In the Early, Cocksure Days

IRAQ, 2003

Fastened to the dash of the jingle bus with a double loop of soft wire, a transistor radio plays reedy, atonal music. The wailing reminds Staff Sergeant Berkholtz of a kazoo, but he can't say that to the Iraqi driver. That's one of the cultural insensitivities S2 briefings had warned him to avoid. Along with touching a woman, drawing Mohammed, drinking alcohol—prohibition stacked upon prohibition like sandstone blocks of a pyramid.

Once a competitive bodybuilder, Berkholtz is the only one in the squad with bulk. While his thick torso tapers to a perfect V, the others are lean and knotted with muscle, perfect builds for soldiers required to hump forty-to-fifty pounds of gear into battle on their backs. Sitting sideways in the front seat, Berkholtz eyes his squad spread through the bus. His boys. That's what he calls them when jawing with other squad leaders. Partly because that's what they are, young boys, none more than a few years removed from high school. But mostly because of the way they look up to him as a father figure, one responsible for preparing them for life-threatening danger. And then, when danger comes, for sending them charging straight into the face of it.

He's not much older, just twenty-seven, but Berkholtz feels fifty-seven, the weight of his rank aging his mind and body and twisting his gut into knots. The Velcro patch on his shoulder with three chevrons and one rocker gives him absolute authority over his squad; he just never realized how heavy it could be. The two team leaders, Corporals Faust and Parker, command four-men teams, but out of the field they're just one of the guys. Not so for Berkholtz. His is a strange and lonely position. Part of the squad, yet separate. Surrounded by men he would die for, but none he can treat as a true friend.

Some of the soldiers doze, their energy sapped from the 120-degree heat. Unlike the drenching humidity of Fort Bragg's forests, the desert kiln leeches moisture until cracked lips bleed and grit-scoured eyeballs scrape their sockets. No matter how much water they suck from the three-liter CamelBaks strapped to their shoulders, the parched feeling never goes away. The only one who seems immune to the withering heat is Private Mueller, a loudmouth filled with frenetic energy. In combat, he's a perfect soldier, a berserker who never flinches when bullets snap the air around him. But when things calm down, he becomes a troublemaker determined to drag others down with him. As Mueller hops up from his seat and slides in behind Bradshaw, Berkholtz knows he's going to start some shit. He could order Mueller back, tell him to leave Bradshaw alone, but anything that takes his mind off the wailing music is a welcome distraction.

BRADSHAW

PFC Bradshaw stares out his window at a landscape of endless, undulating dunes. Below a cloudless sky pale as a blister, the desert's hills and valleys stretch as far as the eye can see. He seems mesmerized by the endless brown, but his mind is back home in the lush green of Virginia.

That morning, he'd chatted online with his sister, Darla, but it had brought him more aggravation than relief. Each time she said how she was praying for his safe return, he was reminded how his faith had died out here in the brown. He'd carried a travel-sized Bible in his breast pocket all through basic training. Now, he has no idea where it is. Bradshaw vaguely recalls praying what feels like a million years ago. A choir boy, he believed every promise the priest uttered—that God was benevolent, that all faithful souls go to Heaven, that good always conquers evil. Each night Bradshaw would curl on his side, arm slung round the neck of his stuffed giraffe as he stared into its eyes, imagining the beaded blackness stretching to infinity. So easy when you're young to believe a soul is fabricated from starlight and clouds, tucked between heart and lungs, stitched within your skin. Harder once you watch those sacred vessels spill their contents in the sand, animated bodies becoming lifeless corpses. The desert taught him what happens when bullets tear a torso's seams, plunge in like needles without a threaded eye. He knows how few places bodies offer souls to hide.

Excerpted from All the Ruined Men by Bill Glose. Copyright © 2022 by Bill Glose. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.