Excerpt from Youngblood by Matt Gallagher, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Aloha," I said.

"Lieutenant Porter." He sounded cross. "I'm going to stay back today, draw up a plan for a sentry shack at the front gate. We're getting complacent."

"Would be good to come," I said. "For the new guys. Especially Chambers." The week before, a small group of augmentees had joined us. Chambers was a staff sergeant with combat experience, the rest cherries straight from basic. They'd all been quiet so far, watching and learning. "He seems squared away, but you could teach him how we roll."

"The rest of the platoon can handle that, sir," Sipe said.

More and more, our platoon sergeant had been finding reasons to stay inside the wire. Though it was hard for me to blame him—he was on his fourth tour to the desert, and only a year from retirement—it hadn't gone unnoticed by the others. And soldiers could be resentful souls.

Whatever, I thought. I've been picking up the slack.

• • •

A couple of hours later, thirty young men in body armor and helmets stood in the foyer of the first floor, an open, sunny octagon covered in red-and-white ceramic tiles. We all wore the lightning bolt patch of the Twenty-Fifth Infantry on our shoulders and had CamelBaks filled with clean, cold water strapped to us.

A fresco covered the wall leading down the stairway into the foyer, depicting ten smiling Iraqi children holding up their national flag. Behind the children stood an old man with a bushy black beard wearing a turban and a white dishdasha and a stoic-looking woman dressed in a dark gray burqa. The artist had given her a considerable chest. Both adults' hands rested on the shoulders of the children. The soldiers called the man Pedo bin Laden. She was the Mother Hajj.

After my patrol brief, I asked for questions. A stubby arm shot into the air from the rear of the group.

"Yes, Hog," I said, raising an eyebrow, my voice carrying a blunted inflection. The others laughed. We'd played this game before.

"Which hajji bodega we hittin' up?" he asked.

"We'll be in the market blocks," I said. I waved him up and handed over the town map. "You tell me."

"Hmm," he said. A native of Arkansas who'd enlisted at seventeen, Hog had a face that always looked like it was pressed against a windowpane, especially when he smiled. "Shi'a, mainly. Poor ones, too. Best bet is the old barber, his wives make crazy good dumplings. And might run into the Barbie Kid there—Boom Boom drinks." "Drink one of those, you're begging for a piss test."

I waited for the snickering to fade before continuing. "We'll be dismounted the whole mission—no reason to waste fuel on this. Should be back in five hours for Call of Duty." More snickering. "Anything else?"

"What if we find the enemy?" one of the new joes asked. Most of the platoon originals laughed contemptuously, causing him to blush. I felt bad for him. It'd taken some stones to ask the question.

"Cry havoc," I said. "And let slip the Hogs of war."

None of the men laughed. Too much, I thought, rubbing my bare chin under my helmet strap. Too much.

We stepped into the spring morning. The young day was already overcooked and smelled of sand and canal water. "Lock and load, Hotspur," I said, using our platoon nickname, swinging around the rifle slung over my shoulder. Technically, the M4 wasn't a rifle but a carbine, though only the country boys insisted on that detail. We each pulled out a magazine from the vests strapped to the front of our body armor. Every magazine was filled with thirty rounds of ammunition, weighing about a pound total. We slid the magazine into the rifle's well and smacked the bottom to make sure it stayed put. We pulled our rifle's charging handle, drawing the bolt back and then releasing it to grab the top round and push it into the barrel, the black magic of the gun slamming forward.

Excerpted from Youngblood by Matt Gallagher. Copyright © 2016 by Matt Gallagher. Excerpted by permission of Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.