3

The teams got the three Scars alive from the quilted city raid without having to fire a shot. Shaw and Dalonna posted up on one roof with Barnes while Hagan and Cooke did the same with Bear. Mike and Ohio led the raid. Slausen and Massey entered after them, rendering aid to a little girl with a bad fungus on her leg and an older woman who had gotten knocked around some during the entry.

The morning after the raid Massey woke up Shaw in their tent.

“Rocks,” Massey said.

Shaw was lying on his bunk with his hands over his eyes. Massey had his hands on his hips and blocked the door of the tent from view. Shaw could hardly see anything. Then Massey kicked the door open and light flooded the tent. He repeated himself. When Massey said rocks the second time, Shaw remembered the two boys. He hoped he hadn’t hurt them. Blinded them for life or anything like that. Brain damage.

The boys had been on an adjacent roof, just a stone’s throw from Shaw, their hands straddling the lip of the parapet. They kept raising their heads and watching the target house. At first Shaw thought they might be combatants, holding rifles and RPGs, maybe strapped with a vest. He’d had his safety off and his laser painted over their little heads. They were a couple pounds of finger pressure from having their hair and skulls and futures split all over the roof in the humid air. But he’d taken a gamble. He had a feeling they were just kids horsing around, but as he’d gotten into bed after the raid, he’d been troubled. He wondered if he’d let himself hope for that scenario without good reason. The neighborhood was run by dangerous cells and the civilians were known to shoot at foot patrols from their windows or roofs and then go back to their magazines, TV, meals, or prayers. A warning shot might have been more appropriate. But he saw two kids horsing around. So he flicked on the safety, had Cooke cover the spot with his own laser from another roof, and grabbed a handful of gravel and rocks. Then he flung the handful at the boys and they disappeared. They had sharp cuts on their soft foreheads, but they were alive. If the boys had worn suicide vests, the target house and the men inside it—not to mention the sniper teams and their attachments—could’ve all been killed. They could’ve detonated before the rocks hit their heads. Guys could’ve died. Still, Shaw had been right.

“You threw rocks.”

Shaw sat up. “Yeah. I feel kinda bad about it.”

Massey sat on the edge of the bed. “Hell, those rocks could’ve been rounds. They wouldn’t have had sore heads to deal with this morning. Nice throw.”

“Hopefully I just hit the bigger one.”

Massey raised his eyebrows. “There were two of them, right? You played short in high school. Don’t kid yourself. You hit them both.”

Shaw thought about the smaller head. The boy was probably not even ten yet.

“Aw, hell. Want to feel good about yourself?”

“I’m not going into a bathroom stall with you.”

“Get fucked,” Massey said. “Follow me.”

•   •   •

The sun was up, but it wasn’t too hot. The sky was blue, the clouds cotton balls. The two of them kicked up dust clouds with their boots and scattered gravel with each step. They watched birds flying overhead on gun runs between outposts and the FOB. They walked outside their compound, over the gravel arteries linking their compound to the conventional ones, and came to a large concrete structure with a façade decorated with bullet holes. A large wooden sign nailed to posts set in the ground declared Combat Support Hospital.

Massey looked at Shaw.

“You been to the CASH?”

“No. And I kinda hoped to keep it that way.”

“It used to be a school. Maybe a factory. I don’t know. Now it houses most casualties in the region before sending them out of the country or back home.”

“Hell, Mass. It’s a little early to see anyone blown apart.” An Apache screeched overhead and then sped off on its gun run. “Not the best field trip.”

“Not too early to be a wiseass, though?”

“Fair. My apologies. I’m enjoying myself. Truly.”

“Don’t be a pussy.”

Massey opened the door and they walked up three wooden planks making a half-decent effort at being steps. They entered a small waiting area. Metal folding chairs spanned one wall half the width of a football field and the receptionist’s desk manned the wall opposite. The lights were bright and the air smelled of rubbing alcohol, hand sanitizer, and packaged gauze. Tear-drained screams and muffled cries were creeping through closed doors down multiple hallways. Shaw felt a headache coming on, a rumbling in his stomach. He thought of the little girl in the poppy fields and the one he saw on the news.

“Mass, I don’t feel like seeing any kids all blown to hell.”

Massey shook his head. “We’re seeing our friend. He’ll be happy to see us.”

A tall blond in fatigues and a crew cut guarding the hallway nodded to Massey and pointed down the hallway. He carried a rifle and wasn’t shy about pointing it at them. They followed his finger down the hall.

“Third door on the left from the end,” the guard said.

There were ten rooms on both sides of the walk. Instead of doors, there were stained bedsheets hanging down from the frames to the floor. Most of the sheets were pulled aside and brown streaks ran the length of the floor. Blood or mud. Likely both. In one of the rooms there was a boy asleep with bandages on the stumps that used to be his legs. In another, a bearded man staring out the door with ragged hair, tubes coming out of his legs and face. Other doorways led to a girl sitting up in bed staring at a wall and a grown man and woman huddled over a form Shaw couldn’t see on a table. He noticed the loudest screams were coming from entryways with their sheets drawn. The sheet doorways did not muffle the cries very well.

“I’m gonna get something sent over for all these kids,” Massey said. “This place is too depressing.” He stopped at an entryway with the sheet drawn, third on the left from the end, just as the guard had said. “Here’s our guy.”

He pushed the sheet aside and motioned for Shaw to walk inside.

The walls of the room were made of thin wood and were unpainted, so the notches and rings of the cut stood for wallpaper. A light shined bright from the ceiling and there weren’t any windows. The room was hot and stuffy. On the bed was a boy in oversized, mismatched hospital scrubs. He wore bright green bottoms and a blue checkered top. He stared at Shaw, his head never moving off the pillow.

“Looks better with clothes on, doesn’t he?” Massey said.

He entered behind Shaw and waved at the boy in the bed. The boy had red welts around his neck and wrists where the chains had been. When he saw Massey he smiled and raised his hand off the bed slowly. It was a good smile, slight and without teeth, but genuine. His eyes were partly closed. He looked relieved, like he’d gotten good news after getting mostly bad for some time.

“They gave him a job.”

Shaw looked at the boy. He was looking only at Massey. Someone had washed him. His black hair was glossy and bright and his skin looked clean.

“Who did, and doing what?” Shaw asked.

“Here at the CASH. He’ll clean up for them. Wash the sheets, sweep the floors, and stuff like that.”

Shaw nodded.

“They said he could sleep on a cot in the main bay.”

The boy never took his eyes off Massey.

“That’s good, Mass.”

The boy shifted in the bed with his head on the pillow. His mouth tightened and his eyebrows rose. He took in a breath of air, like he would speak, but let the breath go, and the smile crept out again on his lips.

•   •   •

The Scars from the city raid were more valuable than any bomb materials that might’ve been found. All three of them were in fact former members of al-Shabaab. This they freely admitted. Each Scar was from a different region of Africa, one even had British citizenship, and the tentacles of their networks within those regions spread deep into the terrorist lifeblood. The information gleaned from the raid could spark raids on nearly every continent of the globe.

Intel had grilled the Scars continuously since the night they were picked up. Nearly three days and nights without sleep. Scar1 and Scar2 hadn’t spoken a word, but Scar3 started talking. Scar1 and Scar2 got sent to an off-site center for further questioning, but Intel kept Scar3 around. They promised to let him see his daughter, the girl Massey had treated with penicillin for her leg fungus—apparently he traveled to the meeting with his wife and daughter—and he started talking about a small village in the mountains. He said he’d used the village to smuggle in new recruits and refit old ones.

After the teams had gotten the 4, the CO told them about the area. It was an isolated sustenance area, full of goat herders and mountain folk, which meant the only traffic coming and going was temporary. Not a normal part of life. Scar3 told Intel he’d personally used the area to pick up and drop off people and supplies twice in the last year. Apparently foreign fighters mixed with the local population and it wasn’t clear where allegiances lay or what kind of balance the two groups had struck up together.

“Intel thought it was worth finding out,” the CO said. “So you’re here.”

Sitting in the briefing room, Shaw thought about Scar3. He’d probably hung his head over a table after he’d been kept awake for days without sleep. Shaw wondered what Intel had said that had gotten him to spill his guts. Shaw had sat next to Scar3 in the GMV. His tank top had sagged loose on his frame and his chin touched the overgrown hairs on his chest. One of his nipples hung flaccid and sad from his chest, like that of a mother who’d nursed for too many years. He was an orchestrator of suicide bombings. And a father who just wanted to see his daughter again.

The op would be a ball-buster.

There were only the ten of them in the brief. Shaw’s team and Mike’s. The CO stood in front of them, blown-up images of the mountain pass printed on sheets and tacked to the whiteboard behind him. He had a red laser pointer in his hand. He highlighted multiple possible insertion points to the village, narrow trails breaking off the main pass, but there was only the single pass to get through and then a single exfil point. The pass started high in the rock and the trails splintered off like fingertips of lightning. They lost elevation until they funneled into the large village. In the village there were smaller structures with thatched roofs made of straw, mud, and tree limbs.

“We’ll need rucks packed for four days,” the CO said. “But keep in mind the choppers can’t get to you after the infil until the exfil. The pass is too narrow. Unless we pull out.”

Shaw wrote down “food for five days” on his printout. “Batteries, ammo, and water for eight.”

“The village and surrounding area is to be considered hostile. Intel’s let me know some of the fighters likely have families settled there, so we can’t count on getting a welcome. The bird will drop you off a couple klicks south of the draw leading to the pass. We’re not sure how the comms will hold up in the narrow straits, so you’re freed from command decisions. No checks or need to confirm. We’ll keep an eye on you from the sats as long as we can. Just get to the village and the 47 will grab you for the exfil. We can try supporting fire in the pass, but any brought in will be danger close. Regardless, we’ll have a Spooky circling the entire movement and we’ll get to you if we can. We’ll pick you up right in the damn village unless it’s too hot.”

Hagan had a whole horseshoe of dip in his lower lip. He looked like he had packed too much and had a nicotine crash, or didn’t like the thought of walking fifty to sixty klicks to the village. It was probably both. He looked like he might get sick all over the printouts.

“I could use a walk,” Cooke whispered. “Damn GMVs are coffins.”

Dalonna had a question.

“Sir, women and children?”

“Yes. Likely.”

Cooke raised his hand.

“Sir. What are we looking to accomplish?”

The CO took his time. He nodded to himself with a hand curled into a fist, propping up his chin. The men all shifted in their seats.

“Recon, then capture or kill. Intel’s let on that recent foot traffic corroborates Scar3’s claims. There’s a good deal of movement and we could be tapping a major access point from neighboring countries. If we can find HVTs or FAMs there, we will want to talk to them. If we don’t, we don’t. Regardless, you guys are cleared to engage as necessary.” He traced the village on the map with his hand. “Scar3’s been the first target to mention the village but Intel dug through past findings from SSEs and was able to link numerous HVTs to the area. This could be a major hub for numerous cells operating in-country. Transparency? This could be big. We don’t know how big, but it’s got potential. We need eyes on before we know what we’ve got.”

The CO let the operators digest what he’d told them and the teams sat studying the map printouts. The rocks looked like some of the canyons of Utah and California they’d been through in the summers on training hops. No one had any more questions.

“There’s no popping hot on this. We’re moving out in three days, regardless of the weather. If we’re lucky, the weather will be shit and no one else will be out. Rain or snow would be nice. We’re off the green until then so the days are yours.”

The room was quiet.

“All right. It’ll be a bit of a walk, but mostly downhill. So there’s that.”

Then he left and none of the men did for a while.

•   •   •

The few days they had off preparing for the walk flew by in a flash of day and night shoots, rucking around the FOB, and sweating out in the gym. Coverage on the increasing bombings in the region spanned the news among reports of the World Series, and Hagan put up 375 on the bench a few times. The guys made him stop there because he was prone to bullheadedness and they didn’t want anyone hurting himself before the walk just to hit 400. The teams pored over satellite images of the area. They had at least a guy or two on the drone feeds watching the village around the clock. There was movement in the area—heavy at times, with women and children walking the mountainsides and village grounds. Other times movement was sparse or nonexistent. It seemed like the whole village would wash over the area like a flood one moment and then disappear into the rocks the next.

On the night of the walk, Lou Reed played softly over the speakers in the war room while Velcro was getting strapped and refit. Hagan stood smiling in the middle of the lockers. He looked at Shaw, raised his eyebrows, racked his weapon, and checked the chamber. The metal slid smooth and echoed sharp.

“Hey, babe,” Hagan said. “Take a walk on the wild side.” He winked and put his helmet on, brought his NODs down, and turned them on. Then he switched them off and raised them. “Good shit. Lou Reed’s badass.”

“You know what that song’s about,” Massey said. “Don’t you, Hog?”

“Nope. Don’t tell me, either. You guys ruin my life.”

Shaw smiled. He was thinking of filling any extra space in his ruck with food or extra rounds. They could get stuck out there for a lot longer than they’d planned. His ruck weighed in at sixty-eight pounds and the nylon fabric stretched so much he could identify items by their bulge. Extra batteries. Extra mags. Extra rounds. Extra batteries. Extra CLP. Dip. Hide site cover. Extra batteries. Extra rounds. Extra strobe. Lemon pound cake. Shaw looked around the lockers and got on the floor. He would kill himself if he ran out of ammo or batteries but had extra pound cake. He saw three more clips of 5.56, a few more batteries, and a black plastic speed-loader under a footstool. He grabbed them and threw them in his ruck, taking out the pound cake and his toothbrush.

“Hog, you should bring your deodorant,” Dalonna said.

“Donna, you know we’re going native, right?”

Hagan looked concerned, like Dalonna had forgotten something important that needed remembering and it worried him.

“Yes, I do. And I stand by my statement.”

