Orange Flames

By J.B. Stevens

Just after I’d arrived at Forward Operating Base Kalsu as part of my unit’s advance team, in the chow hall, I sat at a folding table with a fake wood veneer—smooth beneath my fingertips, in a molded plastic chair that made grade school flash through my mind. The large, open, hanger echoed sounds and it was quickly overwhelming my brain. The scent of fresh food, unwashed Soldiers, and gun oil mixed together and turned my gut.

The man in the next seat was a sergeant, E-5, named Ramirez. I picked at roast chicken and collard greens and followed it with mint chocolate chip ice cream. The collards were over-salted, and the mint smell lingered in my nose. The grease from the chicken skin stuck to my fingers and made them slick. The Bangladeshi food servers played music that sounded like an out-of-tune violin being tortured by a naughty child.

Ramirez grinned at me and explained that he was a medic attached to a tank platoon. He wanted to be a doctor, one day, back on the island. He didn’t say what island, but I figured Puerto Rico because he was Latin, and all the guys I knew from other islands were black.

I told him that a tank platoon was due to be attached to my Infantry company, and I hoped it was his.

He slapped my back and told me he wished for the same and then he grinned and laughed, and it sounded like a friendly jackhammer. He told me stories about all the pussy he got back home and all the women that chased him. His face was covered in pockmarks, and he was overweight, so I thought he was lying. However, maybe he was telling the truth. But I said nothing as I needed a friend.

Halfway through Ramirez’s story about a beach-based-blowjob, a horn went off and he jumped to his feet.

I sat. 

He snapped his fingers at me. “Let’s gooooooooo.”  He grabbed the shoulder of my blouse and pulled.

I clutched my rifle and allowed myself to be led. Ramirez flicked on a red-lensed flashlight as we sprinted outside.  

We turned right and scrambled toward a three-sided concrete upside-down U. It had openings at each end and cement T-Barriers protected those end openings. We slid past the Ts, there was about two feet of space. 

The inside smelled like talcum powder and had a sandy floor. I sat on the ground with my back against the bunker between two of the food service workers and a female from the Air Force. After a moment, my chest sucked in and there was a terrific boom. My body began heating, but I played it off, everyone else in the bunker seemed unconcerned. The female winked at me.

Ramirez lounged next to the woman. He pulled out a can of Copenhagen chewing tobacco—dip. It was the size and shape of a hockey puck. He flicked it down and it made a wet popping noise. Then, he opened it, and I smelled licorice. It looked like moist volcanic sand. 

He raised the puck to me. “You want a lipper?” His Puerto Rican accent took on a redneck lilt. 

Another explosion came and my stomach flipped—I tried to catch my breath. I nodded, took the can, grabbed a damp pinch, and shoved it into my lower lip.  

A third boom cracked off, much stronger than the first two. I felt it in my stomach and flicked my chin at the hidden sky. “The fuck was that?”

Ramirez shrugged. “Haji propane. They don’t know we’re the good guys.” 

Everyone in the bunker chuckled. 

A different negative-pressure feeling came—this one in my ears. Then there was a crack.

Ramirez pointed to the roof. “That’s our answer. Outgoing artillery, our gun bunnies earning their shit.”

I looked up, but all I saw was chipped concrete lit by his red flashlight. I clenched my jaw and lowered my chin. I focused on keeping my face neutral and my breathing even as my heart jackhammered inside my chest. I listened to Ramirez tell progressively vulgar stories. 

After he finished one about a cheerleading team and a barrel of canola oil, a blast came—it was the loudest yet—and the suck was stronger than the others. The bunker shook and a food service guy started to cry.  

I looked at him. “Are we good in here?” 

He shrugged. “If we take a direct hit, we’re ghosts. Anything else, we’re fine.” 

"That’s it?”

“It is.”

He went back to telling stories and I thought of my mother. The explosions stopped. Twenty minutes later, a different horn blew.

Ramirez ducked walked towards the exit and waved me to follow him. “That’s the all clear.”

