The Human Body Part 20

"Hurry up!" Di Salvo whispers.

Torsu has already picked out the right spot for his needs, a huge rock planted in the middle of the riverbed, which probably split the stream and created eddies back when the river flowed. The outcropping was illuminated by the full moon and he'd gazed longingly at it throughout the night between bouts of drowsiness that could only be likened to sleep.

As for what might hit him from above, an accurate shot in the back of his neck, for instance, he wasn't worried about that. If the enemy had wanted to shoot him, he would have done so already. He's more afraid of what might be hidden under the soil. It must be about forty steps from the Lince to the rock. Forty chances to put his foot in the wrong place and be wiped off the face of the earth. The explosion you don't hear is the one that's already killed you, Masiero had said in his course.

Torsu covers the distance with as wide a stride as he can, forcing himself to set his foot down gently (though he knows it's pointless: if there's a detonator and he steps on it, that's it-boom). At first he's hesitant and turns to Di Salvo every two or three steps, as if looking for rea.s.surance. His buddy signals him to go on, move it; Rene might wake up at any moment and the punishment would fall on him too for keeping his mouth shut while the Sardinian committed an infraction.

Another step. It makes no difference whether he zigzags or goes straight ahead; he might as well choose the shortest path.

He's halfway there. He's gaining confidence, moving more quickly now. His gut is looking forward to the privacy and knots up even more tightly. Torsu speeds up. He runs the last few yards. Before going around the rock he bends down, picks up a stone, and throws it a little ways ahead, to scare away any poisonous snakes, scorpions, spiders, and who knows what else.

Finally he's alone. He drops his pants. The cold nips pleasantly at his bare thighs. His p.e.c.k.e.r has withdrawn, shriveled up-it looks like a filbert. Torsu waggles it with his fingers, but the little guy, recalcitrant, sputters out a miserable trickle of very dark p.i.s.s.

How humiliating! He'd stood all that time on the turret, exhausted and filthy. If only he hadn't gotten it into his head to join the mission. He'd had a right to remain at the FOB. Why did he do it, then? To prove his worth, to show how great his loyalty is. Loyalty to whom?

Now his body has nothing left to expel, futile spasms more than anything, but it's nice to crouch there and let it go. During his illness the first corporal major got into the habit of talking to his digestive system, as if it were a creature separate from himself. He scolds it when the pain is too intense and says, "Good boy, you're behaving well," when things go better. Now he tries to calm it down: "We still have a long way to go. If you don't settle down today, Simoncelli will shoot me for real."

As he converses with his bowels, he plays marbles with the pebbles scattered on the ground and scratches the soil with his nails. To stay crouched without tearing the tendons in his heels, he rocks back and forth like a Buddhist monk. He feels like whistling, but maybe that's going too far.

Looking up, he's able to catch a glimpse of the day's first ray of light, which s.h.i.+nes directly in his face. It's pale, tenuous, and doesn't convey any heat. The sun is clinging to the mountain so that he thinks he can see it being born. Then the fiery ball peeps out, gigantic, as if it were about to come toppling down any moment and set everything ablaze. The sky all around is veined with orange, yellow, and pink, the streaks drifting off into the extinguished blue. Torsu has never seen a sunrise so crisp and majestic, not even from the beach at Coaquaddus, when he would stay up until dawn in the summer with his friends.

"f.u.c.king awesome!" he exclaims.

Tersicore89 should be there. Naturally, she'd find more appropriate words than his: she's a poet. But Tersicore89 doesn't want him anymore. She's angry because he doubted her. Torsu feels sad.

When his interest in the rising sun has evaporated, he attempts to clean himself off using water from the canteen.

No enemies around, or so it seems. No one has taken aim at them. If you don't count the IED found yesterday-which could very well have been there for days-if you ignore that little obstacle, there's absolutely no evidence of any hostile presence. For the first time, Torsu thinks they're making a mountain out of a molehill and that everything is likely to go smoothly the rest of the way.

"Dumb-a.s.ses," he says under his breath as he hops confidently back to the Lince, his step breezy, hands in his pockets even (but still careful to go the exact same way he came).

"What did you say?" Di Salvo whispers.

Torsu shakes his head, forget it. He's clean, feeling good, at peace. Ready to go.