Hagan looked at the ground and then up at Dalonna with fire. “Oh, dammit, Donna. We’re all gonna stink like shit together.”

They all laughed and Hagan tried to get in a jab or two while they started funneling out of the war room.

“You smell like a dead cocker spaniel that fell asleep in his own shit! You hear me, Donna?”

Dalonna had a deep, rich laugh and it drowned Hagan out.

They grabbed their rucks and headed out into the night.

•   •   •

The 47 was up and burning holes on the tarmac when they got to the airfield. The length of two school buses, the helicopter had rotors on the head and tail and was trusted to climb the highest elevations. It was cooler out on the airfield and the clouds were so low it seemed like the men could just grab a few and push them out of the way to let the stars breathe a little. Hagan pulled on his cold-weather top after setting down his ruck and sitting in his canvas seat closest to the gunner on the back ramp.

Cooke sat next down next to him. “Hog, you gonna wear that on the walk?”

Hagan looked at him and raised his eyebrows. “No. But I’m sure as hell not gonna freeze my nuts off on the flight up there.”

“All right,” Cooke said. “Smart. And I got a sports bra and some tampons in my pack, too. When you need ’em, just give me a holler.”

They all laughed and buckled in, metal snaps echoing down the line. A gunner strapped himself onto the back ramp of the bird and sat on the floor with his legs straddling a minigun that poked aggressively into the night. The 47’s rotors slapped hard at the sky like oars on water and the aviation fuel soured the air. Their bodies trembled on the roar of the engines.

“This’ll suck,” Massey said.

Shaw laughed. “Probably.” He pulled a balaclava over his head, his mouth and eyes finding the holes. “I’m nervous,” he blurted out.

Shaw looked around to see how many guys heard, but only Massey looked at him. His white teeth seemed to glow.

“Fucking-A right you are. This is gonna suck ass. I don’t wanna die in some shit valley reconning some piss village.”

The rotors found their lift and Shaw watched the tops of the clouds melt away from the bird and drop beneath them over the gunner’s shoulder. The stars came out and spread across the sky like pebbles on a shoreline after the tide washes away. He watched them shine until the pilots voiced their approach.

•   •   •

The bird dropped them off about a klick from the mouth of the pass, in a shallow draw. Before they started walking they all took off the cold-weather tops Cooke had given Hagan so much grief for wearing. After a few minutes in flight they’d all put them on and Hagan had had a big shit-eating grin on his face.

“I’ll grab that sports bra from you when you’re through with it,” Hagan whispered to Cooke while Cooke stuffed his top in his ruck.

Cooke smiled and blew Hagan a kiss.

It was cold in the draw. Their breaths steamed in front of their faces and froze in icicles on their beards. The rocks and dirt had a shine glossed over them, and Shaw made sure his footfalls were balanced, sturdy. The air was clear and cool. Breathing it in felt like tapping into good drinking water. Massey slipped and landed on his ass as soon as the birds flew through the clouds, and they all dropped to a knee and scanned the ridgelines with their lasers. Shaw lit up a bunch of jagged rocks with pebble runoff spilling from either side, but the sound of Massey slapping hard on the ground didn’t bring anyone out of the rocks. Massey got to his feet and keyed into the comms.

“Anybody planning on getting shot?”

No one said anything for a while and then Slausen came over the comms.

“That’s probably a negative, Mass. Generally frowned upon in our profession.”

“Good,” Massey said. “Then I’m gonna throw this goddamned Skedco off a cliff.”

The big plastic stretcher was rolled tight on his back and he’d strapped it over his ruck. It looked like he was humping a bazooka. Shaw smiled and scanned the rocks and boulders knifing up before them, steep and jagged like ice in the mouths of winter caves. Slausen came over the comms again.

“Well, let’s see if any of the dumbasses are stupid enough to get shot on the walk, and if not, we don’t need the Skeds. We can throw them off a cliff when the bird picks us up.”

With that their teams split a laugh and then split up for the walk on separate trails. Mike and his team took a shallow trail north and Shaw and his team moved south of them, keeping the elevated rocks of the pass on their left. Mike’s team would keep the same rocks on their right and they’d funnel into the large village together from either trail.

Shaw led their movement. They kept Massey in the middle to even out the distance he’d have to cover if they took casualties, and Hagan and Cooke fanned out on one side of the pass. Dalonna and Shaw took the other. They walked slow, aiming for fifteen to thirty klicks a night and then they’d pitch hide sites and squat during the day. Every turn in the pass was lit up by lasers from either side and breached like a doorway. They picked their way over sparse patches of dead, wind-chapped grass and around large boulders and weather-beaten trees and shrubs. It was quiet and the overhanging rocks of the pass kept the moon from lighting the way. They kept their NODs down until the sun lit the cliffs and then they hugged the boulders, pulled out camo tarps and blankets. They slept two men at a time, the other three awake and watching the rocks for movement. Then they’d wait for the light to fade so they could move again.

The first night Shaw watched a large cat or mountain goat bound up a cliff outcropping and fade into the mountains where the horizon hit the rocks, but that was it. Hagan had some nice, deep blisters on the sides of his feet and Cooke kept saying he saw a boy on the rocks but no one else ever saw him. Shaw’s mouth was feeling grimy already, so he tried to keep a chaw or Skittle in at all times. He regretted leaving his toothbrush, should’ve offloaded another tin of dip or pouch of chew. The comms between teams stayed clear but faded in and out with their CO, Intel, and the air support back at the FOB or circling above. The men reeked of sweat.

The rain and snow held the first night. They watched clouds gather overhead in the morning, hoping for some moisture to beat down and smooth out the tracks they’d left behind, and it came in the early afternoon. They had buried their MRE wrappers or stuffed them back into their rucks, empty of their contents after they closed in on twenty klicks the night before. They sweated through their tops and bottoms in the cold dark during the movement and changed into dry ones in their hide sites during the day. Shaw picked at the crumbs from the crackers that landed on his top and sucked the peanut butter dry from its package. Then the sleet came. The tarps and covers of their hide sites sank under the weight of the water and ice, and water streamed through the sights thinned into the fabric for concealed viewing. Shaw shivered in his site. His dry top and bottom were soaked before he even lifted a foot for the night’s walk. He had dug a shallow hole to piss and crap in under his cover and it filled up and overflowed so the fluids he’d released found their way back to him. Their tracks were smoothed out but their limbs were freezing and soaking wet.

During his time to rest, Shaw didn’t sleep as much as stop thinking. It was welcome rest even if it wasn’t sleep. He grew dizzy from scanning every crevice of rock or sliver of irregular earth. It was all irregular after a while. His pants and hands were too cold and wet to free himself when he had to piss, so he just let fly through his bottoms and enjoyed the warmth for the little while it lasted before the cold and misery crept back in. He looked at the extra food he’d packed into his ruck and wished he’d brought a good pair of thick gloves instead. But he didn’t. So he shadowboxed with small, choppy jabs when the cold got to be too much.

Hagan came over the comms a few hours into the sleet.

“National Geographic would hate us. There’s a falcon circling at eleven o’clock.”

Every head of the team strained through their hide sites to get a better look. Shaw angled his head up through the recon slits and sure enough, to their northwest a big dark bird arced in lazy circles around a peak out of reach. Watching the bird’s graceful arcs let him forget about being wet and cold for a while, and he acknowledged the dramatic expanse of the surrounding cliffs and jagged rock. He watched the falcon circle and swoop, paying no mind to the water getting in his eyes, until after some time it came to a dead stop in the air and dove at something in the rocks below. It was beautiful, it was gone, and it didn’t come back.

Then they were alone with the cold again.

•   •   •

That night either the fog settled in high on the mountains or they were walking through the clouds. The movement didn’t bring much warmth, but it kept the deep-setting cold from clawing at their arms and legs. Shaw changed underwear before they moved, so at least his nuts were clean and warmer than they’d been in a while. They all changed socks and kept the wet tops and bottoms on because they’d be soaked after the movement anyhow. Visibility was at a rifle barrel’s length, and Mike’s team radioed in that they’d just shot two men.

“They walked right past us down the pass,” Mike said. “We put a couple through them after they’d passed. We nabbed a wood-stocked PRK with a Soviet sickle in it, but we’ll probably drop it. It’s heavy as shit.”

Cooke came over the comms. “Don’t toss it. That’s a keeper. I can offer Hog for it when we get back to the FOB.”

They laughed quietly as they picked their way through the rocks and Hagan radioed over that Cooke and him weren’t friends anymore if anyone was looking for a new best friend. Shaw asked Mike if they were going to continue down the pass or radio in and request an exfil back at the draw.

“They’re dead, so we’re not compromised,” Mike said. “Yet, at least. We’ll push on. Whoever sent them out is gonna come looking for them anyhow, so we’d rather meet them than have to watch our ass for twenty to thirty klicks.”

Shaw told them to keep an eye out and Mike radioed back the same.

•   •   •

The next day, while they were set in their hide sites, a boy appeared on the rocks.

Cooke came over the comms in a whisper.

“There he is.”

The sun was out and the pass had softened and evened out some; the nest of dark boulders and rocks surrounding them had brightened in the light. They were under the tan tarps and covers of their hide sites. The boy stood on a large rock not fifty meters from Hagan, who’d taken the lead of their movement. The boy was facing them and raised his hand. Then he pointed at each of their hide sites as if he were counting birds in a park.

“We’re compromised,” Hagan radioed in.

Shaw radioed over to Mike. “Rook1, this is Rook2. Come in, over.”

“Go ahead, Rook2.”

Shaw watched the boy. “Did you guys see anyone else with those two you nabbed last night? A boy, maybe?”

There was a pause that lasted longer than Shaw was willing to wait.

“Rook1,” he repeated. “Did you guys see a boy?”

“Negative,” Mike said. “The men were alone.”

Shaw let out a slow breath and Hagan came over the comms.

“He’s looking right at me. No weapon, but he’s staring bullets.”

Shaw keyed the comms again. “Rook1. What were the two wearing?”

Another pause.

“They both wore salwars and one had a vest and the other a coat,” Mike said. “Not a field jacket, more of a windbreaker. They both wore black taqs on their domes. We just balled them up and left them in the rocks.”

The boy was standing like a statue in the light, straight and tall. It looked like he had a few wisps of early beard that added a little smoke to his jawline. He had light brown skin, as if he’d gotten suntanned permanently. He wore a dark brown kameez and a white salwar that left a couple inches of bare skin between the hem and his sandals. He didn’t have anything in his hands or on his head.

“There are shepherds around here,” Dalonna said. “Goat herders.”

“Yeah,” Cooke said. “Where’s his staff or flock?”

Hagan keyed in.

“He’s looking right at me.”

He was trying to speak slow and calm, but he sounded edgy.

The boy stood on an outcropping at the head of a bend in the pass. Shaw couldn’t see what was behind him.

“Hold, Hog. Can you see anything behind him?”

Hagan came back quick and short.

“Negative.”

Shaw keyed the handset. “Cooke. Is he the same one you saw a couple nights ago?”

Cooke came over slow and even.

“Can’t tell for sure. Hope so. Otherwise there’s more than the one looking at us.”

“How old do we think he is?” Shaw asked.

Massey came over the comms.

“He’s got fuzz on his jaw, so teens.”

“Teens,” Dalonna agreed.

“Fuck his age, he’s staring right at me,” Hagan said.

Cooke came over slow and even again. “He’s short, but I’d say scouting age for sure. He could be strapped with a vest.”

Shaw rapped his fingers on the trigger guard of his weapon. He licked his teeth and cracked his neck. “So he’s either following us or just happened on our way.”

“You’d think a kid that just happened upon us would act a little surprised,” Cooke said. “Not count us out.”

Shaw nodded and swallowed dry air. He was thirsty. He radioed in again.

“Anyone see any goats or other shit that walks?”

“Negative,” Dalonna said. “Just the boy.”

When Dalonna finished keying the comms, Shaw felt a weight rolling around in his stomach. It seemed like his intestines were knotting themselves into a monkey fist. He felt like he had to take a spine-bruising shit. He keyed the comms.

“Kill. Capture. Let go.”

Silence won out for a little while and then Cooke keyed in.

“Well, it’s not like we can ball him all up and throw him in our rucks.”

Dalonna came over next.

“You’d think he’d have run if he wasn’t comfortable seeing us.”

“Which means he sees us as a threat and doesn’t give a shit because he’s a threat, or he doesn’t give a shit because he’s a friendly?” Shaw asked.

“I don’t know,” Dalonna said. “Could be either.”

Shaw waited awhile in case anyone had anything else to add.

No one did.

“Cooke’s right,” Shaw said. “We can’t take him with us. So leave him alone or take him out?”

Hagan came over again. “I swear he’s getting closer to me.”

The boy hadn’t moved. His feet gripped the lip of the rock with his thin sandals, and his salwar blew light on the wind passing through the pass. He had a tuft of black hair that rose above his head every time the salwar moved, and the sleeve of his kameez brushed the leather bracelet he wore. He hadn’t been standing there a whole minute.

“He’s not, Hog,” Shaw said. “He hasn’t moved.”

Massey keyed in.

“He sees us, so why doesn’t he do anything?”

“I don’t know. Take him or let him go?” Shaw repeated.

Cooke came over first.

“We’ve gotta take him.”

Hagan agreed.

“Donna?” Shaw said.

Dalonna keyed in but didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “He’s comfortable,” he said finally. “Definitely not afraid.”

“Mass, what do you think?” Shaw said.

“Hell, I don’t know,” Massey said. “Everyone’s right.”

Hagan was closest to the boy and Shaw saw his cover shift slightly. The boy hadn’t moved since first counting them out like he had right away. Like ducks on a pond or friends for a game. He might not even have known what he was doing.

