"I know, a flying coffin."

"It isn"t-it"s in low-Earth orbit, like a satellite."

"What was it you said it looked like?" the lieutenant asked. "A coc.o.o.n?"

"A chrysalis," Davis said.

"Same thing," the lieutenant said.

"More or less," Davis said, unwilling to insist on the distinction because, even a year and three-quarters removed from Iraq, the lieutenant was still the lieutenant and you did not argue the small s.h.i.t with him.

"Coffin, coc.o.o.n, chrysalis," Lee said, "it has to be in it before sunset or it"s in trouble."

"Wait," Han said. "Sunset."

"Yes," Davis began.

"The principle"s the same," the lieutenant said. "There"s a place it has to be and a time it has to be there by."

"Thank you, sir," Lee said. He raised his pinky. "And, it drinks blood."

"Yeah," Davis said, "it does."

"Lots," Han said.

"Yeah," the lieutenant said.

For a moment, the only sounds were the fire popping and, somewhere out in the woods, an owl prolonging its question. Davis thought of Fallujah.

"Okay," Lee said, "how do we kill it?"

II.

2004.

There had been rumors, stories, legends of the things you might see in combat. Talk to any of the older guys, the ones who"d done tours in Vietnam, and you heard about a jungle in which you might meet the ghosts of Chinese invaders from five centuries before; or serve beside a grunt whose heart had been shot out a week earlier but who wouldn"t die; or find yourself stalked by what you thought was a tiger but had a tail like a snake and a woman"s voice. The guys who"d been part of the first war in Iraq-"The good one," a sailor Davis knew called it-told their own tales about the desert, about coming across a raised tomb, its black stone worn free of markings, and listening to someone laughing inside it all the time it took you to walk around it; about the dark shapes you might see stalking through a sandstorm, their arms and legs a child"s stick-figures; about the sergeant who swore his reflection had been killed so that, when he looked in a mirror now, a corpse stared back at him. Even the soldiers who"d returned from Afghanistan talked about vast forms they"d seen hunched at the crests of mountains; the street in Kabul that usually ended in a blank wall, except when it didn"t; the pale shapes you might glimpse darting into the mouth of the cave you were about to search. A lot of what you heard was bulls.h.i.t, of course, the plot of a familiar movie or TV show adapted to a new location and cast of characters, and a lot of it started off sounding as if it were headed somewhere interesting then ran out of gas halfway through. But there were some stories about which, even if he couldn"t quite credit their having happened, some quality in the teller"s voice, or phrasing, caused him to suspend judgment.

During the course of his a.s.sociate"s Degree, Davis had taken a number of courses in psychology-preparation for a possible career as a psychologist-and in one of these, he had learned that, after several hours of uninterrupted combat (he couldn"t remember how many, had never been any good with numbers), you would hallucinate. You couldn"t help it; it was your brain"s response to continuous unbearable stress. He supposed that at least some of the stories he"d listened to in barracks and bars might owe themselves to such cause, although he was unwilling to categorize them all as symptoms. This was not due to any overriding belief in either organized religion or disorganized superst.i.tion; it derived more from principle, specifically, a conclusion that an open mind was the best way to meet what continually impressed him as an enormous world packed full of many things.

By Fallujah, Davis had had no experiences of the strange, the bizarre, no stories to compare with those he"d acc.u.mulated over the course of basic and his deployment. He hadn"t been thinking about that much as they took up their positions south of the city; all of his available attention had been directed at the coming engagement. Davis had walked patrol, had felt the crawl of the skin at the back of your neck as you made your way down streets crowded with men and women who"d been happy enough to see Saddam pulled down from his pedestal but had long since lost their patience with those who"d operated the crane. He"d ridden in convoys, his head light, his heart throbbing at the base of his throat as they pa.s.sed potential danger after potential danger, a metal can on the right shoulder, what might be a sh.e.l.l on the left, and while they"d done their best to reinforce their Hummers with whatever junk they could scavenge, Davis was acutely aware that it wasn"t enough, a consequence of galloping across the Kuwaiti desert with The Army You Had. Davis had stood checkpoint, his mouth dry as he sighted his M-16 on an approaching car that appeared full of women in black burkas who weren"t responding to the signs to slow down, and he"d wondered if they were suicide bombers, or just afraid, and how much closer he could allow them before squeezing the trigger. However much danger he"d imagined himself in, inevitably, he"d arrived after the sniper had opened fire and fled, or pa.s.sed the exact spot an IED would erupt two hours later, or been on the verge of aiming for the car"s engine when it screeched to a halt. It wasn"t that Davis hadn"t discharged his weapon; he"d served support for several nighttime raids on suspected insurgent strongholds, and he"d sent his own bullets in pursuit of the tracers that scored the darkness. But support wasn"t the same thing as kicking in doors, trying to kill the guy down the hall who was trying to kill you. It was not the same as being part of the Anvil.

