Appetite for Destruction

By S.J. Hawley

'The drill instructor’s job was to transform a civilian into a potential killer. It was a traumatic procedure, but essential if a marine was to function on the battlefield. Without the ability to take life, a recruit was useless to the united states marine corps.'

Baghdad, 2004. From landmines to sniper-fire to suicide-bombers, nothing has prepared 19-year old donnie prentice for the trauma of boots on the ground in iraq. From his baptism of fire in nasiriyah’s ‘ambush alley’ to the horrors of hand-to-hand combat in the burning city of fallujah, donnie finds himself in conflict with both the jihadist enemies of the coalition and his own inner-demons as he struggles to survive the killing fields of post-9/11 iraq.

'If the corps represented a cross-section of the american public, that cross-section included the percentage of misfits and hoods and sociopaths encountered in civilian life. More so, in fact. The military was a magnet for the off-cuts of society. The poverty-stricken, fatherless, homeless searching for a reason for being and a place to belong. The walking time bombs looking for an excuse to explode.'

• Language: English
• Publisher: S.J. Hawley
• Release date: May 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310851049

S.J. Hawley

Author biogs are only worth reading if you're Jack London, William Burroughs or Ernest Hemingway. Like most writers, the only interesting events in my life take place on paper. In which case, I am a piquant mixture of ageing Lothario, Special Forces operative and underworld sociopath, masquerading in real life as a white-collar graduate drone and suburban commuter.

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APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION

S.J. Hawley

Appetite for Destruction

By S.J. Hawley

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 S.J. Hawley

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover image Cover image was issued by ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office, Kabul, Afghanistan and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

To R.M. 21736 Mne. Hawley, J.D.

Soldier and father.

Modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war’s irrationality and horror is of no effect on him. The horrors make the fascination - William James

Welcome to the Jungle

Central Iraq, August 2004

Prentice dropped his pants. Squatted. Grunted as he released a stream of rusty brown water into the dirt of the alleyway. The local bacilli were hardcore jihadist. Saddam’s WMD kicking in at last. The first and only Arabic phrase he’d picked up so far was Al-mu-ra-fiq? Where is the latrine?

Corporal Polk stuck his head around the corner from the street, cream-cheese complexion flushed with sunburn, blonde high-and-tight spongy with sweat. You done yet?

Prentice tore a strip from his skivvy shirt. Gimme a minute. Gave a perfunctory wipe before fastening his cammies. He’d be walking the rest of the patrol with an itchy ass, but what the fuck. He could live with that. Like many grunts, he had an irrational fear of taking incoming with his pants down. Better a red asshole than a Purple Heart.

It was more than dysentery sending his colon into spasm as he rejoined the platoon, however. The street ahead was deserted. There were no old women in black. Begging kids. Not even the stray dogs that trailed the patrolling Americans like crows behind the plough. The air felt heavy, the way it did before a thunderstorm. It wasn’t a matter of if they were going to be hit, but when.

And then it happened. A Mills bomb lofted over a courtyard wall as they approached a T-junction. Time slowed, the cast-iron orb mesmerizing him as it hung before his eyes. He loosed a jet of diarrhea down his leg as the gnarled, matt-black metal pineapple struck the sidewalk in front of him and bounced, rooting him in place.

The scene jerked back into life, fast-motion, as Polk body-checked him into one of the fetid green puddles lacing the gutter. The grenade detonated, the double-shock of the concussion slapping his ears as the shockwave rebounded from the enclosing walls, temporarily deafening him.

Tuilagi was down, bloodstains mottling the big Samoan’s pants, but Prentice was unable to react. He felt curiously detached as the mujahadeen sprang the ambush. Everything around him was in black and white. The muzzle-flashes seemed unreal, like effects on a movie screen. All he needed was a bucket of popcorn, a Coke, and he could be checking out a blockbuster at the local mall.

Abruptly, his hearing returned. The sonic cracks transformed the muzzle-flashes into gunshots rather than special effects. He buried himself behind a burned-out Volvo, hugging the sidewalk as Doc Bicek scrambled towards Tuilagi, a burst of machinegun fire battering the roadway behind him. It struck him as outrageous that the bastards were trying to kill him. What the fuck had he done to deserve this?

