There were close to a million people out there, and most of them had probably just been scared out of their sleep. The city itself was maybe ten miles wide, but shacks and tents stretched far to the horizon outside it. There was no electricity, so it was completely dark at night. Most of the population was starving. In a briefing before the mission, we had been told that some two hundred people a day were lost to starvation, and that the dying were replaced by a steady stream of people straggling in from the countryside, searching for something better. The thought of all of those people, desperate and terrified, dreaming in the darkness, made me feel small.
Sand was everywhere, corroding everything. I rinsed my mouth out with water, but it was still there. It scratched at my flesh when I moved.
Santiago slapped me on the helmet as he passed behind me and said, “Stop thinking so much.” Hunched over and chuckling, he walked away. He repeated the line often. It was a mantra he was trying to instill in me.
A car turned down the street that led toward my side of the building. One of its headlights was out and the road was full of holes so that it winked and bobbed before finally turning onto a side street. Fighters wouldn’t move around this way at night. The danger in trying to see was also the danger of being seen. All you had to do was aim at the headlights. No one with any knowledge, or history for that matter, would want the enemy to see them.
There were two main clans in the city and they had formed alliances based on tribes, family, friends, and religion. One clan controlled the east, the other the west. Each of the clans controlled villages in the countryside when they wanted to, leaving the city now and then to maraud. They made nearly all their money on the black market, by stealing food shipments, selling weapons, and by controlling the borders and ports, and with them all of the country’s exports. In our first month there, we’d come to recognize individual members of the clans in the villages. We would see the man with the wire-rimmed glasses and the long scar on his cheek first in one village and then a few weeks later in another. Somehow they’d find out where we were delivering food the next day. They’d move in on the village, forcing out the locals. Then they’d collect the food and sell it to the villagers after we left.
Outside one village we’d seen a dead body. It was impossible to determine whether the corpse was male or female through the cloak of bees and hornets that covered it. I’d never seen such a thing. As we moved among the villages, our Humvees kicked up so much dust that it never seemed to settle. Great flocks of birds shifted and turned as one on the wind, cutting down into the dust of our wake.
“Josh,” Cooper said.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“It’s Sunday and I’m still afraid.” He was trying to be as quiet as possible, so that his voice would disappear in the sound of the wind.
“Who’s not,” I said.
“Not too many people die on Sunday,” he said. “Isn’t that right?”
“True enough,” I replied.
“No one wants to kill on Sunday,” he said. Then we were quiet for a time, waiting on the bombing.
At one o’clock Santiago called over the squad radios for us to check in.
We responded in order of rank. As the only sergeant I was first, then Corporal Fizer, Specialist Heath, Specialist Cooper, and finally Private Zeller.
I crawled on my belly back to my rucksack and took out the binoculars, hoping to see the ocean again. As far as I knew I’d never seen the ocean before that day, and I’d never seen it at night. But when I turned on the night vision, there was nothing but the green glow of the sky and stars, and the dark shapes of the buildings below.
Before night fell, I had noticed that the rooftops were remarkably various, so that the city looked like a quilt spread out. If there was a cool wind blowing in off the ocean, I couldn’t feel it here in the city.
Sitting on that rooftop, with all the heat and darkness, the city smelled like death. Enveloped by the stench, the thought of setting sail alone in this world horrified me. I shifted further back from the edge.
It was nearly two in the morning. The bombing would last until dawn.
I forced myself to peer out over the city again. Smart enough to be afraid, I kept my eyes on the darkness below. If anything shifted or turned I didn’t want to be caught off guard. I couldn’t make out the old van parked up the street, the one we’d used to sneak into the city. We’d rigged the stairwell in case someone tried to sneak up on us.
We’d been told that land mines were everywhere, hidden in potholes and crevices. Aside from the clans, there was no police force or local authority in the area. We had been sent in to restore some order to the capital and provide the people with some needed relief. The rest of the country had been subdued for the most part. This was the last, the worst of all the cities.
We hadn’t come across any checkpoints on the way in, but we had been told