I followed. “Now what?”

“We finish dinner.”

“It seems like there should be more.”

“Yeah. What?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just trailed him.

Back inside the chow hall, my food was cold. The kitchen staff had restarted, but the line was a mile long, so I ate my cold food. When I was done, I said goodbye and tried to remember how to get back to my tent. 

As I walked, I felt a bubble in my gut. I stepped into a green porta potty and threw up. Then I turned and sat. I sank into the seat and wondered what to do, but nothing came, so I walked back to my tent and my cot. 

***

At my tent, there was a small fire. A group of Soldiers faced the flames, and they were lit up orange. 

I came to the edge of the group and inhaled the smell of melting plastic. I poked a specialist. “What happened?” 

The specialist glanced at me. “Transient quarters caught one.”

“Damn.”

The specialist nodded. “Some new guy’s gear was inside, but we aren’t seeing any body parts, so we think the new guy wasn’t here. But we’re still checking for meat.” 

I frowned. “I think it was my stuff.” I touched the picture of my fiancé, Maria, in my pocket, glad I’d kept it with me.

My jaw clenched and I nodded.

On the edge of the light was a young-looking Asian woman with Captain’s bars and a clipboard, holding a pen. She wore a large gold ring. 

I marched to the ring. She smelled of vanilla lotion. Her smooth, young, face reflected the firelight.

She looked me up and down. “Specialist?” 

I pointed at the smoking crater and destroyed gear. “My stuff was in there.” 

“Lucky you weren’t with it.” She hunched over the clipboard.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Name and unit?” 

The world spun and warmed, I began to sweat. I closed my eyes. “Sorry, what?” 

The Captain snapped her fingers. “Name and unit. So, I can call you commander, and we can get your property book squared up.” 

“Alpha 2/69, Ma’am.” 

“The incoming infantry company?” 

“Yes.” 

She wrote something. “I’ll contact your command,” turned, and walked away. 

The roil in my gut strengthened. I thought of Maria, and my stomach warmed and settled. I ran after the Captain and tapped her shoulder. “Ma’am, I need somewhere to sleep.” 

She turned back. “Follow me.” She popped a chemical light and shook it, and the world glowed green. I trailed the hovering shine—thankful no one could see the damp trails on my face.

***

Two weeks later, the gear was all situated, and the rest of my unit arrived. The maintenance Sergeant and I met them at the helipad. He lit his cigarette, and I popped a chem light, and we showed them around. The forward operating base got hit that night, but my platoon’s tent was fine. A few guys followed me into the bunkers. The next day my Platoon Leader—Lieutenant Landers—went to the battalion headquarters and got us all containerized housing units. I shared mine with three other guys from my fire team. Our housing unit wasn’t armored, but it was air-conditioned and had real beds. So I might get blown up, but at least I’d be comfortable.

Four days later we started our ride-alongs with the outgoing Infantry unit. We did quick-reaction force (QRF) stuff for units that get in trouble, escort services for explosive ordnance disposal (EOD), and—some nights—we did raids on low-value targets while special operations forces (SOCOM) did the high-value stuff. After two weeks, the old unit left, and we took over, but it felt like a video game and not real life.

We did missions almost every day. I liked the raids as there was an objective. I did not like QRF, rolling into a situation without a plan was stressful. On QRF, most of the time, an improvised expulsive device (IED) had hit one of the coalition vehicles and people started shooting at the Americans. My platoon went to the site and cordoned off the area and shot back as we gathered up the survivors. The gunfights were minor, nothing like the movies. We couldn’t really see the guys shooting at us, just the occasional muzzle flash, and we shot back. I don’t know if I shot anyone. I wasn’t sure if I liked not knowing, but it cannot be helped. A few gunfights back, I stopped caring if I killed haji, and I supposed that said a lot about me, but what else could I do?