The suppressors screwed onto the barrels of their rifles would catch the pressure of the fired rounds and expand the area out of which they escaped from the barrels. The sound of the shots would be muted to more of a cough than a sharp crack. The boy would be down before he heard the slightest whisper of the bullets. He would never be able to see them, even if he’d been looking to. Shaw closed his eyes and shook his head. “Shit.” He thought of guys he’d known who had gotten ambushed after getting compromised. He’d known their wives and seen the kids they left behind grow up after the funerals. Then he looked back at the boy. He’d already memorized his face forever. “Hog, take him out.”

The wind blew softly, and instead of the shots, Shaw heard his own breathing and a harsh pulsing in his head. It felt like his eyeballs were throbbing with each beat of his heart. The boy seemed to crumble off the rock in slow motion, almost gracefully. He landed on the ground with one of his sandaled feet propped on the rock, pointing up toward the sky. The sun was bright and had made its way directly over the short gap in the pass. Oddly, Shaw felt warmth. He realized that for the first time in weeks he hadn’t smelled the stench of burning shit for the last few days. And his clothes were dry. They could’ve been camping in their backyards or in a national park on a holiday weekend.

Hagan keyed in. “He’s down.”

There was a long silence in the valley. The sun was so bright Shaw had to strain his eyes into slight slits. “We need to move the body behind the rocks,” he said. “And cover him.”

It was quiet again for so long that Shaw wondered if he had spoken the words out loud or been speaking to himself. Then Hagan came over again.

“I’m not moving him.”

•   •   •

Shaw moved the boy himself.

He got out from his hide site and walked up the pass while the team covered him. The sky was clear and the sun warm. Any clouds in the air moved fast, racing toward the mountains and then covering them briefly before passing on and disappearing out of sight.

The boy had two holes in his chest, not a finger width between the two entrance points. The salwar was raised to his knees and the sandal not propped on the rock rested in a pile of mud unearthed by his heels. The blood spread in a large dark patch in the middle of the kameez, from his shoulders to his waist. The sun gleamed off the wet fabric like it was gold panned from a stream. The boy looked unimpressed, like death hadn’t fazed him. He looked young. He had some mud and dirt splashed up under his chin that had looked like a beard. Shaw could rub it off with his fingertips. A thin river of blood ran from the corner of his mouth to the ground and colored the earth around him in tones of rust. He was surprisingly heavy, lean but broad-shouldered. He had probably worked in the mountains his whole life.

Shaw set his hands under the boy’s armpits and dragged him into a tight spot between the loose rock and boulders on the opposite side of the pass. The rocks were shaded and it was cool, the moisture not yet dried by the sun. It would be a nice place to rest after a jog. The boy could fit between the rocks if he nestled him on his side, so Shaw knelt down and tried to place him on the ground gently. He saw the bracelet the boy wore, the red rock shining in the sun, and the boy’s body pressed against Shaw’s kit and he felt a stinging in his chest from the agate necklace. Shaw moved any shards of rock or loose dirt away from the boy’s face and folded the boy’s hands gently over the wound in his chest. He tucked his cover around the body tightly, folding the edges around the boy so the cover doubled as a body bag and his own personal hide site. Then Shaw walked away. The boy’s blood was on his gloves, on the sleeves of his top. He couldn’t see any of them through their hide sites, but he knew the team was watching him. He keyed into the comms.

“Who’s got room for another in their site?”

There was a pause and then Massey came over.

“I got some space.”

Shaw walked past Hagan and his old site, and Massey opened his cover for Shaw to crawl under. Massey had dug in between a large pair of boulders on a sharp rise. He had a shithole dug into the low ground.

“Watch your step.”

•   •   •

No one said anything over the comms for the rest of the time the sun was up. Massey offered Shaw some diet pills to keep him cranking and Shaw told him Hagan could probably use some as well. Hagan accepted the offer and Massey threw a pack into the rocks toward him, but it fell short. Hagan left his site when a cloud passed over and retrieved the pills, then covered up again. The team covered him, and when the sun dropped the comms opened.

“Rook2, this is Rook1, come in, over.” It was Mike.

Shaw answered.

“This is Rook2. Go ahead.”

Mike’s voice was light and the transmission spat static.

“How’d the situation with the little one go?”

No one said anything.

“Rook2,” Mike said. “You there?”

Shaw let out a heavy breath and Massey watched his face in the failing light.

“We’re good, Rook1.”

“Okay, then,” Mike said slowly. “Stay up. Razor1 out.”

“Two out.”

Shaw couldn’t see the tarp he’d used to cover the body from Massey’s site, but on the right side of the pass and wrapped around the boy, the tarp, Shaw knew, was doing its job.

•   •   •

Intel broke through that night as they walked. They reported that a group of three FAMs had left the village shouldering weapons and disappeared north into the rocks. The teams acknowledged the movement and added that weight to all the rest. They moved heavily, picking their way through the hard rocks with soft feet on their final approach to the village. They were tired, and Shaw watched the stars and clouds trade places. No one joked over the comms or said much of anything. The pass rose sharp and then fell flat at the entrance of the village. Cooke, leading the last leg of the movement, halted them when he thought he saw something in a shallow inlet off the main pass. Their lasers painted the opening, but it was nothing, just some earth that’d broken away from a larger piece of earth at some point. Like the rest of the rocks in the pass they walked through.

Mike came over the comms and announced they had eyes on the village.

“Waiting on you, Razor2,” he said.

Shaw could see a section of the first dwelling’s roof off to his right, over Cooke’s shoulder. Cooke was on a knee, painting the dead space behind the first dwelling. The village was set between a group of large boulders in a clearing some size bigger than the pass. The clearing emerged from the pass like the head of a tadpole. In some cases the dwellings used the sides of the boulders and pass at large to form their fourth walls. Three dwellings inhabited the outermost ring of the village, nearly flush with the mouth of the pass. There were nine huts in total, the three at the mouth of the pass and the other six trailing off the first ones like scattered raindrops. Shaw and his team were responsible for the three huts immediately to the front and Mike’s team would take the northernmost three. Whoever was able would take the remaining three huts in the southeast sector until all had been searched.

“Check, tape, and tie down,” Shaw said over the comms.

He ran his hands along his ruck, made sure all the straps were tied off or taped in rolls. Then he checked the mag in his well and those snug in his kit. He synched the ruck down tight on his back and the shoulder straps bit into his back and chest. He cracked his neck and squatted up and down a couple times.

“Good to go,” Cooke and Hagan said.

“I’m good,” Dalonna said.

Massey said he was as well and Shaw radioed over.

“Razor1, we’re set. Moving on your mark. Over.”

“Roger that, Razor2. Moving now,” Mike said.

They broke off and flowed into the village.

Hagan and Shaw approached the first dwelling. It was made of hard-packed mud, and long strands of straw and tall grass lined the walls. Dalonna and Cooke took the next in line and Hagan brought his boot up fast and hard and kicked in the clapboard door. The door splintered in the middle like kindling and collapsed on the dirt floor. Shaw stepped over the splintered pieces, and the room was empty except for a garment thrown over the dirt in one of the corners. Hagan lit it up and Shaw checked beneath it. Nothing. They left the hut and lit up the door of the next dwelling while Dalonna and Cooke made their way to the next line of huts. Shaw could see the other teams checking the remaining huts at different points in the head of the tadpole. Again Hagan brought his boot up and crashed it through the door. Again they stepped through the doorway and over the broken wood.

Nothing.

Shaw walked outside the hut and painted the surrounding rocks and other dwellings, expecting targets, or even goats. Anything. Hagan pointed at one of the dwellings in the distance. Then one of the Razor1 teams emerged from the doorway. Soon enough all of the men stood outside the empty dwellings, scattered in teams of twos, shrugging and kicking aside clumps of earth. Guys painted the rocks of the pass surrounding the village or lined up against the huts and took a knee. The comms came to life.

Nothing.

No one.

More voices came over with the same response.

Shaw radioed over to their CO.

“This is Razor2. Objective secure. The village is empty. No one in the huts. Requesting exfil.”

“Roger, Razor2,” the CO said. “The bird’s en route. ETA forty-five mikes.”

“Roger ETA,” Shaw said. “Holding for exfil.”

The comms quieted down.

“Nothing, man,” Hagan said.

Shaw shook his head. He spat on the ground and closed his eyes. The village smelled like trampled earth and livestock. The pass smelled fresh where they had killed the boy. He wondered where the people of the village had gone, if the boy had lived in one of the huts. Then Mike came over the comms.

“We got tunnels,” he said.

The teams searched the surrounding rocks while they waited for the bird to pick them up and found nearly twenty different tunnels carved into the rocks surrounding the village. Some were large enough for a grown man to walk through standing up, while others could be accessed only at a crawl. They radioed them into Intel and were told not to enter. The 47 came in and landed in the dead space between the dwellings, its rotors blowing the roofing off some of the dwellings and throwing rocks and dust into the walls of others. The teams climbed on board while the gunners of the 47 kept the visible openings of the tunnels painted.

No one came out of them, and the captors flew away.

•   •   •

Shaw took his helmet off on the flight back. The cool air passing through the cabin from the open gunner’s perch in the rear felt good, cleansing. He looked around the bird and everyone was asleep. The metallic scent of the bird was harsh compared with the earth they’d just left. A soft red glow lit the inside of the cabin and their faces looked gaunt and haggard, tired. They looked like shadows and ghosts. Then the light went out, or Shaw fell asleep, and he could hardly see his hand in front of his face. The 47’s drone and the thump, thump, thump of the rotors rolled into a steady stream of white noise. His ears popped and the pressure lifted. He felt light. Weightless.

Back at the FOB they did their AAR and told the CO about the boy and the two other men they’d killed. The CO didn’t comment much on it one way or another, but Shaw saw him wince for a moment after they said they had killed the boy. Then he caught himself and said they’d done well, what they had to do, and that Intel would monitor the pass and the village around the clock. Future activity in the village would open the possibility for air strikes and they probably wouldn’t get boots on the ground for the tunnels. JDAMs would fit in better.

Dalonna said he was going to call his family. The rest of them got to their tents and collapsed into their beds. Shaw dreamed of the boy. He was standing on the rock and waving at them, not pointing at their positions. A soft light from the sun brought warmth to his body and he looked like a stained-glass window churches put up. He seemed to glow. Then Shaw woke up and the tent was cold. And there wasn’t a light anywhere.

•   •   •

Hagan yelled out in the dark.

“Oh, fuck off!”

Shaw shot out of bed, startled. He hadn’t even felt the beeper vibrate in his pocket. It glowed with a 1 and headlamps started popping off in the tent. They hadn’t been in bed for more than a few hours. Shaw looked at his watch. Not even 0900 hours yet. He still hadn’t brushed his teeth from the long walk. He could taste too many days of chaw and dirt and Skittles and filth. His breath smelled like something had died in his gut.

“Interdiction,” Cooke said in the dark. He sat up straight on his bed, his headlamp on and the glow hiding everything but his mouth. “Ten bucks.”

“Of course it’s an interdiction,” Hagan said. “Screw your ten bucks. I want to sleep. Fuck you, interdiction.”

They ran out of the tent and into the sunlight.

Cooke was right. Resting at the foot of their lockers were laminated cards of a white pickup and a clean-shaven man with a crescent-moon strip of hair standing guard over the rest of his balding head. The man wore small, circled glasses that looked like wire Easter-egg droppers. He seemed like a professor, or maybe an accountant. The CO pointed to the images on the laminated cards and spoke while the men strapped on their gear. His voice peppered the straps of Velcro and snaps of helmets, the weapons racking.

“There are two guys in the truck. The driver’s a courier for the Scars and we’re not exactly sure who the other guy is, yet. Get them and bring them back.”

The operators ran out to the pickups and sped to the airfield, tires slinging gravel and kicking up clouds of dust. Two Little Birds sat spitting fuel on the tarmac and shaking under the rush of their wings. The helicopters looked anxious, trembling on their skids, as the sun beat down on the tarmac. The engines screamed and sent waves of fire blasting into the air. The heat and the smell of burning fuel and trash were dizzying. Shaw was sure he’d be sick. Cooke threw in a chew, sat on the bench, and offered him one. Shaw waved it off. They clipped in and plugged in their comms, and Dalonna, Hagan, and Massey hopped on the other side. Mike and Ohio did the same with their team on the other bird. Slausen was the last to sit down and clip in. He ran to the bench with his helmet snugged between his arm and chest. His boots were untied and he was buckling his bottoms. They were already sweating, even though it was getting cooler during the days. They had rolled their sleeves and bottoms up to their elbows and knees. Hagan wore no top save for a T-shirt. Their hairy legs glimmered in the sunlight. The pilot asked if they were clipped in and ready, and the birds rose off the ground before they finished a response.

“Well, Baldy’s fucked,” Cooke shouted over the wind.

The birds dipped their noses and charged straight ahead. They headed west.

•   •   •

As the birds flew on, Shaw had to piss badly. Before running out of the war room he’d felt the piss coming on, so he’d grabbed an empty Gatorade bottle and thrown it into one of his cargo pockets. His bladder weighed heavily in his stomach and felt like it would drop out of his skin if he stood up. He knew if he didn’t let loose soon he’d probably piss himself on the hood of the pickup during the interdiction, so he grabbed the empty Gatorade bottle from his cargo pocket and tightened the sling of his weapon around his chest. He undid his bottom buttons and edged up off the lip of the bird. Cooke watched him.

“Cooke, I gotta piss.”

Cooke shrugged. “So piss.”

Shaw closed his eyes and tried to relax, hung himself limp inside the bottle. Nothing came out. He opened his eyes. Cooke was still staring at him.

“Cooke, what the hell?”

