Williams shakes his head. It's all they ever talk about-that special Suzie Rottencrotch back home, their mythical s.e.xual prowess, the hot nurses upstairs and what they are going to do to the world's women when they get out of the Army. He looks up as Sergeant Ruiz enters the room and says, "Hey, Sergeant. What's the word?"

"The word is you morons aren't sleeping when you're supposed to be getting your Zs," Ruiz barks back at him, glaring with his intense eyes. "And not wearing your masks when you're supposed to, either."

"We didn't wear the masks in Iraq, Sarge," McLeod says. "How come we have to wear them here?

"Because in Iraq, we weren't living in a hospital filled with people dying from the Black Death, s.h.i.+t-for-brains."

McLeod grins, racking his wit for a good retort, but Ruiz has already moved on. "Get out of your fartsacks and get your s.h.i.+t on, ladies. LT has some work for us and we're on the move in ten minutes."

Boyd looks up, his eyes gleaming. "My sister's got Lyssa. I got this letter from home."

The boys stop and stare at him.

"My mom says they're burning bodies outside town. She even told me how they do it. They dig a trench to make an air vent, right, and then they build the pyre with wood. They put the bodies on top and burn them up. The town council got totally freaked and started doing this. This is all the way on the other side of the country. The letter took over a week to get to me."

"Sorry about your sister, Boyd," Ruiz offers.

"This was over a week ago," Boyd says, staring at the letter in disbelief. "She could be dead by now."

"Did somebody say they were burning up bodies?" says Ross, whom everybody calls Hawkeye because of his uncanny accuracy with an M4 carbine. He has just woken up and is still bleary from sleep. "Man, that is extreme."

"It's got to be bulls.h.i.+t," says McLeod. "Some cities are digging ma.s.s graves to store the bodies temporarily, but they're not burning them up, for Chrissakes."

"If they were paranoid enough, they might," Williams says.

"What I'm saying is: What am I doing here in New York?" Boyd wonders. "Why aren't we guarding a hospital in Idaho, like in Boise? I should be there. I should be home with them. I could at least be in the same lousy state. I have to call my mom."

"I'll bet we got guys in Boise and the towns around it just like we're here in New York," Ruiz tells him. "Some of them are probably New Yorkers and wis.h.i.+ng they were here. And they're watching over your family just like we're watching over theirs. The same way that everybody in this platoon has each other's backs. All right?"

"Hooah, Sergeant," says Boyd, without enthusiasm.

The boys quietly begin to pull their gear on: battle dress uniform, boots, kneepads, body armor, harness, watch, ammo, knife, gloves, primary weapons and Kevlar.

"Okay, so we've reached the point where we're setting people on fire, but if you look at this whole global plague of death in a gla.s.s-half-full kind of way, there are some things we could actually be pretty happy about," McLeod says to break the ice after a few moments. "For example, we're getting three squares a day, eight hours of rack time a night, and we even got running water. Plus we don't have to go out on patrol in neighborhoods that all look like Tijuana after it's been cl.u.s.ter-bombed, getting our b.a.l.l.s blown off by elevated IEDs and crazy Hajjis."

"Shut up, McLeod," growls Ruiz.

"I'm just trying to cheer everybody up by pointing out it may be true that two hundred million people are going to die and the world is probably ending, but at least we got out of that Arab h.e.l.l with our b.u.t.ts and b.a.l.l.s intact and we don't have to s.h.i.+t in an oven covered in flies, so mission accomplished, am I right or am I right?"

Most of the boys are laughing, but Ruiz is now standing in front of McLeod, who snaps to attention, staring straight ahead into the void, his mouth carefully zipped and primly holding back a smile. Ruiz takes a step forward until their eyes are inches away, Ruiz's probing, searching for an excuse, McLeod's respectfully vacant. Finally, the sergeant shakes his head in exaggerated disgust and walks away. "Vamos, ladies!"

Williams slaps McLeod on the back after Ruiz leaves the room. Their friends.h.i.+p goes back to basic training, where they were battle buddies and McLeod often got them both smoked with pushups and barracks maintenance-usually scrubbing toilets-by falling asleep in cla.s.s and otherwise p.i.s.sing off the drill instructors.

"You go on being a buster and Magilla is gonna chunk your a.s.s good, dawg," Williams warns. He means it: Ruiz is an articulate and thoughtful NCO but has a short temper and, thanks to constant exercise, a thickly muscled body, making him resemble a bulldog. The boys call him Magilla behind his back, short for Magilla Gorilla.

McLeod replies with a cartoonish shrug.

