"Don't tell me you're a f.a.ggot."

"No, sir."

"You know what my old man always used to say? My dear Giacomo, he'd say, Se 'l te pias moll, ghe n'e fin che te voret-if you like them limp, there are as many as you want. That's just what he said, but in dialect, which sounds even worse." The colonel grips his jewels through his pants. "He was a pig. At eighty he would still get into bed with his caregiver. Poor thing, he died alone like a dog. I don't know if we understand each other, Lieutenant"-the wink again, this time obvious-"but as far as I'm concerned, you and your guest can do whatever you want. I have nothing against a little healthy promiscuity."

Egitto decides to completely ignore the gist of the colonel's allusions. How would Ballesio react if he knew the exact nature of his friendship with Irene Sammartino? He has no desire to reveal it. He repeats slowly: "If I won't disturb you, I'll move in here. Temporarily."

"Okay, okay, whatever you like," Ballesio says impatiently. "You know something, Egitto? You're the most boring officer I've met in thirty years of service."

That night, however, Egitto doesn't sleep at all. Ballesio really does snore like a buzz saw and the lieutenant spends his time fretting, imagining the commander's gluey uvula vibrating in his air pa.s.sage, the glands suffused with blood, swollen, hypertrophic. He'd like to get up and shake him hard, but he doesn't dare, he'd like to go back to the infirmary and grab a packet of Ativan, but he doesn't dare do that either. Irene Sammartino is in there, sleeping. When he thinks about it, he's still dubious, wondering whether it may have been just a lengthy, detailed hallucination. The most he can do is tone down Balles...o...b.. shushing him. The colonel quiets down for a few seconds, then starts in again, louder than before. Sometimes he goes into apnea and when he starts breathing again he produces monstrous sucking sounds.

Egitto's frustration leaves him vulnerable to the a.s.sault of memories. The protective sh.e.l.l of the duloxetine softens, and gradually he surrenders to the stream of thoughts. The lieutenant retraces the few, predictable episodes that he still recalls about his affair with Irene. How long had it lasted? Not long, a couple of months at most. They'd attended the same courses together at officers' training school. They'd become close because they were somewhat more casual than their very proper colleagues-she in that vehement way of hers and he with his caustic style, an unexpectedly valuable legacy of Ernesto's rants.

The attraction the lieutenant felt for Irene was on the cool side, but at times it suddenly flared up and blazed like a fire doused with gasoline. What he remembers best about the time he spent with her is having s.e.x in the cramped dorm room, the sheets always a little damper than he would have liked. But Irene's emotional excesses had soon become a cause of anxiety, and when the erotic flare-ups had begun to occur less frequently, Egitto hadn't found a way to reignite them.

He has an image of the two of them lying on his single bed, awake and inert; it was a Sunday morning and they were listening to the guttural cooing of the pigeons on the windowsill. It sounded like the cries of wild human o.r.g.a.s.ms, a suggestion that Egitto chose to ignore: it was the precise moment when he realized that he no longer had any desire. He said so to Irene, in those same brutal terms, more or less.

But getting rid of Irene Sammartino hadn't proved to be so simple. A couple of weeks after the breakup there'd been an unpleasant aftermath: she summoned him to a cafe in the city center and with a devastated air confessed that she was six days late-it couldn't be a coincidence, no, her cycle was always right on time, infallible. Still, she hadn't wanted to take the test, not yet. They'd walked for hours under the arcades, not touching; in his mind Egitto considered various scenarios, barely keeping his nerves under control and occasionally trying to persuade her to make sure. It turned out to be a big mistake. In the months that followed, Irene would turn up when he least expected it. Their mutual friends, generally speaking, were more his than hers, but Irene never pa.s.sed up a chance to run into him. She always arrived alone, smiling, and for a while she'd be implausibly animated. She'd talk to everyone, ignoring him, but when she could no longer keep up the role, she retreated into silence. She'd start looking around, fidgety as a cat, throwing frequent glances in his direction, and sooner or later in the course of the evening they would find themselves alone, asking each other how things were going, increasingly uncomfortable.

Then, overnight, Irene disappeared into thin air. The conjecture that spread among the school's students was that Intelligence had enrolled her in a special program abroad. Egitto wasn't surprised: she had always been sharp, skillful at communicating. He hadn't wondered too much about it, in any case. He felt relieved.