Cooke laughed and yelled over the wind, “I’m just messing with you. Go on and piss.”

Shaw clenched the bottle and looked at Cooke, then at the other bird flying next to them. Mike and Ohio sat on the bench across the sky. They waved. Shaw looked back. The CSAR birds trailed behind them, small and black, a few klicks to the southeast. They looked like black flies in the sky. Shaw closed his eyes, tried to relax, then tried to blast and push it out. Nothing came, so he swore and threw the bottle. It fell to the earth, tumbling end over end, the orange cap fluttering on the wind and the sun flashing bright in the plastic.

“Shouldn’t litter,” Cooke yelled. “We’re trying to rebuild this country.”

•   •   •

The Little Birds hugged the earth as miles of dry flatland sped under the operators’ feet. Clouds of dirt and packed earth thrown into the air by the white pickup stretched across the empty land like smoke.

“Target ahead,” the pilot said over the comms.

The dirt trail from the truck spread over hundreds of meters and their bird banked to the left side of the trail, the other bird hopping onto the right. Shaw couldn’t see the truck yet. Then the piss came. He swore and undid his pants, whipped out and let fly. He pissed all over his bottoms and sent a trail along the bench and tail of the bird.

“You’re a savage,” Cooke yelled, laughing.

Then the white pickup broke through the clouds of dust and the lead bird throttled forward. The other bird decelerated as Shaw’s shot past them. They sped in front of the truck and cut hard ninety degrees to the north, cutting the vehicle off. The truck slammed on the brakes and the operators were on the ground before it was in park. The men were hidden in dust.

Shaw had his sight on the driver. He wore dark sunglasses and had an overgrown face that dwarfed his nose. Fat folds dripped from his chin and his mouth was frozen open. The birds were screaming behind them and it sounded like the world was blowing itself up.

Dalonna and Shaw led, yelling, “Motar sakha raa wudzai,” and “Barah.”

Then a pressure wave hit and the lights went out.

•   •   •

The sky was beautiful, blue and vast. Shaw opened his eyes. Black smoke curled and flexed across his face like passing clouds, dark fingertips. He lay on his back, on the ground, dizzy. It felt like his head had caved in. Massey stood over him, his mouth moving, but Shaw didn’t hear a thing. A loud drone rang in his head, spreading from ear to ear like a siren before settling in the middle and drowning everything out. Everything echoed or muffled and he blinked slow. Then fast. His limbs tingled and felt impossibly heavy. He could see the tips of his boots and a black mass of clouds. Red-and-orange flames danced in the wind over the ground. He smelled gasoline and fire. Burning metal.

Massey helped him up and Shaw saw Dalonna on a knee a few feet away on the ground. Slausen, Hagan, and Cooke were holding him upright by the shoulders. Dalonna spit out some blood and what looked like a couple teeth. He took his helmet off and let it tip over onto the ground, then he collapsed onto the dirt and stared up at the sky. Clots of blood were matted in his beard, shimmering in the light like beads of sweat. Mike, Ohio, and the rest of their team stood around what was left of the truck, kicking up pieces of burnt metal and rubber, sifting through the wreckage and what was left of its inhabitants.

There wasn’t much.

There was a blackened piece of leather sitting just beyond Shaw’s feet, skin melted into the stitching. It was the top half of a sandal. Next to it was a hand cut at the palm, missing all its fingers. Hagan saw Shaw and ran over. Hagan’s eyes were wide and he pointed at Shaw’s crotch, the veins in his forearm popping like little snakes. Shaw was dizzy. The burning tires and metal had stirred up his guts. He looked at the fingerless hand and saw the blackened bone sticking out of the charred flesh. It looked like a burnt piece of charbroiled chicken. He felt faint and nauseated and then he got sick, threw up all over his boots. There were grains of rice stuck between his laces. He couldn’t remember having eaten anything in hours. He felt Hagan’s hands rummaging around his crotch, the fingers fluttering between his legs and grabbing bare skin. Then Hagan stopped and patted him on the back, and the black took Shaw away.

•   •   •

That night the five of them sat around the TOC, watching the monitors together.

“I thought you’d lost your nuts,” Hagan said.

Shaw had a cold pressure wrap tied around his head and he offloaded some of the chaw from his mouth into a foam cup. Spit streaked his beard. He probably didn’t need the nicotine. He was dizzy enough from the painkillers. Hagan looked over at him, his feet propped on another chair. He spoke through a thick horseshoe, drooling into a white foam cup.

“That’s why I was molesting you. Why the hell was your fly open, anyway?” Hagan rested his hands on his thighs. He balanced the cup between his belt and his stomach.

Shaw shrugged.

Dalonna lost his front teeth and had his mouth and cheeks cut up some. Shaw didn’t remember the blast or the flight back, just Hagan feeling his nuts and seeing body parts lying next to charred metal. Both Shaw and Dalonna were diagnosed with concussions. The two of them were off mission status until their concussions cleared, and the rest of the team was given the option of continuing on as attachments or waiting it out with Shaw and Dalonna. They chose the latter and the five of them watched the monitors together, the birds flying out to an objective like dragonflies on the screen.

Shaw had a metallic smell in his nose and a headache ever since the blast. It reeked of hot metal and sawdust, pennies and blood. His brain felt like it was trying to breathe but couldn’t through the thick walls of his skull. The cool wrap wasn’t doing much, but without it he’d probably be sweating and miserable. Massey and Cooke stood behind the other three, facing the monitors, arms crossed over their chests like bandoleers. Dalonna sat next to Shaw, his face puffy with gauze. He had holes shaved into his beard for the stitches. The black sutures looked like hairy moles. He smiled at Shaw.

“How are the nuts?”

Shaw looked down at his pants.

“Donna, the nuts are good. No nut problems. Dandy nuts, guys.”

“It was piss,” Hagan said. “You had piss all over you. The dirt and all from the explosion made it look like blood. That’s why I was checking down there.”

“You’re good, Hog,” Shaw said. “Thanks for looking out for my nuts.”

Hagan nodded and turned to the monitors.

The birds hovered over the target building long enough for fast ropes to drop and then two teams rode the ropes to the roof, entering the dwelling from a protruding doorway while another entered from the ground. The kill TVs weren’t tapped into any sound, so the team watched the screens like a silent black-and-white movie. White flashed on the screen from the doorways as the teams threw in bangers, and then all the screens showed for a while were the teams pulling security around the compound. They scanned the surrounding buildings with their lasers, waved a few neighbors back inside their homes, and then a few more operators entered the building. Minutes later the teams exited the objective, leading four men with hands bound behind their backs. Then all of them walked a ways to a clearing and the birds swooped down and carried them away.

“Good shit,” Cooke said. “Hey, Hog. What were his nuts like?”

They all laughed, and Hagan’s faced turned red. “I explained myself, Cooke. I was worried about his nuts.”

Cooke didn’t say anything else, and Dalonna winced and brought his fingers to his mouth. The stitches were raw and part of his lip had split like he’d gotten caught on a fishhook. Smiling made him bleed.

Massey got up.

“Glad you two are good,” he said. “Donna, have you told the lady yet?”

Dalonna shook his head.

“I don’t think I will.” He ran his hands across his face and touched the stitches. “She wouldn’t be able to sleep.”

“Yeah,” Hagan said. “Probably better if you didn’t.”

•   •   •

The docs told them to stay out of the gym for a few days while their concussions cleared, so Dalonna and Shaw loaded their rucks and walked around the base for hours. They walked at night and during the day. They walked under the stars on the cool desert dirt and against the sun and dust storms and the heat. It was a good distraction. Dalonna got a fake set of teeth made up and never told Mirna about the blast. He’d just come home with a few more scars. She might not even notice. During one of the days they were off, Mike and Ohio came in to check on Dalonna and Shaw and told them about the courier and the professor.

Intel had watched the courier, the driver, for nearly a year. He was thought to run for all three of the Scars at one time, but he’d stopped doing so for the last couple months. The change made Intel wonder what he was doing instead—whether he was dead, running for someone else, or had come to the light—so they increased the surveillance on him and put out requests with other foreign agencies. It turned out he’d been coming in and out of the country often, five or six times in the last four months. He utilized two different safe houses on his trip back into the country and the houses were hundreds of miles apart on the same border. Intel let him continue without bothering him to see who he might lead to, and after his second trip in a single month they started watching him full-time. He was busy. He’d get across the border without any issues and then drive all over the country, picking up women, children, and older men. Intel started calling him the Mayor for the way he made his rounds. When he stopped using his phone Intel really perked up on him. Then one day he picked up a balding man with glasses in a white pickup truck. The balding man was the holder of a Jordanian engineering doctorate. He’d taught at a London university and was asked to leave after his name popped up on a list of donors to a charitable organization that had laundered money to associates of a known bomb-builder. The story had been printed in The Times. He entered the country legally after losing his post, and international intelligence services kept tabs on him for years ever since, letting him move freely and make acquaintances but watching him still. When the Mayor picked him up in the truck, Jordanian intelligence services following the bald man contacted Intel. Intel beeped through the 1 immediately, and the Little Birds were sent out to meet him.

The trunk of the truck was full of packaged fertilizer, hair spray bottles, batteries, five-gallon drums of gasoline, and other white powders in addition to two prototype vests the professor had developed. He saw the birds in the rearview mirror and riffled through a duffel bag in the backseat, arming the vests just as the truck came to a stop. He was a brilliant mathematician, but miscalculated by inches. Intel figured he didn’t want to be taken alive and decided to try to kill as many of the operators as possible.

“We couldn’t question the shoulder or wrist we found,” Mike said. “But at least they didn’t blow in a market or busy street.”

He wore a black ball cap and T-shirt with his bottoms and a pair of shower sandals. He rubbed his hands over his knees and picked at his kneepads with his fingernails. Then he started mumbling softly and no one could hear him over the air conditioners running in the tents. He shook his head and his voice trailed off for good and no one said anything at all. He rubbed his eyes and held his head in his hands. When he looked up again his eyes were red.

Close, he whispered. Close.

•   •   •

Dalonna and Shaw passed their concussion checks six days after the blast. Dalonna trimmed the ends of his sutures to keep them from catching on anything and Shaw walked around during the day in full kit and helmet for hours to see if anything felt off. The kit felt sown to his chest and shoulders and the pads of the helmet found their slots in his skull and hair. Everything felt good. Tight and right. They were on the green again.

The sun was dipping into the horizon and cool air blew on the wind. Fall had left summer for winter during their week off the green and the cold had crept in. The men wore zip-ups, long-sleeve tops, and winter hats to their briefs. They left their tents more during the daylight hours to shoot and play Wiffle ball, and some of the shit stench seemed strangled by the colder winds. They were pitching horseshoes when they got the 4 and Shaw was glad for it. He hadn’t ringed a shoe yet and started getting a headache after concentrating on the stake for so long. He didn’t want to start having second thoughts whether he should be greened or not. He needed the distraction, saw the boy in the pass whenever he closed his eyes.

“We should grab Donna,” Hagan said.

Then he ringed a shoe. Probably the first anyone had ever seen him land.

“He’s on the phones,” Massey said.

Hagan looked off toward the phone tent. He didn’t seem to have noticed his shot.

Shaw stood up from the ground where he’d sat staring at the gray mass of clouds overhead. A long gray wall spanning the entire sky. “I’ll grab him.”

Hagan nodded and spat in the dirt. “He told me to leave him alone a while ago.” He threw his other shoe and ringed it again. “I think he’s messed up.”

“All right. I’ll get him,” Shaw said. “Thanks, Hog.”

Cooke pointed to the stake. His mouth was open and his dip had settled untamed in the gaps of his teeth. He pointed to the stake, at the two horseshoes Hagan had ringed.

“Hog, you’ve never ringed a shoe as long as I’ve known you, and you just ringed two. What kind of shit are you pulling?”

•   •   •

Dalonna was sitting outside on the dirt with his back propped against the wooden shitter shacks across from the phones. He wore a zip-up and a watch cap pulled low on his head. He had an old pipe in his hand and smoke curled in thick leaden tails from his lips. The clouds were gray and heavy, low in the sky. The same color as his smoke.

Shaw walked up with his hands in his bottom pockets. “Nice pipe.”

Dalonna acknowledged Shaw with his eyes and threw the pipe to his side. It landed in the dirt, the tobacco spilling out on the ground. “It was my granddad’s. It’s supposed to calm.”

“Does it?”

“Nah. Mainly just tastes like shit.”

Shaw nodded. “You all right, Donna?”

Dalonna’s stitches were clipped so close that one or two had broken free from the skin. Shaw could make out small dots of dull red blood that had dried to his face. Dalonna looked at him for a brief while and then shook his head. He let out a heavy breath.

“Little Danny isn’t doing too good.”

Shaw tried to picture a Danny they knew. Couldn’t find one.

“Who’s Danny, Donna?”

Dalonna smiled. “Daniel Dalonna. My boy.”

Shaw said the name in his head a few times, mouthed it with his lips. Daniel Dalonna. Danny. Danny Dalonna. It rolled well. Sounded good.

“Danny Dalonna. Daniel. That’s a good name,” Shaw said. “I hadn’t heard his name yet.”

“Hadn’t told anyone yet.” Dalonna smiled.

“What’s wrong with Danny, Donna?”

Dalonna spat at the pipe, missed. “Abnormal nuchal fold.”

Shaw raised his eyebrows.

“It’s a fluid buildup in the neck,” Dalonna said. “They can see it on the ultrasound and measure the levels. They have safe levels, averages, and then levels of concern. Mirna had an ultrasound today and Danny’s levels aren’t good.”

“Not good or bad?”

“Bad.”

“And what does bad mean?”

Dalonna sighed and raised his hands. “Not sure yet. They stabbed Mirna with a needle and took some samples from Danny’s neck to test for issues with chromosomes.”

