If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe.
--Robert Gascoyne-Cecil

Melichek switches off the engine, his car eased into a space between two eighteen-wheel trucks, rain in lumpy rivulets filling up the space left on the glass by the wipers just switched off. He runs his finger along the seam where the two halves of the briefcase meet. He pushes at the seal and wonders if it will keep water out.

Sergeant Dibbs had the look of a man struggling for a long time with a particular disgust, his arms flat on the tabletop, eyes green and large looking at the square window with iron grille-- "That's what really heated me, Captain. I mean, not only did twitchy ass Shifty decide that the other team had the game fixed decidedly in their favor, but I didn't even come back with all the lead and metal I left with." Cold wood table and floor that sounded thick clacks with Melichek's steps. "Punk ass kids. If I ever get my fists near one of their greasy asses. They stole a sizable portion of my forty-fives. Clips too."

The eye, red webwork, green convex disc broken with black, swimming under a clear film.

He gets out of the car into puddles in dips in the tarmac. Water collected with dirt falls from the truck's side in full drops. Black glove fingers clutching briefcase handle, olive coat beginning in sharp crease at knees and ending at stiff collar and scarf, hair wet matted brown, stuck in wedges on forehead. One car at the gas pumps. Attendant's head in the small shop. Melichek walks around the building. Two garage doors, one open, one closed.

Dibbs rubbing his fingers over the table. "We've helped each other out before, Captain, and this time I really need a favor. But I'll tell you what, I'll do my part. I can give you connections. The people I know are hurtin' twice over for the white stuff now, and I know who you can talk to in Aliento. Not that Shoh either, I bet Shifty was right on about that fork-tongued mongrel. I mean the big man in Jinx, Mr. Leopold Boggs. He and I have conducted business before. I can give you a contact number if you've got a little saved away. What do you say, Captain, help keep this pretty face of mine out of the brig?"

A silver car parked in front of the closed garage door. Melichek ducks through the open one. Man in coveralls standing under dripping oil of a car on a lift. Tip of a tongue hanging over a lip, arms extended turning a wrench. "What can I do for you?" Still the tongue, still turning. Cheeks a deep blush red patched with spots of dirt and oil, smudges of grime oil on his fingers, in the grooves between knuckles, the skin looking cold and pale, living too long under oil.

Melichek knows eyes. He knows skin too. Skin not pale blue reptilian enough to look like dead skin and not almond tone oiled leather dark enough to look like skin tanned by the sun, but something in between. Flesh weak opened up around shrapnel hits like the metal bits are being birthed from muscle and bone. Lips baked in the sun and split. The infantryman, rifle swinging lazy in hand by sling: "Looks like they've been here a while." Gunner atop the Bradley, scraping crust of sand stuck on the barrel of the 25mm with a pocket-blade: "You got that, I can practically smell them from here."

Mainly the eye. The ant on the eye moves more slowly than the ants on the skin, the clothes, in the wounds, probing. This ant has to pull each leg out of the sticky clear eye film that catches it.

"I need a brake job." Water seeping over the floor pooling with oil in rings of fuzzy red, blue, yellow. Oil and dirt smell, old broken metal sour smell.

"I don't know if I can fit you in this afternoon."

"Just the two right wheels."

The man nods. "Sure, that's all you had to say. They're waiting for you in here." The man moving in his loose gray clothes, opening a door to the adjacent garage, an oil-marked hand dirtying door handle. Inside, two round ceiling lamps extending cones of light over an engine stripped to its smooth silver castings hanging on a hoist and two men behind a table. Yellow hair thinning in front along a sharp widow's peak. Pudgy wide-nostriled nose, a narrow mouth, suit of dark tan stripes on light brown. The other younger, not older than twenty, baggy gray pants sharp creases, bomber jacket zipped up to a white chin with small spikes of beard, a round face, brown eyes, hair shiny wet.

Door closing behind him. Rain drops a dull quick sound on roof above.

"Good afternoon." Man in brown with offered hand. "My name is Levek. I'm here representing Mr. Boggs. This is my associate Nico."

