by GREG BAXTER

There is a man, Evgeny, between me and Rick, and we are in an up-armored Defender hauling ass through the square of a half-busy bazaar.  These are the city’s northern outskirts.  We are watched indifferently by the vendors and shoppers.  Mopeds and bicycles dart out of our way.  Evgeny is tall, but he is curled tightly over a briefcase.  We come out of the market, and everything is just gone.  I don’t know what to call it.  Scattered buildings.  Dust like fog.  Burned-out jeeps and trucks.  We are leaving Kabul.

Why are we slowing down?  Evgeny hits the driver, Snoop.

Snoop says, NATO.  Be cool.

I lean forward to look through the windshield, and I see them.  A big convoy of cargo trucks and personnel carriers on a perpendicular tack, about three kilometers in the distance.  Snoop is decelerating so we will pass comfortably behind them.  After that, Parvan, and the road goes straight up.

Who gives fuck about NATO? says Evgeny, who is perspiring even though it is freezing.  Go fast.

What is the rush? says Snoop.  If we cross in front of them, they will come after us.

I say faster; fucking beat them!  Evgeny cuffs Ulrich, our team lead, on the shoulder, which is a mistake.  Ulrich orders us to restrain the client.

Evgeny squirms when Rick and I grab him.  I am the fucking money, he says.  No me, no fucking mission.

Evgeny is a typical client.  A minor player with a shot at the big time.  A Russian diplomat with a history in Afghanistan.  Evgeny is in the oil business.  But the oil business is also the arms business, the opium business, reconstruction, sex, and secrets.  Because there is only one industry in Afghanistan—uncertainty.  Like a lot of other clients, he must not fuck up his gig.

In the front passenger seat, Ulrich is concentrating on a map.  He is checking a compass and marking in a notebook.  Ulrich doesn’t talk much, but he is a killer.  I’ve known him one month, and I feel that for certain.

Snoop and Ulrich are ex–South African special forces, former Recon Commandos.  In the world of protective services, South Africans are like U.S. dollars.  They are everywhere, and everybody wants them.  They will take any job and they will kill anyone you call an enemy.  They never have a dog in the fight.

Rick is a former Ranger.  I was a SEAL.  Rick is divorced.  I never married.  There are lots of former SAS guys in the mercenary business, too.  And a lot of Marines who left Iraq and couldn’t stand the peace.  They’re like us—washed out.  No families.  No girlfriends.  No desire to be part of society.

But not the South Africans.  They are adjusted in that way.

I have to take shit, says Evgeny.

Not a chance, says Snoop.

I have to take fucking shit!  I have to take fucking shit four hours ago!

Snoop looks at Ulrich.  Ulrich shrugs.  It is almost lunchtime and we are very high in the Hindu Kush.

How are we on time? asks Snoop.

Ulrich says, We are ahead of schedule.

Turtle, Evgeny says. Turtle!

He leans across me and tries to open the door.

I say, This dude is going to take a shit right on top of me.

All right, says Ulrich.  Stop the vehicle.

We are on a narrow, winding mountain road, but Snoop stops.  The surface is dusty and loose, and we drift toward the road’s edge, where there is a sharp drop.  We are vulnerable from four or five angles.  It is maybe the worst place to stop for miles, but nobody is too worried.  We haven’t seen anything for hours.

Ulrich tells Snoop to stay in the Defender while he and Rick take positions and I guard Evgeny.  Except for Evgeny, the formation is our standard IED sweep.

Evgeny won’t let go of his briefcase, so I haul his ass by the elbow to a spot beside the road and he says, There?

I say, You want privacy?

He looks around.  The landscape is just gray rock and snow, and it goes on forever.  The sun is out and seemingly right on top of our shoulders, but there is no heat in the light.

Evgeny hunts himself for cigarettes.  Ulrich has a no smoking policy in the vehicle.  He drops his trousers and squats and I light his cigarette when he asks me.  We have given him a helmet that is too big for his head.

Company, says Rick, who is peering over the steep drop.

A white car, a mid-’80s Honda, is winding up the road behind us.  It is burning oil and moving very fast.

