Woody and Speed and the rest of the SEALs walked the perimeter of the ville keeping an eye on the surrounding hills and looking for any telltale signs of fuckery. Vehicle tracks. Drag marks. Fresh earth that might mean buried weapons or ammunition. Suspicious or out-of-place objects that could be IEDs.

  "Fuck, my head is killing me," Speed stopped and removed his helmet to massage the back of his neck with one hand.

  "Told you that would happen," Woody said. "Pounding back those shitty energy drinks like that? All you're doing is leeching minerals outta your system. Drink some water or some Gatorade."

  "Gotta stay sharp, bro."

  "What good are you with a migraine? Or an embolism?"

  "You a doctor now?"

  "I just paid attention during the combat med courses while you were playing with yourself."

  "That navy nurse giving the course was hot."

  "She was a pig, Speed. You just hadn't seen anything with tits for six months."

  Some kids were tossing a ball for a dog that ran and fetched it. Small kids. Preschool age. They were laughing and shouting the dog's name until they saw the two SEALs come into view.

  The dog ran at Woody and Speed barking at first, then growling low. A little boy came after it, legs pumping. He reached the dog and brought it down with a tackle around its neck. He lay there hugging the snarling hound and looked up with enormous eyes at the pair of men looking down at him through black wraparounds.

  Woody took off his shades and smiled.

  "Nice dog," he said. His tone conveyed something to the boy, whose eyes lost some of the sheen of fear.

  Woody crouched and held down a hand just out of reach of the dog's snout. The nose twitched and sniffed as the dog stopped growling and stuck out his tongue to brush the knuckles of the offered hand.

  "I think that mutt is Taliban," Speed said, eyes sweeping the huts around them.

  "You're a distrustful fuck," Woody said through his smile. He kept eyes locked with the boy.

  "And that's just how I plan on making it home, bro."

  "Niiiice dog," Woody drawled and this time his smile was returned with a timid little simper that turned to a grin when Woody drew some hard candies from a pocket on his vest. The boy released the dog to snatch the candies from Woody's hand. That was the signal for the other kids to trot over to see what the ferangi were gifting this time.

  Woody tossed a hard candy to the dog who caught it and chomped it to powder in seconds, including the cellophane wrapper. The kids gathered around with their filthy hands out.

  A voice called a name and a woman ran full-tilt from the rear of a house. She held the front of her burqa in one fist so as not to trip over the trailing hem. Her voice and her pace gave away her youth. She was a teenager at most. The thick dark robes couldn't conceal that she was of slender build. Her feet were shod in a pair of knock-off Nikes made in Pakistan.

  She reached the children and started scolding them in a white-hot streak of invective that exceeded Woody's tenuous grasp of the language. The girl did not look at Woody or Speed. They did not exist for her. They were a present but invisible danger that did not warrant even a glance. She took the first boy's wrist and shook the hard candies from his grasp. They fell to the ground where the other kids -- and the dog -- leapt to retrieve them.

  "Look, it's just candy. Nothing to get excited about," Woody said.

  He could hear Speed laughing behind him.

  The girl jerked on the protesting boy's wrist. Woody recognized this as a sibling thing. Big Sis reading Little Brother the riot act. She yanked to pull him along with her. He resisted and pulled back with all his weight, pulling his sister forward into an awkward stumble. She was falling to her knees and Woody reached out a hand and caught her arm to steady her.

  She looked at him then. Her eyes went wide with fear. She looked down at the big rough hand gripping her arm and then began struggling away from his grasp with a mewling cry.

  A high, keening shriek reached them as a bent older woman emerged from the confines of a hut. She was waving her hands and screaming in a high ululating falsetto that seemed an impossibly loud sound to be coming from such a small figure.

  The girl heaved herself free of Woody's grip and fell back on the dirt. The kids stared.

  "What the fuck?" Speed shouted. "What the fuck did you do, man?"

  "I don't know!" Woody shouted back. "She was falling and I---"

  "You ignorant fucker! You can't even point at the women! That's like basic knowledge, bro! Fucking basic FYI!"

