Read Online Kaboom by Matthew Gallagher - Free Book Online

of Saba al-Bor, acting on a tip one of the local sheiks had provided us about a new family in his area housing insurgents affiliated with JAR. The information relayed to us had been flimsy at best, and that, combined with the unabated fatigue that came after an all-night OP transitioned, without interruption, into a predawn raid, had left the majority of the Gravediggers impatient, annoyed, and eager to get back to the combat outpost. All we had found thus far had been a plethora of poorly threaded blankets, some homemade herb the grandmother claimed helped the children with their many illnesses, and a torn Van Halen tee shirt that Specialist Big Ern thought he had owned in 1987 when he sported a mullet and drove a pesticide truck for a living.
    Sergeant Axel and Private Das Boot awaited our arrival on the backside of the mud hut. They stood next to a well from which a water pipe emerged,
connecting to the residence in question. Through the eyes of a green lieutenant, everything looked about as normal as a Middle Eastern abyss could look. They didn’t exactly cover what happened next in the ROTC leadership labs.

    SFC Big Country (left) and Specialist Haitian Sensation patrol through a Saba al-Bor marketplace, in early 2008.
    â€œWatch this, sir,” Staff Sergeant Boondock said, not breaking a stride. He raised his arms to grasp the center of the water pipe, stood up on his tip toes, and tilted the pipe toward Private Das Boot. “Reach in there,” he instructed the young private.
    The soldier did as he was told. “There’s hay in here, Sergeant,” he said. “Reach deeper.”
    A look of confusion crossed Private Das Boot’s face as he strained his reach further into the pipe—confusion that subsequently turned into shock. He pulled out an piece of metal, approximately eight inches long and three inches in diameter, that glinted in the arriving daylight. It shined with polish and showed no signs of rust or neglect.
    Staff Sergeant Boondock and I spoke concurrently. “Mother fuckers,” I said, while he said, perhaps just as eloquently but definitely more accurately, “A mother-fucking bolt.”
    â€œHow’d you know something was in there?” I asked Staff Sergeant Boondock.

    â€œFuck, sir,” he replied, barely able to contain his satisfaction with himself, “you know I wake up in the morning and piss excellence.”
    The next half hour passed in a blur. With the discovery of the rifle bolt, I unleashed my platoon’s rejuvenated energies and instinctive hunting skills upon the mud hut. The two men, who had already been separated, simply hung their heads in resignation when I showed them the metal piece, asking if they knew anything about it. Suge laughed in their faces and told me that they knew better than to claim ignorance at this point. The rest of the family stood quietly off to the side and gathered around a homemade fire in a barrel as we ransacked—as gently as possible—through their personal belongings, unearthing a trigger assembly, five ammo magazines, and at least one hundred 7.62-mm rounds in a carefully dug cubbyhole found underneath a rug. Corporal Spot unwrapped the mother load, found even deeper in the water pipe: a Russian-made Dragunov sniper rifle carefully swathed in dishtowels and very recently cleaned. SFC Big Country still furrowed his brow, though, when I suggested that we were nearing the end of the search. “We’re still missing the stock,” he said, racking his mind for potential hiding spots we had overlooked.
    â€œDamn it,” he continued, stalking over to the barrel where the family huddled around the fire for warmth. He shooed them away and doused the flames with water from his CamelBak hydration system. Smirking, he reached a burly Midwestern hand into the barrel, pulling out a very charred, but still recognizable, homemade wooden rifle stock. I shook my head in disbelief as Suge started