"Shit, I'll never remember this fucker's name," Pig said.

  Priest cleared his throat and the room went quiet. Bear nodded his gratitude.

  "In the region, they call him the White Ghost. Or maybe that's a name he promoted himself," Bear continued. "Someone in the agency codenamed him ‘The Dude.'"

  "White Russian," Manny said. "The Dude. I get it."

  "I don't," Chili said.

  "He made his bones in the Chechen separatist movement kakking Russians," Bear went on. "He was part of that Moscow opera house fiasco in 2002. One of the few terrorists to escape alive. He did time in one of their new gulags and escaped from there too. He's got a price on his head in Russia that's reached Powerball numbers. We figure that's the reason he's gone south into our AO. The man has a real hard-on for infidels and seems to get off on killing them no matter where, or who, they are. Most Chechen groups are more political than religious. But the Dude is a true blue Koranpacker and down with the whole jihad movement."

  "Do we consider him a professional mujahideen?" Priest asked. "Or just another talented amateur?"

  "He's certainly smarter than the average Taliban," Bear said. "There're some blank spots in his file that we strongly suspect were years spent in Iran. That means he got professional military training. And he's drawing real talent into his cell. Most of them are from other theaters. Iranians, Yemenis, Egyptians and Libyans among others. All with prior military experience and the Dude keeps strict military discipline. His core unit wears uniforms in combat. He commands a platoon strength main guard but can call in up to a thousand locals if he needs them. These are the usual gang of morons running around in manjammies firing their AKs in the air whenever the mood strikes them."

  "The OIC here says it's been quiet," Manny said. "If this Chechen's in the hood then what's he been doing?"

  "Building strength toward something major," Bear said. "There've been reports from some of the villes around here about a white European leading uniformed insurgents. We have election officials getting beheaded and forced recruitment of unmarried local males. You saw the IED he set up. Strictly major league. Our theory is he has a stockpile of weapons. Some of the shit you got hit with at Bastion. And he operates mostly at night, which is something the Taliban doesn't do much of."

  "What are we doing here?" Heath asked.

  "You're here to move on the Dude's lair when we pinpoint it," Bear said. "Team 3 will go with the 10th and the hadjis on combined DA ops locally to gather intel. They'll provide cover for you being here at Iron Man. We're looking to triangulate this asshole and find his main base of operations. That's when you go in and fuck him up."

  "Wait time?" Priest said.

  "Two days," Bear said. "Three at the outside. We have Predators up hunting and we're mapping what they find. You can cut this guy off at the nuts before he can make his touchdown play."

  The briefing broke up and the SEALs stepped back into the sunshine. Most headed back to their trailer. Priest broke from them at a trot to run laps around the perimeter.

  "I think that guy dares the Taliwackers to shoot at him," Pig said.

  "He's playing chicken with ‘em," Heath said. "Take a shot at this, motherfucker."

  "Why's our target called the Dude?" Chili asked.

  "He's a white Russian," Manny said. "The Dude only drank White Russians."

  "Is that supposed to make sense?" Chili said. "I still don't get it."

  "You need to expand your cultural horizon past movies with tits and monsters," Manny said.

  S/Sgt Wynocki tried to draft the SEALs from Team 3 into a soccer game between the Afghans and the Americans. They were finished with their morning PT and were set on weapon maintenance and naps after noon meal break. Wynocki was told to fuck off.

  The soccer game turned out to be a bust. It broke up at the bottom of the first half when a National Guardsman from Birdsboro, PA got headbutted by a Beluchi in front of the Afghan goal. That turned into a fistfight that grew to a brawl between both teams. Wynocki and Captain Dice had to break it up before someone got a knife between the ribs. Even Colonel Basir got into it. Daddy's face turned red as he shouted for his men to stand down before he had to shoot one of them. Basir even jerked out that gold-plated piece of his and Dice had to step in front of him and explain that summary executions were frowned upon in the ISAF.

  The hadjis walked off the field cheering and waving fists. The game ended with them a point ahead; a win in their book.