Hurry up, I tell Evgeny.

I can’t, he says.  My ass is frozen.

Are you crying?

My ass.  I can’t.  Oh God.

Let’s abort, says Snoop.  He can just shit himself later.

No, says Evgeny.

Too late, says Ulrich.

In front of us, two more cars have emerged on a ridge and stopped.

Unfriendlies? asks Snoop.

Can’t tell, says Ulrich.

Rick says, What’s going on?  You want me to come up there?

Ulrich considers this.  No, he says. Everybody get back in the vehicle.

Evgeny refuses.  Fucking kill them, he says.  I don’t give fuck.

If they engage us, says Ulrich, we will kill them, but you need to finish or re-enter the vehicle.

You, says Evgeny to me, stick your finger up my ass.  It is only way.

No thanks, I say.

I pay fucking company twenty thousand dollar for day!  Stick your finger up ass!

Put your briefcase down and use your own finger.

Evgeny tries to squeeze.  My asshole is so fucking cold, he says.

Take cover, Ulrich says.

But there is no cover.  Snoop jumps out and lies flat on the road.  Rick takes a knee cautiously and waits for more instruction.

Up on the ridge, the men have erupted from their cars and scattered into positions for engagement.  They are probably Taliban militia.  A rocket-propelled grenade is fired.  They have a good angle of attack but are very far away.  The moment it launches, I can tell the RPG is going to miss.  But still there is a kind of suspense in its journey, because it is unpredictable, and because it seemingly takes forever to get to us.  It moves like a fish.  It misses the Defender, not even close.  And then it enters the vast, boundless space of the mountains.

Moving between the attackers and Evgeny, I kneel and lay down suppressing fire.  There is only one code for a PMC—keep the client alive.  You can lose your whole team, but if you lose the client you are finished.  You are back in Denver, or Louisville, taking shit from a manager.  Your freedom is over.  Rick and Ulrich also fire.  Snoop had no chance to get a weapon—all he is carrying is a sidearm—so he is crawling back toward the Defender.

The man with the RPG is aiming again.  Ulrich orders everyone to drop back.  We are a hundred meters from a sharp turn that would put us behind a rock formation.  I grab Evgeny and he screams at me to let him go, but there’s no time to argue or persuade.  I drag him, trousers down to his ankles, dick waggling.  The next grenade is launched, and misses, but not by much.  It also shrieks into the valley.

This is a stupid engagement on the militia’s part, but it is happening.  And in the open, running to safety, we are vulnerable to magic bullets.  We are not far away at all when the rocket man finally hits his target.  The Defender explodes and a green flourish of fire and heat rises instantly into the atmosphere.  The concussion is palpable, and we are all knocked down.

Ulrich says, Status, and we all reply.  Nobody is hurt.  Evgeny is terrified and trying to run away, but I have him by the collar.  Bullets sizzle above and around us.  The Defender is burning in a violent multicolored plume, and it’s not safe to remain.  We stand again and run down the road while rounds and explosives in the truck, spared in the first blast, begin to go off.  We find haven behind the rocks.

Rick leans into the open and takes a few shots.

Do not return fire, says Ulrich.

They’re bugging out, says Rick.

The men on the ridge disappear, and there is a final explosion that turns the Defender to scrap.

Evgeny says, We’re fucked!  You are fucking idiots!

Ulrich doesn’t disagree.  He walks to the edge of the road and looks below us.

Snoop follows.  The car is still coming, he says.

Rick says, Are they deaf?

No matter what, do not fire on it, says Ulrich.

He makes an asset check.  We have three rifles and four sidearms and enough ammo to sustain one heavy assault.  We lost a lot of ammo and equipment in the Defender, but our shit is still strapped.  Ulrich has the sat phone.  We are still inside contingency.  Except for Evgeny.  And the weather.  He is shivering and lost, and all he’s got on is a suit and the helmet.  There are storm clouds developing above some peaks to the northwest—the direction we are supposed to be heading—and for the first time all day, Evgeny seems to silently comprehend something: death is not experienced by the living.  No riddle is solved by living forever.

