Another bullet passed to his right, a faint whine. Smith shivered in the cool rain, suddenly aware that he was ice cold. Water was pooling under his knees, striking the mine, splashing into his eyes.
Smith stayed down, let a few minutes pass.
He thought he could hear the little girl shouting, screaming, but with the noise the rain was making he couldn't be sure.
There were no more shots.
Smith felt a little unsteady and shook his head. If he passed out now it would all be over. He felt his body shift again, just a bit, and realized it wasn't in his head.
When he had hidden behind the mine his boots had been over the edge of the ditch. Now his shins were on the edge.
Smith looked over his shoulder and saw a few inches of earth drop out of sight.
The sides of the ditch were now saturated with water. His weight and the increasingly heavy soil were too much for the wall of the ditch to bear. The ditch was collapsing out from under him. He could hear clods of soil splashing into the bottom of the ditch.
The horizon moved.
Smith realized that both he and the mine had shifted. He threw his left arm around the FMB, the pain making him bite through his lower lip.
The earth dropped out from under him.
A flurry of sensations. Balance out of whack. Falling. An impact against his back, leaving him breathless. Helmet gone. Pain in his left arm. Pain in his right shoulder and right palm. Weight bearing down on his shoulder and his chest. Back now cold and wet, from head to foot. Rain falling down into his eyes.
It took Smith over a minute to realize what had happened.
The wall of the ditch had caved in. He had landed on his back. The mine, now upside down, was pinning his palm against his right shoulder. He was lying in a steady stream of brown water. The soil beneath him was now a bed of mud, and his upper body was sinking into it.
Smith blinked furiously, and then his hearing was muffled as his ears filled with water.
The rainfall was still fierce. The water flowing through the ditch rose another inch and his ears were completely submerged.
Smith wondered how he was going to die.
He was either going to drown in a few inches of water, or be blown apart by about thirty pounds of TNT. Smith would know the answer in just a few minutes. The water was rising, and his strength was fading fast. Christ, Smith thought. This was turning out to be one dark day.
He started to move. He didn't think of his mom or his dad or home. His life didn't flash before his eyes. He didn't hear any heavenly voices.
He had an idea. A simple one. The only one.
It was time to do or die. He was not going to die on his back, choking on muddy water like a trapped rat.
If he was going to die, he was going to die like a Marine. He owed that much to the buddies who had fought at his side under the relentless sun, and joked around and talked of home in the dark of night. He owed it to the guys who would remember him if he didn't make it, and the ones he would remember if he survived.
Smith gripped the FMB with his left arm. He screamed freely. He rolled to the right, pushing with his legs, pushing against the toe-popper with his right hand, snorting water. Pain seared his lower back as if he had leaned against a hot stove.
The flat bottom of the anti-tank mine slapped down into the water.
Still alive.
Smith looked up. The sky was clearing. The rain was easing off. But the water level was still slowly rising in the ditch, washing across the top of the mine.
Maintaining pressure on the toe-popper striker, Smith got close enough to the mine to kiss it, and then bit into the epoxy.
He felt like he was trying to take a bite out of a Superball. There was a little give to the epoxy, but it was as strong as hell. Smith spit out a mouthful of water and tried again. His teeth gripped a flaking edge of the epoxy and pulled away a piece the size of a penny.
Smith began digging into the epoxy and picking away at it with his teeth. In some places it was brittle. In some places it was tough. If a better quality epoxy had been used Smith would have been completely screwed.
The epoxy slipped out of his grip at one point and his jaws snapped together so hard he chipped a tooth. That little spike of pain was nothing compared to his arm and his back.
He worked as fast as he could. He had no idea if the water level would continue to rise or if it would taper off.
The mine now was six inches under the brown, churning surface of the run-off. Smith would take a breath, submerge his face, probe for edges in the existing hole he had made in the epoxy layer, and then bite down, all the while maintaining pressure on the toe-popper.
When one particularly large piece of epoxy came free just under his right hand, Smith explored the exposed area with his tongue, moving his right hand out of the way as much as possible.
There it was. A slender, curving tube. The exposed detonation cord.
Having nothing to lose at this point, Smith began to chew his way through the cord. Gently. Very gently.
The primary layer of PVC was tough. His jaws were aching, and his throbbing tooth made his head ring like a bell.
He peeled away the PVC coating. Then he reached another layer, thicker, softer plastic. He worked his way through that.
The water was still rising, and the mine was settling into the mud. Foul brown runoff was now a full foot over the mine. When he bit into the det cord now, his head was completely submerged, and his vision was limited.
He had to dig his feet into the mud and steady himself with his wounded arm. There was enough water flowing through the ditch that a strong surge could sweep him away from the FBM, not quite fast enough to survive the resulting explosion.
A terribly bitter taste filled his mouth and Smith gagged. He had reached the explosive chemical core of the det cord.
Chew and spit. Chew and spit.
Smith had to create a clean break in the det cord.
Something in the explosive compound of the core was giving him a terrific headache, and making his eyes burn. Thinking he would now have to work blind, he rose out of the water and vomited until he was empty.
Chew and spit. Chew and spit.
Mud was creeping up over the top of the mine as the heavy steel casing dragged it down. Smith couldn't see the mud, but he got a mouthful every time he went under. There was now two feet of water and mud between him and the anti-tank mine.
Smith took a breath, and went under again. He was biting into something tough and resilient and tearing it free, when he inhaled some water and was shaken by a violent wracking cough.
He rose out of the water and leaned away from the mine, gagging on the biting chemical taste in his mouth, the smell in his nostrils. He felt a tremor in his right hand. Water sprayed his face.
He thought he'd never stop coughing and gasping for air.
Smith let a few minutes pass. After a time, he realized the water was flowing slower now, the mud settling. He could see his right hand. It had slid off of the toe-popper. The toe-popper had exploded. He appeared to be missing a finger.
The toe-popper was all that had exploded, because the detonation cord had been chewed clean through.
Smith dragged himself out of the ditch and flopped on his back beside the road.
His trigger finger was gone.
He might give a shit later, but now he was too tired to care. One finger was a small price to pay. He tore the lining out of one pocket and wrapped it around his hand.
Smith touched his face. Blood seeped from at least a dozen cuts and scratches on his throat and face.
The rain stopped. The sun came out. Smith closed his eyes. When he opened his eyes the sun had moved across the sky.
Smith rolled over. Got up on his knees. He reached for his weapon, using the M4 to push himself onto his feet. He knew that if he stopped moving again he would probably pass out and die. He took a step.
Smith looked over his shoulder. The little girl was standing on the other side of the ditch. She was holding her Barbie.
The man with the bolt-action rifle was beside her, one hand on her small shoulder.
The little girl waved goodbye.
The man made a show of looking into the ditch, looking at Smith, looking into the ditch again. He said something in Arabic, and gave an oddly formal bow.
"Any time," Smith said.
He gave the man and the girl a weary nod of his head, and then started down the road.
It wasn't long before a truck came along.
It wouldn't be long before Smith was home.
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