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  “Ah, for Christ’s sake,” Jesse stops walking and grimaces. “I thought we ducked that stuff here?”

  Dillon shrugs. “We have—in the flight company, for the most part; we’re strictly a bunch of hard-assed prairie Lutherans, from Chaplain Lundquist on down. Course we do come from farm stock and spend a lot of time watching the weather—so we’re probably contaminated by Sioux sky gods.”

  Jesse is eyeing the next pod of trailers. Once she gets past them, it’s a straight shot to the day room. This chaplain is a potential wild card who could be tight with a colonel or general in his prayer group up the chain of command.

  Sam reads her mind and says, “Thing is, Skipper, if this takes a funny bounce, it could wind up on your proficiency report—and you being ambitious and all, gunning for Fixed Wing . . .”

  Jesse clears her throat. “Say what you mean, Top.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Sounds like a garden-variety soldiers’ fight. So maybe you could trust me to cool out this sky pilot—seeing’s I got zero career to protect.”

  Ordinarily, Jesse would resent any man stepping in and playing at chivalry. But just thinking about Toby and a chaplain in the same grid square makes her eyes go wide—so she guts her pride and nods to Dillon. “I appreciate the gesture, Sam,” she says.

  Sam taps a finger to the brim of his soft cap, pivots, and heads for the day room. Jesse, relieved, turns the other direction and makes back for the Supply Hooch feeling just a wee bit sorry for what’s coming the chaplain’s way.

  Rounding the trailers and approaching the day room, Dillon sees Spec Four Toby Nguyen standing outside. He’s tall and gangly and immensely strong, sprung from the intersection of a shitkicker North Dakota dad and a Vietnamese mom his father met in college. He got his brawn from his daddy and the skin color and wraparound angle of his eyes from his mom. He is also, to the chagrin of all the officers in the company, possessed of a comedic streak for which the army provides endless material.

  In his other life, Toby is a Grand Forks city cop who attends night law classes. This morning, Toby has a swollen bruise on his left cheek and his hands are stuffed in the pockets of his flight trousers. An amiable-looking, bespectacled captain stands next to Toby and appears to be trying to hand him something.

  Seeing Sergeant Dillon approach, Toby stands a bit more erect but still keeps his hands in his pockets. Since Balad is technically a combat zone, Dillon holds the opinion that the saluting etiquette is relaxed. So he merely nods courteously to the captain, who wears a chaplain’s insignia Velcroed on his chest.

  Sam turns to Toby and asks, “How bad?”

  Toby shrugs , “Not bad; routine ten fifty four chickenshit.”

  ‘Ten fifty four’ is copper Ten Code for ‘livestock on highway.’ “Watch your mouth,” Dillon warns.

  “Working on it, Top,” Toby says.

  “Get your hands outta your pockets. It ain’t military,” Dillon says. Toby removes his hands, revealing skinned, slightly bleeding knuckles. Then Dillon turns to the Captain and says, “Master Sergeant Dillon. How may I be of service, sir?”

  The captain smiles and says, “This young man needs to appreciate we’re all in this together, fighting a common enemy. Not each other. Perhaps you could convince him to benefit from some reading.” He hands Sam the book in his hand.

  Dillon skims the cover, which bears an army insignia and the title, The Soldier’s Bible. Respectfully, he returns the book, clears his throat, and says, “Sir, by virtue of those bars you’re wearing, you can order Spec Four Nguyen here to do a number of things, like stand at attention. But you can’t tell him what to believe.”

  “I’d never order a soldier to read the Bible, Sergeant. I’m merely offering it as a timely gift.”

  “And it appears Spec Four Nguyen is politely passing on your kind offer,” Dillon says.

  The chaplain turns the book over in his hand and says, “I take it, Sergeant, you and this soldier don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?”

  Dillon makes a slight coughing sound in his throat. “I’m good with the Sermon on the Mount. I suspect Toby here falls somewhere between a lapsed Buddhist and a Jon Stewart wannabe. Now just exactly what happened that brings you into our area, sir?”

  “This soldier belittled the religious faith of two men in my unit and then physically attacked them. They’d be here, except they’re both at the base hospital.”

  Dillon’s eyes click on Toby.

  Toby says, “Coupla pussy Fobbits. Just minor cuts and bruises, same as me.”

