He sits back down, b.u.mps the flashlight with his elbow. The beam of light ends up skimming the ground, revealing boot prints in the sand: each one partially erases the others, the fossil remains of a struggle. It's at that point that the soldier starts to cry, softly at first, then louder. "f.u.c.k," he says through clenched teeth. Then he repeats: "f.u.c.k f.u.c.k f.u.c.k f.u.c.k," as if the toxin he wants to release were lurking in that word.

Egitto doesn't try to stop him, but for some reason he chooses to turn his gaze to the c.h.i.n.k of sky visible between the wall and the outer fortification-it's almost light. He listens to the boy's weeping; he breaks it down into its elements: the shuddering diaphragm, the nasal pa.s.sages filling up with mucus, the breathing that accelerates to maximum intensity and then suddenly subsides. Mitrano is quiet again. Egitto hands him a tissue. "Feel better?"

"I think so."

"We're not in any hurry, though."

Actually, he's wiped out. He'd like to lie down on the ground right there and fall asleep. He closes his eyes for a moment, his head drops forward.

"Doc?"

A second is all it takes for him to find himself in a confused dream, in the middle of a firefight.

"Doc!"

"What is it?"

Women

The sandstorm is over. The morning's clarity holds no trace of the confusion of the strike. The men are still shaken, however, exhausted and nervous as one by one they drift over to breakfast. Despite the general anxiety, activities take place as on any other day: at exactly eight o'clock trainers arrive at the garrison where the Afghan police forces are stationed and teach them how to search a van and rough up the suspects on board; a patrol ventures out to an unexplored settlement near Maydan Jabha; others engage in domestic ch.o.r.es that under different circ.u.mstances would be considered unmanly-doing the laundry, sweeping sand out of the tents, washing down the latrines with buckets of water.

But a new awareness makes them tremble imperceptibly. The veterans, who are familiar with the feeling from other missions, accept it phlegmatically and respond to the recruits seeking rea.s.surance: Where the h.e.l.l did you think you were, at summer camp? Yet for the first time they, too-tough, experienced soldiers though they are-see the impregnable fortification they erected for what it really is: a sandpit exposed to danger.

At eleven o'clock the Third Platoon a.s.sembles at the foot of the west tower for firing practice. The soldiers are waiting with their b.u.t.ts resting on the table where the gleaming artillery stands ready for use, or with their backs against the HEs...o...b..stion, in the shade. They're doing their best to look relaxed, even bored. In reality they're exhausted and a little depressed; no one has anything left to say, after they spent the rest of the night in the tent with the bare bulbs lit, some with their eyes closed trying to futilely catch a few hours' sleep, some commenting over and over again on the dynamics of the attack (which no one really understood)-all of them, however, with their ears p.r.i.c.ked, on the alert for any new explosions. Marshal Rene had racked his brains to come up with an encouraging speech for his men, but the words wouldn't come to him and in the end all he said was, "We're at war, we knew it," as if it had been their fault.

The rifle barrels glint in the sun and the two boxes of ammunition give more than one of the guys the urge to load his weapon, leave the base, and start shooting randomly at any Afghans who come within range. Rene knows that itch; he can feel it himself and it was predicted in the training courses ("a natural human reaction that must be kept under control"). Pecone somewhat awkwardly acts out how they all feel when he wields a rifle and points it toward the mountain and then at the sky, jerking around guardedly. "Come on out, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! I'll pick you off one by one. Bam! Bam!"

"Put down the gun. Or you're more likely to knock off one of us," Rene says. It's a joke, but no one laughs.

When Captain Masiero appears at the edge of the square, the soldiers get to their feet and stand up straight. The colonel has ordered that the captain be in charge of the firing ranges during the stay at the FOB, though generally each platoon manages the matter internally. Needless to say Rene is not at all happy with the change; he feels pa.s.sed over. He has a congenital dislike for Masiero, whom he bluntly considers an a.s.shole and an a.s.s licker of the worst kind. As far as he can see, the feeling is mutual.

By the time the captain reaches the tower, the guys have formed a line. "Is the weapon in position?" Masiero asks.

"Yes, sir."

"Then we'll begin. Let's go."

One at a time the soldiers clamber up the wooden ladder. Rene hands them a gold-plated ammo belt. Masiero stands behind each of them and repeats the same order in each one's ear: "You see the hill? There are three barrels. Aim at the red one in the center. Short bursts and push forward. The MG is a b.i.t.c.h who wants to turn cartwheels, remember that. You have to hold her down-got it? Down. Load up and fire when ready. Use the plugs, unless you want to burst your eardrums."