Bicek touched-down by the Samoan and dragged him into a doorway. He crouched over the wounded Marine as rounds snapped overhead, cutting away the big guy’s pants. The bloodstains had merged by now, soaking the desert camouflage a uniform black. He applied pressure bandages.

Stay with it, Tee. Don’t pass out on me yet, all right?

My balls, Doc. They get my balls?

You’re okay, bro. Still hanging proud.

You shitting me, Doc?

Bicek took his hand. See? Guided it towards his crotch. Everything still in working order, okay?

Tuilagi’s eyes began to brim. Thank you, God. Oh, thank you.

A million dollar wound, ya lucky fuck. You’re on the Freedom Bird back to the States. Land of the big PX. He turned to Kendrick. The kid’s stable but he needs a hospital. You get us some medevac, sarge?

Kendrick snatched at the radio. Get some fuckin’ armor up while I’m at it. He snapped at Prentice. Return fire, dammit.

What?

Use your frigging rifle.

Prentice blinked. He squinted down the sights at the muzzle-blasts emerging from the Soviet-style apartment block down the street. Compressed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

A double-feed. Two rounds in the chamber at once. The bastard was jammed. A useless rifle in the middle of a firefight. He was fucked.

He made to clear the stoppage.

Shit.

The safety was on.

He re-sighted his rifle and drained the magazine into the apartment block. Hoped no one had noticed the fuck-up as he tapped a fresh mag against his helmet, seating the bullets, before reloading.

Someone kicked his foot. Kendrick.

On your feet. You too, Ready Rock. Egighian, Sbabaro. Into that house.

The fire team sprinted forward, heads retracted, shoulders half-turned towards the incoming. They were running flat-out, but everything was in slow motion. It was the nightmare sensation of churning through quicksand, unable to outpace the steel sleeting down on them. The apartment block seemed to recede as they pounded towards it, sphincters clenched, as enemy fire furrowed the asphalt at their feet.

And then they were stacked each side the doorway, safe from the metal storming overhead. Fire was coming from both sides of the street by now, though, a rocket-propelled grenade deflecting from the phone wires above the doorway sheltering Tuilagi and Bicek, the RPG blowing harmlessly in the road as it took a course.

Kendrick punched Prentice’s arm. Stay back. He rolled a grenade into the doorway. An echoing bass note from the explosion, a cloud of dust issuing into the street and they were inside, moving low and close to the walls, coughing and blinking as they searched the rooms on the ground floor. Came up empty.

The stairs. If the hajjis caught them between floors, they were dead.

Keep me covered, Kendrick said. Hit the stairway running.

He crouched as he reached the landing halfway up. Waved them on.

They joined him on the landing. Repeated the procedure. Emerged on the second floor.

Again, nothing.

There were three more landings to go. Fire seemed to be slackening, though. And an Abrams had appeared at the end of the street. It looked as if the ambush was over.

They made it to the roof. The ground was mounded with glittering brass cartridges. There were empty U.S. ration packs. Cigarette ends. No bloodstains, though. The bastards had got away over the rooftops.

They had been lucky this time. The muj had played it safe. Hit and run style. Classic guerrilla warfare tactics. The Marines had made the building, the tank shown at the end of the street, and they’d chosen to book.

It wasn’t always going to be that way, though. These had obviously been local hajjis rather than the hardcore jihadists they were beginning to encounter. Chechens and Somalis, veterans of past wars against the superpowers, fanatics prepared to make the infidel pay for every inch of sacred soil. To fight and die where they stood.

At least it was over for now, which was fine by Prentice. His energy was gone. He suddenly felt weak, as if someone had pulled a plug. Giddy. His hands shook, as he propped himself against the parapet and set light a cigarette. Wondered if he was going to puke, as he sucked down a lungful of smoke.

Goddamn Iraq. It was a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from. He was a twenty-first century, white-bread American boy, for Christ sake. A mall-rat and suburbanite. Generation X. How the fuck had he ended up on a bullet-scarred rooftop in the Middle East, faint, nauseous, stinking of his own shit, while a bunch of religious maniacs tried to kill him?

