Egitto can't believe that Irene would want to impose such a death sentence on all of them. He's likely to sound even more disrespectful, but he says it anyway: "I don't think Sammartino would do such a thing."

All of a sudden Ballesio places his forearms on the table and leans forward, furious. "Is it your testicular sixth sense again telling you that, Lieutenant? Give me a break-it's a mistake a raw recruit would make."

Egitto has no idea whether Ballesio's remarks are just guesses or whether they're certainties-he's not sure what the colonel may or may not know or who may have reported it to him. The way things stand, Irene herself could have been the one to leak it to him. Is there anyone he can trust? The insinuation, founded or not, disorients him; he feels as if he's been exposed. His nerve fails him.

The commander points a finger at him. "Listen to me. Go to confession while there's still time-you never know. You're dismissed."

The officers gather again, the various companies and individual platoons meet, and in the end everyone has a more or less confused idea of what they're supposed to do to start preparing. Morale is high, especially among those who are about to leave: although they're aware of the danger of venturing outside the security bubble in a column, it's also a chance to shake off the cobwebs after a month spent vegetating at the FOB. Besides, who'd want to be a soldier without the opportunity to do some shooting?

Cederna, who in theory at least is an enthusiast of gunfights, is the only one who doesn't share the general optimism. The phone call he has to make scares him to death. He's already put it off for hours and now twice in a row he's let two guys who were behind him go ahead. He's bitten his knuckles to the bone and when he sucks them for the umpteenth time he can taste blood. Agnese won't take it well. His fear of her reaction only makes him more nervous. Why would he, who isn't afraid of anything, be afraid of a woman? Anger generates more fear, in a vicious circle that's driving him crazy. One thing he's sure of, though: he won't tell her anything that vaguely resembles the truth-there's no reason to. He won't tell her that his leave was canceled by that fat slob Colonel Ballesio himself because he played one prank too many and that imbecile Mitrano started shooting up his sleeping bag in the middle of the night. He won't tell her that there's a very high probability that his leave won't be granted even further on and that he's likely to be the only one in the regiment to spend six consecutive months out here. And he won't say he's sorry, never ever.

He grabs the receiver. It's still slick with the sweat of the guys who used the phone before him. Agnese answers, her voice guarded.

"It's me," Cederna says.

"You?"

"Yeah, me."

"I've missed you, soldier."

"They won't let me leave."

Why is Agnese silent for so long now? Say something, speak! "I'm sorry," Cederna adds, immediately failing to stick to his main intention.

She remains mute.

"Hey, did you hear me?"

Not a word.

"It's no use giving me the silent treatment. There's an operation that begins tomorrow. I can't tell you the details, but it's serious stuff. They need all the men and I can't get away."

"Don't you dare try that." Agnese's tone is sharp but calm, different than he expected. He was prepared to listen to her cry on the phone, to hear her rage and fume, but not this. "Don't even try to make me feel sorry for you with your operations and danger and all the rest."

"I told you. Think what you want."

"Right. I'll think what I want."

Did she hang up? Is she still there? These long silences are a dirty trick.

"Agnese . . ."

"I have nothing more to say to you."

"I'll come after you graduate, okay? We'll take a trip like I promised. The weather will be even better."

"We're not taking any trip, Francesco. We're not doing anything. Now excuse me, but I have to go."

"What the f.u.c.k does that mean?"

Agnese feigns a giggle that makes the senior corporal major shiver. "You know what? This is a wonderful graduation gift, Francesco, the best you could have given me. My girlfriends have just planned a vacation. Women only. I said I wouldn't go, because you'd be here, but I really want to go. I want to with all my heart and soul."

Cederna imagines that the plastic receiver is dangerously close to shattering. He loosens his grip. "You're not going on vacation with those s.l.u.tty girlfriends of yours. I'll break your face if you try it!"

Agnese bursts into a loud, raucous laugh. "You really are a savage, Francesco Cederna."