Rene shoots first and is flawless. When hit, the barrel jumps and then falls back into place. The shots that miss kick up clouds of dust among the rocks and low scrub. Masiero, however, can't resist a jab: "Pretty good, Marshal. Try to relax when you shoot. You'll enjoy it more-you'll see."

Rene imagines shoving his index and middle fingers up the man's nostrils and poking them out through his eyes.

He hates to admit it, but it's important to him that they look sharp in front of the captain. He hopes his men will make him look good, too.

It starts out promising. Most of the guys. .h.i.t the target at least once. Camporesi, Biasco, Allais, and Rovere do extremely well; Cederna is complimented on the speed with which he loads and aims the weapon.

Corporal Ietri is the first to disappoint him a little. As usual, the ceiling of the watchtower is too low for him. He has to hunch over the machine gun. Maybe that's the reason-or maybe it's because the captain breathing down his neck makes him nervous-he holds the trigger down too long.

"Don't waste ammunition," Masiero chides him.

When Ietri pa.s.ses Rene, looking grim, the marshal pats him on the shoulder. Ietri is still young; he takes offense at everything.

Zampieri steps up last. Rene involuntarily looks at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as she climbs the ladder, but has no explicit s.e.xual thoughts toward her. He never has thought of her that way, maybe because she's sort of a friend or because he's seen her belch loudly after knocking back a can of beer, and certain things don't go with his idea of femininity. He treats her like all the others, like a guy. Zampieri is a good soldier, she drives the Lince with full control and requisite boldness, she's dogged and never backs away, even when Torsu puts p.o.r.n movies on in the barracks. She stays and watches them, arms folded, until the end. From certain looks he's caught, Rene would bet she's had the hots for Cederna for a long while, though no one suspects it. They all think she's a lesbian.

Zampieri listens to the captain's instructions, nodding. She fits the plugs in her ears and stretches her neck. She fumbles with the cover of the feed a.s.sembly to insert the cartridges, but her hand can't quite reach it. Each time she tries to place the belt, the lid snaps back on her fingers. The gun stock slips out of the hollow of her shoulder. "I can't reach it," she says, and tries again to no avail.

Masiero orders the men to bring a wooden footboard. Di Salvo finds one in the equipment shed and two of them hoist it up on the fortification. Rene arranges it on the platform and Zampieri climbs on it. "Better?" he asks warmly, to rea.s.sure her.

"Yeah."

"It would be even better if you turned the cartridge belt right side up," Masiero says sharply.

"Of course. Sorry, sir."

Zampieri goes on fumbling with the lid, but the machine gun keeps slipping and pitching forward, a recalcitrant animal. Rene is impatient. From below, the guys are watching their platoon mate with a mixture of sympathy and curiosity and glancing at Rene, as if asking him to intervene. The captain, leaning his forearms on the windowsill of the tower, wears a sarcastic grin. Zampieri finally manages to hold the weapon with her elbow and close the feed a.s.sembly. "Done."

"It's about time. Charge!"

The girl tries to pull the charger handle back, but it's too stiff. Rene himself felt a little resistance earlier. Now he's sure Zampieri won't make it. In fact, she tries again, but can't pull it all the way back.

"Maybe it's jammed," she says softly.

Masiero elbows her aside. "It's not jammed, d.a.m.n it! It's you who's inept!" He loads the weapon with a violent jerk. "Now fire!"

Zampieri isn't trembling, but her cheeks are redder than usual, her neck rigid. Rene, too, can feel the blood pulsing everywhere, in his ears, hands. Zampieri hastily takes aim, the MG recoils, and the round winds up about twenty yards above the barrel. The captain swears, then stands behind the girl and shoves her forward with his pelvis, toward the b.u.t.t of the machine gun. If they weren't appalled, the guys would certainly venture a few salacious remarks.

"Fire, d.a.m.n it!"

The rounds land even farther away from the target. Zampieri gives a little cry: her breast is painfully pressed between the weapon and Masiero's sternum. He yanks her around and starts shaking her. "And you're supposed to be a gunner? Huh? A gunner? We're in Gulistan, G.o.dd.a.m.n it! Here they'll slaughter us thanks to people like you!"

The guys in the platoon have bowed their heads a little. Rene, on the contrary, is determined to stare the captain down till the end.

"What if you'd been on guard duty last night? You'd have gotten us all killed. This is a war and you don't know how to use a machine gun!"