Colonel Ballesio's nose emits a high-pitched whistle, like the shriek of a rocket, which then ends in a sudden burst. Egitto tosses and turns on the cot for the millionth time. Irene Sammartino . . . How many years has it been? Eight? Nine? And after all those years she shows up right there, in Gulistan, in his tent, like a Trojan horse that fate has suddenly slipped into his protected haven. To disturb him, to bring him back. To what, he doesn't know. To the glittering world of the living? No, fate has nothing to do with it. Egitto is often tempted to give in to the lure of coincidence, but in this case Irene Sammartino has had a hand in it. If she came to the FOB, it's because she chose to come-she must have something in mind: he's not going to let himself be fooled. Watch your a.s.s, Lieutenant.

Ietri and Zampieri climb the main tower for guard duty. The moon is a luminous crescent over the mountain and Ietri recalls a mnemonic verse he learned in elementary school: The moon is a liar-when it forms a D it's crescens, waxing; when it forms a C it's decrescens, waning. With D in the sky, his father would get up before dawn to plant sugar beets. With C he'd left the house one evening in May and never returned.

"There's a waning moon," he says to himself.

"Huh?"

"Nothing."

Zampieri sits on the ground, legs outstretched. She swings the tips of her boots back and forth. "It's cold," she says. "s.h.i.t, just think about January. We'll freeze to death."

Ietri pulls his gloves out of his pocket and offers them to her. She ignores him and goes on talking while studying the stripped skin around her right thumbnail. She bites it where it's pinkest. "The captain should come up here. To see how cold it is. Not a chance, though-he doesn't get his a.s.s dirty."

"Who, Masiero?"

Zampieri stares at the tip of her boots, persistently gnawing at her finger. "Did you see how he treated me? He called me 'mademoiselle,' like I was some dumb fashion model."

"Is that what it means?"

Again she ignores him. "I know how to load an MG-take my word. I can load any weapon in the world. That machine gun was mounted too high. Masiero should see me shoot with my SC. I'd rip that barrel to shreds."

"You couldn't hit that far with an SC," Ietri contradicts her, but right away he gets the impression that it wasn't the right thing to say. Zampieri in fact looks at him confused, somewhat disgusted, before she continues. "That gun was jammed, I told him. It must have been Simoncelli who fired before me. He always f.u.c.ks up the artillery."

She takes her thumb out of her mouth, rubs it with her forefinger. She loosens her ponytail and shakes her head. She's more beautiful with her hair like that, Ietri thinks, more feminine.

A moment later she's sobbing uncontrollably. "He called me 'young lady'! s.e.xist b.a.s.t.a.r.d! He doesn't act like that with you guys. Oh, no! It's only because I'm a girl. Stupid me. An idiot . . . when I chose . . . this . . . line of work."

Her shoulders heave as she weeps and Ietri has to suppress the urge to stroke her head.

"I'm . . . not . . . capable."

"Of course you're capable."

She jerks her head up suddenly and gives him a withering glance. "No, I'm not! What do you know, huh? Nothing. Not a d.a.m.n thing!"

The outburst seems to calm her down. Ietri decides not to protest. Zampieri is still crying, but more softly, as if it were just a different way of breathing. Ietri doesn't know how to console a girl. He consoled his mother many times, especially during the tough time when his father disappeared in the fields, but that was different. He didn't have to do much, because she did it all: she held him tight enough to nearly smother him and repeated, Mama is here with you, Mama is here with you. "I think I'm incapable sometimes too," he says.

"But you always do everything right. Your cot is always in order, you're always on time for muster, you never complain or act like an a.s.shole. There he is! Corporal Ietri, the perfect little soldier!"

Ietri doesn't like her tone. He applies himself to doing things right, it's true. He doesn't see that there's anything wrong with that. Still, he feels the need to defend himself. "Hey, look-I f.u.c.k up too sometimes!"

"Yeah, right."

"I'm serious."

"Oh, sure."

"The other night I dropped my flashlight in the toilet."

Zampieri turns to look at him, dumbfounded. "The flashlight that clogged up the toilet was yours?"

"I tried to fish it out, but it was pitch dark. I didn't want to stick my hands in there. It was disgusting-it turned my stomach."

The girl slaps her palms on her knees and bursts out laughing in that raucous way of hers. "You're a real a.s.shole!"

"Stop it! You'll wake the whole base."