“They took samples from his neck? How the hell do they do that?”

Shaw imagined Dalonna’s Danny, the little guy squirming in his mom’s fluids and getting tapped with a needle. He probably wasn’t even the size of an acorn yet.

“They stabbed Mirna in the stomach with some big-ass needle and took samples from his neck,” Dalonna said. “Maybe his body. I don’t know. He’s the size of a fucking plum. A lime.”

Shaw looked at his hand. He imagined a small fruit that could sit in his palm. “Damn. Donna, I’m sorry.”

“The needle could’ve killed him to begin with, and Mirna said it hurt like hell, but the doctor said it was necessary. If we wanted to know if he’ll live or not.” Dalonna rubbed the heels of his boots in the dirt.

“Live? Why wouldn’t he live?”

Dalonna shrugged. “That’s what the tests will say, I guess. Larger nuchal folds can mean Down’s syndrome and trisomies, or other disorders that can kill him before he’s even born.”

“Can mean isn’t a sure thing. Right?”

“Yeah, that’s what I told Mirna. But apparently the doctor was freaking her out. He told her to consider her options for the pregnancy.”

“Options as in?”

“Termination.”

“Because of a fluid buildup in his neck?”

“Yeah. He gave Danny a twenty percent chance of living. Less than ten for having a normal life. Based off his experience.”

“His experience.” Shaw spat. “Twenty percent? Because of some fluid. How much experience does this doc have?”

“I don’t know. At least thirty or forty years. He’s a gray-hair. Mirna said he’s some expert in the field. He’s not her normal doctor. They called him in when they saw the nuchal-fold levels.”

“Screw him, Donna. Gray-hairs don’t even know how to drive.”

Dalonna laughed and wiped his hands in the dirt, rubbed them together slowly. He locked his fingers together and looked at his boots.

“Man, I want a boy. I love my girls. But I want a boy.”

He sat propped against the shitters with his shoulders slack and deflated. His neck hung exposed and limp to one side like he was waiting for a blade to take his head off. He looked scared and young. Fragile. Then he brought a hand up and started picking at his stitches. He took one out, and then the others. Blood started to trickle down his face in slow beads that left behind thin trails.

“Mirna almost lost one of her boys a couple days ago and Danny could be waiting to die inside her.” His hand disappeared into one of his pockets and he pulled out the beeper. “I got the 4.”

“You can get out of it, Donna. No worries.”

“I’m good. Just need a few minutes.”

“Donna—”

“I’ll be fine. Meet you at the brief.”

Shaw nodded because he didn’t know what to say. He turned around and left Dalonna. Then he turned back and Dalonna waved him on and Shaw walked to the briefing room. On his way he kept opening and closing his hands. Shaw imagined the smooth skin of a plum nestled in his palm. It would be so easy to break.

•   •   •

The men ate frosted Halloween cookies sent over from Massey’s niece, Penelope, as they waited for the brief to begin. Dalonna came in after the others had already gathered. He grabbed a cookie and the laminated printout in front of him and studied both of them for a while. Then he put down the printout, ate the cookie, and rubbed Hagan’s head and patted Shaw on the back. There were twenty of them in the room. Four teams.

“We’re getting off the Scar intel for a while,” the CO said. “After the village and the car bombing we’re going to develop the intel a little more before moving on any more of it. We’ll be heading up north tonight. There’s already some snow up there.” He shrugged. “So it’ll be a little cold.”

The men were already wearing long sleeves, zip-ups, and winter hats. The real cold might’ve saved itself for the night in the south where the FOB was, but it had already crept into the daylight throughout the rest of the country. The mountains were full of snow. A couple of the southern boys had full jackets on.

“Our target’s with one of his wives tonight,” the CO said. “They loaded into a black SUV with a few other FAMs and left the city in the morning. Not sure if they’re making a run for the border and just squatting for the night or just dicking around, but we can’t risk it. As you can see”—he pointed to the satellite images—“they’re completely isolated. Not another building for at least a klick in any direction, and most of them are goat-herding squat shacks already abandoned for the winter.”

They went over the target and his accomplices during the brief, their reasons for catching Intel’s attention. The FAMs were given the moniker Pup1–4 for the way they followed the target, Lion1, around like his puppies. Lioness1 was the wife.

“She might talk more than any of the men,” the CO said. “We don’t usually get a chance at the women if little kids are around, so getting her alive will be priority one.”

Lion1 was a Saudi in his late forties, an old man for the region he was from. He grew up in a centuries-old village carved into the side of a mountain, and as a boy he was rumored to have killed his own father for abusing one of his sisters. Apparently he ran away to a madrassa for refuge and found his fire. He was a leader from an early age and he’d grown tall and crooked at the hip from a round that had found his legs during the war in the region with the Soviets in the eighties. He was known to hack off the legs of those who fell out of his favor and he kept the de-legged alive to spread fear among his ranks, forcing them to act as runners in firefights. They’d wheel ammo carts tied to their middles and have to crawl around boulders and rocks. He walked with a limp but carried no cane and was known to shave his peppery beard when he planned on making a move. He hadn’t been seen in four years and then a CIA asset on the ground had sent pictures of him with his beard shaved just the day before and Intel pounced.

Lion1 had formerly led an al-Qaeda cell the squadrons had decimated. In the first years of the war his network owned the western regions of the country. If a bomb blew or a body showed up missing its head in an irrigation ditch west of the capital, Lion1’s network had a hand in it. At the height of his power he even had his name thrown in on the ballot for election to the position of Ministry of Defense for the rebuilding government. But he didn’t win and the political move poisoned his network. Captains in his cell alleged that he was straying off the sect’s polarized path of sharia, getting too Westernized with his political aims, so there were assassination attempts. One day his car blew up as it idled next to a fruit stand in a bazaar. He’d gotten out to look at some clothes for sale across the street when the bomb planted in a melon stand next to his car by one of his exiled lieutenants detonated. The blast killed the driver, liquefied the seats, and twisted the metal skeleton of the vehicle. But Lion1 didn’t die in the blast, so he killed the exiled lieutenant and his family and left the bodies in an irrigation ditch off a dirt road. Then he started getting paranoid and killed off his other officers. His cell leaders showed up bound on the sides of busy roads with bullets in the backs of their heads. Weeks and months passed and the killings didn’t, so he lost his clout and his followers. Other cells took over his network while it was reeling, killing those who refused to switch allegiances, until there was nothing but scraps left. The Pups were his oldest living son, his nephew, and two cousins of one of his three wives. The shaved beard and trip up north were reason enough for Intel to move, so the 4 came through.

The CO leaned against a table.

“He’s not with al-Ayeelaa. At least not to our knowledge. But some of his ex-lieutenants that are still alive are rumored to be. Every squadron and coalition force has been looking for this guy for years. Intel figures he’s a bad egg worth talking to. A drone tracked the SUV to the compound and hasn’t reported any activity since they arrived. This is a live feed.”

He pointed to a black-and-white image on one of the kill TVs. The camera circled slowly with the arc of the drone while the compound sat still in the middle of the shot. The CO looked at Dalonna and Shaw.

“You guys feeling okay?”

They nodded.

“Good. Welcome back.”

They got the 1 at 2242 hours.

They were all sitting in the war room, debating whether they should play blackjack or a game Hagan had made up called tittyspank. Blackjack was winning out, even though Hagan was campaigning pretty hard for tittyspank, and Dalonna wasn’t talking a whole lot because of a new set of stitches he had to replace the ones he’d torn out. When the beep came through he folded an ultrasound picture into halves and put it in his top. Then he racked his weapon as the claps of metal mags and bolts slamming home walked the men into the night.

•   •   •

After they clipped into the birds they flew north to the snow. The cold bit at their faces first and then settled heavily into their legs. It hurt to breathe. They flew fast and low, nap-of-the-earth. Shaw could dip down a couple feet and scoop up snow on his boots. The dried, wind-chapped earth gave way to rolling fields of snow and the moon shined bright. The wind blew snow off the tops of the hillsides and the plumes came off the crests as if the land were breathing deep breaths. Their NODs weren’t needed, the world lit up instead by the light of the stars caught in the blankets of ice and snow. They saved their batteries and lifted the NODs.

The Five mikes out call came over the comms and they continued riding the hills until the land flattened and the birds dropped them off two klicks from the compound, where the hills of snow would strangle the noise of their approach. The goat-herder shacks were set up every couple hundred meters and they stood out from the land like tombstones. Like thumbs on the earth’s hand. With NODs down and lasers fired up, the operators painted the world green. The snow was a couple inches thick and crusted over with a thin film of ice. Shooting stars cut the sky and the wind blew snow across the countryside. After they had walked for a half hour, the perimeter teams radioed in Panther1 and 2 in position and the operators could see the objective. Banks of windblown snow draped the target building. It looked like the compound was driving itself out of the snow or trying to hide in it.

The assault teams moved in and Shaw led them to the front door. There weren’t any lights on, the compound set back in the snow and the dark. As they posted up alongside the house Shaw noticed how cold the walls were, how dark everything was. Not a single light escaped from the dwelling, and he wondered if Intel was right and people were sleeping inside. Living inside. He watched Hagan run his hands over the lock, his breath pluming in front of his face, and imagined kicking in the door and finding a bunch of freezing, scared-to-shit goats cuddled up in blankets.

“We’re blowing it,” Hagan whispered over the comms.

He set the charge on the door, and as it blew Shaw noticed the windows were simple, whole sheets of thick metal. The door blew in and bright light from inside the compound flooded out into the dark.

The lights were on.

Bangers started popping and Shaw entered the doorway over the scraps of the blown door. He followed the wall left and Dalonna turned right. It was warm and bright inside and smelled of baharat, wood smoke, and old blankets. Two men stood behind a waist-high table, a third in an open doorway behind them. They’d been eating. Their forks were closer than the rifles settled on the tables, but they flinched forward. The man standing had his thumb looped through the sling of a rifle as if he were resting his hand on a pair of suspenders, his nose and eyes scrunched together like he smelled something off. Dalonna’s rifle popped and coughed before Cooke and Hagan had fully entered the room, and Shaw heard the shots and continued down the wall. He and Dalonna pushed through to the next room while Cooke and Hagan checked the bodies. There were footsteps overhead as Mike’s team cleared the second floor, and then a loud crack, crack, and then more shots. They sounded like coughs muffled by a fist. Then Mike’s voice calling for another medic to come upstairs came over the comms.

“Two wounded. Two EKIA.”

Massey left the three bodies in the first room and ran up to the second level. Then Mike came over the comms again.

“Second floor secured.”

The whole house was cleared in minutes.

Shaw and Dalonna stood in a dark storeroom, scanning the shelves and dusty corners with their tac lights. It smelled of rotten grains and burlap musk. There were half-empty hemp bags of wheat and oats and jarred vegetables covered in dust, the labels nearly faded off. In the corner of the shed were two long wooden rifles that looked like they could hardly fire a shot, and on a nail by the backdoor, a set of car keys.

The black SUV was parked right outside the storeroom. The paint had been chipped and faded, beaten by the countryside for years. It looked like it was shedding its skin. A man could cut himself simply running his hand along the doors. Shaw opened the trunk and found it full of black duffel bags. Inside the bags were false passports, a couple thousand American dollars in crumpled wads, and extra clothes. A loaded Glock 9mm and a Makarov with three loaded clips. The clothes were mostly male tops and bottoms with a few colorful items and silk hijabs sprinkled in. The clothes were not folded. The front seats housed a full bag of almonds and a nearly empty pack of Marlboros. There were two plastic lighters. One yellow and one orange. Shaw radioed in Objective secured and then they left the car and searched the layout and the bodies inside.

The place was tidy, ordered and neat. Shoes were lined up at the front door and low moans and short, strained language came through the ceiling. It sounded like furniture was getting shifted around upstairs. Carpets blanketed every inch of the floor and there were prayer rugs rolled into tight cylinders and stacked against a wall flecked with drops of blood. Elaborate floor lamps with beaded tassels on the covers stood in a corner of every room on the first floor and there were books on shelves and old Time and National Geographic magazines on a small table. A fireplace with ashes in its hearth occupied most of one of the walls, and a large black pot of rice was set on the table between the dead men who had fallen off the chairs and were lying on the floor. Cracked yellow plates of unfinished food were on the table, rice and animal bones with greasy gristle and fat still on the bone. It looked like goat. Partially opened bags of fertilizer lined the walls.

Shaw walked over to the men who had been shot at the table. They lay crumpled on the floor next to their overturned chairs. Their fingers were oily and they had black and green spices stuck in their fingernails. They wore dark jeans with light stitching on the hems and had ashy skin and dark beards. Their blood was settling in the carpet. Dalonna had gone for the face. The two men had holes in their cheeks and foreheads.

“Donna,” Shaw said. “Headshots?”

Dalonna shrugged and leafed through their pockets, set what he found on the table. “Nuchal folds on my mind.”

Shaw looked back at the bodies. Their faces were sunken and cracked where the rounds had entered. The flaps of skin were jagged and the flesh and bones broken. The features—eyes, noses, and mouths—contorted into shattered glass doll masks by the lead. Blood had settled behind the heads and made mops of their hair, and their skin seemed to be taking on the same yellow, sickly glow as the lamps. One of them wore a white kameez with a dark vest and the other wore the same but had a khaki coat with cargo pockets instead of a vest. Shaw went through the cargo pockets of the khaki coat. There was nothing but crumpled tissues in two of the four pockets. The other two were empty. Neither man wore shoes. Shaw smelled something harsh while he was kneeling and noticed a dark bloom on one of the guy’s pants. His bowels had relaxed after he was shot.

“Dude was packing heat,” Dalonna said.

