We arrived at the vehicles, staged and ready to go. The soldiers had already begun to gather for the convoy briefing. We joined the crowd around the sergeant, and when he was done speaking, he directed us to a truck within the column. We threw our assault packs into a trailer that was attached to the Humvee and got in. Seat belts, combat locks, ear plugs, gloves and eye protection, check. I turned to my right to Sgt. Carpenter and held out my right hand and spread my fingers apart, drawing attention to the gloves, then pointed to my earplugs. Sgt. Carpenter nodded and took out his gloves and began to put his earplugs in.

"Go red," the TC (truck commander) announced loudly. We released our combat locks and opened our doors, pointed our barrels out and pulled and released our charging handles, the four of us snapping rounds into the chambers in near unison. We closed and locked our doors and began to pull away.

As we traveled down the roads, making lefts and rights through the village, I stared stoically over the driver's shoulder, up through the mud-spattered and smudged windshield, by all appearances indifferent to the carnival outside; the women walking, their faces hidden and their black burkas tangling in the wind, the children waving or shooting at us with their index fingers, the glaring men blending in poorly with the blank faces at the roadside and more than any country's fair share of stray dogs, mud and litter.

When we arrived, we walked into the main structure and let the lieutenant in charge of the patrol base know we were there. I told him we would be staying for a few days and would need a place to sleep. Seeing his face begin to tense and stress, I said, "Don't worry about it right now, lieutenant. We'll ground our gear in the other room and walk around and talk with your guys for a while. No hurry, just send someone out to find us when you figure it out."

"Sounds good, sir," he said and with that we walked out.

A short while later, one of the NCOs finds us and takes us to where we will be sleeping. We walk across a muddy open area following the line of perimeter barriers to a half-destroyed brick-and-concrete structure. A large portion of it is collapsed into a pile of rubble with giant concrete roof beams sloping, broken down into the ground like an ancient ruin. We pass the debris and enter by an opening just beyond the destroyed part. We walk down a long hallway with multiple rooms off of it and a central courtyard to one side. The concrete floor is uneven and broken. Some of the rooms are too badly damaged to be used, others form sleeping quarters and rooms with other functions.

The room he leads us to has a plywood door with the words "Raven's Nest" painted on it. We enter to find a dingy room with high ceilings and tightly spaced cots. Jagged fractures run the wall, from the cobweb-lined ceiling to the dusty and broken up concrete floor. Former window openings, now filled with plywood and sandbags, keep the late afternoon sunlight out. One bare incandescent bulb hangs from a wire completing the mood, with its dim yellow light. It is surprisingly warm, thanks to several space heaters and it smells of a vanilla air freshener. It is a wonderful space, and Sgt. Carpenter and I nod to each other in silent agreement as the NCO leads us in to our cots. We were not expecting heat. The air freshener is just an added bonus.

The NCO begins to say apologetically, "Usually, sir, we would put you in with the commander, but he is out on a mission right now. I could maybe ... "

I interrupt him and tell him that this is perfect, and I will be just fine.

"Are you sure, sir?"

"This place is great," I say.

"You guys know where the chow hall is right, sir?"

I nod, "Oh, yeah."

"The only other thing is, I don't know if you guys know. We were attacked two nights ago."

"No, I didn't know that," I say.

"Yes, sir, rockets and mortars, and small arms. If we get attacked, everyone in here goes to the roof. I mean ... " and he paused, as if stumbling over the issue of our ranks and he not wanting to appear to be telling me what to do. "You can, I mean, that's what 'we' do."

I interrupt him, to set him at ease. "Sergeant, if we get attacked, Sgt. Carpenter and I will go up to the roof with you guys. We'll be there with you."

"Okay, sir," he replied. "Well, if there's anything else you need, I am in the TOC (tactical operations center)."

"Thanks a lot," I say.

Sgt. Carpenter and I walked outside after leaving our things on our cots. Lighting a cigarette, Sgt. Carpenter turned toward me and said, "Did you catch that?"

"Catch what?" I replied.

"They were attacked the night we were supposed to be here, the day we missed the convoy."

"No. I guess I hadn't thought of that. Huh." I said, unmoved.

"That stuff kept happening during my last tour. We would be scheduled to do something or go somewhere and they would cancel us, and someone else would go instead, and then they would get attacked, and a bunch of them would get killed or something," he said. He paused to draw off his cigarette and exhaled. "It's weird."

"Huh. No, I didn't catch that."

We eventually made our way over to the chow hall and sparked up conversations where we could. In a place this small and with so few soldiers, they all know who we are and that we are there. We find that the best approach is just to strike up casual conversations and be available for a couple of days by staying with them.