But Zampieri won't stop. "You really are an a.s.shole!" she repeats. Then she falls over on her side, unconcerned about her face landing in the dirt.

"At least I can shoot," Ietri mutters, resentful.

She sits up again. Her cheek is a little grimy; she wipes it off with her forearm. "Okay, okay. Don't get p.i.s.sed," she says, but then she starts laughing again.

The earthen square of the watchtower is littered with cartridge cases. Ietri picks one up, turns it around in his fingers. He wonders whether it belonged to a sh.e.l.l that killed someone or one that missed.

Zampieri snorts. "Hey, are you offended?"

"No."

"You sure? You look to me like you're mortally offended."

"I'm not offended."

"You're cute when you pout like that."

Ietri's jaw drops. "What?"

"I said you're cute."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing in particular. You're cute, that's all. Didn't anyone ever tell you?"

"No."

"You should see yourself now. You're all red."

"How can you tell when we're practically in the dark?"

"You're so red it's obvious even in the dark. h.e.l.l, you're practically glowing."

She's probably right. Ietri feels flushed. He turns his back to Zampieri and pretends to look out the narrow opening. The mountain is a hulking animal barely darker than the sky; he can just make out its crouching silhouette. Zampieri told him he was cute. Should he believe her? She opens the zipper of her jacket and slips a hand into the inside pocket. She pulls out an aluminum flask, takes a sip, and offers it to him. "Here. It'll calm you down a bit."

"What is it?"

She shrugs.

"Are you nuts? If we get caught drinking on sentry duty we'll end up CB."

"What did I tell you, gentlemen? There you have it! Corporal Ietri, the perfect little soldier!"

She takes another sip and then chuckles to herself. Ietri is now mortified. "Give me that," he says.

Zampieri hands him the flask. He takes a sip. It's grappa and it's harsh. He gives it back. "How can you swallow that stuff?"

"I drink whatever there is. You want more?"

"Yeah."

They go on like that for a while, pa.s.sing the flask back and forth. Ietri doesn't refuse it even when he doesn't want any more, because at each turn he manages to brush his comrade's fingers. "Were you scared last night?" he asks her.

"I'm never scared," she says. She toys with a strand of hair, twirling it. "You?"

"No, no," Ietri is quick to say. "Of course not."

Zampieri has left her jacket zipper open a bit, her green T-shirt stretched over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Ietri imagines her without clothes. He constructs her naked figure systematically, from her neck to her feet. She's torturing her thumb with her teeth again and seems distant, wrapped up in thoughts that have nothing to do with him. "I'll make the captain pay for it," she murmurs. "One day I'll make him pay, I swear."

They stop talking. The grappa is finished. And Ietri has an erection. He continues peeking into Zampieri's jacket, to conjure up her white b.r.e.a.s.t.s, until she sadly pulls the zipper closed again and curls up. In a minute she's asleep; he can tell from her breathing and from her head, which rhythmically snaps upward.

When it's time to trade places, two hours later, he doesn't wake her. He spends the whole shift on his feet even though his calves are twitching. He's watched her persistently, almost the entire time. He allows himself to fantasize about how he would make love with his duty partner, lying on the floor of the sentry box, how he would grip her thighs tightly and press his mouth on hers. But he also has more tender thoughts, where they kiss and caress each other's hands and he shows her the house in Torremaggiore and they have dinner together at his mother's, who prepares her special potato focaccia for the occasion. It's no less exciting a fantasy. Ietri knows only one way to release all that tension. He'll have to venture to the latrines when he finishes his shift. The problem-and it's not at all an insignificant problem-is that he's been left without a flashlight.