Zampieri is rigid. She looks like she's surely going to break at any moment in Masiero's grip. The capillaries in her eyes have exploded into red.

"Captain," Rene speaks up.

Masiero turns around, furious. "What?"

"Maybe you're being too intimidating."

Rene remains at attention, expressionless, as Masiero slowly walks over to him, breathing through his mouth.

"I'm intimidating her?"

"The men have never used that weapon before today."

"Oh, darn. I'm sorry about that. Maybe I should have given the young lady a water pistol. Has she fired that yet?"

Rene remains silent. His expression doesn't change at all, nor does that of his men, speechless at the foot of the tower. They've been trained to be strictly impa.s.sive, to keep their worst thoughts well hidden behind their eyes, and Masiero was one of their instructors. The captain moves even closer to Rene, stops a few inches from his face. He looks at the stripes pinned to his jacket, as if he weren't perfectly familiar with them. "Marshal, tell me. Have you ever been involved in a firefight? A real firefight, I mean."

"No."

"Answer the way you respond to a superior, Marshal."

"No, sir."

"I see. Too bad. Oh, but don't let it worry you. This mission you'll have your turn. And you know why? Because over here they shoot. Here they hate us and want to kill us all. Did you hear those dazzling fireworks last night? Well, be aware that it wasn't a party and that they won't stop until they've razed this base to the ground and wiped out all the infidel dogs like you and me. You know what the Taliban do to prisoners, Marshal?"

"No, sir."

"They crucify them. Like Jesus Christ. Can you imagine a rusty nail planted in the nerves of your hand? You men down there, can you imagine that? Mademoiselle, can you imagine it? You starve to death, or bleed out. It can take up to three days. The f.u.c.kers moisten your lips to make you last longer. And you know what else they do, Marshal?"

"No."

"No, what?"

"No, sir."

"They bludgeon you with a club, for hours and hours, until you can no longer tell whether you still have clothes on. But they're careful not to kill you. Because afterward they lock you in a cell full of insects and let them finish the job. Or else . . . ask me, Or else what?, Marshal."

"Or else what, sir?"

"Or else they hang you upside down until all the blood flows into your brain and it bursts. Pow! Now do you understand why it's useful to know how to load an MG?"

"Yes, sir."

"And do you think the young lady with the blond curls back here has also understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"Because it would be a shame if those beautiful golden locks were to get smeared with blood, don't you think?"

"Yes, sir."

Masiero pauses. The silence is so absolute that Rene can hear his own breathing. "Well, then," the captain says finally, "we're done here."

Masiero climbs down the ladder. The soldiers stand at attention as he parades by them, not deigning to look at them. Up on the fortification, Rene smiles at Zampieri as if to tell her not to take it so hard-nothing serious, really.

Twilight is Lieutenant Egitto's favorite time of day. The air suddenly turns cooler, but it's not yet biting cold like at night. In the evening light, the FOB seems to shrink, and colors other than the usual ocher and green can finally be seen around the rock-strewn square as the soldiers go about in colorful robes and flip-flops. For a couple of hours, the mood is one of peaceful everyday life. Even the lieutenant's hardened apathy cracks and he experiences unexpected bursts of good humor.

Adjacent to the showers is a tent with a heater, used as a locker room, but Egitto doesn't like to undress in front of his colleagues-he'd rather do it inside the stall, even if the s.p.a.ce is tight. He's perfected a way to take off his clothes and put them back on while balancing first on one leg and then the other, so that his feet don't make contact with the filthy floor without his flip-flops. Survival at the FOB requires skill in countless little things like that.

The water is lukewarm, not really hot, but after about ten seconds it feels pleasant enough. Someone left his body wash on the shelf. Egitto unscrews the cap and sniffs the contents: it has a strong aroma, pungent and inescapably male, the kind that often lingers in the locker rooms at the barracks. The guys like to swathe themselves in dense clouds of fragrance. They spray their chests, even their genitals, with powerful deodorants, which then stagnate in the muggy air-another difference between him and them: the lieutenant washes with alkaline soap from the dispensary.

He pours the liquid into his hand, rubs it onto his chest and shoulders. The scrubbing opens small, dark wounds at the spots that are in the worst shape, which then heal immediately. The lieutenant directs the stream of water to the shreds of dead skin scattered on the ground until they're sucked down the drain. Maybe the owner of the body wash is waiting outside the door. When Egitto pa.s.ses him he'll recognize the scent of his shower gel and G.o.d only knows how he might react. The guys are unpredictable. In any case he'd be right: you don't steal a buddy's soap-it's one of those crimes that in an outpost in the middle of the desert takes on gigantic import. He pours out some more, spreads it over his groin and on his legs. Then he stands under the water with his eyes closed, until someone knocks on the door. He's used up his three minutes in the shower.