The Drill Instructor’s job was to transform a civilian into a potential killer. It was a traumatic procedure, but essential if a Marine was to function on the battlefield. Without the ability to take life, a recruit was useless to the United States Marine Corps.

Desensitization. That was as much an aim of the training as the acquisition of weapons skills. When a boot had to break the neck of a rabbit, skin it, gut it, the hardening of emotion was the point of the exercise rather than the supposed survivalist techniques imparted. Time spent on the rifle range was designed not only to make the recruit proficient in the use of an M-16, but also to enable him to overcome civilization’s most deeply held taboo. If a Marine could pull the trigger without doubt or hesitation by the time he completed boot camp, then the Drill Instructor had succeeded in his task.

The conditioning process was a gradual one. Recruits trained on the Indoor Stimulated Marksmanship Machine before graduating to live firing. The weapons and graphics were state of the art. It made the exercise resemble actual battlefield experience and, at the same time, made the death of an individual nothing more than a point scored in a real-life computer game. Like the General said later, It’s fun to shoot some people… it’s a hoot.

They shot at plastic dummies when they finally made the range. Man-sized targets that collapsed when hit. Firing from a fighting hole, in full combat gear, the training was designed to make the exercises resemble the battlefield as much as possible -and visa versa. If a Marine could fire at a human being with the same lack of affect as he fired at a target on the Live Firing Range, then the DIs at San Diego and Parris Island had done their jobs correctly.

The Corps talked of honor and courage, the warrior spirit, and there was no lie in their words. The lie was in what they omitted: that the warrior and the psychopath were vicious twin brothers joined at the hip. The dark and the light were braided together deep in the soul of a Marine and either could rise to the surface in the heat of battle. The man who would selflessly risk his life to rescue a wounded comrade from the battlefield could turn his assault rifle on an injured enemy combatant with equal aplomb.

Some recruits found the transition easier than others. The myth of the clean-cut youths that manned the ranks, farm boys, suburbanites, city kids looking for a way out, overlooked the fact that the Corps also attracted a good proportion of young men who enjoyed violence. They were attracted to the fact that they could use a gun without restraint. Kill with impunity.

If the Corps represented a cross-section of the American public, that cross-section included the percentage of misfits and hoods and sociopaths encountered in civilian life. More so, in fact. The military was a magnet for the off-cuts of society. The poverty-stricken, fatherless, homeless searching for a reason for being and a place to belong. The walking time bombs looking for an excuse to explode.

BOOK ONE

Teenage Wasteland

California, Fall 2001 - Spring 2002

We have the highest standard of living in the world and, as one would expect, the worst individual fighting soldiers of any big power. Or at least in their natural state they are. They’re comparatively wealthy, they’re spoiled, and as Americans they share most of them the peculiar manifestation of our democracy. They have an exaggerated idea of the rights due to themselves as individuals and no idea at all of the rights due to others. It’s the reverse of the peasant, and I’ll tell you right now it’s the peasant who makes the soldier - Norman Mailer- The Naked and the Dead

One

Prentice rolled out of bed. He put together an outfit from the laundry spilling out of the black plastic trash bag in the corner. Strapped on his Timex.

Son-of-a-bitch. Late again.

The inch-and-a-half of stale liquor in the forty-ouncer of Mickey’s by the bed did something to stabilize his system. He caught the bus on the corner, sipping from a coffee-to-go as he hung from the strap in the center aisle, fighting to control his stomach as he rode downtown.

Lori. They’d argued again. The usual shit. Not that it mattered. A guy could get whiplash trying to keep up with her mood swings. Permanent PMT. She knew how to fuck with his head. No wonder he ended most evenings half in the bag.

He was beginning to realize the songs and movies had lied to him. An appreciation of classic rock lyrics and a fondness for the Late Show were obviously no basis for understanding the female of the species. Bonding with a woman was more complicated than he’d thought. His relationship with Lori was shaping as a crash-course on adulthood and he didn’t think he’d survive to graduate.

You’re smart, Donnie, a reader, yet you’re wasting your life. You did well at school. With your brains, you should be getting an education. Even working for your dad at the garage would be something. And yet you spend your time in crummy service jobs, like a fucking beaner. Boozing away your life with that asshole Trey when you could be in college. Studying for a degree.