  “Let’s hear your side of it,” Dillon says.

  “Well,” Toby says, unable to curb the infectious grin spreading across his face. “I was walking down the flight line, coming back from the Hawk, and I see these two guys with a laptop. So I wander over, and they’re playing this computer game. The new Left Behind Tribulation Forces.”

  “No law against that if they ain’t on duty,” Dillon says.

  “Nope. So I was cheering them on, you know, getting into it. Way the game works the good guys zap the heathens with the power of prayer—’cause if they just shoot them, then they lose some of their spiritual power and gotta restore it hitting their prayer buttons. So I used the line off The Simpsons, you know, when Rod Flanders is playing Bible Blasters and Todd tells him you gotta hit ’em dead-on ’cause if you just wing them, you’ll make them a Unitarian . . .”

  “Yeah, and?” Dillon says.

  “They took offense, it got heated, and then they called me a name and a few punches got thrown.”

  “Like I said,” the chaplain says, “belittling and sarcasm followed by physical assault.”

  Toby dramatically hangs his head. “The chaplain is one hundred percent right. I was definitely insensitive to those guys and way oversensitive about myself. Like, I didn’t realize that the term ‘Unitarian’ was a swear word that could incite them to riot. And I definitely overreacted when this one dude called me a ‘slant-eyed sand nigger’—which I shoulda realized is just normal talk where they come from. So I apologize for being culturally inappropriate.”

  Dillon, struggling to keep a straight face, removes his aviator sunglass and tucks them in his tunic pocket. “They called you that, huh?”

  “Fuckin’ A, Sarge.”

  Dillon turns to the chaplain. “That the way you heard it, sir?”

  “I didn’t hear anything about racial slurs. It’s his word against the two men he assaulted,” the chaplain begins, but now the earnestness fades in his tone.

  “You making this up?” Dillon asks Toby.

  “No, Sarge.”

  “Why should we believe you?”

  “Because I been trained to accurately report on . . . stuff.”

  “How trained?”

  “Back home I’m a cop.”

  Dillon clears his throat again and addresses the chaplain. “Still, sounds pretty serious. Let’s round up the other two troops and question them and march all three over to my company commander. Then, if you’re still so inclined, you can bring Toby up on charges.”

  “On second thought, Sergeant, I’ll accept his apology if you follow up on your end and evaluate him for anger-management counseling,” the chaplain says.

  “I appreciate the guidance. I’ll get our own chaplain right on it, sir,” Dillon says.

  The chaplain holds out The Soldier’s Bible. Dillon just smiles patiently, waiting for the man to leave.

  They watch the chaplain walk from the company area, and when he’s out of sight, Dillon says, “You are one dumb shit. No telling when hair-trigger born-agains are going to pop up, and you pull a stunt like that. You got an alligator mouth, son; problem is you got an alligator ass to back it up. For emphasis, he cuffs Toby—hard—on the back of the head.

  “Ow, shit,” Toby protests. “You ain’t allowed to do that.”

  Dillon whacks him again. “Oh, yeah? Tell it to the chaplain.” Then he puts his sunglasses back on, splashes the gravel next to his boot with a spurt of
Cope, and shakes his head. “Least, that’s what we used to say.”

  Chapter Six

  Davis is late again, so FBI special agent Robert Appert strives to maintain his cool. A square, middle-aged man, he stands looking out the window of an eighth-floor room in the Al Rasheed Hotel in the Baghdad International Zone. His shoulders slope into thick, muscular arms, his short red hair is parted, and busted capillaries bloom on his freckled cheeks. A holstered .40 cal pistol juts from his right hip, and a leather cuff bearing a five-pointed gold star is fixed to the other side of his belt buckle. In keeping with the informal nature of this assignment, he wears jeans and a faded yellow T-shirt with a red USMC emblem. He’s working a joint task force with Colonel Whalid Nasir from the Iraqi Intelligence Ministry; their brief is going after corruption, fraud, dope trafficking, and $9 billion in missing Iraqi development funds.

  Nasir, knife-thin and mustachioed, sits on the couch watching the flat-screen TV. The latest remake of King Kong plays on DVD, with the audio turned off. Naomi Watts screams soundlessly as the big gorilla wrestles a tyrannosaurus.

