It’s a familiar place, bringing back memories of when she briefly resided in such buildings, as a young ward of the state of Maryland.

She briskly walks forward, wanting to catch up with Lieutenant Baker before he passes through the lobby area. He’s slim and freckle-faced, has short red hair, and is wearing the standard ACUs. She knows why he’s here, so far from base. Better to be on your own off-property than to be known around your station as a “base rat,” one who refuses to leave the base boundaries.

He notices her and Rosaria flashes her badge. “Lieutenant Baker? Special Agent Vasquez, CID. I need a few minutes of your time.”

He just nods and his shoulders sag a bit, like he had always anticipated this happening, a CID agent wanting to talk to him.

“Sure,” he says. “Right this way.”

The inside of his small apartment surprises her, for it’s neat and tidy. The furniture is old and dented, no doubt salvaged from Goodwill or the Salvation Army, but the old carpet looks like it’s been freshly vacuumed, and there’s a small TV and homemade bookshelves, lengths of wood and concrete blocks jammed full of paperback books. Rosaria has spent enough time on previous interviews with male service personnel, wading through ankle-deep piles of trash—porn magazines, empty pizza boxes, crushed takeout containers—that this is a nice change of pace.

She sits across from him, and he answers her initial questions with ease and no sign of the earlier concern. Born in Washington, local schools, community college. One day, on a 9/11 anniversary, he spent hours glued to the television, seeing the old footage of the collapsing towers, the burning Pentagon, and the smoking hole in the ground in Pennsylvania.

So he enlisted and eventually entered the military’s famed language school in Monterey, learned Pashto, and after additional intelligence training, was sent off to Afghanistan.

“I was assigned to be with Captain Cornwall,” he says, his pale, freckled hands holding his Army cover between his knees. “We were at FOB Healy in Kunduz Province…the place was named after a Navy SEAL hero who died a number of years back. You ever been at a forward operating base, ma’am?”

“No, I haven’t,” she says. “What’s it like?”

“Like…you’re on the surface of the moon. Desolate for klicks and klicks in every direction—rock and sand and scrub brush. Rough mountains where the Taliban would set up mortar positions and drop rounds on us every now and then. A handful of villages off in each direction. Week to week, you never knew which village supported the government or the Taliban. It was…like nothing I’ve ever seen. Nothing. Reinforcements and supplies came in by chopper. We were entirely cut off.”

Even in this safe living room in Virginia, Rosaria could sense the fear and memories coming forth from the young lieutenant. “What was your MOS?”

“Zero-nine-lima, ma’am,” he says, “translator for whatever prisoners came our way, either captured by our patrols or the government forces. I was with Captain Cornwall when she was doing her interrogations.”