One day, after I ate a very good omelet with cheddar cheese and spinach, we escorted EOD to a Shia Muslim market to disarm a possible secondary IED. At the market, three hours prior, a Sunni Muslim woman had worn a suicide vest and went to a stall selling bootleg DVDs and detonated herself. She was the primary explosive device. She’d blown off her jaw, arms, and legs, but not her entire head. She died as a jawless torso that smelt like fireworks and burnt barbeque. A thousand specks of broken DVDs were spread in the sand around her. The pieces caught the sunlight and reflected it back in a million directions and it looked like someone had decorated the woman. She was the only casualty. After that, on the way back, we got into a little gunfight, and I don’t know if I killed anyone. That night, for dinner, I had a steak—it was rubbery, but the Heinz 57 helped.

***

After the torso, six weeks and dozens of uneventful missions slipped by. It was after lunch on a hot Wednesday, and I walked from my housing unit to the motor pool. I thought of Maria back home and a cavern opened in my chest. Her emails were coming far less often, and they’d taken on a distant tone. I heard a shuffle and looked up, a private speed-walked past me carrying a clear terrarium holding a scorpion. The bug was dusty black and the size of my palm. 

I followed the private to the back of the motor pool, and I saw a ring of Soldiers, one of them was the maintenance Sergeant. I walked over, in the middle of the group was a pit—2 feet deep and 3 feet across and in the pit, there were two scorpions. The soldiers cheered as the insects grasped with their claws and poked one another with their tails. Eventually, the scorpion to my left stopped moving. Half the Soldiers went crazy the other half muttered curse words and spat. Money changed hands.

The guy to my left poked my ribs. “Scam. Somebody is juicing their bug.”

I frowned. “What?”

“Steroids. Testosterone. Meth. Lots of meth, that’s the key.”

I nodded. “How does a scorpion do meth?”

“Fuck if I know. Ask around.”

The guy turned away.

I walked back to my company’s staging area. My platoon leader, Landers, was there. I saluted and he waved me off.

I liked Landers. A few months back, during a national training center rotation, we’d stayed up late talking. We liked the same music and movies. He was from Black Mountain, North Carolina, which was near Towns County, Georgia, where I grew up—so we saw eye to eye on most things. But that wasn’t unique, most of the infantry, most of my unit, saw things the same way. We were all rednecks or ghetto kids—our officers were just the try-hards. They were still trash, that’s why there were here, with us, but they’d gone to college.

I never met an Infantryman from Manhattan, or San Francisco, or Palm Beach. I met a hundred from Puerto Rico, a thousand from Section 8 housing, and a million from trailers in the holler. I was from a trailer in the holler.

A trailer and a containerized housing unit were the same thing, really.

Anyway, I liked Landers. He’d never gotten us lost, as the other Lieutenants tended to do. He always rotated the diesel-shit burn barrel duty at our combat outpost and even took a burn-shift himself—most officers avoided burn-barrel duty. (A burn barrel is where you shit into a half-cut-off steel barrel and when the container is full, you pour in  diesel and roast away the filth.)  Also, Landers wasn’t over-eager to get in gunfights, as other lieutenants tended to be. But the few times we had gotten in gunfights, he’d shot back. Maybe his neck got hot—we never talked about that, mostly just Limp Bizkit and Korn.

***

That evening, at our Command Post, Landers gave a briefing for the night’s mission—a raid on a goat farm that may be a bomb factory. 

Landers passed around a stack of computer-printed photos. “Intel weenie says the entire place might be wired to blow.”  

Scalia, a Private First Class with a South Boston accent, spoke up. “If it might explode, why would we go there?” 

Landers sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Other the fact that this is a war and we’ve been ordered to?” 

“Yes—Sir—other than that.” 

“Because improvised explosive devices are everywhere lately. We need to shut it down before more Americans get killed.” 

“What about us getting killed?” 

My platoon sergeant responded. “What about you quit being a bitch.” 

Everyone laughed and Scalia sat down. 