It's only on a subconscious level that the soldier forms an a.s.sociation with a similar phrase she told him long ago in a very different context. It was one of the first times they went out together, one of the first times they ended up in bed together, and Agnese had said, "You really are a show-off, Francesco Cederna," but that time she'd gone on and added, "A show-off and also a nice guy-I swear to G.o.d no one has ever made me feel that way." He'd been, well, flattered for sure, and also surprised. Now that those earlier words echo in a peripheral part of the brain-who knows if she's aware of the connection-now that things are so much different and she has nothing more to add, Cederna feels a sense of bitterness and defeat and is unable to answer back.

It's Agnese who ends the call instead of him. "So long. Good luck with your operation."

The Third Platoon, Charlie Company, is a.s.signed to bring up the rear, a delicate position but still better than being in the lead. Then, too, they're with the medic, which helps psychologically. On no account must the vehicles leave the track made by those who precede them, or shorten or lengthen the preestablished safety distance of fifteen yards, or take any initiative of any kind or even just dare to propose one, and blah blah blah.

Marshal Rene has repeated the litany a second time, identical to the first, pausing often to make sure everyone has understood. Twenty-seven voices answered, "Yes, sir," drawing the words out more each time. After which he sent the guys to take care of their final tasks. Ietri and Cederna are to disa.s.semble, clean, lubricate, and rea.s.semble the light artillery.

Ietri realizes that it's better to leave his friend alone; since they canceled his leave he's been irritable, he won't speak to anyone, and if you run into him with that surly look, his mouth twisted into a snarl, you get the feeling he might plant a knife in your belly just because you got in his way. He'd like to console him, but he knows that theirs is not that kind of friendship: it's more like the relationship between a teacher and his pupil, and a pupil doesn't dare ask his teacher what's wrong. He'd told him the prank was risky. At least Cederna had remained loyal and covered the fact of his complicity with their superiors. One day, when he's calmer, he'll thank him.

The two work in silence. They peer into the gun barrel with one eye shut and blow away the dust or use the compressed air pump. For the more delicate mechanisms, the sights and magazines, they switch to using a brush with soft black bristles.

Ietri hasn't yet decided how he feels about tomorrow's operation. In the locker room they said the road would be mined with explosive devices and, in fact, in the last few hours the bomb techs from the engineer corps have been going around the FOB with long faces. He'd like to ask Cederna what he thinks. It might do him good. Maybe he feels like exchanging a few words too now, to vent a little. He bites his tongue not to disturb him, but eventually he gives in. "Hey, Cederna," he says.

"Shut your trap, verginella."

Protect my family. Protect my mother, she especially. Protect my platoon mates, because they're good guys. Sometimes they say stupid, vulgar things, but they're decent, every one of them. Protect them from suffering. And protect me too. Protect me from Kalashnikovs, from mortars, from improvised explosive devices, from shrapnel and grenades. If I really must die, though, better a bomb, a large charge; make me blow up from a bomb without feeling any pain. Please, don't leave me wounded, without a leg or a hand. And don't let me get burned, at least not on the face. Dead, yes, but not disfigured for life. Please, I beg you.

The soldiers know how to throw a party together in record time and the circ.u.mstances demand a fitting one. During the afternoon, the FOB witnesses a fine example of cooperation among the various companies. The guys of the Third provide the Wreck and some provisions-chocolate bars, twenty-five-milliliter bottles of grappa saved up from K rations, potato chips-and the other units contribute whatever they can: the bomb techs supply two rather powerful speakers, the cooks work overtime to make some dry but tasty cakes and two pans of something that looks like pizza, others take charge of the decorations. Headquarters, in turn, throws in plastic cups and plates, at the explicit bidding of Colonel Ballesio.

By eight o'clock the room is already full. There's not much time; muster is set for four in the morning and no one is sure when the next time he'll be able to get some sleep will be. The laughter is a bit louder than necessary, the remarks more spirited. It's clear the increased noise is essential to cover another type of din, an inner clamor common to each of them, which grows as the minutes pa.s.s. Ietri had pestered several guys to secure the role of deejay and now he's at his place behind the console. A party isn't a party without the right music and he wants Zampieri to see him at something he does well. No one tried to stop him in any case, because they all wanted to enjoy the evening, period.

