She didn’t blame Frank for wanting Helmand Province. It felt better to incinerate bad actors pinning down trapped men. But when the numbers of men on the ground were so small, choppers did the job better than Vipers. He tried to change minds about that—as if a few decades of doctrine and wartime hadn’t happened. He angled and argued until he figured out it wasn’t anything pervious to suck-up or butt-kiss.

Lieutenant Colonel Avery Hood was their squadron commander, but everyone knew he was substantially pointless. This fight belonged to Special Operations Forces—nutjobs, as Frank called them. There was no more confliction stew, as there’d been her first tour, no more Tampa saying what her wing could do. After the Anaconda mess, even military saw fit to amend. So nutjobs decided where she and Frank flew. Nutjobs they’d never met told them what to smoke.

“Grim 1, Bossman. Kmart affirms coordinates.”

She waited for the order.

“Grim 1. Bonzai debris.” There it was.

“Grim 2, hold fire.”

She looked down. There was debris, a green house in a green village.

“Coming, honey.” Frank’s voice came just as she pressed the pickle. He was trying to be happy for her. Even though he had nothing to do now but watch.

She had a five-hundred-pounder. She tossed it on a seed.

On her display, lime-colored smoke puffed. Looking down, she saw the same through the night-vision visor on her helmet.

“Debris destroyed,” Bossman said after a while. “Grim 2, go home.”

No need for Frank. He was backup, in case she missed.

It was detached, this war. It hung from the side of the country. Her part was secret, so mostly it didn’t show. Some in her squadron bitched about this. We’re out here risking our skins, they’d say, and no one back home cares. That was shit. She’d give them risk. She’d serve some stats. The highest danger to a pilot was friendly fire. Or doing something stupid like that Blackwater pilot flat-hatting through a canyon in a turboprop—he couldn’t pull up fast enough when a mountain showed. Or having a malfunction, like her crash.

But, as with so many things, they still didn’t know what that was. You walked in the dark with a whistle round your neck, and when you blew it to judge the echo, only dogs could hear it. They came barking to tell you what was what. You scratched around the dirt, wondering, what were the pups trying to say? That’s what this war was. Maybe it took a girl on the edges to see the whole thing clear.