Corporal Hicks, watching Boyd slowly pull on his gear while muttering to himself, says, "Get yourself squared away, Rick. Almost everybody in this platoon has somebody on the outside who's got the bug."

"I should be there with them," Boyd says. "They're all I've got in this world."

"If we stay focused, we'll all get through this and I mean everybody. If we start falling apart, with everybody going off his own way, well, then G.o.d help us all because we are surely jacked. Because this thing is going to get a h.e.l.l of a lot worse before it gets better. Until then, make the pain your friend and it will make you stronger."

McLeod grins and says, "Wouldn't it be cool if the Sergeant got Lyssa in his brain and turned into a Mad Dog? *Get out of your fartsacks and get your s.h.i.+t on, ladies!' Snarl, snarl!"

The boys burst into laughter.

I'm going to kill you dead

Sergeant McGraw roars, "Squad as skirmishers, move!" and watches his squad deploy in a line, weapons held at safe port so the friendly citizens of New York can clearly observe their bayonets. Beyond the concertina wire and the sandbags, people keep on streaming through the cars. They break into a run after seeing the soldiers begin to close the checkpoint, and when they finally reach the wire and confirm their dashed hopes, they try to shout or beg their way in.

Help me, they say. I think my kids have it and I don't know what to do.

Their faces are turning blue.

Corporal Eckhardt hands them the yellow sheets, but the people do not want to leave. Many of them brought a sick loved one with them, and the prospect of walking ten blocks to a Lyssa clinic set up in some school or bowling alley does not seem promising. They scream, they shout, they beg. They fall to the ground and sit, numbly clutching their yellow pieces of paper. The air fills with that sickly sour smell people give off when they've got Lyssa-the stench that keeps on giving.

A woman is crying, I can't do it by myself, I can't, I just can't. "Couldn't we let in just a few more people?" Mooney hisses.

"Shut up," says Finnegan, standing next to him. "You know the answer to that."

"This is horrible."

Sergeant McGraw says into his handheld, "We're good at this end, sir." Gunfire rattles just a few blocks away to the west, loud and echoing among the buildings. The seemingly constant wail of police and ambulance sirens appears to multiply in volume.

McGraw pauses, looking west, and says, "I've got-"

A deafening boom sends a brief tremor through the ground and shatters windows in nearby buildings. The soldiers break formation to look as a fireball mushrooms into the air on a plume of black smoke, rising up over the buildings across the avenue to the west. A shrill wail goes up from the civilians.

"Holy c.r.a.p!" says Wyatt. "I felt the concussion."

"Back in formation!" McGraw roars, his face red. "Right now!"

"Whoa, what was that?" says Rollins. "It practically blew out my eardrums."

"Dude, this is seriously jacked," Mooney whispers.

"We got to trust the Sergeant," Finnegan hisses at them. "He'll get us through this. If he don't, Pops will. Now just shut up and do what you're told. It's all going to be okay."

"No talking in the ranks, you hear?" McGraw says, then finishes his report to the LT on his handheld.

Mooney is not listening. He is watching two men jogging towards the crowd at the wire. There is something not right about them. The way they move as they weave purposefully through the cars. A strange, loping gait with their hands splayed into claws pressed against their chests. Like they aren't people, but some kind of animal. The thought chills him.

"Sergeant?" he says.

"Next man who talks is going to get my boot," McGraw growls, fed up.

Mooney has lost sight of the two men. One of them had no s.h.i.+rt on and what looked like blue pajama bottoms. The other wore a baseball cap, denim s.h.i.+rt and blue jeans and had a black stain on his face, around his mouth.

The civilians are screaming. Mooney cranes his neck, trying to see past McGraw's broad shoulders.

Then the sergeant moves, running fast, and Mooney can see the checkpoint. The two men are there, one of them pulling the long dark hair out of a woman's head by the handful while the other systematically bites her stomach, drawing blood and leaving a smear of drool. The other civilians are screaming and trying to get out of the area fast. The men wrestle the woman to the ground. She lets out a horrible high-pitched whine and suddenly seems to give up, her body starting to go slack, her eyes gla.s.sy and pleading.

McGraw is shouting, stop, stop or I will shoot.

Corporal Eckhardt takes a step forward. "Sergeant-"

The sergeant sees what they've done and screams, "I'm going to kill you dead-"

But remembers his training, fires his Beretta into the air. Warning shots. The men's heads jerk up with a spray of blood and spittle, looking like birds startled while feasting on carrion. The one wearing pajama bottoms leaps to his feet and takes a run straight at McGraw but immediately becomes entangled in the concertina wire, thras.h.i.+ng and making sounds like a dog being strangled.

