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even though his MOS, military occupation specialty, was 11B—infantry, the queen of battle. He’d been sent to all sorts of special schools for commo in the past year that he had never requested, but the one school he’d requested seemed further and further away. He switched the frequencies as the colonel called in to their next destination to let them know they were arriving and to kindly not shoot up the friendlies.
    Carter was of average height and lean, whipcord thin, the result of a childhood of hard work, not much food, and constant tension. His face was all angles, but he had the deepest blue eyes, as if there were something gentle deep inside all that exterior hardness.
    Carter spotted the brown walls of the next compound they were to inspect. Guard towers crowned each corner of the ancient outpost, the snout of a fifty-caliber machine gun poking over the top of each. Generations of soldiers had passed through the gate of the outpost. Americans. Taliban. Mujahedeen. Russians. British. And on through the extensive invasion roll of Afghanistan. Alexander the Great might have pissed on the place for all anyone knew.
    The square facility had twenty-foot-high mud and stone walls, each forty yards long and narrowing from ten feet wide at the base to four at the top. Inside, as per every other compound they’d visited, were headquartered a dozen American military advisers and a contingent of Afghan soldiers. The size of that native contingent varied depending on how bad the local economy was: the worse the economy, the more signed up. Some even stayed more than a few weeks. Most left, went to the next region over, and signed up again, taking the enlistment bonus.
At least
they
got what they were promised
, Carter thought.
    Like Vietnamization a generation before, Afghanization—or whatever they were calling it, the system of turning control of the country over to the locals to fight against locals—wasn’t going to work. The colonel knew it, his boss knew it, his boss’s boss knew it, they all knew it all the way to Washington, but the president was bringing the boys back, and one had to put a positive spin on it.
    “I used to do real work,” the colonel groused as Carter finally pulled them onto the dirt track, making a beeline for the gates.
    “Yes, sir.”
I did, too
.
    The colonel shot him a look. “Son, you’ve got no idea of some of the real shit that goes on.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “You know why you didn’t go to SFAS and got assigned to me?”
    That got Carter’s attention. “I do not, sir.”
    Colonel Orlando shook his head. “Forget it.” He laughed. “Nada would probably give very low odds on you.”
    “What are you talking about, sir? Who is Nada?”
    The colonel didn’t respond.
    “I needed that bonus, sir, for getting through SFAS. My family needed it.” Pads would have smacked him for speaking up like that, but Carter was hot, tired, and bored.
    The colonel shrugged. “Shit happens. Things never turn out like you think they’re going to, Sergeant. You would do well to remember that.”
    The wooden gates swung open on rusty hinges. Just before he drove through, Carter felt the hair on the back of his neck tingle. Just like it used to before Pads came in, stoked out of his mind on the meth, swinging whatever was handiest. Carter had always tried to stand in the way, but it was Dee—as the oldest—who always took the worst of it.
    Carter looked over his shoulder at the dusty landscape behind them but didn’t see anything to warrant the feeling. Then they were through, the gates shutting closed.
    Waiting for them was a captain sporting the Green Beret that Carter had so desperately wanted. Behind the captain stood two dozen new Afghan recruits in the semblance of a formation, most of them picking their noses or spitting, whatever bored men did when forced to stand somewhere they really didn’t want to be.
    Carter stopped the Humvee and got out. The captain saluted Orlando and began to