  The Afghans were sent to their tents and the Guardsmen and 10th Mountain footballers ran laps around the impromptu soccer field until they vanished in their own dust cloud. A sergeant screamed an obscene cadence as he trotted alongside them.

  Dice wanted to cancel that evening's movie until things settled down.

  "We can't do that, sir!" Wynocki pleaded as they walked back to their new command center.

  "Why not, Wynocki? Why not?" Dice shouted at him in front of members of SEAL Team 3 in the shade of a tarp, doing vehicle maintenance on one of the MRAPs.

  "It's integral to unit integration, sir!" Wynocki insisted. "They won't get over the fight if we keep the ANA separate from our personnel. Ill feelings will fester."

  "Fester. Where do you get this bullshit, sergeant?"

  "The DoD directives are clear, sir. If you'd go to the website and..."

  "Jesus Christ, Wynocki, I don't want to hear it. That's why you're here; to keep this tide of chickenshit, feel-good fuckery far away from me."

  "So, we're greenlit for the movie tonight?"

  "Yeah, Wynocki," sighed Captain Dice and walked away. "You can have your movie night. And maybe a pillow fight and hot chocolate afterwards. Then we can all sing around a campfire. Jesus Christ."

  "Thank you, sir," Wynocki grinned at the captain's retreating back.

  But it was a pyrrhic victory in the end. The SEALs had overheard the entire exchange and thus S/Sgt Jeffrey J. Wynocki gained a new name.

  Why Not Wynocki.

  The movie went well.

  Wynocki chose The Dirty Dozen from the library of over a thousand DVDs that had collected during the various deployments at FOB Iron Man. He carefully chose the movie based on what would entertain the Afghans without offending them. So many of the DVDs in the collection were pornography or rude comedies that Wynocki's selection process was severely limited.

  A screen was slung up center camp with a digital projector borrowed from the comm center. Nation-building and friendly relations were so important that Wynocki was able to request UMV coverage of the surrounding country during the movie's runtime. Much to Gunga Dick's surprise, CENTCOMM signed off on it. A glowing movie screen in the dark would be a tempting target for any Taliban mortar teams in the AO.

  Wynocki even promoted a popcorn maker from somewhere and the base began to smell like the lobby of a multiplex as the sun went down. He had the kitchen trailers make as much ice as possible to cool down cases of Cokes. By full dark there were a hundred US personnel joining the entire ANA contingent seated on lawn chairs or empty ammo containers with the overspill dropping their asses on the ground. It was drive-in night in the Samangan.

  The movie was a surprising hit. So was the popcorn. It was salty and buttered and you ate it with your hand; perfect snackfood for Muslims.

  There weren't many grunts who hadn't seen the movie before. Many had seen it enough times to know almost every line by heart. There were a half dozen copies of it on base, proving it was already a favorite among the American troops.

  The Afghans watched in rapt attention. Many of them had never seen a movie before and were transfixed. The story was easy enough to follow with lots of action. But Wynocki had spaced translators among the audience to speak the lines in Pashtu and Dari so everyone could keep up. The grunts would laugh at a line of dialogue and then the Afghans would join in once the line was repeated to them.

  The scene where Donald Sutherland, playing a near-retard, imitates a General to mock an Army colonel went over big with both the hadjis and the Americans. Giving officers shit with impunity held its own eternal appeal to soldiers of all cultures.

  One curious development was that the Afghans seemed to believe that the character Maggott was the hero of the movie. In the story, Maggott is a rapist and murderer facing the gallows. But he's also a religious fanatic who quotes his own twisted version of scripture to justify his actions. Rape was not such a big deal to the hadjis and Maggott's description of his murders made them honor killings in the eyes of Allah. Even what could have been the most problematic scene, where Lee Marvin brings in prostitutes for the Dozen to party with, was all good with the hadjis, as Maggott shouts dire warnings of God's wrath that will be visited on Marvin's head for bringing these Jezebels onto a military base. The Afghans actually cheered this scene. Wynocki blushed with pride. Diversity is its own reward.

