Weapons of Mass Destruction Read Online Free Page B

explanation. You tried to help people, and they lashed out. Apparently gifts were easier to give than to receive. They carried an unseen burden, a kind of backhanded slap in the face. If even soccer fields gave offense, imagine the perceived aggression of liberating a country from sectarian tyranny. In Iraq, if not in Montana, freedom translated more readily into vandalism than Saturday afternoon team sports.
    They should have seen it coming. Allegiances changed overnight in Fallujah, like shifting sands in the desert. Marines adapted to the climate, manicuring soccer fields one week, evacuating the city the next. They were in it for the long haul. There was something satisfying about pitting yourself against the region’s timeless resistance to stability. If it took fifty years to usher the Middle East into the twenty-first century, so be it.
    The evacuation was taking longer than anticipated. Sinclair started doubting whether the exodus would be over in time for the offensive. Highway 10 was still packed with people, mostly on foot by late afternoon. Car bombings and munitions smuggling had finally convinced the tactical operations center to restrict vehicular traffic. Civilians were forced to flee with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Most of the more affluent citizens were long gone anyway. According to official reports, the poor lagged behind, inexplicably reticent to leave their homes. From the vantage point of boots on the ground, they looked more resigned than reticent, too accustomed to being trapped to imagine an alternative. They lacked the resources, either emotional or financial, to escape the red tide of war. In order to flee, you have to have somewhere to go.
    A man in a bulky jacket approached Sinclair. The temperature had climbed another ten degrees, and he was conspicuously overdressed. Sinclair confronted him, his weapon at the ready.
    “Back off! Hands over your head.”
    In the heat of the moment, Sinclair forgot the few Arab phrases they’d learned in boot camp. If he had an Achilles heel, it was his phobia of suicide bombers. Improvised explosive devices were a far more pervasive threat, but he took them in stride. At least IEDs made sense, instinctively as well as strategically. Killing the enemy meant safeguarding yourself, your platoon, your country. War itself was an extension of this collective will to survive, not an excuse to indulge self-destructive impulses. Blowing yourself up sullied the ethics of war with senseless violence.
    The man looked more perplexed than intimidated. He kept gesturing toward the moving throng of refugees, repeating the same words over and over.
    “ Ummi . Kalb . Kalb .”
    Sinclair trained the barrel of his automatic on the man’s head. Explosives strapped to his body could be detonated by a point-blank shot.
    “ Ummi . Kalb .”
    McCarthy rushed over and frisked the man. It turns out there was nothing under his jacket but a sweaty T-shirt. An alarming number of people stopped to glower at them. Sinclair tried to reassure them that they were on their side. He used a stock Arabic phrase he’d been required to memorize, something about how searches and checkpoints were designed to protect ordinary Iraqi citizens. The exact translation eluded him. He knew damned good and well his accent was atrocious. Butchering the language had no effect whatsoever on the man’s confidence in Sinclair’s ability to communicate. He started talking the Arabic equivalent of a mile a minute, gesticulating adamantly and often.
    “ La afham ,” Sinclair said. “ La afham , goddamnit.”
    Sinclair kept repeating that he didn’t understand, a phrase he spoke much more fluently than any other. Finally he radioed Radetzky to request an interpreter. The man talked nonstop until the terp showed up. Sinclair asked why he was dressed for a blizzard in the middle of a fucking heat wave. The interpreter was trained to edit out expletives and wildly inappropriate figures of speech. His