He threw two lighters on the table and three packs of cigarettes. The packs were all opened.

“Were those all in his jacket?” Shaw asked.

“No. He had one in his pants.” Dalonna shrugged. “Dude needed his fucking smokes. Beat cancer at least.”

The man who had stood with his thumb in the sling of his rifle lay on the floor between the first room and the storeroom. He had a white dress shirt buttoned to the collar and black pants with no belt. He wore a ratty old green jacket that was frayed at the collar and waistline, and he had a bushy black mustache that reminded Shaw of the one his father wore in pictures he’d seen as a kid. Two red flowers bloomed at the man’s breastbone where the rounds had entered before splintering the wall behind him. Dalonna had spared the man’s face and made his way across the floor and was checking the body.

“Phone,” Dalonna said.

He held it up for Shaw to see and threw it on the table. They bagged it. Then they took pictures of the bodies and fingerprints.

“I think this is sugar,” Hagan said. He had his hands in one of the bags of fertilizer running the length of the walls.

“Taste it,” Cooke said.

“After you, sweetheart.” Then Hagan shrugged and licked his fingers. “Yeah. It’s sugar.”

Shaw and Dalonna walked over to the bags, and Hagan tasted the other bags along the wall.

“All sugar,” Hagan said.

“What if it had been fertilizer, Hog?” Cooke asked.

Hagan shrugged again. “I don’t know. Wouldn’t have tasted as good, I guess.”

Then a sharp inhale came from behind them. There was a whimper, like a puppy stepped on in the dark. Massey was struggling down the stairs, carrying a short, wide woman over his shoulder. She was wearing a long, dark chador, and the back of her head was exposed. She cried out every time Massey took a step. Her long black hair was braided and wrapped in a bun. It shined in the lamplight. One of the braids trailed behind her and bounced off Massey’s back with each step. She had a large mass of white bandages wrapped around her middle, and Slausen walked down the stairs behind them. He was growing his beard back in and the mustache was overpowering the new hair. He carried Ohio over his shoulder, wraps and compresses snaking thick around one of his legs. His face bounced against Slausen’s shoulder with each step and his eyes were open but glassy. He didn’t say anything. Massey walked out of the door with the wife, and Slausen gave them a thumbs-up and followed with Ohio.

“He’ll be fine,” Mike said. He made his way outside, following behind the medics. “Took one in the leg. In and out.”

“And the wife?” Shaw asked.

“Took a few in the gut.” His voice started strong, booming through the warm house. “She probably won’t make it.”

Then the wind swallowed his voice and there was quiet and Shaw looked at his hands. Small tracks of blood had made their way into the creases and wrinkles of his gloves. He didn’t know which dead man it’d come from. Then Hagan came over beside him and tossed him a red apple. He held another, half eaten, in his hand. Shaw caught the apple and looked at him. Hagan was nodding to himself, eyeing the books on the shelf, a hand on his hip.

“This place is like my grandma’s cottage.”

Shaw held up the apple.

“Where’d you get this?”

“On the table next to the goat plates,” Hagan said. “I found a phone right next to it.” He held up the phone in his hand.

“And you’re eating it?”

“Yes to the apple, no to the phone. This isn’t fucking Snow White.”

He laughed and Shaw threw the apple back at his chest.

“Man, it’s hot in here,” Hagan said. “My nuts are swimming. What’s with all the sugar?”

Shaw brought his hands to his nose. “No idea.”

He could still smell the apple on his gloves on the flight back to base.

They took the duffel bags from the trunk. After destroying the weapons and ammunition while waiting for the exfil, they left the rest of the compound relatively intact and stacked the bodies outside neatly. They got all four of the Pups. One was killed on the second floor along with Lion1, and the others were the ones Dalonna tapped with headshots and the man with the blooming breastbone. Lion1 was upstairs in bed with his wife, an AK loaded and lying between them. He got two shots off on Ohio before Mike killed him, and then the wife picked up the rifle and Mike had to put two through her middle. It happened fast. In the air Massey pounded her chest, but got back on the tarmac with blood all over his hands and arms.

“She bled out,” he said.

He opened his hands and let them fall to his sides.

•   •   •

Intel found numerous SIM cards sown into the inside flaps of the duffels taken from the black SUV. The techs analyzed the cards and phones immediately and pored over the data. Spiderwebs formed in major cities and mountain complexes from the networks spun by the plastic chips no larger than a child’s thumbnail. There was also a zip drive wrapped in a teal hijab, balled and tucked inside another black one inside one of the duffels. They found documents and drafts, copies of e-mails saved from various accounts. Those could be tapped and traced.

They were.

Massey and Shaw were sitting outside the tents days after the Lion1 raid. They rolled a baseball across the dirt in the daylight. The heat had left for the year and the clouds hung low and wide, heavy and sinking with snow. Dalonna heard Daniel was okay after advanced testing and they were all happy about that, relieved. He passed out sugar cookies with light blue frosting that Mirna had sent over, and they were good. The men demolished them in a single sitting.

Massey and Shaw rolled the ball back and forth and the cool air felt good. Fresh. The temperatures were more comfortable now outside during the day than at night. They’d been running nonstop since they landed more than a month ago and their op tempo was charging ahead. Intel gathered at the objectives was analyzed immediately and follow-on targets were identified and hit just as fast. Sometimes within hours. They’d hit a target at night and then have a follow-on target the same night heading back to the FOB. A vehicle interdiction during the daylight hours. Then they’d continue the cycle all over again the next night. Their ops had nearly doubled their days in-country. The machine was alive and working. They’d been busy.

Shaw told Massey he was tired.

“Me too,” Massey said. “Lot of blood. Lot of intel.”

He had the last of the Halloween cookies Penelope sent over in a tin beside him sitting in the dirt, and he threw Shaw one. It was a sugar-cookie ghost with black and white frosting. The ghost was black and its features white. It had teeth with little red blood blobs on the ends.

“Dark child, Mass. And when did ghosts get fangs?”

“Penelope is into scaring the shit out of herself now. She loves Halloween.”

“She’s probably scaring the hell out of your brother, too. He’ll think he’s raising a psychopath.”

Massey laughed and nodded. He rolled the ball toward Shaw and ate some crumbs from the tin, squishing them on his thumb and sucking them off. It had been nearly a week and Penelope’s cookies were still highly sought after. Massey took to hiding them under his bed after the men had devoured Mirna’s cookies. Hagan was especially aggressive, eating nearly half the Halloween tin within the first two days. He’d been bugging Massey about when Penelope would send along more and Massey lied and told him it would be soon. Around Christmas, maybe. Hagan got impatient and asked for Penelope’s address, so Massey gave him the address of an old girlfriend. Hagan hadn’t gotten a response yet, but the men were all eagerly awaiting one.

“Up for heading over to the CASH again?”

Shaw took a bite out of the ghost’s side. The light and fluffy base had turned hard and sharp, stale. He thought the frosting might have cut his lip.

“No, Mass. Again, the CASH isn’t somewhere I like to hang out. What’s with you medics? Morbid and bloodthirsty bastards.”

Massey threw what looked like another cookie at him, but it hit like a rock. “No, man. Candy.” Then he smiled real wide and wild. “I got a shit ton of it.”

•   •   •

They carried plastic shopping bags full of Snickers, Reese’s, Kit Kats, Hershey’s, and a bunch of other brightly colored happy shit, and walked to the CASH the same as before—over the gravel and dirt, and across the various perimeters and checkpoints sectioning off the base.

“How exactly did you get all this sent to you?” Shaw asked. He felt the plastic lining of the bag straining under the weight of its contents. There must have been five pounds of candy inside.

“Well, it wasn’t all sent to me. Exactly.”

“Exactly. Exactly meaning what?”

“Exactly meaning I might have gotten a couple smaller bags in the mail sent to me and then got inspired to find some more.” He winked at Shaw.

“I don’t want to know. If I don’t know I can’t get burned.”

“Well, that’s probably not true,” Massey said. “For starters, you’re holding the hot merchandise. But I’ll save you some grief and say its initial owners and nation of origin are classified. There. You can’t be charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive.”

“Fair. Don’t go breaking your clearance for me.”

“Never. You’re not worth it.”

The rickety front steps of the CASH had a few more nails in them and felt a little sturdier than before, but Shaw’s stomach didn’t. He felt his guts moving around. They entered the CASH and Massey nodded to the same blond guard as before and the guard nodded back. Then the guard nodded at Shaw and Shaw returned it and lifted the plastic bag. The guard smiled and eased the barrel of his rifle down to his belt. The pair made their way through the corridor and Shaw leaned toward Massey.

“Security sucks in here. A smile and a nod and you’re in? We could be lugging live grenades and demolish this place.”

The sheets covering the doorways had been replaced with real wooden doors. There wasn’t as much screaming as before, but low moans, muffled and steady like an air conditioner running in the summertime, were still audible from inside the rooms.

“We don’t have grenades and Matty is security,” Massey said. “He doesn’t suck. Matty knows me. Now us. If he didn’t he’d throw that rifle in your face and knock out your damn teeth. He had the safety off and the barrel smiling at me the first time I came in.”

“Well, that’s good. Good for Matty.”

Massey nodded and stopped in front of a doorway at the end of the hall. He entered the room and Shaw followed. Lines of beds spanned the entire floor. The crinkling of plastic bedsheets, a sniffle here and there, and their boots rubbing on the tile floor were the only noises. A kid coughed and it echoed across the entire ward. Small children sat upright and against pillows. Some were lying down, asleep, with covers pulled up to their chins. Others didn’t have covers at all but rather white bandages stained black and red from their amputated arms and legs. The sheets looked like they might irritate the fresh bandages and wounds. Shaw hoped none of the kids were cold.

“The wards are separated by age,” Massey said. “These are the youngest.”

The room was full of dark hair and dark eyes. Bandages. The walls were painted gray and the sheets were a soft blue. Shaw counted ten beds on either side and only one of them was empty. A TV showed Sesame Street running on mute, subtitles rolling over the bottom of the screen. Some of the kids looked at them and others stared at the wall or watched their stumps. There was a young boy with half his hair shaved off bald and fresh stitches spanning the length of the bald spot on his head. He’d lost an arm above the elbow and was staring at where his hand must have been just days before. His eyes were complete glass and he had a little drool slipping onto his pillow from his mouth. They must have had him on some serious shit. Morphine or something heavier. Very slowly, he was wiggling what was left of his arm.

“Hi,” Massey said.

Massey held his hand up and waved it back and forth slowly. A little girl with white bandages on her arms and her lower half covered by a blanket sat propped up in a bed in front of him. She smiled a little, had a dimple on the right side of her face. She was missing some hair but cute, a really pretty little kid. She had some green in her eyes, same as Penelope. Massey dug into his bag and pulled out a big fistful of candy, set it by her hands. The girl watched the bright colors come out of the black bag and then she chirped back excitedly, like a little bird. She held the candy in her bandaged hands and ran her fingers over the wrappers. She probably liked all the colors, the sound of the plastic wrappers rubbing between her fingers. She smiled at Massey and then at Shaw.

They walked around the ward and stopped at a boy’s bed. He propped himself on his side and smiled. He put out his hand and said, “Hi.” Shaw gave him some candy from the bag and then the boy nodded and said, “Hi,” again before putting the candy in his pillowcase. “It’ll melt,” Shaw said. He pointed at the case and rubbed his fingers together, made a disgusted face. The boy nodded and said, “Hi,” again. Then he smoothed his pillowcase, the candy hidden beneath it, and Massey patted his bed and smiled, let him be. The boy was missing both of his legs.

Shaw and Massey made their way around the room for a long while. Some of the kids were scared or shy, so Shaw and Massey would just leave some candy under the pillows. Other kids tried to speak English. They said things like “Hi,” “Basketball,” and “Real Madrid.” One girl even said, “Snickers, please,” real soft and quiet. Most smiled or were probably too drugged up to decide on their reaction. Shaw liked being around all the kids. It was nice to see some happy faces in the depressing place, and he even made funny faces to bait smiles out of the ones who didn’t warm up to them. It made him feel good. Then he thought about how both sides dropped bombs and he figured the kids had a right not to smile at them if they didn’t feel like it.

When a nurse came in, Massey hid his bag behind his back, so Shaw did the same. They waved at her and she smiled and inserted an IV into a sleeping girl by the door, brushed the girl’s hair, and then left. They gave out all the candy and put the empty bags in a trash can filled with needles and bloodied compresses and walked back in the failing light. Shaw was going to ask Massey if he ever brought Dalonna to the CASH, thinking that all the kids would make Dalonna happy, but when they left Shaw looked back and saw all the kids in the beds watching them go. Their bright smiles stood out sharply against their dark hair. Even the ones they couldn’t get smiles out of watched them leave. The boy without legs who had propped himself up on his side and said “Hi” to them held a hand up, and Shaw felt good and like he might get sick at the same time. Seeing all the kids torn up would break Dalonna.

“Mass. Won’t they get sick from all the candy?”

“Nah. They’re blown up, not malnourished. The starving kids are in a separate area of the CASH.” He looked at the sky for a while and put his hands in his pockets. “They monitor that ward especially close. These kids just need to get used to living without their limbs. Some candy is small potatoes.”

Shaw thought that made sense and then asked about the kid they’d found chained to Tango1’s floor. Massey said he was cleaning up the wards, resupplying some of the medical materials. He’d gotten his cot and room, and Massey said he seemed happy. Shaw thought he might like to see him.

“What was his name?”

Massey stopped walking and his eyes narrowed. He looked up at the sky. “You know what? I don’t even know his name.” He laughed and shook his head.

“Do you think he’ll get some fake teeth?”

“I don’t know,” Massey said. “I hope so. But it’s probably not a priority.”

