Read Part 1 first or this doesn’t make much sense.

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The academic theory – pushed on them at The Farm, of course – was that you could never be certain of exactly which seemingly innocuous facts might later be critical in determining where a case went bad – if it did – or what might be important for the analysts back home, who had access to other reports from other case officers in the field, and even from other countries. So they were told, but Frank had quickly learned that the field reality was much like a ham-and-egg trial lawyer’s – you had a limited amount of time in which to write and too much other stuff to do on all of your cases. Therefore, you triaged and assessed very quickly and included what you thought was the important stuff and relied upon your memory of the case as you moved it along.

“Wait a minute…” Frank began, with his voice rising, “you’ve got satellites, don’t you? You’re just watching porn over there, huh?”

Tate laughed and almost swallowed some dip spit.

“Yeah! Don’t I fuckin’ wish. Haha! Nah, Tim’s the porn guy, Bro.” Ned laughed for a bit. “That guy’s into some weird shit, by the way.” When Frank looked over Tate raised his eyebrows.

Tate looked down at the laptop’s display and began to adjust the map resolution.

“Hunh. Ooh, here we go! Yahtzee! We’ve got satellites, yo!”

The terrain was much easier on this side of the mountain, so Slade clutched, slid the shift into neutral, and let the truck accelerate down the slope toward what looked like a four-way intersection of two dirt roads. As Frank scanned the valley, he noticed that the roads formed an X at the bottom. Both roads were passable for cars and light trucks, running off into the hills that surrounded them. The grass was thin on the hard packed clay, surprisingly smooth under the truck’s tires. The hill was steeper up top, but not terrible, curving to a more gentle slope near the bottom. As Frank glanced left again, he saw something on the ground… but his attention was on the surrounding hills. Damn bad if we get jumped here… he looked back ahead toward the intersection. Something made his head swivel back left, a prickling… a feeling…

He squinted to see if he could make it out… and his blood froze. He slammed on the brakes, nearly putting Ned’s face into the laptop.

“What the shit–” Ned began, but the words froze. He looked where Slade’s eyes were fixed and recognized it immediately.

“Oh.” He said softly. “Oh, fuck.”

Slade nodded his head once. Fifty yards to their left and front were the unmistakable flags of a United Nations de-mining project. They had both seen them before – together, in fact. You couldn’t spend much time in Afghanistan and not see them.

Frank knew that the Soviet Army had given not one single fuck about the Geneva Conventions, liberally spreading mines during their adventure in Afghanistan. Typically, the mines came from artillery shells or planes, airburst munitions that detonated a pre-determined height above the ground and then scattered tiny little bomblets over an area, usually about the size of a football field… one minefield per artillery shell. Frank was familiar with them because the United States also had them, but treaty restricted their use… a treaty the Russians had also signed.

The entire country was littered with those and many other kinds of mines, anti-tank mines, anti-personnel mines…  it was how most of the IEDs being used against the US and Coalition Forces were constructed. The Taliban, AQ, or their surrogates would dig the Composition B out of the old mine and then repurpose it with a wire. Voilà! Instant remotely detonated IED with reliable Russian military explosive-filling to ensure it wouldn’t dud, as a lot of the homemade stuff did. Sometimes terrorists would simply pick up an old Russian anti-tank mine and move it to a road or route they knew that U.S. forces used. It was risky as hell – and not particularly smart – but war was a dangerous business.

Ned and Slade had been out in town doing some surveillance when a large explosion rocked the quiet of the day. It came from a dry riverbed they sometimes used for picking up sources. Some zipperhead had been trying to set a mine and blew himself into tiny bits. One of the case officers, a soccer fan, would later cheer when they figured out what happened: “Another own goal for us!” he cackled, and everyone in the small facility they shared for writing cables chuckled and high-fived.