Back at the infirmary, he finds the tent zipper halfway open. "Anybody there?"

A female voice comes from the other side of the green canvas: "Alessandro? Is that you?"

The flap opens and a bare arm emerges followed by a shoulder, a strip of white towel, then the round face of Irene Sammartino, with her hair pinned up. Irene. The half-naked hologram of her is projected before the lieutenant from a distant universe, far off in time and s.p.a.ce. Bewildered, Egitto takes a step back from the apparition.

The woman smiles at him. "I chose this cot. I didn't know where you slept. There's no sign of a living soul."

"What are you doing here?"

Irene tilts her head to one side, folds her bare arms across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were never very large, though they weren't small either; Egitto roughly remembers how it felt to cup one of them in the palm of his hand.

"Is that any way to welcome an old friend? Come here. Let me give you a kiss."

Egitto approaches, reluctantly. Irene looks up to study him carefully, compensating for the slight difference in height that separates them; she seems to want to make sure that all his features are in place. "You're still pretty good looking," she says, satisfied.

The towel covers only part of her thighs and sways each time she moves. What's holding it closed at the collarbone isn't a knot, just a corner tucked under the edge, which could come loose at any moment, displaying her entire body. Egitto doesn't know why he's considering this possibility. Irene Sammartino is there, barefoot, in his tent, and he has no idea why-he doesn't know where she came from, whether she rained down from the sky or sprouted from the earth, what her intentions are. She plants two friendly kisses lightly on his cheeks. She's wearing a nice scent that doesn't arouse any memory in him. "Come on, Lieutenant, say something! You look like you've seen the devil himself!"

Half an hour later Egitto is asking Colonel Ballesio for an explanation, as the colonel meanwhile turns his attention to wiping out the bottom of a container of yogurt with his finger.

"Irene, right. She said you were friends. Lucky you. Nice piece of a.s.s, no doubt about it. But she blabbers a mile a minute. Nonstop. And she makes jokes that frankly I don't get. Don't you think there's something pathetic about women who make jokes that aren't funny? My wife is that way. Never had the guts to tell her." Ballesio sticks his whole finger in his mouth, pulls it out, glistening with saliva. "Plus, she seems like one of those who have a tendency to put on weight. Her legs-I mean, have you looked at them? They're not fat but you can tell there's a good chance they will be. I had an overweight girl as an NCO and . . . phew! Those chubby ones have something about them . . . something swinish. Did she get settled in okay?"

"I let her have my cot."

"Good. I appreciate it. I would even have kept her here, but since you're already friends . . ." Did he just wink at him? Or was it only his impression? "Besides, I have this terrible snoring problem. It almost cost me a divorce. My wife and I have slept in separate rooms for fourteen years. Not that I mind, but sometimes I wake myself up because I'm snoring so loud. A buzz saw, that's me." He coughs. "No remedy for it, Doctor?"

"None, Colonel." Egitto is angrier than he lets on.

Ballesio inspects the bottom of the container, in case there might still be a trace of yogurt. He even scrupulously licked the foil lid, which is now lying on the table. He tosses the container into the trash can, but misses. The plastic cup bounces off the rim and rolls on the ground, at the lieutenant's feet. Egitto hopes he won't ask him to pick it up. "Of course. Because there is no cure. Patches, lozenges, sleeping on my side-I've tried everything. There is no solution. If a person snores, he snores, end of story. Anyway. Our Irene will be here a week, helicopters permitting."

"What is she doing here, Colonel?"

Ballesio looks at him sideways. "You're asking me, Lieutenant? How should I know? Afghanistan is full of these Irenes wandering around. They look into things, they investigate. It wouldn't surprise me if your friend were here to gather information about one of us. Who can tell? Today a soldier complains about some bulls.h.i.t and they immediately pounce on you like vultures. She can be my guest, though. I have nothing to protect anymore. If they were to force me to retire tomorrow, I'd be more than happy. You, on the other hand. Watch your a.s.s."

Egitto takes a breath. "Commander, I'd like to ask permission to sleep here. I won't bother you."

Ballesio's face darkens, then relaxes in a smile again. "Oh, no, I know that. Of course you wouldn't. If anything I'd be the one disturbing you. Tell me: what's the problem, Lieutenant?"

"I feel it's more appropriate for Irene to have her privacy."