"What are you gonna do?"

  "You told me I don't have to do anything. Priest too. Just leave it be."

  "Clark is pissed."

  "Yeah. Get off my radio, you hick motherfucker."

  Speed made a wet raspberry in Woody's ear and signed off.

  Down on the road, the Afghans worked with Team 3 to slow traffic going in either direction on the paved two-lane. They rolled out barricades and, with direction from the SEALs, the Afghans began moving along the growing traffic jam, urging drivers and passengers out of their vehicles.

  Like anyone suddenly given a measure of authority, the ANA soldiers swiftly turned into total dicks. They hassled drivers. They banged the butts of their rifles on car hoods. They shoved passengers to line up along the verges of the road. They shouted dire threats and vile insults. They searched each vehicle with the enthusiasm of kids with a piñata.

  "I think we might just have found something these assholes are good at," Clark said.

  Even Daddy Basir joined in the fun, picking through some of the detritus tossed to the roadway by the zealous searchers. He found a case of Jack Daniels pints and helped himself to a bottle before his soldiers smashed the bottles to flinders with their rifle butts. The puddle of Jack evaporated in a visible haze.

  "For serving to company," he explained to Clark with a weak smile and secured the brown bottle beneath his coat.

  Clark let the Afghans run wild for a while then blew hard on his whistle. It was time to restore discipline and get this shit detail in some kind of order. The early morning traffic was backed up for a half mile east and west and the fuckers sitting in the broiling heat were going to wear their batteries down with all the horn honking.

  The SEALs assigned some of the Afghans to searches and the rest to cover. They showed the ANA expedient search methods and the basics of profiling. They tried to impart the nuances that would allow you to wave one driver through while giving another a full rousting.

  "Look at the driver's face. If you see something you don't like you pull him to the shoulder and do a thorough search," Clark instructed in Dari.

  That resulted in every Iranian, Uzbek and Kurdish driver being pulled over and dragged from the wheel while their ride was looted.

  They had a workable system in place by mid-morning and things were moving along smoother. The stops were averaging less than two minutes. SEALs waved military traffic past the jam, along the verges. Some AKs were confiscated and they found some stolen military rations with Polish markings. The drivers were frisked and their shoes removed, then they were carted back to Iron Man for a talk with Bear. They'd be released and their trucks returned once they'd had the shit sufficiently scared out of them. The contents of their trucks would have vanished in the meantime.

  The day grew hotter as the sun rose higher. Up at his post, Woody stripped off his body armor and slapped fresh bug juice on his neck, brow and wrists. Fleas and biting flies were converging on him, drawn by the smell of sweat. He took a draw from his Camelbak to replace what he sweated off.

  "You awake, bro?" Speed's voice in his ear bud.

  "On the job, dude."

  "That Priest is some kind of hard-on, huh?"

  "That whole team is the real deal, Speed."

  "I never caught their number. What's their team designation?"

  "They don't have one. They don't have names. They're ghosts."

  Radio silence.

  "Think we'll ever get that good?" Woody pondered after the pause.

  "We fucking better get that good, bro," Speed answered.

  "What's that mean?"

  "Means if you don't get better at this job then you don't fucking live, you hear me? The longer you last in the teams, the harder you get. It's survival math, bro."

  "That's cold, Speed. What about luck?"

  "Fuck luck. It's experience that gives you the edge. Everything else is bullshit, bro."

  "Yeah," Woody said rested his eye over the scope cup after peeping over the barrel at the row of stopped traffic below. He slowly traversed the line to pick up Afghans stopping and tossing vehicles with something close to professional proficiency. Two soldiers were unraveling a bolt of fabric while two more held the arms of the protesting driver. Woody watched it like a silent movie. The driver spat and kicked the dirt. The soldiers holding him were laughing.

  "Heads up!" Speed barked in his ear.

  "Yo!" Woody replied.

  "Got a vehicle eastbound making a you-bee. Inside the thousand yard mark."