Before supper he jotted down a list of bands: Nickelback, Linkin Park, Evanescence, maybe something old by the Offspring, then some serious stomping with his favorites, Slipknot, Neurosis, Dark Tranquillity. He hopes the guys feel like letting loose. On paper it had seemed like a workable playlist, but now that the party has started, he realizes that time is flying faster than he expected and he has to skip some selections to get to the meat of it sooner. Besides, no one is dancing yet, the mood is stiff. Ietri can't really say why; usually when the Spanish voice of "Pretty Fly" starts up at Tuxedo Club, he can't resist jumping into the fray. Someone, not too kindly, suggested he change the type of music, but he ignored him.

"Hey, knock it off with that noise!" Simoncelli yells from across the room.

Ietri pretends he hasn't heard him. Out of the corner of his eye he's spotted Zampieri approaching. He ducks his head to show he's busy, when actually all he has to do is select this or that number. "Pretty Fly" is coming to an end and he doesn't know what to choose next. The program he scrawled on the sc.r.a.p of paper calls for Motorhead, but it doesn't seem like the right group to greet Zampieri with. He's confused, fl.u.s.tered. She comes up to him and he starts the first song he finds at random: "My Plague."

Zampieri sits on the table in front of him. Ietri feels tingly all over his body, as though stung by a million pinp.r.i.c.ks. When did she start having that effect on him?

"Don't you have anything easier on the ear?"

"Why? Don't you like Slipknot?"

Zampieri makes a strange face. "I don't even know who they are."

Ietri bows his head. He again runs through the list of t.i.tles, scanning up and down. Suddenly it seems there's nothing appropriate, nothing interesting enough to make an impression on her. "Suicide, do you know them?" he asks hopefully.

"No."

"The Nevermore?"

Zampieri shakes her head.

"I'll play them for you. The Never are dynamite."

She sighs. "Don't you have Shakira?"

Ietri straightens up, indignant. "Shakira? That's not music."

"But everybody likes it."

"She only does commercial hits."

Zampieri looks around, dejected. "Well, at least people would dance. You see? No one's moving. Soon we'll be plugging up our ears."

"If you don't like it, someone else could have been the deejay. This is my music." He's angry and humiliated. If Zampieri really likes Shakira, then he's not sure how they could get along.

"Come on, don't get so upset!" she says. "You're like a little kid, taking offense so easily over music." She waves her hand scornfully. "Play whatever you want-I really don't care." Then she walks away.

Ietri stands there dumbfounded, the iPod stupidly in his hand. It takes him several seconds to rouse himself. "My Plague" ends and he doesn't have the presence of mind to put something else on. Only the guys' loud talk can now be heard in the Wreck. Zampieri has already gone back to the others, rejoined the group with Cederna, Pecone, and Vercellin and is laughing like a loon, as if she really didn't care anything about the music, or him.

"About time!" Mattioli yells out, hands cupped to his mouth like a megaphone. The others respond with applause.

What an idiot he was. He wanted to stand out and be noticed and instead he's made a fool of himself, as always. He's overcome by shame now; he'd like to disappear. Let them find their own music. h.e.l.l, they don't know a thing about it. Ietri looks at his colleagues and all of a sudden he hates them like he once hated the guys back home in Torremaggiore. They didn't understand s.h.i.t about music either-all they listened to were groups chosen by the radio, wimpy Italian singers.

He crushes the plastic cup, tosses it angrily into a corner, and leaves the Wreck. The nights are getting colder and colder and he's not wearing anything over his cotton T-shirt. Who the h.e.l.l cares? He walks to the phones with his hands in his pockets; there's still time to call his mother. And to think he almost didn't do it, he was so busy with that pathetic party. He pa.s.ses other soldiers going in the opposite direction. Go on, go-you won't have a good time.

