Coop took a step forward and the horse turned its head, regarding him with a single black eye. Coop stopped in place, feeling suddenly like a trespasser. He began to take another step but found himself deeply unnerved, as if there was some force of judgment contained in the animal’s flat gaze; a reflection in which Coop saw his own fraudulent heart. The horse seemed to know the truth. Even if they were reunited, Coop would never tell Kay everything he had seen and done.
The wind came up and Coop found himself suddenly aware of his own smallness under the great billowing clouds. He started to fall back, creeping in reverse until his boots hit the highway. The horse studied his retreat with glassy indifference, a look both ominous and serene.
* * *
—
Thunder boomed again over the plain as Coop returned to the humvee and slung himself into the driver’s seat. Anaya was on the radio, the receiver cradled between the sergeant’s shoulder and his squat turtle head. Mariachi music was still playing from a small boom box.
“Horse ran off,” said Coop.
Anaya gave him the thumbs-up. “Chemist Three-Three, roger, we have determined, ah, no threat to the convoy operation, over.”
“You didn’t ride it,” said Greely from the back.
“Bullshit I didn’t ride it,” said Coop. “We galloped across the plains. Horse and man became one.”
“Roger roger,” said Sergeant Anaya into the radio, “what is the mission status, over?”
“Why’d you cut it loose?” said Greely. “It’s just standing there.”
“Any news on the mission?” said Coop. Anaya held up his hand for silence.
Somewhere back at the staging ground, Captain White would be consulting with Bagram, getting a report from the weather combat team, whose pressure sensors might register a dip in the atmosphere; a forewarning of sudden rainfall that could flood the valley and wash their convoy from the road. Coop hoped the mission wouldn’t be canceled. There had been a lot of recent gossip about a Big Operation coming down the pike. That very morning, before they went off to inspect the horse, Greely had spotted two boonie-capped civilians in a powwow with Captain White. “Don’t get too riled,” Anaya had warned when Greely made this report. “CIA don’t automatically make it a high-speed mission, hooah?”
Rumors of The Big Op had started with PFC Tosker, a Bravo mechanic from Philadelphia whose Italian-speaking girlfriend sent him a clipping from Il Messaggero profiling a local paratrooper. According to the article, this Roman was “currently deployed to a remote Southeastern base, assisting US Forces with the ongoing hunt for Abdul Razaq, former Minister of the Treasury under the Taliban.” As others had excitedly observed, there were Italian forces stationed at FOB Snakebite, so when a convoy operation was announced a few days after Tosker got the article, gossip shifted heavily toward this Razaq guy being the target. It was more information than they ever got from Command, and it was enough for Coop to get excited. His unit had arrived in the wake of Operation Anaconda, a monthlong pummeling of the fighters who’d hunkered in the eastern mountains. President Karzai kept saying that Bin Laden was most likely dead, and in the first weeks of his deployment Coop had begun to worry he’d missed the war. But now, after seven months of missions, his new fear was that he hadn’t done anything in Afghanistan he could truly be proud of. Certainly he had done things he regretted.
“No word yet,” said Anaya, cradling the handset.
“You know what I’ll bet happens to that horse?” said Greely, still talking from the backseat. “Prolly gets eaten by mountain dogs.”
* * *
—
A line of gun trucks were arranged along the sloped ridge just down the road from FOB Snakebite, and Coop parked the truck alongside this formation. Overhead the sun had come up but the sky was still darkening toward storm.
“Be back, I’m checking with Command,” said Anaya as he dismounted. Coop opted to stay behind and make some final inspections on the vehicle. He watched the sergeant and Greely head downhill toward the staging area, a garden of crooked olive trees and rubble where the infantry sat back-to-back in pairs on the ground, tearing open their morning MREs. Haggling over chow had just begun.
“Cheese spread for cinnamon drink, y’all.”
“Peanut butter! Who wants some motherfucking peanut butter?”
Coop turned his attention to the truck. Their humvee was an eighties-era tactical clunker; basically a plus-sized doorless jeep, still painted green for jungle warfare. For extra armor the floor of the truck had been packed down with several layers of sandbags. According to the official explanation, this protective barrier would help deaden the impact of a land mine or IED, though Coop suspected the result would just be extra sand in your corpse.
“Pound cake?” said Greely, suddenly standing behind him. Coop hadn’t heard the private come back up the hill.
“I can’t shit for days, I eat one of these,” said Greely, holding out a brown foil rectangle.
Coop waved the package away.
“You don’t wanna come down and eat with the others?” said Greely.
“I’m good,” said Coop. “Gonna resecure these tarps, case it keeps breezing up like this.”
“Hooah, hooah,” said Greely, lingering by the truck. Coop found himself irritated by the FNG’s presence. His kevlar helmet was tilted crookedly, with the chin strap undone, and Greely wore a pair of wraparound polychromatic shades that always reminded Coop of rich-kid snowboarders and highway cops. In the Army they called people like him “ate-up,” but it was more than just sloppiness. Gaumy, that’s what he was, a good old Maine word. Working the tie-downs, Coop contemplated a renaming: Private Gaumy the FNG. He wondered if he could pitch the new nickname to Anaya.
“Chaplain will be here soon,” said Greely. He jerked his thumb back to where the grunts were assembled.
“Think I’m good,” said Coop.
“You miss the prayer, maybe God lets us drive over a mine. Then that tarp ain’t gonna do shit, right?”
Coop turned around to face Greely. He pointed to the far mountains. “Tell me, Greely, the Taliban fighters living up there in the caves, with nothing but their old Russian weapons and raw onions to eat—you really think any of us are praying harder than them?”
“Joke’s on them,” said Greely. “Praying to the wrong God.”
Coop assumed a grim smile. He knew Greely was just playing his role in the banter. But still the conversation somehow made him angry.
“Hell, Greely, you ever read the Bible? This is the place where your God got invented.”