The feeling of foreboding only got worse as they neared the village, the sun directly overhead now and scorching hot, sweat dripping down Jess’s back beneath the body armor she wore. It was the noise, she realized, or the lack thereof; the closer they got to the objective, the quieter the valley seemed to get. No birds, no animals, no human voices. The air was still, waiting for what happened next.

The village was three or four clicks down the valley from the OP, nestled plumb on the frontier between American-controlled territory and the enemy. Go much farther down the road and you’d better have the whole damn corps at your back, unless you were suicidal.

The village was built up along the east side of the valley, the terrain so steep that no house sat level with its neighbor, and each row of houses stood entirely above the last, the whole place tied together by narrow, labyrinthine passages cut into jagged shale, the valley above choked with rock and dense forest.

They didn’t have the whole damn corps, but they did have Second Platoon spread out on the western side of the valley for cover, mortars and shooters alike, a couple of 240s, machine guns, and a .50 cal to boot. There were even supposed to be Apaches for air cover, so as far as command was concerned, all bases were covered. The Apaches never showed, diverted to more pressing concerns a couple of valleys over, but as it turned out, none of that would matter anyway.

They were almost at the village when Jess saw the boy. He was hiding behind a low stone wall, peering out at the marines as they passed, his eyes wide and serious. She recognized Selab, one of the villagers’ children; he was eight or nine years old, and precocious, if a little shy. He’d watched Jess and Afia drink tea with his mother and the other women in the village, lurking on the margins of the room, clearly curious but always silent.

He’d looked at Jess in awe then, as though he’d never expected to see an American woman in combat attire, as though she were something larger than life and fantastical, a comic-book heroine. Now he just looked worried, and when she waved to him and smiled, he didn’t wave back, just ducked down quickly and didn’t reappear. And still the air was quiet.

Nobody else had noticed Selab.

Their contact, a woman named Panra, watched from the shade beside one of the village houses as the marines fanned out, forming a perimeter. She wore a chador, a scarf over her head, and a traditional patterned firaq partug, a flowing, billowy garment over loose, baggy trousers. Her expression was inscrutable.