That was how the lieutenant had described their role. "Our friends in the United States Marine Corps are going to play the Hammer," he had said the day before. "They will sweep into Fallujah from east and west and they will drive what hostiles they do not kill outright south, where we will be waiting to act as the Anvil. The poet Goethe said that you must be either hammer or anvil. We will be both, and we are going to crush the hostiles between us."

After the lieutenant"s presentation, Han had said, "Great-so the jarheads have all the fun," with what Davis judged a pa.s.sable imitation of regret, a false sentiment fairly widely held. Davis had been sure, however, the certainty a ball of lead weighting his gut, that this time was going to be different. Part of it was that the lieutenant had known one of the contractors who"d been killed, incinerated, and strung up at the Saddam Bridge last April. Davis wasn"t clear exactly how the men had been acquainted, or how well, but the lieutenant had made no secret of his displeasure at not being part of the first effort to (re)take the city in the weeks following the men"s deaths. He had been-you couldn"t say happy, exactly, at the failure of that campaign-but he was eager for what was shaping up to be a larger-scale operation. Though seven months gone, the deaths and dishonorings of his acquaintances had left the lieutenant an appet.i.te for this mission. Enough to cause him to disobey his orders and charge into Fallujah"s southern section? Davis didn"t think so, but there was a reason the man still held the rank of lieutenant when his cla.s.smates and colleagues were well into their Captaincies.

The other reason for Davis "s conviction that, this time, something was on its way to him was a simple matter of odds. It wasn"t possible-it was not possible that you could rack up this much good luck and not have a s.h.i.tload of the bad bearing down on you like a SCUD on an anthill. A former altar boy, he was surprised at the variety of prayers he remembered-not just the Our Father and the Hail Mary, but the Apostles" Creed, the Memorare, and the Hail, Holy Queen. As he disembarked the Bradley and ran for the shelter of a desert-colored house, the sky an enormous, pale blue dome above him, Davis mumbled his way through his prayers with a fervency that would have pleased his mother and father no end. But even as his lips shaped the words, he had the strong sense that this was out of G.o.d"s hands, under the control of one of those medieval demiG.o.ddesses, Dame Fortune or something.

Later, recovering first in Germany, then at Walter Reed, Davis had thought that walking patrol, riding convoy, standing checkpoint, he must have been saved from something truly awful each and every time, for the balance to be this steep.

III.

10:01pm "I take it stakes are out," the lieutenant said.

"Sir," Lee said, "I unloaded half a clip easy into that sonovab.i.t.c.h, and I was as close to him as I am to you."

"Closer," Han said.

"The point is, he took a half-step backwards-maybe-before he tore my weapon out of my hands and fractured my skull with it."

"That"s what I"m saying," the lieutenant said. "I figure it has to be...what? Did you get your hands on some kind of major ordnance, Davis? An RPG? A Stinger? I"ll love you like a son-h.e.l.l, I"ll adopt you as my own if you tell me you have a case of Stingers concealed under a bush somewhere. Those"ll give the f.u.c.ker a welcome he won"t soon forget."

"f.u.c.king-A," Han said.

"Nah," Lee said. "A crate of w.i.l.l.y Pete oughta just about do it. Serve his a.s.s crispy-fried!"

Davis shook his head. "No Stingers and no white phosphorous. Fire isn"t going to do us any good."

"How come?" Lee said.

"Yeah," Han said.

