A hut was the size of a singlewide, with six-foot-high panels making bedrooms not much bigger than a bed. The plywood hooches lined up in rows and columns as in trailer parks, only pushed closer to one another, with a central walkway made of broken rock running between them, which led to the main road. Across the road, but still in Bagram’s air-force village, were the relocatable buildings, called RLBs. They were hollowed out, no panels, just a long corridor, like the belly of a whale, with bunks inside it. Frank lived in one. Most soldiers liked B-huts, because, unlike RLBs, they contained no shitholes. As Mary mushed the hundred yards to the female latrine, she wished she’d gotten the RLB: winter meant boots and parka for the first pee of the day.

On the way back, she ran into the weapons loader from the night before. She’d not recognized him then, and her eyesight through the splotching snow wasn’t good enough to let her place him either. She’d not taken time to wear gloves, and her hands were jammed in her pockets when he offered his hand to shake hers.

“Tasty kill,” he shouted into the wind.

She put her hand in his mitten. He was a big man. He put his other mitten around her hand and added, “Stay warm.”

“Thanks,” she said and pushed on. By the time she got to her hut, the snow seemed icier, and as dull razors of it hit her face, she thought this might be a day to avoid the Dragon and eat in. Microwaves weren’t allowed, but she could open a can of tuna.

The Chinook pilot, Seri, had returned while Mary was gone. She was on her bed, laptop flipped open. When the snow howled in with Mary, she shielded her screen.

“No choppers in this scat,” Mary said as she pushed against the wind to close the door. She pulled off her dripping parka and tried to shake it into a controlled puddle by an empty cot near the door.

“Snow day in Kabul,” Seri said. “It’s fifty degrees in New Mexico.”

“Sleeping now, huh?” Mary looked at her watch. It was a little after eleven in the morning, their time. About half past midnight back in Carlsbad. Seri couldn’t talk to her mom for another six hours.

“Yeah,” she said. “We gotta clear off the roof like any second.”

They listened to the plywood making its moaning whistles. They couldn’t let more than a foot accumulate: huts weren’t strong enough to hold it. A couple of slackers woke to an avalanche in their laps one night.

The snow had been wet, and Mary guessed by now it was starting to harden on top. Last time the crust got thick, they’d had to pickax it loose.

“What’s the forecast?” Mary said.