In Kabul, I go see a man named Khorsid once a week. One day, when the wheels fell off his shop, I helped him put them back on, and he and his sons asked me home to eat food and drink tea.

He has a beautiful teenage daughter.  I don’t know how exactly old she is, and I don’t bother asking.  The girls here are usually pretty until the age of about fifteen, and after that the environment wears them down.  Whenever I come over, the old man and I sit outside and watch the traffic—we can’t communicate.  I have no Pashto, and he has no English.  And yet we have a good time.

When we are done sitting he gathers the entire family, shoos them out of the house, and leaves me and the daughter with some tea.  I don’t know what he thinks.  Perhaps he tries to convince himself we sit on opposite sides of the table and talk marriage.  Perhaps he doesn’t care.  Anyway, he accepts the microwaves and televisions and stereos.  He sells them all.  It makes his life easier.  His sons admire him more.  With each delivery of goods they become more like Italian teenage hipsters—who want nothing more in the world than to smoke cigarettes and pose on street corners.  The significance of a son’s respect here is inestimable, but accruing it is like everything else, an economy, so it has an exchange rate.  The daughter is indifferent.  She lies down and moans and sticks her fingernails in my ass, but there is nothing in her eyes.  They are brown with gray-blue specks, and they are always open.  I do all the terrible things I can imagine.  Nothing shocks or disgusts her.  Nothing.  Sometimes I wish she would vomit, just to prove she is alive.  Or look terrified.  Or scream for mercy.  Maybe the indifference is a protest—the only way she can exert her will on the world.  Something like an expression of dignity.  It doesn’t matter: ideas expire outside their economies.  When she gets pregnant I will stop coming around.  I will have Rick go by and tell Khorsid that I have died and hand over a bunch of money for an abortion.  Rick has pretty good Pashto.

Kabul is, in fact, a pretty swinging metropolis, if you are into mayhem.  It’s full of hot Swiss NGO girls, Russian hookers, gamblers, pimps, and wannabe players, underground nightclubs, and a fuckload of dope.  There are gangsters and mercenaries everywhere.  And the only thing that talks is money.  It’s like a grim sci-fi fantasy.  Except it is the real fucking thing.

By the time the car gets to us, more than half the sky is overcast.  Storms up here can really move.  The clouds have swallowed the sunlight, and snow is beginning to fall.  It is just the beginning, but it will get worse.

Evgeny says, Winter.

I don’t know why Ulrich hasn’t made the call on his phone.  I know he should have the instant the gunmen disengaged.

Rick takes a position on the road to stop the car.  As it rounds the final corner, windshield wipers pumping snowflakes from one side to the other, the driver spots him and starts to reverse, but Ulrich and Snoop step behind the car and order it to halt.  The wheels lock.  We will know in a moment if they are going to fight or surrender.

A hand comes out of the window.  It’s waving something like paper.  Snoop approaches.  Rick and Ulrich inch forward.  Ulrich counts two heads in the back and two in the front.  Rick confirms the count.

Snoop says, It’s just a guy and his family.  He wants to bribe us.

What the fuck are they doing on this road? asks Rick.

Snoop talks to the man.  I can’t hear what they are saying.  The weather is starting to really come down.  Where Evgeny and I are, on high ground above the scene, the wind is gusting so hard that we have to take knees not to blow down the mountain.

He’s on his way home, Snoop shouts.  His wife will give birth soon.

Order them out, says Ulrich.

Snoop orders them out.  The man pleads with him, won’t open the door.  Snoop reaches inside the car, unlocks the door and opens it, then grabs the man by the arm.  The man is arguing, but there’s no panic yet.

Get them all out, says Ulrich.

Snoop again orders everyone out, but nobody moves.

Ulrich tells Rick to pull the woman out.

Rick says, Hold on for a second.

Do it.

She’s pregnant, Rick says.

Ulrich tolerates no reality except the one that exists in his head.  His universe is infallible.  And he does not like new team members questioning his authority.  He tells Snoop the situation has escalated, so Snoop drops a sweep move on the arguing man and buries his face in the ground, putting his sidearm to the man’s temple.  He orders the man to get his family—the wife and two boys—out of the car.