College. Right. He’d stuck it for a semester, at his parent’s insistence, before quitting. Sitting in a classroom had always struck him as an exercise in brainwashing, even at school. That was without the marketing stereotypes that surrounded him on campus. The wannabe CEOs in Ralph Lauren worrying about their pension plans. Wiggers. Jocks. Frat-boys. Pierced and dyed rebels living the bohemian life on daddy’s dime. College and me didn’t get on, Lori. I wasn’t cut out for business school. I thought you knew that by now. He closed his eyes, obscuring the flicker of the TV set in the corner of the bedroom. Let them open again as he attempted to keep things civil. This isn’t the first time we had this conversation, you know? It’s getting kinda boring. We don’t wanna argue about the same old shit again, do we, babe?

Lori pouted as she dressed, cheerleader-casual in a powder blue pullover and sports’ bra, a Mickey Mouse tattoo flashing left of center as she stepped into stone-colored sweatpants. So the course didn’t agree with you, she said, lacing on her Nikes. Try something different. You were always a moviegoer. Music-buff. Media studies would be a walk in the park for you. Wouldn’t it, Donnie?

Try getting a job with a degree in media. Besides, college costs money. Money I haven’t got.

What about your parents?

After I blew the scholarship? You gotta be kidding me. Why do you think I’m living in a cold water flat rather than back at my folks’ place?

There’s always an excuse, isn’t there?

It’s a reason, Lori. Not an excuse. Two different things, okay? He knitted his hands behind his head and focused on the light bulb. Whatever he was looking for, it wasn’t to be found on a university campus. Not yet, anyhow. He was still trying to figure things out. What to do with his life. Where he was heading. He didn’t want to be trapped into adulthood until he was good and ready for it. Fed into the corporate shredder without a struggle. Not at this point in his life, anyway. Look, Lori, you might as well save your breath. We had this argument before and we always end up in the same place. I’m not going back to college and that's final, okay? No matter how much you bitch about it.

You don’t think about the future, do you, Donnie? What if…

What?

You and me, Donnie. You never think about what’s going to happen with us, sweetheart?

He tossed the empty coffee container as he stepped off the bus opposite the recruitment center. Him and Lori. The future. Either three years trapped with a bunch of clones in a campus prison or the rest of his life spent in the grind and humiliation of minimum wage labor. Some fucking choice.

He consulted his watch again. If he still had a choice, that is. He was almost ten minutes late. That prick Landau. He’d tear him a new asshole he was late again this week.

He slipped in the rear entrance, nodding to Brenda, the senior waitress, as she shook her head at him.

Brenda always looked to be in recovery from some life-threatening illness, the skin loose on her face, like an ill-fitting rubber mask. She reminded him of an East Bay version of Iggy Pop. What thirty years in the service industry could do to an individual, they didn’t get with the program while they still had the chance.

He’s got a hair across his ass, she said, in her forty-a-day cigarette croak, torching a Newport. You best get your coat off and get those tables cleared before he knows you’re in.

Too late. The little bastard was standing by the cloakroom. Morning, Prentice. Or should I say afternoon? Glad you could join us today.

He ducked his head. Mr Landau. Hated himself for kowtowing to the middle-aged half-pint, as he made to edge past him.

Not so fast, Prentice. You know how many times you’ve been late this month?

Thing is, Mr Landau…

I don’t want to hear it. One more time, Prentice, and you’re out on your ear. If you can’t take this job seriously, there’s no reason we should be putting ourselves out to accommodate you. Do I make myself clear?

He pictured himself hoisting Landau off his feet by the neck, the manager’s face turning purple, tongue protruding, as he squeezed. Yes, Mr Landau.

And wipe that idiotic smirk off your face while you’re at it. You’re close enough to the edge as it is, without treating this as some kind of joke.

He shucked his coat. Mr Landau.

Now get out front and get those tables cleared. I’m sick of the sight of you.

Brenda clucked as he emerged from the hallway. He really laid it on you, didn’t he, honey?

He felt the color climb in his face. You heard it out here?

He’s got a mouth on him, I’ll give the son-of-a-bitch that. Now hurry up and get to work. The only way you gonna hang onto this job is if he sees you working your butt off when he comes out here on an inspection tour.