  Woody looked over his barrel while shifting his rifle to the west. He saw a dust cloud rising from the slowing traffic. He lowered the barrel on it before sighting. A pick-up truck, a Toyota Hilux, leapt into focus. The long range through the scope crushed everything into a two-dimensional tableau that made it appear as if only inches separated the file of trucks stopped in line from each other. The Hilux was in the middle of a desperate three-point turn to head back westbound and away from the checkpoint. A Mercedes panel truck veered to miss it and the Toyota jerked to a stop.

  It would only be moving further out of range now. Woody trained on the cabin while touching his PRC to dial into the team's shared channel. Shooting out tires only happened in movies. The Win Mag could take out an engine block but the truck could still get miles away before the motor finally seized. He needed a kill order.

  "Hightop to command," he said, his wire mike picking it up. "We have a vehicle making a turnaround-"

  "Green light!" Clark's voice roaring in digital clarity. "Take that fucker!"

  Woody squeezed his trigger home and the Win Mag kicked back. He instantly brought it back down on the truck cab. As he did so, he heard the boom and echo of Speed's rifle. Since they were motoring to the AO, Speed humped in the big-ass .50 cal from Accuracy International. It was a fucking cannon. Woody hated it with a passion.

  Before dropping the hammer a second time, Woody could see the rear window of the Toyota's cab vanish under the blow of the .50. Woody's attitude of fire was higher and he was aiming to drive a round through the roof of the cab at as oblique an angle as he could to allow his round maximum opportunity for damage. Woody gave himself some lead before the truck's progress and pressed the trigger a second time.

  He drew the barrel down again to see the Toyota rolling free across the opposite lane. A brightly painted bus kissed its rear panel and sent the smaller pick-up in a fishtail spin to the far verge. Another boom from Speed's .50 and a fist-sized hole appeared in the suicide door of the cab. The truck rolled to a stop nose down in a run-off ditch.

  Woody kept the scope's reticules squarely trained on the driver's side door but no one exited.

  "Waxed that fucker!" Speed in his ear.

  "You hit the truck. I hit the driver."

  "I don't know what you were looking at, bro. I nailed the driver while you were playing pocketball."

  "Twenty bucks and a hand job from your sister says I pegged him first."

  "Twenty bucks and you can have my sister, bro," Speed laughed.

  The Afghans found fifty 105mm artillery rounds hidden under sacks of rice in the rear of the dead Toyota. Two T3 SEALs trained in EOD rolled the truck away from the road a football field or two distant while the Afghans shut down traffic in either direction for a half-mile in either direction. The truck was detonated and went up with a thump Woody could feel in his chest, even from his post.

  MC Clark reported to the snipers that two index finger wide holes were drilled through the roof of the cab above the driver and either of the shots could have been the one to decapitate him. The round that took out the back window punched through the dash into the engine compartment. The fat one through the passenger side door went through the truck's floor.

  "Woody one, Speed zippo!" Woody said on their private channel.

  "Enjoy the hand job, bro," Speed groused.

  Woody and Speed were spelled after that by two other SEALs from their team who took up residence in their hides. They rode back in an MRAP to the FOB as guards for hadji truck drivers caught with contraband. One of the drivers sat crying into his flexi-cuffed hands while the other two sullenly looked at the floor with occasional sharp glances at Woody and Speed. Contraband taken from their trucks included bricks of opium gum, a couple of crates of loaded thirty-round magazines for AKs, a diesel generator clearly marked as property of the United States Air Force and ten cases of Budweiser. The dope would be burned, the mags handed out to the Afghan troops, the generator considered a gift from the flyboys and the Bud would be a casualty of indifferent bookkeeping.

  "Think she's still there, bro?" Speed asked.

  Woody sighed.

  He didn't want to hear about the hadji girl. MC Clark was holding him personally responsible for the embarrassment her continued existence was causing the unit. The other guys would not let up in their teasing about it. They asked where he was planning on spending their honeymoon and what did he think of the in-laws. Some asshole actually found a copy of Brides magazine somewhere and left it on his bunk. They'd touched up the bridal veil with a Sharpie marker to give the sexy model on the cover a full burqa head covering.