By half past six they're on the move. Masiero has promised that he won't move from where he is until they reach him. Lieutenant Egitto has slept fitfully, mainly because of the cold. During the night the temperature dropped sharply and he s.h.i.+vered, half asleep, huddled in his waterproof poncho. Every quarter of an hour Marshal Rene got up from the stretcher, crept into the driving compartment, and started the engine to run the heater, then had to turn it off to conserve fuel. Finally, tired of going back and forth, he stayed behind the wheel, awake, staring out at the night. Egitto admires the marshal's remarkable tenacity. He feels a little ridiculous at deriving such rea.s.surance from a younger man. The vacant s.p.a.ce on the stretcher was immediately occupied by Abib, who is still snoring; even asleep he has a c.o.c.ky att.i.tude, legs spread wide, an arm behind his head.

Egitto has to manually stimulate his numb facial muscles. He has the symptoms of a cold: nose stuffed with mucus, achy bones, head like a lead balloon, maybe even a fever? Uncertain, he crunches a thousand-milligram tablet of Tylenol, then rinses his mouth. He's aware of the liver damage that can be caused by an overdose of acetaminophen, but this is no time to be overly fastidious.

Rene drives more smoothly than Camporesi; he knows how to deal with the holes to minimize the stress on the shock absorbers. Now that they're the third vehicle in the column, there's less dust in front of them and you can see everything. The marshal murmurs good morning, then falls silent again, as if to respect the lieutenant's slow awakening; he himself shows no signs of giving out, despite the nearly sleepless night and the wound on his stomach.

In a few minutes they're out of Lartay, all in one piece.

"One down," Rene says, exhaling forcefully through his mouth.

Egitto hands him an energy bar, and the marshal takes it. They celebrate like that while Abib loudly clears his nasal pa.s.sages. The acetaminophen is reaching its peak effectiveness. The velvety serenity of drugs-that's one thing the lieutenant can always count on.

They leave Pusta behind them, and avoid Saydal by clambering up the slope of the mountain. These are not strategic choices made by the marshal: all they can (and must) do is follow the tracks of the vehicles that preceded them. Wherever Masiero's tire marks can be seen on the ground, they're guaranteed to find no surprises.

At half past seven they catch sight of the cl.u.s.ter of dwellings that make up Terikhay, which is little more than a mountain pasture, though it seemed more significant than that on the map. They climb farther and continue along the mountainside. Then they descend to the dry riverbed. They find themselves in a spot where the valley suddenly narrows like an hourgla.s.s and that's where they come upon the spectacle.

A sizable flock of reddish sheep is blocking their way, while more come rus.h.i.+ng in from both sides. They tear down the hillside, hooves slipping and sliding: two streams of animals converge in their path, forming a whirlpool of undulating fleece. The sheep rub against each other and sniff one another's b.u.t.ts; occasionally one raises its head to the sky and utters a harsh, grating bleat.

Egitto is amazed at this burst of vitality. "How many can there be?" he asks.

Rene doesn't answer. The marshal has realized something that the lieutenant, distracted by the sheep or by the free flow of serotonin in the hippocampus, has missed. Rene is leaning over the wheel, biting his upper lip. "There's no shepherd," he says, then grabs the binoculars hanging on the seat. He scours the area.

It's true-there's no shepherd, there's not a soul, aside from the sheep that seem to be spewing right out of the mountain, hurtling down by the hundreds, terrified by something that the soldiers can't see.

"We have to get out of here," Rene says.

Egitto registers the change of color on the marshal's face. "How?" he asks. "We're boxed in."

"We'll shoot."

"Shoot the sheep?"

Torsu, standing on the Browning's turret a few yards from them, looks like he's enjoying it all. He keeps ducking in and out of the cupola, pointing at the sheep.

Rene grabs the radio and calls to Cederna, who is at the head of the column, but his colleague's ironic response-a bleat-is drowned out by the RPG strike that thunders behind them. The lieutenant sees the flash out of the corner of his eye through the rearview mirror. Afterward, there's just black smoke rising from one of the vehicles. Egitto holds his breath as he tries to figure out which one it is. He feels relieved when he realizes that it's one of the civilian trucks. Only much later will he be able to reflect on that momentary lack of humanity.

What follows next, until the time the Lince driven by Salvatore Camporesi blows up on twenty kilograms of explosives, blasting the pa.s.sengers on board to bits-all except one, who has the good fortune to be thrown several yards away among the sheep-lasts three or four minutes at most.

Torsu, Di Salvo, Rovere, and the other gunners in the column hammer away with the Brownings. They fire at an enemy they can't see, somewhat hit or miss and mostly pointing upward.

Mattioli shoots.

Mitrano shoots.