  The hadjis were dismayed when Maggott was gunned down by Jim Brown in the third act. They murmured and shouted and a few stood to call out to the screen in anger. They saw Telly Savalas as a brother and were torn up by what they saw as a betrayal by an American black man. Their officers cautioned them to quiet down. The officers offered that Maggott had given in to his base desires and defied The Word and jeopardized the mission. One wag joked in Pashtu that Maggott had gone Taliban; there was much laughter over that.

  They watched the rest of the movie with giddy appreciation as the Dozen wiped out a nest of Nazi officers with bullets, knives, explosives and gasoline. They broke into hoots and applause as the movie ended.

  Wynocki was running with sweat by the time the DVD menu appeared on the screen again. The level of audience participation when Maggott bought it threatened to turn into a repeat of the soccer brawl. But the calm was kept and a good time was had by all. He vowed to preview any future movie choices more carefully, with an Islamic worldview in mind.

  "Good work, Sergeant," Captain Dice said to him as the men returned to their barracks or duty posts.

  "Excellent film," Colonel Basir grinned. His chin was greasy with popcorn butter. "My men enjoyed it very much."

  Wynocki beamed at them both. Mission accomplished.

  From a hillside a half mile outside Iron Man's wire, an audience of two was watching the movie through a pair of KOMZ 32X binoculars.

  Charborz Ilyas Muhammed, the White Ghost, turned to the man beside him.

  "Charles Bronson," Charborz said with a grin.

  "Yes," his companion said with a smirk. "Is good."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE TOUCH

  "Hot," Woody, nè Jason Billings, said.

  "Fuckin' A," Speed said.

  They sat in the shade of some pines where they had set up to provide overlook protection for the Afghan soldiers resting along the road below. The sun was high at midday. Waves of heat weaved in the air off the baking ground. They'd rousted a ville five klicks out from FOB Iron Man in the morning. They stopped along the road for a quick meal and prayers.

  Some of the group below spread mats on the roadway and knelt to the west with their asses in the air. Some, not all. The bulk of the rest sat down on the verge of the road. They opened their rucks to get at the noon meal and canteens. Woody was surprised that, after all the bullshit about being conscious of the locals' dedication to Islam, most Afghans didn't observe strict religious doctrine.

  "Most of them aren't praying," he said to Speed.

  "Don't surprise me. Laziest fuckers on the planet. They don't even get out of bed at reveille. Their officers have to practically pull ‘em out of the sack by their cocks." Speed was rooting in a ditty bag in his lap with one hand, his eyes stayed on the surrounding country.

  "I just expected them to be, you know, more devout."

  "Shit. Just cross the line and break some rule Mohammed laid down and they're devout as all fuck. You know that, bro."

  "It's called hadith."

  "What is?"

  "Their rules."

  "All bullshit to me, is what it is."

  Woody thought of his job as babysitting. The Afghans sat and ate and talked like kids on a school field trip. Not a worry in the world. Out in the wide open in hostile country with precious little cover and they were totally relying on their American allies to watch over their asses. That is, if they even thought about it.

  It was Colonel Basir's idea for the combined force of ANA soldiers and SEALs from Team 3 to move between the target villages on foot. So they marched in a loose column along a dusty track that wound between hills from the FOB to the first ville and onto the second. Over the rough and rocky ground dotted with copses of sickly pines and riven with gully washes, Team 3 walked flank as skirmishers on either side. They were the first line of defense for the boy scouts walking the road below.

  Daddy Basir's spoken logic was to toughen up his little cohort of locals. "Turn them into warriors," he said from behind his mirrored shades. But Woody was convinced the Colonel was really using his men as mine sweeps. Basir himself stayed in his MRAP and followed behind with the rest of the motor transport under the protection of heavy guns, in air conditioned comfort.

  Woody and Speed sat with their M4s in their laps and scanned the ground that rose sloping upwards from the road on the other side. Brother SEALs were doing the same from the other side of the road.

  No movement under the hammering sun. Not even a swirl of dust. The heat-warped air made an illusion of animation out there. Just mirages. In this kind of heat you had to look for shadows. So far there was nothing happening out there. Not even birds. That didn't mean there weren't bad guys out there. It just meant they were watching -- not moving. It meant they were disciplined bad guys.

