Anaya shook his head. “Total goatfuck. Afghans are telling Bill and the CIA guy that we were just here last week.”
“Wait, our guys already raided this town?”
“Not us, I don’t think. But the old hajji says the soldiers wore our camo,” said Anaya. He tugged on Coop’s sleeve in monkeyish imitation. “Like this, they were saying. Same uniform.”
“That’s fucked,” said Coop.
“Captain White was confused as hell, he went out to radio with HQ. Thing is, they said these other soldiers took some people.”
“What do you mean they took people?”
“Arrested them, supposedly. Bill said it was probably a local warlord looking for ransoms, but the CIA guy says no way, all the chiefs in this region are on the payroll.”
“Wait,” said Greely, coming out of the hut. “What’s up with the CIA? Did you tell them about the bomb we found?”
“So what are we gonna do?” said Coop. Anaya shrugged.
“Mr. CIA says we give these folks money and destroy any weapons we find. So let’s boom this bitch.”
“Listen, Sergeant,” said Coop. “I’m wondering, any way we can try moving this thing instead?”
Anaya looked at him incredulously. “Sure, I’ll just put it on my back, hump it back to the FOB.”
“The collateral is bad,” said Coop.
“Sucks to be hajji,” said Anaya with a shrug. “First Sergeant says twenty minutes until rollout. Maybe you want to go in there, play red wire, blue wire?”
They began to lay the explosives. While they worked, a few MPs showed up with an assortment of other confiscated weapons: a handful of curved daggers, some cans of gasoline-smelling sludge, and a bolt-action hunting rifle with a busted stock. These were arranged around the bomb like offerings, all wound together with loops of det-cord.
“Hell of an arms cache,” said Greely.
CHAPTER THREE
Greely drove for the return trip, leaving Coop in the backseat, alone with his misgivings. He kept thinking about the upturned faces of the Afghans, watching as fireworks replaced the sky over their village.
They were almost back to FOB Snakebite when a call came in over the radio.
“Pyro Two, this is Black Cat Three-Three, over.”
“Roger, this is Pyro Two,” said Anaya.
“Once you guys arrive, have Specialist Cooper report to the TOC. Captain wants to see him, over? It’s urgent.”
Coop sat up. The sweat went cold on his neck. “What was that, Sergeant?”
“Roger,” said Anaya, into the radio. “We’ll be there, maybe twenty mikes. Pyro Two out.”
* * *
—
“Why’s the captain want to see me?” said Coop, coming forward between the seats.
The sergeant yawned and patted his face. “How should I know?”
Greely revved the humvee up a steep incline, and Coop slid back into the rear compartment, the engine rumbling in his guts. Wants to see me urgently, he thought. Coop looked to the dusty road ahead, where shadows jumped away from the light, and his mind traveled back to October. He saw an ancient chimney rising up from the sand, surrounded by rubble and red-painted rocks.
Coop rubbed at his eyes and looked around the humvee. In the rearview mirror he caught sight of a pale, stricken face; his own reflection. They caught me, he thought. Somehow they caught me.
Once inside the FOB they left Coop at the edge of tent city. He watched the humvee putter away, imagining the mission’s conclusion: Anaya would circle up with the noncoms while Greely ghosted the motor pool, trying to steal a drip pan so he could log out the vehicle. Then Coop’s teammates would be free. They’d hit the DFAC for hot chow, possibly grab a shower, then head off to the sleep tent, where, swaddled in Gore-Tex cloaks, they’d finally get to rack out while the rest of camp began its morning. Staring down the crooked path of sand that led to the TOC, Coop feared he was facing a different kind of day.
It was almost 0500 Zulu, twenty hours since Coop and the others had left the base. Lone grunts were starting to slip from their sleep tents, and from the blue-dark morning came the first formations of runners, each gang led by a private carrying their unit’s guidon, the pennants bobbing over the shoe-kicked dust. The soldiers sang cadence as they ran, and Coop caught snatches from the nearest group:
Mama mama can’t you see,
what this Army’s done to me?
Continuing down the path, he tried to keep his mind on the soreness of his sleep-starved joints. Overhead the camp lights were seething in a fury of insects.
Every step carried Coop closer to the unavoidable conclusion that his lie from October had been uncovered. He knew what would happen next. They’d take him off Anaya’s team to spend the rest of deployment washing dishes with the crazies. Like Private Linklater from construction platoon, who’d gotten bad news from his wife and tried swigging a canteen full of ammonia. Or that grunt Figueroa, busted for locking and loading on a fellow soldier after accusing him of stealing a Sex and the City DVD. Rather than sending these lunatics home, Command threw them on kitchen patrol, and Coop expected he’d end up there, too, at least until he was court-martialed.
He eyed the glinting razor-wire fence, felt the immense presence of the Conex storage containers. The sun had set and Coop began to smell the reek of smoke from the burn pit, where hajji contractors worked all night feeding refuse to the fire.
The Tactical Operations Center was a collection of three newly fabricated B-huts shrouded under a tent of camouflage netting. A long ramp led to the swinging double doors of the main building, and muraled over this threshold was a big-chested woman in robes. Saint Barbara, the patron mother of demolitionists. In one hand she held a cartoon bomb, and in the other a fistful of jagged lightning. Rather than trespass under her image, Coop instead chose to circle around the perimeter of the TOC. At the rear of the complex was a smoking pit—currently occupied. Coop watched from under the meshwork canopy. A figure was perched in one of the lawn chairs arranged around the ash pail, a smoldering cherry poised between two fingers. Coop sniffed; the air was spiced with the smell of clove cigarettes. Then the ember brightened, and Coop recognized the freckled cheeks of his jump buddy, Corporal McKenzie. She was already cleaned up from the mission, wearing a fresh uniform and good boots, her hair still wet from a shower. But something was wrong. Her eyes were wet and she shuddered a little between drags.
It occurred to Coop that McKenzie, being a clerk, might know something about his summons, and more than anyone else, she might be willing to help.