  "I didn't see her when we rode out this morning," Speed persisted.

  Woody caught one of the hadji truck drivers glaring at him.

  "You want trouble, asshole?" Woody growled, meeting the man's hard gaze. "You looking to start something? Because it's a long way back to Iron Man, dickwad."

  The man had no English but grasped Woody's meaning enough to lower his eyes again.

  "Bro?" Speed grinned.

  "All right! Fuck you!" Woody reached out and tapped the leg of the SEAL manning the turret.

  They switched places and Woody stood on the turret platform and swung the M-2 around on its mount so he could look for the hadji girl along their approach. He was a good twelve feet off the ground on his perch and could see across the entire kill zone baking under the late afternoon sun.

  A flight of buzzards lifted off along the road ahead of them. They were driven to flight by the thundering approach of the big truck. Before they settled back down Woody could see it was a dog carcass the big carrion birds were worrying at. Woody was divided between relief and disappointment. The birds could have been feeding on the cast-off girl. That would have solved a shitload of problems for him. He felt guilty for even thinking that. He didn't wish her ill. Actually, that wasn't true. Woody didn't care what the fuck took her out of his sight -- and out of his life -- so long as he didn't have to know about it.

  "Don't be there," he said to himself as the big vehicle rumbled home. "Don't beeeeeeeeee there."

  But she was.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BRIDAL SHOWER

  "You need to tell someone about this," Speed said.

  "Better to apologize than ask permission," countered Woody.

  It was evening, thirty minutes from full dark. They were walking towards the entrance to Iron Man. Woody had an armload of MREs and some bottled waters. Speed trotted beside him, bitching the whole way.

  "This is bullshit, bro. This is a local problem."

  "I'm just gonna talk to her."

  "Your Dari sucks ass."

  "I'll get help."

  At the fortified checkpoint they found a mix of grunts from the 10th and some Afghan troops manning gun positions covering the approach road. Another goodwill effort from a West Point thinktank. If the ferangi and the hadjis share a few watches they'll bond, right? Stand at the wall together for a while and soon they'll be exchanging Happy Ramadan cards and spending Super Bowl Sundays together.

  "Can I help you, sailor?" An M/Sgt stepped down from a raised Hesco bunker leaving behind a pair of Afghans at a lateral mounted mini-gun.

  "Yes, you can, Master Sergeant," Woody said. "You've seen that girl hanging out beyond the wire, right?"

  "For two fucking days, yes," the M/Sgt said, eyeing the MREs and Dasanis in the sailor's arms and already not liking where this was going.

  "I want to see if we can't persuade her to move on."

  "I don't see where I come into this. Word is, some shithead SEAL whipped her burqa over her head and gave her the high hard one and now she can't go home to Mama."

  Even on a piece of real estate as small as FOB Iron Man, rumors had a way of growing from interesting to beyond fucking belief.

  "That's not what happened!" Woody protested.

  "So you're the shithead SEAL," the M/Sgt grinned, his little pig eyes crinkling in delight. "Well, I don't have the orders. But, you're the fucking superstars so I guess I can't stop you. But you're not taking any of my men with you. No one from the Tenth."

  "I need an interpreter to talk to her. I'll take one of them," Woody said. He pointed to two Afghans seated on a bench sharing a paperback copy of the Koran the Army gifted to them. The one on the end was the kid the SEALs called Harry Potter.

  "You can have both of them," the M/Sgt growled and waved the two Afghans forward with an impatient gesture. Harry Potter pocketed the Koran as both men shoulder-slung their AKs and joined Woody and Speed.

  "Either of you speak English?" Woody asked.

  "I am quite good, yes. Learned at university," the older of the two said, and made a vague gesture at Potter. "He knows only Dari. I am teaching him to read Koran."

  "That's outstanding," Woody said and pointed beyond the gate. "I want you to join me on a walk out there. We're going to talk to the girl out there. You've seen the girl?"

  "The whore? The one who fornicated with many ferangi soldiers?" The Afghan wrinkled his nose in displeasure. His eyes were hot with contempt.