  Woody's reply to this was broken off by more shouting voices, both male and female. The girl moved away before rising to her feet. She was powdered with dust from the dry ground. Her eyes were lowered to the ground as people from the huts started coming out, shouting at Woody and Speed, and each other, in angry voices. The children were hastily pulled away. They left the dog behind. The mutt had already forgotten the sweet taste of Werther's butterscotch and began barking again.

  Speed dropped back and raised his rifle. Woody reached out to slap it down.

  That was the moment that Master Chief Clark chose to appear with four of their fellow SEALs trotting behind.

  "Billings! Report!"

  The villagers took that as a cue and raised the volume level.

  "Shut up! Shut the fuck up, all of you!"

  Stone silence after that. A bright red vein stood out clear and bulging on the Chief's temple. The villagers continued their sullen looks but kept their traps shut.

  Woody began an abbreviated account of all that had gone before but was interrupted by the arrival of Lieutenant Tamir, who began questioning the villagers. It was Babel then as the villagers explained this outrage to Tamir. They were all speaking at once while Woody tried to explain what happened to an increasingly impatient Clark.

  Tamir held up a hand and stood aside as a gaggle of old women pushed the young girl before them. They shoved the girl towards Woody, who almost reached out to steady her before withdrawing his hand as if scalded. The villagers gasped collectively. Speed laughed again. Woody was not laughing.

  "She is yours," Tamir said.

  "What?" Woody bewilderedly asked. None of this made any sense.

  "You touched her. Defiled her. She is yours."

  Woody looked at MC Clark. Clark looked past him.

  "We can't take her with us. Billings is a fucking moron but he didn't hurt the girl," Clark said.

  "Then leave her," Tamir said with an indifferent shrug.

  "What happens if we leave her?" Woody asked.

  "They kill her. Maybe," Tamir shrugged again. "They will beat her, certainly."

  "Not our problem," the Chief said and turned to go.

  Woody looked from the girl being shoved toward him to the retreating back of the Chief.

  "Emcee---" Woody started.

  "Continue sweep, Billings. This is not our lookout. This is not our problem." The MC waved a hand and his quartet of SEALs trotted after him.

  Woody looked back at the Afghan lieutenant who met his gaze impassively.

  "Jesus," Woody sighed. The girl was trembling, eyes cast to the ground. All around her, hard eyes fixed on him.

  "Jesus has left the building, bro," Speed said and gripped Woody's arm to pull him away.

  The crowd of villagers melted back toward the houses, leaving the girl standing alone and looking after Woody.

  After a moment she slapped a hand at her burqa to remove what dust she could and followed behind the two SEALs .

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE STRAY

  "She's still following us, bro," Speed said.

  "Shit," Woody said.

  He looked behind them and saw the girl from the village following about fifty paces behind. She had been closer, but Speed flung a few rocks her way and she dropped back.

  Below them, the Afghans were nearing the idling trucks of the column. Daddy Basir had the convoy ready and pointed back toward the FOB to get them home before sunset. Already the shadows were lengthening and the faces of the hills to the west were turning black.

  The SEALs were coming down from their overlook positions as the trucks loaded. Gunners atop the mix of MRAPs and Buffalos transversed their guns to cover the hills on either side of the road.

  "She's gonna follow us all the way to Iron Man, bro," Speed said.

  "She'll give it up after a while," Woody said. He was not himself convinced of that.

  "No fucking way. She got nowhere to go, bro. You're her ticket. Face it, bro. You got yourself your own Hadji girl."

  "She'll go home."

  "Maybe she's a little hottie under that burqa. You think of that, bro?"

  "She'll give it up, Speed. She'll go back home and take her beating. Do I feel bad about it? Yeah. But there's nothing I can do about it. I fucked up and she's paying for it. Blame this fucking fucked up country. Who gives away their daughter because a stranger touched her? Christ."