They walked on a ways, and Shaw was enjoying the light breeze and the fading light, the quiet. He smelled dust and rain and it was nice.

“You know what?”

Shaw looked at him, then at the moon switching spots with the sun. “What’s that?”

“People are messed up,” Massey said.

Shaw had just put in a chew. The juices were warm and rushing hard. He didn’t say a thing.

Massey shook his head. “Cute kids. All blown to hell.”

Just then the wind kicked up and blew cold and Shaw wished he’d brought a jacket along. He hadn’t, though, so he put his hands in his pockets and set them in deep, reaching for warmth.

•   •   •

They didn’t get spun up that night, so they watched feeds of other raids on the kill TVs in the TOC. Shaw watched Dom, the Belgian Malinois, run into a room before an assault team and then the screen flashed white. The team outside the door moved back with the blast—except for Stephens, who ran into the room. The teams radioed in a casualty and Shaw thought about the white flash and the pressure that moved the team backward. He knew Dom was gone. He thought about Patch then, how Patch used to sit next to him on hot days when he was a kid and pant and pant all day long. Patch liked to lick the salt off Shaw’s knees, and Shaw would rub the crown of Patch’s skull between his thumb and forefinger. Patch would fall asleep against his legs, stomach rising and falling quick. Then his grandma would come outside and they’d both pet him together. Shaw missed him, wanted to feel the soft white fur on his fingers.

The rest of the raid went well and they got their guy alive, but everyone was quiet in the war room after they got back. Dogs and their handlers were closer than most team members. They slept in the same beds, jumped out of planes together, and even showered together. Shaw and Massey sat against the lockers with Stephens after the teams got back. Stephens held one of Dom’s tac vests in his lap and ran his fingertips over the bristles of the toothbrush he kept looped into the vest at all times. He brushed Dom’s teeth three times a day, was hoping to get the Belgian Malinois to live twenty years. He was convinced that keeping the plaque from forming in Dom’s teeth would keep the dog’s arteries and intestines clean, assuring a longer life. He talked about it endlessly.

Stephens rifled through his pockets slowly and took out a bright green tennis ball. His eye sockets were puffy and his cheeks shined bright in the light. He spoke real soft, barely made a sound. “Can someone get rid of this for me?” He released the ball and it rolled under the lockers. Then he seemed to sink into the wall lockers, his upturned hand resting on the ground and his fingers extended. A single tear from each eye fell down his cheeks and disappeared in his beard.

Shaw grabbed the ball and walked out of the war room and put it in his tent. He figured he’d give it back to Stephens in a few weeks. He probably didn’t want to let it go, just didn’t want to have to look at it for a while.

•   •   •

The men gathered in rows and had a service outside for Dom that night. The sun was just setting and the sky was clear. Stephens had cut up some leather from one of Dom’s collars and tied it off around his wrist. Shaw asked if he could have one, too, and Stephens brightened up and said he’d get working on it. After the service they got a 4 on their beepers and in a few minutes the briefing room was full of guys shifting in their seats. Stephens was there, even though he wouldn’t be on the op. He had an Orioles cap set low on his face, only his beard visible below the brim, and Ohio sat beside him with his bandaged leg propped on a chair. He wouldn’t be on the op, either, and he rested his hand on Stephens’s shoulder. The CO stood in front of them and began the brief.

“To start. That was indeed sugar in the fertilizer bags from the Lion1 raid. Intel’s been digging through the finds from the SSE for the past week, night and day. Most of the e-mails they’ve breached are written in code. They’ve been able to break some, take good guesses on others, and are working on the rest. We didn’t think he had anything to do with al-Ayeelaa, but he did. From what Intel can gather, they think Lion1 and his caravan made a deal with al-Ayeelaa. They might have agreed to provide a hundred pounds of fertilizer in a remote compound in the hills in exchange for safe passage out of the country. We didn’t find an ounce of fertilizer, but we did find enough sugar to supply a small bakery for weeks. Add in the fake documents, the money, the packed bags, and shoot-it-out firepower they had, and I’d say that’s a pretty good guess. Lion1 was probably planning on giving al-Ayeelaa a final Fuck you before you guys ruined it for him.”

There were more operators in the room than there were during any other brief thus far, and the teams seated around the tables seemed to notice. They kept looking around the room at one another while they listened to the brief. Shaw couldn’t help but stare at the images tacked to the whiteboard. They showed a compound nearly a block wide dropped into the middle of a cluttered neighborhood of dust-colored shanty homes, small storefronts, and narrow alleyways. It was the same quilted spread of urban patchwork as the night with the rocks, only spread over a larger area. Shaw thought of the boys and the rocks he threw at them and wondered how they were doing. If they were good boys or bad, and where he’d draw the line between the two. He wondered if they were still alive.

The CO said multiple correspondences had been traced from the zip drive they found to a single IP address originating in the compound pictured on the whiteboard and printouts. Frequent contributors to a jihadist website had the same IP address.

“We also have two different numbers that have popped hot in the compound today. Both were recently dialed from phones in the Lion1 compound. The phones have popped in the Scar network as well. We’re attributing the numbers to a Pike1 and 2. The compound is formerly a school. It’s not anymore. Sources on the ground can’t verify a specific use, and based on its size it could be a lot of things. It could be a bomb factory. It could be a meeting or housing area. It could be a damn daycare or an urban training ground—we know they’re not using the mountain camps anymore like bin Laden used. Or it could be nothing.” The CO shrugged and opened his hands. “But take the IP address and the two phones and it’s worth checking out. If Lion1 was dealing with someone in the compound, they’re likely a big fish. Even more if the Scars had anything to do with them. Any FAM should be taken in for questioning. All tech devices are to be bagged, no matter how big or outdated.”

Shaw thought of the maze of classrooms his schools had had in his childhood. There were lots of blind corners, open spaces, and places to hide. The room seemed to tense and hold its breath the longer the CO spoke.

“You all know the laws around here,” he said. “One weapon per household, and there’s a hell of a lot of houses. The GMVs make the most sense. It’s too risky to bring birds into the neighborhood, so we’ll drive out and hope the whole city doesn’t decide to come out and mess with us. They shouldn’t, they’re smart enough. Intel’s received hits within the past three hours, but they haven’t gotten one in an hour and a half. We’re not hauling until we know they’re still there. Expect a 1 as long as it’s still dark out. The objective’s barely an hour away.”

He asked if there were any questions and there weren’t.

“Stephens.” The CO swallowed, his Adam’s apple rising and falling sharp in his throat. He ran his tongue around the inside of his cheek. “We’re sorry about Dom.”

Ohio rubbed Stephens’s shoulders and Stephens stared straight ahead, nodding along slowly. He didn’t blink or look like he’d heard a single word the CO had said.

•   •   •

After the CO left, the teams stayed in the briefing room to plan movements and flow patterns. The compound looked to be at least two stories high, maybe more. Cooke was squatting and wringing his hands, rocking on the balls of his feet.

“There’s probably a basement, too,” he said. “Places like this always have a lower level.”

Every wing of the compound would be neutralized by one of four different assault teams, while the same number of perimeter and sniper attachments would try to keep any potential combatants from entering the compound. After a while the planning got redundant. The scenario on the ground would likely blow all the plans to hell, so they agreed to keep their flow patterns flexible with an emphasis on section isolation and containment. They figured they’d settle the rest out on the objective. Then all the teams split up and went their separate ways. Hagan got up and wiped stray flecks of dip off his pants after packing his lip.

“Well. This’ll be an interesting night. I’m gonna go take a shit.”

“Poetic,” Cooke said.

Hagan looked at him and smiled. “Cooke. I love you.” Then he paused. “But, and this is a big but—Donna’s wife’s ass big butt—should you get your nuts shot off tonight . . .” Then he paused and took a bow. “I think the world would be a more peaceful, happier place.”

He winked at Shaw and Massey, and his voice carried him outside.

“That’s my security plan,” Hagan said. “Neuter Cooke, increase the peace.”

“Low, Hog,” Dalonna yelled after him. “Mirna’s ass is sanctified.”

•   •   •

The night stretched through endless cups of dip spit and the war room got noxious with all the gun oil and farting thrown into the air. Nicotine highs peaked and adrenaline burnt off after the hours passed. The men were bored and falling asleep. They’d passed 0200 hours, and bets were getting put down whether they’d even roll that night. Shaw put down money that they would, but was hoping they wouldn’t. He reconsidered his bet after sleep crystals started stabbing the pockets and corners of his eyelids. Cooke was lying against his ruck and looked at his watch at 0245 hours and then again at 0330. Dalonna was asleep and Massey seemed to be as well. Hagan was pounding diet pills to stay awake, buzzing pretty hard. He’d yell every few minutes.

“Come on, 1. Beep, you beeper-bitch bastard!”

Then it did and the room came alive.

The operators turned into a sleep-strained mass of swearing and flailing arms and legs. Shaw jumped to his feet and knocked over a cup of spit. The thick spit and dipped tobacco got all over Dalonna’s legs.

“Brutal,” Dalonna said, wiping off his pants with the backs of his hands. “Nothing worse could happen to me.”

Shaw laughed, apologized, and said he hoped that was true. He draped his kit over his head and snapped it in. Checked his watch. It was 0437 hours.

“Damn right,” Hagan said. “How much did I win?”

“Twenty-three dollars,” Cooke said. “Big winner.”

Cooke had fallen asleep in his kit and helmet, so he just stood up and racked his weapon. He gave Dalonna a towel to wipe off the spit streaking his ass and thighs. Some guys flipped down their NODs right away, while others left them up, but they all racked their weapons and stepped outside. The GMVs were motored up and waiting for them, growling on the gravel and spitting out fumes. The clouds were low and moving fast. The teams settled into the cabins and the driver and gunner keyed into the comms, asked the teams if they were good to go. They said they were.

“All right,” the driver said. “Closing the coffin.”

The gears of the doors whined and clicked, then hissed on the frame and sealed shut. Everything went black. A voice yelled out in the dark.

“The sun will be up.”

•   •   •

The GMVs surged forward and chewed up the roads. Shaw and his team split up with Mike’s, so two carriers held half of both teams. If one carrier got separated or neutralized, members of either team would still be able to hit their part of the objective. Mike and Bear sat with Shaw, Dalonna, and Barnes. Hagan and Cooke were in another carrier with Massey and Slausen and the newbies in Mike’s team. Shaw cracked his knuckles over and over again until they wouldn’t pop anymore and he felt pain in the joints. Every set of legs bounced as if the GMVs were driving over rough ground even though the wheels rolled on smooth highways. The men kept checking their watches and shaking their heads.

The GMVs were armor-plated beasts, half the size of a school bus, with tires taller than a man and bomb rails lining the sides. Everything about them was loud and large. The .50-calibers mounted on the roofs saluted the sky, their thumb-sized rounds waiting to breathe. The operators sat in the cabin with sections of collapsible ladders at their feet, disconnected and ready to wear on their backs. The snipers would post up on ladders inside the wall and man the perimeters after the assault teams had climbed and entered the compound. Shaw sat next to Dalonna and Bear. Barnes sat on the other side with Mike. Bear was grinning, his hands dancing up and down the stock of his rifle. He was blowing bubbles with his gum.

“Careful or you’ll get dirt in that bubble,” Dalonna said.

Bear looked at him. His eyes were milk white in the dark. “Donna, I’ve had dirt in my mouth for the last decade.” He blew another bubble. “I like the dirt.”

Dalonna and Shaw laughed.

“When does the sun rise?” Barnes asked.

“Soon,” Mike said. He chewed a granola bar slowly and cracked his neck. “We’ll be out in the light unless we turn back.”

After a while the gunner opened the top hatch and fresh air flooded into the GMV from outside. A soft light lit the cabin. With the hatch open it was easier to figure out where they were, and the traffic and city noises gave way to silence soon enough. They’d cleared the limits of one city and were racing toward another. The vibration from the wheels marked their speed and progress—slowing down meant less bouncing but larger bumps, while speeding up was more bouncing but smaller bumps. Shaw felt the changes in speed in his ass and face. Air started moving around inside the cabin and he thought he could smell some plant life. Then someone took out some dip and he could only smell Copenhagen. They bounced along and Shaw turned to Dalonna.

“How’re the little lady and the littler ones?”

Shaw spoke soft, didn’t want to put Dalonna in a tough spot. If things with Mirna were rocky and he didn’t want the whole cabin knowing about it, Shaw would feel like a dick.

“You know,” Dalonna said. “Not bad, not great.”

Dalonna looked at his wrist and smiled. His girls had made him a pink bracelet and he had it wrapped around his watch.

Bear leaned in.

“I hear you got some sausage cooking in that oven finally, Donna.”

Dalonna smiled. “You bet. And finally is right. Now I’m done. Cut my tubes.”

“Congratulations,” Mike said. “Little dudes are the best. I love my girls, but the little guys are just fearless. It’s awesome to watch.”

“Good for you, Donna,” Bear said. “Congratulations.”

He offered his gum and Dalonna and Shaw shook their heads. Barnes spoke up and said he’d take a few. Bear handed him a couple pieces and Barnes unwrapped them all at once and chewed them all together. Then he took out a pouch of his tobacco, grabbed the gum out of his mouth, and wrapped the gum around the plug.

“Barnes,” Bear said. “You’re fucking up my gum.”

Barnes smiled and shook his head.

“Nah, just making it work a little differently than it’s used to.”

Mike laughed quietly and shook his head and soon the only noise was the rumbling of the engines, the slides of the mounted .50-caliber scanning the road ahead. The moon’s pale light came softly through the open hatch, casting shadows and hard angles on the men’s faces. Their faces appeared sharp and blackened. They looked like ghosts in the dark.