Look, Look, and Look Again

"An IED is a homemade bomb, remember that. Improvised explosive device. Anyone can build one. Take a jerry can of chemical fertilizer, a couple of copper wires and some clips, connect them all together. The simplest electrical circuit you can think of-even a child can do it. The instructions are on the Internet. There's nothing you can do about it. An IED costs about the same as a pizza and beer and the material can be found at any hardware store. It's a mousetrap, that's what it is. And we're the mice. It's because of IEDs that this war has become a s.h.i.tty war like Iraq. You don't see the enemy anymore; he's not there. He buries his bomb and then hides behind a rock to enjoy the show. Boom! There's not a thing you can do about it, just watch out. You have to look at everything, all the time. Look, look, and then look again. A pile of garbage on the roadside? Suspected IED. A little boy standing on a roof, waving at you? Suspected IED. A clod of earth a little darker than the rest? Suspected IED. If the earth is lighter, it's also a suspected IED. Some stones lined up? An abandoned car? The rotting carca.s.s of a camel? Suspected IED. We're the truffle dogs of this war. If there's any danger of an explosive device, stop and let the ACRT do his job. Don't rush him. If the ACRT hurries through it, you blow up. Bring him something to drink if he asks for a drink and even if he doesn't ask, because if the ACRT is thirsty and gets a headache and gets confused, you blow up. Remember that. It's a lousy war, the lousiest of all. You can't plant a bayonet in those Talibans' guts-get used to it. They go around in their pure white garments. They smile at you, they say As-salaam alaik.u.m to you, and meanwhile they've placed their little gift less than a mile farther on. They're sons of b.i.t.c.hes. It was better when you could plant a knife in their belly-at least you looked them in the eye. (Murmur of approval.) You won't know anything about the IEDs-ever. Remember that. Each IED is a story in itself. We have metal detectors and they build the pressure plates in ceramic. We send robots on ahead to reconnoiter and they place the charge a mile back from the pressure plate. We find the plate and happily lift it up to defuse it and it activates another one right there under us and the charge explodes up our a.s.s. These Taliban f.u.c.kers know how to wage war. They've done nothing else for fifty years. (A question.) A Lince can withstand twenty-two pounds of explosives, maybe twenty-six. Here they make fifty-five-pound bombs. Even a Buffalo would go flying through the air with fifty-five pounds. A charge like that rips you in half like a lightning bolt plunging through your skull. It depends on where it explodes, of course. If it's in front, it may be that the two gun operators will be saved. If it explodes at midpoint, it's all over. If it explodes behind, the driver and radio specialist might make it, though without arms or legs, or both. The gunner is f.u.c.ked in any case. Whoever is behind picks up the pieces. You know the drill. If an IED has exploded, it's exploded. If someone's dead, he's dead. You have to think about cleaning up. Remember that as well. Remember everything I've said. What you forget is what will get you killed. If an IED has exploded and a friend of yours has lost his life because the ACRT didn't see it and you're infuriated with him and feel like giving him a good kick in the a.s.s, don't do it, because there could be another IED twenty yards away and an ACRT with a sore a.s.s is a less efficient ACRT and you sure as h.e.l.l don't want to blow up too. Wait until you're back at the base to waste him. (Laughter.) Whoever was killed is dead now and the ACRT can't do squat about it. No one can do squat about it. (A question.) ACRT stands for Advanced Combat Recognition Team. An IED is an Improvised Explosive Device, as I said before. If you add a D at the end it becomes Improvised Explosive Device Disposal, which is a whole other thing. EOD, on the other hand, means Explosive Ordnance Disposal. A VBIED is an IED planted in a run-down vehicle. You need to know the abbreviations-they're important, all of them. If you don't know English, learn it. The right abbreviation at the right time will save your life. This is not a clean war. It's not an evenhanded war. You are the targets. You're mice in a piece of moldy cheese. There isn't one single friend of ours out there. Not even those kids with flies on their faces. Not even the Mau Maus. Nine times out of ten, a Mau Mau knows where an IED is buried and won't tell you. They're as corrupt as wh.o.r.es, those guys. Never go where a Mau Mau doesn't want to go. And never go where a Mau Mau tells you to go. (A question.) A Mau Mau is an Afghan policeman. Where the h.e.l.l have you been till now? (Laughter.) We're in a country of filthy, corrupt people. There's nothing to improve here. When we've straightened a few things out and go home, everything will go back to being the same mess it was before. All you should care about is going home. Make it home and your mission will have been a success-the h.e.l.l with Afghanistan. (A question.) Because we're soldiers, we do what has to be done. Don't waste my time with dumb-a.s.s questions."

There's word of a tip-off. One person told another, who leaked it to yet another, who then reported it to the auto parts dealer at the bazaar (who thanks to a favor he received has become an informant of average reliability), that those responsible for the attack the other night are hiding in an area in the northern part of the village. In the last week there's been an unusual parade of motorcycles to and from that district. It's enough to organize a retaliatory action.