  The trucks pulled out as they loaded up and rolled away south at a school zone pace with ten truck lengths between each. Basir's primo truck stayed mid-pack. The SEALs came down from either side of the road to load onto the Buffalo, the last vehicle still parked on the road. Woody stopped and pulled a few MREs from a pouch on his vest.

  "What are you doing, Billings?" Clark demanded.

  "That girl from the ville has been following us," Woody said.

  "And you're encouraging her?" Clark's tone dropped lower, to dangerous.

  "Can we keep her, Chief?" piped up one of the SEALs already seated inside the Buffalo. Someone else cracked up at that.

  "She'll go home, Chief," Woody said.

  "Not if you feed her, dickhead," Clark growled.

  The girl stepped from the ditch onto the road behind the Buffalo, fifty paces distant. She stood, unmoving.

  Clark squinted back at her. The corners of his mouth went white.

  "All right. Leave the rations. You'd better be right, Billings. I'll have your ass if she shows up at Iron Man."

  "Yes, Chief," Woody answered. He dropped the MREs on the side of the road along with a couple of Payday bars.

  Go home, bitch, he thought to himself, as the Buffalo trundled back to base.

  Go. The. Fuck. Home.

  There was a goat roast in the SEAL compound that night thanks to Chili. He nailed a big billy while the team was on a walk-around earlier in the day.

  Single pop from the Model 70 he was sporting.

  The animal was skinned and slung on a spit over coals in an open fire pit. Flames flared up and embers popped as grease dripped from the carcass each time Chili turned it. He was lovingly brushing it with a mix all his own, made of crushed garlic and a hot sauce called Smack My Ass And Call Me Sally, which he had picked up from a Mex place near MacDill AFB. The secret ingredient in the glaze, which was no secret at all since he told anyone in listening range about it, was a liter of Coca-Cola, when he could get it, and coffee when he couldn't.

  "That goat was free range, right?" Manny asked.

  "Wanderin' all on its lonesome, dude," Chili said, as he dipped his brush into a plastic bucket and painted more of the sticky mess down the torso in long strokes.

  "I mean, was it wild? You didn't kakk some poor hadji's animal, right?"

  "Well, it was wearing a collar with a little metal tag that said, ‘if lost please return to UBL,'" Chili grinned.

  Pig snorted Mountain Dew through his nose at that.

  "You can eat goat, right, Manny?" Chili said. "It's kosher?"

  "My people were eating goat while yours were still living in trees, you redneck fuck."

  "Shit," Heath put in. "Chili's family only came out of the trees when someone invented the trailer park."

  "No picking!" Chili smacked Heath's hand away with the sticky brush. Heath came away with a strip of meat off the flank anyway.

  "Damn, son, for a white boy you sure can barbeque," Heath said and licked grease from his fingers.

  "And what would a Dee-troit gangsta motherfuckah know about real barbeque?" Chili said.

  "That ain't real barbeque with all that shit smeared on it," Pig said. "Only real barbeque is Texas barbeque."

  It was a SEAL-only event except for some officers from the 10th, Colonel Basir, and Bear and his pair of agency officers. The scent of the barbeque was drifting all over Iron Man, making mouths water. S/Sgt Wynocki made some noises about the Afghan grunts feeling left out but was waved off by Captain Rice. When Wynocki persisted he was uninvited.

  Over generous slabs of spicy goat, the SEALs and their guests reviewed the day by the glow from the cooking pit. It wasn't long before Woody's hadji girl came up in the conversation.

  "That's fucked up," Pig said in a conciliatory tone.

  "I know," Woody said. "I mean, I was just keeping her from falling."

  "So," Pig deadpanned, "you gonna raise the kids Islamic or haven't you and your fiancée decided?"

  "Fuck you," Woody said.

  "No, fuck her," Priest put in from the shadows beyond the fire.

  "It's not her fault," Woody said.

  Priest stepped into the light. He held a paper plate of shredded thigh meat in one hand. He stood and sucked sauce of his fingers as he spoke.

  "What do you care?"

  "She's, like, banished from her family. What kind of shit is going to happen to her now? She'll starve or get raped. It's fucking crazy."