Landers held up an image. “We got shithooks so we don’t have to roll. This is the target house.” He passed the picture to Scalia, who passed it to me. I saw a beige building surrounded by grey and white goats with patchy hair. It looked like every other crappy farm south of Baghdad.

“Meet at the pad in an hour.”

***

The moon was high and clear as I arrived, most of the guys were already there. Two Boeing CH-47 Chinooks sat off to the side. Their rotors spun in lazy circles, their engines put off a high-pitched whine, and I smelled their fuel—JP-8, and it reminded me of kerosine.

Landers whistled, we all gathered around, and he reiterated the plan for the goat farm. Then we marched, single file, to the Chinooks. I was behind McCluskey a specialist from Jalapa, Tennessee. I entered, sat, put in some earplugs, and strapped into red-webbing seats. The crew chief walked up and down the aisle, making sure we were buckled up. Finally, we lifted off. There were no special helmets on this trip.

We flew near as possible (NAP) to the earth to limit incoming enemy fire, and my stomach spun. I lowered my PVS-14 night-vision monocular and everything took on a green tinge. The 14 stuck out like a rhino’s horn and strained the back of my neck. I lifted it and shut my eyes. The seats were comfortable, and the rotors thumped in a steady beat. My heart rate dropped, and I drifted back home, and I was sitting in a metal folding chair on the front porch watching a heist movie on Netflix on my phone with Maria.

We landed and I returned to Iraq (new home). I stood, lowered the 14, and stepped out and into a trench. My boot sank and I was hit with the smell of human waste. I gagged, shook off my foot, and kept moving—lining up behind my fire team leader, Sergeant Fitz. My neck heat came, and my stomach turned. I squeezed, the rifle felt smooth and familiar in my hands, and my neck cooled. McCluskey offered me Copenhagen snuff. I accepted and shoved a pinch in my lower lip. We walked about twenty meters, and the Chinooks took off. The farmhouse sat six hundred meters in front.

After they left, Landers’s voice crackled across the radio. “Blue Four Alpha. Take the main entrance. Blue Four Bravo, set up a suppressive fire position east of the barn.” 

I lowered my 14s and followed McCluskey to the wooden gate. It was set inside a mud-brick fence. He kicked the gate and it disintegrated. 

He radioed Landers. “We’re inside.” 

“Take the house.” 

We crept to the front door. McCluskey stood to the left and nodded at me. I checked the knob, it was locked. I said my let it come fast prayer and shouldered it. The door gave, there was no explosion, and we flowed into the main room. There was a couch covered in paisley green upholstery and a small tube TV flickering static atop a table built of scrap wood. Four mismatched fabric folding chairs were in front. There were no people.

McCluskey led us to a too-narrow stairs set of stairs. We ascended and came to a warped door with a chewed-up brass knob. McCluskey pushed through and we followed to the roof. I looked left and right. I saw an old man and a girl. They were prone on sleeping mats, both sat up and raised their hands to the stars. We lifted our 14s and turned on red-lensed flashlights. We searched the roof, there were no weapons and no more people. McCluskey gestured for them to lower their arms.

I watched the girl. She looked down and away. she had lines tattooed on her jaw and there was a divot where her collar bones joined, below her neck. The hollow space was damp and reflected my light. 

McCluskey radioed Landers. Landers came up with our interpreter (terp). The terp was an Assyrian Christian from Baghdad who’d moved to California and hated all Muslims. 

Landers spoke to the people through the terp. Landers pointed at the old man and young woman. “Sir, can you come talk with me? Ma’am, please stay there.”

The old man stood and walked to Landers—they were close enough for me to listen in. Landers asked where the bomb materials were. The old man insisted he was a goat farmer and nothing else. They went back and forth for a few minutes. Landers got frustrated, turned his back to the old man, and radioed for half of the suppressive fire team to cordon off the house and the other half to search the barn and hay piles. 

I was relieved, knowing they had to search and not me, and I wouldn’t get blown up stumbling onto a cache of something—then I felt guilt—but I was still happy I wasn’t searching.