Concertina wire is lined with two-inch-long razors set four inches apart. The man shreds himself until he falls to the ground, his legs soaked with blood and bleeding out from a severed femoral artery in his thigh.

The other man jumps to his feet, runs, leaps over the wire- Several carbines crack and pop at once and the man twitches in mid air, lands on the ground in a heap. Instantly, a widening pool of blood begins to form under him.

"Cease fire! Cease fire!"

Mooney lowers his carbine. The sharp tang of cordite hangs in the air. "Did you see that?" McGraw says to n.o.body in particular. "What was that?"

Bowman is shouting, running towards them from the other checkpoint, demanding to know why weapons are being fired.

The woman is still alive, lying on the ground and in the throes of some sort of convulsions. The two a.s.sailants lie still in their own blood, obviously dead.

"Ma'am, it's all right now," McGraw says, holding the Beretta behind his back and extending his other hand across the wire. "Come to me. We'll take care of you."

The woman stares at him in terror, panting as she pulls herself unsteadily onto her feet.

He lowers his mask. "Look at me. Miss. You're going to be okay." She begins twitching and blinking rapidly.

"No, don't-"

But she has already turned and started running. By the time the squad can make an opening in the wire enough for McGraw to give chase, she is gone.

Chapter 2.

Beginning to wonder if we actually did leave Iraq The night is alive with police sirens and car horns and shouting and gunfire. The warm, muggy air smells like smoke. The streetlights dim and occasionally flare up as the city juggles its power problems. Down First Avenue, past the roadblock, the traffic lights are all blinking red and the traffic is snarled and honking with fury as thousands continue their flight from Manhattan in anything that can get a little gasoline in it.

Everybody thinks things are better somewhere else.

The boys of Second Platoon's Third Squad pace the wire nervously, wired on black coffee. A police helicopter roars overhead, its powerful spotlight exploring the area briefly and ruining their night vision before moving on.

"I can't believe this," Corporal Hicks mutters to himself, squinting down First Avenue and listening to the deep thuds of heavy machine-gun fire. "Are those tracers?"

"No, I'm just happy to see you," McLeod says, strolling up with his SAW. "Sounds like a fiddy-cal. So what?"

"Because this is New York, not Baghdad, s.h.i.+t-for-brains. What is somebody down there doing firing an MG in the middle of New York?" Then, as an afterthought: "Beat your face, McLeod. Give me twenty."

"Are you serious? We're in the middle of a war zone here."

"You want thirty?"

While McLeod counts off his pushups, Hicks raises his carbine's telescopic close combat optic to his eye. A red dot is centered in the optic for easy targeting. The tracers form a stream of light over the hoods of cars crawling in b.u.mper-to-b.u.mper traffic and the heads of people running through the cars.

Hicks can't see through buildings, though, so he can't tell who is laying down this steel rain and who is getting rained on. Just a few hundred meters away, and yet even this close he feels isolated and can barely tell what is going on. He wonders where all those big bullets are ending up. A fifty-cal round can travel four miles. It can blow through vehicles and, at close range, concrete walls.

Now imagine what it can do to a human being.

"Six. . . . Seven. . . ."

The firing stops. It lasted only a few seconds. Somebody screwed up big time, probably some green recruit in a Humvee who got spooked. Hopefully, n.o.body got killed.

Rather you than me, he thinks.

Hicks is about to lower his weapon when he notices two people at the periphery of his scope image and focuses on them. One is a middle-aged man wearing boxers. The other is a teenaged girl dressed in a long T-s.h.i.+rt that comes down to her knees. They're staring vacantly and doing that strange, jittery neck roll that people with the Mad Dog strain of Lyssa often do and that always gives Hicks the creeps. Their hands are clenched into fists in front of their chests. They look in his direction, open their mouths, and bolt away in the direction of where the MG fire had come from.

He mutters, "And what are all these Mad Dogs doing running around without a leash?"

The last thing we need, he tells himself, is another bunch throwing themselves at our perimeter and getting themselves shot. Getting caught in that kind of fire incident will follow you around for life.

The MG starts thudding again.

"I'm beginning to wonder if we actually did leave Iraq," McLeod says, then resumes counting.

Things will be just fine, sir, if we keep right on moving

The armored Humvees, b.u.t.terbar Todd Bowman commanding, race up Haifa Street through dense smells of burning trash and gasoline fumes. The boys in the lead vehicle bob their heads in time to Dope's "Die Motherf.u.c.ker Die" played loud enough to be heard in the mosques. A year ago, the government of Iraq tottered on the edge of collapse and the U.S. Army reentered the cities in force to prop it up, unleas.h.i.+ng a new generation of martyrs, foot soldiers and mad bombers in a war that has no end.