"I'm Melichek." First hand soft but rough with hard hairs on the finger joints. Second hand stiff and enclosing like something hardened at the bottom of the sea. Eyes brown like black eyes, like black painted thick on glass.

Raincoat bundled up, half on table, hanging half off table. Briefcase, big silver clasps.

"Ready for business, Mr. Melichek?"

He pulls his own case onto the table. Both of them laid down on steel filings and oil spots on gray metal table. Two sets of clasps snapped open. New crisp money stacked and bundled in bands of printed paper. He turns the case and pushes it to the other end of the table. The other case, slid over the metal, a long scrape, just that and the rain damp sound on the roof. Nico, pack of bills in hand, long stiff ruffle his finger running deep along the edge of the stack, bills all snapping quickly in succession.

Plastic bags white with powder packed into tight clumps. Placed lengthwise with others added breadthwise to fill the spaces. A pack full and soft in his hand. He squeezes it in his fingers. He undoes the seam, wets his fingertip with a spot of saliva and dips in, white sticking to his finger, thin speck film. Taste, sharp, bitter, gritty dissolving on his tongue. He nods.

Levek smiling, taking the money from Nico's hands and fitting it back in the case. "Everybody happy then?" He shuts the case, pushes the snaps down until they flick away from his fingers quick into place.

Nico. "Aren't we counting it first?"

Levek gathers the raincoat from the table, fitting his arms into it around his small body. "Come now, Nico, we can trust an officer, can't we?" His smile a perfect artifice, and Melichek knows he's saying that Boggs is powerful enough to find him anywhere if the amount ends up short.

Long reluctance in Nico. Hard shell of black eye. Mouth set close a thin line of lips tight together.

"Have a good afternoon, Mr. Melichek." Levek working a switch, hum of motor engaging and chain straining. The garage door raises slowly, compacting in articulated sections into the ceiling. Outside, a burst of rain, gray spots too quick for eye to catch, sharp hollow noises of rain on metal of the car in front. Levek with briefcase and Nico following into the car.

Melichek closes the case. Car engine started, yellow lights diffused dull through shadow rain drops, the car pulling into reverse and away.

Melichek was amused at himself for imagining certain scenarios. He was surprised at himself, and he was frightened. The two soldiers wrapped in their dark olive and brown uniforms waiting by the howitzer under the bomb barrages. Thunder passage of the heavy bombers rumble upon rumble, dull shocks through the earth a sound and a feel like their brains thudding the insides of their skull bones.

Then the rockets. He watched them firing on plumes of smoke and flare red and yellow, fast sucking sound, air smelling burnt, twelve bright points arcing in the sky. He only learned after the war that the other soldiers called it the steel rain, dropping its canopy of grenades popping open shrapnel into skin, steel, bone.

"See, rocket hits everywhere." The soldier with the slung rifle, pattern stripes of tan and black sparkling in sun under his eyes, pointing out black scars in sand, flak fragments spread over a wide area, then walking over the berm of sand piled up into stiff peaks. Then the two lying at the base of the howitzer, exhausted, the one with the bushy mustache and big teeth in rotting gums, the ant arduously lifting its stuck legs across the eye.

Out into the rain. The car pulling away, splashing up water as it dips onto the main road, heads south into town. Rain on Melichek's hair that didn't have time to dry. He walks between the two rigs and trailers. His car waiting, water streaming off the bumper, muddy water off the thick truck tires and rubber flaps.

He opens the door and tosses the case onto the passenger seat before sliding in himself.

What he doesn't see: the one who had been waiting behind one of the trailers who now steps out with a gun in his hand and moves quickly to point the gun and speak before Melichek has closed the car door.

Melichek hears him through the broad voice of rain. "Don't move." He turns and sees him, rain

dripping over his face. He's young like Nico. The same style of jacket, the same sharp black hair, but its wax stiffness dissolved so the locks are hanging in long curls over the forehead.

Mouth of the gun, solid steel circle close. Water droplets sliding around the barrel and falling off the bottom..

Melichek puts his hands up slowly. One in the car, one still outside where the rain enters through his coat cuff.