No one has had time to figure out which direction the RPG rocket came from, so they take aim at the sheep rus.h.i.+ng down the hill, as if they were the threat. Things become clear soon enough, however, because the enemy starts. .h.i.tting them with everything they have, from all sides. Mortar sh.e.l.ls erupt from the villages of Terikhay and Khanjak; clearly the artillerymen have had time to plan, because the strikes land a few dozen yards away. Small arms fire converges on the column from every direction, then more rockets, and shrapnel that shatters in the sky and hails down on their heads. An inferno, h.e.l.l on earth.

Pecone, Pa.s.salacqua, and Simoncelli shoot.

Cederna makes out two armed shadows up above, at nine o'clock, and doesn't stop firing until he's neutralized them both. The satisfaction he feels when the first one jerks back isn't anything like what he'd imagined; it happens too quickly and from too far away-it's almost more gratifying to put a hole in the center of the silhouette at the firing range.

Ruffinatti shoots.

Ietri performs his job zealously, though it's not much: he hands Di Salvo the ammunition belts and in between dealing them out he tries to pinpoint the enemy with binoculars, so he can then give the location to Cederna. He's very calm. It's almost as if he doesn't realize what's happening. A sheep rubs up against the hot metal of the door, then looks at him intently; Ietri stands there in a daze, watching it, until Di Salvo yells: "Ammo, a.s.shole!"

Allais, Candela, Vercellin, and Anfossi shoot.

Rene shouts over the radio: "Move forward-go, go, go!"

Zampieri is the one who should move because she's first in the column, but she's frozen. Her mind is a blank; all she sees is those sheep and she wonders what they're doing there, although the more pertinent question would be what is she doing there.

Camporesi honks the horn to rouse Zampieri. No one hears it; there's too much noise.

An RPG blows up another truck.

Egitto is blinded for a few seconds by the flash of a mortar bomb that kills a dozen sheep in one strike. The ambulance shudders.

"Move, move, move!"

The sheep are running wild. They do an about-face to clamber back up the mountain, collide with those that are racing down, and tumble along together for a few yards without ever falling.

"Move, d.a.m.n it, move!"

Camporesi floors the accelerator, steers to the right to get around Zampieri's vehicle, and pa.s.ses her, tires squealing. Some sheep move aside to let him through; others are ruthlessly mowed down. He makes it to the front of the column, cuts through the bleating flock, runs over a pressure plate made of two stolen graphite strips and 1.5-volt alkaline batteries with his left front wheel, sets off the charge placed under the plate, and the Lince blows up.

The charred pieces of the Lince lie scattered over the dry gra.s.s. Ietri stares at them from behind the mud-spattered window. He could rub the gla.s.s with his forearm to see better, but a part of him knows that the dirt is mostly on the outside and it wouldn't do any good. Peering more closely, he realizes that some of the burnt remains on the ground, the smaller ones, aren't mechanical but anatomical. For example, there's a boot still attached to its sole, upright, with something sticking out of it. He's not sure what the others are. So that's how a human body is blown apart, he thinks.

The blaze spreads from the vehicle to the brush, radiating a few yards.

How many sheep must have been killed by the explosion? Maybe fifty, but it might be more, a gory carpet of fleece overhung with dense smoke billowing up from the flaming cha.s.sis.

Salvatore Camporesi, Cesare Mattioli, Arturo Simoncelli, and Vincenzo Mitrano no longer exist. They've been vaporized.

Angelo Torsu, after an acrobatic fight, lies faceup thirty paces from the demolished vehicle. He lost consciousness, but came to almost immediately. He can't feel any of his limbs, he's blind, and he can barely breathe. Rather than worrying about anything more important, he's concerned that a sheep might come and lick him; he dreads the idea of a rough tongue pa.s.sing over him in the dark. He's bleeding a little everywhere and he knows it.

Marshal Rene has completed his mental roll call. He was slower than usual, but the result he's come up with is accurate. He's missing Camporesi, Mattioli, Mitrano, and Simoncelli. Torsu is out there, unmoving, most likely to be counted among the lost, he thinks. The marshal's eyes fill with tears-something new for him.

Being heroic is not enough to be a hero.

The enemy had stopped firing, but has resumed almost immediately, seemingly only made bolder. Cederna is the only one who has the presence of mind to return the fire. He shoots, reloads, shoots, reloads, shoots, reloads, not stopping to catch his breath.

One of the last incidents that Roberto Ietri remembers about his father is the night he woke him up to take him to see the wheat stubble burning. The countryside was all in flames, the entire Daunia on fire, the hills red against the black.

Zampieri makes out bizarre shapes in the plumes of smoke: a tree, a hand, a gigantic dragon. None of this can be real.