"If I"m right about this thing spending its nights in low-Earth orbit-in its "coffin"-and then leaving that refuge to descend into the atmosphere so it can hunt, its skin has to be able to withstand considerable extremes of temperature."

"Like the s.p.a.ce Shuttle," the lieutenant said. "Huh. For all intents and purposes, it"s fireproof."

"Oh," Lee said.

"Given that it spends some of its time in the upper atmosphere, as well as actual outer s.p.a.ce, I"m guessing substantial cold wouldn"t have much effect, either."

"We can"t shoot it, can"t burn it, can"t freeze it," Lee said. "Tell me why we"re here, again?" He waved at the trees fringing the clearing. "Aside from the scenery, of course."

"Pipe down," the lieutenant said.

"When we shot at it," Davis said, "I"m betting half our fire missed it." He held up his hand to the beginning of Lee"s protest. "That"s no reflection on anyone. The thing was fast, cheetah-taking-down-a-gazelle fast. Not to mention, it"s so G.o.dd.a.m.ned thin... Anyway, of the shots that connected with it, most of them were flesh wounds." He raised his hand to Lee, again. "Those who connected with it," a nod to Lee, "were so close their fire pa.s.sed clean through it."

"Which is what I was saying," Lee said.

"There"s a lot of crazy s.h.i.t floating around s.p.a.ce," Davis said, "little particles of sand, rock, ice, metal. Some of them get to moving pretty fast. If you"re doing repairs to the s.p.a.ce Station and one of those things. .h.i.ts you, it could ruin your whole day. Anything that"s going to survive up there is going to have to be able to deal with something that can punch a hole right through you."

"It"s got a self-sealing mechanism," the lieutenant said. "When Lee fired into it, its body treated the bullets as so many dust-particles."

"And closed right up," Davis said. "Like some kind of super-clotting-factor. Maybe that"s what it uses the blood for."

"You"re saying it"s bulletproof, too?" Lee said.

"s.h.i.t," Han said.

"Not-more like, bullet-resistant."

"Think of it as a mutant healing ability," the lieutenant said, "like Wolverine."

"Oh," Han said.

"Those claws it has," Lee said, "I guess Wolverine isn"t too far off the mark."

"No," Han said. "Sabertooth."

"What?" Lee said. "The f.u.c.k"re you going on about?"

"Sabertooth"s claws." Han held up his right hand, fingers splayed. He curled his fingers into a fist. "Wolverine"s claws."

"Man has a point," the lieutenant said.

"Whatever," Lee said.

"Here"s the thing," Davis said, "it"s bullet-resistant, but it can still feel pain. Think about how it reacted when Lee shot it. It didn"t tear his throat open: it took the instrument that had hurt it and used that to hurt Lee. You see what I"m saying?"

"Kind of," Lee said.

"Think about what drove it off," Davis said. "Remember?"

"Of course," the lieutenant said. He nodded at Han. "It was Han sticking his bayonet in the thing"s side."

For which it crushed his skull, Davis could not stop himself from thinking. He added his nod to the lieutenant"s. "Yes he did."

"How is that different from shooting it?" Lee said.

"Your bullets went in one side and out the other," Davis said. "Han"s bayonet stuck there. The thing"s healing ability could deal with an in-and-out wound no problem; something like this, though: I think it panicked."

"Panicked?" Lee said. "It didn"t look like it was panicking to me."

"Then why did it take off right away?" Davis said.

"It was full; it heard more backup on the way; it had an appointment in f.u.c.king Samara. How the f.u.c.k should I know?"

"What"s your theory?" the lieutenant said.

"The type of injury Han gave it would be very bad if you"re in a vacuum. Something opening you up like that and leaving you exposed..."

"You could vent some or even all of the blood you worked so hard to collect," the lieutenant said. "You"d want to get out of a situation like that with all due haste."

"Even if your healing factor could seal the wound"s perimeter," Davis said, "there"s still this piece of steel in you that has to come out and, when it does, will reopen the injury."

"Costing you still more blood," the lieutenant said.

"Most of the time," Davis said, "I mean, like, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a million, the thing would identify any such threats long before they came that close. You saw its ears, its eyes."

"Black on black," Lee said. "Or, no-black over black, like the corneas had some kind of heavy tint and what was underneath was all pupil."