  “I truly love Americans and their movies,” Nasir says in clipped Oxford-accented English. “The detail on the lizard is exact, but look, that’s the tenth crotch shot of the big ape, and he has no balls. Just empty space down there.”

  “I wouldn’t read in too much, Nasir,” Appert says in a weary voice. “The guy who made it is a Kiwi.”

  “I’m just saying . . .” Nasir’s voice trails off as he glances at his watch, then at his cell phone sitting on the couch. “He’s late. He doesn’t call . . .” He goes back to watching his movie.

  Appert mutters “Fuckin’ Davis” under his breath, turns back to the window, and stares at the brown, steaming city. Except it isn’t steam, it’s a slow-moving dust storm, and he can barely make out the shadows of the Great Ziggurat and the slender minarets. Like a new species of Iraqi birdlife, a navy Sea Stallion chugs across the gritty sun.

  They are preparing for a raid involving a large shipment of heroin and possibly a cache of missing IDF funds. Nasir’s men are prepped and ready to go. But where? As usual, they’re waiting on their mercurial “undercover asset.”

  On paper Davis is an independent security consultant who ostensibly works for Nasir, but Appert is inner circle and knows Davis is really one of Mouse Malone’s Rainmakers. Malone is a silent partner in the task force. He presides over a Skunk Works operation secreted in the bowels of the National Security Agency. The essense of the clandestine shop Malone runs is demonstrated by how deftly he conceals its black budget between the lines. Since NSA is prohibited from running field agents, Malone employs Davis as a contract asset—an investigator—who follows up leads gleaned from international intercepts. If Davis turns up actionable material, he calls in old-style cops like Appert to play catch up in the wake of his freewheeling cowboy boots.

  “Ex–Force Recon Marine,” the paperwork says. Wounded in Fallujah, in Afghanistan, and in other arid and/or jungle-rot places. The record is murky, the kind of dissembling Appert associates with the CIA’s Special Activities Division. He glances across the room at the messy pile of gear on Davis’ desk and shakes his head. Damn scofflaw spook never puts anything away.

  But he admits that Davis has a flair for playing it alone in the black-market netherworld where the drug gangs, bad-apple contractors, and insurgents intersect. The grudging thought is preamble for Davis shoving through the door coated with sweat and red dirt that he shakes from his floppy bush hat and then dusts from his curly brown hair. Davis hides his scarred face behind broad sunglasses that he removes to reveal intense green eyes. In his early thirties with the build of a skinny six-foot python, he tosses his M4 carbine on a chair and holds up the iPhone in his hand.

  “Hey, Bobby, you gotta see this. Talk about a new take on the car bomb. A chick in Riyadh just posted it on Facebook, and it’s streaming live on Al Jazeera English. She filmed herself driving a car, man, in violation of that ordinance they got.” Davis grins. His face is out-of-focus handsome, redesigned by high explosives. Cosmetic surgery has given him a reasonably repaired nose that is mostly centered in the braided ripple of scar tissue that meanders diagonally across his face and trails off into his right cheek. The right corner of his smile droops slightly. “Arab spring is bustin’ out all over,” he says.

  “Al Jazeera?” Appert repeats in a perplexed voice. Then he holds up his hands in a questioning gesture and nods toward Nasir.

  Davis shrugs and says, “It’s going down up north, in Ramil, tomorrow at noon. Word is they got a ton of heroin coming in. My informant got inside the house where the meet is set and saw a closet full of shrink-wrapped hundred-dollar bills. So far there’s just goons guarding the place.”

  “You sure about the buyer?” Appert asks.

  “Just a hardworking guy from DuBuque picking up on a passing advantage, huh? He’s in food services at the embassy,” Davis says. “You know, the new 600-million-dollar, 121-acre embassy we’re building as we pull out.” Davis baits Appert with a droll wink. “Like I’ve been telling you, Bobby—this whole war is just one big financial instrument . . .”

  Appert ignores the smart-ass remark and asks, “So where’s Ramil?” He walks to a banquet table strewn with files, a computer, several cells, a satellite phone, and a military radio. He digs around and finds a map.

  “It’s up north of Samarra,” Nasir calls from the couch, “on the big canal. It’s about eight kilometers past the ruins at Turmar. Once the storm clears, we’ll need a helicopter.”