"Now give me the case." Eyes blinking in the water coursing down the forehead. Eyes small dark. A hand gripping the gun looking white and cold.

The soldier scraping the Bradley's 25mm clean, shading his eyes from the sun. "I'd like to see one live one, it'd be nice to get some actual fighting in before we reach Baghdad." Standing staring at the eye Melichek thought the man said it so no one would know how pleased he was at not having to face anything yet and how scared he was at imagining he might have to face something. Like the steel rain that lets the ants enter the fiber holding your body together.

He begins lowering his right hand, watching the finger curved into the space formed by the trigger guard. The finger tenses, a vein greenish-blue bulging out slightly more on the back of the hand.

His hand gripping the handle of the briefcase. "Is this how Boggs plays it?"

Each smooth strand of black hair is a circuit for water dripping over and onto the forehead. "Forget about Boggs. You're dealing with the Jinx Boys now."

"Boggs won't be too happy when he finds out."

"Boggs won't hear shit." Lips tight, a face trying to be a soldier's face. First the dead glassy eye, the fear he felt frozen solid. After that more bodies, charred trucks and tanks listing in smoke, trapped carbon-black figures, the uniforms burned off or welded in scraps to skin. The others who raced to surrender. Through all of that and the miles of desert, the gunner eager, finding himself, his blood, his young tense muscles in the reach of 25mm bullets. You stopped believing in being a soldier.

He lifts the case by the handle, guides it over his lap into the outside into the rain. The gunman's other hand reaching. Melichek lowers his left hand under the suitcase. Gun balanced in the hand. Eyes blinking in water.

Hand underneath grips the case's bottom, hand holds tight on top. At once, quick, the case thrust hard at the hand with gun, his body twisted out of the car and up. Because the gunman is young, because he is trying to be a soldier but is not one yet, he is surprised and the case hits his gun hand before he can fire. The case dropped to free hands, one holding the gun a finger into the trigger to block the other finger, the other hand fingers curling back strike of palm's heel against face.

Briefcase on ground, claps coming free, bags of white spilling out--head hit back against side of truck, edge of hand chops on wrist until gun hand loosens.

Gun held by the barrel in Melichek's hand. He holds it tight, brings it down to hit the face. Once, and again.

A crack like bone cracking.

Blood opening over an eye.

The gunman is on the ground. One hand on face. The other in a puddle, fingers splayed wide.

The gunman doesn't look to see Melichek pointing the gun at him. Instead, he crawls under the trailer, Melichek following him with the gun, looking under the trailer, spots of blood spreading thin in the puddles, two legs running.

Briefcase lying open. A few bags inside. Mostly on the ground in the rain. Hard water cutting dents in smooth piles of white. One bag ripped open, steady trail of powder separating into grains flowing away.

"Of course you outrank me, sir, but if you don't mind a little presumption I think I'll share my viewpoint on soldiering. Sure, you can be loyal to your country, follow all the rules, lead the charge and get cut down in a cloud of lead, but I happen to believe that the only thing you can really be loyal to is what you know is right and necessary for survival. And all the talk of sacrifice to what they call patriotism, that's just something a real soldier has to overcome. And if I look around the world and decide that making a good load of money's the best and truest way to survive, then sure, I'll defy whatever regulations come my way. That's a soldier, Captain, that's what I've always been." This was Dibbs's way.

He lays the gun on the seat and with both hands starts grabbing the bags and throwing them on the floorboard of the car. Moist, pliable plastic, seams still holding against the rain. He closes the case and throws it onto the passenger seat. The rain and him complete now, soaked through his collar, his hair and skin saturated.

He gets into the car, picks up the gun and looks at it for just a moment. .45 automatic with "U.S. ARMY" stamped in clean steel into the barrel. This makes him stop, the door still open, keys still in his pocket, bags of powder everywhere on the floorboard. You can't believe in Dibbs's way.

He shuts the door, puts the gun into a coat pocket and turns the ignition. The wipers start, flinging small pools of rain off the windshield. You only believe in the eye unblinking and vacant under the steady progress of an ant.