All the men were fidgeting. Shaw ran his gloves together. They used to be a deep glossy black but were bleached ashen by all the sun and foreign earth over the years. They fit better than any pair of socks he ever owned or ever would and formed so well to the grooves and contours of his hands he could see his own ribbed veins and enlarged tendons in the fabric. Notches in the fingers of the gloves allowed for airflow and a hard plastic ridgeline spanned the length of the knuckles. The ridgeline was good for bracing against concrete and keeping the knuckles fresh, although some guys just liked it because it delivered a hell of a blow to anyone who needed a little push along.

After a while Five mikes out came over the comms and elbows flared out and gloved hands fingered straps, tightening buckles and fasteners. Velcro straps loosened and then sealed shut, spreading dust into the air. Shaw refastened his gloves, cracked his knuckles, and made sure he had a round in the chamber and fingered the safety. He turned on his NODs and the world turned green. Then he turned them off. A mag clicked into its well and Mike and Barnes checked their comms. Bear, Dalonna, and Shaw did the same on their side.

“Good to go?” Shaw asked.

Everyone gave a thumbs-up.

Mike looked around, holding onto the straps of his kit with his hands.

“The Cowboys play tonight.”

“The Cowboys suck,” Bear said. “And you’re from Alaska. Why the hell do you care? Who’re they playing, anyway?”

“Alaska isn’t exactly a desirable sports market, Bear, and we don’t suck. We’re focusing on the future. And I don’t know. The Falcons, maybe? Cardinals? Some shit poultry.”

The whole cabin laughed.

“It’s Dali’s birthday,” Dalonna said softly, looking at the floor. He smiled. “She’s three today.”

“Happy Birthday,” Shaw said. He clapped Dalonna on the knee with his gloved hands.

Mike smiled and congratulated him and then his face hardened a little. Bear slapped Dalonna on the back.

“Three,” Barnes said, nodding from across the aisle. “Three’s a good age.” He put his hands on his kneepads and smiled at Dalonna. “Wish I was three again. Happy Birthday, Little Donna.”

Mike smiled and nodded along with the bumps in the road. He looked at his watch.

“Sun’s up.”

Then it started to rain, the large drops splashing loud and hard against the metal sides of the carrier. It seemed every face in the cabin peered down at their watches at the same time and then the gunner on the .50 started shifting sides on the mount in jerks, practically throwing himself from wall to wall. He came over the comms, talking fast.

“Engaging targets on the roofs.”

Shaw recognized the rain as incoming rounds and the .50-caliber on the roof started spitting its thumb-sized rounds, woomf, woomf, woomf, out into the streets. The men racked their weapons and tightened their helmets and kits.

“Well, this is nice,” Barnes said. “The whole city’ll be out.”

Dalonna made the sign of the cross with his fingers and Shaw bit his lips until blood came thick, tasting like rust. Bear had his eyes closed, the back of his head resting against the side of the carrier. He looked asleep.

The carriers slammed to a halt and the door dropped to the ground.

Shaw jumped off the ramp first, into a cloud of dirt and exhaust and a city on fire in the sun.

•   •   •

Shaw brought his sight up to engage targets before his boots hit the dirt. He saw Hagan and Cooke run out from their carrier just a couple meters ahead, then two large women came into view dressed in long black chadors. Their faces were visible, so Shaw looked for the husbands. He saw only the women herd some kids back inside, so he ran through all the dust thrown up in the air by the GMVs. He threw his weight against a wall that looked like it couldn’t hold him, and it didn’t. Brick shifted at the base of his back and then dust and pieces of the wall landed on his shoulders.

AKs cracked their 7.62, and the .50s from the carriers answered with their woomf, woomf, woomf, while 5.56 started spitting around the alleys and streets as the teams hit the ground. Cooke aimed at a blind spot Shaw couldn’t see—behind the house the women had just herded the kids into—and squeezed off a few rounds. The casings ejected and glittered in the sunlight and then settled in the dirt. Cooke and Hagan and Dalonna ran across the road with ladders on their shoulders, weapons up and scanning with one hand. They settled into the wall behind Shaw.

The air snapped, pinged, and buzzed around them. The GMVs raised their doors, stayed put, and the .50s continued sending rounds into the buildings, storefronts, and rooftops. The men moved toward the compound, and targets that popped up on roofs were dropped down onto the street. There wasn’t a lot of screaming, but the fire was total, the roar of weapons deafening. Rounds came from all over and were sent out the same. Shaw led the two teams hugging the wall down its length and turned when it ended in front of a storefront with yellow fruits and vegetables spread out on a ledge. A gangly male wearing a white T-shirt, dark green pants, and flip-flops was leaning out of a doorway in front of the stand, his back turned. He sprayed rounds down the street and his back rippled with the AK’s kick. When Shaw raised his sight and dropped him, his head snapped and his long black hair caught on the wind. He twirled and face-planted, settling between the doorway and the street. They ran past him and Shaw heard a pop, pop as Hagan put two in him to make sure he was down. The air smelled of burning metal and tires. Calls of fire came in so fast they were jamming the airwaves. The comms were useless.

Fire to the east fifty meters, on the rooftops.

Storefront ahead one hundred meters.

Alleys.

On the roof.

South one hundred.

West seventy-five.

North fifteen meters.

East one hundred fifty.

Shaw shot a man wearing sunglasses and propping a rifle on a third-story windowsill, and the man fell back inside the room. Then a woman stuck the muzzle out the same window and he put her down, too. She was wearing a hijab with her face exposed and had strands of black hair cobwebbed over her face from the wind. He could’ve sworn he saw her eyes light up as the rounds hit her chest. He turned a corner and saw the compound on the next block, the walls the color of sand and smoke. Rounds chipped away at the concrete, sending puffs of rock and dust into the air. Black smoke from tire fires rose on the sides of the compound and started blotting out the sun. Apaches had already been called in over the comms and were speeding to the area.

Hagan and Dalonna sprinted across the street ahead of the rest and threw the ladders at the wall. They climbed the rungs and hopped into the compound without pause. The rest of the teams followed suit and dragged the ladders over the walls and inside. Barnes and Bear immediately climbed the rungs and engaged targets. Brass from their fire started raining on the concrete inside the compound. Shaw breathed heavily, scanning the surrounding rooftops and the walkway in front of him that led to the doors and stairwells of the compound. His sight was shaking, bobbing up and down with each rapid breath, so he tried to steady himself. He held a couple breaths and let them go slow.

“Hog and Mass. First floor with me,” he said.

Cooke and Dalonna ran up an exposed stairwell bisecting the first floor to the second level. They didn’t need to be told. Rounds tore through the compound and over the walls, embedding into the walkway that led to the rooms and against the sides of the first level. Shaw heard shots coming above them. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Then the rounds landing in front of them stopped. He and Hagan started down the walk slowly, Massey watching the surrounding rooftops and following behind them. They crept over chips in the walk and spent casings. Hagan and Shaw tac-lighted the rooms and found empty carpets spread out on the floors and sham cloths hung for doorways that led to more carpeted empty rooms. There were bookshelves lined with scattered paperbacks and knickknacks, and a couple pairs of shoes but nothing else. Massey fired at targets outside the compound from the doorways and Hagan and Shaw cleared the rooms and made their way to the next one. It sounded like the world was burning itself down.

The sky was a beautiful blue and the air swarmed with helicopters, lead, and smoke. The Apaches leaked streams of brass shells onto the streets below. Massey changed a mag and Hagan and Shaw cleared another empty room. Massey brought his rifle up and Shaw saw a man in a loose red T-shirt across the street on a third-floor rooftop shoulder a weapon, then fall back as rounds tore through his front. The casings from Massey’s rifle hit him in the face and Shaw brushed the burning metal away from his collar, the skin already blistering.

Shaw pressed on to the last room in their sector and walked into a windowless space, dark except for the light coming through the open door. His tac light lit up a dozen pale faces huddled into a corner. Boys and girls of knee to hip height with snot and tears crusted on their faces stood bunched together behind a single woman dressed head to toe in black. She had her arms flung out to her sides. She was short but cast a wide arc. He lit up her face and she squinted in the light. Full, wrinkled cheeks and thick, dark brows. A wide nose and deep black eyes.

“Erfa yadayk,” Shaw said. “Dasthaa baalaa.”

He tried to say it softly, but she winced with each word. He saw her arms trembling and could smell her breakfast on her breath. Fruit and some type of cornmeal. Her chador twitched and her breast heaved.

“It’s okay,” Shaw whispered. “Show me your hands.”

Shaw’s throat was dry and thick. It felt like he’d swallowed a whole apple. The kids were whimpering and staring out from behind her. Some of the kids had their hands raised and others had them cupped around their ears. The noise had been deafening.

Shaw dropped the light from her face a little.

“Erfa yadayk,” he repeated. “Dasthaa baalaa.”

Her arms trembled, but she raised them in the air.

“Good,” Shaw said.

Shaw let his sling hold the weight of his rifle. He brought his wrists together, gestured toward her. She mirrored him, held her hands toward him.

“Hog. Cuff her. But light and in the front.”

Hagan stepped in front of him and placed the flex-cuffs around her wrists. An RPG impacted the wall somewhere outside and large blocks of concrete peppered the walk inside the compound. Gravel scattered into the room from the open doorway. The kids recoiled with the blast and the woman started to cry. Hagan patted her on the shoulder and then ran the backs of his hands along her body. She avoided his touch and Shaw shook his head.

“She’s good, then,” Hagan said.

“Okay,” Shaw said. “Okay.”

They were all quiet for a while then, standing in the room together while the rest of the world erupted behind them. Shaw heard sniffles from a few of the kids, and the woman’s breathing had slowed and then softened. The comms were crackling and voices were rushed and shouting, but it was all white noise, faded voices from far away. The kids studied the operators’ beards and the bearded men studied their hairless faces. The woman never moved her hands from her front. She stood rigid and upright and stopped crying after a while. Shaw felt bad about having to cuff her. He’d been at it long enough to recognize the hate in her eyes. They would never win over people with eyes like that.

A small girl placed her tiny hand on the woman’s side, and the smooth, pale skin on the black cloth stood out harsh in the beam of Shaw’s tac light. The hand looked skeletal, ghostly. Shaw radioed in that they had their sector secured, and Cooke and Dalonna came down to the first level and gathered outside the room with Massey. The three of them kneeled on the walkway and scanned the perimeter, popping off single shots at targets Shaw couldn’t see. He heard a call for exfil over the comms even as the calls for fire kept coming through. Birds swooped over the compound and their miniguns buzzed like chainsaws and the shells rained down on the streets and dwellings and plinked, plinked, plinked on the streets and rubble below. Rockets whooshed and hissed and shrieked, crashing into walls and storefronts. Then there was a loud crash and the outer wall caved in on itself where the rear of a GMV plowed through the crumbled stone. The hatch dropped right in front of the room with all the kids.

Massey, Cooke, and Dalonna ran in and Hagan and Shaw turned away from the kids.

“Hog,” Shaw said. “Cut her loose.”

Hagan let his rifle hang on his sling. He took out a knife longer than his hand from his kit and walked to the woman. She raised her chin. Some of the kids tried to hide behind her. Hagan brought the knife to the cuff and sliced it. Then he sheathed the knife, patted the woman on the shoulder, waved to the kids, and ran past Shaw. He ran into the carrier and sat down. Shaw looked at the kids and the woman and held his hand up in the doorway. The woman stared back at him and then turned her back, covering the kids with the cloth of her chador. Shaw saw their little faces start to press through the fabric of her black cloth and then he ran over shells, chipped concrete, and wall rubble and jumped into the carrier. The door sealed shut behind him and the GMV lurched forward and accelerated up the streets.

They bounced over the wreckage and through the chattering gunfire. The gunner opened the hatch in the roof. Sunlight and stale air came through. A loud blast filled the streets as an IED blew nearby and pieces of earth and the blast fluttered into the carrier like snow. Then the gunfire faded away as if the whole world had run out of ammunition at the same time. The only sound was the GMV’s engine and the shift of its gears. Shaw took off his helmet and set it at his feet. Everyone looked around the cabin, eyes wide. Flecks of the IED blast peppered the men’s boots.

“What the hell was that?” Hagan said. He shook his head, looked at his boots, and spat on the floor.

“Seven,” Dalonna said. “I got seven.”

Cooke put a big chaw in his cheek and rubbed his pants. “Yeah, that didn’t go over right, did it?”

Shaw let out a deep breath and set his head against the wall of the carrier. His hair was wet with sweat and he closed his eyes. He wondered what their CO was doing then and how many calls were getting made. Secure lines must’ve been firing up the world over and reporters would be speeding to the scene. He opened his eyes and took off his gloves and dropped them at his feet. He ran his hands over his face, through his beard.

“Mass,” Hagan said. “Did we take any hits?”

Massey shook his head. “I didn’t hear of any over the comms.”

“Christ,” Hagan said. “We must’ve dropped hundreds. That was totally fucked. Am I right? What the hell was that all about?”

“Got caught in the daylight,” Cooke said. He shrugged and swallowed his spit. “News crews will be in soon.”

•   •   •

It took hours to get back to the FOB, the carriers bouncing along and getting stuck in traffic jams in the bazaars. Shaw watched the sun shining bright through the hatch and imagined the street vendors swarming around the carriers, hawking their fruits and clothes. Making their living around those who’d left so many dead. He thought of those kids and the woman with the flex-cuffs on her wrists.

They started nodding off in ones and twos. Then Hagan’s voice broke through the quiet.

“Hey. Did we even get any of the Pikes?”

Shaw looked at him and opened his hands. He let them rest on his thighs and shrugged. Everyone else was asleep.

“What a cluster,” Hagan said.

Shaw watched him close his eyes and unbuckle his helmet, rest his head against the carrier. Hagan breathed deep and raised his voice.

“We’re gods.”