  “You can’t get a helicopter. They come in pairs,” Davis says.

  Appert picks up a phone. “What do you think? Call special ops at Balad?”

  “Naw, some of those guys might know me from the old days. Let’s get a good old down-home Guard unit. Use your flash clearance. Throw in a code name. Those Guard boys get all fired up about code names,” Davis says. As Appert makes the call, Davis flops down on the couch next to Nasir and stares, exhausted, at the TV.

  “King Kong,” he says, “classic white-bread paranoid rape fantasy. Cool.”

  Chapter Seven

  Downtime. Girl time. Miranda Lambert is singing “Gunpowder and Lead” on the iPod. Jesse hunches on her cot, knees drawn up, stripped down to a sports bra and panties. Right now she’s inspecting her toenails and thinking the paint job’s looking shabby.

  She raises her head and listens to the storm grumble against the trailer walls. “You think the freakin’ sand can blow right through my boots and chip my toenails?”

  Laura, similarly dressed down, sits cross-legged on her bunk across the trailer, staring at a laptop. A full-blooded Lakota out of Standing Rock, she’s a Grand Forks EMT in her other life. Without looking up, she answers, “Don’t see why not, blows into everything else: gauges and our watches and various nooks and crannies the guys joke about.” In the morning, the two women will be flying side by side in Tumbleweed Six.

  “Number four grit in the old nooks and crannies will separate the men from the boys, every time,” Jesse observes.

  “Who said that?”

  “Think it was Sam.” Then Jesse methodically works on her toenails with polish remover and cotton balls.

  Laura goes back to her screen and says, “According to this, the first American female soldier was a Deborah. Except she went by ‘Robert’ . . .”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah, this was like in the Revolutionary War. Says Deborah taped her breasts down . . .”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And she carved a musket ball out of her leg to escape being detected by the guys. Hmmm.” Laura cups one of her ample breasts under her gray T-shirt and hefts it.

  Jesse raises an eyebrow, “No way you’d make it in the Revolutionary War, girl.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “They didn’t have Gorilla Tape back then.”

  Laura flings a pillow across the trailer. Jesse ducks and heaves the pillow back. “You got any of that Bl
ue Iguana nail polish? I’m out,” she says.

  After digging in her toiletry bag, Laura flips a bottle. Jesse snaps it out of the air, opens it, and starts applying the paint. Laura turns back to her laptop and states, “Says here the army’s designing a new uniform for chicks. For flat-chested captains mainly, so they don’t look baggy across the front . . .”

  ***

  The storm has passed, moving several cubic tons of Iraq downrange into the desert. A little before dawn, Jesse is walking out of the mess hall carrying a cup of coffee, when she sees major Greg Colbert, the flight company operations officer, talking to Lt. Col. Sampson, the battalion commander. Something about their posture and the cloistered nearness of their heads makes her look twice.

  Then Colbert breaks away from the colonel and jogs over to her. Greg’s usually impassive face is decidedly animated. He says, “Hey, Jess, glad I caught you before the intel briefing. They just scrambled the whole mission schedule,” he says.

  “What?”

  “This FLASH order came down to us bypassing Corps, and Brigade. High-profile spook stuff. Apache escort. We’re flying a code name.”

  “We?”

  “Actually, ah, me. I’m sitting in as commander on your mission set. You get to fly lead. I’ll be on trail.” He taps himself on the chest with mock seriousness. “And I thought the war was over. Major Greg Colbert, from Williston, North Dakota is gonna haul a goddamn code name.”

  “I thought Task Force Brown handled that kind of mission.”

  Task Force Brown is the off-limits special-operations compound on the base. Jesse lengthens her stride to keep pace with Colbert’s long legs as they hurry back toward the battalion and the intel briefing in the mission shack.

  “Don’t know. Brown must be saturated,” Colbert says.

  “So what’s the code name?”

  “Busted Flush. Cool, huh?”

  Inside the shack, Colbert, the plans officer, addresses the company pilots. Sure enough, he explains how they’ve been tasked with a short-notice, high-profile mission. So now the plans section has to reconfigure the pickup and delivery schedule around the standard ring route the company flies. Chaplain Lundquist offers a prayer for the day’s missions. Colbert tells the pilots to check back in half an hour.