He trailed out the coffee shop eight hours later, burning a Marlboro as he walked towards the bus stop. This couldn’t go on. The job was killing him by inches. Having to scrape to a pissant like Landau. The rich fucks that stopped off for their triple lattes on the way to the office…

The Marine sergeant was locking up the recruitment center as he approached the bus stop. The dude looked crisp in his starched blue trousers and olive-green raincoat. There was something about him that said confidence. Self-belief.

All right, so the sergeant had to take orders, follow commands, probably more so than he did himself. But there was a world of difference between being ordered around by a captain of Marines and the fucking pond-life he had to deal with on a daily basis. He was pretty sure the Marine sergeant would break apart an asshole like Landau with his bare hands, the little shit as much as raised his voice to him - which didn’t seem likely, what he’d seen of the coffee shop manager when dealing with anyone other than browbeaten wetbacks and unqualified teenagers.

He felt, rather than heard, the bass line sounding over the low rumble of the car engine, as it interrupted his reverie.

Yo, nigga. Wassup?

He stiffened. Kept walking.

Donnie, you prick. It’s me. Trey.

He stopped as the waxed green Montero pulled in beside him. Fucking Superfly hisself. How you doing, Trey?

Trey ran a be-ringed hand through his gelled and spiked carrot top, letting Prentice get an eyeful of the new gold identity bracelet draped around his steroid-enhanced wrist. Better than you, anyway, Donnie, old pal. Still at the coffee shop?

Prentice indicated the day-old polo shirt, the corporate brand a scarlet letter over his left breast. The lint-covered black pants. You think I’m dressed like this outta choice? He keyed in on the box-fresh Adidas and Karl Kani jeans, the thick gold chain linked across the neck of his buddy’s Forty-niners jersey. Caught a whiff of ‘Obsession’, as Trey lowered the volume on the DMX track pumping out of the deck. You’re looking good, though, Trey, I gotta say. Still in the pharmaceutical industry?

A growing market, my friend. Those kids up at the college can’t enjoy themselves of a weekend without their pills and powders, ya know? He pushed the aviator shades onto the top of his head, letting Donnie take a peep at his calculating baby-blues. Ya know, it’s a shame you dropped outta that business course you was taking up at the University, Don. You’d a been in a top spot for putting out product. Paid for your tuition and made a profit into the bargain. His voice dropped. And those little college bitches. You think they don’t want to get close to the guy with the candy? Think they don’t know how to show their gratitude when the man shows his?

Too late now, Trey. You’ll have to make the ride up there yourself. Besides, I’m still with Lori.

Lori won’t be around much longer you don’t start to bring home the bacon, bro. He smiled as the shaft sunk home. I always liked Lori. Good-looking woman. I’d stop by and say hello someday, I didn’t know she was already with you, my man.

"She is with me, though."

Sure she is, pal. And I never mess with a friend’s woman. As long as they’re still together that is. He shifted gears at the expression on Donnie’ face, changing his tone to earnest. You and me, though, Donnie. We could still do business together. Don’t have to be up on the campus. That coffee shop you work in. Plenty those yuppies need a little something to relax them after a hard day at the office, no?

You don’t listen, Trey. I told you already. I’m not interested.

You sure, bro?

Prison overalls aren’t my style, ya know?

Trey showed his teeth in a laugh. And that outfit is? He replaced his shades as he turned the CD back up. Ignitioned the Montero. His parting shot was to stay with Prentice the following day, as he digested the events unfolding before him on the TV screens of America. You’re already in prison, my friend. You just don’t know it yet, that’s all.

Two

9/11 was his generation’s equivalent of the Kennedy assassination. The end of innocence. History unfolded live on primetime and life would never be the same again for those who’d witnessed it.

Everybody remembered where they were, what they were doing, when they first heard the news, much the same way their grandparents remembered their own circumstances when the President went down at Dealey Plaza.

For Prentice, the day had started much the same as any other. At least he’d

Reviews for Appetite for Destruction

[Robyn Willet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very well written story. I served in 2 tours to Iraq, 06-07, 08-09. I was a 88M (truck driver). This book is gives a good indication of the things that went on during this time.