"Han got lucky," Davis said. "The s.p.a.ce we were in really wasn"t that big. There was a lot of movement, a lot of noise-"

"Not to mention," Lee said, "all the shooting and screaming."

"The right set of circ.u.mstances," the lieutenant said.

"Saved our a.s.ses," Lee said, reaching over to pound Han"s shoulder. Han ducked to the side, grinning his hideous smile.

"If I can cut to the chase," the lieutenant said. "You"re saying we need to find a way to open up this f.u.c.ker and keep him open so that we can wreak merry havoc on his insides."

Davis nodded. "To cut to the chase, yes, exactly."

"How do you propose we do this?"

"With these." Davis reached into the duffel bag to his left and withdrew what appeared to be a three-foot piece of white wood, tapered to a point sharp enough to p.r.i.c.k your eye looking at it. He pa.s.sed the first one to the lieutenant, brought out one for Lee and one for Han.

"A baseball bat?" Lee said, gripping near the point and swinging his like a Louisville Slugger. "We gonna club it to death?"

Neither Davis nor the lieutenant replied; they were busy watching Han, who"d located the grips at the other end of his and was jabbing it, first underhand, then overhand.

"The people you meet working at Home Depot," Davis said. "They"re made out of an industrial resin, inch-for-inch, stronger than steel. Each one has a high-explosive core."

"Whoa," Lee said, setting his on the ground with exaggerated care.

"The detonators are linked to this," Davis said, fishing a cell phone from his shirt pocket. "Turn it on." Pointing to the lieutenant, Han, Lee, and himself, he counted, "One-two-three-four. Send. That"s it."

"I was mistaken," the lieutenant said. "It appears we will be using stakes, after all."

IV.

2004.

At Landstuhl, briefly, and then at Walter Reed, at length, an impressive array of doctors, nurses, chaplains, and other soldiers whose job it was encouraged Davis to discuss Fallujah. He was reasonably sure that, while under the influence of one of the meds that kept his body at a safe distance, he had let slip some detail, maybe more. How else to account for the change in his nurse"s demeanor? Likely, she judged he was a psych case, a diagnosis he half-inclined to accept. Even when the lieutenant forced his way into Davis "s room, banging around in the wheelchair he claimed he could use well enough, G.o.dd.a.m.nit, Davis was reluctant to speak of anything except the conditions of the other survivors. Of whom he had been shocked-truly shocked, profoundly shocked, almost more so than by what had torn through them-to learn there were only two, Lee and Han, Manfred bled out on the way to be evac"d, everyone else long gone by the time the reinforcements had stormed into the courtyard. According to the lieutenant, Han was clinging to life by a thread so fine you couldn"t see it. He"d lost his helmet in the fracas, and the bones in his skull had been crushed like an eggsh.e.l.l. Davis, who had witnessed that crushing, nodded. Lee had suffered his own head trauma, although, compared to Han"s, it wasn"t anything a steel plate couldn"t fix. The real problem with Lee was that, if he wasn"t flooded with some heavy-duty happy pills, he went fetal, thumb in his mouth, the works.

"What about you?" the lieutenant said, indicating the armature of casts, wires, weights, and counterweights that kept Davis suspended like some overly ambitious kid"s science project.

"Believe it or not, sir," Davis said, "it really is worse than it looks. My pack and my helmet absorbed most of the impact. Still left me with a broken back, scapula, and ribs-but my spinal cord"s basically intact. Not that it doesn"t hurt like a motherf.u.c.ker, sir. Yourself?"

"The taxpayers of the United States of America have seen fit to gift me with a new right leg, since I so carelessly misplaced the original." He knocked on his pajama leg, which gave a hollow, plastic sound.

"Sir, I am so sorry-"

"Shut it," the lieutenant said. "It"s a paper cut." Using his left foot, he rolled himself back to the door, which he eased almost shut. Through the gap, he surveilled the hallway outside long enough for Davis to start counting, One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, then wheeled himself to Davis "s head. He leaned close and said, " Davis."

"Sir?"

"Let"s leave out the rank thing for five minutes, okay? Can we do that?"

"Sir-yes, yes we can."