Come on, I say to Evgeny. We’re going down there.

Fucking peasants, he says.  Let’s just fucking kill them.

The pregnant woman rushes from the car.  She is making a wild, songlike crying noise.  She kneels by the roadside with her hands up.

Get the children out and search the car, says Ulrich.

Rick says, Listen man, the bitch is fucking pregnant.

Ulrich has not taken his eyes off the car.  He says, You lose your ride, you find a ride.  We are within the brief.

Rick says, So is using the fucking sat phone.

The sat phone is for emergencies, he says.

Evgeny slips as we are coming down the slope and loses his grip on the briefcase.  I let him go.  I have to.  I can’t stop him from falling.  Evgeny lands on his face.  The briefcase tumbles out of his reach, and he panics.  He somersaults and twists his ankle.  When he stops, he scans the road and sees the briefcase curiously upright by the car.  He scrambles for it.  He is panting and terrified.  It is pitiful.

Relax! says Ulrich.

But Evgeny continues.  Rick takes his eyes off the car to grab Evgeny.

It is his last mistake.  A moment later, he is peppered with bullets, taking a half-dozen rounds to the chest, on his body armor, before a round takes his head off.  It bursts, and the body goes down.  For a moment, everyone is frozen.  Nobody understands what has happened, that one of the two in the backseat opened fire with an automatic rifle.

Evgeny screams and grabs the briefcase and tumbles away.  Suddenly time shoots forward again.  I leap down and lie on top of him.

The man Snoop is holding down bucks ferociously out of Snoop’s grip.  He is adrenalized and twice the man he was. He knows what is taking place now and will defend his family at any cost.  There is nothing anyone can do.  The man reaches through his window.  He wants the weapon.  Snoop shoots him in the back.  He does not die instantly.  He clings to the roof of the car for a few seconds, trying to speak.  He can see the future.  He wants to protect his family, even as he gradually slips out of existence.

Ulrich says, Do not fire on the vehicle.  Secure the woman.

Snoop rolls across the front of the car.  The boys in the backseat are panicking.  They begin to cry.  Snoop takes the pregnant woman by the neck and yells at the boys to toss the gun out and come forward.

Nothing happens at first, but Snoop tightens his grip on the woman and promises to kill her.  My Pashto is shit, but I know Come out or I will kill her.

The rifle comes out slowly.  It’s a Kalashnikov.  When it drops, clanging on the frozen soil, Snoop yanks the boys from the car and puts them facedown on the road.  He checks them for more weapons.

Which was the shooter?

I don’t know, says Snoop.  This one I think.  The older one.

Ulrich tells me to release Evgeny and stand over the boys while Snoop searches the car.  He tells Evgeny to hold the Kalashnikov and shoot if anybody moves.  Evgeny puts the briefcase between his feet.

The storm is getting worse.  I’m wiping snow out of my eyes.  The woman is on her knees and crying.

Then Evgeny opens fire and kills the older boy.

Ulrich grabs the rifle off him.

What? says Evgeny.  He fucking moved.

Car is clear.

Get in, says Ulrich.  We are still on schedule.

We’re going ahead? I ask.

We leave the woman and her young son by the road.  She begs us for the sake of her baby not to abandon them.  I want to ask Ulrich if we can put her in the trunk, drop her in the village.  But I know what he will say.  I give her a bunch of blankets, and I get Snoop to tell her that she should cover herself with the bodies of her son and husband because they will keep her warm.  She becomes hysterical.  The younger son seeks her reassurance, but she begins to beat him. Evgeny says, Why bother?  We throw a blanket over Rick’s body and put it beside Evgeny in the backseat.  We must have something that can absorb fire on either side of the client.  That is just standard operating procedure.  Ulrich takes out his map and compass.

Inside Evgeny’s briefcase are documents and blueprints for national infrastructure projects, including those owned by the company Evgeny represents.  Pipelines.  Electricity.  Roadworks.  Also names of individuals, Afghans who support the GWOT.  He demands to show me this.  He demands I know how important he is.  He tells me the identity of his contact, a Saudi oilman who provides intelligence, at a very high price, to the Taliban.