After dark, Sgt. Carpenter and I stood outside in a shadow that the moon had cast from the other side of the building. From where we stood, we could see three of the four walls of the barriers that make up the perimeter, the one in front of us being 15 to 20 feet away as we stood there talking, passing the time.

A tall soldier walked by on his way to the latrine, a few feet from us, our ranks and faces obscured by the darkness.

"What's up?" he said as he passed.

"Hey."

On his way back, he stopped and lit a cigarette.

"How are you doing?" I said.

"Oh, I'm alright. How about yourselves?"

"We're good," Sgt. Carpenter answered, and began to shuffle in the dark for his own cigarette.

As he lit it, the soldier, seeing Sgt. Carpenter's face in the glow of the flame, said, "Hey, I know you. You're combat stress, right?"

"You got me," Sgt. Carpenter replied, smiling, holding the cigarette with his lips and looking over toward him, and then let the flame go out on his lighter, returning his face to black.

"Yeah, I remember you came down and stayed here before," the soldier said.

"Yeah, you're Sgt. Doyle, right?"

"You got it."

The conversation fell dead for a moment, and the three of us stood there quietly in the dark. Abruptly, Sgt. Doyle chimed in, "You guys know we got attacked out here a couple of nights ago, right?"

"Yeah, we heard," Sgt. Carpenter answered.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Hit and run really. Fuckin' pussies. I wanna chase 'em. But we can't. But I think we should, you know, go after 'em."

I took in a breath and sighed, "Well, I don't think that would be such a great idea because they would start using it against us pretty quickly, don't you think?"

"You're right. It still sucks, though. I'm just waiting for them to climb over these walls," he added. You could sense us all turning in the dark to look over at the perimeter barriers next to us, the walls being beyond the shadow of the building, lit gray by the moon like stones. "I just wanna chase 'em. Damn pussies." The glowing cigarette tip floated to his face in the dark and then dropped back down as he exhaled audibly.

"The big dog will always have its fleas, know what I mean?" I offer. "We are the big dog, and they are the fleas."

"Yep," he replied, and we all fell silent. Then he dropped his cigarette, stamped out the glowing amber dot in the dark and began to walk back inside. As he walked away, he yelled back, "Good night, fellas."

"Good night," we replied.

We stood there in the dark a little while longer while I looked up at the stars and Sgt. Carpenter finished his smoke. Just over the barriers of the perimeter, the rooftops of the nearby houses glowed blue-white in the distance with their fluorescent lights.

When Sgt. Carpenter and I went back inside, several of the soldiers were lying on their cots sleeping. We walked sideways in between them to get to our cots, using our flashlights, trying to slip quietly past without waking them. We take off our boots and lean our rifles up against the wall, near our heads and within our respective reaches. I take off my blouse, but leave my T-shirt and pants on and slip into my sleeping bag. I lift my arm above my head in the dark and feel for my weapon, memorizing the motion required to reach for it, and to register its position, relative to mine. I begin at the forward sight and slide my hand down the barrel, toward the receiver, grazing past the magazine, and stroke the selector switch, feeling the safety on.

As I lay there in the still and quiet, my eyes began to adjust to the dark. The ceiling was about 20 feet high and a large brick and concrete wall fragment ran the length of my cot like some kind of war-zone privacy screen in the center of the room. Its ends and top were jagged, broken off and unattached to the ceiling or either wall on the ends of it. I imagined it falling over and crushing me in my sleep but decided it probably wouldn't.

I began to imagine my wife, at first intentionally, and then obsessively, unable to stop. I imagined her in various positions of repose in different rooms and places in our home. Before I realized it, more than an hour had passed. An hour of me lying in the dark, silently imagining her. I had mapped every detail of her, her skin, her birthmarks, her eyes, her mouth, the way the hair above her ears fades softly into the skin at her temples. The way it feels on my cheek and the way her hair smells just there, her expressions, the sound of her breath. I lay with my eyes closed, smiling in the dark for at least another hour, swimming in images of her. Periodically, my eyes opened and I would gaze up at the giant wall fragment next to me. I began to accept that I would not be getting to sleep at all this night. My mind drifted into blissful insomnia, accepting.

A few times throughout the night, I got up to use the latrine outside. In the quiet chill of the night, the bombed-out building took on an eerie presence, accentuated further by the blue beam of my tiny flashlight. As I passed the unused rooms off the corridor, I compulsively shined my flashlight into them, drawing dark passing shadows reminiscent of horror films, drifting slowly left to right through the debris and destruction. It was 3 a.m. As I walked outside the building, the perimeter drew my eye like a specter glowing in the moonlight and I could not pull my eyes from it, my weapon slung on my shoulder, magazine in.