Frank stared at the flags in the ground, in neat rows like Memorial Day at a cemetery, except these flags were red and white; some rows completed, some not. The flags were either entirely white, indicating that someone had verified the mine was safe, or red indicating a hot mine; uncertain mines got both red and white flags crossed together. Frank’s mind was furiously trying to find a pattern in all of the red and white, anything that might give a clue as to what they should do and which way was safe. His eyes traveled from the flags back across the grass to the truck. They were well within the area of the half-completed demining project…

Ned was looking in the side and rearview mirrors. His face was serious, but betrayed no emotion. Frank pondered their options, while he looked at the hills around them. They were completely exposed.

“I don’t think I can do it, Bro,” Ned finally said, casually, as if they were discussing whether or not to go to the gym. They had both served in the Marine Corps, officer and enlisted, and so they both knew the doctrine: if you wander into a minefield, the assistant driver should “dismount the vehicle” and “proceed to the rear to direct and assist the driver in backing up along the tire tracks” that brought you into the mess in the first place.

Frank had an instant phantasm of Tate walking backwards, trying to direct the truck, and then Frank watching Ned get vaporized in the rearview mirror. He pushed that thought away. The theory, which was certainly logical, was that you should be able to back your way out safely… the theory did not particularly interest Frank at the moment.

Frank paused and forced himself to ask the question: “You want me to try it?” He hoped his voice didn’t betray how badly he wanted Ned to say no. The thought of getting out of the truck while Ned drove made his stomach flip-flop and for a moment his bowels almost betrayed him. The feeling came on instantly and he had to clench his sphincter to keep from shitting himself. A thought flitted across his mind about an old expression he had heard about among World War Two Marines during the beach assaults during the Pacific campaign: Keep a tight asshole. Under the onslaught of machine guns and artillery, newbies would frequently shit their pants.

“Not really,” Ned said, looking around, up at the hills. A wave of relief mixed with guilt at his own cowardice washed over Frank. He would have gotten out if Ned had asked; his honor as a Marine officer would have demanded it.

The truck idled. It was eerily quiet, except for a soft, warm breeze making the grass sway in rivulets as the wind trickled over it and the light purr of the engine.

Unbidden, Slade became aware of his kids back home, eight-and-a-half time zones away. For a moment he wondered, if I die, will they have some instantaneous sense of it? Would they awake with a start from their dreams, as if they sensed a disturbance in The Force? Was there some psychic, faster-than-light connection that would let them know I died? Or would they spend the rest of their lives wondering what had happened to their father, with no one ever being able to tell them how Ned and I simply vanished from the Earth?

No one would ever know. He knew it at that moment with a certainty that was inescapable. They were utterly alone, just the two of them, and they would live or die here together. They had just gotten a satellite signal, but those could do nothing for them now. All the technology in the world couldn’t help them.

Ahead and to the right, they could see the road and intersection – clean, free, beckoning to them, perhaps fifty yards away. The main branch led west and south, just the way they needed to go. Just to the right of those fucking flags…

“Well,” Ned finally said, like a man playing poker who decides to go all in. “Fuck it. You got this, Man. Let’s go.” Tate grabbed his shoulder belt and tugged it so it locked.

Slade was glad Ned had said what he was thinking.

“Any particular way?” he asked. Ned shifted himself in his seat, and then pointed to where they were both looking. It was the most direct route to the road, but wasn’t the farthest possible way from the flags. Of course, the whole area looked like the perfect setup for a minefield. MotherFucking Russians…

…And then Slade had a moment of madness. He started to think about whether he should gun the engine, or go slowly and look for signs of mines in the ground, or, or, or… he was paralyzed by the thought of running over a mine and being blown to pieces. It might have been an instant, or thirty seconds… he would never be able to recall accurately.

Ned put his left hand firmly, but kindly, on Frank’s shoulder. Out of his peripheral vision, Frank could see Ned Tate smile warmly.

“You got this, Brother. C’mon. Let’s go,” Ned said with a nod toward the road. Then he turned forward and waited for Slade to go, a tight smile showing as a line through his beard. His left hand stayed on Frank’s shoulder.

Frank set his eyes forward, looked again for the slightest clue in the dirt that might tell him if they were going to die, and as he hit the accelerator, Frank prayed to God with every fiber of his being, perfectly reconciled that he would never know it or feel it when they died.