Are the plans fake? I ask.

They are real.

I nod.

You think there is no logic, he says.

No, that’s not what I think.

You think that because you are stupid.

No, I get it.

You feel sorry for that woman, he says.  You do not get shit.

Ulrich and Snoop have gone to search the village.  The contact is late and Ulrich smells a trap.  I am sitting beside Rick’s body.  There’s no blood anymore.  Maybe he has bled out, and maybe he is frozen.  He is the first team member I’ve ever lost.  I want to blame Evgeny, but I can’t.  I believe Ulrich saw the boys pull the Kalashnikov and said nothing to prevent Rick’s death, but I can’t prove it.  I lost my grip on Evgeny coming down the mountain.

Now Evgeny waits in the doorway of a little hut in a bleak little village, anxiously checking his watch.  The briefcase is back under his right arm.  Past him, snow has covered everything.  It is falling and falling and falling.

Evegeny sticks his foot out the door.

Hey you, he says.  My foot is outside.  You are supposed to watch!  Somebody might shoot the foot!

Do what you want, I say.

Night arrives.  Like a terrible spell.  The village empties mysteriously.  Shadows tiptoe into the mountain darkness.

Ulrich and Snoop didn’t find anything.  They came back with a few Kalashnikovs, and Ulrich said, We may get snowed in if we don’t leave—we may get snowed in anyway.

Someone will come, says Evgeny.

He is right.  Not long after darkness, two rows of bright halogen lights emerge in the relentless white drift, revealing what looks like an old tank-tracked Soviet APC. It halts at the edge of the village.

Evgeny starts to move forward, but Ulrich stops him.  Ulrich nods at Snoop, and Snoop sneaks out of the hut.  When he comes back, he says, The signal is authentic.

The Saudi sits at an upright wooden box across from Evgeny.  He is going over the maps.  He asks about Rick’s body, and Evgeny says Rick was killed by a teenage boy.  He laughs.  The Saudi does not.  Outside the hut are four heavily armed Arab bodyguards.  But they are clearly thugs, not spec ops.  This is easy to recognize.  They are patrolling outside the hut, moving in standard, predictable asymmetry.

The Saudi says, It is in order.

Of course it is in order, says Evgeny.

The Saudi packs the documents into a case and gives Evgeny an envelope full of U.S. dollars.

Evgeny is about to count the money when Snoop reappears in the doorway.

We have a problem, says Snoop.  His entourage is gone.

No one responds at first.  It is a lot to digest.  No matter how long you are involved in this shit, no one ever truly escapes the sensation of panic, not even guys like Ulrich.  You just learn to suppress it.

Where are they? Ulrich asks the Saudi.

The Saudi folds his arms across his chest.

Ulrich unholsters his .45 and points it at the Saudi’s brain.

The Saudi does not know where his men have gone, but he is not afraid of Ulrich.  He says, Does it make any sense to you that I would sacrifice myself?

Ulrich does not have time to consider the question.  The Saudi may not be a threat, but he is a liability.  Ulrich discharges his firearm.  The man’s head snaps, and his body sinks in the chair.

I know the world is made of facts, not things.  A world divided into things could not be so easily corrupted.  A world of things would not require a language.

Only in a world of facts can one life have higher value than another.

It can get confusing.  Not long ago, I was at a club in Andarabi, a gambling spot full of playboy diplomats and ex-Soviet officers trying to pawn themselves as consultants—guys just like Evgeny.  I don’t get too involved.  I sit by one of the roulette tables—all the dealers are Russian girls with fat breasts and ice-white hair—and place low-risk bets for hours and drink free.  There are no windows.  You have to know people.  Nobody seems to run the place.  It’s as though it sprang intuitively into being and runs itself.

I finished up at five a.m.  I was flirting with one of the dealers but it’s a mistake to take one home.  Because one day you’re fucking her in the ass and she’s telling you she loves your big cock, and the next day you’ve become a key figure in a sprawling and incomprehensible mafia war.  I wanted to stroll around and watch the sun come up and observe, over the course of a few hours, the transformation of the city from the black calm of predawn to the smoky, hectic, violent chaos of morning.  And get some breakfast.

