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I looked up and saw that Sebastian was gazing at me, his head on one side, as if he was trying to read what was going on in my mind.

I smiled at him, hiding my concern.

“Time to move your ass
, Sebastian. I’ll see you later?”

He kissed me quickly, and then darted out through the door. Half a minute later I saw him strolling
casually across the compound, greeting some of the other men who were either waking up or coming off watch.

I yawned and stretched
, and took a moment to freshen myself up with some more baby-wipes, before heading out to join the line for chow.

The
day’s new gossip was that fresh rations would be dropped in by helicopter in the next couple of days. Other than the butt-clenching fear of being under fire, it was as exciting as things got.

I realized that if there was going to be a food drop, then there might well be mail, too. I decided I
’d keep my promise to Sebastian and write him a letter.

Thankfully, the day passed far less eventfully
than the previous one. I wasn’t sent out with Sebastian, but accompanied Lieutenant Crawley and a cheerful Afghan interpreter called Gawhar, who told me his name meant ‘jewel’. He was fascinated by the fact that I wasn’t married and didn’t have children. He kept asking who was ‘in charge’ of me. He couldn’t comprehend my answer of ‘no one’. I wouldn’t like to imagine how puzzled he’d be if he ever met a woman officer with men under her command. I hoped my presence gave him another point of view, at the very least.

Gawhar
thought women should be educated “up to the age of 11”, so that they could be more useful in childrearing. At one time, women in Afghanistan had been able to go to college, but now anyone attempting to educate girls was living very dangerously. Gawhar’s attitude was relatively liberal, compared to many.

I sighed. That poor country had a long way to go.

Our patrol was the first one back at the compound. Grant had confirmed that a food drop would be happening soon, so each Marine could have a one-minute shower with what was left from the water ration. Soon, there was an awful lot of naked flesh on display. I was glad I had a pair of sunglasses behind which to hide my blushes – or maybe it was my interest that I was hiding. I’d never used to pay much attention to that sort of thing, even though I lived by a beach. Huh, I blamed Sebastian.

I headed back to my room and started typing up notes and polishing a couple of articles that were almost ready to go. I was pleased with the photographs, too. The one
s from the previous day were particularly dramatic, although looking at them brought back some of the knee-trembling terror that I’d felt.

After an hour of
typing, I flipped shut the laptop lid, and sat outside to write an old-fashioned pen-and-paper letter to Sebastian. I was determined that if mail did arrive soon, he’d have a letter to open. I spent my time being creative: he said he wanted to get kinky with me, so I roughed out some ideas, to see if any of them were on his ‘to do’ list. It was a shame our time and space was so limited right now: I wanted to show him what a formerly-sexually-frustrated forty-year-old with a good vocabulary could imagine.

Sebastian
’s patrol was the last to return to the compound. Even from a distance, I could see that his face was strained. He glanced over to where I was sitting, and shook his head imperceptibly.

A few minutes later he emerged from Grant
’s makeshift office, and strode over to me.

“Captain Grant would like to see you, ma
’am,” he said formally.

I followed him across the compound, feeling anxious as he pressed his lips together in a hard line.

Grant’s office seemed gloomy after the punishing sunlight; he waved me to the only other chair in the room and Sebastian stood silently behind me.

“
Ms. Venzi, your presence is causing some interest among the local population. Chief Hunter heard some talk while on patrol that concerned him.”

I glanced up
at Sebastian who remained resolutely mute.

“And what does this talk say?” I prompted.

“At the moment it’s vague, but the news of having a woman with us will spread quickly now. We have a new cook and a new medic arriving in six days, so the heli will be putting down briefly. If you become a person of interest, as I think you will, you’ll be at risk and you’ll be putting my men at risk, too. I want you on that flight, Ms. Venzi.”

I felt like he
’d punched me, and all the air left my lungs. But I understood, as well. He was making a strategic decision. He hadn’t tried to persuade or softball me; he just told it like it was.

“I see. Well, thank you for
being so candid and explaining the situation to me, Captain Grant. I’ll ensure that I get as much work done as I can, and I’ll be ready to leave when you advise.”

The
Captain looked relieved; perhaps he’d expected me to argue, or throw a hissy fit. I may have been a stupid woman who overslept on her first day embedded with his unit, but I wasn’t selfish enough to risk the lives of others. Especially not Sebastian’s.

The worst part was that I
’d be leaving him behind. I’d always known that day would come, I just thought we’d have a bit longer first. He was right: we always seemed to be traveling in different directions.

