“Your father’s platoon and mine got assigned to a security detail,” Finn continues. “A convoy of trucks, carrying cargo from the airport to the CPA headquarters in Saddam’s old presidential palace. We had to drive seven miles through Baghdad. The most dangerous stretch of road in Iraq, maybe the world. We called it Route Irish. Bullets, rockets, mortars, you name it. Insurgents would plant IEDs, especially near the median. Or they’d put one in a vehicle near exits. Sometimes you’d have suicide bombers in vehicles ready to blow themselves to Allah as long as they took you with them. The road looked like a junkyard, bombed-out trucks and cars everywhere. And all those bombs would make craters in the asphalt, so the road was bumpy as hell. You ride in a Bradley for a security run on Route Irish, you learn pretty quick which god you believe in.

“That first convoy, your dad rode point in a Bradley. The trucks were driven by Iraqis. I rode in one of those trucks and kept my rifle pointed at the driver the whole time so he didn’t do anything funny. He just kept sweating and muttering to himself, held onto the steering wheel like he was hanging on the edge of a cliff. Halfway to the Green Zone, we had to stop because there was a car blocking the road. This Iraqi family was standing around the car and looking at it, and so traffic stopped. A few Iraqis sped by in the breakdown lane, because nobody wanted to be stuck on Route Irish, but there wasn’t enough room for our trucks to do that. Everyone was tense. Was the car stalled, or was it a trap so an insurgent could fire an RPG, or was it an IED?

“Your dad got out of his Bradley. No one liked riding in those things—they were armored boxes with no airflow and like a hundred and thirty degrees inside—but they could protect you from a bullet or shrapnel. Jimmy just walked toward the Iraqi family with a translator. I was watching from the first truck. Your dad talked to the father of the family, who started getting hysterical that an armed American soldier was approaching him. Somehow your dad calmed him down and decided the guy’s car was really stalled, so he got a few of his grunts to push the car to the side of the road. Meanwhile the rest of us were gripping our rifles and trying to eyeball everything in every direction because we knew someone was gonna open fire or blow an IED. But no one did. We drove through Baghdad and got the trucks to the CPA, and the first thing I did after we got off duty was buy your dad a drink. Called him our good luck charm. Ethan, can I get some water, please? My throat’s getting dry.”