The buildings of the village were of the usual construction; flat-roofed huts of mud and clay, with doors framed by raw timber or pallet wood. Standing in Coop’s first hut was a woman he recognized: Corporal McKenzie, an admin clerk he knew from Airborne School. McKenzie had been drafted for door busting by the Military Police, who never had sufficient female recruits to search all the Afghan women they detained. She stood over a blue ghost crouched on the floor of the hut, a woman in a burqa, struggling to pull clothes on a shivering little boy. The boy’s eyes jumped between soldier and veiled mother, and in the flashlight Coop saw the kid’s snot-crusted nose, his turquoise pajamas with cheap gold embroidery, and the outline of murmuring lips as the woman made shushing sounds from behind the ornate screen.
“I know, I know,” McKenzie was saying, “but you gotta hurry it up, Mama.” Then she saw Coop and grinned, punching him playfully on the arm.
“Hey there, jump buddy,” she said. “I’ll be clear in a sec.”
McKenzie cracked and shook a chemlight before dropping it on the clay floor, signifying the hut had been cleared of civilians. Her freckles glowed in the blue light. “All yours,” she said, and gave Coop a wink.
“Okay, Mama, gzi gzi,” she said to the woman, ushering her out of her tiny home.
There wasn’t much to search. Two dusty rugs lay on the ground, the weaving undone and dangling. Coop lifted the rugs, tossed over a lumpy sleeping mat, shook dust from a mound of bedding. Besides the rugs and the mat, the entire contents of the hut were the following: two handmade pots, three food cans with Arabic labels, a single blackened onion, two cloth bags of long-grain rice, one aluminum can containing rusty nails, a roll of tape, and a single ink pen decorated with glued-on fragments of indigo glass. Coop stood in the small, cold room, letting his weapon hang from the sling. One hut down and he could already feel it: There was nothing in the village. No Taliban chief, no arms cache, nothing but dust.
Coop cracked a red chemlight and left the hut. The far sky had deepened to a purple band on the horizon, and through a wide alley between the huts Coop could see the main square, brightened by spotlights to an unnatural clarity that reminded Coop of night construction. The captive Afghan men lay facedown and spread-eagled while military police patted them down. At the periphery the women and kids were cordoned together, a brightly colored band of blowing veils and crying children. Coop looked for the child in the turquoise pajamas but couldn’t pick him out from the crowd.
Turning from the square, Coop drifted back to the village periphery. Under the mountain’s shadow it had turned to complete night, with just the glow of red and blue chemlights emanating from the mouths of old clay huts, and the occasional flashlight beam swimming through the dark. Absently Coop wandered into another hut, giving the sparse quarters just a few quick glances under his flashlight before he threw down one of the red chemlights from his cargo pocket. When he came out he saw Greely leaving a nearby hut, the private’s weapon slung low as he drifted toward the darkened cluster of ruins at the back end of the village.
Coop was working on his third hut when Greely came running up, pale-faced, his mouth working silently before he coughed out the words.
“I found some crazy shit.”
* * *
—
Lying in the shadows with its dented fins, the bomb seemed ready to swim away. Eight feet long, and easily a five-hundred-pounder, Coop estimated. An old Russian blockbuster. And tattooed across every inch of the shell were running tigers, a huge mystical eye, oasis scenes, beautiful flowing script.
Sergeant Anaya came in shortly after Coop. He crouched, took off his helmet, and stroked one hand across the painted bomb.
“Look at you,” he said in a low, intimate voice. “You could kill us all.”
The sergeant stood and wiped off his palms. “All right, I’m going to find the commander, see if the terp can hook me up with an old-timer, maybe figure out what the deal is with this monster. You two set up the lights and gear, hooah?”
“Hooah,” Greely practically yelled, manic with the importance of his discovery.
Anaya headed out, turned back at the door. “And Coop, you wanna get me a collateral estimate? Probably want to round up.”
Coop went outside to take the measurements. On his waterproof green notebook he did some field-expedient math, adding the approximate explosive weight of the aerial bomb to the initiating C4, plus some guesswork to get a sense of the blast damage. From the edge of the hut he performed a pace count, walking out to where he guessed the initial detonation would reach. He whistled. Checked the pad again. Felt a small tic in his heart. Remeasured, looked up, used his arm to indicate the blast angle. Even in the best scenario, there were seven homes he could figure being vaporized by the explosion. One of them was the first hut he’d searched, home of the kid in the turquoise pajamas.
Back inside, the hut was filled with buzzing light. Greely had finished angling the tripods, big battery-powered bulbs that made the bomb seem even more enormous in the cramped clay dwelling. Dust spilled through the hot white air and over the unrolled wire reel with fifty feet of detonation cord, the MDI kit, a galvanometer, and a pair of lineman’s pliers. Then Greely came up licking his lips. Looking weirdly anxious.
“What is it?” said Coop.
“Specialist,” said Greely, out of breath. “You have to let me put my dick on this bomb.”
Coop stared at him.
“You’re fucking with me.”
“Please, Coop.”
Ever since they invaded Afghanistan, photos had been circulating within engineer units. Grainy shots of guys exposing themselves to unexploded ordnance, dicks hovering over mortars and piles of grenades, and though Coop hadn’t seen it, there was an alleged photo of their first sergeant with a grenade hanging off his cock.
“I’ll give you three minutes,” Coop said, turning away to study the rubble that had been piled against the opposite wall.
“Coop? One more thing. Like, a big favor.”
“Not a chance.”
The private lifted his arms toward the smashed-in roof. “But who’s gonna take the picture?”
As Coop walked out of the hut, he heard Greely mutter “Okay, Jesus” and unbuckle his gear. He put his eyes back on the notepad, hoping somehow to magic the calculations. Change it so the kid’s house would get spared.
Anaya returned from the square wearing a slightly stunned expression. “What the fuck?” he said, looking into the hut, then jumped back out.
“Jesus Goddam Christ,” he said. “Fucking new guy.”
“Fucking new guy,” Coop agreed. “What say the council of elders?”