I stood up
, and Sebastian escorted me out of the Captain’s office.

“Sorry, baby,” he murmured.

“That’s okay,” I replied, quietly. “I don’t want to cause more problems out here. Besides, I can get some stories from Leatherneck, so the paper won’t be shortchanged.”

“If anything happened to you…” he began.

I interrupted him quickly. “I told you, Sebastian, I’m not going to take risks. If you care about me, you won’t either.”

“
If
I care about you?” he said angrily.

“You know what I mean – and keep your voice down.”

He scowled, and looked mutinous.

Great. S
ulky Sebastian was back.

R
eluctantly, he left me outside my room, and marched off to the other side of the compound where he threw angry glances at me until it was meal time.

I was just drowning my sorrows in some piss-weak coffee
, when Lieutenant Crawley emerged from Grant’s subterranean office.

“
Supply chopper on its way,” he announced, then picked out a platoon to retrieve the goodies.

A few minutes later, we all heard the distinctive thrum of the
Black Hawk’s twin engines chewing up the air around it, and small parachutes began raining down.

Once the swag had been
collected and relocated to the compound, everyone gathered around to sort out the supplies: ammunition, water and – thank you God – fresh rations. There was also a bag of mail which I volunteered to sort out, much to Captain Grant’s obvious surprise.

There weren
’t as many letters as I’d expected. My two shadows, Ben and Larry, helped me do the sorting, and explained that any parcels from home would be held back until there was room (or spare weight) on the next heli drop.

When they weren
’t looking, I casually slipped my letter to Sebastian into the pile. It didn’t take long to finish sorting, and it was easy to tell which of the guys were family men – they had the most letters, some obviously addressed by their kids.

As he
’d said, Sebastian didn’t get many letters and that day, mine was the only one addressed to him.

The rest of the unit circled us like sharks, waiting for the moment
they heard their name. I saw Sebastian’s surprise when Larry called out ‘Hunter’.

“You got mail, Chief,” and he waved the thin envelope at
Sebastian.

Of course, I hadn
’t written a return address, so that should have clued him in, but instead he just looked puzzled. I watched him as he scrolled down the first few lines of my scandalous letter. Then his eyes widened in shock, and a wicked grin crept across his face. He glanced up, and I winked at him.

He read through the whole letter, sitting in the dirt, leaning against the mud wall of the compound. Then he closed his eyes and let his head rock back: he was still smiling.

Yeah, think about those positions, Chief.

One of the other men, a young guy
named Ross from Minneapolis, scrunched up his letter in disgust and dropped it in the dirt.

“What
’s up man?” said Larry.

“Fucking
‘dear John’ letter,” he said bitterly. “She said she didn’t want to spoil my last few days of leave, so she thought she’d wait till I got out here to tell me she was seeing someone else. Bitch.”

He got some sympathetic looks. A lot of the men had been there.
It could be hard to hold onto relationships in the military.

The sun had sunk behind the mountains and the air was beginning to cool
, when there was a sudden flurry of activity.

“Incoming!” came the yell from the sangar.

Suddenly, men were flying everywhere, running for their body armor and weapons. I sprinted for my room, but tripped over an abandoned jacket, and went sprawling in the dust.

The first RPG exploded about 200 yards outside the compound. The noise was horrendous
, and the plume of dirt rocketed 90 feet into the air.

I covered my head with my hands
, and pushed my face into the loose dirt on the ground. When the dusty shower had subsided, I crawled on my hands and knees into my room, and pulled on my body armor and helmet in double-quick time. Then I grabbed my camera and nervously pointed it out of the tiny window, taking snap after snap of the Marines as they took their positions. Then the durg-durg of the heavy machine guns started.

Another RPG exploded,
closer this time, and I dropped to the floor, counted to ten, and peered out of my window. After a minute of what seemed like organized chaos, bellows and shouts, silence rippled outwards.

My heart was thundering in my chest
, and I realized my hands were shaking. I began to wonder if a nice, safe job in a bank might be a good career move.

Sebastian
’s head suddenly appeared around my door, and I nearly yelled out in fright.

“You okay, baby?”

“Yes, fine. Don’t worry about me,” I replied, rather breathlessly.

He nodded, and disappeared.

The Taliban had a new tactic: sleep deprivation. Intermittently throughout the night, they’d fire an RPG randomly towards us. None of them came close enough to cause concern, but it was successful at stopping us resting, not that sleeping in body armor was possible anyway – at least not until complete exhaustion had set in.