Mary hit the switch for the battery. She hit the switch for jet-fuel start. She put the data-transfer cassette in the slot. Through the engine’s maw, she heard Frank in her ear: “Grim 1, pick your tail up, give me a wave.” She flipped him the finger. “Sugar Mary, mother of wingmen, give the throttle a split-tail wiggle.” She ignored him, rested her left hand on the throttle and her right on the stick. She might as well stay that way for the mission. A turtle could steer this one.

They flew alone tonight, just the two of them. A Reaper, the newest drone, was busy in Helmand Province. Predators, the smaller drones, were available, but nutjobs wanted a big fire. She’d been pulled out of sleep, taken her go-pills, and thanked the air force once again for her approved Schedule II narcotic. A weapons loader she didn’t recognize put his arm in the air. She raised her index finger, gave him the hand signals.

Just seconds, the wheels were up and ground was lost. The airlessness, how she needed it. “Grim 2, I’m falling in love,” she told Frank. They’d turned off the com so they could only hear each other. “Miss X, you can’t be serious. You need man love to put you right.”

Her right multifunction display showed the geography in green. All it had were lines and swirls, bordered with numbers. Around her canopy were the actual stars, a thick night-rug of them. The one she almost bought last weekend in the Kabul bazaar, the bursts were scattered through with dollar signs, and diamonds too. Even tribes wanted more than heaven. There was the moon, tonight a crescent.

They were headed to Khushali Torikhel, a village in North Waziristan—tribal Pakistan, near the Afghan border. It was a short ride from Bagram.

“Grim 1, Bossman.” It was the air controller. The coordinates were loaded, but they didn’t want any missteps on this thing.

“Bossman, Grim I go,” Mary said.

“Grim 1, Bossman double-checking coordinates with Kmart,” he said.

“Copy that, Bossman.”

They’d been in Afghanistan a month, flying missions like this one, but not often enough for Frank, and too many times for Mary. Snow had layered over the base since she’d arrived. First tour she’d done, it’d been winter too. She didn’t remember being this cold. The B-huts felt like cardboard. All Frank craved were missions south, but not for the warmth, because there wasn’t any. He wanted to be where the firefights were. Up here, it was impersonal. Shows of force, aerial assassination. Pilots didn’t even read the intel, they just flew by a cassette to a coordinate the intel designated, dropped fire, went back, waited for the next run a week or so later, sometimes longer.