Almost immediately, I ran into one of Khorsid’s sons.  He was drunk or high and didn’t recognize me.  All he saw was a Westerner.  He asked, in English, if I wanted to fuck his sister for a hundred dollars.  He said she was a very pretty virgin.  I said nothing, so he dropped the price to fifty.  Later that day I went by Khorsid’s with Rick.  I told the old man what happened, and Rick translated.  Eventually the boy had dropped the price to five dollars, chasing me down the street, and I told Khorsid that too.  I started to grab some of the boxes I’d brought the previous visit, and Khorsid threw himself on top of them and wept.  He told us to wait and ran out of the room.  Rick sat down on a small wooden stool that wobbled underneath his great size and said, This is fucked up.  How did you meet these people?

When Khorsid returned he had the son with him, beating him with a shoe.  He asked if we would like to beat him.

Rick told me, and I said, To death?

But Rick didn’t translate that.

Never mind, I said.

Then Khorsid grabbed his son by the collar and told him to leave the house.  He could never return.  Five dollars! he screamed.

Snoop says, I think I see movement.

Evgeny is kneeling over the body.  The Saudi’s eyes are open, as though his punishment for the evil he fostered in the world is to be forced to look upon it forever.  Nobody closes them for him.  Evgeny is momentarily inconsolable and speechless.  The Saudi is the corpse of his future.

I definitely see movement, says Snoop.  Taliban militia.

Copy, says Ulrich.  For a few minutes he’d been standing in a deeply introspective cloud of worry.

I can drive us out of here, I say.

It’s too late, says Ulrich.  We will never get to the APC.

We don’t need the APC, I say.  I can drive us out of here in the Honda.  I grew up in the mountains.

That piece of shit is snowed in, says Snoop.

It’s not, I say.

Ulrich pulls out his map and turns it over.  He will not consider my plan, and perhaps he is right—it is too late.  He draws the village from memory.  He and Snoop will take the fight outside.

You want us to be bait? I say.

We don’t need bait, says Ulrich.

And if they take you?

Then you can test your theory.

They take their M4s and a handful of Kalashnikovs each, leaving one M4, two .45s, and just one Kalashnikov for me and Evgeny.

They are gone for about ten minutes before I hear the first kill.  There is grunting.  Two bodies tumbling in the snow.  It is over quickly.

It’s happening now, I say.  Stay low.

Evgeny sits on the ground behind Rick’s body.  He has put the money in his briefcase, which he is holding tightly.  He is trembling.

Haven’t you been in a gunfight before?

He nods.  Many, he says, squeezing the briefcase.

I tell him, If they take me out and storm the hut, fire your weapon wisely.  Do not spray.  When your rifle is out of ammo, pull your .45.  When that is finished, take the knife.  Maybe by then everyone will be dead.

But my suitcase.

What about it?

He says nothing.  In the village, there are more noises.  Running.  Equipment rattling.

Slowly, gunshots interrupt the tension.  The semiautomatic bursts of our M4s, then a wave of automatic fire returning from our enemies.  The pauses between the firing shorten.  Soon there is nothing but the steady chatter of Kalashnikovs.

Evgeny says, We are going to fucking die.

I can hear what Snoop and Ulrich are up to.  They are moving back and forth along two parallel lines, drawing fire, dispensing fire, and their enemies are forming two opposing lines of attack.  Soon they will entrench and fire upon themselves.  And Ulrich will flank them while Snoop goes on drawing fire.  Say what you want, but they are pros.  They are ice cold.

Come on, I tell Evgeny.

We are going? You are leaving them?

Yeah, we’re going.

He looks at the briefcase, then outside to the snowstorm.  No, he says. I wait for Ulrich.

Suit yourself.

It is cold and blustery in the car because the back window is gone, shot out while we were pulling away from the village.  Visibility is minimal.  The tires aren’t sticking.  But I have driven in worse conditions, on roads as narrow and perilous.  Evgeny was hit in the elbow, and he is handling it all like an actress.  He is weeping.

