What I didn’t know until sometime later was that Dejung and Lanier had instituted a heightened level of security all their own. It was winter by this point, and the desert had taken on a raw chill, particularly when the winds came in, unobstructed in their bitter path. I had walked down to the gate to relieve Lanier on a gray day in which the desert and sky seemed to merge at the horizon. A pump truck was idling at the gate, waiting to siphon the waste out of the shitters. I found the driver behind the blast wall, leaning forward with his hands on the concrete and his feet spread. His trousers were around his ankles. His buttocks were very pale. Lanier knelt behind the man, a flashlight in hand, while Dejung stood a few paces back, his rifle at a forty-five. “Go on then,” Dejung said. I looked at Lanier, and he gave me that dead-eyed smile I’d seen in the chow hall. “Zero-nine,” I said. “Shift change.” Dejung just spat. “Run along now,” he said. I looked again at Lanier, and though I wasn’t certain, it seemed he gave me the slightest nod. I nodded back. Then I walked to the other side of the blast wall, shivering in the cold and pricking my ears. They were some time in returning. When at last they were done, the driver climbed into his pump truck, while Lanier headed back to the tent. Dejung just grinned. In the days that followed, I waited for a chance to broach the topic, to ask Lanier about the heightened security measures. But the moment seemed never to arise—the time was never right. And as the days passed, the whole matter seemed another indicator of their solidarity—of the trust forged between them. Trapped within the walls of the Iron Maiden, I began to feel very much alone.
Around New Year’s my girlfriend broke up with me. I had suspected for some time that she had lost interest in our relationship, perhaps even that she was cheating on me. I had developed a habit of spending long hours scrolling through her feed, searching for indicators of other men. When a name I didn’t recognize left a comment or liked a post, I would hurriedly research every shred of evidence I could find, as if by seeking out his image or the various breadcrumbs he’d left on the internet, I could discover the truth of their interactions. As time went by, her calls came less frequently. When she did call, I found it difficult to explain to her what it was we did on the fob or how we passed the time. She seemed not to understand what it meant to stand post and I seemed not to be able to explain. The first week, she’d texted me a selfie that took my breath away—now, when I asked for another, she demurred. Finally, I demanded she tell me his name. She wouldn’t say, wouldn’t even speak, and when I demanded again, I could hear her breathing on the other end of the line. It occurred to me she was crying. “Tell me,” I said.
“Fuck you, Jason.”
I was standing out by the helipad, on a gravel path, with the sun setting and the day’s warmth rapidly slipping away. “I always knew you were a whore,” I said. Then I hung up.
It seems too much of a coincidence, looking back on it—a trick of the mind, merging two events into one in an attempt to make sense of the world—but as I recall it, that was the same evening I had a strange experience with Lanier. I had stayed out by the helipad for a while, feeling the cold against my skin. The artillery marines were executing a fire mission and I could feel the blasts in my gut, a choppy, rippling sensation, like my organs were falling apart. After a while, I took the long way around back to the tent, paralleling the Hesco barriers and the blast walls, and I had stopped into the head to wash my face when I heard someone vomiting in one of the stalls. I stood still, the water dripping from my face. The vomit continued for some time, until the retching turned dry. Then the stall door opened. Lanier startled when he saw me. His cheeks were hollow and wet and the razor bumps on his neck appeared infected. He walked to the adjacent sink and began to wash the spittle from his face. In the big stainless steel mirror he gave me a pained smile, as if a finger had hooked each of his cheeks.
“Too much clam chowder,” he said.
I gave a little laugh. “Never trust the clam chowder,” I said. He smiled weakly and spit the last remnants of bile into the sink.
“You gotta let Doc take a look at those razor bumps.”
He shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”