He finds Rene near the phones. The marshal is pacing back and forth, smoking. "What are you doing walking around without a flashlight?" he scolds him.

Ietri shrugs. "I can find my way around by now," he says. "You didn't stay at the party?"

"Too much confusion," the marshal replies. He looks dejected and very tense. Maybe it means that the operation won't be a cakewalk.

But at this moment Ietri has no room for fear; he's not interested, too frustrated to feel anything else. "Do you have to use the phone?" he asks.

"Me? No." Rene runs a hand over his razed skull. "No, I don't. See you tomorrow. Try to get some rest."

He walks away at a brisk pace; the corporal is left alone. At night, the silence at the FOB is different from others Ietri has known. It's a silence devoid of engines, of human voices, but also a silence from which nature too is absent: no birds chirping, no crickets, no streams burbling nearby, no nothing. Just silence.

His mother's voice stirs feelings in his stomach and the result is an acute spasm that makes his throat clench. "Has your intestinal problem gone away?"

"Mama, that was days ago. I'm fine."

"But you sound sad."

It's no use; she always exposes him. She has receptors that are sensitive to every crack in his voice. "I'm just tired," Ietri says.

"I miss you so much."

"Mmm-hmm."

"Don't you miss me?"

"I'm not eight years old anymore, for G.o.d's sake."

"I know, I know. Don't say that. You were such a marvel when you were eight."

And now? Now what is he? He remembers that his mother couldn't stand his music either and for a moment he's angry with her. She'd said, "It's just noise, you'll damage your ears." Once he'd called her an old fool because she said something bad about Megadeth. Only that one time, though, because the slap she gave him for it made his head spin.

"Mama, I won't be able to call you for a few days."

"Why?" She's immediately alarmed. "For how many days?"

"Four or five. At least. They have to repair the phone lines."

"But they're working. Why not leave them alone?"

"Because they can't."

"They shouldn't touch them if they're working."

"You don't know anything about these things."

His mother sighs. "It's true. I don't. But I'll be worried."

"There's no reason to be. Nothing is happening here."

"A mother who's far away is always worried."

Ietri refrains from telling her that this time, just this once, she'd have every right to be. Earlier, no, the dozens of nights when she'd stayed up waiting for him with her heart in her mouth, when she'd lost sleep for nothing. He's always been more sensible, more cautious and obedient than she imagined. He's sure she'd be disappointed to find out. Her son is nothing special; he's just like a lot of guys. "I have to go now, Mama."

"No! Not yet. Afterward you won't call me for all those days. Talk to me some more, tell me something."

Tell her what? Anything he can tell her would pain her. That the food is more disgusting than he's let her believe. That he's fallen for a woman, a soldier like him, but she calls him a kid. That tomorrow they're leaving on a mission through an area controlled by the Taliban and he's s.h.i.tting himself. That this morning he saw a decapitated head and felt so sick to his stomach that he vomited his breakfast all over his boots, and that now he sees that face before him every time he closes his eyes. That at times he feels empty and sad, and old, yes, old at twenty, and he doesn't for a moment believe that he was a marvel at one time. That all the guys continue to treat him as if he were the new kid on the block and that he hasn't found anything like what he was hoping for and now he no longer even knows what he was looking for. That he loves her and misses her very much, she's what matters most to him, the only thing. He can't tell her that either, because he's an adult now, and he's a soldier.

"I really have to go, Mama."

Torsu lied to the doctor, but the lie was for a good reason. He didn't want to be the only one in the platoon to stay behind at the base, safe and sound, while the others faced the trip through the valley. They would have treated him like a slacker when they got back and he can't imagine anything more shameful. So he said he felt better, in good shape in fact, swore that for three days his stool had shown an acceptable consistency (whereas, in reality, his last bout of diarrhea had been just that morning) and signed some kind of release form. When the doc approached with the thermometer to take his temperature, Torsu said he preferred to do it himself and then read off 96.8 instead of 99.5. What's a few degrees' difference? He carried it off-the doc was distracted today and wanted the visit to be over quickly.

"So I can go?"