As they searched, Landers talked with the old man. After an hour, the suppressive fire team came across the radio. They’d found a rusted Soviet assault rifle under the hay. The weapon had no rounds and no magazine.  

Landers asked the old man about the gun. The old man talked about how he had it for protection.  

The terp spit and said the old man was a fucking-lying-terrorist, this was definitely a former bomb factory, and that the old man was a good actor—but a terrorist—and we should kill him. 

I believed the terp, but I didn’t agree with the killing part. I looked at the old man’s hands. They were smooth and unscared. My cousin was a farmer and his hands always looked like they’d been in a fight with a chainsaw and lost.

The terp offered to kill the old man. Landers told him no, and to shut up, and we didn’t do things that way. The terp frowned and lit a cigarette. 

The old man complained about his gate and his door. Landers told the old man to come to the FOB tomorrow and do a claim, and he would get paid.  

Landers called over our evidence collection tech, a sixty-two-year-old ex-drug Enforcement Administration Agent who’d moved to Thailand permanently in 1984 and had never married and had never returned to the States. The ex-Agent kept his stringy hair long, died it pitch black, and kept it tied in a ponytail. He wore diamond studs in both ears. He’d once told me he’d come to Iraq to pay for his habits, but he never explained what those habits were. He made my skin crawl—the same way Father Shaughnessy had back in grade school.

Landers told the tech to get the gun.

Ten minutes later, the tech returned with the AK.

Landers reminded the man to come to Kalsu. Then he radioed the choppers, and we turned away. We walked down the stairs, clomped to the shit-hooks, and took off. In the chopper’s red light, I saw a Private named Pulaski across from me. He held a clear piece of Tupperware. He raised it towards me and winked. Inside was the largest black scorpion I’d ever seen. 

We landed. I went back to my containerized housing unit (CHU), showered, and put on physical training (PT) clothes. Then, I went to the morale-welfare-recreation tent. There was a stack of cheap black sunglasses on the sign-in table. Each pair had “USO” printed in white letters on the side. I waited in line for a computer for twenty minutes. Finally, my turn arrived. I got online to check my email. I smiled, Maria had written me, the first time in seventeen days. I opened the message.

I’m so sorry. I’ve made a mistake. We cannot be together. Please stay safe.

Maria

My neck became an inferno, my stomach clenched, and my hands shook. I walked to the front and grabbed a pair of the stupid sunglasses, shoved them on, and walked back to my CHU—looking down. Tears splashed against the inside of the lenses and the little droplets bounced back and tickled my nose.

A sergeant from Bravo Company saw me and started singing, “I wear my sunglasses at night…” 

I flicked him off and he told me to go fuck myself and I kept walking. I went to the medic’s CHU and pounded on the door. After a few minutes, it opened. Our medic was there and So was Ramirez. Ramirez just hugged me, somehow he knew, and I didn’t ask how—I just hugged him back. My medic sat up in his bed, rubbing his eyes. He complained that I woke him up and I said I didn’t care and told me to go to the porta potty and suck my own dick. I told him it was too small as tears ran down my face and made dark splotches on my grey PT shirt. He laughed at the comment, looked at the splotches, and his smile went straight. I told him I needed something to sleep. He nodded and gave me two pills and I immediately swallowed them dry. He squeezed my shoulder, I went back to my CHU, cried into my pillow.

I couldn’t sleep, so I clutched my rifle and went outside. I put Maria’s picture on the ground, pulled out my lighter, and lit it on fire.

It burned hot and orange.

It fizzled out, I didn’t feel any different, and I went back inside and lay in my bed, and nothing felt right.

****

J.B. Stevens lives in the Southeastern United States with his wife and daughter. He is a former U.S. Army Infantry officer. He served in Iraq and earned numerous awards, including a Bronze Star. His war poetry collection The Explosion Takes Both Legs is available from Middle West Press. His short story collection A Therapeutic Death is available from Shotgun Honey Books. 

For more info, and a free book, go to JB-Stevens.com.