  Speed tipped back a little bottle of 5-Hour Energy.

  "How many of them you had?" Woody said.

  "Don't worry, bro. Chili gave me plenty from his stash."

  "I'm not worried about running out of them, dipshit. You drink too many of them and they dehydrate you."

  "You my mother now, Woody?"

  "I was your mother? I'd have had an abortion on your first birthday."

  "I need some edge, man. This fucking heat's making me drowsy."

  "Don't come crying to me when your head's pounding and you can't take a piss."

  "Fucking A," Speed said and tossed aside the empty two-ounce bottle.

  Down below their position, Lieutenant Tamir blew on a whistle and some of the Afghans rose to their feet in response. Others needed a second blast. A few needed to be kicked to get off their asses. They humped their rucks and weapons and straggled down the road for the next ville out of sight over some hills to the north. The motor transport gunned back to life and crawled in pursuit at a discrete fifty yard distance.

  "And we're rolling," a tinny voice came over the PRC on Woody's vest. It was Ben Clark (E-9), the OOD for this route patrol.

  Woody and Speed stood and placed their helmets back on their heads. They hated the headgear. It was hot and rattled no matter how much tape they used to dog down loose straps. Their BDUs were already sodden with sweat and they longed to switch out the socks squelching inside their boots. They wore the brain buckets as a good example to the Afghans who bitched about their own soup bowl helmets which were hotter, heavier and rattled even more.

  The pair of SEALs moved along the hillside to shadow the Afghans' leisurely amble below. Even over the rough ground, Woody and Speed had to adjust their progress to a crawl. Ahead of them, other men of Team 3 moved on point; behind them, more on drag.

  "Damn, I think I'm gonna doze off at this snail pace," Woody said.

  "See what I mean, bro?" Speed said. "Man needs a boost."

  The second ville of the day was identical to the first in almost every way. A collection of huts strewn on either side of the road and surrounded by tilled but fallow fields enclosed with long stacked-stone walls about waist height. The older, larger buildings were roofed in tiles that showed frequent repairs. The others had the flat rooftops that were more common in this country.

  This town was a little wealthier than the last. There were more dirtbikes in evidence. A half dozen houses had satellite dishes. Those were the two measures of wealth in this country. This ville was part of the dope trade. All the signs were here. They either trafficked or grew. The dusty dry furrows near the ville were probably cover for fields of poppies growing out of sight in the hills beyond.

  Kids came to the roadside to look at the Afghan troops approaching. Dogs growled and barked until kicks from the kids silenced them. The arrival of uniformed men on foot broke up a soccer game being played in the roadway. That meant the road was clear of IEDs, anyway. Or not. The Taliban and their crazy Al Qaeda butt-buddies weren't above martyring children.

  The kids stood without speaking and goggled at the Afghans moving past. The soldiers were twitchy. The easy pace of the hike changed to a deliberate movement. They held their rifles in ready combat positions with fingers resting on trigger guards the way their ferangi weapons instructors drilled into them.

  Lieutenant Tamir stopped before the largest house and blew his whistle. He called out in Dari for the village elder -- a stocky man in robes and an elaborately embroidered kufi that sat atop a head wreathed in white beard. The man looked like he'd been carved from dark teak with a face weathered and scored from wind and sun. There was no way to tell his age. He walked with an assertive power. These people humped over these mountains all their lives and had the constitution of decathlon athletes when it came to covering ground. When age caught up to the men it was in a hurry and they faded away to weakness, and finally death, in short order. The women seemed to just shrink away to nothing as they aged.

  Others followed the elder out of the house into the sunlight.

  All men. Any woman over the age of twelve were kept out of sight.

  Tamir spoke to the elder. He asked after the women. The women had to come out as well. They would not be harmed. On a word from the elder, the younger men returned to the house and brought the women out into sight. There were a half dozen hidden beneath burqas and moving in a clutch to join the men. Their eyes scanned the soldiers anxiously. The gaze of the village men remained hard and impassive. They'd been through this game before, from both sides of the jihad. They'd endure the searches and questions and accusations and then go back to their lives, unchanged.