When I was army, he says, I was shot ten times.  I was not afraid.  Now I am very afraid.

Thirty kilometers go by, and we are back to the scene of the first incident.  I know because we have passed the remains of the Defender.  Evgeny is calm now, but depressed.

I don’t know how you drive, he says.  I can’t see fucking shit.

I can see fine, I say, hitting the brakes.

Why are we stopping?

Shut the fuck up and stay in the car.

He shows me his elbow.

What?

He shows me his elbow again.

I step out of the car and onto the road.  The headlights cast a copper luminescence but only over a small space.  Beyond that it is blackness.  It’s like we are inside a light bulb.  I scan the light’s edges, which yawn and tighten in the elements.  A lot of snow has fallen, but I spot the mound.  A body.

I nudge it.  I poke it with the barrel of the M4.  It’s dead.  But there is a noise.  And a second body.  I know what has happened.  I pull the two bodies away, and the pregnant woman is beneath them.  She did what I told her.  And she is alive.  There is no sign of the younger boy.

I pick the woman up and bring her to the car.  I throw her in the back seat.

Are you fucking crazy? says Evgeny.

She’s alive, I say.

Alive?

Evgney turns on the dome light.  She moans.  There is blood all over her.

She is bleeding, he says.

I don’t think so.  It’s from the others.

He dips his finger in some blood between her legs.  You are wrong, he says.

She moans again, and I crawl on top of her and slap her face lightly.  Wake up, I say.

Her eyes open.

Wake up, I repeat.  I came back for you.

Evgeny says, This is fucking crazy.

The woman says something.  She is looking at me.  Maybe she recognizes me.

What?

It is inaudible.  She is reaching for something.  Something on me.  I hold her hand and guide it around me.  She is too weak.

She wants the knife, says Evgeny.

She what?

She wants you to save the baby.  I have seen this before.  It is fucking pitiful.

I tell the woman, I don’t know how.

She begins to cry.

I’m sorry, I say.

She reaches for the knife again.

Maybe she will do it herself, says Evgeny.  Crazy bitch.

Shut the fuck up, I say.  Do you know how to do this?

Evgeny says, I have seen it done, but nobody was trying to save baby.

That doesn’t fucking help then.

I give her the knife.  I hold her hand tightly.

Show me, I say.

She takes the knife to one side of her belly but does not touch herself with the blade.  Then, showing me the path of the incision, she draws it across her belly in a horizontal line below the navel.

She takes the knife and stabs herself in the throat, and in a few seconds she is dead.

Put it inside your shirt, I say.

No fucking way, says Evgeny.

The baby is crying.  It is a purple and white mess, and its umbilical cord is dangling from its belly.

Put the briefcase fucking down and put him inside your shirt, or I will kill you.

Evgeny does not move, so I take the knife and put it to his throat.

Do you believe I will kill you?

Yes, he says.

He puts the briefcase down and takes the baby.  He unbuttons his shirt, puts the baby against his skin, and then rebuttons the shirt.

This is fucking bad, he says.

I take the woman and her insides and toss them in the road.  I vomit.  I clean my hands and face with the snow.  And we are off again.

Evgeny doesn’t say anything.  We are low on oil and gas, but we have gravity.

I know a man in Kabul, I say, who may want another son.

Evgeny nods.  He is afraid of me.  We are an hour into the trip now, and it is bitterly cold.            How is the baby?

Fine, says Evgeny.  Sloppy.  That woman would not save second son but killed herself to save baby.  Fucking animals.

Why isn’t it crying?

Maybe it likes me.

Is he dead?

Evgeny looks into his shirt.

Nope.  Afghans are too tough to die as babies.  It is their curse.

But by the time we wind out of the mountains, and the road loosens like an untied knot into the vast, cold plains, and the light of day emerges fretfully, the baby is perfectly still and dead.  Evgeny says nothing.  We continue into the snow.  Now and then Evgeny wipes the windshield with the bloody cuff of his shirt.

Read the comments from Greg and Cincinnati Review’s fiction editor, Brock Clarke