They sat on the roof for a while after they’d cleared it. Mary balanced on the wire broom she’d used to sweep away the last. She enjoyed her quickened breathing, felt glad for metabolism heat. They hadn’t needed the ax or the pitchfork, which they’d left on the ground below. Visibility wasn’t great, but while they’d been up there the storm had cycled away from a gale into those free-floating, oversized flakes that always made Mary feel a little sedated. Others were on top of their huts too, shoveling, or jumping off into fluffed mounds. Mary and Seri watched a snowball fight a dozen huts away, and soon there was a crowd, and someone found a way to keep score. But every so often they’d see a pair or three like them, just sitting on a roof, looking at the white hushing the base.

“There’s not going to be a press release,” Mary said after a little while.

“Maybe not,” Seri said. She just stared out, didn’t turn to look at her.

“I don’t enjoy it.” “It” could mean the release, or last night’s hop. She seemed incapable of straight talk, even with Seri.

“Release won’t say you do.”

“I saw the weapons loader from last night on the path after I peed this morning, and you know what he said? ‘Tasty kill,’” Mary said, keeping her tone light, since her meaning was now unambiguous.

“He just wants to get in your pants,” Seri said.

That made Mary laugh. “Bagram love,” she said.

“It may be Bagram, but I wouldn’t call it love,” Seri said.

“Oh man.”

“Oh boy,” Seri said. “Oh boy, you mean. What is he? Eighteen?”

“No, he’s full-grown,” Mary said. “A few days older than Purdue.”

“If she brings those reservists to the hut one more time, I’ll ground them. Make them do their homework. Tell them to play Go Fish.”

“If they know how.”

The snowballing looked as if it was noisy—some getting pissed off, others taking sides—but the snow muffled all. It gave Mary a childish sense, as if she were in a hollow and anything wrong had been neutralized, sucked out of the air, and kept at bay outside a twinkling perimeter.

She was just enjoying when she heard Frank’s voice below.

“X,” he yelled. “X!”

She peered down at him. He was carrying sections of corrugated fiberglass, pale green skiffed with snow. He put them above his head and shouted: “Sleds.”

“T-Knee, you know better,” Seri said. She’d never much liked Frank.

Mary clapped snow off her ass and climbed down the ladder. Frank had switched his regulation parka for a blanket with a thick drawstring.

“What is that?” Mary said.

“Pashtun snowsuit.”

“Why?”

“We’re going off base, Miss X!” Frank was on his toes, jumping too.

“Not me.”