Free Fives and Twenty-Fives by Michael Pitre Page A

on each card while using his other hand to steady the rifle slung across his chest. The old men dug through the documents we had been given at Ramadi for something more to offer the young marine, even after he had passed them, satisfied.
    I waited my turn and, as he approached, pulled the card from my hip pocket and held it over my head, slow and cool.
    The marine tapped my card with one finger, put his hand over his heart, and said, “Shukran.”
    “That is right, man. My name is MCA, and I have a license to kill.” I heard that once on a Beastie Boys album and had always thought it sounded cool. It made the young marine laugh, anyway.
    The truck jumped into gear and idled through the gate. We passed a line of American trucks waiting to leave the way we came in. A dozen cargo trucks and several Humvees. Men, and a few stern women, leaned against them. Tan jumpsuits covered them head to foot. I watched them put on their hoods and helmets and seal themselves inside their armor, wondering what they were going out there to do. Kill someone? Someone I might know?
    Our convoy broke apart. The escorts with the mounted machine guns sped away toward their own corner of the plateau. Our truck turned a corner and arrived in America. Men in desert camouflage strolled with rifles draped across their backs. Fat civilians in collared shirts and khaki pants pushed through the hot wind with their heads down.
    We passed helicopters parked in neat rows behind razor wire and an empty field becoming a city as we watched. A heavy crane unloaded metal living quarters, five meters square, from a line of waiting flatbed trucks and arranged them into neat rows. Carried five to a truck, these boxes looked able to accommodate two beds, keeping the lucky Americans inside well cooled with individual air conditioners. Those Americans without nice, air-conditioned boxes lived in long, plywood huts with a dozen others.
    A dump truck followed the crane with gravel, which foreign laborers, Pakistanis I imagined, raked into walkways while armed guards watched them from all around. The field hummed with generators, compressors, air movers.
    A cargo plane took off. I smelled the exhaust, felt the heat of its engines, and missed the river.
    Eventually, we came to a cluster of concrete bunkers, isolated behind their own wire and gate on the far side of the base. These deep bunkers were made for surviving bombs. An American in khaki pants and sunglasses opened the gate for us. Our truck stopped and the brakes exhaled. The old men ripped open their tight flak vests and gasped, their lungs for the first time in hours free to inflate fully.
    The tailgate fell away and a man called out in Arabic, “Leave your flak jackets and helmets on the truck. They go back to Ramadi. You get new ones here.”
    I stripped off my gear and jumped to the ground, taking the six-foot drop like a boss, slapping the dirt. The Americans would teach me to say that— like a boss —and laugh when I said it inappropriately.
    “Help each other from the truck,” the man yelled. “If you need more help, wave to a marine.”
    I put my hands in my pockets and smelled the air. I stepped away from the truck, walked in tight circles, kicking dirt clods and small rocks as Americans crowded the tailgate to help the old men down.
    “Don’t wander. Line up here, in front of me. I need to check you in.”
    I searched the crowd for the voice, imagining an Arab in an ankle-length shirt. I assumed he would have an olive complexion, at least.
    “Directly to my front! Have your identification ready!”
    There I found him, with his expensive sunglasses and his marine’s uniform. He looked just like an American, and not much older than me. He waved a clipboard over his head. But despite his uniform, I could tell instantly that he was not a marine. Dark hair spilled out from under his hat, and his trouser legs hung straight to his bootheels. Real marines would tuck the loose trouser fabric neatly away