  "These hadji women are as bad as the men. Worse. Young or old. They turn the women loose on the prisoners with knives. They're all Manson girls under those burqas. Fuck her. Forget her." Priest tossed his empty plate into the cook fire, and the grease flared momentarily.

  Captain Dice spoke up.

  "A story as old as these hills. Kipling even wrote about it:

  When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,

  And the women come out to cut up what remains,

  Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

  And go to your God like a soldier."

  "Yes, sir," Woody said when the recitation was over. "I'll treat today as a lesson learned."

  "That's how all of life's hardest lessons are learned," Gunga Dick said. "First hand."

  "Yes, sir," Woody said.

  As soon as it was not impolite to do so, Woody drifted from the feast to return to his bunk. Speed followed.

  "Where you headed?" Speed asked.

  "Gonna rack out. Got a boot download of Walking Dead on my iPad."

  "The one where Shane-" Speed started.

  "Spoilers, motherfucker."

  "I'll go with you. Gotta email home anyway."

  "You hear that shit Priest was laying down, Speed?"

  "It's righteous shit, bro. Battlefield experience. Priest is no bullshitter or ballbuster. He's speaking truth to your dumb brain. Your hadji girl is fucking Taliban. No lie."

  "And Dice? What was all that? Who the fuck is Kipling, bro?"

  "Fuck that. What's a Manson girl?"

  The next day, Team 3 walked overlook for the ANA soldiers without incident. Two villes were swept with no weapons or explosives found. Speed said that only meant they were good at hiding them.

  They motored back to Iron Man in the waning light.

  Their Buffalo weaved through the Jersey barriers, last in line again.

  Bart Thomas (E-7) was manning the Ma Deuce in the turret atop the truck and spun the weapon around to train on a figure moving parallel to the access road beyond the barriers.

  "Yo, Woody," he called down into the cabin. "Your hadji bitch is here."

  Woody replaced Thomas topside and saw the black-draped figure moving over the open ground at a slow walk toward Iron Man's only entrance.

  "Shit," he groaned under his breath.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SPEED TRAP

  The following day was a change-up.

  Team 3 and the Afghans motored out to Highway One where they set up a checkpoint. The concept was to give the ANA troops some firsthand exercise at roadblocks and security detail. Clark explained that the local boys needed the tactile experience of searching vehicles. The only way the hadjis learned anything was if you walked them through it a dozen times.

  The Afghans were at least familiar with the concept. Ten years of living in a country under martial law, almost all of them had been subjects to stops and searches, and most of them suffered through them multiple times.

  Woody and Speed set up separate hides on a slope well above the two-lane road. Unlike their brothers in the Army and Marines, SEALs snipe alone. They don't have a partner they use as a spotter. This practice creates a force multiplier and allows them to spread out for greater coverage. They each found places fifty yards from each other with good views of the checkpoint and the approaching traffic. Their max optimal range for a shoot would be less than six hundred yards under these conditions.

  In the shelter of a shelf of rock and brush that would provide some shade until later in the afternoon, Woody rolled out a padded groundsheet to go prone on. He removed the long rifle from its protective case. A .300 Winchester Mag with Nightforce scope. It was Woody's favorite piece of ordnance and he treated it like a beloved child. He liked that it was light but powerful. It was an awesome weapon for long ranges -- accurate and with a lot of punch. But it was also ideal for easy reaches like the roadway below him. He could zero in on targets within range of the checkpoint with just a little fiddling to his scope. He situated his rifle and unsnapped the scope covers.

  "Ears on?" Speed's drawl came through his right ear via the ear bud jacked into the PRC lying by Woody's arm.

  They chose a channel the FOB wouldn't be using. It was important that he and Speed remain closely coordinated with one another. Their angles of fire overlapped like a deadly Venn diagram. What one missed the other could nail over a broad span of open ground free from high cover.

  "I'm here, Speedy. Eyes on the prize."

  "What are you gonna do about your fiancée?"

  "Would you stop calling her that, Speed?"