Naturally, Ietri knows nothing about any of this. Communication breaks up as it trickles down the chain of command. The only thing he and his companions hear from Rene are the name of a target and a departure time. They leave the FOB two hours before dawn. The idea is to surprise the Taliban by moving in stealthily, though it doesn't make much sense: forty tons of metal advancing at a crawl over rough terrain doesn't exactly create what might be called a surprise. Should the Taliban think of escaping, however, they'd find their pa.s.sage barred, since the soldiers are converging on the district from five different directions, blocking the roads. The higher-ups in Herat have guaranteed aerial coverage with two fighter-bombers that will fly unseen over the area and can detect heat sources within a several-mile radius. Colonel Ballesio worked out that flawless strategy in less than no time, a few hours earlier.

Ietri is aboard the Lince driven by Zampieri. From the backseat, he'd rather look at her than at the flat terrain outside, as the horizon brightens with an orange glow. Zampieri greatly disturbs him or greatly soothes him, depending on the situation. It's a curious thing, which makes him think. The ACRT orders three stops for suspected explosive devices: a dead bird flattened at the side of the road, a few limp sacks abandoned in the middle of nowhere, a group of three rocks arranged in nearly a straight line. They're false alarms, but enough to intensify Ietri's apprehension. From a place where he'd been keeping it at bay, it spreads to every part of his body. He tightens his grip on the barrel of the automatic rifle, which he's holding straight up between his knees. He starts studying the possible geometries of the rocks, in case he might pick out a suspect one that's escaped the bomb tech. He can't make heads or tails of it, though; they're all regular or irregular depending on how you look at them. He can't understand how the sappers can do the job they do. Maybe they too just take a guess, and in fact every so often one of them is killed. "Are we almost there?" he can't help asking.

n.o.body answers.

"Well, are we nearly there or not?"

"We're there when we get there," Zampieri replies coldly, without taking her eyes off the road.

By the time they get out of the Lince, the sun has risen. The soldiers cover about fifty yards at a run, turn a corner, and then another. Rene seems to know where they're headed. They line up against the wall of a house.

They communicate with arm, head, and finger gestures, prearranged coded signals that roughly mean: You guys move forward. Keep an eye out over there. You, bring up the rear. We'll go in that door. A final command is for Ietri: You go first. Cederna will cover you. Kick in the door and jump aside. Rene raises his right thumb, meaning: Do you understand? Ietri thinks so, but what if he's wrong? He rotates his forefinger to ask the commander to repeat it. Rene runs through the sequence again, more slowly.

Okay?

Okay.

Ietri moves to the head of the column, then lunges for the other side of the door. Cederna follows two steps away. Did he have to pick me? Ietri thinks. For some reason he's reminded of the c.o.c.kroaches at the Wreck, the way they silently scurry across the room, looking for cover along the way.

A rooster crows loudly in the distance and calls him back. There's a narrow, empty track that runs between the houses and fades into the barren desert; part of the road is in the shadow of the house where they think the enemy is hiding. Seven of them, Rene in the lead, are standing in this shade, to the right of the wooden door. He and Cederna are the only ones on the other side of the door.

Ietri slides a hand inside his collar, feeling for the chain with the cross; he pulls it out, brings it to his lips, and realizes that his hands are shaking. His legs are too. And his knees. f.u.c.k. He has only one chance to kick in the door. It looks pretty rotten, but there's a latch. Maybe they've bolted it on the inside with iron bars, in which case he's screwed. It's possible they'll finish him off in a second, that the Taliban in the house are aware of their arrival and are now waiting for them with their Kalashnikovs aimed at the door. They'll fire on the first one to appear, and that first one will be him. There was something he had to remember before he died; he had it on his mind until a moment ago. Was it his mother, maybe? The way she used to comb his hair into a pageboy when he was a little boy, using her fingers? He doesn't think it was that. Anyway, all he remembers about his mother now is the slap she gave him the day before he left and how she started crying at the airport. Ietri feels a surge of anger toward her.

"Go on, verginella, move," Cederna urges him from behind.

But Ietri's calves are as heavy as wet sandbags. He can't even think about raising his leg to kick. His boots might have fused with the ground, for all he knows. "I can't," he says.

"What do you mean, you can't?"

"I can't."

"Why can't you?"

"I feel dizzy."

Cederna is silent for a second; Ietri feels his hand on his shoulder. Rene is signaling him again to break down the door.