  "That's bullshit. You know ‘bullshit'?"

  "Boolsheet. Is lies."

  "It's bullshit that anyone touched that girl, all right? Total bullshit. You and I are going to walk out there. I'm going to give her this food and water and you're going to tell her what I tell you to say?"

  "Yes," the interpreter said unhappily.

  "Well, let's go, then," Woody said and led them to the gate. Harry Potter followed and Woody allowed it. One more local wouldn't hurt to reassure the girl. Speed stepped forward too.

  "Where the fuck are you going?"

  "We're partners, bro. This is a dickhead move, but you're set on it so I'm riding shotgun." Speed meant that literally and patted the Remington 840 that rested, combat-slung, across his chest.

  There was no dissuading Speed, and Woody wanted to get outside the compound before the M/Sgt had second thoughts and radioed back to command for confirmation.

  The quartet moved through a main door in the fence and began to make their way through the serpentine of Jersey barriers and out into the gloom.

  Woody took point with the MREs and waters in his arms. The interpreter was a pace behind, with Harry Potter a few paces behind him and Speed bringing up drag.

  "Call out to her," Woody said. "And be nice, be polite. Don't call her a whore, okay?"

  "Okay," the interpreter shrugged.

  The interpreter called out a phrase, repeating it as they moved forward.

  A figure separated itself from the dark and stepped out onto the road fifty yards from them. It was a girl looking pathetically small. She moved uncertainly to the center of the road and stood there unmoving.

  Woody stepped forward and held out the boxed foodpacks. The interpreter spoke past him to the girl. She was speaking in response, or so it seemed -- at first. As he halved the distance between them, Woody could hear a sing-song chant. The girl's eyes were lowered to the road and she was speaking the same words over and over.

  The interpreter's eyes grew wide and he moved to run back to the checkpoint. Woody turned to call after him and saw that Harry Potter was already sprinting down the road for the glow of the FOB. Speed was running forward, shouting, shotgun raised.

  "Down! Fucking down!"

  Speed shoulder-checked Woody hard as he ran past. Woody rolled to the dusty hardpack and came up prone to see Speed rushing the unmoving girl and pumping shot at her as he ran.

  Woody felt the blast before he heard it. A broiling wave of air raced over the ground and sent him tumbling him down the road surface. A boot flew from his foot. His head felt like it was being crushed. Something hot and wet covered him and he fought to maintain awareness.

  It was a losing effort and he sank away through the pain and the noise to nothingness.

  "Jason? Jason Billings?"

  A voice. His mother? Mom?

  "Can you fucking hear me? Do you know your fucking name?"

  No. Not Mom.

  He was surprised to find that his eyes were already open. His vision went from a smoky gray to swirling milkiness. The light drilled in and hurt his head. A face was inches from him and it's mouth working.

  "You still with us, dipshit? Blink if you can hear me!"

  It took something like two weeks but he managed a blink.

  The face withdrew but he could still hear the voice.

  "He's alive. We gotta move him. Now."

  There was more. Other voices. Shouting. He couldn't make sense of it.

  Then there was sweet, sweet, cloying black all around.

  Woody came to, vaguely aware of pain all around. His awareness became sharper as consciousness returned. The pain turned from a pale sensation to very real agony.

  He was lying in a bunk in a med shed and feeling the way he used to after an all-day football practice in high school. His head throbbed in time to his pulse. His shoulders and ribs hurt with each breath. When he tried to rise from the bunk the dull ache in his elbows and knees rose in intensity. Even his ass was giving him pain.

  Except for his boxers he was naked and covered in sheen of sweat, despite cool air coming from the vents of an AC unit suspended from the ceiling at the center of the shed. There was a clean dressing on one of his arms and his right knee was wrapped tight with adhesive tape. The rest of him was covered in scrapes and yellowing bruises.

  He sat up on the edge of the bunk and looked around. The other bunks were empty and bare with folded linens stacked at their foot.

  "Hey!" he croaked and little came out.

  He hawked and spit thick phlegm into a pan on the floor by his feet. He tried again.