Torsu's diaphragm shudders as he comes to. He also regains his sight (not entirely; his left eye is swollen and the eyelid partly shut). All Torsu can see is a portion of sky. Wherever he is, he has to let the others know that he's alive. a.s.suming that there still are any others. Gathering up whatever energy he has left in his body, he directs it to his right arm and with an immense effort raises it.

"He's alive! Torsu is alive!" someone yells.

Rene has also noticed the raised arm. The request to take action and rescue their comrade comes to him by radio from all the vehicles. But whoever goes out there without cover is likely to stay there. Once again, he has to make a difficult decision because of Torsu. G.o.d d.a.m.n that Sardinian! Marshal Rene, a man of sterling character, the NCO who would like to be captain, the intrepid soldier, doesn't know what to do.

"Charlie Three One to Med. Charlie Three One to Med. Request permission to retrieve the wounded man, over."

Rene turns to Lieutenant Egitto. He's in charge after all. "What should we do, Doc?"

Di Salvo has to let up on the Browning if he doesn't want to melt the barrel. He shoulders his rifle and goes on firing.

The whirring of the blades of an approaching helicopter. No, there are two. Two helicopters! Here they come!

Egitto replies to Rene: "Let's wait."

Torsu's arm drops to the ground. He starts to cry.

Recklessness is a miraculous quality of young men and Ietri is the youngest of all. He's just twenty years old. He sees Torsu's arm rise and then fall back. I'm a soldier, he tells himself. I'm a man. Zampieri's kiss is still burning on his lips and gives him courage. s.h.i.+t, I'm a soldier! I'm a man! "I'm going to get him," he says. "Don't you move from there," Cederna barks. He's higher in rank, but who does he think he is, giving him orders? After what he did. Ietri opens the door and jumps out of the vehicle. He sprints, dodging the dead sheep and his companions' body parts, and in an instant is beside his buddy. "I'll get you out of here now," he promises. But then he doesn't know what to do, whether he should drag him by the hands or feet, or hoist him up and carry him on his back. But what if he has a broken spine? He's come that far and now he's uncertain. "Hang on," he says, but more than anything it's a way of telling himself: Move it!

The enemy has plenty of time to take aim. The shots come from multiple directions at once, roughly the same number of bullets in front and in back. For that reason, though jolted, the body of Roberto Ietri remains standing for an exceptionally long time. The autopsy will reveal that the fatal bullet is the one that veers improbably from his scapula and becomes lodged in his heart, in the right ventricle. In the end Ietri sags and collapses on top of Torsu.

The night the fields burned he had fallen asleep in his father's arms as they walked back to the car. He'd hardly ever stayed up so late, but in the morning he dragged himself out of bed so he could tell his mother all about it. She'd listened patiently, even the third and fourth time. Maybe this wasn't the final thought the corporal had planned on before dying, the one he'd prepared, but it's fine just the same. It wasn't so bad after all. Life hadn't been so bad.

Torsu finds it hard to breathe again, his sternum squashed by his companion. He's s.h.i.+vering now and he's afraid he's going to die. His face feels strange, as if someone has put ice on it. He whimpers. He didn't think this would happen, that he would die leaving everything hanging. He feels stupid for what he did, for the way he acted, in general and more particularly for the way he treated Tersicore89. What good was all that truth? What difference did it make? She loved him, she understood him. He should have been satisfied with that. Now look where he is: crushed under the dead body of a comrade with no one to miss him, no one to cry out to. Just to feel less alone, First Corporal Major Angelo Torsu hugs the lifeless body of Roberto Ietri. He holds him tight. The body still retains a little of its human warmth.

Colonel Ballesio dismissed everyone except her. When the subordinates left, he pushed his chair back with his pelvis and leaned his forehead on his folded arms. He hasn't moved again. Could he be sleeping? Is there something she should do? She could go over and rest a hand on his shoulder, for example. No, it's unthinkable. Their familiarity hasn't nearly developed to that point.

And she, Irene, how does she feel? Relieved for one thing, because Alessandro's name isn't listed among the dead. She's stunned, of course, but it's as if the real shock were slow to hit her. You're sending people to die, Irene. I want you to realize that before it happens, because afterward there can be no excuses for you.

A short while ago Ballesio had delivered a concise report of the battle to the soldiers a.s.sembled at the base and read the list of fallen comrades with exaggerated pauses: "Senior Corporal Major Simoncelli. Senior Corporal Major Camporesi. First Corporal Major Mattioli. Corporal Mitrano. They were on the Lince. Corporal Ietri was struck by small arms fire. The wounded man is First Corporal Major Torsu. The survivors are still under enemy fire. Now get the h.e.l.l out, all of you."

Each name was greeted by sighs, moans, curses: an effective way to measure how well the victims were liked.

Irene gets up, fills a plastic cup from the water tank, and takes small sips. Then she fills one for the commander. She places it on the desk, near his head. Ballesio heaves himself up. He has a red mark on his forehead from the pressure of his arms. He gulps down the water all at once and then stops to contemplate the translucent molded plastic.

"You know what, Sammartino? I wish I had something personal to say about those guys. The men expect me to talk about their comrades tonight, to pay tribute to them, like a kind of father"; he says "father" scornfully. "Every good commander is able to. How decent he was, how brave he was, how handy he was with engines. A f.u.c.king story for each of them. And they're right. But you want to know the truth? I can't think of anything. I'm not their father. If I had kids like my soldiers, I'd spend my time kicking their a.s.ses." He crumples the sheet of paper with the names of the fallen in his hand. Then, repentant, he smoothes it out with his palm. "I don't remember the face of any one of them. Arturo Simoncelli. Who the h.e.l.l is that? Vincenzo Mitrano. Him, yeah. Vaguely. I think I can picture this one too: Salvatore Camporesi. A tall guy. Does that seem to you like something I could say? 'We mourn the loss of our friend Salvatore, he was a very tall guy.' And these two? Ietri and Mattioli. I haven't the foggiest idea who they were. Maybe I never even set eyes on them. There are 190 soldiers here at the FOB, Sammartino, 190 human beings who depend on me and the mood I'm in when I get up in the morning, and I didn't bother to take the time to distinguish them from one another. What do you think of that? It's interesting, isn't it? I find it very interesting. You want to report that information to your superiors? Go right ahead and report it-I don't really give a s.h.i.+t."

"Commander, please."

"They're all indistinguishable. Tell them that too. Colonel Giacomo Ballesio says of his men, colon, quote, 'For me they're all indistinguishable.' This one died instead of that one, so what? It makes no difference. Tell that to your G.o.dd.a.m.n superiors. It makes no difference. They were just kids who didn't know what they were doing."

He's livid. Irene is willing to tolerate the outburst up to a certain point, as long as it isn't directed against her. She wonders what would happen if she really did decide to report the commander's words. What he's saying to her is a declaration, dictated by his grief but still a declaration, and therefore could legitimately be reported. Would she have the courage to do it? When they ask her for a detailed report on the FOB-and they will ask; after what's happened they'll want to be informed about everything-will she tell them this as well? Who would benefit from it, other than her professional integrity? She'd rather not go head-to-head with her own moral principles over such a question. The commander would be better off saying no more. She tries to interrupt, but there's no way.

"If they're dead it's because they made a mistake. They made a mistake. And I made a mistake sending them there. And you're about to make another one, writing a version in your report that won't even come close to the truth, to the complexity of the truth. Because you, Sammartino, let's be frank, don't know a d.a.m.n thing about war."

Here they come, the accusations. There can be no excuses for you. She'll let that pa.s.s as well; then she'll turn her back and walk away.

"And then there's an infinite chain of errors that precedes you and me, but that doesn't absolve us." Ballesio's forehead is perspiring, but he holds his hands strangely still, palms down on the table, like a sphinx. "We're all guilty, Sammartino. All of us. But some of us . . . well, some of us much more so."

Viewed from above, from the perspective of a helicopter, the circle of vehicles down in the valley looks like a magic symbol, a ring to ward off evil spirits. It would be worth photographing it, but n.o.body does.

For the soldiers trapped in the armored vehicles the sight is less appealing: there's the carca.s.s of the vehicle still burning in some places, the amputated, decapitated, and mangled sheep, and First Corporal Major Torsu with the corpse of Ietri on top of him.

They've arranged the vehicles in a circle, front ends pointed out, to ensure protection to the injured soldier. A distasteful maneuver-many of them had to crush the dead sheep with their wheels-as well as rash, since all or nearly all of them had to go outside the track, risking other IEDs.

As the minutes go by since the firing stopped, Lieutenant Egitto's eyes seize on new, less conspicuous details. His window is splattered with blood. Some of the animals, still wandering around disoriented, have string tied around their necks. And the dead soldiers' weapons are miraculously intact.

He'd shouted to Torsu to signal him with his arm every minute, to show that he's alive and conscious. If he were to stop signaling, then the lieutenant would have to come up with something, a quick rescue. Someone would have to risk his life with him. But Torsu raises his right hand and slaps the ground diligently. He does this seven times in all.

I'm still alive.